This work contributes to the study of slavery in Africa by emphasizing the roles Africans played both as slaves and slavers. It uses comparative and eclectic approaches to demonstrate that in the different types of indigenous states in Africa, slavery was never a common phenomenon. In Centralized states it emanated from indigenous servitude and formed an integral component of the elaborate kinship system. In the non-Centralized states it was introduced by the trans-system and it fulfilled an economic function.
‘Us Maoris used to practice slavery just like them poor Negroes had to endure in America . . .' says Beth Heke in Once Were Warriors. ‘Oh those evil colonials who destroyed Maori culture by ending slavery and cannibalism while increasing the life expectancy,' wrote one sarcastic blogger. So was Maori slavery ‘just like' the experience of Africans in the Americas and were British missionaries or colonial administrators responsible for ending the practice? What was the nature of freedom and unfreedom in Maori society and how did that intersect with the perceptions of British colonists and the anti-slavery movement? A meticulously researched book, Outcasts of the Gods? looks closely at a huge variety of evidence to answer these questions, analyzing bondage and freedom in traditional Maori society; the role of economics and mana in shaping captivity; and how the arrival of colonists and new trade opportunities transformed Maori society and the place of captives within it.
In 1952, a woman named Hadija was brought to trial in an Islamic courtroom in the Cameroon Grassfields on a charge of bigamy. Quickly, however, the court proceedings turned to the question of whether she had been the wife or the slave-concubine of her deceased husband. In tandem with other court cases of the day, Harmony O'Rourke illuminates a set of contestations in which marriage, slavery, morality, memory, inheritance, status, and identity were at stake for Muslim Hausa migrants, especially women. As she tells Hadija's story, O'Rourke disrupts dominant patriarchal and colonial narratives that have emphasized male activities and projects to assert cultural distinctiveness, and she brings forward a new set of women's issues involving concerns for personal prosperity, the continuation of generations, and Islamic religious expectations in communities separated by long distances.
Saharan Crossroads: Exploring Historical, Cultural, and Artistic Linkages between North and West Africa counteracts the traditional scholarly conception of the Sahara Desert as an impenetrable barrier dividing the continent by employing an interdisciplinary lens to examine myriad interconnections between North and West Africa through travel, trade, communication, cultural exchange, and correspondence that have been ongoing for several millennia. Saharan Crossroads offers a unique contribution to existing scholarship on the region by uniting a diverse group of African, European, and American scholars working on various facets of trans-Saharan history, social life, and cultural production, and bringing their work together for the first time. This trilingual volume includes eleven chapters written in English, five chapters in French, and three chapters in Arabic, reflecting the multicultural nature of the Sahara and this international project. Saharan Crossroads explores historical and contemporary connections and exchanges between populations living in and on both sides of the Sahara that have led to the emergence of distinctive cultural and aesthetic expressions. This contact has been fostered by a series of linkages that include the trans-Saharan caravan trade, the spread of Islam, the migration of nomadic pastoralists, and European colonization. The book includes three major sections: (1) history, culture, and identity; (2) trans-Saharan circulation of arts, music, ritual performance, and architecture; and (3) religion, law, language, and writing. While the gaze of international political analysts has turned toward the Sahara to follow problematic developments that pose serious threats to human rights and security in the region, it is especially timely to recall that the people and countries of the Sahelo-Saharan world have maintained long histories of peaceful coexistence, interdependence, and cooperation that are too often overlooked in the present.
This handbook places emphasis on modern/contemporary times, and offers relevant sophisticated and comprehensive overviews. It aims to emphasize the religious, economic, political, cultural and social connections between Africa and the rest of the world and features comparisons as well as an interdisciplinary approach in order to examine the place of Africa in global history. "This book makes an important contribution to the discussion on the place of Africa in the world and of the world in Africa. An outstanding work of scholarship, it powerfully demonstrates that Africa is not marginal to global concerns. Its labor and resources have made our world, and the continent deserves our respect." – Mukhtar Umar Bunza, Professor of Social History, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, and Commissioner for Higher Education, Kebbi State, Nigeria "This is a deep plunge into the critical place of Africa in global history. The handbook blends a rich set of important tapestries and analysis of the conceptual framework of African diaspora histories, imperialism and globalization. By foregrounding the authentic voices of African interpreters of transnational interactions and exchanges, the Handbook demonstrates a genuine commitment to the promotion of decolonized and indigenous knowledge on African continent and its peoples." – Samuel Oloruntoba, Visiting Research Professor, Institute of African Studies, Carleton University
Afrodiasporic Forms explores the epistemological possibilities of the “Black world” paradigm and traces a literary and cultural cartography of the monde noir and its constitutive African diasporas across multiple poetic, visual, and cultural permutations. Examining the transatlantic slave trade and modern racial slavery, Raquel Kennon challenges the US-centric focus of slavery studies and draws on a transnational, eclectic archive of materials from Lusophone, Hispanophone, and Anglophone sources in the Americas to inspect evolving, multitudinous, and disparate forms of Afrodiasporic cultural expression. Spanning the 1830s to the twenty-first century, Afrodiasporic Forms traverses national, linguistic, and disciplinary boundaries as it investigates how cultural products of slavery’s afterlife—including poetry, prose, painting, television, sculpture, and song—shape understandings of the African diaspora. Each chapter uncovers multidirectional pathways for exploring representations of slavery, considering works such as a Brazilian telenovela based on Bernardo Guimarães’s novel A Escrava Isaura, Robert Hayden’s poem “Middle Passage,” Kara Walker’s sculpture A Subtlety, and Juan Francisco Manzano’s Autobiografía de un esclavo. Kennon’s expansive method of comparative reading across the diaspora uses eclectic pairings of canonical and popular textual and artistic sources to stretch beyond disciplinary and national borders, promoting expansive diasporic literacies.
This book compromises 26 well-researched essays in honour of Professor Verkijika G. Fanso, who retired in 2011 after over 36 years of distinguished service at universities in Cameroon. Contributors include colleagues, former students and close collaborators in Cameroon and beyond. Contributions cover a wide range of issues related to the contested histories, politics and practices of boundaries and frontiers in Africa. These are themes on which Fanso has researched, published and taught extensively, and earned international recognition as a leading scholar. The book explores, inter alia, indigenous and endogenous practices of boundary making in Africa; as well as colonial and contemporary traditions, practices and conflicts on and around frontiers. In particular focus, are disputed colonial boundaries between Cameroon and its neighbours. Issues of intra- and inter-disciplinary frontiers, politics and cultures are also addressed. The volume is crowned by a farewell valedictory lecture by Fanso. Like Fanso and his rich repertoire of publications, this bumper harvest of essays is without doubt, truly immortalising.
In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
