New Books in African Studies

Today’s book is: 100 Years of Radio in South Africa, Volume 1: South African Radio Stations and Broadcasters Then & Now (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), edited by Dr. Sisanda Nkoala (with Gilbert Motsaathebe). The book focuses on South African radio stations and broadcasters in the past and present. It brings together media scholars and practitioners to deliberate on the role and influence of radio broadcasting in South Africa over the past 100 years. One of few books to consider radio broadcasting in South Africa, this volume provides a historical account of the development of the sector, theoretical frameworks, an in-depth look at key people and institutions that have shaped the sector, a critique of the medium’s role in community-building and culture making, and includes the voices of media practitioners reflecting on the importance of this medium.Our guest is: Dr. Sisanda Nkoala who is an Associate Professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of the Western Cape. She won the NIHSS Digital Humanities: Best Visualisation or Infographic award; the Western Cape Cultural Affairs Award for Best Researcher Contributing to Archival Heritage; the HERS-SA Young Women Leader in Higher Education award; and Vodacom Journalist of the Year: Western Cape Radio Features category. She serves as vice-chair of the IAMCR’s media education research section, the African Journalism Educators Network secretary-general, as an associate editor for the Journal of Communication Technology, a public representative on the South African Press Council, a member of the Film & Publication Board’s Appeals Tribunal, and as the vice-president of the South African Communication Association. She is published in journals and in The Conversation. She is the editor of 100 Years of Radio in South Africa, Volume 1: South African Radio Stations and Broadcasters Then & Now, and Community Radio, Digital Radio and the Future of Radio in South Africa. Before joining academia, she was a radio journalist.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners may also like: The Conversation article discussed in this episode on 100 years of radio in Africa: from propaganda to peoples' power The Conversation article referenced in today's episode on radio in South Africa turning 100 and colliding with podcasting and streaming The Conversation article referenced in today's episode on community radio and how young South Africans are helping shape the news through social media The Conversation article referenced in this episode on setbacks for indigenous languages learning Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Please help support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Set in Colonial Northern Nigeria, this book confronts a paradox: the state insisted on its separation from religion even as it governed its multireligious population through what remained of the precolonial caliphate. Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria (Cambridge UP, 2023) grapples with this history to offer a provocative account of secularism as a contested yet contingent mode of governing religion and religious difference. Drawing on detailed archival research, Rabiat Akande vividly illustrates constitutional struggles triggered by the colonial state's governance of religion and interrogates the legacy of that governance agenda in the postcolonial state. This book is a novel commentary on the dynamic interplay between law, faith, identity, and power in the context of the modern state's emergence from colonial processes.Dr. Akande is currently an Assistant Professor in the Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Canada and chairs the international legal history project at the African Institute of International Law in Arusha. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies as an Academy Scholar from 2019-2021. She received her Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) degree from Harvard Law School in 2019 with her dissertation, “Navigating Entanglements: Contestations over Religion-State Relations in British Northern Nigeria, c. 1890-1978” receiving the Law and Society in the Muslim World Prize. At Harvard University, Dr. Akande held the Clark Byse fellowship at the Law School and was a Dissertation Fellow and Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She also served on the editorial board of the Harvard International Law Journal. Prior to her graduate work, Dr. Akande obtained her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Ibadan, graduating with First Class Honors and at the top of her class. She later studied at the Nigerian Law School, from which she also graduated with First Class Honors.Dr. Katz is currently a postdoc in Grants Operations Management and Creative Engagement at UNC Chapel Hill. She was previously a postdoc in the History Department at Duke University, and a Visiting Assisting Professor at Loyola University New Orleans. She received her PhD in African History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Across the Green Sea: Histories from the Western Indian Ocean, 1440-1640 (University of Texas Press, 2024) by Dr. Sanjay Subrahmanyam presents a history of two centuries of interactions among the areas bordering the western Indian Ocean, including India, Iran, and Africa.Beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, the regions bordering the western Indian Ocean—“the green sea,” as