Sociology Book List ·

An African American in South Africa

The Travel Notes of Ralph J. Bunche 28 September 1937–1 January 1938

Ralph Bunche, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950, traveled to South Africa for three months in 1937. His notes, which have been skillfully compiled and annotated by historian Robert R. Edgar, provide unique insights on a segregated society.…

A Bed Called Home

Life in the Migrant Labour Hostels of Cape Town

In the last three years the migrant labor hostels of South Africa, particularly those in the Transvaal, have gained international notoriety as theaters of violence. For many years they were hidden from public view and neglected by the white authorities.…

Being Maasai

Ethnicity and Identity In East Africa

Everyone “knows” the Maasai as proud pastoralists who once dominated the Rift Valley from northern Kenya to central Tanzania. But many people who identity themselves as Maasai, or who speak Maa, are not pastoralist at all, but farmers and hunters.…

Building on a Borrowed Past

Place and Identity in Pipestone, Minnesota

Why is there a national monument near a small town on the Minnesota prairie? Why do the town's residents dress as Indians each summer and perform a historical pageant based on a Victorian-era poem? To answer such questions, Building on a Borrowed Past: Place and Identity in Pipestone, Minnesota shows what happens when one culture absorbs the heritage of another for civic advantage.…

Cannabis, Alcohol, and the South African Student

Adolescent Drug Use, 1974-1985

Du Toit examines the results of two surveys which he made a decade apart among high school students of Black, Indian, White, and Colored backgrounds. The initial survey showed some acceptance of the use of these substances among a small proportion of high school students but a high degree of intolerance of such use by the majority.…

The Cape Herders

A History of the Khoikhoi of Southern Africa

The Cape Herders provides the first comprehensive picture of the Khoikhoi people. In doing so, it fills a long-standing gap in the resources of Southern African studies, and at a time when interest in the indigenous populations of South Africa is growing daily.…

The Children of Africa Confront AIDS

From Vulnerability to Possibility

AIDS is now the leading cause of death in Africa, where twenty-eight million people are HIV-positive, and where some twelve million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS. In Zimbabwe, 45 percent of children under the age of five are HIV-positive, and the epidemic has shortened life expectancy by twenty-two years.…

Colonialism in the Congo Basin, 1880-1940

This exceptional study of the Mongo people of the upper Congo River basin focuses on the evolution of Mongo work patterns from the period of the late nineteenth century to 1940, the high-water mark of the colonial period.…

Colonization, Violence, and Narration in White South African Writing

André Brink, Breyten Breytenbach, and J. M. Coetzee

The representation of pain and suffering in narrative form is an ongoing ethical issue in contemporary South African literature. Can violence be represented without sensationalistic effects, or, alternatively, without effects that tend to be conservative because they place the reader in a position of superiority over the victim or the perpetrator? Jolly looks at three primary South African authors—André Brink, Breyten Breytenbach, and J.…

Communities of Work

Rural Restructuring in Local and Global Contexts

The image of rural America portrayed in this illuminating study is one that is vibrant, regionally varied, and sometimes heroic. Communities of Work focuses on the ways in which rural people and places are affected by political, social, and economic forces far outside their control and how they sustain themselves and their communities in response.…

Conflict Resolution in Uganda

There is a new mood in Uganda. There is a determination to reak out of the bitter history of internal conflict. Uganda gives hope to all those other areas of the world where violence has become endemic such as Ulster, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka.…

Contours of White Ethnicity

Popular Ethnography and the Making of Usable Pasts in Greek America

In Contours of White Ethnicity, Yiorgos Anagnostou explores the construction of ethnic history and reveals how and why white ethnics selectively retain, rework, or reject their pasts. Challenging the tendency to portray Americans of European background as a uniform cultural category, the author demonstrates how a generalized view of American white ethnics misses the specific identity issues of particular groups as well as their internal differences.…

Controlling Anger

The Anthropology of Gisu Violence

Controlling Anger examines the dilemmas facing rural people who live within the broader context of political instability. Following Uganda's independence from Britain in 1962, the Bagisu men of Southeastern Uganda developed a reputation for extreme violence.…

Custodians of the Land

Ecology and Culture in the History of Tanzania

Farming and pastoral societies inhabit ever-changing environments. This relationship between environment and rural culture, politics and economy in Tanzania is the subject of this volume which will be valuable in reopening debates on Tanzanian history.…

Dance Civet Cat

Tonga Children and Labour in the Zambezi Valley

In this, the first comprehensive study of the Tonga people in Zimbabwe, Pamela Reynolds focuses on children’s work in a subsistence agricultural system, assessing how much work they do, the value of their work to their families and how it both limits their opportunities and fosters their personal growth and knowledge.…

Disarming Manhood

Roots of Ethical Resistance

Masculine codes of honor and dominance often are expressed in acts of violence, including war and terrorism. In Disarming Manhood: Roots of Ethical Resistance, David A. J. Richards examines the lives of five famous men—great leaders and crusaders—who actively resisted violence and presented more humane alternatives to further their causes.…

Empire State-Building

War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925–1952

This history of administrative thought and practice in colonial Kenya looks at the ways in which white people tried to engineer social change. It asks four questions:Why was Kenya's welfare operation so idiosyncratic and spartan compared with that of other British colonies?Why did a transformation from social welfare to community development produce further neglect of the very poor?Why was there no equivalent to the French tradition of community medicine?If there was a transformatory element of colonial rule that sought to address poverty, where and why did it fall down?The answers offer revealing insight into the dynamics of rule in the late colonial period in Kenya.…

Ethnic Conflict

Religion, Identity, and Politics

The outbreak of numerous and simultaneous violent conflicts around the globe in the past decade resulted in immense human suffering and countless lost lives. In part, both results were aided by inactivity or by belated and often misplaced responses by the international community to the embattled groups.…

Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa

The politics of identity and ethnicity will remain a fundamental characteristic of African modernity. For this reason, historians and anthropologists have joined political scientists in a discussion about the ways in which democracy can develop in multicultural societies.…

Faces in the Revolution

The Psychological Effects of Violence on Township Youth in South Africa

One of South Africa’s most serious problems is the large number of youths in the black townships who have been exposed to an incredible depth and complexity of trauma. Not only have they lived through severe poverty, the deterioration of family and social structures, and an inferior education system, but they have also been involved in catastrophic levels of violence, both as victims and as perpetrators.…