Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Book (23)
Language
- English (23)
Has Fulltext
- yes (23)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (23)
This is a book on the state of social anthropology as an academic discipline in contemporary Zimbabwe. The authors are frustrated and disheartened by a problematic visibility and sluggish growth of the discipline in the country. The book makes an important claim that the future and vibrancy of anthropology in Zimbabwe, lies in how well anthropologists in the country and in the diaspora are able to join efforts in articulating, debating and enhancing its relevance and vitality. The book provides critical overview and nuanced analyses of the role and continued relevance of the discipline in reading and interpreting the social unfolding of everyday life and dynamism. It is a vital text for understanding and contextualising histories and trends in the development of social anthropology in Zimbabwe and how anthropologists in the country navigate the tumultuous waters and struggles that have engrossed the discipline since colonial times. The book has the capacity to generate added insights and influence national, continental, and global debates and trends in the field.
In spite of its surging popularity with scholars and environment conservation and management aid experts, scientific environmental epistemology does not seem to be the answer to the forestry and environmental problems that Africa is facing. Due to the lasting impacts of colonialism and therefore Western scientism on Africa, at the core of the conservation dilemma lies the conflict between scientific conservation epistemologies and 'local'/'indigenous' conservation epistemologies with the latter being the locals' potential workable solution to the environmental problems haunting the continent. It is in view of these circumstances that this book was born. The book is a clarion call for the revival and reinstitution of indigenous conservation and management epistemologies, not as a challenge to Western scientific conservation epistemologies, but to complement efforts by Western science in easing the tapestry of environmental problems that haunt Africa and the rest of the world. This is a valuable book for environmental conservationists, land resource managers, political/social ecologists, environmentalists, environmental anthropologists, environmental field workers and technicians, and practitioners and students of conservation sciences.
In Nzarayapera's village, famine and hunger strike as rain could not fall. The sky remains blue with scorching heat that leaves no creature desiring to move on with life. Chief Nzarayapera and his councillors believe this scourge is a curse from the ancestors. They think of holding a ceremony to mollify the ancestors and petition rain. The ceremony is held, but nothing happens except that hunger and famine strike even harder. This sets a fertile ground for conflict between traditionalists, Christians and scientists who lay blame on one another and take turns to intercede for the people. What comes out of this conflict only requires you to read Rain Petitioning for yourself. Equally there to awaken your curiosity is Step Child, the second play in this collection.
Jostling Between 'Mere Talk' & Blame Game? : Beyond Africa's Poverty and Underdevelopment Game Talk
(2018)
One of the fundamental challenges in rethinking and remaking development in Africa from a Pan African perspective is that too much mere talk and blame game have played out at the expense of real action. The blame game and mere talk on Africas poverty and underdevelopment jam have remained printed in bold on the face of the continent, yet Africas dire situation warrants nothing less than real emphatic action. This book focuses on the empirics of the production and reproduction of poverty and underdevelopment across Africa in a fashion that warrants urgent pragmatic policy attention and quest for workable homegrown solutions to persistent predicaments. The volume advances the need to recognise the realities of global inequalities and move swiftly in a most informed and transparent manner to address the poverty and underdevelopment conundrum. The book sets the tempo and pace on the need for praxis and pragmatism on the African situation. It is handy to students and practitioners in African studies, poverty and development studies, global studies, policy studies, economics and political science.
Poverty remains a thorny and topical challenge and research topic to scholars and researchers on African development. Scholars in the Global North have since the Second World War sought to research poverty and underdevelopment in Africa, postulating what they think are the major causes of insipid and abject poverty in the continent, but with little or no success on how to solve the poverty enigma. Sadly, little research and homework have been done by scholars in context (in Africa) on why there seems to be more production rather than eradication of poverty and vulnerability in Africa and among Africans. This book is born out of the realisation for the need for both scholars on the ground and outside Africa to earnestly interrogate and reflect on the poverty situation that continues to haunt the people of Africa and rattle the conscience of the world at large. With contributors from across the continent and beyond, the volume offers a balanced and rigorous, multi-faceted analysis of Africa's poverty and vulnerability from a rich tapestry of perspectives. The volume is handy to scholars and students in the fields of African and development studies, as well as to students of Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science and Policy Studies.
How come Africa is so underdeveloped when it is one of the richest continents on earth? The present volume is an attempt to theorise Africas [under-]development with a view to providing a sustainable, enduring framework of operations that will arrest the predicament of the continent while taking it forward from its current passivity. The volume rethinks and re-imagines a number of externally imposed problematic mechanisms used (un-)consciously in Africa, with the intention of raising awareness and fostering critical thinking in scholars of African development. The book is a pacesetter on how to think and research Africas [under-]development. It is also an invaluable asset for social scientists, policy makers, development practitioners, civil society activists and politicians.
This is a vivid, thought-provoking and fascinating text on some contentious issues in contemporary medical ethics. The book acknowledges the contribution of 'African tradition' and Western scholarship to the development of medical ethics as a university discipline. It questions the lack of consensus around such biomedical issues as euthanasia and traditional medicine. In many countries, the failure has resulted in public outcries. Its thrust centres on the nexus of practice and theory, and the importance of pragmatism and critical questioning in dealing with different cases on and around biomedicine. Its virtue is its significant shift from the traditional positions on selected biomedical issues to a more rigorous, pragmatic and critical questioning and understanding of the reasoning and positions of all involved and/or affected parties.
The relationship between police and the public in formerly colonised countries of Africa has never been smooth. It is plagued with clich's of suspicion, mistrust, and brutality which are all a result of the legacy of draconian policing in colonial Africa. This colonial hangover has chiefly been an upshot of sluggish switching from the mantra of colonial policing to community progressive policing advocated in democratic societies. This book, the result of five years of ethnographic and library research on the interaction and relationships between police and members of the public in Zimbabwe, is a clarion call for a generative progressive working together between the police and the public for a peaceful and orderly society. While it traces the historical trends and nature of policing in Africa and in particular Zimbabwe, the book demonstrates how law, morality and policing enrich one another. The book offers critical insights in the interpretation of contemporary policing in Zimbabwe with a view to inform and draw lessons for both police and the public. It should be of interest not only to legal anthropologists but also political scientists, members of the public, police instructors, police officers, and students and educators in academic disciplines such as criminal justice, criminology, law, sociology, African studies, and leadership and conflict management.
This is a dense, erudite collection of finely crafted poems that powerfully reflect on vices such as war, bad governance, deforestation, dissipation, greed, oppression and cruelty. The poems also tackle other important phenomena of life such as love, anxiety, weather, time, politics, morality, economics, justice, culture and the environment. The virtue of these finely tuned poems does not only lie in their philosophical questioning, but their artistic merit and audacious reflection of issues pertinent in human life of all ages. While some of the poems provoke amusement and others tears, the corpus of the collection educates through entertainment. The poetry penetrates into the greater depths of the public's psyche to appraise, query, empty and expose their concerns in such a manner that should hopefully make those who cause or ignite human tribulations to rethink their actions and those haunted by the same to stay vigilant.
This is a comprehensive study and erudite description of the struggle of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems in an Age of Globalization, using in particular eighty-four children's traditional games in south-eastern Zimbabwe. The book is an informative and interesting anthropological account of rare African children's games at the risk of disappearing under globalization. The virtue of the book does not only lie in its modest philosophical questioning of those knowledge forms that consider themselves as superior to others, but in its laudable, healthy appreciation of the creative art forms of traditional literature that features in genres such as endangered children's traditional games. The book is a clarion call to Africans and the world beyond to come to the rescue of relegated and marginalized African creativity in the interest of future generations.