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Contemporary Narratives on Yoruba History, Modern Society in Nigeria, and the Meaning of Decolonized Humanity in the African Context African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-09-23 Nnanna Onuoha Arukwe
Instead of being merely a historical occurrence, colonization is a structural feature of civilizations that have been touched by colonialism, which affects the prospects for the colonial subjects. This process is still ongoing in various forms among the so-called postcolonial societies today. Therefore, decolonization is a response to both the negative stereotypes and falsehoods about Indigenous peoples
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Cabral and Revolution in Portuguese-Speaking Africa African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-09-17 Aliou LY
In Amilcar Cabral: The Life of a Reluctant Nationalist, a translation and revision of his earlier Portuguese edition, Antonio Tomas addresses what he sees as a gap between the reality of the armed struggle in Guinea and the ways in which it has been discussed by all previous writers on the subject. He claims to base his critique on newly released archival information and recent publications on Cabral
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Africa and the Possibility of Philosophy: Paulin Hountondji’s Intellectual Legacy African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-08-27 Katrin Flikschuh
In this brief memoriam, I argue that Hountondji’s methodological concern over the possibility of African philosophy led him to query the very idea of philosophy as the search for universal knowledge. Hountondji’s lasting legacy thus consists, among other things, in challenging the image of Western philosophy as the repository of universal knowledge. To the contrary, philosophy will come into its own
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Literary Imaginations from Below: Crowdsourced Verse and African Literature’s Digital Publics African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-08-15 ‘Gbenga Adeoba
What could be called a digital turn has amplified conversations around publics, literary cultures, and African literature’s broadened genres. Drawing on conceptual frameworks and debates from literary, cultural, and media studies, Adeoba examines the literary imaginations and ekphrastic practices that emerge from the digital cultures of African Twitter users. Adeoba argues that crowdsourced verse demonstrates
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Reencuentros with Paulin Hountondji African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-08-15 Sarah M. Quesada
These reflections look back on Paulin Hountondji’s mentorship, and how he helped a comparatist to bridge Latin American (and Latinx) studies with African studies during fieldwork in Benin.
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Rural Radicalism in the Capital City: The Impact of Histories of Inequitable Safety on Patterns of Violence African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-08-14 Naomi Pendle, Deng Maror
Around the world, armed conflict is increasingly occurring in capital cities and governments are relying on pro-government, rurally recruited, militia to suppress anti-government political violence. Pendle and Maror draw lessons from South Sudan where recruits from rural areas were brought to Juba to help defend the government. Drawing on ethnographic observations and qualitative interviews with combatants
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The Power of Critique: A Tribute to Paulin Hountondji African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-29 Uchenna Okeja
The emergence of African philosophy as a systematic field of inquiry can be traced to the trailblazing work of a few figures. Paulin Hountondji occupies a special place among these trailblazers. A true exemplar of the field, Hountondji’s work is neither limited by the linguistically circumscribed mapping of African philosophy nor the dichotomies and quarrels arising from methodological and stylistic
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The Dynamics of Herder-Farmer Conflicts in Plateau State, Nigeria, and Central Darfur State, Sudan African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-17 Abosede Omowumi Babatunde, Fatma Osman Ibnouf
Drawing on their own field studies, the authors examine how state and local actors involved in resource management and peacebuilding activities are implicated in the conflict between farmers and herders in Plateau State, Nigeria, and Central Darfur State, Sudan. The authors show that state officials, traditional chiefs, and security agents intensified the conflict by perpetuating the inequitable distribution
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Nationhood in South Sudan Cinema: The Iconicity of Motherhood in Akuol de Mabior’s No Simple Way Home (2023) African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Addamms Songe Mututa
Post-cessation nationhood in South Sudan presented a paradoxical situation: a country united during struggle is fragmented after independence. Among the triggers for this scenario was the death of Dr John Garang de Mabior—the country’s founding father. This article is a multidisciplinary semiotic critique of Akuol de Mabior’s film, No Simple Way Home (2023), against the history of South Sudanese nationhood
