The politics of heritage in Africa : economies, histories, and infrastructures / edited by Derek Peterson, University of Michigan, Kodzo Gavua, University of Ghana, Ciraj Rassool, University of the Western Cape (South Africa).

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Peterson, Derek R., 1971- editor.

Gavua, Kodzo, editor.

Rassool, Ciraj, editor.

International African Institute.

Series:

International African library ; 48.

The International African library ; 48

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cultural property--Political aspects--Ghana--Congresses.

Cultural property.

Cultural property--Political aspects--South Africa--Congresses.

Heritage tourism--Political aspects--Ghana--Congresses.

Heritage tourism.

Heritage tourism--Political aspects--South Africa--Congresses.

Cultural property--Protection--Ghana--Congresses.

Cultural property--Protection--South Africa--Congresses.

Ethnological museums and collections--Political aspects--Ghana--Congresses.

Ethnological museums and collections.

Ethnological museums and collections--Political aspects--South Africa--Congresses.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xx, 291 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Introduction: heritage management in colonial and contemporary Africa / Derek Peterson

Heritage and legacy in the South African state and university / Daniel Herwitz

Seeing beyond the official and the vernacular : the Duncan Village Massacre memorial and the politics of heritage in South Africa / Gary Minkley and Phindi Mnyaka

Fences, signs and property : heritage, development and the making of location in Lwandle / Leslie Witz and Noëleen Murray

Monuments and negotiations of power in Ghana / Kodzo Gavua

Of chiefs, tourists and culture : heritage production in contemporary Ghana / Ray Silverman

Human remains, the disciplines of the dead, and the South African memorial complex / Ciraj Rassool

Heritage vs. heritage : reaching for pre-Zulu identities in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa / Mbongiseni Buthelezi

9/11 and the painful death of an Asante king : national tragedies in comparative perspective / Kwesi Yankah

Visions of ethnicity in nineteenth-century African linguistics / Judy Irvine

The role of language in forging new identities : countering a heritage of servitude / Mary Esther Dakubu

Folk opera and the cultural politics of post-independence Ghana : Saka Acquaye's "The lost fishermen" / Moses Nii-Dortey

Flashes of modernity : heritage according to cinema / Litheko Modisane

Conclusion / Carolyn Hamilton.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-316-25631-6

1-316-23739-7

1-316-25442-9

1-316-25063-6

1-316-25252-3

1-316-23550-5

1-316-15118-2

1-316-24874-7