Language in Contemporary African Cultures and Societies PDF Download

Author: Leonard Muaka
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498572286
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Language in Contemporary African Cultures and Societies examines language in contemporary Africa by positioning language at the center of interrelationships between individuals, society, and culture. Because of how language permeates every aspect of human existence within each society, this book has assembled contributions by researchers and scholars who focus on different topics within African languages and cultures. By presenting African languages as resources and subject and subject of the study, this book discusses Africa’s multilingualism, language policy, preservation, and their uses in development, security, liberation, and identity formation in the diaspora. Based on empirical research and analysis of texts, this book takes a closer look at the continent and the diaspora by situating African languages, cultures, and literatures at the center, and shows how African languages are used in the liberation, transfer of knowledge, and promotion of literacy among Africans globally. It is a book that seeks to bridge the gap between the continent and the diaspora. All contributors are experienced scholars of language, literature, education and linguistics. The chapters provide a major means for examining the interplay of language, literature, and education.

Author: Peter J. Schraeder
Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780312076030
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
"Examines continuity and change in African politics and society from the precolonial era to the present, with particular focus on the post-Cold War era". -- Jacket.

Author: Peter Alegi
Publisher: University of Kwazulu Natal Press
ISBN: 9781869141820
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
'The passionate and meticulous research in Laduma! ensures that a lost legacy is highlighted and that the roots of soccer in South Africa have now been properly recorded.'-Mark Gleeson --Book Jacket.

Author: Benjamin Talton
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812251474
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
On August 7, 1989, Congressman Mickey Leland departed on a flight from Addis Ababa, with his thirteen-member delegation of Ethiopian and American relief workers and policy analysts, bound for Ethiopia's border with Sudan. This was Leland's seventh official humanitarian mission in his nearly decade-long drive to transform U.S. policies toward Africa to conform to his black internationalist vision of global cooperation, antiracism, and freedom from hunger. Leland's flight never arrived at its destination. The plane crashed, with no survivors. When Leland embarked on that delegation, he was a forty-four-year-old, deeply charismatic, fiercely compassionate, black, radical American. He was also an elected Democratic representative of Houston's largely African American and Latino Eighteenth Congressional District. Above all, he was a self-proclaimed "citizen of humanity." Throughout the 1980s, Leland and a small group of former radical-activist African American colleagues inside and outside Congress exerted outsized influence to elevate Africa's significance in American foreign affairs and to move the United States from its Cold War orientation toward a foreign policy devoted to humanitarianism, antiracism, and moral leadership. Their internationalism defined a new era of black political engagement with Africa. In This Land of Plenty presents Leland as the embodiment of larger currents in African American politics at the end of the twentieth century. But a sober look at his aspirations shows the successes and shortcomings of domestic radicalism and aspirations of politically neutral humanitarianism during the 1980s, and the extent to which the decade was a major turning point in U.S. relations with the African continent. Exploring the links between political activism, electoral politics, and international affairs, Benjamin Talton not only details Leland's political career but also examines African Americans' successes and failures in influencing U.S. foreign policy toward African and other Global South countries.

Author: Ryan Shaffer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538159988
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 833

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Book Description
Bringing together a group of international scholars, The Handbook of African Intelligence Cultures provides the first review of intelligence cultures in every African country. It explores how intelligence cultures are influenced by a range of factors, including past and present societal, governmental and international dynamics. In doing so, the book examines the state’s role, civil society and foreign relations in shaping African countries’ intelligence norms, activities and oversight. It also explores the role intelligence services and cultures play in government and civil society.

