{"title":"James Currey","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780852557983","title":"The African Slave Trade","description":"Examines the slave trade in three areas of Africa: the old Congo kingdoms, the city states of the East Coast, and parts of the Guinea coast.   Basil Davidson states that by examining three important areas of Africa in the history of slavery 'against a general background of their time and circumstance' he was taking 'a fresh look at the oversea slave trade, the steady year-by-year export of African labour to the West Indies and the Americas that marked the greatest and most fateful migration - forced migration - in the history of man.'   North America: Times\/Random House","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56294995296629,"sku":"9780852557983","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780852557983_c2d032ab-b91b-4906-9a55-ca0c04bbe972.jpg?v=1786015807"},{"product_id":"9780852557860","title":"A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991 – Updated and revised edition","description":"Updated and revised edition.   Bahru Zewde has updated the first edition, adding a new chapter and taking the history through to 1991.     'The new chapter enhances the value of the book as the best historical introduction to modern Ethiopia. The account of the Revolution, contained in 41 pages, is nuanced and worthy of attention in its own right... In short, the updating of an already indispensable book.' - Donald Crummey in JOURNAL OF MODERN AFRICAN STUDIES  NorthAmerica: Ohio U Press; Ethiopia: Addis Ababa U Press","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56294995526005,"sku":"9780852557860","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780852557860_ae217c1c-f8b6-4a0e-b8dd-b217f1dcfa13.jpg?v=1786015806"},{"product_id":"9780852552032","title":"The Invention of Africa – Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge","description":"Joint winner of the 1989 Herskovits AwardWhat is the meaning of Africa and of being African? What is and what is not African philosophy? Is philosophy part of  Africanism? These are the kind of fundamental questions which this book addresses.     North America: Indiana U Press","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56295104840053,"sku":"9780852552032","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780852552032_8d05ae58-4c06-4d00-84de-8235e0000dca.jpg?v=1786015804"},{"product_id":"9780852555309","title":"Moving the Centre","description":"In this collection Ngugi is concerned with moving the centre in two senses - between nations and within nations - in order to contribute to the freeing of world cultures from the restrictive walls of nationalism, class, race and gender  Between nations the need is to move the centre from its assumed location in the West to a multiplicity of spheres in all the cultures of the world. Within nations the move should be away from all minority class establishments to the real creative centre among working people in conditions of racial, religious and gender equality.  North America: Heinemann; Kenya: EAEP","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56295104872821,"sku":"9780852555309","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780852555309_c641dd57-62db-40a0-baea-c1ef551670da.jpg?v=1786015805"},{"product_id":"9780852555019","title":"Decolonising the Mind","description":"Ngugi describes this book as 'a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism and in teaching of literature.North America: Heinemann; Kenya: EAEP","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56295168967029,"sku":"9780852555019","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780852555019.jpg?v=1786015806"},{"product_id":"9781847010889","title":"Foundations of an African Civilisation – Aksum and the northern Horn, 1000 BC – AD 1300","description":"A single coherent narrative of Aksumite civilisation revealing the roots of medieval Christian Ethiopia.   This well-illustrated book provides an up-to-date survey of a key period in the history of northern Ethiopia and south-central Eritrea. It is accessible to the general reader, but its comprehensive references and guidance to controversies and research needs will render it invaluable to specialists and students. It considers how the region's literate communities arose and flourished during the last millennium BC, giving rise to the Aksumite civilisation whose achievements and intercontinental significance are increasingly recognised, and which formed an integral but often neglected component of the Christian world in Late Antiquity. Aksum is now seen as the ancestor of the region'smedieval Christian kingdom whose churches and associated art continue to attract many visitors to Ethiopia.     David W. Phillipson is Emeritus Professor of African Archaeology and former Director of the University Museum of Archaeology \u0026amp; Anthropology, Cambridge. 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The handbook offers a concise introduction to all aspects of the country, rooted in a broad historical account of the development of the Sudanese state. It consists of eighteen self-contained, cross-referenced chapters, covering essential topics in the geography, history, sociology, culture and politics of the country, written by outstanding Sudanese scholars and recognized international experts. It includes numerous purpose-drawn maps and diagrams,glossaries of key terms, capsule biographies of key figures, a chronology and a bibliography.     