Medicinal Rule - A Historical Anthropology of Kingship in East and Central Africa

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.

Über den Autor / die Autorin

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.

Zusammenfassung

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...

Produktdetails

• Autoren: Koen Stroeken, Stroeken Koen
• Verlag: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Sprache: Englisch
• Produktform: Taschenbuch
• Erschienen: 30.09.2021
• EAN: 9781800732148
• ISBN: 978-1-80073-214-8
• Seiten: 328
• Serie: Methodology & History in Anthropology
• Themen: Geisteswissenschaften, Kunst, Musik > Geschichte > Regional- und Ländergeschichte; Sachbuch > Geschichte > Sonstiges; Sozialwissenschaften, Recht,Wirtschaft > Sozialwissenschaften allgemein; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, HISTORY / Africa / Central, East Africa, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Social and cultural anthropology, Central Africa, African History