Author: Stephen Ellis
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195220162
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
With Christian revivals (including Evangelicals in the White House), Islamic radicalism and the revitalisation of traditional religions it is clear that the world is not heading towards a community of secular states. Nowhere are religious thought and political practice more closely intertwined than in Africa. African migrants in Europe and America who send home money to build churches and mosques, African politicians who consult diviners, guerrilla fighters who believe that amulets can protect them from bullets, and ordinary people who seek ritual healing: all of these are applying religious ideas to everyday problems of existence, at every level of society. Far from falling off the map of the world, Africa is today a leading centre of Christianity and a growing field of Islamic activism, while African traditional religions are gaining converts in the West. One cannot understand the politics of the present without taking religious thought seriously. Stories about witches, miracles, or people returning from the dead incite political action. In Africa religious belief has a huge impact on politics, from the top of society to the bottom. Religious ideas show what people actually think about the world and how to deal with it. Ellis and Ter Haar maintain that the specific content of religious thought has to be mastered if we are to grasp the political significance of religion in Africa today, but their book also informs our understanding of the relationship between religion and political practice in general.

Author: Chinyere Ukpokolo
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 1942876386
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This book illuminates the complex and constantly shifting social and cultural dynamics that shape peoples identity. Specifically, the volume focuses on the intersections of gender with, culture and identity, and at different historical epochs; on the way men and women define themselves and are defined by diverse peoples and cultures across time and space in sub-Saharan Africa. The discussions presented in this anthology primarily focus on being as a state or condition, defined by sex identity, and how this identity shifts, and hence becoming, assuming diverse meanings in disparate societies, contexts, and time. The discourse, therefore, moves from how the perception of the self in cultural and historical contexts has informed actions and at some other times shaped interpretations given to historical facts, to how changing economic realities also shape the definitions and constructions of social and relational issues in Sub-Saharan Africa. The historical trajectories of Islamic religion, colonialism and Christian missionary activities in sub-Saharan Africa have shaped the worlds of the peoples of the region and impacted on gender relations.

Author: Christopher C. Mojekwu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description

Author: John Parker
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0192802488
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Intended for those interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this work looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. It illustrates key themes in modern thinking about Africa's history with a range of historical examples.

Author: Amadou Tidiane Fofana
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604978315
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Ousmane Sembene was a Senegalese film director, producer, and writer whom the Los Angeles Times considered one of the greatest authors of Africa. Often called the "father of African film," Sembene strongly believed that African films should be geared primarily toward educating the masses and making the philosophical quandaries and political issues contested by elites accessible to the poor and those with little to no formal education.Although Sembene's central aim was to reach African audiences and encourage a dialogue within Senegalese society, his films are also extraordinarily effective in introducing non-African audiences to many of the most intriguing cultural issues and social changes facing African people today. The films are not fast paced in the manner of many Hollywood films. Rather, they are deliberately unhurried and driven by the narrative. They show actual ways of life, social relations, and patterns of communication and consumption, and the joys and tribulations of West African people. For people who have never been to Africa, the films offer an accessible first gaze. For those who have visited or lived in an African culture, the films provide a way to explore African society and culture more profoundly. Sembene was an independent filmmaker, solely and totally responsible for the content of his films, which were inspired by the realities of daily life. This focus on microcosmic social relations and day-to-day politics is so central to Sembene art, his films breed provocative commentary on social, historical, political, economic, linguistic, religious, and gender issues relevant to Senegalese society. Because of his concern with daily Senegalese life, Sembene targeted the common people whose voices are seldom or never heard. In fact, depicting the struggles and concerns of average Senegalese people was a central preoccupation of his films, as he himself has articulated. This study examines the artistry of Sembene's films as well as the multitude of signifying elements Sembene uses in them to communicate in less direct ways with his audience. The book interprets the meaning conveyed by images through their placement and function within the films, and it contributes new insights into Sembene's interpretations of cultural practices and the meanings he ascribes to social behaviors. It examines how Sembene uses language, mise-en-scene, cinematography, and creative editing to evoke the emotions of his targeted audience. Several chapters in the volume also demonstrate how the many ironies and political economic tensions that are so characteristic of Sembene's work are best understood within the sociocultural context of each film's production. Hence, to make sense of Sembene's cinema, one must be willing to read beyond the denoted meaning of the storyline and to dig into the cultural significance of the carefully selected and manipulated codes and images.