Negotiating Identities in Contemporary Africa: Gender, Religion, and Ethno-cultural Identities explores the changing dynamics of identities in Africa, with a focus on gender, ethno-cultural, and religious identity. Toyin Falola and Emmanuel M. Mbah argue that because identity defines who we are as individuals or groups, studies on African identities must focus on understanding the changing dynamics in the socio-economic and political spheres in the continent. These chapters cover subjects such as women’s career identity, gender roles and knowledge, childlessness, ethnocentrism and democracy, cultural identity through theater, Black identity in the diaspora, and diasporic consciousness. Using existing scholarship, the chapters in this edited volume challenge our understanding of what identity entails and provide new discussions on the hitherto politicized historiography of some identities in Africa.

Explores the instrumentalization of various aspects of popular culture in Africa. This anthology provides insightful data on and discussions of a wide array of popular cultural manifestations and theoretical perspectives, covering such issues as kinship, religion, conflict resolution, music, cinema, drama, andliterary texts. The issues cohere around the understanding that culture is situational and political. Going beyond merely challenging popular stereotypes and representations of Africans and African-related practices in various outlets, the book reveals how popular cultural practices are instruments that have been manipulated for personal and collective survival. The book is distinctive in its codification and explication of aspects of popular practices that are based on data from countries in Africa, Europe, and the Americas that showcase cultural negotiations either with reference to how notions, values, norms, and images of Africans have been packaged and exploited over theyears or how popular cultures are used as tools of resistance and agitation by the various focal groups that are discussed. The topics are presented and illustrated in ways easily accessible to readers of all backgrounds. Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Augustine Agwuele is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Anthropology, Texas State University, San Marcos. Contributors: Arinpe Adejumo, Augustine Agwuele, Antoinette Tidjani Alou, Maurice N. Amutabi, Tokunbo A. Ayoola, Nicholas M. Creary, Toyin Falola, Celeste A. Fisher, Denise Amy-Rose Forbes-Erickson, Hetty ter Haar, Debra L. Klein, Emmanuel M. Mbah, Sarah Steinbock-Pratt, and Asonzeh Ukah