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Teaching Africa introduces innovative strategies for teaching
about Africa. The contributors address misperceptions about Africa
and Africans, incorporate the latest technologies of teaching and
learning, and give practical advice for creating successful lesson
plans, classroom activities, and study abroad programs. Teachers in
the humanities, sciences, and social sciences will find helpful
hints and tips on how to bridge the knowledge gap and motivate
understanding of Africa in a globalizing world.
Africa supplies the majority of the world's diamonds, yet consumers
generally know little about the origins and history of these
precious stones beyond sensationalized media accounts of so-called
blood diamonds.
"Stones of Contention" explores the major developments in the
remarkable history of Africa's diamonds, from the first stirrings
of international interest in the continent's mineral wealth in the
first millennium A.D. to the present day. In the European colonial
period, the discovery of diamonds in South Africa ushered in an era
of unprecedented greed during which monopolistic enterprises
exploited both the mineral resources and the indigenous workforce.
In the aftermath of World War II, the governments of newly
independent African states, both democratic and despotic, joined
industry giant De Beers and other corporations to oversee and
profit from mining activity on the continent.
The book also considers the experiences of a wide array of
Africans--from informal artisanal miners, company mineworkers, and
indigenous authorities to armed rebels, mining executives, and
premiers of mineral-rich states--and their relationships to the
stones that have the power to bring both wealth and misery. With
photos and maps, Stones of Contention illustrates the scope and
compexity of the African diamond trade as well as its impact on
individuals and societies.
Alluring Opportunities examines the lives of African laborers in
the tourism industry in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique and the
social ascension that many of these workers achieved in spite of
demanding conditions. From the origin of the colonial period until
its end in 1975, the tourism industry developed on the backs of
these laborers and ultimately became an important source of foreign
exchange for Portugal. Todd Cleveland explores the daily
experiences of local tourism workers in the genesis and expansion
of this vital industry with an analytical utility that transcends
Africa's borders by complicating the narrative established and
reinforced by an expansive body of literature that stresses the
exploitation of indigenous tourism workers. He argues that just as
foreign tourists embraced the opportunity to travel to various
locations in Mozambique, so too did many Indigenous laborers seize
opportunities for employment in the tourism industry in an effort
to realize social mobility via both the steady wages that they
earned and their daily interactions with sojourning clientele.
Alluring Opportunities reconstructs these workers' lives,
highlighting their critical contributions to the local industry,
while also prompting a reconsideration of Indigenous labor and
social mobility in colonial Africa. As a result, Cleveland reveals
new ways of thinking, more broadly, about the ways that tourism
shapes processes of empire, interracial interactions, and power
relations.
These groundbreaking essays demonstrate how Africans past and
present have utilized sports to forge complex identities and shape
Africa's dynamic place in the world. Since the late nineteenth
century, modern sports in Africa have both reflected and shaped
cultural, social, political, economic, generational, and gender
relations on the continent. Although colonial powers originally
introduced European sports as a means of "civilizing" indigenous
populations and upholding then current notions of racial
hierarchies and "muscular Christianity," Africans quickly
appropriated these sporting practices to fulfill their own varied
interests. This collection encompasses a wide range of topics,
including women footballers in Nigeria, Kenya's world-class
long-distance runners, pitches and stadiums in communities large
and small, fandom and pay-to-watch kiosks, the sporting diaspora,
sports pedagogy, sports as resistance and as a means to forge
identity, sports heritage, the impact of politics on sports, and
sporting biography.
Diamonds in the Rough explores the lives of African laborers on
Angola's diamond mines from the commencement of operations in 1917
to the colony's independence from Portugal in 1975. The mines were
owned and operated by the Diamond Company of Angola, or Diamang,
which enjoyed exclusive mining and labor concessions granted by the
colonial government. Through these monopolies, the company became
the most profitable enterprise in Portugal's African empire. After
a tumultuous initial period, the company's mines and mining
encampments experienced a remarkable degree of stability, in
striking contrast to the labor unrest and ethnic conflicts that
flared in other regions. Even during the Angolan war for
independence (1961-75), Diamang's zone of influence remained
comparatively untroubled. Todd Cleveland explains that this
unparalleled level of quietude was a product of three factors:
African workers' high levels of social and occupational commitment,
or "professionalism"; the extreme isolation of the mining
installations; and efforts by Diamang to attract and retain scarce
laborers through a calculated paternalism. The company's offer of
decent accommodations and recreational activities, as well as the
presence of women and children, induced reciprocal behavior on the
part of the miners, a professionalism that pervaded both the social
and the workplace environments. This disparity between the
harshness of the colonial labor regime elsewhere and the relatively
agreeable conditions and attendant professionalism of employees at
Diamang opens up new ways of thinking about how Africans in
colonial contexts engaged with forced labor, mining capital, and
ultimately, each other.
