New Books in African Studies

Most of the authors I’ve interviewed for this show have addressed episodes in the past, campaigns of mass violence that occurred long ago, often well-before the author was born. Today’s show is different. In his book Genocide by Attrition: The Nuba Mountains of Sudan (Transaction Publishers, 2012), Samuel Totten addresses the violence against the people of the Nuba Mountains of the Sudan.  This violence was part of a broader civil war and unrest in the Sudan in the 1980s and 90s.  Totten makes a convincing case that, in the Nuba, it reached a level reasonably labeled genocidal.  To demonstrate this, Totten provides a succinct but thorough history of the conflict. But the heart of the book is a series of interviews with victims of the tragedy.  Totten collected the interviews himself and uses them to demonstrate the nature and consequences of the conflict. Our interview won’t stop with the book, however, for conflict has recently broken out again in the region.  Scholars differ about how to label the new violence (Totten himself prefers to avoid calling the new fighting genocidal).  But there’s no question many of the human tragedies of the 80s and 90s have reemerged.  Totten has written extensively about this new conflict.  We’ll use of one these articles, from the recent issue of Genocide Studies International, as the basis for our discussion of current events. Totten has been active in the field of genocide studies since its inception and brings an enormous wealth of information and passion to the subject.  I trust the interview will convey his commitment to his discipline and to the victims of the violence he studies. Also.  I talked with Sam this week and he tells me he’s just finished a major revision of the book we discussed in this interview, almost doubling its length.  The second edition will presumably be out soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Donovan Chau is the author of Exploiting Africa: The Influence of Maoist China in Algeria, Ghana, and Tanzania (Naval Institute Press, 2014). Chau is an associate professor of political science at California State University. Chau examines China’s role in Algeria, Ghana, and Tanzania from the 1950s to the 1970s. China used its limited diplomatic, intelligence, and economic means to shape events and to exploit its relationships to gain lasting influence on the continent. Chau argues that it is critical to understand the nature and character of China’s historical actions in Africa in order to properly grasp the nation’s current and future policies. Rather than merely looking forward, he argues that we must look backward to comprehend the true nature of China in Africa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

July 2011 saw that rarest of events – an attempt to resolve a conflict in Africa by the redrawing of borders. It saw the birth of South Sudan as a fully fledged country after decades of conflict going back to the days of independence. It is obviously far too early to say whether this radical surgery on Sudan has been a success, and fighting has continued in various ways over the last three years, including between Juba and Khartoum. But, as James Copnall‘s terrific book A Poisonous Thorn in Our Hearts: Sudan and South Sudan’s Bitter and Incomplete Divorce (Hurst, 2014) suggests, it is not too early to see how this momentous event has affected the lives of many of those in both of the Sudans. James’ approach, no doubt echoing the storytelling that he did as the BBC’s Khartoum correspondent, has been to pick out a handful of people on both sides of the border – including a tea seller, nomads, and a businessman – and ask what the changes have meant to them. As well as giving the redrawing of an international border a human face (or several) this also teases out some of the big issues with the subject, not least the continued interconnectedness of the Sudans. It also, I am pleased to say, makes this a particularly enjoyable book to read, as well as an informative one, and one that I recommend without hesitation to anybody interested in Africa, and not just those looking at Sudan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

This spring, I taught a class loosely called “The Holocaust through Primary Sources” to a small group of selected students. I started one class by asking them the deceptively simple question “When did the Holocaust end?” The first consensus answer was “1945.” After some discussion, the students changed their answer. The new consensus was simple. It hasn’t yet. This came to mind when reading Susan Thomson‘s powerful new book Whispering Truth to Power: Everyday Resistance to Reconciliation in Postgenocide Rwanda (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013). While writing the book,  Thomson talked at length with a variety of ‘ordinary’ people in Rwanda.  Their stories remind us that recovery, both societal and personal, from the events of 1994, has been both halting and problematic.  Her account, like that of Jennie Burnet, also draws our attention to the ways governments’ efforts to shape and reshape cultures of remembrance impact individuals decades after violence is over. With historians and others paying more and more attention to the aftermaths of mass violence, Thomson’s book sheds light both on issues specific to Rwanda and more generally to the history of remembrance and reconciliation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Abena Dove Osseo-Asare‘s wonderful new book is a thoughtful, provocative, and balanced account of the intersecting histories and practices of drug research in modern Ghana, South Africa, and Madagascar. Bitter Roots: The Search for Healing Plants in Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2014) tells the stories of six plants, all sourced in African countries, that competing groups of plant specialists have tried to transform into pharmaceuticals since the 1880s. The leaves and roots and seeds of the book’s narrative collectively map the contours of a story that emerges from a crucial and germinal tension: on the one hand, much of the history of the plant sciences in these African spaces is motivated by a race for patents and scientific credit; at the same time, the mobility of plants across the borders of Osseo-Asare’s study has complicated efforts to assign priority of discovery to individuals or groups, and in fact challenges the very notion of a “traditional” or “indigenous” body of knowledge in the first place. Simultaneously a carefully situated ethnography and a history informed by a material archive that encompasses pages and petals, the book explores that tension in a critical assessment of what it means to talk about “African” science or “local” knowledge. Bitter Roots will deservedly have a wide audience in African studies, science studies, and the histories of medicine, pharmacy, and botany. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Professor Sean D. Murphy is the Patricia Roberts Harris Research Professor of Law at George Washington University and co-author of the book Litigating War: Mass Civil Injury and the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission (Oxford University Press, 2013) with Won Kidane, Associate Professor of Law at the Seattle University Law School, and Thomas R. Snider, an international arbitrator at Greenberg Taurig. Their book goes to the heart and intricacies of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission. Its analysis and comprehensiveness is certainly insightful and is a must-read for anyone wanting to learn about the commission and its context.  Professor Murphy discusses with us some of the contents of the book, providing details on the war that occasioned the commission, the commission’s establishment, its jurisdiction and other very pertinent issues relating to the commission’s work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

