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
Volume:   35
ISBN:  

9781785339844

ISBN 10:   1785339842
Pages:   328
Publication Date:   07 September 2018
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
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

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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