African Studies
About African Studies
Ohio University Press’s African Studies publishing program includes regional surveys, works of distinguished scholarship that contribute to academic debates, and multiauthor collections on key topics. Groundbreaking series such as Eastern African Studies, Western African Studies, Research in International Studies (RIS) Africa, RIS Global and Comparative Studies, and the Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History have redefined the study of Africa. The New African Histories series promotes continued research on the lived experience of Africans while pushing the boundaries of social history in exciting new directions. A forthcoming series, Africa in World History, will produce accessibly written books by African specialists who speak to current images of Africa in the popular culture, drawing attention to the parallels in human experience in Africa and other parts of the world.
Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, our list promotes the work of both first-time authors and established scholars. Topics include the nature of the colonial state, social history and social life, religion and politics, conflict and reconstruction, environmental history, poverty, public health, and development.
Many books on our African Studies list are available in paperback editions.
Featured Title(s)
The African AIDS Epidemic
A History
By John Iliffe
This history of the African AIDS epidemic is a much-needed, accessibly written historical account of the most serious epidemiological catastrophe of modern times. The African AIDS Epidemic: A History answers President Thabo Mbeki’s provocative question as to why Africa has suffered this terrible epidemic.…
Butterflies & Barbarians
Swiss Missionaries and Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa
Swiss missionaries played a primary and little-known role in explaining Africa to the literate world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book emphasizes how these European intellectuals, brought to the deep rural areas of southern Africa by their vocation, formulated and ordered knowledge about the continent.…
Fighting the Greater Jihad
Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853–1913
In Senegal, the Muridiyya, a large Islamic Sufi order, is the single most influential religious organization, including among its numbers the nation’s president. Yet little is known of this sect in the West.…
Oral Literature and Performance in Southern Africa – On Sale
Edited by Duncan Brown
This book draws together contributions from literary studies, anthropology, ethnomusicology, and African language studies to analyze the complex functioning of oral texts and models in differing contexts.…
Ouidah
The Social History of a West African Slaving Port, 1727–1892
By Robin Law
Ouidah, an African town in the Republic of Benin, was the principal precolonial commercial center of its region and the second-most-important town of the Dahomey kingdom. It served as a major outlet for the transatlantic slave trade.…
Pastimes and Politics – On Sale
Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890–1945
By Laura Fair
The first decades of the twentieth century were years of dramatic change in Zanzibar, a time when the social, economic, and political lives of island residents were in incredible flux, framed by the abolition of slavery, the introduction of colonialism, and a tide of urban migration.…
Paths of Accommodation – On Sale
Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920
Between 1880 and 1920, Muslim Sufi orders became pillars of the colonial regimes and economies of Senegal and Mauritania. In Paths of Accommodation, David Robinson examines the ways in which the leaders of the orders negotiated relations with the Federation of French West Africa in order to preserve autonomy within the religious, social, and economic realms while abandoning the political sphere to their non-Muslim rulers.…
Penetration & Protest in Tanzania
Impact of World Economy on the Pare, 1860–1960
The originality of this study of rural transformation stems from the way in which Professor Kimambo has used the oral tradition to reveal the history of the impact of the world economy in northeastern Tanzania.…
Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia – On Sale
The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century
By Bahru Zewde
In this exciting new study, Bahru Zewde, one of the foremost historians of modern Ethiopia, has constructed a collective biography of a remarkable group of men and women in a formative period of their country's history.…
The Political Economy of Health in Africa
Edited by Toyin Falola and Dennis Ityavyar
This book examines the major phases in the history of health services in Africa and treats health as an integral aspect of the deepening crisis in Africa’s underdevelopment. One important thesis is that Western delivery systems have made health care less accessible for most people.…
Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda
Economy, Society, and Warfare in the Nineteenth Century
Blessed with fertile and well-watered soil, East Africa's kingdom of Buganda supported a relatively dense population and became a major regional power by the mid-nineteenth century. This complex and fascinating state has also long been in need of a thorough study that cuts through the image of autocracy and military might.…
The Poor Are Not Us – On Sale
Poverty and Pastoralism in Eastern Africa
Edited by David M. Anderson and Vigdis Broch-Due
Eastern African pastoralists often present themselves as being egalitarian, equating cattle ownership with wealth. By this definition “the poor are not us”, poverty is confined to non-pastoralist, socially excluded persons and groups.…
Portugal and Africa
Portugal was the first European nation to assert itself aggressively in African affairs. David Birmingham's Portugal and Africa, a collection of uniquely accessible historical essays, surveys this colonial encounter from its earliest roots.…
The Post-Apartheid Constitutions
Perspectives on South Africa's Basic Law
Edited by Penelope Andrews and Stephen Ellmann
Offering a unique range of perspectives on South Africa's interim and final constitutions, this collection of essays by scholars, lawyers, and political leaders illuminates the many issues of process, substance, and context presented by the constitutions.…
Potent Brews – On Sale
A Social History of Alcohol in East Africa, 1850–1999
In this first general history of alcohol and drinking in East Africa, Justin Willis's central theme is power—from customary beliefs in alcohol as a symbol of authority and a means of enhancement and privilege, to the use of power in advertising, and discourse on the consumption of modern bottled beers and spirits.…
Property Rights & Political Development In Ethiopia & Eritrea – On Sale
This book looks at the microfoundations of poverty in the developing world and in particular those present in property rights. The local institutions that govern land access are fundamental in affecting the distribution of wealth in a society.…
The Quest for Fruition Through Ngoma – On Sale
The Political Aspects of Healing in Southern Africa
Edited by Ria Reiss, Marja Spierenburg and Rijk van Dijk
This study has arisen out of a fascination with the vibrant nature of African societies, their vitality, and particularly the way in which they seem to be able time and again to overcome tribulation and turmoil.…
Race, Resistance, and the Boy Scout Movement in British Colonial Africa
Conceived by General Sir Robert Baden-Powell as a way to reduce class tensions in Edwardian Britain, scouting evolved into an international youth movement. It offered a vision of romantic outdoor life as a cure for disruption caused by industrialization and urbanization.…
Religion & Politics in East Africa
The Period since Independence
Edited by Michael Twaddle and Holger Bernt Hansen
Religious activities have been of continuing importance in the rise of protest against postcolonial governments in Eastern Africa. Issues considered include attempts by government to “manage” religious affairs in both Muslim and Christian areas; religious denominations as surrogate oppositions to one-party-state regimes and as advocates of human rights; Islamic fundamentalism before and after the end of the Cold War; and Christian churches as NGOs in the age of structural adjustment.…
Religious Pluralism & the Nigerian State
In the case of Nigeria, scholarship on religious politics has not adequately taken into account the pluralistic context and the idealistic pretensions of the state that inhibit the possibility of forging an enduring civic amity among Nigeria’s diverse groups.…
Remapping Ethiopia – On Sale
Socialism & After
Edited by Eisei Kurimoto, Wendy James, Donald L. Donham and Alessandro Triulzi
Governance everywhere is concerned with spatial relationships. Modern states “map” local communities, making them legible for the purposes of control. Ethiopia has gone through several stages of “mapping” in its imperial, revolutionary, and postrevolutionary phases.…
The Resolution of African Conflicts
The Management of Conflict Resolution and Post-Conflict Reconstruction
Edited by Alfred Nhema and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
“These two volumes clearly demonstrate the efforts by a wide range of African scholars to explain the roots, routes, regimes and resolution of African conflicts and how to re-build post-conflict societies.…
Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa – On Sale
Gender, Culture, and the Myth of the Patriarchal Pastoralist
Edited by Dorothy L. Hodgson
The dominant trend in pastoralist studies has long assumed that pastoralism and pastoral gender relations are inherently patriarchal. The contributors to this collection, in contrast, use diverse analytic approaches to demonstrate that pastoralist gender relations are dynamic, relational, historical, and produced through complex local-translocal interactions.…
