Author: Bob W. White
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822389266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Book Description
Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) from 1965 until 1997, was fond of saying “happy are those who sing and dance,” and his regime energetically promoted the notion of culture as a national resource. During this period Zairian popular dance music (often referred to as la rumba zaïroise) became a sort of musica franca in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. But how did this privileged form of cultural expression, one primarily known for a sound of sweetness and joy, flourish under one of the continent’s most brutal authoritarian regimes? In Rumba Rules, the first ethnography of popular music in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bob W. White examines not only the economic and political conditions that brought this powerful music industry to its knees, but also the ways that popular musicians sought to remain socially relevant in a time of increasing insecurity. Drawing partly on his experiences as a member of a local dance band in the country’s capital city Kinshasa, White offers extraordinarily vivid accounts of the live music scene, including the relatively recent phenomenon of libanga, which involves shouting the names of wealthy or powerful people during performances in exchange for financial support or protection. With dynamic descriptions of how bands practiced, performed, and splintered, White highlights how the ways that power was sought and understood in Kinshasa’s popular music scene mirrored the charismatic authoritarianism of Mobutu’s rule. In Rumba Rules, Congolese speak candidly about political leadership, social mobility, and what it meant to be a bon chef (good leader) in Mobutu’s Zaire.
Rumba Rules
Author: Bob W. White
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822389266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Book Description
Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) from 1965 until 1997, was fond of saying “happy are those who sing and dance,” and his regime energetically promoted the notion of culture as a national resource. During this period Zairian popular dance music (often referred to as la rumba zaïroise) became a sort of musica franca in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. But how did this privileged form of cultural expression, one primarily known for a sound of sweetness and joy, flourish under one of the continent’s most brutal authoritarian regimes? In Rumba Rules, the first ethnography of popular music in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bob W. White examines not only the economic and political conditions that brought this powerful music industry to its knees, but also the ways that popular musicians sought to remain socially relevant in a time of increasing insecurity. Drawing partly on his experiences as a member of a local dance band in the country’s capital city Kinshasa, White offers extraordinarily vivid accounts of the live music scene, including the relatively recent phenomenon of libanga, which involves shouting the names of wealthy or powerful people during performances in exchange for financial support or protection. With dynamic descriptions of how bands practiced, performed, and splintered, White highlights how the ways that power was sought and understood in Kinshasa’s popular music scene mirrored the charismatic authoritarianism of Mobutu’s rule. In Rumba Rules, Congolese speak candidly about political leadership, social mobility, and what it meant to be a bon chef (good leader) in Mobutu’s Zaire.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822389266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Book Description
Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) from 1965 until 1997, was fond of saying “happy are those who sing and dance,” and his regime energetically promoted the notion of culture as a national resource. During this period Zairian popular dance music (often referred to as la rumba zaïroise) became a sort of musica franca in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. But how did this privileged form of cultural expression, one primarily known for a sound of sweetness and joy, flourish under one of the continent’s most brutal authoritarian regimes? In Rumba Rules, the first ethnography of popular music in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bob W. White examines not only the economic and political conditions that brought this powerful music industry to its knees, but also the ways that popular musicians sought to remain socially relevant in a time of increasing insecurity. Drawing partly on his experiences as a member of a local dance band in the country’s capital city Kinshasa, White offers extraordinarily vivid accounts of the live music scene, including the relatively recent phenomenon of libanga, which involves shouting the names of wealthy or powerful people during performances in exchange for financial support or protection. With dynamic descriptions of how bands practiced, performed, and splintered, White highlights how the ways that power was sought and understood in Kinshasa’s popular music scene mirrored the charismatic authoritarianism of Mobutu’s rule. In Rumba Rules, Congolese speak candidly about political leadership, social mobility, and what it meant to be a bon chef (good leader) in Mobutu’s Zaire.