What is the interplay between the physical human body and the body politic? This question is at the heart of Ellen J. Amster‘s Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877-1956 (University of Texas Press, 2013). In this pioneering, interdisciplinary study, Professor Amster explores the French campaign to colonize Morocco through medicine. It is through medicine and medical encounters that Amster reveals competing ideas of “scientific paradigm (cosmologies), knowledge systems (hygiene and medical theory), and the technologies of physical intervention (therapeutics)” (p. 2) between the colonizing French positivists and the Moroccan populace. Amster’s breadth of expertise in the fields of medical history, Moroccan/North African history, the history of French colonization, the study of Islam and Sufism, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy is equally matched to the depth in which she explores these topics throughout the six chapters of her work. Each chapter explores a unique encounter, or more often clash, between the French and the Moroccan. From Sufi saints in the first chapter to government hygiene initiatives in the fourth, Amster is meticulous and exhaustive with her source material. Even more distinctive is her use of oral narratives. Scholars interested in the role of women as medical practitioners will greatly benefit from Amster’s exploration of the qabla (midwife) in the fifth chapter. Gradually, Amster demonstrates that French attempts to “modernize” Morocco were in fact the very seeds that led to Moroccan ideas of independence and nationhood. This work will have a tremendous impact on many fields and hopefully give rise to further interdisciplinary work in the fields of Islam, North African and Moroccan history, and medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Host Jonathan Judaken speaks with Xolela Mangcu, biographer of Anti-Apartheid leader Steve Biko, about the life and murder of Steve Biko, as well as the struggle for equality in South Africa under Apartheid rule, and how it relates to the Civil Rights Movement in America.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

In our fast-paced world, it is easy to move from one crisis to another. Conflicts loom in rapid succession, problems demand solutions (or at least analysis) and impending disasters require a response. It is all we can do to pay attention to the present moment. Lingering on the consequences of the past seems to take too much of our finite attention. Jennie Burnet‘s fantastic new book Genocide Lives in Us: Women, Memory and Silence in Rwanda (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), offers a useful corrective to this fascination with the immediate. Jennie is interested primarily in what it means to live in a society ruptured by violence. She writes about how people try to speak, or not speak, about the killing that destroyed their families or those of their neighbors. She reflects on how the government’s decision to try to forestall future violence by eliminating ethnic categories affects individuals’ efforts to shape their own identity and self-understanding. She analyzes the way practices of memorialization reflect changing ways of understanding and narrating past atrocities. And she allows her subjects to share the challenges of living in a world where the past is always present. Jennie, both in print and in the interview, is thoughtful, articulate and compassionate. I hope the interview gives you a taste of the richness of her book. Genocide Lives in Us won the 2013 Elliot Skinner Book Award from the Association for Africanist Anthropology. It also received an honorable mention for the 2013 Melville J. Herskovits Award from the African Studies Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Early modern European imperialism is really pretty easy to understand. Spain, Portugal, England, France, Russia and the rest were ruled by people whose business was war. They were conquerors, and conquering was what they did. So, when they attacked and subdued vast stretches of the world, they did so without regret or second-thought. All that changed after French Revolution. France was not, ostensibly at least, ruled by people whose business was war. Yet, even for the French republicans, imperialism remained attractive. And so the question was put: how does a republican state “do” imperialism? In her excellent book By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria (Cornell University Press, 2011), Jennifer Sessions tells us how with reference to the French conquest and colonization of Algeria. The answer the French gave was strikingly simple: you make you imperial subjects into citizens and your imperial territories part of the mother country. That was the theory, at least. Sessions shows us how it worked out–or didn’t work out–in practice. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies