Browse
by Paperbacks: All Subjects
By Area: Africa
View: By Date | Alphabetical | eBooks | Paperbacks
-
Forthcoming Pb 2025
Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples
Displacement, Forced Settlement and Sustainable Development
Chatty, D. & Colchester, M. (eds)
The second edition of this remarkable book updates the immense advances in policy and soft international law with regards to the rights of mobile indigenous peoples in conservation.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Environmental Studies (General) Development Studies Sustainable Development Goals
-
Published August 2024
Care in a Time of Humanitarianism
Stories of Refuge, Aid, and Repair in the Global South
Osanloo, A. & deBergh Robinson, C. (eds)
Care in a Time of Humanitarianism presents complex histories of forced migration and humanitarianism in an accessible way. It adopts a comparative approach to highlight the diverse cultural and religious traditions of care that are adopted across the Global South for the “distant others”.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Refugee and Migration Studies Sociology
-
eBook available
Published March 2024
Max Gluckman
Macmillan, H.
This handy, concise biography describes the life and intellectual contribution of Max Gluckman (1911-75) who was one the most significant social anthropologists of the twentieth century.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology
Pb -
Published July 2023
Once Upon a Time is Now
A Kalahari Memoir
Biesele, M.
Fifty years after her first fieldwork with Ju/'hoan San hunter-gatherers, anthropologist Megan Biesele has written this exceptional memoir based on personal journals she wrote at the time.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Development Studies
-
Published December 2024
This Land Is Not For Sale
Trust and Transitions in Northern Uganda
Meinert, L. & Reynolds Whyte, S. (eds)
As violent conflict has declined in northern Uganda, tensions and mistrust concerning land have increased. Residents try to deal with acquisitions by investors and exclusions from forests and wildlife reserves. Using extended case studies, collaborating researchers analyze the principles and practices that shape access to land. Contributors examine the multiplicity of land claims, the nature of transactions, and the management of conflicts.
Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Development Studies Sociology
-
eBook available
Forthcoming July 2025
Chinese Medicine in East Africa
An Intimacy with Strangers
Hsu, E.
Based on fieldwork conducted between 2001-2008 in urban East Africa, this book explores who the patients, practitioners and paraprofessionals doing Chinese medicine were in this early period of renewed China-Africa relations.
Subject: Medical Anthropology
-
Published March 2024
Environing Empire
Nature, Infrastructure and the Making of German Southwest Africa
Kalb, M.
Between the infamous Benguela Current and the Namib Desert, nature significantly effected the progression of German imperialism and the creation of German Southwest Africa. Environing Empire reveals the environmental infrastructures that defined not only the culture of German colonial entanglements, but the fantasy that drove Lebensraum during the Second Reich.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Environmental Studies (General)
-
eBook available
Published June 2024
The Precarity of Masculinity
Football, Pentecostalism, and Transnational Aspirations in Cameroon
Kovač, U.
This book follows young Cameroonian men who aspire to migrate abroad and play football for a living while analyzing masculinities in West Africa. The book argues that the athletic aspirations of young Cameroonians and their propensity to consult with Pentecostal Men of God offer new insights about the nature of social mobility in the neoliberal age.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion Gender Studies and Sexuality
Pb -
Published February 2022
Afropolitan Horizons
Essays toward a Literary Anthropology of Nigeria
Hannerz, U.
Nigeria is a country shaped by internal diversity and transnational connections, past and present. Leading Nigerian writers from Chinua Achebe, Amos Tutuola and Wole Soyinka to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Teju Cole have portrayed these Nigerian Issues, and have also written about some of the momentous events in Nigerian history. Afropolitan Horizons discusses their work alongside other novelists and commentators.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Literary Studies Anthropology of Religion
-
Published May 2023
After Corporate Paternalism
Material Renovation and Social Change in Times of Ruination
Straube, C.
In this ethnographic study of post-paternalist ruination and renovation, Christian Straube explores social change at the intersection of material decay and social disconnection in the former mine township Mpatamatu of Luanshya, one of the oldest mining towns on the Zambian Copperbelt.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Development Studies Sociology
-
eBook available
Forthcoming April 2025
German Rule, African Subjects
State Aspirations and the Reality of Power in Colonial Namibia
Zimmerer, J.