An engaging social history of foreign tourists' dreams, the African
tourism industry's efforts to fulfill them, and how both sides
affect each other. Since the nineteenth century, foreign tourists
and resident tourism workers in Africa have mutually relied upon
notions of exoticism, but from vastly different perspectives. Many
of the countless tourists who have traveled to the African
continent fail to acknowledge or even realize that skilled African
artists in the tourist industry repeatedly manufacture "authentic"
experiences in order to fulfill foreigners' often delusional, or at
least uninformed, expectations. These carefully nurtured and
controlled performances typically reinforce tourists' reductive
impressions--formed over centuries--of the continent, its peoples,
and even its wildlife. In turn, once back in their respective
homelands, tourists' accounts of their travels often substantiate,
and thereby reinforce, prevailing stereotypes of "exotic" Africa.
Meanwhile, Africans' staged performances not only impact their own
lives, primarily by generating remunerative opportunities, but also
subject the continent's residents to objectification,
exoticization, and myriad forms of exploitation.
These groundbreaking essays demonstrate how Africans past and
present have utilized sports to forge complex identities and shape
Africa's dynamic place in the world. Since the late nineteenth
century, modern sports in Africa have both reflected and shaped
cultural, social, political, economic, generational, and gender
relations on the continent. Although colonial powers originally
introduced European sports as a means of "civilizing" indigenous
populations and upholding then current notions of racial
hierarchies and "muscular Christianity," Africans quickly
appropriated these sporting practices to fulfill their own varied
interests. This collection encompasses a wide range of topics,
including women footballers in Nigeria, Kenya's world-class
long-distance runners, pitches and stadiums in communities large
and small, fandom and pay-to-watch kiosks, the sporting diaspora,
sports pedagogy, sports as resistance and as a means to forge
identity, sports heritage, the impact of politics on sports, and
sporting biography.
Teaching Africa introduces innovative strategies for teaching
about Africa. The contributors address misperceptions about Africa
and Africans, incorporate the latest technologies of teaching and
learning, and give practical advice for creating successful lesson
plans, classroom activities, and study abroad programs. Teachers in
the humanities, sciences, and social sciences will find helpful
hints and tips on how to bridge the knowledge gap and motivate
understanding of Africa in a globalizing world.
With Following the Ball, Todd Cleveland incorporates labor, sport,
diasporic, and imperial history to examine the extraordinary
experiences of African football players from Portugal’s African
colonies as they relocated to the metropole from 1949 until the
conclusion of the colonial era in 1975. The backdrop was
Portugal’s increasingly embattled Estado Novo regime, and its
attendant use of the players as propaganda to communicate the
supposed unity of the metropole and the colonies. Cleveland zeroes
in on the ways that players, such as the great Eusébio, creatively
exploited opportunities generated by shifts in the political and
occupational landscapes in the waning decades of Portugal’s
empire. Drawing on interviews with the players themselves, he shows
how they often assumed roles as social and cultural intermediaries
and counters reductive histories that have depicted footballers as
mere colonial pawns. To reconstruct these players’ transnational
histories, the narrative traces their lives from the informal
soccer spaces in colonial Africa to the manicured pitches of
Europe, while simultaneously focusing on their off-the-field
challenges and successes. By examining this multi-continental space
in a single analytical field, the book unearths structural and
experiential consistencies and contrasts, and illuminates the
components and processes of empire.
Diamonds in the Rough explores the lives of African laborers on
Angola's diamond mines from the commencement of operations in 1917
to the colony's independence from Portugal in 1975. The mines were
owned and operated by the Diamond Company of Angola, or Diamang,
which enjoyed exclusive mining and labor concessions granted by the
colonial government. Through these monopolies, the company became
the most profitable enterprise in Portugal's African empire. After
a tumultuous initial period, the company's mines and mining
encampments experienced a remarkable degree of stability, in
striking contrast to the labor unrest and ethnic conflicts that
flared in other regions. Even during the Angolan war for
independence (1961-75), Diamang's zone of influence remained
comparatively untroubled. Todd Cleveland explains that this
unparalleled level of quietude was a product of three factors:
African workers' high levels of social and occupational commitment,
or "professionalism"; the extreme isolation of the mining
installations; and efforts by Diamang to attract and retain scarce
laborers through a calculated paternalism. The company's offer of
decent accommodations and recreational activities, as well as the
presence of women and children, induced reciprocal behavior on the
part of the miners, a professionalism that pervaded both the social
and the workplace environments. This disparity between the
harshness of the colonial labor regime elsewhere and the relatively
agreeable conditions and attendant professionalism of employees at
Diamang opens up new ways of thinking about how Africans in
colonial contexts engaged with forced labor, mining capital, and
ultimately, each other.
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