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Performing Nigerianness: Equivocal Identities and Digital Legibility of White Women Comedians African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Rowland Chukwuemeka Amaefula
Sabina Yuhas (@Overszabi) and Juliana Belova (@juliewanderz or Oyibo Marlian) are Hungarian and Russian women, respectively, who are fascinated by Nigerian popular culture. Despite their successes in exploiting Black culture to attain wealth and fame in the Nigerian mediasphere, their works have hardly been studied. Close readings and nuanced analyses of their selected TikTok skits show a multiplicity
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Paulin Hountondji: The Struggle for Meaning and the Struggle for Action African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-29 Nathalie Etoke
Paulin Hountondji is an essential figure in the literary and philosophical world of Africa. Rereading The Struggle for Meaning: Reflections on Philosophy, Culture, and Democracy in Africa allowed me to rediscover a man whose theoretical work is indissociable from action. Conscious of the dangers of sterile speculation and above all passionate about improving Africans’ conditions of existence, Hountondji
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Harlem, Addis, and Johannesburg: African Solidarity and African American Internationalism in Harlem from the 1960s to the 1990s African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Carolyn A. Brown
This 2021 ASA Presidential Lecture combines sociopolitical history with personal reflections on Black Harlem during African decolonization. It begins at the turn of the twentieth century and traces Harlem’s transformation into an international center of pan-Africanist activism and cultural production. Brown explores solidarities that grew as Harlem politicians, grassroots leaders, and residents encountered
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More Than an Intermediary: James Bannerman and Colonial Space-Making on the Nineteenth-Century Gold Coast African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-08 Hermann W. von Hesse
Scholars have emphasized the importance and autonomy of African intermediaries in European imperial projects. However, intermediaries have not been studied as founders of (proto) colonial administrations. Between 1840 and 1874, the inchoate British establishment on the Gold Coast was largely a project of Anglo-African merchants, rooted in their political visions of “progress.” Merchants like James
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#BringBackOurGirls: Transnational Activism and the Remediation of the 2014 Chibok Girls’ Kidnapping in Nigeria African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-26 Chijioke K. Onah
In April 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped almost three hundred girls attending school in Chibok, Nigeria. The #BringBackOurGirls campaign emerged as a global activist movement in the aftermath of that kidnapping. Onah’s article analyzes the global mediascapes of the campaign to show the mnemonic affordances of the Chibok girls’ kidnapping and the intermedial dynamics that coalesced to make it a global memory
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Electoral Politics and Struggles for Accountability African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Elvis Bisong Tambe
This review essay focuses on electoral politics and the African accountability struggle, which has gained interest and scholarly attention following the third wave of democratization. Before the Namibia Constituent Assembly elections in November 1989, many would agree that elections were neither acknowledged nor considered appropriate for selecting governmental and national leaders. However, the democratic
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(Re)negotiating State Authority: How Hinterland Protests against Global Capital Impact the Mediating Role of Traditional Rulers in Postcolonial Sierra Leone African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Mohamed Sesay
Sesay draws from three hinterland protests against multinational corporations in the mining and agricultural sectors to examine how global capital influences central/local politics in postcolonial Sierra Leone. Focusing specifically on the mediating role of traditional rulers—a strong legacy of British colonial indirect rule—Sesay argues that hinterland protests not only enable the relative autonomy
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Evolving An African Postcolonial Condition: Cultural Property Restitution, Cinematic Independence, Globalized NGO Compassion, and Grappling with an Elite Corruption Complex African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Nnanna Onuoha Arukwe
The empire-building phase of the European powers in Africa, which spanned several centuries, had its climax at the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, where the colonizers carved up and allocated the African continent among themselves as their respective colonial projects. They would subsequently invade virtually all of the continent based on this arbitrary partitioning—which, among other things
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Collaborative Autoethnography and Reclaiming an African Episteme: Investigating “Customary” Ownership of Natural Resources African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-26 Francis Abonga, Jacky Atingo, Jacob Awachango, Akena Denis, Julian Hopwood, Ocitti James, Opiyo Dick Kinyera, Susan Lajul, Auma Lucky, Joseph Okello
