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.

About the author

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.

Summary

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...

Product details

• Authors: Koen Stroeken, Stroeken Koen
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.09.2021
• EAN: 9781800732148
• ISBN: 978-1-80073-214-8
• No. of pages: 328
• Series: Methodology & History in Anthropology
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, HISTORY / Africa / Central, East Africa, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Social and cultural anthropology, Central Africa, African History