Overview

Employing an innovative methodological toolkit, Doing Conceptual History in Africa provides a refreshingly broad and interdisciplinary approach to African historical studies. The studies assembled here focus on the complex role of language in Africa's historical development, with a particular emphasis on pragmatics and semantics. From precolonial dynamics of wealth and poverty to the conceptual foundations of nationalist movements, each contribution strikes a balance between the local and the global, engaging with a distinctively African intellectual tradition while analyzing the regional and global contexts in which categories like work , marriage , and land take shape.

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9781785331633

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Translation [as this volume shows] is thus integral to conceptual history not only as the scholar's burden but also as a matter of negotiation and contestation among language users. It is, along with other methodological considerations put forward in this rich volume, another domain for doing conceptual history in Africa. Africa

This pioneering volume is the first to apply the methods of conceptual history to the languages and cultures of sub-Saharan Africa, and as such will be welcomed by a wide variety of scholars. It is a major achievement. * Willibald Steinmetz, Bielefeld University; As the first book to examine conceptual history in Africa, this is a significant contribution that takes us beyond discourse analysis and other comparable approaches. Historians, anthropologists, and linguists will all benefit from its theoretical and methodological insights as well as its illuminating examples of application. * Inge Brinkman, Ghent University

Author Information

Axel Fleisch is a Professor of African Studies at the University of Helsinki. His focus is southern Africa, including African languages and historical linguistics. He is the author of Lucazi Grammar: A Morphosemantic Analysis (2000) and the co-editor of Grandmother's Footsteps: Oral Tradition and South-East Angolan Narratives on the Colonial Encounter (1999). Rhiannon Stephens is an Associate Professor of African History at Columbia University. Her work focuses on East Africa, particularly Uganda. She is the author of A History of African Motherhood: The Case of Uganda, 700-1900 (2013) and has published work in the Journal of African History and Past and Present.

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