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African-Asian interactions contribute to the emergence of a decentred, multi-polar world in which different actors need to redefine themselves and their relations to each other. Afrasian Transformations explores these changes to map out several arenas where these transformations have already produced startling results: development politics, South-South cooperation, cultural memory, mobile lifeworlds and transcultural connectivity. The contributions in this volume neither celebrate these shifting dynamics as felicitous proof of a new age of South-South solidarity, nor do they debunk them as yet another instance of burgeoning geopolitical hegemony. Instead, they seek to come to terms with the ...
In this groundbreaking book, Z. S. Strother, inspired by dialogues with African masquerade patrons and performers, disputes assumptions that masks universally hide, reveal, or transform. In Western European languages, the word mask exerts a powerful presence as a figure of speech. To masquerade is to pretend to be someone or something one is not. By extension, unmasking is a heroic metaphor for exposing a hidden truth. In this volume, art historian Z. S. Strother counters that narrative, using African case studies to offer an alternative vision of masquerading. She explores the aesthetic emotions aroused by masks, or more precisely, by “dances of masks”: joy, wonder, awe, fear, and the release of laughing out loud. She also investigates the uncanny—a sensation of “delicious shiveriness” triggered when familiar spaces and individuals become strange and changeable. Inspired by Strother’s studies in DR Congo, African Masks and Emotions takes a comparative perspective and moves emotion from the periphery to the center of analysis.
This study shows how power was constructed, enacted, and contested by discursive and non-discursive strategies and practices. It emphasizes the local and historic divergence of these processes and illustrates how Germans and Africans were able to produce exclusive power arenas but also engaged in a reciprocal extraversion of the respective power of the other. Stefanie Michels teaches at the University of Cologne, Germany.
This edited volume investigates place, product, and personal branding in the Middle East and North Africa, including some studies from adjacent regions and the wider Islamicate world. Going beyond simply presenting logos and slogans, it critically analyses processes of strategic communication and image building under general conditions of globalisation, neoliberalisation, and postmodernisation and, in a regional perspective, of lasting authoritarian rule and increased endeavours for “worlding.” In particular, it looks at the multiple actors involved in branding activities, their interests and motives, and investigates tools, channels, and forms of branding. A major interest exists in the entanglements of different spatial scales and in the (in)consistencies of communication measures. Attention is paid to reconfigurations of certain images over time and to the positioning of objects of branding in time and space. Historical case studies supplement the focus on contemporary branding efforts. While branding in the Western world and many emerging economies has been meticulously analysed, this edited volume fills an important gap in the research on MENA countries.
Dis.Ordering Distribution explores the intricate relationship between distribution and production, drawing on empirical evidence from two vibrant centers of cultural production: Africa and Asia.
A rich, multifaceted appraisal of Mami Wata and other water deities in Africa and beyond
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"Every month tons of green tea travel from China to West Africa in a movement that largely thrives beyond the attention of Western observers. In this trade, Malian merchants assumed a central role. They travel to China, visit family gardens and the factories, which process and package the product. Together with their Chinese suppliers, they select the tea leaves and create their brand. On Bamako's largest market, the Grand Marché, more than a hundred different tea brands are found, whose packages have colourfully, often eye-catching designs with brand-names such as Gazelle, Tombouctou, Arafat and Obama. This book explores the unique tea culture that celebrates with its brands the strength of desert animals, the fading glory of trading places, the excitement of social events and the accomplishments of admired politicians"--
Includes Proceedings of the Executive council and List of members, also section "Review of books".