Medicinal Rule : A Historical Anthropology of Kingship in East and Central Africa Paperback / softback
by Koen Stroeken
Part of the Methodology & History in Anthropology series
Paperback / softback
Description
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.
Information
-
Out of stock
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:328 pages
- Publisher:Berghahn Books
- Publication Date:17/09/2021
- Category:
- ISBN:9781800732148
Other Formats
- Hardback from £74.65
Information
-
Out of stock
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:328 pages
- Publisher:Berghahn Books
- Publication Date:17/09/2021
- Category:
- ISBN:9781800732148
