Anthropologist de Bruijn (African Studies Centre, Leiden) calls agency "... perhaps the most slippery and fuzzy concept the tool-kit of social science has ever produced." Nonetheless, she believes that agency research has contributed to African studies by elucidating researchers' values. Following an introduction to the Manchester School and other approaches to studying Africa, international scholars present a dozen case studies (one in untranslated French) treating agency-structure dynamics, e.g., a Nambibian chief's opposition to South African rule, concepts of agency in the Kapsiki religion of Cameroon and Nigeria, family dynamics in the changing Zimbabwe economy, and how street children in Chad act out their agency. The volume includes a map showing the featured case study sites but lacks an index. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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vii | |
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vii | |
| Photographs |
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vii | |
| Preface |
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ix | |
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Social and historical trajectories of agency in Africa: An introduction |
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1 | (15) |
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Manchester as the birth place of modern agency research: The Manchester School explained from the perspective of Evans-Pritchard's Book The Nuer |
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16 | (46) |
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Dreams and agency during Angola's War of Independence |
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62 | (21) |
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Chief Hosea Kutako: A Herero royal and Namibian nationalist's life against confinement 1870-1970 |
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83 | (31) |
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Agency in Kapsiki religion: A comparative approach |
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114 | (30) |
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Les enveloppes pour Papa Daniel: La transformation des relations domestiques dans les menages des Congolais de la diaspora |
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144 | (19) |
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From individual act to social agency in San trance rituals |
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163 | (26) |
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The dynamics of families, their work and provisioning strategies in the changing economies in the urban townships of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe |
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189 | (26) |
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Images of Africa: Agency and nature conservation in South Africa |
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215 | (25) |
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Solitary births in Tera, Niger: A local quest for safety |
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240 | (23) |
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Agency in and from the margins: Street children and youth in N'djamena, Chad |
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263 | (22) |
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Negotiating the memory of Fulbe hierarchy among mobile elite women |
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285 | (27) |
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The safe and suffering body in transnational Ghanaian Pentecostalism; Towards an anthropology of vulnerable agency |
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312 | (27) |
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Theorizing agency in and on Africa: The questions are key |
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334 | (5) |
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| List of Authors |
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339 | |
Mirjam de Bruijn, Ph.D. (1995) Utrecht University, is an Anthropologist at the African Studies Centre in Leiden. Her work on nomadism, children and youth, mobility, (in)security, poverty, and social and economic in- and exclusion has an interdisciplinary character. She has done extensive fieldwork in Chad and Mali. Rijk van Dijk, Ph.D. (1992) Utrecht University, is an anthropologist at the African Studies Centre where he researches the rise of new religious movements in Africa, particularly Pentecostalism, in relation to globalization, transnational connections and youth. He has published widely on the emergence of Pentecostal movements in Malawi, Ghana and, more recently, Botswana. Jan-Bart Gewald, Ph.D. (1996) University of Leiden, is a historian at the African Studies Centre, Leiden. He has published extensively on aspects of African history and is currently focusing on the history of the relationship between people and technology in Africa.
