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AAAD 214: Ethnography of Africa: List of ethnographies
Examples of ethnographies
African Modernities and Mobilities by
In this book Walter Gam Nkwi documents the complexities and nuances embedded in African modernities and mobilities which have been overlooked in historical discourses in Africa and Cameroon. Using an ethnographic historical approach and drawing on the intricacies of what it has meant to be and belong in Kom- an ethnic community in the Northwest Region of Cameroon - since 1800, he explores the discourses and practices of kfaang as central to any understanding of mobility and modernity in Kom, Cameroon and Africa at large. The book unveils the emic understanding of modernity through the history and ethnography of kfaang and its technologies and illustrates how these terminologies were conceived and perceived by the Kom people in their social and physical mobilities. It documents and analyzes the historical processes involved in bringing about and making kfaang a defining feature of everyday life in Kom and among Kom subjects.
Call Number: Full text available onlineISBN: 9789956762378Publication Date: 2015-05-11
Dancing Skeletons by Call Number: Davis Library (5th floor) Call Number GN655.M22 D48 2014ISBN: 9781478607588Publication Date: 2013-09-01
Distant Companions by
Distant Companions tells the fascinating story of the lives and times of domestic servants and their employers in Zambia from the beginning of white settlement during the colonial period until after independence. Emphasizing the interactive nature of relationships of domination, the book is useful for readers who seek to understand the dynamics of domestic service in a variety of settings. In order to examine the servant- employer relationship within the context of larger political and economic processes, Karen Tranberg Hansen employs an unusual combination of methods, including analysis of historical documents, travelogues, memoirs, literature, and life histories, as well as anthropological fieldwork, survey research, and participant observation.
Call Number: Full text available onlineISBN: 0801495466Publication Date: 1989-01-23
Laibon by
Elliot Fratkin shares the story of his early anthropological fieldwork in Kenya in the 1970s. Using his fieldnotes and letters home to bring to life the voices of those he met, Fratkin invites the reader to experience his cross-cultural friendships with the enigmatic laibon (a diviner and healer of the Samburu and Maasai peoples) Lonyoki, his family, and the people of the nomadic community of Lukumai. Fratkin participated in the daily lives of the Ariaal livestock herders and accompanied the laibon as he performed divination and healing rituals throughout Marsabit and Samburu Districts. After Fratkin reunited Lonyoki with his son and wife, Lonyoki adopted Fratkin into his family, and Fratkin continues his close friendship with Lonyoki's son Lembalen today. Black-and-white photographs, a guide to the characters, words, and places, and a list of suggested readings supplement the engaging narrative. Laibon is more than a memoir; it delves into nitty-gritty details of fieldwork, speaks to larger questions about ethnographic research, and provides unparalleled insight into the world of the laibon.
Call Number: Davis Library (5th floor) Call Number GN21.F37 A3 2012ISBN: 9780759120679Publication Date: 2011-09-29
Listen, Here Is a Story by
Based on author Bonnie L. Hewlett's ten years of field experience in the Central African Republic, Listen, Here Is a Story: Ethnographic Life Narratives from Aka and Ngandu Women of the Congo Basin offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of contemporary African women in their own words. Rendered here are the experiences of four women who Hewlett depicts in their homes, fields, and the forest. The women vividly recall memories, childhood games, dances, folk tales, songs, and drawings from throughout their lives and provide insights and anecdotes from their experiences as children,adolescents, mothers, wives, and providers. A vital contribution to literature on foraging and farming societies, Listen, Here Is a Story presents a new viewpoint on small-scale communities from a non-Western perspective.
