Books With Flair

This book examines the role that Africa has played on the world stage, the African Union, the African leaders' efforts to take care of their own problems and lessen their dependence on the United States and European countries.

Covering the entire span of human history across the African continent, this book begins in the Garden of Eden in the highland interior of East Africa and ends with the disintegration of apartheid. In the first chapter the author introduces us to our earliest tool-making ancestor (known affectionately as "dear boy"), in the last the author ponders the changes we are likely to see as the political elites of Africa begin to review the operation of their single-party systems. The human colonization of the continent - the origins of food production, the formation and diffusion of African languages, the achievements of Ancient Egypt, the impact of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, slavery, the caravan trade, exploration and colonization, the economic, political and social developments which gave rise to the modern nation states - this book looks at all these aspects in an overview of the history of Africa.

This work offers a philosophical interpretation and critical analysis of the African cultural experience in modern times. Gyekye attempts to show the usefulness of Western philosophical concepts in addressing a range of specifically African problems.

Contributors assert that women's contribution to global agricultural production for food and for profit continues to be largely unacknowledged and undervalued and that their ability to farm is constrained by lack of control over land, agricultural inputs, credit and other essential resources.

The State of Virginia recognizes the 1619 landing of Africans at Point Comfort (present-day Hampton) as a complicated beginning. This collection of new essays reckons with this historical fact, with discussions of the impacts 400 years later. Chapters cover different perspectives about the "20 and odd" who landed, offering insights into how enslavement continues to affect the lives of their descendants. The often overlooked experiences of women in enslavement are discussed.

This volume emphasizes the economic, political, and socio-cultural aspects of globalization from a variety of African perspectives. Although the book's emphasis is on the post-Second World War period, the ten chapters of Globalization and the African Experience also touch on the history of globalization in traditional and colonial African societies. It is a resource that can be used both as a scholarly guide to those interested in globalization in Africa and as a textbook for modern era African history courses. The book's strength lies in its ability to approach African history within a twenty-first century historiographical view; it reinforces the idea that the processes of globalization are age-old and multi-faceted and underscores the necessity of taking a local and global approach in assessing their impact. The book is divided into two sections. In the first, “Economic and Political Globalization,” the authors analyze Africa's economic relations with the West and with developing world economies. The first section also addresses the relationship between conflict and globalization and the role of NGOs, the state, the market, and civil society. The second section, “Socio-Cultural and Intellectual Globalization,” focuses on the junction of globalization and gender issues as well as issues of health, medicine, and the biomedical industries. It analyzes globalizing influences on African traditional societies and the very different impact on popular and youth culture while also addressing Africa's role in the intellectualization of Blackness. Individual contributors employ localized research and integrate it with larger, global themes to reveal the depth and complexity of globalization and how the processes affect Africa and Africans at the micro and macro levels.

Linguists estimate that there are currently nearly 2,000 languages in Africa, a staggering figure that is belied by the relatively few national languages. While African national politics, economics, and law are all conducted primarily in the colonial languages, the cultural life of the majority of citizens is conducted in a bewildering Babel of local and regional dialects, making language itself the center of debates over multiculturalism, gender studies, and social theory. In The Power of Babel, the noted Africanist scholar Ali Mazrui and linguist Alamin Mazrui explore this vast territory of African language. The Power of Babel is one of the first comprehensive studies of the complex linguistic constellations of Africa. It draws on Ali Mazrui's earlier work in its examination of the "triple heritage" of African culture, in which indigenous, Islamic, and Western traditions compete for influence. In bringing the idea of the triple heritage to language, the Mazruis unravel issues of power, culture, and modernity as they are embedded in African linguistic life. The first section of the book takes a global perspective, exploring such issues as the Eurocentrism of much linguistic scholarship on Africa; part two takes an African perspective on a variety of issues from the linguistically disadvantaged position of women in Africa to the relation of language policy and democratic development; the third section presents a set of regional studies, centering on the Swahili language's exemplification of the triple heritage.The Power of Babel unites empirical information with theories of nationalism and pluralism—among others—to offer the richest contextual account of African languages to date.

This text presents the broad historical contours of the African experience in Spanish America, from enslavement, resistance, and rebellion to the crucial participation of Afro-Latin Americans in the wars of independence, and a region-by-region account of their varied treatment in the newly-founded republics from the 19th century to the modern era.

The intersection of race and technology: blackcreativity and the economic and social functions of the myth ofdisengenuity.

The involvement of African Americans with Islam reaches back to the earliest days of the African presence in North America. This book explores these roots in the Middle East, West Africa and antebellum America.