This classic study, now available for the first time in English, explains how German colonial ambitions foundered in present-day Namibia. As it shows, the highly rationalized planning of Wilhelmine authorities could not accommodate the practical, lived realities of both colonizer and colonized.
Subjects: Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present
-
eBook available
Published May 2021
When They Came for Me
The Hidden Diary of an Apartheid Prisoner
Schlapobersky, J. R.
Whilst a student in South Africa, John Schlapobersky was arrested for opposing apartheid and tortured, detained and deported. In this volume, apartheid and its resistance come to life in personal stories that make this a vital historical document - one of its time and one for our own.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
Pb -
eBook available
Published February 2024
The Herero Genocide
War, Emotion, and Extreme Violence in Colonial Namibia
Häussler, M.
Drawing on previously inaccessible and overlooked archival sources, The Herero Genocide undertakes a groundbreaking investigation into the war between colonizer and colonized in what was formerly German South West Africa and is today the nation of Namibia. The result is an indispensable account of a genocide that has been neglected for too long.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History
Pb -
eBook available
Published February 2024
South Africa's Dreams
Ethnologists and Apartheid in Namibia
Gordon, R. J.
In the early sixties, many South African anthropologists supported ‘Grand Apartheid’ in Namibia. South Africa’s colonial policies in the country served as a testing ground for many key features of its repressive infrastructure, and strategies for countering anti-apartheid resistance. The book also analyses how the knowledge used to justify and implement apartheid was created.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History Peace and Conflict Studies
Pb -
eBook available
Published October 2023
Lands of the Future
Anthropological Perspectives on Pastoralism, Land Deals and Tropes of Modernity in Eastern Africa
Gabbert, E. C., Gebresenbet, F., Galaty, J. G., & Schlee, G. (eds)
Rangeland, forests and riverine landscapes of pastoral communities in Eastern Africa are increasingly under threat. Abetted by states who think that outsiders can better use the lands than the people who have lived there for centuries, outside commercial interests have displaced indigenous dwellers from pastoral territories. This volume presents case studies from Eastern Africa.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Development Studies Mobility Studies Sustainable Development Goals
Pb -
eBook available
Published October 2024
Nourishing Life
Foodways and Humanity in an African Town
Huhn, A.
In this accessible ethnography of a small town in northern Mozambique, everyday cultural knowledge and behaviors about food, cooking, and eating reveal the deeply human pursuit of a nourishing life. This emerges less through the consumption of specific nutrients than it does in the affective experience of alimentation in contexts that support vitality, compassion, and generative relations.
Subjects: Food & Nutrition Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published May 2023
On the Edges of Whiteness
Polish Refugees in British Colonial Africa during and after the Second World War
Lingelbach, J.
From 1942 to 1950, nearly twenty thousand Poles found refuge from the horrors of World War II in camps within Britain’s African colonies, including Uganda, Tanganyika, and Kenya. On the Edges of Whiteness tells their improbable story, tracing the manifold, complex relationships that developed among refugees, their British administrators, and their African neighbors.
Subjects: History: World War II Refugee and Migration Studies Colonial History
Pb -
eBook available
Published November 2023
Social Im/mobilities in Africa
Ethnographic Approaches
Noret, J. (ed)
Grounded in both theory and ethnography, this volume insists on taking social positionality seriously when accounting for Africa’s current age of polarizing wealth. To this end, the notion of social im/mobilities emphasizes the complexities of current changes, taking us beyond the prism of a unidimensional social ladder, for social moves cannot always be apprehended through the binaries of ‘gains’ and ‘losses’.
Subjects: Mobility Studies Anthropology (General) Sociology
Pb -
eBook available
Published December 2024
Water, Life, and Profit
Fluid Economies and Cultures of Niamey, Niger
Keough, S. B. & Youngstedt, S. M
Water, Life, and Profit offers a holistic analysis of the people, economies, cultural symbolism, and material culture involved in the management, production, distribution, and consumption of drinking water in the urban context of Niamey, Niger. Keough and Youngstedt offer new insights into the lived experiences of gender, ethnicity, class, and spatial structure in Niamey’s water economies today.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General) Political and Economic Anthropology Sustainable Development Goals
Pb -
eBook available
Published June 2022
Ambiguous Childhoods
Peer Socialisation, Schooling and Agency in a Zambian Village
Clemensen, N.
