Suchergebnisse

This work covers the subject of resistance. Were political forms of resistance directed at the imposition or ending of colonial rule or at African elites profiting from the onset of capitalist relations of production? This work aims to answer this question and more.

Let it be said that African history and politics are not among the 'overblown' disciplines in Australian universities. Compared with America or Britain, Australia lacks profound historic connections with Africa, while as yet domestic pressures in the direction of black studies are few and, with rare exceptions, uninfluential. A glance at the consolidated index to Australian Outlook (Melbourne), the journal of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, shows that from 1947 to 1972 it carried only 27 articles on African countries and international relations. Apart from the annual gatherings of the All-African Students' Union of Australia, only one conference concerned exclusively with contemporary African politics has yet been held: at the Flinders University of South Australia, in May 1971.

AbstractThis study is rooted in the move by the South African government at the turn of the 21stcentury to spearhead the conception of what then President Thabo Mbeki referred to as anAfrican Renaissance. This move entailed cultivating an African consciousness; educationbeing one of the key tools. With textbooks still playing a critical role in the educationsystem, I analysed South African National Curriculum Statement-compliant historytextbooks in order to understand the construction of the African being. I employed a criticaldiscourse analysis methodology to analyse a sample of four contemporary South Africanhistory textbooks with a focus on the chapters that deal with post-colonial Africa. At adescriptive level of analysis, the textbooks construct the African being as five-dimensional:the spatial, the physical, the philosophical, the cultural and the experiential notions. Theinterpretation is that the African being is constructed as multidimensional. I usepostcolonial theory to explain that while the macro-level of power produces the dominantdiscourses, the micro-level of the citizen also contributes to the discourses that permeate thehistory textbooks. Indeed, the production of textbooks is influenced by multifarious factorsthat when the discourses from the top and from below meet at the meso-level of textbookproduction, there is not just articulatio

"This volume investigates the development of biographical study in African history and historiography. Consisting of 10 case studies, it is preceded by an introductory prologue, which deals with the relationship between historiography and different forms of biographical study in the context of Western history-writing but especially African (historical and anthropological) studies. The first three case studies deal with the methodological insights of biographical studies for African history. This is followed by three case studies dealing with personas living through fundamental societal transitions, and four case studies focusing on the discursive dimensions of biographical subjects (including religion, cosmology and ideology). Countries or regions discussed include South Africa, Zambia, Gold Coast, Cameroon, Tanganyika, Congo-Kinshasa and the Central African Republic in colonial times. Contributors are Lindie Koorts, Elena Moore, Iva Peša, Paul Glen Grant, Jacqueline de Vries, Duncan Money, Morgan Robinson, Eve Wong, Klaas van Walraven, Erik Kennes."--

In nearly all the major historical fields one can see the increasing use historians are making of methods, models, and insights from the social sciences. E. H. Carr's exhortation, that the more history becomes sociology and the more sociology becomes history the better for both, is being taken seriously. Yet there is much more that can be done to bring these fields together. Most historians have used sociological theory only to gain insight, not with great rigour. They have learned their sociology by osmosis, so to speak. They have not gone through the social science literature, but rather have soaked it up second-hand from other interpreters. Consequently their works have not had the precision they might. Concepts have been distorted because of a lack of familiarity with them. African historians, on the whole, have been reluctant to use this rich and suggestive literature. This is probably true because the greatest efforts have been made in finding new sources in this difficult field—oral tradition, linguistic evidence, and so forth. But one is hard pressed to find works by African historians which have employed the theoretical literature of the social sciences.