| Medicinal Rule: A Historical Anthropology of Kingship in East and Central Africa Contributor(s): Stroeken, Koen (Author) |
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ISBN: 1785339842 ISBN-13: 9781785339844 Publisher: Berghahn Books OUR PRICE: $128.25 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: September 2018 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social - History | Africa - East - History | Africa - Central |
| Dewey: 306.209 |
| LCCN: 2018008442 |
| Series: Methodology & History in Anthropology |
| Physical Information: 0.9" H x 6.3" W x 9.1" (1.30 lbs) 328 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - East Africa - Cultural Region - Central Africa |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: As soon as Europeans set foot on African soil, they looked for the equivalents of their kings - and found them. The resulting misunderstandings have lasted until this day. Based on ethnography-driven regional comparison and a critical re-examination of classic monographs on some forty cultural groups, this volume makes the arresting claim that across equatorial Africa the model of rule has been medicine - and not the colonizer's despotic administrator, the missionary's divine king, or Vansina's big man. In a wide area populated by speakers of Bantu and other languages of the Niger-Congo cluster, both cult and dynastic clan draw on the fertility shrine, rainmaking charm and drum they inherit. |
Contributor Bio(s): Stroeken, Koen: - " Koen Stroeken is Associate Professor in Africanist anthropology at Ghent University (CARAM) and the coordinator of a long-term academic exchange with Mzumbe University, Tanzania. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Sukuma healers, his publications - including the monograph Moral Power (2012, Berghahn) - mainly deal with African cosmologies and the sensory materiality of magic. " |