African Studies - Recent Titles from Ohio University Press

Hanging by a Thread

Tue, 01 Apr 2008

Hanging by a Thread (2008)
Cotton, Globalization, and Poverty in Africa

Edited by William G. Moseley and Leslie C. Gray

The textile industry was one of the first manufacturing activities to become organized globally, as mechanized production in Europe used cotton from the various colonies. Africa, the least developed of the world’s major regions, is now increasingly engaged in the production of this crop for the global market, and debates about the pros and cons of this trend have intensified.

Hanging by a Thread: Cotton, Globalization, and Poverty in Africa illuminates the connections between Africa and the global economy. The editors offer a compelling set of linked studies that detail one aspect of the globalization process in Africa, the cotton commodity chain.

From global policy debates, to impacts on the natural environment, to the economic and social implications of this process, Hanging by a Thread explores cotton production in the postcolonial period from different disciplinary perspectives and in a range of national contexts. This approach makes the globalization process palpable by detailing how changes at the macroeconomic level play out on the ground in the world’s poorest region. Hanging by a Thread offers new insights on the region in a global context and provides a critical perspective on current and future development policy for Africa.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Hanging+by+a+Thread.
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The Resolution of African Conflicts

Tue, 15 Jan 2008

The Resolution of African Conflicts (2008)
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. They offer sober and serious analyses, eschewing the sensationalism of the western media and the sophistry of some of the scholars in the global North for whom African conflicts are at worst a distraction and at best a confirmation of their pet racist and petty universalist theories.”
—From the introduction by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

This book offers analyses of a range of African conflicts and demonstrates that peace is too important to be left to outsiders.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/The+Resolution+of+African+Conflicts.
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The Roots of African Conflicts

Tue, 15 Jan 2008

The Roots of African Conflicts (2008)
The Causes and Costs

Edited by Alfred Nhema and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

“Africa is no more prone to violent conflicts than other regions. Indeed, Africa’s share of the more than 180 million people who died from conflicts and atrocities in the twentieth century is relatively modest.… This is not to underestimate the immense impact of violent conflicts on Africa; it is merely to emphasize the need for more balanced debate and commentary.”
—From the introduction by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

Violent conflicts have exacted a heavy toll on Africa’s societies, polities, and economies. This book presents African scholars’ views of why conflicts start in their continent. The causes of conflict are too often examined by scholars from the countries that run the proxy wars and sell the arms to fuel them. This volume offers theoretically sophisticated, empirically grounded, and compelling analyses of the roots of African conflicts.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/The+Roots+of+African+Conflicts.
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Women, Work & Domestic Virtue in Uganda, 1900–2003

Sat, 01 Dec 2007

Women, Work & Domestic Virtue in Uganda, 1900–2003 (2007)

By Grace Bantebya Kyomuhendo and Marjorie Keniston McIntosh

This groundbreaking book by two leading scholars offers a complete historical picture of women and their work in Uganda, tracing developments from precolonial times to the present and into the future. Setting women’s economic activities into a broader political, social, and cultural context, it provides the first general account of their experiences amid the changes that shaped the country. Women, Work & Domestic Virtue in Uganda, 1900–2003 describes the origins of the current situation, highlighting the challenges working women now face and recommending strategies that will improve their circumstances in the future.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Women%2C+Work+%26+Domestic+Virtue+in+Uganda%2C+1900%E2%80%932003.
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The Sacred Door and Other Stories

Sat, 01 Dec 2007

The Sacred Door and Other Stories (2007)
Cameroon Folktales of the Beba

By Makuchi

The Sacred Door and Other Stories: Cameroon Folktales of the Beba offers readers a selection of folktales infused with riddles, proverbs, songs, myths, and legends, using various narrative techniques that capture the vibrancy of Beba oral traditions. Makuchi retells the stories that she heard at home when she was growing up in her native Cameroon.