Collaborative autoethnography can function as a means of reclaiming certain African realities that have been co-opted by colonial epistemes and language. This can be significant in very concrete ways: northern Uganda is suffering a catastrophic loss of tree cover, much of which is taking place on the collective family landholdings that academia and the development sector have categorized as “customary
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Rural Radicalism and the Tactic of Third-Party Leverage: How Acholi Peasants Drew a UN Agency into Their Struggle against Land-Grabbing by the Ugandan State African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-22 Tessa Laing, Sara Weschler
This article analyzes a 2018 protest instigated by rural activists in northern Uganda, who chose to contest violent state-driven evictions by peacefully occupying a UN compound in the urban center of Gulu. With their contribution to this ASR forum on rural radicalism, Laing and Weschler argue that in militarized contexts such as Uganda, remote geographies present rural political actors pursuing radical
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The Mediation of Autocratic Regimes: How Local Officials Shaped Authoritarian Systems in Rwanda and Sudan African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-08 Marie-Eve Desrosiers, Anne-Laure Mahé
Local state officials impact authoritarian systems through the mediation they perform. Desrosiers and Mahé argue that these local functionaries fulfill a number of mediating functions, including translating and representing authoritarian systems at the local level. By enacting these two roles, however, local officials do not straightforwardly reproduce the system. Instead, their interpretations and
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Radical Autochthony? Proprietary Political Discourse Among Elites and Peasants in the Anti-Balaka Armed Movement in the Central African Republic African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-12-22 Louisa Lombard, Gino Vlavonou
Since at least the colonial era, the Central African Republic (CAR) has been a hotbed of rural rebellion and protest. This article explores the political discourses of members of the Anti-Balaka, a diffuse protest movement and armed rebellion, comparing discourses to see how they vary in relation to demographic categories: urban and rural, elites and peasants. Lombard and Vlavonou find that rural peasants
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“These Somalis are not Somalis:” Cup of Art Italian Coffeehouse, Authentic Identities, and Belonging in Hargeisa, Somaliland African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-12-22 Yusuf Serunkuma
Through ethnography of a performatively Western-inspired coffeehouse in a “traditionally” identifying town of Hargeisa in Somaliland, Serunkuma uses Cup of Art Italian Coffeehouse to debate the political-conceptual dilemma—and potential dangers—of the renewed longing for cultural authenticity and “total revolution” in post-colonial Africa. While acknowledging the failure of the dreams that animated
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Crime and Policing in Africa: Tactical Politics, Authoritarianism, and the Rule of Law African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-12-15 Elizabete Albernaz
In 2020, Nigerian youths took to the streets to demand the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a unit of the Nigerian Police with a long history of extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, extortion, torture, and other atrocities. The Nigerian government created the division in 1992 following the killing of an army colonel, under the pretense of fighting a crime wave which was
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Global Forces, Rural Radicalism, and the Dual Transformation of Urban and Rural Protest in Africa African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-12-07 Zachariah Cherian Mampilly
Studies of protest in contemporary Africa often fail to address three related dynamics. First, rural radicalism has long been more central to African political struggles, even urban ones, than is commonly recognized. Second, the ongoing transformation of rural political economies links them to those of urban areas and has changed struggles over land and resources. Finally, these changes have reduced
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Contested Truths Over COVID-19 in East Africa: Examining Opposition to Public Health Measures in Tanzania and Uganda African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-11-22 Jia Hui Lee, Laura A. Meek, Jacob Katumusiime
The comparative analysis of three “contested truths” around COVID-19 in East Africa demonstrates that knowledge is a product of knotted, uneven, and disputed epistemological practices tied to structures of power. Lee, Meek, and Katumusiime examine: (1) the construction of a pan-African skepticism of COVID-19 that drew on anti-imperialist discourses; (2) social media posts through which Tanzanian digital
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Recent Approaches to the Study of Health, Healing, Illness, and Care in Africa African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Julia Ross Cummiskey
