Thamyris/Intersecting is a series of edited volumes with a critical, interdisciplinary focus. This issue looks back and assesses the relations and debates between Africa, Europe and America discussing issues of othering, the roots of culture, economic and cultural entanglement, and the creation of national identities. Includes essays on Mongo Beti, Buchi Emecheta, female genital mutilation, Waris Dirie, Western philosophy and the study of aesthetics in African cultures and the Black Atlantic. The essay on Caryl Philips and Ellen Ombre is in French. Index, bib, notes, 208pp, UK. RODOPI, 9042010290

Overview of the history, application and teaching of anthropology in post-colonial Africa shows how the continent's anthropologists are redefining the historical legacy of European and American disciplinary hegemony, and developing distinctively African contributions to anthropological theory and practice. The contributors illustrate the diverse national traditions of anthropological practice that have developed in sub-Saharan Africa since decolonisation and exemplify the diversity of professional work carried out by the discipline's practitioners. Index, 274pp, UK. ZED BOOKS.

From interdisciplinary and continental perspectives, this volume explores elements of African culture and ideas, indigenous and modern, and how they have evolved through the ages. It considers areas such as education; cross-culturalism; the relationship between African, Arabic and Egyptian civilizations; traditions of philosophy; music, the performing arts and literature; language; gender; and the impact of colonialism and pan-Africanism. 452pp, NIGERIA. IBADAN CULTURAL STUDIES GROUP.

Now available in paperback, this volume addresses the debates surrounding pre-agricultural lifestyles. Using archaeological evidence gathered from East and Southern African sources, where the greatest time depth of foraging cultures can be traced, the author builds a picture of the technological and social adaptations which hunter-gatherer bands developed in response to their environment. Valuable introduction to students of African archaeology, anthropology and history. Index, refs, apps, b/w illus, tables, diags, 284pp, USA, 075910154X

The story of the anthropological fieldwork centred at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Focusing on collaborative processes, the author places assistants and informants in a central role. She shows how local conditions and ideas, as well as local people's previous experience of outsiders' interest, shape their responses to anthropological fieldwork and help them, in turn, to influence the construction of knowledge about their societies and lives. 23 b/w photos, notes, bib, index, 376pp, USA. DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Essays on the production of material objects in Africa looking at the meanings of sticks, masquerades, household tools, clothing and television Index, refs, b/w illus, 369pp, USA. INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Breaks new theoretical and methodological ground in the study of the African diaspora in the Atlantic world. Eleven leading scholars of archaeology, linguistics, and socio-cultural anthropol-ogy draw upon extensive field experiences and archival investigations of black communities in North America, the Caribbean, South America, and Africa to challenge received paradigms in Afro-American anthropology. The contributors address colonialism, the slave trade, racism, ethnogenesis, New World nationalism, urban identity politics, the development of artworlds, music and its publics, the emergence of new religious and ritual forms, speech genres, and contested historical representations. 448pp, UK. JAMES CURREY PUBLISHERS.

Drawing on fieldwork from Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Peru, Guatemala, India, Chad, Columbia and South Africa, the contributors discuss the form and reach of the modern state and how people understand and experience the agency of the state, whether on the margins or at the centre of power. Issues raised include the impact of the trade in arms, diamonds, goods and currency; the role of language as cultures try to articulate their struggles; and the problems that mercenaries pose to the state. Index, refs, notes, ix, 330pp, UK. JAMES CURREY PUBLISHERS, 0852559488

Using a wide range of sources, the author examines the formation of 'Africa' as an artifical entity molded and remolded by colonialism and now popular culture in Europe and the United States. Using fiction, fashion, film, comic books and hip hop culture amongst other media, she places Africa in American cultural history and shows how these conceptual and ideological images of the continent have functioned both in white societies as well as African-American communities. Illustrated with b/w photographs. Index, bib, notes, viii, 370pp, USA. NEW ENGLAND UNIVERSITY PRESS, 158465192X

Be it the vitality of African popular culture, the vitality of religious ideas or the vitality of artistic forms of expressions - invoking the notion of vitality has become a common practice in Africanist discourses. Most often, the purpose of invoking this notion is to emphasize the unexpected and astonishing power and strength of certain cultural fields in Africa. But what is really meant with the notion of local vitality beyond its metaphorical usage, beyond the underrated and unforeseen? The present volume brings together a number of essays exploring the answers to these questions from different perspectives and disciplines. Based upon an international conference on Local Vitality and the Globalization of the Local organized by the Humanities Collaborative Research Centre at the University of Bayreuth. 470pp, GERMANY. LIT VERLAG.

