Books in the African Systems of Thought series

Features an introduction to Yoruba religion, as practiced in Africa and the Americas.

Contends that it is through their encounter with Christian missions in the mid-19th century that the Yoruba came to know themselves as a distinctive people. This book focuses on the experiences of ordinary men and women and shows how the process of Christian conversion transformed Christianity into something more deeply Yoruba.

An intimate look at an evangelical Christian mission in Muslim Africa

A collection of essays that demonstrate the central role that divination plays throughout Africa in maintaining cultural systems and in guiding human action. It offers insights for discussions in comparative epistemology, cross-cultural psychology, cognition studies, semiotics, ethnoscience, religious studies, and anthropology.

What did it mean to be an African subject living in remote areas of Tanganyika at the end of the colonial era? For the Kaguru of Tanganyika, it meant daily confrontation with the black and white governmental officials tasked with bringing this rural people into the mainstream of colonial African life. T. O. Beidelman's detailed narrative links this administrative world to the Kaguru's wider social, cultural, and geographical milieu, and to the political history, ideas of indirect rule, and the white institutions that loomed just beyond their world. Beidelman unveils the colonial system's problems as it extended its authority into rural areas and shows how these problems persisted even after African independence.

Beginning where stories of colonial liquor control and exploitation leave off, this title looks at the commerce of beer, it's valorising of male sociability and sports, and the corporate culture of South African Breweries, the world's most successful brewing company.

An eminent African philosopher asserts the compatibility of universal and particular values in defining cultural identities.

Assesses the direction and impact of African philosophy as well as its future role.

Examines and reassesses the use of oral resources in writing African history.

A penetrating look at changing perceptions of health, illness, and debility.

Contains essays that open fresh perspectives for understanding African societies and cultures through the study of objects. This title treats topics ranging from the production of material objects to the meaning of sticks, masquerades, household tools, clothing, and the television set in the contemporary repertoire of African material culture.

Apartheid's Festival highlights the conflicts and debates that surrounded the 1952 celebration of the 300th anniversary of the landing of Jan Van Riebeeck and the founding of Cape Town, South Africa. Taking place at the height of the apartheid era, the festival was viewed by many as an opportunity for the government to promote its nationalist, separatist agenda in grand fashion. Leslie Witz's fine-grained examination of newspapers, brochures, pamphlets, and advertising materials reveals the expectations of the festival planners as well as how the festival was engineered, historical figures were reconstructed, and the ANC and other anti-apartheid organizations mounted opposition to it. While laying open the darker motives of the apartheid regime, Witz shows that the production of local history is part of a global process forged by the struggle between colonialism and resistance. Readers interested in South Africa, representations of nationalism, and the making of public history will find Apartheid's Festival to be an important study of a society in transition.