Drawing on rich linguistic-ethnographic details of Zambian children interacting, combined with observations of school and household procedures, the author provides a rare insight into the lives, voices, and learning paths of children in a rural African setting.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Development Studies Educational Studies
Pb -
eBook available
Published October 2023
Fierce Medicines, Fragile Socialities
Grounding Global HIV Treatment in Tanzania
Mattes, D.
Looking at Tanga, a city on the Tanzanian Swahili coast, Dominik Mattes examines the implementation of antiretroviral HIV-treatment (ART) in the area, exploring the manifold infrastructural and social fragilities of treatment provision in public HIV clinics as well as patients’ multi-layered struggles of coming to terms with ART in their everyday lives.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Development Studies Sustainable Development Goals
Pb -
eBook available
Published August 2022
Mobile Urbanity
Somali Presence in Urban East Africa
Carrier, N. & Scharrer, T. (eds)
Demystifying Somali residence and mobility in urban East Africa, this volume shows its historical depth, and explores the social, cultural and political underpinnings of Somali-led urban transformation. In so doing, it offers a vivid case study of the transformative power of (forced) migration on urban centres, and the intertwining of urbanity and mobility.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Anthropology (General) Urban Studies
Pb -
eBook available
Published February 2023
Rethinking and Unthinking Development
Perspectives on Inequality and Poverty in South Africa and Zimbabwe
Mpofu, B. & Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (eds)
Through theoretical contributions and case studies focusing on South Africa and Zimbabwe, this volume attempts to rethink (and unthink) development discourses and practices in southern Africa. The authors explore the ways in which legacies of colonialism impact development, as well as other factors such as regional politics, corruption, and socio-economic and cultural barriers.
Subjects: Development Studies Political and Economic Anthropology Sustainable Development Goals
Pb -
Published December 2022
Going to Pentecost
An Experimental Approach to Studies in Pentecostalism
Eriksen, A. Blanes, R. L., MacCarthy, M.
Co-authored by three anthropologists with long–term expertise studying Pentecostalism in Africa and Melanesia, and in recognition of the increasingly non-territorial nature of religion in the contemporary world, Going to Pentecost offers an experimental approach to the study of global religious movements, and Pentecostalism in particular.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion
-
eBook available
Published September 2021
Medicinal Rule
A Historical Anthropology of Kingship in East and Central Africa
Stroeken, K.
Based on ethnography-driven regional comparison and a critical re-examination of classic monographs on some forty cultural groups, this volume makes the arresting claim that across equatorial Africa, the model of rule has been medicine – and not (as Europeans have long assumed) the colonizer’s despotic administrator, the missionary’s divine king, or Vansina’s big man.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History
Pb -
eBook available
Forthcoming May 2025
The Wheel of Autonomy
Rhetoric and Ethnicity in the Omo Valley
Girke, F.
Through the theoretical lens of rhetoric, this book offers an interactionalist analysis of how the Kara – a small population in southern Ethiopia – negotiate ethnic and non-ethnic differences among themselves, the relations with their various neighbors, and eventually their integration in the Ethiopian state.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
-
eBook available
Published February 2018
Doing Conceptual History in Africa
Fleisch, A. & Stephens, R. (eds)
The contributions assembled here focus on the complex role of language in Africa’s historical development. From prehistoric dynamics of wealth and poverty to the conceptual foundations of postcolonial nationalism, each engages with African intellectual history while analyzing the regional and global contexts in which categories like “work” and “land” take shape.
Subject: History (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published March 2023
Returning Life
Language, Life Force and History in Kilimanjaro
Myhre, K. C.
Returning Life explores how language and action affect life force. Diverse sources demonstrate how this phenomenon extends to coffee cash-cropping, Catholic Christianity, and colonial and post-colonial rule, featuring cognate languages throughout the area.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
Pb -
eBook available
Published September 2019
Peaceful Selves
Personhood, Nationhood, and the Post-Conflict Moment in Rwanda
Eramian, L.