The Art of Emergency
Author: Chérie Rivers Ndaliko
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190692324
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
The Art of Emergency charts the maneuvers of art through conflict zones across the African continent. Advancing diverse models for artistic and humanitarian alliance, the volume urges conscientious deliberation on the role of aesthetics in crisis through intellectual engagement, artistic innovation, and administrative policy. Across Africa, artists increasingly turn to NGO sponsorship in pursuit of greater influence and funding, while simultaneously NGOs-both international and local-commission arts projects to buttress their interventions and achieve greater reach and marketability. The key values of artistic expression thus become "healing" and "sensitization," measured in turn by "impact" and "effectiveness." Such rubrics obscure the aesthetic complexities of the artworks and the power dynamics that inform their production. Clashes arise as foreign NGOs import foreign aesthetic models and preconceptions about their efficacy, alongside foreign interpretations of politics, medicine, psychology, trauma, memorialization, and so on. Meanwhile, each community embraces its own aesthetic precedents, often at odds with the intentions of humanitarian agencies. The arts are a sphere in which different worldviews enter into conflict and conversation. To tackle the consequences of aid agency arts deployment, volume editors Samuel Mark Anderson and Ch�rie Rivers Ndaliko assemble ten case studies from across the African continent employing multiple media including music, sculpture, photography, drama, storytelling, ritual, and protest marches. Organized under three widespread yet under-analyzed objectives for arts in emergency-demonstration, distribution, and remediation-each case offers a different disciplinary and methodological perspective on a common complication in NGO-sponsored creativity. By shifting the discourse on arts activism away from fixations on message and toward diverse investigations of aesthetics and power negotiations, The Art of Emergency brings into focus the conscious and unconscious configurations of humanitarian activism, the social lives it attempts to engage, and the often-fraught interactions between the two.
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190692324
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
The Art of Emergency charts the maneuvers of art through conflict zones across the African continent. Advancing diverse models for artistic and humanitarian alliance, the volume urges conscientious deliberation on the role of aesthetics in crisis through intellectual engagement, artistic innovation, and administrative policy. Across Africa, artists increasingly turn to NGO sponsorship in pursuit of greater influence and funding, while simultaneously NGOs-both international and local-commission arts projects to buttress their interventions and achieve greater reach and marketability. The key values of artistic expression thus become "healing" and "sensitization," measured in turn by "impact" and "effectiveness." Such rubrics obscure the aesthetic complexities of the artworks and the power dynamics that inform their production. Clashes arise as foreign NGOs import foreign aesthetic models and preconceptions about their efficacy, alongside foreign interpretations of politics, medicine, psychology, trauma, memorialization, and so on. Meanwhile, each community embraces its own aesthetic precedents, often at odds with the intentions of humanitarian agencies. The arts are a sphere in which different worldviews enter into conflict and conversation. To tackle the consequences of aid agency arts deployment, volume editors Samuel Mark Anderson and Ch�rie Rivers Ndaliko assemble ten case studies from across the African continent employing multiple media including music, sculpture, photography, drama, storytelling, ritual, and protest marches. Organized under three widespread yet under-analyzed objectives for arts in emergency-demonstration, distribution, and remediation-each case offers a different disciplinary and methodological perspective on a common complication in NGO-sponsored creativity. By shifting the discourse on arts activism away from fixations on message and toward diverse investigations of aesthetics and power negotiations, The Art of Emergency brings into focus the conscious and unconscious configurations of humanitarian activism, the social lives it attempts to engage, and the often-fraught interactions between the two.
Business Process Management Workshops
Author: Johann Eder
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540384448
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 518
Book Description
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of 6 international workshops held in conjunction with the 4th International Conference on Business Process Management, BPM 2006, in Vienna, Austria in September 2006. The 40 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 94 overall submissions to six international workshops.
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540384448
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 518
Book Description
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of 6 international workshops held in conjunction with the 4th International Conference on Business Process Management, BPM 2006, in Vienna, Austria in September 2006. The 40 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 94 overall submissions to six international workshops.
A Nervous State
Author: Nancy Rose Hunt
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822375249
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
In A Nervous State, Nancy Rose Hunt considers the afterlives of violence and harm in King Leopold’s Congo Free State. Discarding catastrophe as narrative form, she instead brings alive a history of colonial nervousness. This mood suffused medical investigations, security operations, and vernacular healing movements. With a heuristic of two colonial states—one "nervous," one biopolitical—the analysis alternates between medical research into birthrates, gonorrhea, and childlessness and the securitization of subaltern "therapeutic insurgencies." By the time of Belgian Congo’s famed postwar developmentalist schemes, a shining infertility clinic stood near a bleak penal colony, both sited where a notorious Leopoldian rubber company once enabled rape and mutilation. Hunt’s history bursts with layers of perceptibility and song, conveying everyday surfaces and daydreams of subalterns and colonials alike. Congolese endured and evaded forced labor and medical and security screening. Quick-witted, they stirred unease through healing, wonder, memory, and dance. This capacious medical history sheds light on Congolese sexual and musical economies, on practices of distraction, urbanity, and hedonism. Drawing on theoretical concepts from Georges Canguilhem, Georges Balandier, and Gaston Bachelard, Hunt provides a bold new framework for teasing out the complexities of colonial history.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822375249
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
In A Nervous State, Nancy Rose Hunt considers the afterlives of violence and harm in King Leopold’s Congo Free State. Discarding catastrophe as narrative form, she instead brings alive a history of colonial nervousness. This mood suffused medical investigations, security operations, and vernacular healing movements. With a heuristic of two colonial states—one "nervous," one biopolitical—the analysis alternates between medical research into birthrates, gonorrhea, and childlessness and the securitization of subaltern "therapeutic insurgencies." By the time of Belgian Congo’s famed postwar developmentalist schemes, a shining infertility clinic stood near a bleak penal colony, both sited where a notorious Leopoldian rubber company once enabled rape and mutilation. Hunt’s history bursts with layers of perceptibility and song, conveying everyday surfaces and daydreams of subalterns and colonials alike. Congolese endured and evaded forced labor and medical and security screening. Quick-witted, they stirred unease through healing, wonder, memory, and dance. This capacious medical history sheds light on Congolese sexual and musical economies, on practices of distraction, urbanity, and hedonism. Drawing on theoretical concepts from Georges Canguilhem, Georges Balandier, and Gaston Bachelard, Hunt provides a bold new framework for teasing out the complexities of colonial history.