Argues that even within anthropology, a discipline that strives to overcome misrepresentations of peoples and cultures, colonialist depictions of the so-called Dark Continent run deep. The grand narratives, tribal tropes, distorted images, and natural histories that forged the founda-tions of discourse about Africa remain firmly entrenched. Explores how anthropology can come to terms with the colonial library and begin to develop an ethnographic practice that transcends the politics of Africa's imperial past. The way out of the colonial library, Apter argues, is by listening to critical discourses in Africa that reframe the social and political contexts in which they are embedded. Index, bib, b/w illus, 171pp, USA. CHICAGO U P.

Collection of anthropological essays generated by debate and contemporary issues in Southern Africa. Looks at the relevance of anthropology in development and policy making and offers perspectives on youth, sexuality, land and tradition. Notes, refs, figs, maps, b/w illus, xiv, 318pp, NAMIBIA. UNIVERSITY OF NAMIBIA PRESS, 9991659420

Twenty years ago, Arjun Appadurai’s edited collection The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1986) brought about a major change in perspectives on material things in circulation. A domain hitherto reserved for economics was accessed by anthropologists concentrating on commodities and wielding new conceptual tools such as tournament of value, cultural biography of things, and politics of consumption. In the present book, some of the original contributors of 1986 (Arjun Appadurai himself, and leading British archaeologist Colin Renfrew) meet with today’s prominent names in the field (Jean & John Comaroff, Paul & Jennifer Alexander, Roy Dilley, Mike Rowlands, and Herskovits award-winning Nancy Rose Hunt) and with scholars of the next generation: Brad Weiss, Rijk van Dijk, Janet Roitman, James Leach, and Irene Stengs. 400pp, GERMANY. LIT VERLAG.

Provides students with an aid to understanding the complexities and subtleties of new theoretical inputs on geography, ranging from psychoanalysis to postcolonial studies in short essays exploring the key concepts in cultural geography. Index, 222pp, UK. I.B. TAURIS.

Examines variability within broadly defined African forager societies, such as the Basarwa, Pygmies, Hadza and others. Foragers have been seen as culturally similar in that they all pursue a subsistence strategy that emphasizes hunting and gathering. However, research suggests there may be more diversity among groups than has previously been acknowledged. It is important to understand why diversity occurs within foraging societies and how this diversity compares with various societies. Here, leading scholars in the field compare and contrast various groups within more broadly defined forager societies. 358pp, UK. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

The diversity of the African continent forms its greatest resource and its greatest challenge. In this innovative collection, leaders and senior managers from business, government, academia and the voluntary sector, with extensive experience both in Africa and internationally, discuss the implications of this diversity for leadership practice. Among the topics covered are leader-ship and wealth creation, the potential and limits of western management models in Africa, the management of cultural diversity and gender assumptions in different settings and the analysis of labour market trends. 344pp, UK. PALGRAVE.

Based on an analysis of culture understood as a system of meanings rather than as values, this provocative book offers a methodology that grounds political analysis in the interpretation of what 'makes sense' to the people concerned. Their approach, which resists particularisms but instead proposes a different 'scientific' method, draws upon a wide range of political, sociologi-cal and anthropological sources. The authors illustrate the analytical power of this method with a comparative study of the state and political representation in France, Sweden and Nigeria. Index, bib, 395pp, UK. C. HURST & CO.

