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The Falling Dawadawa Tree
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Book Synopsis The Falling Dawadawa Tree by : Christiana Oware Knudsen
Download or read book The Falling Dawadawa Tree written by Christiana Oware Knudsen and published by Left Coast Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapter 9. The Guan
Book Synopsis Ancient West African Women - Toppled Cornerstones by : Christiana Oware Knudsen
Download or read book Ancient West African Women - Toppled Cornerstones written by Christiana Oware Knudsen and published by Pneuma Springs Publishing. This book was released on 2016-07-07 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The period between the 9th and the 19th centuries was a dark period in the history of West African Women. The effect of this dark period continues today, in part, in the form of persistent gender inequalities. Prior to this period, ancient West African women were empowered to the point that they effectively organised their own societies in ways that helped complement their interaction with men. In those instances, matriarchal inheritance systems ruled. The phenomenon of females ruling societies was based on the basic acknowledgement that all men and women, great or humble, emerged into this world from the womb of a woman. However, these matrilineal cultures were gradually destroyed by the arrival of, first, Islam, then the North Atlantic chattel slave trade, colonisation and, finally, Christianity. Slave trading was taking place across the world, but chattel slavery was first introduced in West Africa by a number of Western European countries. Ancient West African Women is a short, crisp book which systematically explains how women in ancient West African tribes migrated from the Nile Valley in Egypt westwards to an area south of the Sahara, which we now know as West Africa. The book also polemically explores the lasting impact of chattel slave trading, colonization, Christianization and Islamization on the standing of West African women. Book reviews online: PublishedBestsellers website.
Book Synopsis Thicker Than Water by : Melissa Meyer
Download or read book Thicker Than Water written by Melissa Meyer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blood is more than a fluid solution of cells, platelets and plasma. It is a symbol for the most basic of human concerns--life, death and family find expression in rituals surrounding everything from menstruation to human sacrifice. Comprehensive in its scope and provocative in its argument, this book examines beliefs and rituals concerning blood in a range of regional and religious contexts throughout human history. Meyer reveals the origins of a wide range of blood rituals, from the earliest surviving human symbolism of fertility and the hunt, to the Jewish bris, and the clitoridectomies given to young girls in parts of Africa. The book also explores how cultural practices influence gene selection and makes a connection with the natural sciences by exploring how color perception influences the human proclivity to create blood symbols and rituals.
Book Synopsis Making the Mark by : Miroslava Prazak
Download or read book Making the Mark written by Miroslava Prazak and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do female genital cutting practices persist? How does circumcision affect the rights of girls in a culture where initiation forms the lynchpin of the ritual cycle at the core of defining gender, identity, and social and political status? In Making the Mark, Miroslava Prazak follows the practice of female circumcision through the lives and activities of community members in a rural Kenyan farming society as they decide whether or not to participate in the tradition. In an ethnography twenty years in the making, Prazak weaves multiple Kuria perspectives—those of girls, boys, family members, circumcisers, political and religious leaders—into a riveting account. Though many books have been published on the topic of genital cutting, this is one of the few ethnographies to give voice to evolving perspectives of practitioners, especially through a period of intense anticutting campaigning on the part of international NGOs, local activists, and donor organizations. Prazak also examines the cultural challenges that complicate the human-rights anti-FGM stance. Set in the rolling hills of southwestern Kenya, Making the Mark examines the influences that shape and change female genital cutting over time, presenting a rich mosaic of the voices contributing to the debate over this life-altering ritual.