Authentically African
Author: Sarah Van Beurden
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821445456
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 505
Book Description
Together, the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, and the Institut des Musées Nationaux du Zaire (IMNZ) in the Congo have defined and marketed Congolese art and culture. In Authentically African, Sarah Van Beurden traces the relationship between the possession, definition, and display of art and the construction of cultural authenticity and political legitimacy from the late colonial until the postcolonial era. Her study of the interconnected histories of these two institutions is the first history of an art museum in Africa, and the only work of its kind in English. Drawing on Flemish-language sources other scholars have been unable to access, Van Beurden illuminates the politics of museum collections, showing how the IMNZ became a showpiece in Mobutu’s effort to revive “authentic” African culture. She reconstructs debates between Belgian and Congolese museum professionals, revealing how the dynamics of decolonization played out in the fields of the museum and international heritage conservation. Finally, she casts light on the art market, showing how the traveling displays put on by the IMNZ helped intensify collectors’ interest and generate an international market for Congolese art. The book contributes to the fields of history, art history, museum studies, and anthropology and challenges existing narratives of Congo’s decolonization. It tells a new history of decolonization as a struggle over cultural categories, the possession of cultural heritage, and the right to define and represent cultural identities.
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821445456
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 505
Book Description
Together, the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, and the Institut des Musées Nationaux du Zaire (IMNZ) in the Congo have defined and marketed Congolese art and culture. In Authentically African, Sarah Van Beurden traces the relationship between the possession, definition, and display of art and the construction of cultural authenticity and political legitimacy from the late colonial until the postcolonial era. Her study of the interconnected histories of these two institutions is the first history of an art museum in Africa, and the only work of its kind in English. Drawing on Flemish-language sources other scholars have been unable to access, Van Beurden illuminates the politics of museum collections, showing how the IMNZ became a showpiece in Mobutu’s effort to revive “authentic” African culture. She reconstructs debates between Belgian and Congolese museum professionals, revealing how the dynamics of decolonization played out in the fields of the museum and international heritage conservation. Finally, she casts light on the art market, showing how the traveling displays put on by the IMNZ helped intensify collectors’ interest and generate an international market for Congolese art. The book contributes to the fields of history, art history, museum studies, and anthropology and challenges existing narratives of Congo’s decolonization. It tells a new history of decolonization as a struggle over cultural categories, the possession of cultural heritage, and the right to define and represent cultural identities.
Africa since Independence
Author: Paul Nugent
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 023039356X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 680
Book Description
An indispensable introductory textbook that provides students with a genuinely comparative study of the different trajectories and experiences of independent African states. Paul Nugent explores a range of key concerns including the impact of HIV and AIDS, the contagion of warfare, and efforts at achieving national reconciliation both in the past and today. This is an ideal core text for modules on Modern African History, African Politics or Africa since Independence - or a supplementary text for broader modules on African History - which may be offered at the upper levels of an undergraduate History, Politics or African Studies degree. In addition it is a crucial resource for students who may be studying modern African history for the first time as part of a taught postgraduate degree in African History, African Politics or African Studies. New to this Edition: - Revised and updated throughout in light of the latest research - Reflects recent developments on issues such as AIDS, urbanization, the secession of South Sudan, questions of citizenship and the importance of transnational spaces - This second edition now features photographs
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 023039356X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 680
Book Description
An indispensable introductory textbook that provides students with a genuinely comparative study of the different trajectories and experiences of independent African states. Paul Nugent explores a range of key concerns including the impact of HIV and AIDS, the contagion of warfare, and efforts at achieving national reconciliation both in the past and today. This is an ideal core text for modules on Modern African History, African Politics or Africa since Independence - or a supplementary text for broader modules on African History - which may be offered at the upper levels of an undergraduate History, Politics or African Studies degree. In addition it is a crucial resource for students who may be studying modern African history for the first time as part of a taught postgraduate degree in African History, African Politics or African Studies. New to this Edition: - Revised and updated throughout in light of the latest research - Reflects recent developments on issues such as AIDS, urbanization, the secession of South Sudan, questions of citizenship and the importance of transnational spaces - This second edition now features photographs
Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Author: Emizet Francois Kisangani
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810863251
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 718
Book Description
The third edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo looks back at the nearly 48 years of independence, over a century of colonial rule, and even earlier kingdoms and groups that shared the territory. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 800 cross-referenced dictionary entries on civil wars, mutinies, notable people, places, events, and cultural practices.
