The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship between labour and land in African value systems.
love this page.you are an awesome writter and I've learned a lot because of your work.For some reason african history appears to me to suffer more than anyother world region from distortions by specious claims and popular but ultimately very stupid tropes.
take ''States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control ''by Jeffrey Herbst ,the argument has so many flaws(like j diamonds book) that i struggle to believe why even today it is quoted(even in books by african authors) as a serious work in the analysis of premodern african states.would be a dream to read a sharp analysis of yours about it btw.
However,do you share my appreciation of african history beign particularly distorted or misreppresented? If so, would you agree with me that the quantity as well as the quality of knowledge production and versatility its communication by africans and afro-descendents must increase?or do you have other reasons in mind?
There are indeed a lot of misrepresentations in African history, even from well-meaning scholars, because the discipline has deep-rooted colonial foundations.
I think a lot of the research being done in the field is an attempt to overturn these colonial misconceptions, but scholars stop short of repudiating the problematic theoretical basis of modern African historiography itself. That's why we find ourselves still debating these seemingly basic concepts like whether Africans valued land or whether they were agents of their own history.
The participation by Africans and the diaspora in the dissemination of their own history would certainly help accelerate the decolonisation process, because the field is still dominated by Western specialists and institutions, some of whom are preoccupied with gate-keeping knowledge generated by Africans about their own societies.
For example, I learned that these Angolan archives mentioned in the essay were not even accessible to the very people who wrote and preserved them! They were simply locked in a Western museum as some sort of ethnographic artifact, yet they contained centuries of precious historical data.
love this page.you are an awesome writter and I've learned a lot because of your work.For some reason african history appears to me to suffer more than anyother world region from distortions by specious claims and popular but ultimately very stupid tropes.
take ''States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control ''by Jeffrey Herbst ,the argument has so many flaws(like j diamonds book) that i struggle to believe why even today it is quoted(even in books by african authors) as a serious work in the analysis of premodern african states.would be a dream to read a sharp analysis of yours about it btw.
However,do you share my appreciation of african history beign particularly distorted or misreppresented? If so, would you agree with me that the quantity as well as the quality of knowledge production and versatility its communication by africans and afro-descendents must increase?or do you have other reasons in mind?
I'm very grateful for your contribution.Thanks
There are indeed a lot of misrepresentations in African history, even from well-meaning scholars, because the discipline has deep-rooted colonial foundations.
I think a lot of the research being done in the field is an attempt to overturn these colonial misconceptions, but scholars stop short of repudiating the problematic theoretical basis of modern African historiography itself. That's why we find ourselves still debating these seemingly basic concepts like whether Africans valued land or whether they were agents of their own history.
The participation by Africans and the diaspora in the dissemination of their own history would certainly help accelerate the decolonisation process, because the field is still dominated by Western specialists and institutions, some of whom are preoccupied with gate-keeping knowledge generated by Africans about their own societies.
For example, I learned that these Angolan archives mentioned in the essay were not even accessible to the very people who wrote and preserved them! They were simply locked in a Western museum as some sort of ethnographic artifact, yet they contained centuries of precious historical data.