Call Number: DT650.A38 H48 2012ISBN: 9780199764235Publication Date: 2012-05-01
The Nuer by ISBN: 9781179585093Publication Date: 2011-09-01
Once Intrepid Warriors by
"Once Intrepid Warriors advances a brilliantly persuasive critique of development among the Maasai. . . . This historical ethnography is a tour de force, counter-balancing the analysis of cultural, political, and socio-economic transformation over the longue duree with intimate and memorable portraits of representative individuals." --Richard Werbner "In a series of chapters on the interrelationships of ethnicity, gender, and 'modernity,' Hodgson concludes that it is not the Maasai who have remained static, but rather the external images of them." --Choice ". . . meticulous and well-documented . . . a valuable resource. . . ." --Africa
Call Number: Davis Library (5th floor) Call Number DT443.3.M37 H63 2001ISBN: 0253214513Publication Date: 2004-04-06
Political Oratory and Cartooning by
Political Oratory and Cartooning An Ethnography of Democratic Processes in Madagascar "Insightful, detailed, and substantial, this book has much to say to students of language and followers of politics, not to mention those of us passionate about both and how they interact." Virginia R. Dominguez, Gutgsell Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign "Why don't more people write books like this? Jennifer Jackson's brilliant insights on Malagasy cartooning, oratory, and political culture are not only a breath of fresh air for the anthropological study of political language, but a genuinely creative contribution to the study of global democracy." David Graeber, Goldsmiths, University of London Called kabary in the island nation of Madagascar, political oratory jostles with political cartoon satire in competing for public attention and shaping opinion. The apparent simplicity of these modes of political commentary conceals nuanced subtleties, which inform the constantly evolving landscape of politics. Linguistic anthropologist Jennifer Jackson offers an original semiotic analysis of the formative social role played by these narratives in Madagascar's polity. Though political orators and cartoonists rarely come face to face, their linguistic skirmishing both reflects and informs the political process, deploying rhetorical devices that have significant impacts on the vernacular political culture, its language and publics. This new ethnography examines the dynamic interplay between past and new forms of oratory and satire and their effects in social, religious, class, and transnational contexts. Jackson assesses how far they mirror the vicissitudes of political agency and authority, especially under the leadership of President Marc Ravalomanana. The author shows how democracy must be understood as historically contingent, bound in a local and global accretion of social and economic relations, and always mediated by language.
Call Number: Full text available onlineISBN: 9781118314432Publication Date: 2012-12-13
Sacred Rice by
Sacred Rice explores the cultural intricacies through which Jola farmers in West Africa are responding to their environmental and economic conditions given the centrality of a crop - rice - that is the lynchpin for their economic, social, religious, and political worlds.Based on more than ten years of author Joanna Davidson's ethnographic and historical research on rural Guinea-Bissau, this book looks at the relationship among people, plants, and identity as it explores how a society comes to define itself through the production, consumption, and reverence of rice.It is a narrative profoundly tied to a particular place, but it is also a story of encounters with outsiders who often mediate or meddle in the rice enterprise. Although the focal point is a remote area of West Africa, the book illuminates the more universal nexus of identity, environment, anddevelopment, especially in an era when many people--rural and urban - are confronting environmental changes that challenge their livelihoods and lifestyles.
Call Number: Call Number DT613.45.D56 D38 2016ISBN: 9780199358687Publication Date: 2015-08-14
Male Daughters, Female Husbands by
In 1987, more than a decade before the dawn of queer theory, Ifi Amadiume wrote Male Daughters, Female Husbands, to critical acclaim.This compelling and highly original book frees the subject position of 'husband' from its affiliation with men, and goes on to do the same for other masculine attributes, dislocating sex, gender and sexual orientation. Boldly arguing that the notion of gender, as constructed in Western feminist discourse, did not exist in Africa before the colonial imposition of a dichotomous understanding of sexual difference, Male Daughters, Female Husbands examines the structures in African society that enabled people to achieve power, showing that roles were not rigidly masculinized nor feminized.At a time when gender and queer theory are viewed by some as being stuck in an identity-politics rut, this outstanding study not only warns against the danger of projecting a very specific, Western notion of difference onto other cultures, but calls us to question the very concept of gender itself.
Call Number: Full text available onlineISBN: 9781783603350Publication Date: 2015-03-12
The City Is Our Farm by
The City Is Our Farm examines cultural change in Africa from the vantage point of real human beings caught up in that change. By presenting vignettes from the daily lives of seven households, Professor Aronson presents what is the source of social-science theory: the experience of individuals. To readers who think of development in terms of GNP, political rhetoric, and vague abstractions, this book supplies a much-needed corrective.
Call Number: Full text available onlineISBN: 9781351485029Publication Date: 2017-07-12
Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa by
How does democracy fare when the people governed insist they live in a world with witches? If the government of a people afflicted by witchcraft refuses to punish witches, how does it avoid becoming alienated from the perceived needs of its people or, worse, seen as being in league with witches? In Soweto, South Africa, the constant threat of violent crime, the increase in black socio-economic inequality, the AIDS pandemic, and a widespread fear of witchcraft have converged to create a pervasive sense of insecurity among citizens and a unique public policy problem for government. In Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa, Adam Ashforth examines how people in Soweto and other parts of post-apartheid South Africa manage their fear of 'evil forces' such as witchcraft. Ashforth examines the dynamics of insecurity in the everyday life of Soweto at the turn of the twenty-first century. He develops a new framework for understanding occult violence as a form of spiritual insecurity and documents new patterns of interpretation attributing agency to evil forces. Finally, he analyzes the response of post-apartheid governments to issues of spiritual insecurity and suggests how these matters pose severe long-term challenges to the legitimacy of the democratic state.
Call Number: Davis Library (4th floor) Call Number BF1584.S6 A84 2005ISBN: 0226029743Publication Date: 2005-01-15
Symbolic Structures by
Many opposing theories have been elaborated by different anthropologists in an attempt to explain the nature of symbolism. In this work Nigel Barley uses a particular ethnographic case to examine the relevance and limitations of these existing theories and to develop a new alternative approach which draws on areas of linguistics and folkloristics at one time neglected by symbolic theorists. The book is a detailed study of the symbolic universe of the Dowayos of north Cameroon, as displayed in their ritual and beliefs. Considering matters as diverse as their oral literature, their material culture and their festivals, Dr Barley's analysis develops by unfolding sequentially a map of the symbolic structures that underlie Dowayo culture and shape their apperception of the world about them. This book will be particularly useful for students. It will also interest all anthropologists concerned with the study of symbolism and with the application to anthropology of models derived from linguistics and folklore.
Call Number: Full text available onlineISBN: 9780521247450Publication Date: 1983-09-15
Patrons and Power by
Originally published in 1986, this urban political ethnography focusses on Mushin, a large suburb of metropolitan Lagos, Nigeria. It explores the mechanisms which bridge the various social categories to bring about political interaction. The book traces the development of Mushin from a collection of rural villages to its full status as a political community. It analyses structures and processes and the ways in which, since the 19th century, the system has responded to colonial, civilian and military regimes. It examines the tactics ordinary people use to meet their needs and the ways in which political aspirants manipulate the system to acquire and wield power.
Call Number: Davis Library (6th floor) Call Number JS7656.9.L3 B37 1986ISBN: 9780367001216Publication Date: 2018-08-16
Moral Imagination in Kaguru Modes of Thought by Call Number: Library Service Center — Request from Storage Call Number DT443.3.K33 B45 1986ISBN: 1560982365Publication Date: 1993-09-17
Women and Marriage in Kpelle Society by Call Number: Davis Library (5th floor) Call Number DT630.5.K63 B55 1980ISBN: 0804710198Publication Date: 1980-07-01
Placing the dead: tombs, ancestral villages and kinship organization in MadagascarCall Number: Davis Library (5th floor) Call Number DT469.M264 B56 1971ISBN: 9780128091500
Wombs and Alien Spirits by
Based on nearly two years of ethnographic fieldwork in a Muslim village in northern Sudan, Wombs and Alien Spirits explores the zâr cult, the most widely practiced traditional healing cult in Africa. Adherents of the cult are usually women with marital or fertility problems, who are possessed by spirits very different from their own proscribed roles as mothers. Through the woman, the spirit makes demands upon her husband and family and makes provocative comments on village issues, such as the increasing influence of formal Islam or encroaching Western economic domination. In accommodating the spirits, the women are able metaphorically to reformulate everyday discourse to portray consciousness of their own subordination. Janice Boddy examines the moral universe of the village, discussing female circumcision, personhood, kinship, and bodily integrity, then describes the workings of the cult and the effect of possession on the lives of men as well as women. She suggests that spirit possession is a feminist discourse, though a veiled and allegorical one, on women's objectification and subordination. Additionally, the spirit world acts as a foil for village life in the context of rapid historical change and as such provides a focus for cultural resistance that is particularly, though not exclusively, relevant to women.
Call Number: Full text available onlineISBN: 9780299123147Publication Date: 1989-12-15
Yoruba Medicine
According to the Yoruba of Western Nigeria, most illness is caused by the activity of germs or tiny worms in the body which can be either controlled or expelled by the judicious use of herbal medicine. This book is an unusual account and analysis of a series of conversations with Yoruba herbalists about the nature of their craft. Buckley shows that Yoruba medicinal knowledge is systematically similar to ideas found in Yoruba social life and traditional religion, and offers a paradigm for understanding Yoruba culture that plays a similar role to paradigms in western scientific thought.
Call Number: Davis Library (5th floor) Call Number DT515.45.Y67 A57 1985ISBN: 9780198232544Publication Date: 1985-10-17
Opportunity and Constraint in a Savana Society by Call Number: Library Service Center — Request from Storage Call Number DT570 .B87ISBN: 0121460606Publication Date: 1981-01-01