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810863251
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 718
Book Description
The third edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo looks back at the nearly 48 years of independence, over a century of colonial rule, and even earlier kingdoms and groups that shared the territory. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 800 cross-referenced dictionary entries on civil wars, mutinies, notable people, places, events, and cultural practices.
Music and Globalization
Author: Bob W. White
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253223652
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 247
Book Description
The musical heritage of slavery : from Creolization to "world music" / Denis-Constant Martin My life in the bush of ghosts : "world music" and the commodification of religious experience / Steven Feld A place in the world : globalization, music, and cultural identity in contemporary Vanuatu / Philip Hayward Musicality and environmentalism in the rediscovery of Eldorado : an anthropology of the Raoni-Sting encounter / Rafael Jose? de Menezes Bastos "Beautiful blue" : Rara?muri violin music in a cross-border space / Daniel Noveck World music producers and the cuban frontier / Ariana Hernandez-Reguant Trovador of the Black Atlantic : Laba Sosseh and the Africanization of Afro-Cuban music / Richard M. Shain Slave ship on the infosea : contaminating the system of circulation / Barbara Browning World music of today / Timothy D. Taylor The promise of world music : strategies for non-essentialist listening / Bob W. White. Rethinking globalization through music / Bob W. White 1: Structured encounters The musical heritage of slavery : from Creolization to "world music" / Denis-Constant Martin My life in the bush of ghosts : "world music" and the commodification of religious experience / Steven Feld A place in the world : globalization, music, and cultural identity in contemporary Vanuatu / Philip Hayward Musicality and environmentalism in the rediscovery of Eldorado : an anthropology of the Raoni-Sting encounter / Rafael Jose? de Menezes Bastos 2: Mediated encounters "Beautiful blue" : Rara?muri violin music in a cross-border space / Daniel Noveck World music producers and the cuban frontier / Ariana Hernandez-Reguant Trovador of the Black Atlantic : Laba Sosseh and the Africanization of Afro-Cuban music / Richard M. Shain 3: Imagined encounters Slave ship on the infosea : contaminating the system of circulation / Barbara Browning World music of today / Timothy D. Taylor The promise of world music : strategies for non-essentialist listening / Bob W. White.
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253223652
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 247
Book Description
The musical heritage of slavery : from Creolization to "world music" / Denis-Constant Martin My life in the bush of ghosts : "world music" and the commodification of religious experience / Steven Feld A place in the world : globalization, music, and cultural identity in contemporary Vanuatu / Philip Hayward Musicality and environmentalism in the rediscovery of Eldorado : an anthropology of the Raoni-Sting encounter / Rafael Jose? de Menezes Bastos "Beautiful blue" : Rara?muri violin music in a cross-border space / Daniel Noveck World music producers and the cuban frontier / Ariana Hernandez-Reguant Trovador of the Black Atlantic : Laba Sosseh and the Africanization of Afro-Cuban music / Richard M. Shain Slave ship on the infosea : contaminating the system of circulation / Barbara Browning World music of today / Timothy D. Taylor The promise of world music : strategies for non-essentialist listening / Bob W. White. Rethinking globalization through music / Bob W. White 1: Structured encounters The musical heritage of slavery : from Creolization to "world music" / Denis-Constant Martin My life in the bush of ghosts : "world music" and the commodification of religious experience / Steven Feld A place in the world : globalization, music, and cultural identity in contemporary Vanuatu / Philip Hayward Musicality and environmentalism in the rediscovery of Eldorado : an anthropology of the Raoni-Sting encounter / Rafael Jose? de Menezes Bastos 2: Mediated encounters "Beautiful blue" : Rara?muri violin music in a cross-border space / Daniel Noveck World music producers and the cuban frontier / Ariana Hernandez-Reguant Trovador of the Black Atlantic : Laba Sosseh and the Africanization of Afro-Cuban music / Richard M. Shain 3: Imagined encounters Slave ship on the infosea : contaminating the system of circulation / Barbara Browning World music of today / Timothy D. Taylor The promise of world music : strategies for non-essentialist listening / Bob W. White.