Twenty years after the 1994 genocide, Rwandans are still troubled by what made the violence possible and how they can know it will not recur. This study uncovers how Rwandan visions of peace and modern nationhood concern not only political reform or economic development, but also transformations in the self.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Peace and Conflict Studies
Pb -
eBook available
Published June 2020
Foucault's Orient
The Conundrum of Cultural Difference, From Tunisia to Japan
Lazreg, M.
Using interviews with scholars from Tunisia and Japan, this book examines the manner in which Foucault experienced and explained his encounters with non-Western cultures, unraveling the anthropological implications of his unwavering commitment to cultural difference. It also traces the philosophical-theoretical sources of his conception of difference, and uncovers the contradictions of his dismissal of empirical anthropology to know human beings.
Subjects: Sociology Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published July 2021
Children of the Camp
The Lives of Somali Youth Raised in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya
Grayson, C.-L.
This original study carefully considers how young people perceive their living environment and how growing up in exile structures their view of the past and their country of origin, and the future and its possibilities.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Anthropology (General) Peace and Conflict Studies Sociology
Pb -
eBook available
Published October 2020
The Myth of Self-Reliance
Economic Lives Inside a Liberian Refugee Camp
Omata, N.
The Myth of Self-Reliance provides valuable insights into refugees’ experiences of repatriation to Liberia after protracted exile and their responses to the ending of refugee status for remaining refugees in Ghana.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Anthropology (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published January 2022
The Forest People without a Forest
Development Paradoxes, Belonging and Participation of the Baka in East Cameroon
Lueong, G. M.
The Forest People without a Forest explores how the Baka, who live in Eastern Cameroon, assert forms of belonging in order to participate in development interventions, and how community life is shaped and reshaped through these interventions. These interventions raise paradoxes of belonging for the Baka, and are often targeted toward competing and contradictory goals.
Subjects: Development Studies Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published September 2020
Breaking Rocks
Music, Ideology and Economic Collapse, from Paris to Kinshasa
Trapido, J.
Based on fieldwork in Kinshasa and Paris, Breaking Rocks examines patronage payments within Congolese popular music. This book offers insights into both the ideologies of power and value in central Africa’s troubled post-colonial political economy, and the economic flows that make up the hidden side of the globalization.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Political and Economic Anthropology Cultural Studies (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published February 2020
Life as a Hunt
Thresholds of Identities and Illusions on an African Landscape
Marks, S. A.
The landscape of Zambia’s central Luangwa Valley has been crafted over centuries by the Valley Bisa who live there. Stuart Marks explores an emergent dissonance with the inconvenient conventions and myths of conservationists, administrators and philanthropists who seek to intervene in Africa’s environmental and wildlife crises on new terms and with technical means.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General)
Pb -
Published August 2016
Violent Becomings
State Formation, Sociality, and Power in Mozambique
Bertelsen, B. E.
Violent Becomings sheds light on violence in the periods of colonial and postcolonial state formation by conceptualizing the state not as the bureaucratically ordered polity of the nation-state, but as a continuously evolving and violently challenged mode of social ordering.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Peace and Conflict Studies Colonial History
-
eBook available
Published June 2019
The Nature of German Imperialism
Conservation and the Politics of Wildlife in Colonial East Africa
Gissibl, B.
This is the first book-length study analyzing the origins of Tanzania’s wildlife conservation under German colonial rule. It examines the shift of wildlife policies from exploitation to preservation. By situating East Africa’s conservation in a global context, The Nature of German Imperialism shows how colonial policy helped to shape international conservationist efforts.
Subjects: Colonial History Environmental Studies (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published March 2016
The Decolonial Mandela
Peace, Justice and the Politics of Life
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S.
This concise, forcefully argued volume lays out a groundbreaking interpretation of the “Mandela phenomenon.” Contrary to a neoliberal social model that privileges adversarial criminal justice and a rationalistic approach to warmaking, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni elevates transformative political justice and a pluriversal vision of society as key features of Nelson Mandela’s legacy.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
Pb -
eBook available
Published March 2016
Cutting and Connecting
'Afrinesian' Perspectives on Networks, Relationality, and Exchange
Myhre, K. C. (ed)
Cutting and Connecting rethinks anthropology’s comparative endeavor by calling in a conceptual debt that theoretical innovations from Melanesian anthropology owe to network analysis originally developed in African contexts. The contributors adopt and employ concepts from recent anthropological studies of Melanesia to analyze contemporary life on the African continent.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published October 2018
Who Knows Tomorrow?