So far, the twenty-first century has been a boom time for studies of health, illness, healing, and care work in Africa, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only increased attention to these issues. Yet again, current events remind us that history, politics, social relationships, and public health are inextricably linked. These five books encompass a range of approaches to the questions and sources that animate
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“More than Disease”: Uncovering the Economic, Social, and Political Consequences of Sierra Leone’s COVID-19 Pandemic African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Kristen E. McLean, Liza J. Malcolm
When COVID-19 reached Sierra Leone, the government responded by implementing strict containment measures. While the effectiveness of such actions has been debated, the socioeconomic and political implications were undeniable. This qualitative study reveals that people suffered tremendously from economic insecurity, strains on social relationships, and civil rights violations, prompting many to perceive
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“We Are not into Politics, but Politics Is into Us”: The Politicization of the Ghana Armed Forces Through Patronage Exchanges between Political Elites and Military Leaders African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-08-11 Humphrey Asamoah Agyekum
Throughout Ghana’s political history, soldiers have inspired socio-political change. Based on fieldwork with the Ghanaian military, this article contributes to literature on militaries and civil-military relations in Africa. Agyekum analyzes how the politicization of the military impacts dynamics within the barracks, while highlighting how the country’s political class endeavors to diminish the armed
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Black Power, Raw Soul, and Race in Ghana African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-08-10 Alison Okuda
In the late 1960s, Ghanaians joined the global conversation about Black Power. Despite the absence of President Nkrumah and attempts to dampen local interest in radical political movements, young Ghanaian students, musicians, and audience members were well informed of the global implications of white supremacy. Okuda examines how Ghanaians expanded the legacy of Black Power into an African context
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Chief or Big-Man Politics in Post-War Sierra Leone? African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-07-17 Kars de Bruijne
Marshall Sahlins claims that individuals with personal power, influence, networks, and control over their followers within the political sphere are actually “big-men” rather than “chiefs.” Big-men derive their authority from personal maneuvering, whereas “chiefs” obtain their authority from semi-hierarchical, formalized, and de-personalized rule. De Bruijne argues that those individuals who are perceived
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Gendering Counter-Terrorism: Kunya and the Silencing of Male Victims of CRSV in Northeastern Nigeria African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-07-05 Emeka Thaddues Njoku, Isaac Dery
As the silence of male CRSV victims continues to be debated, some argue that gender norms and a lack of agency contribute to the silence of victims, even as others assert that victims exercise agency by speaking selectively about their experiences. In northern Nigeria, the concept of kunya—a model for appropriate behaviour rooted in the importance of secrecy and discretion—plays a role in the silencing
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“The Country Is on One Leg”: An Analysis of Secondary Educated Youths’ Perceptions of the Risks, Challenges, and Opportunities of the Peacebuilding Process in Côte d’Ivoire African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-05-29 Line Kuppens, Arnim Langer
While youths in Africa are often portrayed as peace spoilers, this view largely overlooks youths who have not (yet) turned to (post-) conflict violence. In order to deepen our understanding of the risks of conflict recurrence and the ways to prevent these risks from materializing, Kuppens and Langer argue that it is crucial to study the perspectives of non-violent youths in post-conflict countries
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Money in South-Central Africa, 1890–1931: Africans, Imperial Sterling, and Colonial Economy-Building African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-05-29 Tinashe Nyamunda, Admire Mseba
In South-Central Africa, British mining companies shadowed colonial monetization in an assertive and coercive manner. In the emerging settler states, African money users were obliged to adjust to colonial money for the payment of tax and transactions. Yet they often found it difficult to obtain access to colonial currency. Company rule in the region was initially closely connected to the South African
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Radio in Africa African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-04-20 Robert Heinze
Frantz Fanon’s essay “This is the Voice of Algeria” is a still-underused text in the study of radio. The book it comes from, A Dying Colonialism, is often regarded as one of Fanon’s weaker works, since its sociological studies of the Algerian revolution are considered to lack the rhetorical mastership and philosophical heft seen in his more famous books. At least in the case of his essay on radio,