The collection of thirty-four folktales of the Beba showcases a wide variety of stories that capture the richness and complexities of an agrarian society’s oral literature and traditions. Revenge, greed, and deception are among the themes that frame the story lines in both new and familiar ways. In the title story, a poor man finds himself elevated to king. The condition for his continued success is that he not open the sacred door. This tale of temptation, similar to the story of Pandora’s box, concludes with the question, “What would you have done?”

Makuchi relates the stories her mother told her so that readers can make connections between African and North American oral narrative traditions. These tales reinforce the commonalities of our human experiences without discounting our differences.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/The+Sacred+Door+and+Other+Stories.
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Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa

Fri, 16 Nov 2007

Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa (2007)

Edited by Henri Médard and Shane Doyle

Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa is a collection of ten studies by the most prominent historians of the region. Slavery was more important in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa than often has been assumed, and Africans from the interior played a more complex role than was previously recognized. The essays in this collection reveal the connections between the peoples of the region as well as their encounters with the conquering Europeans. The contributors challenge the assertion that domestic slavery increased in Africa as a result of the international trade. Slavery in this region was not a uniform phenomenon and the line between enslaved and non-slave labor was fine. Kinship ties could mark the difference between free and unfree labor. Social categories were not always clear-cut and the status of a slave could change within a lifetime.

Contents:
- Introduction by Henri Médard
- Language Evidence of Slavery to the Eighteenth Century by David Schoenbrun
- The Rise of Slavery & Social Change in Unyamwezi 1860–1900 by Jan-Georg Deutsch
- Slavery & Forced Labour in the Eastern Congo 1850–1910 by David Northrup
- Legacies of Slavery in North West Uganda ‘The One-Elevens’ by Mark Leopold
- Human Booty in Buganda: The Seizure of People in War, c.1700–c.1900 by Richard Reid
- Stolen People & Autonomous Chiefs in Nineteenth-Century Buganda by Holly Hanson
- Women’s Experiences of Slavery in Late Nineteenth- & Early Twentieth-Century Uganda by Michael W. Tuck
- Slavery & Social Oppression in Ankole 1890–1940 by Edward I. Steinhart
- The Slave Trade in Burundi & Rwanda at the Beginning of German Colonisation 1890–1906 by Jean-Pierre Chretien
- Bunyoro & the Demography of Slavery Debate by Shane Doyle

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Slavery+in+the+Great+Lakes+Region+of+East+Africa.
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African Sacred Groves

Thu, 01 Nov 2007

African Sacred Groves (2007)
Ecological Dynamics and Social Change

Edited by Michael J. Sheridan and Celia Nyamweru

In Western scholarship, Africa’s so-called sacred forests are often treated as the remains of primeval forests, ethnographic curiosities, or cultural relics from a static precolonial past. Their continuing importance in African societies, however, shows that this “relic theory” is inadequate for understanding current social and ecological dynamics. African Sacred Groves challenges dominant views of these landscape features by redefining the subject matter beyond the compelling yet uninformative term “sacred.” The term “ethnoforests” incorporates the environmental, social-political, and symbolic aspects of these forests without giving undue primacy to their religious values. This interdisciplinary book by an international group of scholars and conservation practitioners provides a methodological framework for understanding these forests by examining their ecological characteristics, delineating how they relate to social dynamics and historical contexts, exploring their ideological aspects, and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses as sites for community-based resource management and the conservation of cultural and biological diversity.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/African+Sacred+Groves.
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War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa

Mon, 01 Oct 2007

War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa (2007)
The Patterns and Meanings of State-Level Conflict in the 19th Century

By Richard J. Reid

War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa examines the nature and objectives of violence in the region in the nineteenth century. It is particularly concerned with highland Ethiopia and the Great Lakes. It will be of use to those interested in military history and to anyone involved in modern development and conflict resolution seeking to understand the deeper historical roots of African warfare.