Uncertainty in North-Eastern Sudan
Calkins, S.
Uncertainty, though intertwined with all human activity, is experienced differently—sometimes obsessed over and other times ignored. This ethnography shows how Rashaida in north-eastern Sudan deal with unknowns, which at times present debilitating problems, but also may offer opportunities to create other futures.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Development Studies
Pb -
Published January 2023
The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective
Knörr, J. & Kohl, C. (eds)
For centuries, Africa’s Upper Guinea Coast region has been the site of regional and global interactions, with societies from different parts of the world engaging in economic trade, cultural exchange, and conflict. This book examines how such encounters have continued into the present day, identifying the disruptions and continuities in social phenomena that have resulted.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General) History (General) Colonial History
-
eBook available
Published September 2018
Making Ubumwe
Power, State and Camps in Rwanda's Unity-Building Project
Purdeková, A.
Since the end of the Rwandan genocide, the new political elite has been challenged with building a unified nation. The book investigates this project of civic education, the explosion of neo-traditional institutions and activities, and the uses of camps and retreats that come together to shape the “ideal” Rwandan citizen.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Refugee and Migration Studies Development Studies
Pb -
Published April 2018
Bush Bound
Young Men and Rural Permanence in Migrant West Africa
Gaibazzi, P.
Many young men in a Gambian village, although eager to travel for money and experience, settle as farmers, family heads, businessmen, civic activists or, alternatively, as employed, demoted youth. This ethnography focuses on these “stayers,” who enable others to migrate while preserving the values and traditions of rural, sedentary life.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Refugee and Migration Studies
-
eBook available
Published November 2017
At Home in the Okavango
White Batswana Narratives of Emplacement and Belonging
Gressier, C.
An ethnography of the lives of white citizens of the Okavango Delta, Botswana, this book examines their relationships with the natural and social environments of the region. In response to the insecurity of their European descent in a postcolonial African state, the white Batswana have developed values and practices that allow them high levels of belonging.
Subject: Anthropology (General)
Pb -
Published May 2017
Witchcraft, Witches, and Violence in Ghana
Adinkrah, M.
Witchcraft violence is a feature of many contemporary African societies. In Ghana, belief in witchcraft and the malignant activities of putative witches is prevalent. This book provides a detailed account of Ghanaian witchcraft beliefs and practices and their role in fueling violent attacks on these alleged witches.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion Gender Studies and Sexuality
Pb -
Published June 2017
Masks and Staffs
Identity Politics in the Cameroon Grassfields
Pelican, Michaela
Subject: Anthropology (General)
Pb -
Published April 2017
Imperial Projections
Screening the German Colonies
Fuhrmann, W.
Scandals and economic stagnation in the colonies demanded a new and positive image of their value for Germany. By promoting business and establishing a new genre within the fast growing film industry, films of the colonies triggered patriotic feelings but also addressed the audience as travelers, explorers, wildlife protectionists, and participants in unique cultural events.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Colonial History
Pb -
Published May 2020
Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989–2011)
Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities
Casciarri, B., Assal, M.A.M. & Ireton, F. (eds)
Based on original fieldwork collected in Sudan from 2006 to 2011, contributors’ look at “access to resources” from various disciplinary approaches — socio-anthropology, geography, politics, history, linguistic. The book analyzes major transformations, from the 1980s to South Sudan’s independence in 2011, which affected the country in the framework of “globalization.”
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Development Studies
Pb -
Published July 2018
Healing Roots
Anthropology in Life and Medicine
Laplante, J.
Laplante follows umhlonyane — one of the oldest and best-documented indigenous medicines in South Africa. The volume follows the plant anthropologically on its trails and trials of becoming a biopharmaceutical — from the “open air” to controlled environments — learning from the plant itself, and from the people who use it with hopes in healing.