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Religious Dynamics and Conflicts in Contemporary Ethiopia: Expansion, Protection, and Reclaiming Space African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-04-11 Terje Østebø
Ethiopia has often been portrayed as a unique case of peaceful inter-religious relations. The country has, however, seen an increase in violence between religious communities over the last decades, something which has been interpreted within the prism of extremism. Analyzing inter-religious dynamics in Ethiopia, Østebø argues that the notion of extremism is an inadequate analytical tool, and proposes
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Ubunyarwanda and the Evolution of Transitional Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda: “To Generalize is not Fresh” African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-03-31 Zoë Elizabeth Berman
Conversations around transitional justice often focus on concepts of victimhood and perpetration. Such has been the case in Rwanda in the decades following the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi. However, even as Rwandans continue to observe state-led transitional justice reforms which divide them into victims and perpetrators, they simultaneously draw on state discourses of unity to carefully critique
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Making Demands on Government: Theorizing Determinants of Backyard Residents’ Collective Action in Cape Town, South Africa African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Adam S. Harris, Andreas Scheba, Louis Rice
Informality is growing with Africa’s rapid urbanization. Much like residents of other types of informal housing, backyard dwellers face overall poor living conditions and political marginalization. However, backyard residents are in an ambiguous legal area and have been far less politically active and organized to pursue their rights to adequate housing. Using a qualitative case study of backyard residents
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The Management of the Bank of Senegal and the Formation of a Colonial Economy, 1840s–1901 African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Toyomu Masaki
In 1854, the Bank of Senegal was established using part of the compensation paid to former slave owners. The bank issued banknotes and provided modern financial services. Masaki analyzes the bank’s management and interrogates the widely accepted argument that merchants from Bordeaux controlled the bank to marginalize African merchants, concluding that the bank largely provided equitable service to
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Going Back to the Roots: Indigenous Language, Media Performance, and Change in Kenya African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-03-06 Fridah Kanana Erastus, Ann H. G. Kinyua
The introduction of indigenous languages to Kenyan media, following pre- and post-independence realities, opened the floodgate of communications within the country, with both positive and negative consequences. Indigenous languages found expression in creative works, civic communication, and other areas previously reserved solely for English and Kiswahili. Kanana and Kinyua discuss this trajectory
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African Studies Keywords: Queer African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-03-02 Kwame E. Otu, Adriaan van Klinken
“Queer” is a relatively recent and somewhat controversial term in African studies. Yet it is proving to be productive, not only for understanding African subjectivities of sexuality and gender, but also for situating Africa’s position in the larger economy of knowledge. Otu and van Klinken explore the productive tensions between “queer” and “Africa,” and aim to read Africa as queer and to read queer
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Coloniality of Waithood: Africa’s Wait for COVID-19 Vaccines amid COVAX and TRIPS African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-19 Ampson Hagan
African nations have struggled to secure lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines, while rich nations have purchased more than they needed, depleting the global supply. High vaccine prices and intellectual property regulations that block the production of cheaper generics have contributed to a condition of African waithood. Hagan examines this waithood, which characterizes the disjuncture between African countries’
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Dialoguing with Retired Nurses: Involving Interview Participants in the Interpretation Process in South Africa African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-19 Leslie Anne Hadfield
The African Studies community has reinvigorated discussions about the racial and power dynamics of the field in the past few years. A core question has been how to Africanize knowledge production. Hadfield’s practical example as a white American historian involving Black South African oral history interview participants in different stages of the research process shows that successfully including interview
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Land and Living on Little in Kenya African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-19 Priscilla Shilaro
