Description
| Product ID: | 9781785339844 |
| Product Form: | Hardback |
| Country of Manufacture: | GB |
| Series: | Methodology & History in Anthropology |
| Title: | Medicinal Rule |
| Subtitle: | A Historical Anthropology of Kingship in East and Central Africa |
| Authors: | Author: Koen Stroeken |
| Page Count: | 328 |
| Subjects: | African history, African history, Social and cultural anthropology, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography |
| Description: | Select Guide Rating Based on ethnography-driven regional comparison and a critical re-examination of classic monographs on some forty cultural groups, this volume makes the arresting claim that across equatorial Africa, the model of rule has been medicine - and not (as Europeans have long assumed) the colonizer's despotic administrator... As soon as Europeans set foot on African soil, they looked for the equivalents of their kings – and found them. The resulting misunderstandings have lasted until this day. Based on ethnography-driven regional comparison and a critical re-examination of classic monographs on some forty cultural groups, this volume makes the arresting claim that across equatorial Africa the model of rule has been medicine – and not the colonizer’s despotic administrator, the missionary’s divine king, or Vansina’s big man. In a wide area populated by speakers of Bantu and other languages of the Niger-Congo cluster, both cult and dynastic clan draw on the fertility shrine, rainmaking charm and drum they inherit. |
| Imprint Name: | Berghahn Books |
| Publisher Name: | Berghahn Books |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 2018-09-07 |
