Culture and Customs of Zambia

Culture and Customs of Zambia
Author: Scott D. Taylor
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2006-10-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0313027641

Zambia stands out in Africa as one of the continent's most peaceful countries. In its early years as an independent state, Zambia became a regional bulwark against imperialism and colonial domination and South African apartheid. Today, it stands out as an important example of Africa's recent democratization, experiencing both incredible success as well as some notable setbacks. The country is also one of the most urbanized in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result of this urban influx, Zambia's diverse ethno-linguistic groups interact regularly. Moreover, many contemporary Zambian households, especially those in cities, are also exposed to the media, technology, and influences of western urbanized cultures, from Internet cafes to hip hop music. The interesting ways that tradition and modernity conflict and combine in contemporary Zambia are prime considerations in this book. This book explores Zambia's culture, with an eye toward its historical experiences and its particular endowments. It focuses on how traditional and modern interact, and sometimes collide, in the country through topics such as religion, gender roles and family, cuisine, the arts, literature, and more. The major groups are examined to give the reader an idea about how many Zambians live.

Satisfying Zambian Hunger for Culture

Satisfying Zambian Hunger for Culture
Author: Mwizenge S. Tembo
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2012
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 1479702080

The Southern African country of Zambia with 72 tribes has experienced tremendous social turmoil during the last 48 years. The 13 million citizens migrated into the cities and professionals immigrated and scattered abroad in a growing Diaspora. The diversity of the Zambian society and globalization has created a cultural crisis. "Satisfying Zambian Hunger for Culture" discusses social and political history, gender rites of passage, food, religion, witchcraft, and recommendations for contemporary life in the 21st century. The17 chapter book puts the diverse Zambian African tribal customs, culture and technology into the modern digital age.

Storytelling in Northern Zambia

Storytelling in Northern Zambia
Author: Robert Cancel
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2013
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1909254592

Storytelling plays an important part in the vibrant cultural life of Zambia and in many other communities across Africa. This innovative book provides a collection and analysis of oral narrative traditions as practiced by five Bemba-speaking ethnic groups in Zambia. The integration of newly digitalised audio and video recordings into the text enables the reader to encounter the storytellers themselves and hear their narratives. Robert Cancel's thorough critical interpretation, combined with these newly digitalised audio and video materials, makes Storytelling in Northern Zambia a much needed addition to the slender corpus of African folklore studies that deal with storytelling performance. Cancel threads his way between the complex demands of African fieldwork studies, folklore theory, narrative modes, reflexive description and simple documentation and succeeds in bringing to the reader a set of performers and their performances that are vivid, varied and instructive. He illustrates this living narrative tradition with a wide range of examples, and highlights the social status of narrators and the complex local identities that are at play. Cancel's study tells us not only about storytelling but sheds light on the study of oral literatures throughout Africa and beyond. Its innovative format, meanwhile, explores new directions in the integration of primary source material into scholarly texts. This book is the third volume in the World Oral Literature Series, developed in conjunction with the World Oral Literature Project.

Malawi - Culture Smart!

Malawi - Culture Smart!
Author: Kondwani Bell Munthali
Publisher: Kuperard
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2018-06-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1787029395

Nicknamed "The Warm Heart of Africa," "Land of the Lake," and "The Land of Smiling Faces," this small, landlocked country in southeast Africa offers travelers a true African experience. Within a single day, visitors can go on safari, enjoy sprawling tea gardens, and watch the sun sets over Lake Malawi, the third-largest lake in Africa and home to many rare species of fish. The country has nine unique national parks and wildlife reserves and has been home to many diverse African cultures, from the indigenous hunter-gathers to the incoming iron-working Bantu settlers. Dress, dance, masks, language, and traditional festivals all reflect waves of migrating tribes—those fleeing Shaka Zulu in the south, Swahili Arab slave traders in the east, and Bantu from Central Africa. Other cultural influences came through the slave trade routes, contact with Portuguese and Indian traders, and English missionaries who introduced Victorian-era buildings. This historic blend has produced a people who are strong, good-humored, conservative, traditional, yet adaptable, creative, loyal, and hard-working.