In these three volumes, Ambreena Manji, Barbara Thomas, and Julie Zollman detail how poor people in Kenya navigate everyday struggles against restrictive social, economic, and political constraints to build livelihoods through their individual and collective efforts in order to access basic social services, land, markets, and employment, and to participate in the social, economic and political arenas
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Literary Analysis of a Memory Book by a Schoolteacher with HIV in Rural Uganda: Writing about Living with and Dying of HIV African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Machiko Oike
Memory book projects encourage parents living with HIV to write workbooks for their children about their family background and life experiences, to guide the child in the parent’s future absence. In Uganda, site of the first memory book projects in Africa, most writers have been widows with agrarian background and limited schooling. Oike conducts a close literary textual analysis of an exceptionally
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African Studies Keyword: The Bush African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-16 Martha Lagace
When Ugandan singer Geoffrey Oryema died in France in 2018 after forty-one years in exile, his wish was to be cremated, repatriated to Uganda, and dispersed on the wind. His wish implied improper burial and ignited a controversy due to varied meanings of the bush. The bush is a keyword with a painful past. Oryema’s experience and Acholi concepts of the bush suggest the bush is partly a discourse, inherited
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Reorganizing the Escudo Zone: Portuguese Monetary Policy and Empire-Union in Africa in the 1960s African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-16 Maria Eugénia Mata
In the 1960s, the escudo zone, comprising Portugal and its African colonies, countered the trend of European decolonization. The Portuguese state reorganized monetary relations in the empire-state with the help of a new legal framework. The aim of this imperial economic reorganization was to establish a balance of payment relations which was expected to facilitate Portugal’s economic modernization
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Restitution vs. Retention: Reassessing Discourses on the African Cultural Heritage African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-16 Jérémie Eyssette
In order to reappraise discourses on the restitution vs. retention of Africa’s cultural heritage, Eyssette examines the Musée du Quai Branly (France), the AfricaMuseum (Belgium), the British Museum (UK), and the Humboldt Forum (Germany) as one representative spectrum for analysis showing the mutual imbrications of their changing strategies and practices. After detecting biases in retentionist arguments
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Transnational Strategies of Legitimation in the 1990s: The Togolese Regime and its Exiled Opposition in Ghana African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-12 Nathalie Raunet
After a failed transition to democracy in the 1990s in Togo, the opposition took refuge in Ghana, outside of the regime’s reach. Why and how did the regime react to transnational dissent? Analyzing an unpublished RPT-produced press review and the opposition press in Ghana and Togo, Raunet argues that the Togolese regime used the foreign press, the language of legality, and the politics of belonging
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Stories and Empathy in a Time of Crisis: An African Viewpoint African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-06 Ato Quayson
This Presidential Lecture explores the ways in which African orality provides the means for a sentimental education in an era of crisis. Quayson notes how the essentially polysemic character of the genres of orality have influenced the ways he understands both literature and the African city, two areas of keen interest. After tracing the texture of Accra’s trotro (passenger vehicle) slogans and the
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COVID-19 and the Ugandan Presidential Election: Contesting Lockdown Authority in Popular Songs African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-12-23 David G. Pier, Micheal Mutagubya
The COVID-19 pandemic struck when Uganda was in the middle of an acrimonious campaign season, in which longstanding president Yoweri Museveni was being challenged by Bobi Wine, a reggae singer turned politician. When Museveni imposed a strict lockdown, musicians sympathetic to Wine responded with songs about COVID-19 that challenged the government’s short-term, biopolitical demarcation of the national
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From German East African Rupees to British East African Shillings in Tanganyika: The King and the Kaiser Side by Side African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-12-21 Karin Pallaver
Pallaver situates German East Africa within the framework of the broader East African region as a way to illuminate the processes of currency standardization in the colonial context. The monetary geography of the region was determined first by the circulation of the rupee and later by Great Britain’s interests to create a common currency for its East African colonies. Pallaver argues that transimperial
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The Collapse of the Gold Standard in Africa: Money and Colonialism in the Interwar Period African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-12-20 Leigh Gardner
