What did it mean to be an African subject living in remote areas of Tanganyika at the end of the colonial era? For the Kaguru of Tanganyika, it meant daily confrontation with the black and white governmental officials tasked with bringing this rural people into the mainstream of colonial African life. T. O. Beidelman's detailed narrative links this administrative world to the Kaguru's wider social, cultural, and geographical milieu, and to the political history, ideas of indirect rule, and the white institutions that loomed just beyond their world. Beidelman unveils the colonial system's problems as it extended its authority into rural areas and shows how these problems persisted even after African independence.

Beer connects commercial, social, and political history in this sobering look at the culture of drinking in South Africa. Beginning where stories of colonial liquor control and exploitation leave off, Anne Kelk Mager looks at the current commerce of beer, its valorizing of male sociability and sports, and the corporate culture of South African Breweries \[SAB\], the world's most successful brewing company. Mager shows how the industry, dominated by a single brewer, was compelled to comply with legislation that divided customers along racial lines, but also promoted images of multi-racial social drinking in the final years of apartheid. Since the transition to majority rule, SAB has rapidly expanded into new markets―including the United States with the purchase of Miller Brewing Company. This lively book affords a unique view into global manufacturing, monopolies, politics and public culture, race relations, and cold beer.

Barbara M. Cooper looks closely at the Sudan Interior Mission, an evangelical Christian mission that has taken a tenuous hold in a predominantly Hausa Muslim area on the southern fringe of Niger. Based on sustained fieldwork, personal interviews, and archival research, this vibrant, sensitive, compelling, and candid book gives a unique glimpse into an important dimension of religious life in Africa. Cooper’s involvement in a violent religious riot provides a useful backdrop for introducing other themes and concerns such as Bible translation, medical outreach, public preaching, tensions between English-speaking and French-speaking missionaries, and the Christian mission’s changing views of Islam.

Until the advent of African independence, Africans were not considered fitting subjects for historical research and their words, voices, and experiences were largely absent from the continent’s history. In 13 lively and provocative essays focusing on all areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, oral sources are seen as a way to restore African expression to African history. African Words, African Voices evokes the richness and relevance of oral sources for understanding a complex past for readers at all levels. Contributors include E. J. Alagoa, David William Cohen, Laura Fair, Babacar Fall, Tamara Giles-Vernick, Isabel Hofmeyr, Abdullahi A. Ibrahim, Corinne A. Kratz, Stephan F. Miescher, Bethwell Allan Ogot, Megan Vaughan, Luise White, and Kwesi Yankah.

This book assesses the direction and impact of African philosophy as well as its future role. What is the intellectual, social, cultural, and political territory of African philosophy? What directions will African philosophy take in the future? What problems will it face? In 10 probing essays by distinguished African, European, and American scholars, African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry examines the role of African philosophy at the opening of the new millennium. Here philosophy cuts across disciplinary boundaries to embrace ideas taken from history, literary studies, anthropology, and art. Addressing topics such as the progress of philosophical discourse, knowledge and modes of thought, the relevance of philosophy for cultures that are still largely based on traditional values, and the meaning of philosophy to cultures and individuals in the process of modernization, this volume presents today's best thinking about the concerns and practices that constitute African experience. New views about personhood, freedom, responsibility, progress, development, the role of the state, and life in civil society emerge from these broad-based considerations of the crisis of the postcolonial African state. In a lively fashion this diverse book shows how philosophical questions can be applied to interpretations of culture and reveals the multifaceted nature of philosophical discourse in the multiple and variable settings that exist in contemporary Africa.

"This volume has much to recommend it―providing fascinating and stimulating insights into many arenas of material culture, many of which still remain only superficially explored in the archaeological literature." ―Archaeological Review ". . . a vivid introduction to the topic... A glimpse into the unique and changing identities in an ever-changing world." ―Come-All-Ye Fourteen interdisciplinary essays open new perspectives for understanding African societies and cultures through the contextualized study of objects, treating everything from the production of material objects to the meaning of sticks, masquerades, household tools, clothing, and the television set in the contemporary repertoire of African material culture.

