Perspectives on Africa

The second edition of Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation is both an introduction to the cultures of Africa and a history of the interpretations of those cultures. Key essays explore the major issues and debates through a combination of classic articles and the newest research in the field.

• Explores the dynamic processes by and through which scholars have described and understood African history and culture
• Includes selections from anthropologists, historians, philosophers, and critics who collectively reveal the interpenetration of ideas and concepts within and across disciplines, regions, and historical periods
• Offers a combined focus on ethnography and theory, giving students the means to link theory with data and perspective with practice
• Newly revised and updated edition of this popular text with 14 brand new chapters and two new sections: Conflict and Violent Transformations; and Development, Governance and Globalization

Acknowledgments x

List of Maps xiv

List of Figures xv

List of Plates xvii

List of Tables xviii

Introduction: Africa in Perspective 1

Part I: Representation and Discourse 19

Introduction 21

1 Africa Observed: Discourses of the Imperial Imagination 31

Jean and John Comaroff

2 The Meaning of Our Work 44

Cheikh Anta Diop

3 Europe Upside Down: Fallacies of the New Afrocentrism 48

Kwame Anthony Appiah

4 Discourse of Power and Knowledge of Otherness 55

V. Y. Mudimbe

Part II: From Tribe to Ethnicity: Kinship and Social Organization 61

Introduction 63

5 The Nuer: Time and Space 71

E. E. Evans-Pritchard

6 The Illusion of Tribe 83

Aidan W. Southall

7 Ethnicity in Southern African History 95

Leroy Vail

Part III: Economics as a Cultural System 109

Introduction 111

8 Lele Economy Compared with the Bushong 123

Mary Douglas

9 Research on an African Mode of Production 139

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch

10 The Cattle of Money and the Cattle of Girls among the Nuer, 1930–83 151

Sharon Hutchinson

Part IV: Hunter-Gatherers in Africa 167

Introduction 169

11 The Lesson of the Pygmies 175

Colin M. Turnbull

12 Houses in the Rainforest: Gender and Ethnicity among the Lese and Efe in Zaire 184

Roy Richard Grinker

13 Land Filled with Flies: The Evolution of Illusion 200

Edwin N. Wilmsen

14 Foragers, Genuine or Spurious? Situating the Kalahari San in History 219

Jacqueline S. Solway and Richard B. Lee

Part V: Witchcraft, Science, and Rationality: The Translation of Culture 237

Introduction 239

15 Conversations on Rain-making 245

David Livingstone

16 The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events 249

E. E. Evans-Pritchard

17 Understanding a Primitive Society 257

Peter Winch

18 The Moral Economy of Witchcraft: An Essay in Comparative History 270

Ralph A. Austen

Part VI: Ancestors, Gods, and the Philosophy of Religion 283

Introduction 285

19 Conversations with Ogotemmêli 291

Marcel Griaule

20 African Philosophy, Myth and Reality 302

Paulin J. Hountondji

21 Ancestors as Elders in Africa 314

Igor Kopytoff

Part VII: Arts, Aesthetics, and Heritage 323

Introduction 325

22 Humorous Masks and Serious Politics among the Afi kpo Igbo 335

Simon Ottenberg

23 Art, Identity, Boundaries: Postmodernism and Contemporary African Art 348

Olu Oguibe

24 As Plato Duly Warned: Music, Politics, and Social Change in Coastal East Africa 354

Kelly M. Askew

25 In Place of Slavery: Fashioning Coastal Identity 372

Bayo Holsey

Part VIII: Sex and Gender Studies in Africa: Economy and Society 379

Introduction 381

26 The Economics of Polygamy 389

Ester Boserup

27 “Sitting on a Man”: Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of Igbo Women 399

Judith Van Allen

28 Virginity Testing: Managing Sexuality in a Maturing HIV/AIDS Epidemic 411

Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala

Part IX: Europe in Africa: Colonization 423

Introduction 425

29 The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa: Methods of Ruling Native Races 431

Frederick D. Lugard

30 How Europe Underdeveloped Africa 439

Walter Rodney

31 The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa 450

Terence Ranger

32 Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary 462

Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Part X: Nations and Nationalism 471

Introduction 473

33 Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century 477

Léopold Sédar Senghor

34 On National Culture 484

Frantz Fanon

35 Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Modernity: The Paradox of Mau Mau 498

Bruce J. Berman

36 The Invisible Face: Masks, Ethnicity, and the State in Côte d’Ivoire 514

Christopher B. Steiner

Part XI: Violent Transformations: Conflict and Displacement 521

Introduction 523

37 Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa 531

Max Gluckman

38 Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone 543

Paul Richards

39 Sacrifice as Terror: The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 555

Christopher C. Taylor

40 Where to Be an Ancestor? Reconstituting Socio-spiritual Worlds among Displaced Mozambicans 569

Stephen Lubkemann

Part XII: Development, Governance, and Globalization 583

Introduction 585

41 Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt 595

James Ferguson

42 Development Aid and Structural Violence: The Case of Rwanda 609

Peter Uvin

43 Nigerian Scams as Political Critique: Globalization, Inequality and 419 616

Daniel Jordan Smith

44 The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly 629

Jean-François Bayart

45 “Govern Yourselves!” Democracy and Carnage in Northern Mozambique 644

Harry G. West

46 Nuer-American Passages 660

Dianna Shandy

Index 671

Roy Richard Grinker, Ph.D. is Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at George Washington University, Director of the GW Institute for Ethnographic Research, and Editor-in-Chief of Anthropological Quarterly. He is author of four other books, including In the Arms of Africa: The Life of Colin M. Turnbull, Houses in the Rainforest: Ethnicity and Inequality Among Farmers and Foragers in Central Africa, and Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism.

Christopher B. Steiner is the Lucy C. McDannel ’22 Professor of Art History and Director of Museum Studies at Connecticut College. He is the author of the award-winning book African Art in Transit, and co-editor (with Ruth Phillips) of Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds.

Stephen Lubkemann is Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at George Washington University. He is author of Culture in Chaos: An Anthropology of the Social Condition in War and is associate editor for Anthropological Quarterly and a co-founder of GWU’s Diaspora Research Program.

The second edition of the popular reader Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation offers valuable new chapters showing the progress and continuity in the field of African studies. Forty five articles illustrate the dynamic processes by and through which scholars have described and understood African history and culture over the past several decades, and show how profoundly the ethnography of Africa has influenced the direction and development of anthropological and social theory. This new edition offers 14 new selections as well as two entirely new sections, “Conflict and Violent Transformations” and “Development, Governance, and Globalization,” in which the authors reveal processes that have had a vital influence on the historical trajectory and the daily experience of African people in the modern world.

Selections include distinguished anthropologists, historians, philosophers, and Africanists. Collectively they show the multiplicity of voices in African studies, and reveal the interpenetration of ideas and concepts within and across disciplines, regions, and historical periods.