Expectations of Modernity

Expectations of Modernity
Author: James Ferguson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 1999-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 052092228X

Once lauded as the wave of the African future, Zambia's economic boom in the 1960s and early 1970s was fueled by the export of copper and other primary materials. Since the mid-1970s, however, the urban economy has rapidly deteriorated, leaving workers scrambling to get by. Expectations of Modernity explores the social and cultural responses to this prolonged period of sharp economic decline. Focusing on the experiences of mineworkers in the Copperbelt region, James Ferguson traces the failure of standard narratives of urbanization and social change to make sense of the Copperbelt's recent history. He instead develops alternative analytic tools appropriate for an "ethnography of decline." Ferguson shows how the Zambian copper workers understand their own experience of social, cultural, and economic "advance" and "decline." Ferguson's ethnographic study transports us into their lives—the dynamics of their relations with family and friends, as well as copper companies and government agencies. Theoretically sophisticated and vividly written, Expectations of Modernity will appeal not only to those interested in Africa today, but to anyone contemplating the illusory successes of today's globalizing economy.

Zambia

Zambia
Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile
Publisher: Continental Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2010-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 9987932258

This work is a general introduction to Zambia and its people. All the country's provinces and towns are covered in the book. The author also looks at Zambia since independence, the economy, the country's different ethnic groups and cultures and how the people have been able to build a stable, multi-ethnic society with one identity: One Zambia, One Nation. The author presents a comprehensive picture of Zambia and its people, customs and traditions. The book is about Zambia today. But it's also a historical study of a country which once was a part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The federation was also known as the Central African Federation. And what was then Northern Rhodesia, which is Zambia today, was the largest country in that colonial union. The author has focused on a number of ethnic groups in the country from a historical and cultural perspective and in terms of contemporary life. The work is also a comprehensive study of the geography of the country and its economic potential including an abundance of natural resources. It is a general study of Zambia as a country and as a nation, rich in culture - customs and traditions - and in history, and full of vitality. It should serve as a good introduction to Zambia, comprehensive enough to meet the needs and satisfy the curiosity of some members of the general public such as tourists who want to learn quite a few things about this African country."

Zambia

Zambia
Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile
Publisher: New Africa Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 9987160115

This work is about life in Zambia. It's also a general introduction to Zambia, the land and its people. Subjects covered include the country's history and geography, ethnic groups and their cultures. All the provinces of Zambia and their natural resources and important landmarks are also covered in the book. So are towns and cities in each of the provinces. Much of the work is focused on how the people live in their traditional societies and in the towns and cities, including the people of different ethnic groups - some from neighbouring countries especially Tanzania and Malawi - who work in the mines in the Copperbelt Province and how they interact with each other and with the indigenous people of Zambia. Some of the people who may find this work to be useful include tourists and others going to Zambia or anybody else who wants to learn some basic facts about the country.

Salaula

Salaula
Author: Karen Tranberg Hansen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2000-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780226315805

When we donate our unwanted clothes to charity, we rarely think about what will happen to them: who will sort and sell them, and finally, who will revive and wear them. In this fascinating look at the multibillion dollar secondhand clothing business, Karen Tranberg Hansen takes us around the world from the West, where clothing is donated, through the salvage houses in North America and Europe, where it is sorted and compressed, to Africa, in this case, Zambia. There it enters the dynamic world of Salaula, a Bemba term that means "to rummage through a pile." Essential for the African economy, the secondhand clothing business is wildly popular, to the point of threatening the indigenous textile industry. But, Hansen shows, wearing secondhand clothes is about much more than imitating Western styles. It is about taking a garment and altering it to something entirely local, something that adheres to current cultural norms of etiquette. By unraveling how these garments becomes entangled in the economic, political, and cultural processes of contemporary Zambia, Hansen also raises provocative questions about environmentalism, charity, recycling, and thrift.

Zambian Traditional Names

Zambian Traditional Names
Author: Mwizenge Tembo
Publisher: Julubbi Enterprises Limited
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2006
Genre: Names, Personal
ISBN: 9789982825085

Funeral Culture

Funeral Culture
Author: Casey Golomski
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2018-06-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0253036488

Contemporary forms of living and dying in Swaziland cannot be understood apart from the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, according to anthropologist Casey Golomski. In Africa's last absolute monarchy, the story of 15 years of global collaboration in treatment and intervention is also one of ordinary people facing the work of caring for the sick and dying and burying the dead. Golomski's ethnography shows how AIDS posed challenging questions about the value of life, culture, and materiality to drive new forms and practices for funerals. Many of these forms and practicesnewly catered funeral feasts, an expanded market for life insurance, and the kingdom's first crematoriumare now conspicuous across the landscape and culturally disruptive in a highly traditionalist setting. This powerful and original account details how these new matters of death, dying, and funerals have become entrenched in peoples' everyday lives and become part of a quest to create dignity in the wake of a devastating epidemic.