it was known to Arabic speakers—had increasing contact through commerce, including a slave trade, and underwent cultural exchange and transformation. Using a variety of texts and documents in multiple Asian and European languages, Across the Green Sea looks at the history of the ocean from a variety of shifting viewpoints: western India; the Red Sea and Mecca; the Persian Gulf; East Africa; and Kerala.Dr. Subrahmanyam sets the scene for this region starting with the withdrawal of China's Ming Dynasty and explores how the western Indian Ocean was transformed by the growth and increasing prominence of the Ottoman Empire and the continued spread of Islam into East Africa. He examines how several cities, including Mecca and the vital Indian port of Surat, grew and changed during these centuries, when various powers interacted until famines and other disturbances upended the region in the seventeenth century. Rather than proposing an artificial model of a dominant center and its dominated peripheries, Across the Green Sea demonstrates the complexity of a truly dynamic and polycentric system through the use of connected histories, a method pioneered by Dr. Subrahmanyam himself.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Maarten Couttenier's Anthropology and Race in Belgium and the Congo (1839-1922) (Routledge, 2023) examines the history of Belgian physical anthropology in the long nineteenth century and discusses how the notion of 'race' structured Belgian pasts and presents as well as relations between metropole and empire.In a context of competing European nationalisms, Belgian anthropologists mainly used physical characters, like skull form and the color of hair and eyes, to delimitate 'races', which were believed to be permanent and existent. Their belief in a supposed racial superiority was however above all telling about their own origins and physical characters. Although it is often assumed that these ideas were subsequently transferred to the colony, the case of Belgian colonization in Congo shows that colonial administrators, at least in theory, were reluctant to use the idea of permanent 'races' because they needed the possibility of 'evolution' to legitimize their actions as part of a 'civilizing mission'. In reality, however, colonization was based on military occupation and economic exploitation, with devastating effects. This book analyzes how, in this violent context, widespread racial prejudices in fact dehumanized Congolese. This not only allowed colonizers to act inhuman but also reduced Congolese, or their body parts, to objects that could be measured, photographed, casted, and 'collected'.This volume will be of use to students and scholars alike interested in social and cultural history as well as imperial and colonial history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

In the 1990s, the promise of justice for atrocity crimes was associated with the revival of international criminal tribunals (ICTs). More recently, however, there has been a renewed emphasis on domestic accountability for international crimes across the globe. In identifying a 'complementarity turn', a paradigm shift toward domestic accountability in the field of international criminal justice, this book investigates how the shadow of international criminal tribunals influences the treatment of serious crimes at the national level.Drawing on research and interviews in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone, International Criminal Tribunals and Domestic Accountability: In the Court's Shadow (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Patryk I. Labuda develops a tripartite framework to analyse how states and tribunals work with, despite, or against one another in the fight against impunity. While international prosecutors and judges use the principle of complementarity to foster cooperation and decrease tension with government actors, Dr. Labuda argues that too much deference by ICTs toward states reduces the likelihood of accountability and may enable national elites to consolidate authoritarian power.By interrogating how international accountability stakeholders relate to their domestic counterparts, International Criminal Tribunals and Domestic Accountability advocates improvements to ICTs' institutional design and more dynamic interactions with states to strengthen the enforcement of international criminal law.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Just a decade ago, before COVID upended everything, tens of thousands of migrants from African countries traveled to China in search of economic opportunity. One 2012 estimate put the African population in Guangzhou alone at 100,000.When the British-Nigerian travel writer Noo Saro-Wiwa heard about this community, she decided to travel to Guangzhou and China to learn more. She met traders, drug dealers, surgeons, visa overstayers, former professional athletes, and many more trying to live, work and stay in China.Her travels are the subject of her new book Black Ghosts: A Journey Into the Lives of Africans in China (Canongate, 2023).In this interview, we talk about her experiences in Guangzhou, the prejudice Africans immigrants faced in China—and the prejudices they brought with them—and what this migration says about “south-south” relationsNoo Saro-Wiwa is a travel author and journalist. Born in Nigeria and raised in England, she writes for Condé Nast Traveller magazine, and has contributed book reviews, travel, opinion and analysis articles for The Guardian newspaper, The Financial Times and The Times Literary Supplement, among others. Her first book, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria (Soft Skull: 2012), was published to critical acclaim in 2012 and was named The Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year in 2012.