AFRICAN

A UNIVERSE OF THOUGHT
As novelist,
poet,
playwright
and essayist,
Dambudzo
Marechera
stands alone
– which given
AFRICA & GERMAN COLONIALISM
The next issue of the
AFRICAN GRIOT
will be published in Autumn 2013
CHINA AND AFRICA
the events of
his turbulent
life may well
be how he
would have
preferred it.
REMEMBERING AFRICA
That eventful life arced from birth in
A great strength of having two dynamic,
Southern Rhodesia 1952, through
influential African Studies imprints is
Even the most casual observer
education and work in Oxford and
that we consistently cover a multiplicity
will be aware, courtesy of
London, to a premature death in 1987,
of themes and subjects. This article,
media pieces often edged
in what had by then become Zimbabwe.
however, comes from a new source, our
with alarmist or cautionary
Camden House imprint, which mostly
overtones, of the high levels
His writing remains dazzling in its
focuses on German, American and
of Chinese investment in
intellectual richness and in the fierce
English literature.
Africa over recent years.
singularity of his authorial voice. Here
Grant Hamilton, editor of Reading
We relish new approaches to African
Kenneth King’s new
Marechera (James Currey), gives us
studies, so the chance of a piece on CH’s
book, China’s Aid and
a brief but compelling introduction to
new book Remembering Africa was
Soft Power in Africa
Marechera and his work. read more
just too good to miss.
(James Currey), should
be compulsory reading for
So here’s Jim Walker, Editorial Director
SPECIAL OFFER: SAVE 25%!
anyone interested in China’s
of Camden House, interviewing Dirk
attitude and commitment
African Griot readers can save 25% off all
Göttsche on his groundbreaking
to the continent, since it
five titles featured in this issue. Order online
treatment of the fascinating themes of
explains the significance of
at www.boydellandbrewer.com, add
colonialism and Africa in German literary
China’s increasing role as an
to basket as usual and quote the special
fiction.
education donor there. Prof.
reference AFG13 during checkout. Postage
Anyone interested in colonial history or
King’s recent interview reveals
and packing charges will apply.
literary representations of Africa will find
a great deal about Chinese
Offer ends 31 July 2013. Any queries?
much to consider here. read more
intentions and methods.
E-mail africangriot@boydell.co.uk
read more
SOUTH AFRICA’S NEW PLACE IN THE WORLD
FROM STRUGGLE TO POWER TO…FAILURE?
Once an international pariah,
South Africa has emerged in
the 21st-century as a respected
and influential African state,
projecting its economic and
political power across the
continent.
South Africa and the World
Economy (University of
Rochester Press), the new
book from William G. Martin,
chronicles the volatile history of
this resurgence and offers clear
yet contentious lessons for the
present.
As is clear from the following
discussion, it’s a fascinating and
absorbing topic. read more
Roger Southall has studied
Southern African politics for over
30 years and can view the long
trajectories of the Zimbabwean,
Namibian and South African
liberation movements in their
entirety, from opposition and
struggle to the assumption of
power and, it’s often claimed,
eventual disappointment and
failure.
His new book, Liberation
Movements in Power (James
Currey), studies and compares
all three movements in detail,
as never before. The picture,
as he admits in this exclusive
interview, “is complicated”….
read more
ANTHROPOLOGY / GENDER STUDIES
NEW
African Local Knowledge
& Livestock Health
Diseases & Treatments in South Africa
WILLIAM BEINART & KAREN BROWN
A much needed
examination of
contemporary
approaches to animal
healing in South Africa,
informed by a strong
understanding of
history.
This book argues that
African approaches to
animal health rest largely
in environmental and nutritional explanations.
The authors explore the widespread use of plants
as well as biomedicines for healing. While rural
populations remain concerned about supernatural
threats, and many men think that women can
harm their cattle, the authors challenge current
ideas on the modernisation of witchcraft. They
examine more ambient forms of supernatural
danger expressed in little-known concepts such as
mohato and umkhondo. They take the reader into
the homesteads and kraals of rural black South
Africans and engage with a key rural concern –
vividly reporting the ideas of livestock owners.
This is groundbreaking research which will have
important implications for analyses of local
knowledge more generally as well as effective state
interventions and animal treatments in South
Africa.
WILLIAM BEINART is Rhodes Professor of Race
Relations, African Studies Centre, University of
Oxford; KAREN BROWN is Research Associate at
the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine,
University of Oxford.