Book Synopsis The Twilight of Cutting by : Saida Hodzic
Download or read book The Twilight of Cutting written by Saida Hodzic and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last three decades have witnessed a proliferation of nongovernmental organizations engaging in new campaigns to end the practice of female genital cutting across Africa. These campaigns have in turn spurred new institutions, discourses, and political projects, bringing about unexpected social transformations, both intended and unintended. Consequently, cutting is waning across the continent. At the same time, these endings are misrecognized and disavowed by public and scholarly discourses across the political spectrum. What does it mean to say that while cutting is ending, the Western discourse surrounding it is on the rise? And what kind of a feminist anthropology is needed in such a moment? The Twilight of Cutting examines these and other questions from the vantage point of Ghanaian feminist and reproductive health NGOs that have organized campaigns against cutting for over thirty years. The book looks at these NGOs not as solutions but as sites of “problematization.” The purpose of understanding these Ghanaian campaigns, their transnational and regional encounters, and the forms of governmentality they produce is not to charge them with providing answers to the question, how do we end cutting? Instead, it is to account for their work, their historicity, the life worlds and subjectivities they engender, and the modes of reflection, imminent critique, and opposition they set in motion.
Book Synopsis Transcultural Bodies by : Ylva Hernlund
Download or read book Transcultural Bodies written by Ylva Hernlund and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-07 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Female "circumcision" or, more precisely, female genital cutting (FGC), remains an important cultural practice in many African countries, often serving as a coming-of-age ritual. It is also a practice that has generated international dispute and continues to be at the center of debates over women's rights, the limits of cultural pluralism, the balance of power between local cultures, international human rights, and feminist activism. In our increasingly globalized world, these practices have also begun immigrating to other nations, where transnational complexities vex debates about how to resolve the issue. Bringing together thirteen essays, Transcultural Bodies provides an ethnographically rich exploration of FGC among African diasporas in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. Contributors analyze changes in ideologies of gender and sexuality in immigrant communities, the frequent marginalization of African women's voices in debates over FGC, and controversies over legislation restricting the practice in immigrant populations.
Book Synopsis The Theologian Slave Trader by : Christiana Oware Knudsen
Download or read book The Theologian Slave Trader written by Christiana Oware Knudsen and published by Pneuma Springs Publishing. This book was released on 2010-10-04 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text explores the life of Fredericus Petersen, a mulatto adopted in 1710 by a Danish Lutheran Priest at Christiansborg Fort in what is now Ghana and who was subsequently brought back to Denmark as a teenager. The author brings Fredericus Petersen's story to life.
Book Synopsis Historical Dictionary of Ghana by : David Owusu-Ansah
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Ghana written by David Owusu-Ansah and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 515 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ghana, the former British colony of the Gold Coast, is historically known for being the first country to the south of the Sahara to attain political independence from colonial rule. It is known for its exports of cocoa and a variety of minerals, especially gold, and it is now an oil exporting country. But Ghana’s importance to the African continent is not only seen in its natural resources or its potential to expand its agricultural output. Rather the nation’s political history of nationalism, the history of military engagement in politics, record of economic depression and the ability to rise from the ashes of political and economic decay is the most unique character of the country. This fourth edition of Historical Dictionary of Ghana covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 900 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Ghana.
Book Synopsis Historical Dictionary of Ghana by : Edmund Abaka
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Ghana written by Edmund Abaka and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-02-27 with total page 619 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ghana, the former British West African colony of the Gold Coast, is known for its rich agricultural, mineral, and petroleum resources. Ghana has made tremendous strides in all areas of life and has become the gateway to West Africa, if not all of Africa. Observers now cite the country’s achievement of economic recovery, political stability, and democratized governance as an example worthy of emulation by other African countries. Historical Dictionary of Ghana, Fifth Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 900 cross-referenced entries on important personalities as well as aspects of the country’s politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Ghana.