Research on Africa’s monetary history has tended to focus on the imposition of colonial currencies while neglecting the monetary upheavals which faced the colonial powers after the collapse of the gold standard during World War I. Gardner profiles three crises—in The Gambia, Kenya, and Liberia—resulting from shifting exchange rates between European currencies during the 1920s and 1930s. These three
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Writing in Englishes: Taking Control of the Technology of Power through Literary Aesthetics: A Keynote Speech to the African Studies Association Conference, 2021 African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-12-01 Aminatta Forna
As language increasingly becomes uncoupled from the nation state, transnational writers, transnational African writers, and African writers are using language to serve their own purposes and creating new literary aesthetics. This essay, first given as a keynote speech to the 2021 African Studies Association Annual Conference, examines some debates about the relationship between language and power and
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Communication politique et symbolique vestimentaire au Cameroun : cas de l’élection présidentielle de 2018 African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-11-23 Jean Daniel Bombela Bombela
La communication politique conventionnelle occulte l’usage des symboles culturels de l’apparence que sont les vêtements lors des campagnes électorales. Or le vêtement est incorporé à l’œuvre de conquête et de conservation du pouvoir politique du fait de son potentiel de séduction. En prenant pour site d’observation la campagne pour l’élection présidentielle camerounaise d’octobre 2018, cet article
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“A Reason Not to Belong”: Political Decentralization, Intercommunal Relations, and Changing Identities in Northeastern Uganda African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-11-22 Samuel Meyerson
Abim district, located in Uganda’s Karamoja region, is one of the scores of new administrative units created under the country’s decentralization policy. The establishment of Abim district in 2006, following decades of conflict in northern Uganda, was accompanied by changes in ethnic identity within local communities of Ethur farmers. Based on oral history fieldwork in Abim, Meyerson documents these
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Eyes on the Prize: Toward a Reimagining of the Role of Awards in African Studies African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-10-24 Kristin D. Phillips, Kristen E. Cheney
Phillips and Cheney preface an analysis of the ASA’s Graduate Student Paper Prize in a discussion with past Prize winners with a review of the sociological literature on awards and scholarly critiques of the history of African Studies. They find that the Prize has played an important role in amplifying and recognizing the voices of young scholars who have pushed the thematic and theoretical boundaries
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“Awa ndi macheza aamai (This is women’s play)”: Examining Pleasure in Urban Malawian Women’s Social Spaces African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-10-14 Asante Lucy Mtenje
Women’s social groups and gatherings in Malawi, whether physical or virtual, are often dismissed as something not to be taken seriously, as they are imagined to be places where nothing useful but chitchat and gossip will emerge. Nevertheless, these spaces, as sites of leisure where women can engage in macheza (play), continue to play an important role in how urban women variously experience pleasure
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A Mosaic of Yorùbá Ontology and Materiality of Pleasure Since AD 1000 African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-10-14 Akinwumi Ogundiran
What have been the meanings and meaningfulness of pleasure in Yorùbá thought, practice, and history over the past eight hundred years? Ogundiran draws from literary, archaeological, myth-historical, and ethnographic sources to answer this question in two parts. First, he examines the ontologies, materiality, and sociality of pleasure at the levels of ordinary experience and institutional culture. Second
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On Visuals and Selling the Promise of Sexual Plaisir and Pleasure in Abidjan African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-10-14 Naminata Diabate
Diabate examines images and news reports about rampant sexual permissiveness in Abidjan and its online environs. Attention to the visual dimension of this pleasure explosion highlights the presence of homines economici. Considering buyers of aphrodisiacs or butt/breast-enhancing products not as uninformed agents, but instead as rational actors who are sensitive to images leads makers and retailers
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Pleasures of the Nollywood Familiar and Everyday Life African Studies Review (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-10-14 Moradewun Adejunmobi
Sequels, spinoffs, serials, and other kinds of generic works are prevalent in Nollywood filmmaking and popular with fans. These spinoffs and other generic works are characterized by a degree of familiarity, made evident in their repetitive and or affiliative dimensions. According to Adejunmobi, familiarity as a mode of media engagement in Nollywood generates specific pleasures connected to the repetitive