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This collection of essays spans a 15-year period of close observation of Zambia and its first leader, Kenneth Kaunda. It begins with the 1984 Zambian elections and continues to Kaunda's accusation of treason by the Chiluba government in 1998. ... Read more

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In Makishi: Mask Characters of Zambia, Manuel Jordán reveals the beauty and complexity of the remarkable masquerade traditions of the Chokwe, Mbunda, Lunda, Lwena/Luvale, and Luchazi peoples who live in the “Three Corners” region of northwestern Zambia, northeastern Angola, and southwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The distinct yet overlapping mask types and styles used by these groups reflect their continual interaction and demonstrate the constant reformulation of visual and performance genres. Relations among peoples of the “Three Corners” are further complicated by recent refugee flows, and the masquerades that Jordán considers and vividly illustrates in his field photographs reflect histories of compromise and creative tension, as well as contemporary struggles for survival. While exquisite masks drawn from the Fowler Museum's collections demonstrate long use, Jordán shows how new characters can be created within earlier categories, so that basic dramatic plots are preserved while reference is made to new technologies, foreign encounters, and the dynamics of social interaction in a rapidly changing world. In many ways, as the author astutely argues, the masks are a performative mechanism used to explain, cope with, and, often enough, celebrate life's most difficult transitions and transformations. Makishi vibrantly documents the ability of theater to perpetuate tradition while providing an adaptive leading edge. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Nice little book
It's a nice little book with lots of color photos, lots of Chokwe masks and scenes from dances and ceremonies.It wouldn't be high on my listed of recommended books unless you specifically were interested in more detail and more examples of this particular style of mask or wanted to know more about tribal life. ... Read more

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An eye-witness account of the events which shook South-Central Africa before the advent of Colonial rule. It presents an account of the Lozi, a record of Coillard's journeys and his work in establishing the Paris evangelical mission in Barotseland. ... Read more

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This book looks at Central Africa in the moment before the collapse of British colonial authority. Beginning with a lively study of Northern Rhodesia, the book moves outward in widening circles to the views of native councils, of colonial leaders, of African campaigners for independence, and ultimately of the Colonial Office in London. The result is a prismatic glimpse of the complexities of decolonization in Africa. Based on a rich assortment of unpublished documents, the book focuses on the key year of 1959, the year before the events that turned the tide toward independence. Rich in historical detail and conflicting perspectives, the book provides new insight into the complex particularities of local colonial history.
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What are the problems of rural food supply in southern Africa today and how have they arisen historically? In part this book is a reconstruction of an African agricultural system over one hundred years; in part it is an examination of the construction of knowledge about a rural African people. The first half of the book focuses on the chitemene agricultural system of the Bemba known as slash and burn. The authors show that chitemene involves a great deal more than the cutting and burning of trees. The second half addresses the question of labour migration and its effects on the agricultural production of the area, re-visiting the colonial debate with new evidence. The authors provide a critical re-assessment of Audrey Richards' classic work, Land, Labour and Diet: An Economic Study of the Bemba Tribe and assess the ecological, social and political impact on a rural society undergoing rapid change. North America: Heinemann ... Read more

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Valentine Musakanya played a leading role in Zambia's first post-independence government as Secretary to the Cabinet and Head of the Civil Service. He was subsequently a Member of Parliament, a Government Minister and Governor of the Bank of Zambia. Musakanya is however better known today as one of those convicted of the 1980 coup attempt against the one-party state of Kenneth Kaunda's United National Independence Party (UNIP) government. Although Musakanya was subsequently acquitted of involvement in the coup, questions have persisted: was Musakanya involved in the coup attempt? If so, why did he become involved? This volume, making Musakanya's writings available in public for the first time, provides a glimpse into one of Zambia's most brilliant minds. Musakanya's memoirs chart his personal and intellectual journey from a childhood in rural Northern Province and the mining township of Wusakile, to outstanding educational success and a glittering career in the civil service of newly independent Zambia. They describe his significant achievements, but also his disillusionment with the politicisation of state structures, the growth of patronage and corruption, and the growing authoritarianism and centralisation of political power in the hands of the President. Musakanya provides an insider's insight into the failings of post-independence government, articulating his personal disillusionment with UNIP and Kaunda, and explaining his involvement with those accused alongside him of involvement in the 1980 coup attempt. Musakanya describes in detail his arrest and interrogation at the hands of the intelligence services, and the publication sheds substantial new light on the organisation of the coup and the motivations of those involved. This volumes is the first in a planned series of publications which will place the writings of Valentine Musakanya in the public domain, in Zambia and internationally. ... Read more

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Africanizing Anthropology tells the story of the anthropological fieldwork centered at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) during the mid-twentieth century. Focusing on collaborative processes rather than on the activity of individual researchers, Lyn Schumaker gives the assistants and informants of anthropologists a central role in the making of anthropological knowledge.

