Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Koen Stroeken
Publisher:   Berghahn Books
Imprint:   Berghahn Books
ISBN:  

9781800732148

ISBN 10:   1800732147
Pages:   328
Publication Date:   17 September 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Tables and figures Acknowledgements Note on Language List of Abbreviations of Referenced Works Introduction: Endogenous Kingship PART I: DIVINATORY SOCIETIES Chapter 1. The Forest Within Chapter 2. Beyond Turner's Watershed Division PART II: MEDICINAL RULE Chapter 3. A Sukuma Chief on Medicine Chapter 4. Endogenizing Vansina's Equatorial Tradition Chapter 5. From Cult to Dynasty: Nilotic and Niger-Congo Extensions Chapter 6. Magic and the Sole Mode of Production Chapter 7. Tio Shrines of the Forest Master PART III: THE CEREMONIAL STATE Chapter 8. Kuba, Kongo and Buganda 'Miracles': Reversions in Transition Chapter 9. From Divinatory to Ceremonial State: Narrative Proof from Rwanda Conclusion: Reversible Transitions References Index

Reviews

Koen Stroeken has developed an argument that is subtle and profound... [He] covers immense territory historically and geographically, but without sacrificing rigorous empiricism, deep ethnography, or conceptual sophistication. * Journal of Anthropological Research Admirably clearly written... [the volume exhibits] high scholarship, methodological ingenuity, and sound use of history. * David Parkin, University of Oxford

Author Information

Koen Stroeken is Associate Professor in Africanist anthropology at Ghent University (CARAM) and the coordinator of a long-term academic exchange with Mzumbe University, Tanzania. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Sukuma healers, his publications - including the monograph Moral Power (2010, Berghahn) - mainly deal with African cosmologies and the sensory materiality of magic.

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