The Politics of Heritage in Africa: Economies, Histories, and Infrastructures (The International African Library, Series Number 48) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1107477476 ISBN 13: 9781107477476

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2017

Synopsis

Heritage work has had a uniquely wide currency in Africa's politics. Secure within the pages of books, encoded in legal statutes, encased in glass display cases and enacted in the panoply of court ritual, the artefacts produced by the heritage domain have become a resource for government administration, a library for traditionalists and a marketable source of value for cultural entrepreneurs. The Politics of Heritage in Africa draws together disparate fields of study - history, archaeology, linguistics, the performing arts and cinema - to show how the lifeways of the past were made into capital, a store of authentic knowledge that political and cultural entrepreneurs could draw from. This book shows African heritage to be a mode of political organisation, a means by which the relics of the past are shored up, reconstructed and revalued as commodities, as tradition, as morality or as patrimony.

About this title

Book Description:

The Politics of Heritage in Africa draws together studies from history, archaeology, linguistics, the performing arts and cinema to show how the lifeways of the past were made into a store of authentic knowledge that political and cultural entrepreneurs could draw from. This book shows African heritage to be a mode of political organisation.

About the Author:

Derek Peterson is Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He has edited several books, including Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (2009), and has authored Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival (2012).

Kodzo Gavua is Associate Professor of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon. He has edited A Handbook of Eweland: The Northern Ewes in Ghana (2000) and is co-editor of Intercultural Perspectives on Ghana (2005).

Ciraj Rassool is Professor of History and director of the African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studies at the University of the Western Cape. He co-authored and co-edited several books, including Recalling Community in Cape Town: Creating and Curating the District Six Museum (2001) and Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations (2006).

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1107477476
• ISBN 13: 9781107477476
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 313
• Editor: Peterson Derek R., Gavua Kodzo, Rassool Ciraj