The African Inheritance

Africa is a continent gripped by civil wars and widespread famine. The causes of many of the continent's problems are deep rooted and can be traced to Africa's colonial past, when European powers divided the spoils of the continent into separate sovereign states. The African Inheritance examines the effect this "balkanization" of Africa has had, and is having, on the political and economic well-being of the continent. From a brief history of pre-colonial Africa and its subsequent European partition and inevitable decolonization, the book discusses the consequences of such an inheritance: small and weak states, destructive secessionist movements, irredentism and African imperialism. Attempts to tackle these problems and assert independent development are inhibited by the colonial inheritance.

Weaving sound historical research with rich ethnographic insight, An Impossible Inheritance tells the story of the emergence, disavowal, and afterlife of a distinctive project in transcultural psychiatry initiated at the Fann Psychiatric Clinic in Dakar, Senegal during the 1960s and 1970s. Today’s clinic remains haunted by its past and Katie Kilroy-Marac brilliantly examines the complex forms of memory work undertaken by its affiliates over a sixty year period. Through stories such as that of the the ghost said to roam the clinic’s halls, the mysterious death of a young doctor sometimes attributed to witchcraft, and the spirit possession ceremonies that may have taken place in Fann’s courtyard, Kilroy-Marac argues that memory work is always an act of the imagination and a moral practice with unexpected temporal, affective, and political dimensions. By exploring how accounts about the Fann Psychiatric Clinic and its past speak to larger narratives of postcolonial and neoliberal transformation, An Impossible Inheritance examines the complex relationship between memory, history, and power within the institution and beyond.

Examines the effect of Africa's colonial past on the present political and economic well-being of the continent. The consequences of such an inheritance are discussed: small and weak states, destructive movements and African imperialism.

Scientific Essay from the year 2014 in the subject Sociology - Social System, Social Structure, Class, Social Stratification, , language: English, abstract: From time immemorial, women have suffered greatly and disproportionately in comparison to their male counterpart. Most societies have been essentially patriarchal but in no area of political, social and religious life has the despicable plight of women been more conspicuously noticeable than in the aspect of inheritance. Over time, concrete efforts have been made in the Western world to stem this tide, while African societies, on the other hand, have not recorded much achievement in this area. National constitutions of African and other developing countries tend to prohibit discriminations against women in property inheritance, yet discriminatory traditional and customary practices persist. International treaties are merely ratified by these countries without committed implementation. This paper is posed to interrogate existing practices and laws in African and developing societies regarding the right of women to inherit property on the same footing as men in the light of developments in the Western world. At the end, recommendations are proffered so that those countries of the world which are lagging behind in treating women appropriately may have a second thought.

A major reassessment of the development of race and subjecthood in the British Atlantic Focusing on Jamaica, Britain’s most valuable colony in the Americas by the mid-eighteenth century, Brooke Newman explores the relationship between racial classifications and the inherited rights and privileges associated with British subject status. Weaving together a diverse range of sources, she shows how colonial racial ideologies rooted in fictions of blood ancestry at once justified permanent, hereditary slavery for Africans and barred members of certain marginalized groups from laying claim to British liberties on the basis of hereditary status.