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The collective inquiries in this volume address ethnicity in
ancient Africa as social fact and political artifact along numerous
dimensions. Is ethnicity a useful analytic? What can archaeology
say about the kinds of deeper time questions which scholars have
asked of identities in Africa? Eleven authors engage with
contemporary anthropological, historical and archaeological
perspectives to examine how ideas of self-understanding, belonging,
and difference in Africa were made and unmade. They examine how
these intersect with other salient domains of social experience:
states, landscapes, discourses, memory, technology, politics, and
power. The various chapters cover broad geographic and temporal
ground, following an arc across Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon,
the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and East Africa, spanning
from prehistory to the colonial period.
The collective inquiries in this volume address ethnicity in
ancient Africa as social fact and political artifact along numerous
dimensions. Is ethnicity a useful analytic? What can archaeology
say about the kinds of deeper time questions which scholars have
asked of identities in Africa? Eleven authors engage with
contemporary anthropological, historical and archaeological
perspectives to examine how ideas of self-understanding, belonging,
and difference in Africa were made and unmade. They examine how
these intersect with other salient domains of social experience:
states, landscapes, discourses, memory, technology, politics, and
power. The various chapters cover broad geographic and temporal
ground, following an arc across Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon,
the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and East Africa, spanning
from prehistory to the colonial period.
Ripped from motherland and family, ethnically mixed to quell the
potential of uprisings, and brutalized by regimes of hard labor,
the heart - the spirit - of Africa did not stop beating in the New
World. Rather, it survived and has re-emerged; changed by contacts
with new cultures and environments, but still part of the continuum
of African tradition: an African Re-Genesis. This is the first
volume in its field to emphasize the interdisciplinary temporal and
geographic comparative research of Archaeology, Anthropology,
History and Linguistics to allow us to form unique perspectives on
broader trends in the transformation and (re-) emergence of African
Diaspora cultures. African Re-Genesis confirms that regardless of
discipline, from continental Africa to Europe, the Western
Hemisphere and Indian Ocean, all Diaspora research requires a
relevance to modern communities and sensitivity to the interplay
with contemporary cultural identities. Matters concerning race and
cultural diversity, though ostensibly de-fused by the vocabulary of
political correctness, remain contentious. Indeed, the topic of
racial relations has become to the twenty-first century what sex
was to the nineteenth century - something best not discussed in
public, and better talked around than confronted directly. African
Re-Genesis strikes at the nerve of urgency that the past, present
and future globalization of African cultures, is a cornerstone of
the entire human experience, and it thus deserves recognition as
such.
Ripped from motherland and family, ethnically mixed to quell the
potential of uprisings, and brutalized by regimes of hard labor,
the heart - the spirit - of Africa did not stop beating in the New
World. Rather, it survived and has re-emerged; changed by contacts
with new cultures and environments, but still part of the continuum
of African tradition: an African Re-Genesis. This is the first
volume in its field to emphasize the interdisciplinary temporal and
geographic comparative research of Archaeology, Anthropology,
History and Linguistics to allow us to form unique perspectives on
broader trends in the transformation and (re-) emergence of African
Diaspora cultures. African Re-Genesis confirms that regardless of
discipline, from continental Africa to Europe, the Western
Hemisphere and Indian Ocean, all Diaspora research requires a
relevance to modern communities and sensitivity to the interplay
with contemporary cultural identities. Matters concerning race and
cultural diversity, though ostensibly de-fused by the vocabulary of
political correctness, remain contentious. Indeed, the topic of
racial relations has become to the twenty-first century what sex
was to the nineteenth century - something best not discussed in
public, and better talked around than confronted directly. African
Re-Genesis strikes at the nerve of urgency that the past, present
and future globalization of African cultures, is a cornerstone of
the entire human experience, and it thus deserves recognition as
such.
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