John Ryle, Rift Valley Institute and Division of Social Sciences, Bard College, USA; Justin Willis, Department of History, Durham University, UK and former Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa; Suliman Baldo, International Center for Transitional Justice, New York, International Crisis Group; Jok Madut Jok, Department of History, LoyolaMarymount University, USA.     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Tracing the early history of the Oromo as part of the Cushitic language speaking family of peoples, it establishes that they were neither foreigners nor newcomers to Ethiopia, but have been an integral part of the indigenous population since at least the first half of the 14th century. The massive 16th-century pastoral Oromo population movement revolutionized relations between the Christians and the Oromo. During the long process of assimilation that followed, with periods of both war and peace in central and southern Ethiopia, Oromo society was able to absorb and assimilate Cushitic and Semitic language speakers and Oromize them through the open, democratic and egalitarian Gada\/ system; while in northern Ethiopia the Oromo themselves were absorbed into Christian Amhara society. Mohammed Hassen is Associate Professor in the Department of History, Georgia State University. His books include The Oromo of Ethiopia: A History, 1570 to 1860 (Cambridge University Press, 1990). 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Focusing mainly on case studies, contributors engage a variety of performance forms, ranging from investigations into radical dramatic and popular musical performances, through \"street theatre\" (festivals and masquerade shows) and pop culture, to consideration of applied theatre, dance, audience, cultural performances and folktales. Articles address African American and African cultural dialogue; choreographic study; the carnivalization of indigenous African festivals; the stigmatization of disability; the performance of nationality, as well as orality and African performance aesthetics.     Highlighted in this volume is the playscript of the detective play The Inspector and the Hero by Femi Osofisan, one of Africa's foremost playwrights.     Volume Editor: CHUKWUMA OKOYE  Series Editors: Yvette Hutchison, Reader, Department of Theatre \u0026amp; Performance Studies, University of Warwick; Chukwuma Okoye, Reader in African Theatre \u0026amp; Performance, University of Ibadan; Jane Plastow, Professor of African Theatre, University of Leeds.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56307898057077,"sku":"9781847012364","price":85.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781847012364_c89b14d1-d96f-4ea1-9871-29191d137b5e.jpg?v=1786029627"},{"product_id":"9781847010643","title":"A History of Malawi","description":"This is the first comprehensive history of Malawi during the colonial period. Using a wide range of primary and secondary sources, John McCracken places this history within the context of the pre-colonial past. Central themes are the shaping of the colonial economy, the influence of Christianity, resistance to colonial occupation and the rise of a powerful nationalist movement that contained within it the seeds of a new authoritarianism. In particular, the author demonstrates the interrelationship between environmental and economic change and the impact these forces had on the Malawian peasantry. 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Its intellectual and political elite left behind a vast written record, including over 300 Arabic texts authored by the jihad's leaders: Usman dan Fodio, his brother Abdullahi and his son, Muhammad Bello (known collectively as the Fodiawa). Sokoto's early years are one of the most documented periods of pre-colonial African history, yet current narratives pay little attention to the formative role these texts played in the creation of Sokoto, and the complex scholarly world from which they originated. Far from being unified around a single concept of Muslim statecraft, this book demonstrates how divided the Fodiawa were about what Sokoto could and should be, and the various discursive strategies they used to enrol local societies into their vision. Based on a close analysis of the sources (some appearing in English translation for the first time) and an effort to date their intellectual production, the book restores agency to Sokoto's leaders as individuals with different goals, characters and methods. 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Based on an African case study, this book calls for new ways of thinking about diversity that go \"beyond religious tolerance\". Focusing on the predominantly Muslim Yoruba town of Ede, the authors challenge the assumption that religious difference automatically leads to conflict: in south-west Nigeria, Muslims,Christians and traditionalists have co-existed largely peacefully since the early twentieth century. In some contexts, Ede's citizens emphasise the importance and significance of religious difference, and the need for tolerance.But elsewhere they refer to religious boundaries in passing, or even celebrate and transcend religious divisions.     Drawing on detailed ethnographic and historical research, survey work, oral histories and poetry by UK- and Nigeria- based researchers, the book examines how Ede's citizens experience religious difference in their everyday lives. It examines the town's royal history and relationship with the deity Sàngó, its old Islamic compounds and itsChristian institutions, as well as marriage and family life across religious boundaries, to illustrate the multiplicity of religious practices in the life of the town and its citizens and to suggest an alternative approach to religious difference.     