New in paperback. Why was there a bloody civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina when Croats, Serbs, and Muslims had lived peacefully side-by-side for decades? Why did nobody see and act upon the early warning signs of genocide in Rwanda? What is it that makes Kashmir potentially worth a nuclear war between India and Pakistan? The violence involved in these conflicts continues to destabilize entire regions, hamper social and economic development, and cause unimaginable human suffering. And the extensive media coverage of these conflicts all too often raises important questions that it signally fails to answer. This book aims to fill this gap. Drawing on the author's long experience of studying such conflicts around the world and his involvement in attempts to resolve them, it provides an illuminating and accessible introduction to the origins, dynamics, and management of ethnic conflict. B/w illus, 256pp, UK. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Explores the intersection of 'gender' and 'modernity' as they are mediated in the lives and subjectivities of diverse individuals and groups. BNS, 288pp, UK. PALGRAVE.

Both on the continent and off, Africa is spoken of in terms of crisis: as a place of failure and seemingly insurmountable problems, as a moral challenge to the international community. What, though, is really at stake in discussions about Africa, its problems, and its place in the world? And, what should be the response of those scholars who have sought to understand not the Africa portrayed in broad strokes in journalistic accounts and policy papers but rather specific places and social realities within Africa? Ferguson moves beyond the traditional anthropological focus on local communities to explore more general questions about Africa and its place in the contemporary world and argues that Africans in a variety of different social and geographical locations increasingly seek to make claims of membership within a global community, claims that contest the marginalization that has so far been the principal fruit of globalization. 272pp, USA. DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Concise and comprehensive history encompassing key themes, methodological frameworks and debates. Bib, index, viii, 207pp, UK. PLUTO PRESS, 074531385X

Explores the reasons for differences and similarities in human behaviour throughout the world. Aims to help us to understand the effect of culture in our own lives and to be more open to different forms of human expression. Figs, index, ix, 158pp, SOUTH AFRICA. CLUSTER PUBLICATIONS, 187505328X

Argues that there is no such thing as a 'native identity' which imposes itself on political identities through force of circumstances: there are only strategies pertaining to identities, which are rationally pursued by identifiable actors, and identity-related dreams or nightmares to which we adhere due to their power to seduce or terrify us. Contrary to the view that the world is witness-ing a clash of civilizations, Bayart demonstrates that cultures and their attendant identities are in constant flux. [Stephen Ellis] Index, notes, 303pp, UK. HURST & CO.

The revised edition of the classic text exploring how the concepts of nation and nationality have developed over time and have been used by both imperialist powers and popular movements during the 19th century and later anti imperialist resistance in Africa and Asia. Index, bib, notes, xv, 224pp, UK. VERSO, 0860915468

Addresses key concepts of modern anthropology like 'difference' and 'identity' in the light of ethnographic evidence from various local settings stretching from Morocco to Indonesia. As the antagonistic and destructive aspects of social identification are also discussed, the book is also a contribution to conflict theory. Notes, refs, ix, 280pp, GERMANY. LIT VERLAG, 3825839567

Using case studies from France, the USA and Israel, the authors examine whether there is a global culture of schooling or many national and local cultures and how these are affected by globalisation. Index, refs, notes, 263pp, UK. PALGRAVE.

Rather than seeing youth as either a social or cultural entity in itself, or as a predefined life-stage, the book argues for an exploration of how youth position themselves and are positioned within generational categories. In studying young people, social scientists must conceptualise youth as both social being and social becoming, a position in movement. It is from the duality of being positioned and seeking one's own socio-generational position that this collection engages in the debate on contemporary African youth. 250pp, SWEDEN. NORDIC AFRICA INSTITUTE.

Tells the story of a travelling exhibition of the author's photographs of the Okiek. Looks at the stereotypes she sought to challenge, how commentaries by Okiek people were incorporated, and different ways that viewers in Kenya and the US understood the exhibition. Also explores the exhibition medium itself, focusing on the complexities and possibilities of cultural representation. 32 col ill, figs, notes, bib, index, 307pp, USA. CALIFORNIA U P.

African research played a major role in transforming the discipline of anthropology in the twentieth century. Ethnographic studies, in turn, had significant effects on the way imperial powers in Africa approached subject peoples. this collection provides the first comparative history of these processes. With essays exploring metropolitan research institutes, Africans as ethnographers, the trans-national features of knowledge production, and the relationship between anthropology and colonial administration, this volume both consolidates and extends a range of new research questions focusing on the politics of imperial knowledge. Specific chapters examine French West Africa, the Belgian and French Congo, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Italian Northeast Africa, Kenya, and Equatorial Africa (Gabon) as well as developments in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. 304pp, UK. MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS.

