Medicinal rule : a historical anthropology of kingship in East and Central Africa / Koen Stroeken.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stroeken, Koen, author.

Series:

Methodology and history in anthropology ; v. 35.

Methodology and history in anthropology ; volume 35

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chiefdoms--Africa, Central.

Chiefdoms.

Traditional medicine--Africa, Central.

Traditional medicine.

Africa, Central--Politics and government.

Africa, Central.

Africa, Central--Kings and rulers.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (328 pages) : illustrations, map.

Place of Publication:

New York : Berghahn Books, 2018.

Summary:

As soon as Europeans set foot on African soil, they looked for the equivalents of their kings – and found them. The resulting misunderstandings have lasted until this day. Based on ethnography-driven regional comparison and a critical re-examination of classic monographs on some forty cultural groups, this volume makes the arresting claim that across equatorial Africa the model of rule has been medicine – and not the colonizer’s despotic administrator, the missionary’s divine king, or Vansina’s big man. In a wide area populated by speakers of Bantu and other languages of the Niger-Congo cluster, both cult and dynastic clan draw on the fertility shrine, rainmaking charm and drum they inherit.

Contents:

Part I: Divinatory societies

The forest within

Beyond Turner's watershed division

Part II: Medicinal rule

A Sukuma chief on medicine

Endogenizing Vansina's equatorial tradition

From cult to dynasty: Nilotic and Niger-Congo extensions

Magic and the sole mode of production

Tio shrines of the forest master

Part III: The ceremonial state

Kuba, Kongo and Buganda 'miracles': reversions in transition

From divinatory to ceremonial state: narrative proof from Rwanda

Conclusions: Reversible transitions.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-80758-699-5

1-78533-985-0

OCLC:

1347246548