Search results for ""Author Richard Fardon""

This book is about a story (Ousmane Sembene's Xala), about a time (the aftermath of Senegalese Independence), and about a place (Dakar, the capital of Senegal). It's also about the collaboration between an artist and an anthropologist, who have reacted in their different mediums to the story, time and place, and to what the other made of them ...' So opens a unique account in a genre of its own devising that will engage readers interested in Sembene Ousmane as writer and film director, in Senegal, in African film, in West Africa, or in books designed to be desirable objects in their own right.

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Written in the last two decades of her life, Cultures and Crises finds Mary Douglas developing analyses of critical conditions facing contemporary societies, sometimes in the company of distinguished co-authors across the whole gamut of social sciences. The essays focus on the collaborative development of ′cultural theory′ from the ′grid and group′ analysis of the 1970s through to its application and elaboration in her later thought. The material covers questions of culture and institutions, the challenges to culture posed by climate change and the nature of risk in culture. What emerges is the most complete picture of Mary Douglas′s cultural theory that is currently available to us. The book will add to the legions of Douglas′s readers across the disciplinary divisions of the social sciences. Mary Douglas was one of the most widely read social anthropologists of the 20th Century. She is celebrated both as a literary stylist and an anthropological thinker who challenged common presuppositions and understandings of religion, economy and society. As a cornerstone of modernism in social anthropology, and a precursor of 21st Century interdisciplinarity, her work remains highly influential both within and outside the social sciences. Richard Fardon is Mary Douglas′s Literary Executor and Head of the Doctoral School and Professor of West African Anthropology at SOAS, University of London, UK.

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This text examines a number of African radio broadcast cultures. Radio has played a pivotal role in situations of conflict, crisis, change and development on the African continent. Local radio stations are as important as international broadcasters being both the barometers and agents of change. North America: Praeger

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Winner of the Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association The Benue River Valley is the source of some of the most abstract, dramatic, and inventive sculpture in sub-Saharan Africa. A vast region, the Valley extends from the heart of present-day Nigeria eastward to its border with Cameroon, and is home to a large number of ethnic and linguistic groups, all of whom have produced sculptures that are remarkable for their variety. This book brings together figurative wood sculptures and ceramic vessels, masks, and elaborate bronze and iron regalia drawn from public and private collections in Europe and the United States, selected to exemplify important typologies within the region, along with many historical photographs. The 18 contributors demonstrate that the stylistic tendencies were constantly evolving due to cultural exchanges, mutual influences, and other points of contact in an area that like the Benue River itself was historically in a state of flux. These objects speak to us not only through their superb formal qualities but also through the circumstances of their being rooted in a turbulent past, situated between war and colonization.

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