Book Synopsis Newer Islamic Movements in Western Europe by : Lars Pederson
Download or read book Newer Islamic Movements in Western Europe written by Lars Pederson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in 1999, this book analyses the development of the recent cultural trend represented by the newer Islamic movements among Muslim immigrants in Western Europe. Included is a comprehensive description of the institutionalisation and organisation of Islam in Western Europe and an investigation of the organisation, activities, visions and strategies of the European and Islamic movements. Particular attention is paid to the most important Islamist trend among the Turkish minorities, Milli Gorus. The empirical data is original and has been primarily collected through interviews with leaders of Islamic organisations in Denmark, Berlin and Paris. The Islamistic stress on the validity of Islam as constituting the basis of particular social and cultural interest is analysed in the perspective of the concepts of ‘life world’ and ‘system world’ presented by Jurgen Habermas. The investigation demonstrates the existence of locally organised communities, whose social and cultural interests are in need of representation. It is shown that Islamism constitutes a clear and concrete point of departure from a positive identification in the Muslim immigrant societies. This critical relevance of Islamism is discussed in the light of the social and economic marginalisation characterising the situation of the immigrated Muslim minorities in Western Europe. The main conclusion is that Islamism is a collective political representation of an alternative position to the dominant cultural and social marginalisation.
Download or read book The Asante World written by Edmund Abaka and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-30 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Asante World provides fresh perspectives on the Asante, the largest Akan group in Southern Ghana, and what new scholars are thinking and writing about the "world the Asante made." By employing a thematic approach, the volume interrogates several dimensions of Asante history including state formation, Asante-Ahafo and Bassari-Dagomba relations in the context of Asante northward expansion, and the expansion to the south. It examines the role of Islam which, although extremely intense for just a short time, had important ramifications. Together the essays excavate key aspects of Asante political economy and culture, exemplified in kola nut production, the kente/adinkra cloth types and their associated symbols, proverbs, and drum language. The Asante World explores the Asante origins of Jamaican maroons, Asante secular government, contemporary politics of progress, governance through the institution of Ahemaa or Queenmothers, epidemiology and disease, and education in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Featuring innovative and insightful contributions from leading historians of the Asante world, this volume is essential reading for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars concerned with African Studies, African diaspora history, the history of Ghana and the Gold Coast, the history of Islam in Africa, and Asante history.
Book Synopsis Understanding Circumcision by : George C. Denniston
Download or read book Understanding Circumcision written by George C. Denniston and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every year, in the United States and the third world combined, 13.3 million boys and 2 million girls are circumcised. Whether because of perceived medical, cultural, or religious necessity, most of these parents feel they have no alternative but to allow their children to undergo this surgery. Sparking intense debate, the circumcision of children is a highly controversial and complex phenomenon that touches a variety of sociological areas, such as religious beliefs, identity issues, medical conceptualizations, fear, and superstition. The contributors to this volume comprise an international panel of experts in the fields of medicine, psychology, law, ethics, sociology, anthropology, history, theology, and politics. In 18 chapters they discuss the history of circumcision; document the physical and psychological consequences of circumcision; present the latest anatomical discoveries about the male prepuce; analyze the role of circumcision in various traditions; reveal the medical industry's investment in the practice; describe current legislative efforts to protect children from circumcision; and outline effective, culturally sensitive methods that are being implemented today to safeguard the human rights of at-risk children. For its insights into this troubling aspect of culture, Understanding Circumcision: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to a Multi-Dimensional Problem is a critically important contribution to the growing body of literature on this subject.
Book Synopsis Female "circumcision" in Africa by : Bettina Shell-Duncan
Download or read book Female "circumcision" in Africa written by Bettina Shell-Duncan and published by Lynne Rienner Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To ban excision in Meru, Kenya, Lynn Thomas
Book Synopsis Engaging Cultural Differences by : Richard A., Shweder
Download or read book Engaging Cultural Differences written by Richard A., Shweder and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2002-06-27 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberal democracies are based on principles of inclusion and tolerance. But how does the principle of tolerance work in practice in countries such as Germany, France, India, South Africa, and the United States, where an increasingly wide range of cultural groups holds often contradictory beliefs about appropriate social and family life practices? As these democracies expand to include peoples of vastly different cultural backgrounds, the limits of tolerance are being tested as never before. Engaging Cultural Differences explores how liberal democracies respond socially and legally to differences in the cultural and religious practices of their minority groups. Building on such examples, the contributors examine the role of tolerance in practical encounters between state officials and immigrants, and between members of longstanding majority groups and increasing numbers of minority groups. The volume also considers the theoretical implications of expanding the realm of tolerance. Some contributors are reluctant to broaden the scope of tolerance, while others insist that the notion of "tolerance" is itself potentially confining and demeaning and that modern nations should aspire to celebrate cultural differences. Coming to terms with ethnic diversity and cultural differences has become a major public policy concern in contemporary liberal democracies, as they struggle to adjust to burgeoning immigrant populations. Engaging Cultural Differences provides a compelling examination of the challenges of multiculturalism and reveals a deep understanding of the challenges democracies face as they seek to accommodate their citizens' diverse beliefs and practices.