Insa Nolte is Reader in African Studies at the University of Birmingham, and Visiting Research Professor at Osun State University, Osogbo. She is President of the African Studies Association of the UK(2016-18) and Principal Investigator of the ERC project \"Knowing Each Other: Everyday Religious Encounters, Social Identities and Tolerance in Southwest Nigeria\". Olukoya Ogen is Provost of Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo; Professor of History at Osun State University, Osogbo; and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. He is the Nigerian coordinator of the \"Knowing Each Other\" project. 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In this political ecology Lisa Fuchs exploring the failure of the government-led forest restoration and rehabilitation initiative to 'Save the Mau', launched in 2009, the author examines two of the most contentious issues in Kenya since colonial times: land and the environment. She sheds light on the structural factors and the role of individuals in the forest's destruction and of non-protection and traces the colonial legacy of post-independent environmental conservation policies and practices. In doing so, Fuchs demonstrates that the Mau crisis is more than an environmental crisis: it is also a political, an economic, and a socio-cultural crisis.\u003cbr\u003eThough a detailed empirical analysis, the author shows that the 'Mau crisis' led to the near collapse of landscapes and livelihoods in the Mau Forest ecosystem. She traces the implementation of insufficient conservation programmes, which resulted from historical path-dependency and the adoption of global environmental governance blueprints, forest allocation and benefits, and exposes a forest management system that prioritises commercial forest production over biodiversity conservation. Access and entitlements to the highly fertile forest land, and the amalgamation of forest rehabilitation with the reclamation of grabbed public forest are emphasised as a further core contributor to the crisis. The socio-cultural dynamics within and among various forest-dwelling communities, including the indigenous hunting and gathering Ogiek and 'in-migrant' groups, are also analysed. The book highlights that local types of environmentalism are caught between the 'invention of traditions' and 'perverse modernisation' and shows the contradictory effects of the celebrated, highly anticipated but poorly executed 'Save the Mau' initiative, and how the presence of political will to maintain the crisis conditioned its perseverance. 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Among the most influential was South African poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile, or 'Bra Willie', as he was affectionately known. Yet, until now, there has been no full-length study of his work.   \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUhuru Phalafala's wide-ranging book reveals the foundational influence of Kgositsile's mother and grandmother on his craft and unveils the importance of the oral\/aural traditions, indigenous knowledge systems, and cosmologies he carried with him into and after exile.  It illuminates a southern African modernity that was strongly gendered and deployed in anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, anti-apartheid, and civil rights struggles. Using the original concept of 'elsewhere', the author maps the sources of Kgositsile's transformative verse, which in turn generated 'poetics of possibility' for his contemporaries in the Black Arts and Black Power Movements and beyond - among them Maya Angelou, Larry Neal, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tom Dent, members of The Last Poets, Otabenga Jones \u0026amp; Associates, and rapper Earl Sweatshirt - who all looked to his work to model their identities, cultural movements and radical traditions.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56369335992693,"sku":"9781847014672","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781847014672_74a9de94-306e-48f9-b547-3bb674b0d838.jpg?v=1786029632"},{"product_id":"9781847013613","title":"Christian Faith and Namibian Liberation","description":"\u003cb\u003eIlluminates how Christian communities shaped the trajectory of one nation's liberation struggle through the life of Namibian refugee pastor, Salatiel Ailonga.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorn at a Finnish mission station in South West Africa (SWA), Salatiel Ailonga was part of a generation of contract labourers who first imagined themselves as belonging to a multi-ethnic Namibian nation and who played a central role in liberating it from apartheid South African rule. This book examines the interplay between Christian missionary work and anti-colonial nationalism through Ailonga's life, in the context of Southern Africa's liberation wars and exile experiences during the late twentieth century - a period that united an international community across the Cold War divide and shaped the future of an African region. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAilonga joined the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO) in 1960, and in 1974 he became the first chaplain affiliated with a Southern African liberation movement in exile. When, amidst SWAPO internal conflict, he and his Finnish missionary wife were deported from Zambia to Finland, he sought to free Namibians detained in the frontline states and became part of a SWAPO dissident community. In 1990, just after Namibian independence, the Ailongas repatriated to Namibia, where conflicts and rumours from exile followed him home; competing memories of his life have reverberated ever since, outliving his death in 2015.