The Infrastructural South

The Infrastructural South
Author: Jonathan Silver
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2023-10-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262376733

An in-depth look at the infrastructural landscape of Africa amid the third wave of urbanization, drawing on case studies from Africa and extending further afield. The Infrastructural South represents a major theoretical contribution to the study of infrastructure’s role in the third wave of urbanization centered on Africa. Based on over a decade of empirical research, Silver’s sweeping examination probes many of contemporary urbanism’s most exciting and pressing issues through the lens of the Global South. Focusing on Uganda, Ghana, and South Africa, Silver’s conceptually innovative chapters explore the way access to energy, water, sanitation, transit, and information technologies shape everyday life as they map the dynamic relations between cities, technology, and the environment. Pushing readers to look at the wider worlds that suffuse urban systems, this theoretical and geographical perspective treats Africa’s rapidly transforming towns and cities as complex sites of disruption, emancipation, and contradiction. In doing so, it shows how the proliferating urbanisms and contested techno-environments arise from shifting priorities in infrastructure planning, politics, and financing gaps. As urban issues become a key twenty-first-century challenge for Africa, Silver offers a comprehensive reworking of our understanding of urbanization. The Infrastructural South rethinks how global scholarship approaches infrastructure, laying pathways for future research at the intersection of technology, environmental urbanism, and urban politics.

Masters of Psalmody (bimo)

Masters of Psalmody (bimo)
Author: Aurélie Névot
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2019-08-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004414843

In Masters of Psalmody (bimo) Aurélie Névot analyses the religious, political and theoretical issues of a scriptural shamanism observed in southwestern China among the Yi-Sani. Her focus is on blood sacrifices and chants based on a secret and labile writing handled only by ritualists called bimo. Through ethnographic data, the author presents the still little known bimo metaphysics and unravels the complexity of the local text-based ritual system in which the continuity of each bimo lineage relies on the transmission of manuscripts whose writing relates to lineage blood. While illuminating the usages of this shamanistic tradition that is characterized by scriptural variability between patrilineages, Aurélie Névot highlights the radical changes it is undergoing by becoming a Chinese state tradition.

Purity and Danger

Purity and Danger
Author: Professor Mary Douglas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2013-06-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136489274

Purity and Danger is acknowledged as a modern masterpiece of anthropology. It is widely cited in non-anthropological works and gave rise to a body of application, rebuttal and development within anthropology. In 1995 the book was included among the Times Literary Supplement's hundred most influential non-fiction works since WWII. Incorporating the philosophy of religion and science and a generally holistic approach to classification, Douglas demonstrates the relevance of anthropological enquiries to an audience outside her immediate academic circle. She offers an approach to understanding rules of purity by examining what is considered unclean in various cultures. She sheds light on the symbolism of what is considered clean and dirty in relation to order in secular and religious, modern and primitive life.

Hero with an African Face

Hero with an African Face
Author: Clyde W. Ford
Publisher: Turtleback Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2000
Genre: Africa
ISBN: 9780613216999

Drawing on extensive research and his own wide travels, Ford vividly retells ancient African myths and tales and brings to light their universal meanings.

Man, Play, and Games

Man, Play, and Games
Author: Roger Caillois
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2001
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 9780252070334

According to Roger Caillois, play is an occasion of pure waste. In spite of this - or because of it - play constitutes an essential element of human social and spiritual development. In this study, the author defines play as a free and voluntary activity that occurs in a pure space, isolated and protected from the rest of life.

UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. I, Abridged Edition

UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. I, Abridged Edition
Author: Jacqueline Ki-Zerbo
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 1990
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520066960

"This volume covers the period from the end of the Neolithic era to the beginning of the seventh century of our era. This lengthy period includes the civilization of Ancient Egypt, the history of Nubia, Ethiopia, North Africa and the Sahara, as well as of the other regions of the continent and its islands."--Publisher's description

The Invention of Africa

The Invention of Africa
Author: V. Y. Mudimbe
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1988
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780852552032

What is the meaning of Africa and of being African? What is and what is not African philosophy? Is philosophy part of Africanism? These are the kind of fundamental questions which this book addresses. North America: Indiana U Press

Beyond observation

Beyond observation
Author: Paul Henley
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2020-01-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1526131374

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Beyond Observation is structured by the argument that the ‘ethnographicness’ of a film should not be determined by the fact that it is about an exotic culture – the popular view – nor because it has apparently not been authored – a long-standing academic view – but rather because it adheres to the norms of ethnographic practice more generally. On these grounds, the book covers a large number of films made in a broad range of styles across a 120-year period, from the Arctic to Africa, from the cities of China to rural Vermont. Paul Henley discusses films made within reportage, exotic melodrama and travelogue genres in the period before the Second World War, as well as more conventionally ethnographic films made for academic or state-funded educational purposes. The book explores the work of film-makers such as John Marshall, Asen Balikci, Ian Dunlop and Timothy Asch in the post-war period, considering ideas about authorship developed by Jean Rouch, Robert Gardner and Colin Young. It also discusses films authored by indigenous subjects themselves using the new video technology of the 1970s and the ethnographic films that flourished on British television until the 1990s. In the final part of the book, Henley examines the recent work of David and Judith MacDougall and the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab, before concluding with an assessmentof a range of films authored in a participatory manner as possible future models.

UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. III, Abridged Edition

UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. III, Abridged Edition
Author: Unesco. International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 422
Release: 1992-11-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520066984

"The book first places Africa in the context of world history at the opening of the seventh century, before examining the general impact of Islamic penetration, the continuing expansion of the Bantu-speaking peoples, and the growth of civilizations in the Sudanic zones of West Africa"--Back cover.