Book Synopsis Encyclopedia of African Religion by : Molefi Kete Asante
Download or read book Encyclopedia of African Religion written by Molefi Kete Asante and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2008-11-26 with total page 1582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Numerous titles focusing on particular beliefs in Africa exist, including Marcel Griaule′s Conversations with Ogotemmeli, but this one presents an unparallelled exploration of a multitude of cultures and experiences. It is both a gateway to deeper exploration and a penetrating resource on its own. This is bound to become the definitive scholarly resource on African religions." — Library Journal, Starred Review "Overall, because of its singular focus, reliability, and scope, this encyclopedia will prove invaluable where there is considerable interest in Africa or in different religious traditions." –Library Journal As the first comprehensive work to assemble ideas, concepts, discourses, and extensive essays in this vital area, the Encyclopedia of African Religion explores such topics as deities and divinities, the nature of humanity, the end of life, the conquest of fear, and the quest for attainment of harmony with nature and other humans. Editors Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama include nearly 500 entries that seek to rediscover the original beauty and majesty of African religion. Features · Offers the best representation to date of the African response to the sacred · Helps readers grasp the enormity of Africa′s contribution to religious ideas by presenting richly textured concepts of spirituality, ritual, and initiation while simultaneously advancing new theological categories, cosmological narratives, and ways to conceptualize ethical behavior · Provides readers with new metaphors, figures of speech, modes of reasoning, etymologies, analogies, and cosmogonies · Reveals the complexity, texture, and rhythms of the African religious tradition to provide scholars with a baseline for future works The Encyclopedia of African Religion is intended for undergraduate and graduate students in fields such as Religion, Africana Studies, Sociology, and Philosophy.
Book Synopsis Changing Natural Resource Regimes in Northern Ghana by : Wolfram Laube
Download or read book Changing Natural Resource Regimes in Northern Ghana written by Wolfram Laube and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2007 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colonial and national interventions have considerably changed the natural resource regimes regarding water and land in Northern Ghana. However, this change has not led to the establishment of new institutions, but different actors - farmers, bureaucrats, earthpriests, chiefs, and politicians - are continuously engaged in negotiation process over (natural) resources. While the institutional and distributional outcomes of these negotiation processes remain inconclusive they have led to a precarious local power balance, in which different actors rely on different institutions and changing political alliances to pursue their interests.
Book Synopsis Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa by : Kathleen Sheldon
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa written by Kathleen Sheldon and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2005-03-16 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This vast dictionary launches the new series, Historical Dictionaries of Women in the World, and fills a huge gap in the literature, as there previously has not been any comprehensive reference work on African women. This dictionary includes over 660 entries on notable women in history, politics, religion, the arts, and other sectors; on events particularly associated with women; on women's organizations and publications; and on a range of topics that are important to women in general or that have a special importance for African women, including marriage, fertility, market women, goddesses, and much more. Entries include cross-referencing information that facilitates readers' ability to find related information. The book also includes an introductory essay and a chronology on African women's history, as well as an extensive bibliography divided into sub-sections on different historical eras and subjects. Access to finding specific information is further aided by a country index. A wide range of users will find this reference extremely valuable, including researchers in African or women's history, high school and university students, and people involved with African policy and development issues such as diplomats or aid workers.