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHighlighting the way in which Christian communities have sought to shape the trajectory of African nationalism, the book casts light on the interplay between religion and politics and the role of religion in conflict and peace-building processes in Africa.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56420069736821,"sku":"9781847013613","price":85.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781847013613_dcfd22ab-967e-4d02-a117-2faab956b188.jpg?v=1786029629"},{"product_id":"conflict-and-collusion-in-sierra-leone","title":"Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone","description":"A comprehensive description and novel interpretation of events in Sierra Leone.   The United Nations' presence in Sierra Leone has made that country a subject of international attention to an unprecedented degree. Once identified as a source of 'the New Barbarism', it has also become a proving ground for Western interventions in the war against terrorism.    The conventional diplomatic approach to Sierra Leone's civil war is that it has been a contest between two clearly defined sides. Keen demonstrates this is not the case: the various armed groups were fractured throughout the 1990s, often colluded with one another, and had little interest in bringing the war to an end. This book not only represents a new and innovative approach to the study of war and Third World development and politics generally.     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Despite Pembans' reputation for piety and deep Islamic knowledge,uchawi- 'mystical work and power', sometimes termed 'magic', 'witchcraft', or 'sorcery' - has long featured in diverse visions of their identity and as key to worldly power. Today, as traditional methods of securing agency are called into question and new ways proliferate, the mystical world is an intensely conflicted realm where the nature of power, ethical action, and reality itself is continually reframed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis luminous ethnography follows Pemban notions of invisible and worldly power through the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964, the trials of multiparty democracy, the rise of Islamic revival, and intensifying neoliberalism. 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Should the movement embrace initiatives that pivot on public-private partnerships and implement CBNRM as 'fortress conservation'? Should conservation policies continue to hinge on commoditising nature and global-local market forces? Or should conservation approaches and models break with such neoliberal ordering and instead, design new, alternative ways to distribute the added value that nature and land resources present? 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Throughout, contributors argue for a better appreciation of a vibrant national literature by Sierra Leoneans themselves as well as its place in and contribution to world literature more generally.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57629235609973,"sku":"9781847014238","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"experimental-rural-development-in-the-global-south","title":"Experimental Rural Development in the Global South","description":"Are digital technologies really a silver bullet for development in the Global South?Digital technologies are supposed to solve the challenges of climate change, projected population growth, land conflicts and food insecurity, especially in rural areas. Yet NGOs, government institutions, and private companies are increasingly adopting a trial-and-error approach as they recognize the limitations of transferring Western science and technologies to the global South.     This book presents the ambivalent practices and implications of digital pilot projects which aim to 'develop' both farming communities and locally adapted innovations in East Africa. Inspired by laboratory ethnographies in Science and Technology Studies, it explores the practices of testing and developing digital technologies in rural Tanzania. The multi-sited ethnography, which takes in agricultural fairs, conferences, documents, online courses, tech hubs, project offices, villages and fields, centres on three case studies, namely DAST (a digital land-formalisation tool), STAS (an AI system for agricultural productivity) and iPlus (an e-extension tool). Rather than viewing these technologies simply as welcome tools to promote connectivity, empowerment and increased production - as commonly advanced in development policy - this book foregrounds the (un)intended consequences of the planning, set-up, maintenance and results of digital pilot projects. Against the backdrop of conflicting logics between testing technologies and developing Tanzanian agriculture through them, this book considers their (un)predictable impacts on new actors, the character of development and the trial communities in rural Tanzania.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57629235675509,"sku":"9781847014368","price":100.