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Black Ghosts. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Untold Histories of Nigerian Women: Emerging from the Margins (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023) is a curation of insightful and engaging narrations aimed at freeing women from the margins of Nigeria's history. It chronicles their protest movements against colonial administrations, including "monster" petitions on taxation and food price controls. It details a string of remarkable political landmarks which highlight women's historical credentials as nationalists, as well as their voice in early male-dominated legislative institutions. It also narrates more contemporary episodes in women's resistance against oil exploitation, environmental pollution and anger over the mass abduction of school girls. This timely preservation of the voice and agency of Nigerian women from a wide variety of colonial and contemporary documents will benefit readers interested in African history and gender and women's studies.Tayo Agunbiade is a journalist and social historian. She studied history at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and women development studies at the University of East London. She has published articles on women’s history and is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Tayo is Newsletter Editor for the Women’s History Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism (Cornell UP, 2024) answers a straightforward question: how are refugees governed under capitalism in this moment of heightened global displacement? To answer this question, Ali Bhagat takes a dual case study approach to explore three dimensions of refugee survival in Paris and Nairobi: shelter, work, and political belonging. Bhagat's book makes sense of a global refugee regime along the contradictory fault lines of passive humanitarianism, violent exclusion, and organized abandonment in the European Union and East Africa. The book highlights the interrelated and overlapping features of refugee governance and survival in these seemingly disparate places. In its intersectional engagement with theories of racial capitalism with respect to right-wing populism, labor politics, and the everyday forms of exclusion, the book is a timely and necessary contribution to the field of migration studies and to political economy.Ali Bhagat is a PhD in Political Studies (Queen's University) and works largely on the topic of global displacement in relation to racial capitalism. As an international political economist, he is interested in the intersections of race, class, and sexuality and has worked on issues pertaining to LGBTQ+ refugees in particular. His work is based in qualitative methods drawing from interviews, policy analysis, and other ethnographic techniques. Ali’s work cuts across the everyday political economy of housing, work, finance, and political belonging.Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

A total of 305,000 enslaved Africans arrived in the New World aboard American vessels over a span of two hundred years as American merchants and mariners sailed to Africa and to the Caribbean to acquire and sell captives. Using exhaustive archival research, including many collections that have never been used before, historian Sean M. Kelley argues that slave trading needs to be seen as integral to the larger story of American slavery.In American Slavers: Merchants, Mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644-1865 (Yale UP, 2023), Kelley examines the experience of captivity, drawing on more than a hundred African narratives to offer a portrait of enslavement in the regions of Africa frequented by American ships. Kelley also provides a social history of the two American ports where slave trading was most intensive, Newport and Bristol, Rhode Island.In telling this tragic, brutal, and largely unknown story, Kelley corrects many misconceptions while leaving no doubt that Americans were a nation of slave traders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Cristina Brito's book Humans and Aquatic Animals in Early Modern America and Africa (Amsterdam University Press, 2024) deals with peoples' practices, perceptions, emotions and feelings towards aquatic animals, their ecosystems and nature on the early modern Atlantic coasts by addressing exploitation, use, fear, empathy, otherness, and indifference in the relationships established with aquatic environments and resources by Indigenous Peoples and Europeans. It focuses on large aquatic fauna, especially manatees (but also sharks, sea turtles, seals, and others) as they were hunted, consumed, venerated, conceptualised, and recorded by different societies across the early colonial Americas and West Africa. Through a cross-cultural approach drawing on concepts and analytical methods from marine environmental history, the blue humanities and animal studies, this book addresses more-than-human systems where ecologies, geographies, cosmogonies, and cultures are an entangled web of interdependencies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies