The Power Of African Cultures

An analysis of the ties between culture and every aspect of African life, using Africa's past to explain present situations. This book focuses on the modern cultures of Africa, from the consequences of the imposition of Western rule to the current struggles to define national identities in the context of neo-liberal economic policies and globalization.The book argues that it is against the backdrop of foreign influences that Africa has defined for itself notions of identity and development. African cultures have been evolving in response to change, and in other ways solidly rooted in a shared past. The book successfully deconstructs the last one hundred and fifty years of cultures that have been disrupted, replaced, and resurrected. The Power of African Cultures challenges many preconceived notions, such as male dominance and female submission, the supposed unity of ethnic groups, and contemporary Western stereotypes of Africans. It also shows the dynamism of African cultures to adapt to foreign imposition: even as colonial rule forced the adoption of foreign institutions and cultures, African cultures appropriated these elements. Traditions were reworked, symbols redefined, and the past situated in contemporary problems in order to accommodate the modern era. Toyin Falola is a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and Fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria. He is the recipient of the 2006 Cheikh Anta Diop Award for Exemplary Scholarship in AfricanStudies, and the 2008 Quintessence Award by the Africa Writers Endowment. He holds an honorary doctorate from Monmouth University and he is University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin where heis also the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities. His books include Nationalism and African Intellectuals and Violence in Nigeria, both from the University of Rochester Press.

African Cultures, Memory and Space is an impeccable volume that powerfully grapples with a gamut of cultural heritage issues, challenges and problems from a vista of inter- and multi-disciplinary approach. The book, which is designed as a foundational text to the study of culture in ever-changing environments, makes an important argument that the dynamism of culture in highly globalised societies such as that of Zimbabwe can be studied from any perspective, but most importantly through careful examination of cultural elements such as memory, oral history and space, among others. While the book makes special reference to Zimbabwe, it profoundly and audaciously dissect and cut across different geographical and cultural spaces through its penetrating interrogation and scrutiny of different issues commonplace in many African contexts and even beyond. The book, written by scholars from different backgrounds and orientations, should appeal to scholars, researchers and students from various disciplines which include but not limited to Cultural Heritage Studies, Policy Studies, Social-Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, Development Studies and African Studies.

An introductionto African culture - its literatures, arts,and values.

This book was first published as a two-part essay in 1965 and 1967 in ABBIA Cameroon Cultural Review under the title Idea of Culture. Its main argument is that indigenous Africans cultures must be the foundation on which the modern African cultural structure should be raised; the soil into which the new seed should be sown; the stem into which the new scion should be grafted; the sap that should enliven the entire organism. This culture, the object of imperialist mockery and rejected, needs rehabilitation. However, such rehabilitation of African culture cannot be a mere archaeological enterprise. It will not answer to dig up the past and live it as it was. Not only is African culture not without its imperfections, times change and African culture must adapt itself, at every turn, to the changing times. In restoring African culture, it is imperative to steer clear of two extremes: on the one hand, the imperialist arrogance which declared everything African as only fit for the scrap-heap and the dust-bin, and, on the other hand, the overly enthusiastic and rather naive tendency to laud every aspect of African culture as if it were the quintessence of human achievement.

From interdisciplinary and continental perspectives, this volume explores elements of African culture and ideas, indigenous and modern, and how they have evolved through the ages. It considers areas such as education; cross-culturalism; the relationship between African, Arabic and Egyptian civilizations; traditions of philosophy; music, the performing arts and literature; language; gender; and the impact of colonialism and pan-Africanism.

Explores the cultural aspects of the African continent such as food, clothing, religion, pastimes, social mores, and traditions.