The author traces the European fascination with cannibalism, explaining the ideological assumptions behind the clash between European and non European cultures. Index, notes, 172pp, USA. ILLINOIS, UNIVERSITY OF PRESS.

Making a break with conventional wisdom in post-colonial discourse, this book explores contemporary African identities in transition. The contributors look at the colonial legacy and how colonial identities are being reconstructed in the face of deepening social inequality across the continent. Using case-studies, the book explores the distinctive languages of identity politics and asks whether the very idea of post-colonial conceals the continued dependence of African countries. Is the post-colonial merely a neo-colonial mystification, a Eurocentric product of Western scholarship in collusion with Western imperialism? Index, 211pp, UK. ZED BOOKS.

The focus is on the making of subjectivities as a process that is political, a matter of subjugation to state authority; moral, reflected in the conscience and agency of subjects who bear rights, duties and obligations; and realised existentially, in the subjects' consciousness of their personal or intimate relations. B/w ill, maps, figs, notes, bib, index 256pp, UK. ZED BOOKS, 1856499553

Focuses on the modern cultures of Africa, from the consequences of the imposition of Western rule to current struggles to define national identity. BNS, 430pp, USA. UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER P. (US), 1580461395

The cumulative implications for Africans of the neoliberal processes (market speculation, shifts in sites of production, new modes of consumption, redefinition of the relation between states and their citizenry) cannot be reduced to single parameters. Three themes are central: the neoliberal production of personhood, the crises of youth and the moral panic in which so many of the wider reforms are registered in experience. With contributions on marriage payments, Muslim saints, popular theatre, homosexuality, ritual haunts, domestic reproduction, masculine fantasy, poetic justice, spirit possession and corruption. Afterword by Jean and John L. Comaroff. BNS, 360pp, NETHERLANDS. E J BRILL.

Selected contents: The present and the past of age notions within historical anthropology: the status questions/ Mario I. Aguilar; Where one sleeps matters : Fipa markers of cultural growth in Tanzania / Kathleen R. Smythe; Mobility and discipline: colonial age discourse in Tanzania/ Thomas Burgess; 'Have you heard the words of the elders?': senior Bamana women's adapta-tions to culture change in rural Mali/ Julianne E. Freeman; Gender, age and power: hierarchy and liminality among Abaluyia women of Kenya/ Maria G. Cattell. Index, 322pp, USA. AFRICA WORLD PRESS.

The concept of 'community' is ubiquitous in the way we talk and think about life in the twenty-first century. Political and economic projects from rainforest conservation to urban empower-ment zones focus on 'the community' as the appropriate vehicle and target of change. Some scholars see a decline of community and predict dire social consequences; others criticize the concept itself for its ideological baggage and lack of clear definition. Moving the debate to a deeper level, the contributors to this volume aspire to understand the various ways 'community' is deployed and the work it performs in different contexts. Includes an essay on economies of violence & governable spaces in the Niger Delta, Nigeria by Michael Watts. 350pp, UK. JAMES CURREY PUBLISHERS.

A collection of ten essays which explore the issues of identity in Africa. The problems of language, ethnicity and religion are examined in the context of the overarching themes of identity, nationality and nation building in Southern Africa, the Great Lakes region, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and the Sudan amongst others. Index, tables, notes, refs, xiii, 180pp, SOUTH AFRICA. HUMAN SCIENCES RESEARCH COUNCIL, 0796919860

A survey of the phenomenon of witchcraft past and present. Drawing on the latest historical and anthropological findings, Behringer sheds new light on the history of European witchcraft, while demonstrating that witch-hunts are not simply part of the European past. Although witch-hunts have long since been outlawed in Europe, other societies have struggled with the idea that witchcraft does not exist. As Behringer shows, witch-hunts continue to pose a major problem in Africa and among people in America, Asia and Australia. The author explores the idea of witchcraft as an anthropological phenomenon with a historical dimension, aiming to outline and to understand the meaning of large-scale witchcraft persecutions in early modern Europe and in present-day Africa. BNS, 320pp, UK. POLITY PRESS. 0745627188