Subject: Medical Anthropology
Pb -
Published April 2017
Beyond the Lens of Conservation
Malagasy and Swiss Imaginations of One Another
Keller, E.
This ethnography examines how the cooperation between a national park in Madagascar and a Swiss zoo is perceived by ordinary people at either end. One view focuses on power and history, the other on morality and progress. Nature conservation therefore widens the gap between people in the North and South.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General) Development Studies Political and Economic Anthropology
Pb -
eBook available
Published February 2016
On the Path to Genocide
Armenia and Rwanda Reexamined
Mayersen, D.
“This is an excellent book. The combination of theory and context works well…The prose is sharp and the author has set up the problem in a logical way that is easy to follow. It also benefits from an interdisciplinary approach. Her grasp of detail is superior to many theorists…It reads very fluently, the author is clearly a gifted prose writer. The thread of argument runs through the book in a compelling way…The conclusion is full of intriguing ties to other case studies and the author summarizes her argument well.” · Cathie Carmichael, University of East Anglia
Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
Pb -
eBook available
Published September 2015
Dance Circles
Movement, Morality and Self-fashioning in Urban Senegal
Neveu Kringelbach, H.
A historically informed ethnography of creativity, agency, and the fashioning of selves through the different life stages in urban Senegal, this book explores the significance of multiple engagement with dance in a context of economic uncertainty and rising concerns over morality in the public space.
Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published September 2015
Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J.
The author’s sharply critical perspective reveals how an epistemology of alterity has kept Africa ensnared within colonial matrices of power, serving to justify external interventions in African affairs, including the interference with liberation struggles and disregard for African positions. Evaluating the quality of African responses and available options, the author opens up a new horizon that includes cognitive justice and new humanism.
Subject: Colonial History
Pb -
eBook available
Published October 2014
The Making of the Pentecostal Melodrama
Religion, Media and Gender in Kinshasa
Pype, K.
Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Media Studies Anthropology (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality
Pb -
eBook available
Published October 2014
Ambiguous Pleasures
Sexuality and Middle Class Self-Perceptions in Nairobi
Spronk, R.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality Sociology
Pb -
eBook available
Published October 2013
The State and the Social
State Formation in Botswana and its Precolonial and Colonial Genealogies
Gulbrandsen, Ø
Botswana has been portrayed as a major case of exception in Africa—as an oasis of peace and harmony with an enduring parliamentary democracy, blessed with remarkable diamond-driven economic growth. Whereas the “failure” of other states on the continent is often attributed to the prevalence of indigenous political ideas and structures, the author argues that Botswana’s apparent success is not the result of Western ideas and practices of government having replaced indigenous ideas and structures. Rather, the postcolonial state of Botswana is best understood as a unique, complex formation, one that arose dialectically through the meeting of European ideas and practices with the symbolism and hierarchies of authority, rooted in the cosmologies of indigenous polities, and both have become integral to the formation of a strong state with a stable government.
Subject: Anthropology (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published April 2013
Crude Domination
An Anthropology of Oil
Behrends, A., Reyna, S. P. & Schlee, G. (eds)
Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Anthropology (General)
Pb -
Published May 2017
Evidence, Ethos and Experiment
The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa
Geissler, P. W. & Molyneux, C. (eds)
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Development Studies
Pb -
eBook available
Published June 2013
Funerals in Africa
Explorations of a Social Phenomenon
Jindra, M. & Noret, J. (eds)
This volume brings together scholars who have conducted research on funerary events across sub-Saharan Africa. The contributions offer an in-depth understanding of the broad changes and underlying causes in African societies over the years, such as changes in religious beliefs, social structure, urbanization, and technological changes and health.
Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published October 2013
Imagining the Post-Apartheid State
An Ethnographic Account of Namibia
Friedman, J. T.
In northwest Namibia, people’s political imagination offers a powerful insight into the post-apartheid state. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork, this book focuses on the former South African apartheid regime and the present democratic government; it compares the perceptions and practices of state and customary forms of judicial administration, reflects upon the historical trajectory of a chieftaincy dispute in relation to the rooting of state power and examines everyday forms of belonging in the independent Namibian State.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Political and Economic Anthropology
Pb -
eBook available
Published June 2013
Youth Gangs and Street Children
Culture, Nurture and Masculinity in Ethiopia
Heinonen, P.