Contents:
I THEORY & CONTEXT
African War in Historical & Theoretical Perspective
Antiquity & Inheritance
Restorative Violence & the Weight of History

II ARMIES Tools & Tactics
Organisation & Function

III PROCESS, IMPACT & CULTURE Cost & Profit
War & Economic Change
Violence & Society
The Resolution & Avoidance of Conflict
The Culture of Conflict
Conclusions: War & the Making of State & Society

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/War+in+Pre-Colonial+Eastern+Africa.
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Women and Slavery, Volume One

Fri, 28 Sep 2007

Women and Slavery, Volume One (2007)
Africa, the Indian Ocean World, and the Medieval North Atlantic

Edited by Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers and Joseph C. Miller

The literature on women enslaved around the world has grown rapidly in the last ten years, evidencing strong interest in the subject across a range of academic disciplines. Until Women and Slavery, no single collection has focused on female slaves who—as these two volumes reveal—probably constituted the considerable majority of those enslaved in Africa, Asia, and Europe over several millennia and who accounted for a greater proportion of the enslaved in the Americas than is customarily acknowledged.

Women enslaved in the Americas came to bear highly gendered reputations among whites—as “scheming Jezebels,” ample and devoted “mammies,” or suffering victims of white male brutality and sexual abuse—that revealed more about the psychology of enslaving than about the courage and creativity of the women enslaved. These strong images of modern New World slavery contrast with the equally expressive virtual invisibility of the women enslaved in the Old—concealed in harems, represented to meddling colonial rulers as “wives” and “nieces,” taken into African families and kin-groups in subtlely nuanced fashion.

Women and Slavery presents papers developed from an international conference organized by Gwyn Campbell.

Volume 1 Contributors
Sharifa Ahjum
Richard B. Allen
Katrin Bromber
Gwyn Campbell
Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch
Jan-Georg Deutsch
Timothy Fernyhough
Philip J. Havik
Elizabeth Grzymala Jordan
Martin A. Klein
George Michael La Rue
Paul E. Lovejoy
Fred Morton
Richard Roberts
Kirsten A. Seaver

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Women+and+Slavery%2C+Volume+One.
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Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946–1958

Tue, 25 Sep 2007

Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946–1958 (2007)

By Elizabeth Schmidt

In September 1958, Guinea claimed its independence, rejecting a constitution that would have relegated it to junior partnership in the French Community. In all the French empire, Guinea was the only territory to vote “No.” Orchestrating the “No” vote was the Guinean branch of the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA), an alliance of political parties with affiliates in French West and Equatorial Africa and the United Nations trusts of Togo and Cameroon. Although Guinea’s stance vis-à-vis the 1958 constitution has been recognized as unique, until now the historical roots of this phenomenon have not been adequately explained.

Clearly written and free of jargon, Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea argues that Guinea’s vote for independence was the culmination of a decade-long struggle between local militants and political leaders for control of the political agenda. Since 1950, when RDA representatives in the French parliament severed their ties to the French Communist Party, conservative elements had dominated the RDA. In Guinea, local cadres had opposed the break. Victimized by the administration and sidelined by their own leaders, they quietly rebuilt the party from the base. Leftist militants, their voices muted throughout most of the decade, gained preeminence in 1958, when trade unionists, students, the party’s women’s and youth wings, and other grassroots actors pushed the Guinean RDA to endorse a “No” vote. Thus, Guinea’s rejection of the proposed constitution in favor of immediate independence was not an isolated aberration. Rather, it was the outcome of years of political mobilization by activists who, despite Cold War repression, ultimately pushed the Guinean RDA to the left.

The significance of this highly original book, based on previously unexamined archival records and oral interviews with grassroots activists, extends far beyond its primary subject. In illuminating the Guinean case, Elizabeth Schmidt helps us understand the dynamics of decolonization and its legacy for postindependence nation-building in many parts of the developing world.

Examining Guinean history from the bottom up, Schmidt considers local politics within the larger context of the Cold War, making her book suitable for courses in African history and politics, diplomatic history, and Cold War history.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Cold+War+and+Decolonization+in+Guinea%2C+1946%E2%80%931958.
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