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"marjorie-oludhe-macgoye","title":"Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye","description":"\u003cb\u003eEssays offering a unique intellectual perspective on East Africa's early nationalist period, particularly the end of colonialism and the first decades of independence, which open a window into the cultural debates of the day.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMarjorie Oludhe Macgoye (1928-2015) has been hailed as the \"grand matriarch\" of Kenyan writing and a \"national treasure.\" Though she is best known for her poems and novels, particularly \u003ci\u003eComing to Birth\u003c\/i\u003e, Macgoye also wrote substantial nonfiction pieces on a wide range of social and cultural topics in the decades leading up to and immediately following the end of colonial rule in East Africa.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This book offers a carefully curated collection of previously unpublished or hard-to-find essays written by this pioneering writer over a 50-year period. The first and most significant is autobiographical:  \"A Half-Witted Life\" recounts Macgoye's early years, her decision to go to Kenya as a missionary during the height of the Mau Mau rebellion, her marriage to a junior civil servant at a time when interracial marriages were extremely rare, her work in the book industry, her own growth as a writer, and her observations about Kenyan society, literature, and culture.  The remaining essays address a range of social, cultural, and historical topics including race relations, mixed marriages, gender roles, the impact of missionaries, and cultural change. The collection will appeal to anyone interested in East African literature and history, particularly in relation to the nationalist period leading up to and following independence.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57629236527477,"sku":"9781847015365","price":95.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781847015365.jpg?v=1792425297"},{"product_id":"concepts-of-time-in-the-salambala-conservancy-of-namibia","title":"Concepts of Time in the Salambala Conservancy of Namibia","description":"Explores how community-based conservation shapes rural communities' relationships with time, development and the environment.   Namibia's communal conservancies were established to empower rural communities to manage their own wildlife, integrating ecological protection with economic incentives. However, in Salambala, in the Zambezi Region, while the game guards go on patrol and the committee holds meetings, a sense of indefinite waiting for the promised development grows.   Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this book argues that community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is, above all, a regime of temporal governance. It examines how the future conceptualised in CBNRM, with its focus on streamlined planning and bureaucratic data sets, intersects and sometimes clashes with more seasonal and ad hoc temporalities on the ground. CBNRM can result in increased numbers of iconic wildlife but, as yet another attempt to subordinate the environment to Western spatio-temporal frameworks, ultimately does not challenge the modern capitalist expansion project at the heart of the nature crisis. At the intersection of the anthropology of time, the anthropology of human-environment relations, the anthropology of development, and political ecology, the book contends that CBNRM can be seen as a temporal fix - binding people to bureaucratic schedules and deferred rewards in the name of a future that seldom arrives.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57679997239669,"sku":"9781847014412","price":95.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"african-knowledge-systems","title":"African Knowledge Systems","description":"How can epistemic sovereignty be constructed, institutionalized, and projected under conditions of inequality?Among contemporary scholars, Toyin Falola stands out for his rigorous interrogation of African knowledge systems and his advocacy for epistemic plurality, challenging Eurocentric paradigms as the sole arbiters of truth and legitimacy. This book engages extensively with Falola's scholarship to uncover the foundational epistemic traditions of African societies and to explore how further research into their legacies may serve contemporary African interests. It illuminates the diverse epistemic traditions inherent in Africa, tracing their evolutionary trajectory, and shows how they have sustained African civilizations for centuries, ensuring moral and cultural integrity despite historical and contemporary challenges. Chapters explore the epistemological challenges faced in the decolonization of knowledge production, changes in the articulation of African decolonial thought over time, its relevance and meanings in contemporary Africa, and the future of African knowledge production, engaging with key debates on knowledge transmission, epistemic injustice, and universalism. Afrocentric in its orientation, the book endeavours more broadly to provide a systematic framework for the decolonization of dominant knowledge structures while proposing sustainable pathways for epistemic sovereignty. By critically engaging with these epistemic legacies, this study contributes to the wider discourse on the reclamation of indigenous knowledge systems and their role in shaping a more equitable and pluralistic global intellectual order.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57679997862261,"sku":"9781847016515","price":130.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/publisher-james-currey.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}