...an unprecedented opportunity to understand West African oratory from the point of view of a native Akan speaker who is also a gifted linguist and ethnographer...\[Yankah\] shows with elegance the connections between verbal strategies and the cultural organization of West African social systems. - "Alessandro Duranti". Among the Akan of Ghana and in other areas of West Africa, royal speech is not articulated with a single voice but is rather a composite of the chief's words and their artistic relay by his orator and principal diplomat, the okyeame. In the royal entourage the okyeame is the most conspicuous personage, functioning as the chief's mouth and the individual through whom the chief speaks and through whom others' words may reach the chief. This little-studied phenomenon receives comprehensive exploration in Kwesi Yankah's engaging "Speaking for the Chief", a theoretically informed work rich with firsthand observations. Yankah shows the art of the okyeame to be not simply a genre of speaking but a set of cultural practices that mediate and reconstitute local notions of power, hegemony, and public discourse.

.."". the contributors to Status and Identity in West Africa have swept away the dust that has obscured the study of the societies of western Sudan and have made it possible to pursue the salutory work of decolonizing the history and sociology of these regions.""A—American Ethnologist ""This discussion is among the most significant contributions that African studies can make to the contemporary global dialogue on multicultural issues."" — Choice ""It is 'must' reading for anyone who works in African literature today."" — Research in African Literatures ""an indispensable guide to understanding the producers of art in the Mande world, including the art of the spoken word. The writing and arguments are clear and jargon-freeit will provide a rich harvest of detailed original research"" — African Arts ""\[This\] book... is the most impressive effort to look at these groups in comparative perspective. The essays fit together nicely to challenge notions that came out of colonial scholarship."" — Journal of Interdisciplinary History .."". the volume makes a significant contribution to the social history and ongoing processes of cultural pluralism in West Africa."" — Journal of Religion in Africa The nyamakalaw—blacksmiths, potters, leather-workers, bards, and other artists and specialists among the Mande-speaking peoples of West Africa—play powerful roles in Mande society. This book presents the first full portrait of one of Africa's most powerful and least understood social groups.

"\[Herbert\] has constructed a model of power relationships structured upon gender and age, and derived from male transformative processes, and in so doing has written a notable, and most enjoyable, book." ―African History "Herbert examines with great care and thoroughness the relationships between gender and power and the rationales that give them social form... \[Her\] analytical ability is outstanding." ―Patrick McNaughton "This book is a well-written and essential study of the place of belief in African material culture." ―International Journal of African Historical Studies Herbert relates the beliefs and practices associated with iron working in African cultures to other transformative activities―chiefly investiture, hunting, and pottery making―to propose a gender/age-based theory of power.

In 1958, Guinea declared independence from France and propelled Ahmed Sékou Touré to power. Early revolutionary fervor was not to last, and until his death in 1984, Sékou Touré ruled with an iron fist. What would it have been like to participate in Guinea's changing political fortunes? Jay Straker invites readers to reconsider the sources, stakes, and ramifications of Guinea's nation-building experience. By engaging official political tracts, state and popular newspapers, education journals, novels, poems, plays, photographs, and personal histories, Straker offers an alternative view of the uneven effects of the state's attempts to reshape popular attitudes, social practice, and youth consciousness. Showing how visions of ideal youth played into the workings of revolutionary power, Straker creates a captivating and intense history that uncovers the ambitions that drove militant socialist-revolutionary politics in Guinea.

" . . . de Heusch has achieved a significant advance over Lévi-Strauss' formulations... \[A\] landmark contribution to anthropological theory, historical methodology, structural analysis, and African studies." ― Choice A major work that modifies and extends Lévi-Straussian myth analysis in profound and exciting ways. Roy Willis' masterful translation makes technical terms accessible to the general reader.