In 2010, billions of naira were spent to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Nigeria's independence since 1960. More naira are to be spent in 2014 to commemorate the centenary marking the nation's birth in 1914 from an amalgamation of diverse group of peoples, languages, cultures and expectations. As the conscience of the nation, writers are calling for a deeper introspection. A hundred years after unification, the most populous African nation has oscillated from being great to being fickle,...

Ifi Adadiume contrasts the collectivist, humanist culture of traditional African matriarchal heritage with the corrupt and oppressive culture of the imperialism that is the heritage of contemporary elite-led women's organizations. Amadiume examines the activities of such organizations in Nigeria, making comparisons with those in Britain and South Africa as well as in international movements; looking at Beijing International Women's Conferences, she explores internationalis...

Now in this Essential Amadiume edition designed to bring Amadiume's groundbreaking ideas to a new generation of readers, this extraordinary book issues a clarion call for a new understanding of Africa, one made and written by Africans**.** Here Amadiume issues a seminal challenge to Western anthropologists to recognize their own complicity in producing a version of Africa that is often little more than a reflection of their own class-based, patriarchal tho...

Winner of the Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the YearIn 1987, more than a decade before the dawn of queer theory, Ifi Amadiume wrote Male Daughters, Female Husbands to critical acclaim. Here Amadiume boldly argues that the notion of gender, as constructed in Western feminist discourse, did not exist in Africa before the colonial imposition of a dichotomous understanding of sexual difference.This new Essential Amadiume edition illustra...

In this latest book by the award-winning author of the hugely influential Male Daughters, Female Husbands, Ifi Amadiume propels gender relations beyond dichotomies and discriminations, and towards a power-sharing argument in discourse, contestation and resistance.Representing the culmination of over 40 years of ground-breaking work on notions of matriarchy at the intersection of the Igbo-African universe and the Western capitalist reality, Amadiume sets forth a blueprint f...

Chinua Achebe and the Igbo-African World: Between Fiction, Fact, and Historical Representation explores Chinua Achebe’s literary works and how they communicated the Igbo-African world to readers. Engaging in the politics of representation, Achebe sought to demystify deterministic views of race and cultural ethnocentrism. While his books and commentaries have been very influential in shaping a unique and multifaceted view of the African world, some scholars have challenged Achebe’s...

Straddling disciplines and continents, Feminist Futures interweaves scholarship and social activism to explore the evolving position of women in the South.Working at the intersection of cultural studies, critical development studies and feminist theory, the book's contributors articulate a radical and innovative framework for understanding the linkages between women, culture and development, applying it to issues ranging from sexuality and the gendered body to the environm...

Bloomsbury presents Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society by Ifi Amadiume, read by Nneka Okoye.Winner of the Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the YearIn 1987, more than a decade before the dawn of queer theory, Ifi Amadiume wrote Male Daughters, Female Husbands to critical acclaim. Here Amadiume boldly argues that the notion of gender, as constructed in Western feminist discourse, did not exist i...

How did the industrialized nations of North America and Europe come to be seen as the appropriate models for post-World War II societies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? How did the postwar discourse on development actually create the so-called Third World? And what will happen when development ideology collapses? To answer these questions, Arturo Escobar shows how development policies became mechanisms of control that were just as pervasive and effective as their colonial counterparts....

Gandhi (1869-1948) was one of the few men in history to fight simultaneously on moral, religious, political, social, economic, and cultural fronts. During his time as a lawyer in South Africa he developed his strategy of non-violence: the idea of opposing unjust laws by non-violent protest, which he made the basis of his successful struggle against British rule in India. In this Very Short Introduction to Gandhi's life and thought, Bhikhu Parekh outlines both Gandhi's major philosophical i...

The Women, Gender and Development Reader is the definitive volume of literature dedicated to women in the development process. Now in a fully revised second edition, the editors expertly present the impacts of social, political and economic change by reviewing such topical issues as migration, persistent structural discrimination, the global recession, and climate change. Approached from a multidisciplinary perspective, the theoretical debates are vividly illustrated by an array o...

The history of the Mwaghavul is a long one, documented in various forms, ranging from records of administration by the colonialist, to the documentation of archaeological discoveries by white explorers and administrators, documentation and analysis of languages, oral lore and culture by linguists and the latest series of narration and documentation of various aspects of the Mwaghavul people by students and individuals. These have not been collated into a single source of information about ...