Critical Terms For The Study Of Africa

For far too long, the Western world viewed Africa as unmappable terrain—a repository for outsiders’ wildest imaginings. This problematic notion has had lingering effects not only on popular impressions of the region but also on the development of the academic study of Africa. Critical Terms for the Study of Africa considers the legacies that have shaped our understanding of the continent and its place within the conceptual grammar of contemporary world affairs. Written by a distinguished group of scholars, the essays compiled in this volume take stock of African studies today and look toward a future beyond its fraught intellectual and political past. Each essay discusses one of our most critical terms for talking about Africa, exploring the trajectory of its development while pushing its boundaries. Editors Gaurav Desai and Adeline Masquelier balance the choice of twenty-five terms between the expected and the unexpected, calling for nothing short of a new mapping of the scholarly field. The result is an essential reference that will challenge assumptions, stimulate lively debate, and make the past, present, and future of African Studies accessible to students and teachers alike.

Following in the very successful tradition of Critical Terms for Literary Studies and Critical Terms for Art History, this book attempts to provide a revitalized, self-aware vocabulary with which this bewildering religious diversity can be accurately described and responsibly discussed. Leading scholars working in a variety of traditions demonstrate through their incisive discussions that even our most basic terms for understanding religion are not neutral but carry specific historical and conceptual freight.

This volume provides the essential vocabulary currently employed in discourses on the future in 50 contributions by renowned scholars in their respective fields, which examine future imaginaries across cultures and time. Not situated in the field of “futurology” proper, it comes at future studies ‘sideways’ and offers a multidisciplinary treatment of a critical futures’ vocabulary. The contributors have their disciplinary homes in a wide range of subjects – history, cultural studies, literary studies, sociology, media studies, American studies, Japanese studies, Chinese studies, and philosophy – and critically illuminate numerous discourses about the future (or futures), past and present. In compiling such a critical vocabulary, this book seeks to foster conversations about futures in study programs and research forums and offers a toolbox for discussing them with an adequate degree of complexity.

This book presents interdisciplinary research to examine the ongoing debates around nonhuman animals in urban spaces. It explores how we can better appreciate and accommodate animals in the city, while also exploring the ecological, health, ethical, and cultural implications of the same. The book addresses seven interrelated themes such as blurred boundaries between the human and the nonhuman, the right of nonhuman species to the city, interactions between the human and nonhuman animals, the fabric of urban space, human and nonhuman complex systems, and collective welfare that forms the basis of a transspecies urban theory. It explains how a holistic understanding of the city requires that these blurred boundaries are acknowledged and critically examined. Chapters analytically consider the need to bring interspecies relationships to the fore to tackle questions of legitimacy and who has the "right" to the city. These also consider important intersections between the economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of the urban experience. The research contained in this book focuses on the development of an urban theory that would eradicate the divide between humans and other species in cities, and it depicts nonhuman animals as social actors that have voices within urban spaces. With global insights on human–animal relationships in a contemporary context, this book will be useful reading for scholars and students of urban studies, animal sciences, animal law, animals and public policy, anthropology, and environmental studies who are interested in the study of animals in cities.

This multidisciplinary, international Research Handbook on Inequalities and Work examines disparities within contemporary working life and comes at a critical juncture of socio-historical change. As the world reels from the impact of economic insecurity, the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, the trans liberation fight, the climate crisis and the rise of Artificial Intelligence, systemic inequalities and their impacts have been thrust into the limelight alongside the ceaseless struggle for social justice. Against this background, the Handbook provides cutting edge research studies that offers unique insight into the international nature of inequalities at work.

Roads to Decolonisation: An Introduction to Thought from the Global South is an accessible new textbook that provides undergraduate students with a vital introduction to theory from the Global South and key issues of social justice, arming them with the tools to theorise and explain the social world away from dominant Global North perspectives. Arranged in four parts, it examines key thinkers, activists and theory-work from the Global South; theoretical concepts and socio-historical conditions associated with 'race' and racism, gender and sexuality, identity and (un)belonging in a globalised world and decolonisation and education; challenges to dominant Euro-American perspectives on key social justice issues, linking decolonial discourses to contemporary case studies. Each chapter offers an overview of key thinkers and activists whose work engages with social justice issues, many of whom are under-represented or left out of undergraduate humanities and social sciences textbooks in the North. This is essential reading for students of the humanities and social sciences worldwide, as well as scholars keen to embed Southern thought in their curricula and pedagogical practice.

Critical Theory Today is the essential introduction to contemporary criticial theory. It provides clear, simple explanations and concrete examples of complex concepts, making a wide variety of commonly used critical theories accessible to novices without sacrificing any theoretical rigor or thoroughness. This new edition provides in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to literary analysis today: feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, reader-response theory, new criticism, structuralism and semiotics, deconstruction, new historicism, cultural criticism, lesbian/gay/queer theory, African American criticism, and postcolonial criticism. The chapters provide an extended explanation of each theory, using examples from everyday life, popular culture, and literary texts; a list of specific questions critics who use that theory ask about literary texts; an interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby through the lens of each theory; a list of questions for further practice to guide readers in applying each theory to different literary works; and a bibliography of primary and secondary works for further reading.

The Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism provides an international, intersectional, and interdisciplinary overview of, and approach to, Pan-Africanism, making an invaluable contribution to the ongoing evolution of Pan-Africanism and demonstrating its continued significance in the 21st century. The handbook features expert introductions to, and critical explorations of, the most important historic and current subjects, theories, and controversies of Pan-Africanism and the evolution of black internationalism. Pan-Africanism is explored and critically engaged from different disciplinary points of view, emphasizing the multiplicity of perspectives and foregrounding an intersectional approach. The contributors provide erudite discussions of black internationalism, black feminism, African feminism, and queer Pan-Africanism alongside surveys of black nationalism, black consciousness, and Caribbean Pan-Africanism. Chapters on neo-colonialism, decolonization, and Africanization give way to chapters on African social movements, the African Union, and the African Renaissance. Pan-African aesthetics are probed via literature and music, illustrating the black internationalist impulse in myriad continental and diasporan artists’ work. Including 36 chapters by acclaimed established and emerging scholars, the handbook is organized into seven parts, each centered around a comprehensive theme: Intellectual origins, historical evolution, and radical politics of Pan-Africanism Pan-Africanist theories Pan-Africanism in the African diaspora Pan-Africanism in Africa Literary Pan-Africanism Musical Pan-Africanism The contemporary and continued relevance of Pan-Africanism in the 21st century The Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism is an indispensable source for scholars and students with research interests in continental and diasporan African history, sociology, politics, economics, and aesthetics. It will also be a very valuable resource for those working in interdisciplinary fields, such as African studies, African American studies, Caribbean studies, decolonial studies, postcolonial studies, women and gender studies, and queer studies.