The rapidly expanding population of youth gangs and street children is one of the most disturbing issues in many cities around the world. By focusing on gender as the defining element of these children’s lives — as they describe it in their own words — this book offers a clear analysis of how the unequal and antagonistic gender relations that are tolerated and normalized by everyday school and family structures shape their lives at home and on the street.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Anthropology (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published February 2013
The Ju/’hoan San of Nyae Nyae and Namibian Independence
Development, Democracy, and Indigenous Voices in Southern Africa
Biesele, M. & Hitchcock, R. K.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology
Pb -
eBook available
Published February 2012
Politics of Innocence
Hutu Identity, Conflict and Camp Life
Turner, S.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Peace and Conflict Studies Development Studies
Pb -
eBook available
Published June 2012
Moral Power
The Magic of Witchcraft
Stroeken, K.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Anthropology of Religion
Pb -
eBook available
Published December 2012
The Land Is Dying
Contingency, Creativity and Conflict in Western Kenya
Geissler, P. W. & Prince, R. J.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Anthropology of Religion
Pb -
eBook available
Published April 2013
Historical Memory in Africa
Dealing with the Past, Reaching for the Future in an Intercultural Context
Diawara, M., Lategan, B., & Rüsen, J. (eds)
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
Pb -
eBook available
Published December 2012
Morality, Hope and Grief
Anthropologies of AIDS in Africa
Dilger, H. & Luig, L. (eds)
Subject: Medical Anthropology
Pb -
eBook available
Published October 2013
Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-east Africa
Volume II: Sudan, Uganda, and the Ethiopia-Sudan Borderlands
Schlee, G. & Watson, E. E. (eds)
Drawing on the expertise of anthropologists, historians and geographers, these volumes provide a significant account of a society profoundly shaped by identity politics and contribute to a better understanding of the nature of conflict and war, and forms of alliance and peacemaking, thus providing a comprehensive portrait of this troubled region.
Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Anthropology (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published October 2013
Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-east Africa
Volume I: Ethiopia and Kenya
Schlee, G. & Watson, E. E. (eds)
Forms of group identity play a prominent role in everyday lives and politics in northeast Africa. Case studies from Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya illustrate the way that identities are formed and change over time, and how local, national, and international politics are interwoven. Specific attention is paid to the impact of modern weaponry, new technologies, religious conversion, food and land shortages, international borders, civil war, and displacement on group identities.
Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Anthropology (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published April 2012
Substitute Parents
Biological and Social Perspectives on Alloparenting in Human Societies
Bentley, G. & Mace, R. (eds)
Subjects: Sociology Anthropology (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published February 2011
Social Torture
The Case of Northern Uganda, 1986-2006
Dolan, C.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Refugee and Migration Studies
Pb -
eBook available
Published February 2011
Biopolitics, Militarism, and Development
Eritrea in the Twenty-First Century
O'Kane, D. & Hepner, T. R. (eds)
Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Development Studies Anthropology (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published March 2012
Kinship and Beyond
The Genealogical Model Reconsidered
Bamford, S. & Leach, J. (eds)
Subject: Medical Anthropology
Pb -
eBook available
Published November 2010
The Impact of Electricity
Development, Desires and Dilemmas
Winther, T.
Subjects: Development Studies Anthropology (General) Sustainable Development Goals
Pb -
Published June 2008
Where Humans and Spirits Meet
The Politics of Rituals and Identified Spirits in Zanzibar
Larsen, K.
Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General) Performance Studies
hb -
eBook available
Published March 2011
Spirits and Letters
Reading, Writing and Charisma in African Christianity
Kirsch, T. G.
Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General) Colonial History Educational Studies
Pb -
Published May 2008
Working with Spirit
Experiencing Izangoma Healing in Contemporary South Africa
Wreford, J. T.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Anthropology of Religion
hb -
Published March 2008
Advancing Refugee Protection in South Africa
Handmaker, J., Hunt, L. A. de la, & Klaaren, J. (eds)
Subject: Refugee and Migration Studies
hb -
Published December 2007
The Problem of Money
African Agency & Western Medicine in Northern Ghana
Bierlich, B. M.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Development Studies
hb -
Published November 2007
Picturing Pity
Pitfalls and Pleasures in Cross-Cultural Communication.