Schumaker shows how local conditions and local ideas about culture and history, as well as previous experience of outsiders’ interest, shape local people’s responses to anthropological fieldwork and help them, in turn, to influence the construction of knowledge about their societies and lives. Bringing to the fore a wide range of actors—missionaries, administrators, settlers, the families of anthropologists—Schumaker emphasizes the daily practices of researchers, demonstrating how these are as centrally implicated in the making of anthropological knowlege as the discipline’s methods. Selecting a prominent group of anthropologists—The Manchester School—she reveals how they achieved the advances in theory and method that made them famous in the 1950s and 1960s.

This book makes important contributions to anthropology, African history, and the history of science. ... Read more

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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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

"Expectations of Modernity" by James Ferguson
This is a truly rich and incisive ethnography of an African nation in the midst of long-term economic decline.Ferguson may be best known to readers as the author of 1990's "The Anti-Politics Machine", a widely acknowledged classic of contemporary social anthropology and one of the seminal works of what might be called the new development studies.Admirers of "Anti-Politics Machine" should not expect a simple retread of old material here, however."Expectations of Modernity" focuses squarely on the lived experience of national economic decline, and the cultural and economic strategies by which retiring copper miners are adjusting to the new world order.
Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of "Expectations" is Ferguson's recourse to an eclectic mix of theoretical concepts and approaches.Dick Hebdige's analysis of subculture and style, Judith Butler's insights into gender performances, and Bourdieu's reflections on cultural capital are all invoked here to shed light on Zambians' attempts to grapple with economic decline.The breadth and subtlety of the author's theoretical approach to questions of culture, power, and style enables him to challenge the old, teleological narrative of Africa's progress from "tradition" to "modernity.""Expectations of Modernity" is therefore relevant not only to Africa and the Third World, but also to all those de-industrializing and declining regions of the capitalist West that have been nourished for decades on the false promises of modernist metanarratives.

An eloquent, elegant, and important study
I have read many ethnographies in my day, but I can't recall another that has had me at turns astounded by the author's insight, impressed with his prose, saddened by his findings, and laughing out loud at the wry wit of his descriptive voice.I do not normally consider good anthropology "fun" to read, but "EXPECTATIONS OF MODERNITY" bucks the trend.It's well-argued, impassioned, and thoroughly readable.

Author Ferguson is concerned with the experience of "modernity" and "development" as lived by residents of Zambia's Copperbelt, who since the 1970s have experienced an unrelenting slide into social and economic marginalization.He works in case studies drawn from individual interview subjects, census data, and textual asides--boxes featuring news clippings from Zambian papers, or brief "People Watching" accounts of the author's street observations with his research assistant.The discussion ranges from meta-narratives of "progress" and "modernization" to an eye-opening analysis of the opposing styles adopted by Zambian urbanites.

His conclusion is grim:"For many Zambians... recent history has been experienced not--as the modernization plot led one to expect--as a process of moving forward or joining up with the world, but as a process that has pushed them out of the place in the world that they once occupied."The process of globalization has not connected this corner of Africa (and its inhabitants) to the currents of prosperity traversing the world economy; rather it has disconnected them, throwing them out of the garden of "development."Ferguson stresses that they have not been "left out" of world capitalism; the processes of abjection he describes are integral parts of the system.

Even amid the gathering gloom of this analysis, I found myself heartened by the author's occasional humor and by his sympathetic (and self-effacing) accounts of casual encounters in the field.I had not previously had much time for anti-globalization arguments, but Ferguson's disarming approach lowered my skepticism, forcing me to confront the ugly truths of the new world order in a way I had never done before.My hat is off to this man for crafting such a great book. ... Read more