African GeniusOhio University Press, 1 sty 2005 - 384 The African Genius presents the ideas, social systems, religions, moral values, arts, and metaphysics of a range of African peoples. Basil Davidson points toward the Africa that might emerge from an ancient civilization that was overlaid and battered by colonialism, then torn apart by the upheaval of colonialism’s dismantlement. Davidson disputes the notion that Africa gained under colonialism by entering the modern world. He sees, instead, an ancient order replaced by modern dysfunction. Davidson’s depiction of the sophisticated “native genius” that has carried Africans through centuries of change is vital to an understanding of modern Africa as well. |
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... seen not as points of departure but as points of arrival . In many ways this was a world of its own , a world of country values and beliefs , very much a rural world . Even the large exceptions to this rule , the crowding market cities ...
... seen as a prolonged conflict between two principles , the forces making for activity and the forces making for inactivity ' , a dialectical concept that is likewise found among the ancient Chinese . This strife of opposites , so ...
... senses that religious needs were seen as lying at the heart of social evolution. Social needs, that is, were conceived in religious terms. 'After settling in an area', Kimambo has noted of the Pare, 'each group established its sacred.
... seen, by the most purposive ritual, by a wide range of arts, and sometimes by systematic explanations of the universe. Yet all this structure of sanctioned behaviour had its foundations firmly on the ground. And the ground was that of ...
... groups, combined in a jural community, that was seen as having devised the saving balance with nature. This meant that political action was necessarily kinship action. But this in turn required that every individual must play an.
Spis treści
PART FOUR MECHANISMS OF CHANGE | |
From Elders to Kings | |
The Nature of Kingship | |
Conquest and Clientage | |
Trade and Islam | |
Power Rank and Privilege | |
The Crisis Opens | |
PART FIVE THE DELUGE AND TODAY | |
Age Sets | |
Secret Societies | |
PART THREE STRUCTURES OF BELIEF | |
A Science of Social Control | |
Of Witches and Sorcerers | |
UpsideDown People | |
Explanation and Prediction | |
The Danger Within | |
Useful Magic | |
Answers to Anxiety | |
Art for Lifes Sake | |
The Dynamics of Reality | |
From a Guerrilla Diary | |
The Great Transition | |
The Kings Resist | |
Twilight of the Old Gods | |
New Redeemers | |
The Modern Context | |
The Masses React | |
Epilogue AFRICAN DESTINIES | |
Acknowledgements | |
Notes and References | |
Select Bibliography | |
Index | |