Image and Word in a North Cameroon MissionGullestad, M.
Subjects: Colonial History Anthropology (General)
hb -
Published March 2009
Local Science Vs Global Science
Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge in International Development
Sillitoe, P. (ed)
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Development Studies Anthropology (General)
Pb -
Published August 2006
Le Malaise Creole
Ethnic Identity in Mauritius
Boswell, R.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Political and Economic Anthropology
hb -
eBook available
Published November 2009
Changing Properties of Property
Benda-Beckmann, K. von, Benda-Beckmann, F. von & Wiber, M. (eds)
Subjects: Development Studies Anthropology (General)
Pb -
Published May 2006
Navigating Terrains of War
Youth and Soldiering in Guinea-Bissau
Vigh, H.
Subject: Anthropology (General)
Pb -
Published December 2007
Transnational Nomads
How Somalis Cope with Refugee Life in the Dadaab Camps of Kenya
Horst, C.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Anthropology (General)
Pb -
Published March 2006
The Politics of Egalitarianism
Theory and Practice
Solway, J. (ed)
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Medical Anthropology
Pb -
Published October 2006
Breast Feeding and Sexuality
Behaviour, Beliefs and Taboos among the Gogo Mothers in Tanzania
Mabilia, M.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Gender Studies and Sexuality
Pb -
Published May 2005
Sex and the Empire That Is No More
Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion
Matory, J. L.
Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Gender Studies and Sexuality Anthropology (General)
Pb -
Published April 2006
Science, Magic and Religion
The Ritual Processes of Museum Magic
Bouquet, M. & Porto, N. (eds)
Subjects: Museum Studies Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published March 2005
Children and Youth on the Front Line
Ethnography, Armed Conflict and Displacement
Boyden, J. & Berry, J. de (eds)
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Peace and Conflict Studies
Pb -
Published October 2002
Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples
Displacement, Forced Settlement and Sustainable Development
Chatty, D. & Colchester, M. (eds)
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Environmental Studies (General) Development Studies Sustainable Development Goals
Pb -
eBook available
Published August 2002
Swedish Ventures in Cameroon, 1883-1923
Trade and Travel, People and Politics
Ardener, S. (ed)
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History Travel and Tourism
Pb -
Published January 2002
Cameroon's Tycoon
Max Esser's Expedition and its Consequences
Chilver, E. M. & Röschenthaler, U. (eds)
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History
Pb -
eBook available
Published October 2001
Fear in Bongoland
Burundi Refugees in Urban Tanzania
Sommers, M.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Peace and Conflict Studies Development Studies
Pb -
Published July 2001
Whatever Happened to Asylum in Britain?
A Tale of Two Walls
Pirouet, L.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Anthropology (General)
Pb -
eBook available
Published December 2001
Recalling the Belgian Congo
Conversations and Introspection
Dembour, M.-B.
Subjects: Colonial History Anthropology (General) Sociology
Pb -
Published September 2001
Losing Place
Refugee Populations and Rural Transformations in East Africa
Bascom, J. B.
Subject: Refugee and Migration Studies
Pb -
Published July 2003
Kingdom on Mount Cameroon
Studies in the History of the Cameroon Coast 1500-1970
Ardener, E.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History
Pb -
Published July 1996
African Crossroads
Intersections between History and Anthropology in Cameroon
Fowler, I. & Zeitlyn, D. (eds)
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History
Pb -
Published March 1996
The Politics of Cultural Performance
Parkin, D., Caplan, L. & Fisher, H. (eds)
Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion
Pb -
Published March 1993
Spatial Boundaries and Social Dynamics
Case Studies from Food-Producing Societies
Holl, A. & Levey, T. E. (eds)
The papers in this volume examine the sociocultural, socioeconomic and environmental factors that condition spatial patterning of human behavior in food-producing (both agricultural and pastoral) societies. The spatially patterned material manifestations of that behavior are considered in the light of archaeological and ethnographical examples. Archaeological and ethnographic data sources are drawn primarily from Africa, as well as the ancient Near East.
Subjects: Archaeology Anthropology (General)
Pb