Global Popular Music
Author: Clarence Bernard Henry
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040151922
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 985
Book Description
Global Popular Music: A Research and Information Guide offers an essential annotated bibliography of scholarship on popular music around the world in a two-volume set. Featuring a broad range of subjects, people, cultures, and geographic areas, and spanning musical genres such as traditional, folk, jazz, rock, reggae, samba, rai, punk, hip-hop, and many more, this guide highlights different approaches and discussions within global popular music research. This research guide is comprehensive in scope, providing a vital resource for scholars and students approaching the vast amount of publications on popular music studies and popular music traditions around the world. Thorough cross-referencing and robust indexes of genres, places, names, and subjects make the guide easy to use. Volume 2, Transnational Discourses of Global Popular Music Studies, covers the geographical areas of North America: United States and Canada; Central America, Caribbean, and South America/Latin America; Europe; Africa and Middle East; Asia; and areas of Oceania: Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, and Pacific Islands. It provides over twenty-four hundred annotated bibliographic entries covering discourses of extensive research that extend beyond the borders of the United States and includes annotated entries to books, book series, book chapters, edited volumes, special documentaries and programming, scholarly journal essays, and other resources that focus on the creative and artistic flows of global popular music.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040151922
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 985
Book Description
Global Popular Music: A Research and Information Guide offers an essential annotated bibliography of scholarship on popular music around the world in a two-volume set. Featuring a broad range of subjects, people, cultures, and geographic areas, and spanning musical genres such as traditional, folk, jazz, rock, reggae, samba, rai, punk, hip-hop, and many more, this guide highlights different approaches and discussions within global popular music research. This research guide is comprehensive in scope, providing a vital resource for scholars and students approaching the vast amount of publications on popular music studies and popular music traditions around the world. Thorough cross-referencing and robust indexes of genres, places, names, and subjects make the guide easy to use. Volume 2, Transnational Discourses of Global Popular Music Studies, covers the geographical areas of North America: United States and Canada; Central America, Caribbean, and South America/Latin America; Europe; Africa and Middle East; Asia; and areas of Oceania: Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, and Pacific Islands. It provides over twenty-four hundred annotated bibliographic entries covering discourses of extensive research that extend beyond the borders of the United States and includes annotated entries to books, book series, book chapters, edited volumes, special documentaries and programming, scholarly journal essays, and other resources that focus on the creative and artistic flows of global popular music.
The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History
Author: John Parker
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191667552
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 693
Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History represents an invaluable tool for historians and others in the field of African studies. This collection of essays, produced by some of the finest scholars currently working in the field, provides the latest insights into, and interpretations of, the history of Africa - a continent with a rich and complex past. An understanding of this past is essential to gain perspective on Africa's current challenges, and this accessible and comprehensive volume will allow readers to explore various aspects - political, economic, social, and cultural - of the continent's history over the last two hundred years. Since African history first emerged as a serious academic endeavour in the 1950s and 1960s, it has undergone numerous shifts in terms of emphasis and approach, changes brought about by political and economic exigencies and by ideological debates. This multi-faceted Handbook is essential reading for anyone with an interest in those debates, and in Africa and its peoples. While the focus is determinedly historical, anthropology, geography, literary criticism, political science and sociology are all employed in this ground-breaking study of Africa's past.
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191667552
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 693
Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History represents an invaluable tool for historians and others in the field of African studies. This collection of essays, produced by some of the finest scholars currently working in the field, provides the latest insights into, and interpretations of, the history of Africa - a continent with a rich and complex past. An understanding of this past is essential to gain perspective on Africa's current challenges, and this accessible and comprehensive volume will allow readers to explore various aspects - political, economic, social, and cultural - of the continent's history over the last two hundred years. Since African history first emerged as a serious academic endeavour in the 1950s and 1960s, it has undergone numerous shifts in terms of emphasis and approach, changes brought about by political and economic exigencies and by ideological debates. This multi-faceted Handbook is essential reading for anyone with an interest in those debates, and in Africa and its peoples. While the focus is determinedly historical, anthropology, geography, literary criticism, political science and sociology are all employed in this ground-breaking study of Africa's past.