$90.00/£50.00(s) November 2013
978 1 84701 083 4
18 b/w illus.; 286pp, 23.4 x 15.6 (9 x 6 inches), HB
Southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho,
Zimbabwe and Swaziland): Wits University Press
We publish our
free e-newsletter
READING
MARECHERA
The African Griot
twice-yearly, each
May and October.
It features
original articles
and interviews
and is dedicated
to giving readers
special access to
our authors and
unique insight into their work.
AFRICAN GRIOTIssue VI, Spring 2013
CHINA’S AID & SOFT POWER
IN AFRICA
To subscribe either e-mail africangriot@
boydell.co.uk or visit the African Griot
archive at www.boydellandbrewer.com,
where you can also browse previous
editions.
African Hosts and
their Guests
Cultural Dynamics of Tourism
Edited by WALTER VAN BEEK
& ANNETTE SCHMIDT
Africa is a ‘theme park’
for Western tourists to
experience untouched
wilderness, untamed
nature, and truly
‘authentic’ cultures,
where the hosts, too, are
part of a discourse
about the ‘other’.
For Western tourists
Africa embodies the Romantic ideal of ‘nature’,
where they go to have adventures in the game
parks and encounters with colourful cultures and
picturesque people. In the long list from slavery to
colonialism and from liberation to globalisation,
international tourism is one of the latest global
dynamics engaging the people on the continent,
but the agency of the receiving partners is much
larger than it was in the colonies. The differences
stand out in what constitutes the heart of this
book, the encounter in the field between ‘hosts’
and ‘guests’.
$90.00/£50.00(s) September 2012
978 1 84701 049 0
32 b/w illus.; 352pp, 25.4 x 17.8 (10 x 7 inches), HB
Photography in Africa
Edited by RICHARD VOKES
An ethnographic
account of the
complexities of the use
of photography in
Africa, both historically
and in contemporary
practice.
This collection of
studies in African
photography examines,
through a series of empirically rich historical
and ethnographic cases, the variety of ways in
which photographs are produced, circulated,
and engaged across a range of social contexts.
It critically engages current debates in African
photography and visual anthropology and makes
an important contribution to our understanding
of the relationship between photography and
ethnographic research methods.
These essays and Richard Vokes’s presentation offer
fascinating examples of photography’s intersection
with ethnography. AFRICAN AFFAIRS
$29.95/£17.99 July 2013
978 1 84701 053 7
110 b/w illus.; 288pp, 25.4 x 17.8 (10 x 7 inches), PB
Also by Richard Vokes: Ghosts of Kanungu.
See page 4.
The Reverend Jennie Johnson
and African Canadian
History, 1868-1967
NINA REID-MARONEY
A unique and powerful
view of nearly one
hundred years of the
struggle for freedom in
North America.
After her conversion at a
Baptist revival at sixteen,
Jennie Johnson followed
the call to preach. Raised
in an African Canadian
abolitionist community
in Ontario, she immigrated to the United States to
attend the African Methodist Episcopal Seminary
at Wilberforce University. On an October evening
in 1909 she stood before a group of Free Will
Baptist preachers in the small town of Goblesville,
Michigan, and was received into ordained ministry.
She was the first ordained woman to serve in
Canada and spent her life building churches and
working for racial justice on both sides of the
national border.
NINA REID-MARONEY is Associate Professor in
the Department of History at Huron University
College at Western (London, Ontario).
$90.00/£60.00(s) April 2013
978 1 58046 447 5
6 b/w illus.; 196pp, 23.4 x 15.6 (9 x 6 inches), HB
Gender and Race in American History
Women and Slavery in
Nineteenth-Century
Colonial Cuba
SARAH L. FRANKLIN
How patriarchy operated
in the lives of the women
of Cuba, from elite
women to slaves.
Based on a variety of
archival and printed
primary sources, this
book examines how
patriarchy functioned
outside the confines
of the family unit by
scrutinizing the foundation on which nineteenthcentury
Cuban patriarchy rested. It investigates
how patriarchy operated in the lives of the
women of Cuba, from elite women to slaves.
Through chapters on motherhood, marriage,
education, public charity, and the sale of slaves,
insight is gained into the role of patriarchy both
as a guiding ideology and lived history in the
Caribbean’s longest lasting slave society.
SARAH L. FRANKLIN is assistant professor of
history at the University of North Alabama.
$90.00/£60.00(s) June 2012
978 1 58046 402 4
2 b/w illus.; 240pp, 23.4 x 15.6 (9 x 6 inches), HB
Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
www.boydellandbrewer.com
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