Böcker i African Social Studies-serien

This book describes how style of dress influences the body's demeanour and habit. In describing dress practices in three West African communities - Muslim, Animist and Christian - it considers the role played by dress in the enculturation of the body.

This detailed ethnography follows trajectories the controversial stimulant khat takes from Kenya's Nyambene Hills to consumers spread throughout the world, and highlights the great economic, social and cultural significance of this transnational commodity for those animating its 'social life'

The king of Mankon (Cameroon) acts as a container of ancestral substances he distributes to his people. This book shows how the exercise of power in a contemporary African kingdom is based on the implementation of bodily and material technologies.

Using a focus on the trajectory of commoditisation of gin in West Africa, this book investigates how imported goods acquire specific local meanings. It shows that local consumers, not foreign advertisers, produced the importance of schnapps gin for African ritual

Anchored in an empirically-grounded anthropology, this book explores the notion of governance in a non-normative way. It describes and analyses the institutional and political processes through which social actors and groups - be they state, private or 'third-sector' - contribute to the provision of public and collective goods or services. The book draws on case studies from Anglophone and Francophone Africa, crossing anthropological traditions that have too often evolved in parallel directions and dealing with a range of topics such as health, water supply, sanitation and waste management, security, humanitarian aid, land issues and decentralisation. Beyond African boundaries, it contributes to current debates about governmentality, public policy, subject making, public/private boundaries, and the role of the state.

Challenging portrayals of West African female farmers as a homogenous group, the present study provides an ethnographic account of the contractual relations established between female hosts and migrants, in the exchange of land and labour for agrarian production in The Gambia.

This volume reexamines the Maji Maji war of 1905-07 in Tanzania, the largest African rebellion against European colonialism. Contributors provide histories of previously neglected localities and groups, and new insight into the use of protective medicines believed to provide invulnerability.

African Floodplains in semi-arid areas are important for local livelihoods but are under pressure and contested. Case studies from Mali, Cameroon, Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana present the change in the management of common pool resources in these wetlands and provide a comparative new-institutionalist analysis.

Hausa society in West Africa has attracted researchers attention for decades, and has featured in the historical record for at least 500 years. Yet, no clear picture is available of the historical trajectories that underpin Hausa ethnogenesis. This book addresses this gap, deploying interdisciplinary approaches to revisit questions to which single disciplines have given partial answers, often due to the paucity of written sources for early periods of Hausa history. Contributors draw from the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, economic history, and archaeology to enquire into how a Hausa identity took shape and what have been its changing material and cultural manifestations. The result is a compelling overview of one of the most iconic groups of modern West Africa.

This book conceptualizes integration and conflict as interrelated dimensions of social interaction impacted by specific historical experiences. Contributions aim at a better understanding of the social mechanisms affecting processes of integration and conflict at the local, national and regional levels.

Ethiopia 's unique system of ethnic-based federalism claims to minimise conflict by organising political power along ethnic lines. This empirical study shows that the system eases conflict at some levels but also sharpens inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic divides on the ground.

Drawing on nine case studies, this book offers a comparative ethnography of the contested powers that shape democratization in Ethiopia. Focusing on the competitive 2005 elections, the authors analyze how customary leaders, political parties and state officials confronted each other during election time.

Can 'traditional' leaders and institutions help to build more legitimate, accountable and effective governments in polities or 'states' under (re)construction? This book investigates the fascinating case of "Somaliland", the 20-year old non-recognized state which emerged from Somalia's conflict and state collapse.

Land is the nexus of Malagasy livelihood and socio-cultural relations. Simultaneously, the Malagasy government and international stakeholders value land for its biodiversity, minerals and agricultural potential. This book provides vital background to the contest for land in Madagascar.

In Colonial Survey and Native Landscapes in Rural South Africa, 1850 - 1913, Lindsay Frederick Braun explores the technical processes and struggles surrounding the creation and maintenance of boundaries and spaces in South Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.