CiNii Books - Re-inventing Africa : matriarchy, religion and culture

This extraordinary book issues a clarion call for a new understanding of Africa. The author of the best-selling Male Daughters/Female Husbands here issues a 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 thought. Professor Amadiume calls instead for a new history of Africa, made and written by Africans. This is such a book. The book * explores how imperialism, violence, patriarchy and class-based social structures - originally imposed by colonialism - have become internalized to result in a contemporary Africa cursed with neo-colonial states. * uncovers the hidden matriarchal history of Africa which continues to empower women in political struggle throughout the continent * looks at the masculinization of indigenous African religions, effected largely by the imposition of Christianity and Islam * provides a guide to the main Afro-centric social theorists, writing a new social history of their continent. Dedicated to the diasporic African communities in their struggle to construct alternative, anti-racist and anti-imperialist epistemologies of self-representation and self-generated ideals, this is the beginning of a new vision of Africa, from the powerful voice of an African woman.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Writing Africa Part I: Rewriting History 1. The Matriarchal Roots of Africa 2. Race and Gender: Cheikh Anta Diop's Moral Philosophy 3. Theorizing Matriarchy in Africa: Kinship Ideologies and Socio-Cultural Systems in Africa and Europe 4. Women's Achievements in African Political Systems: Transforming Culture for 500 years 5. Gender and Social Movements in Africa: A West African Experience 6. Gender and the Contestation of Religion: A Historical Perspective on African societies Part II: Decolonizing History 7. African Women and Politics: A History of Transformation 8. Cycles of Western Imperialism: Feminism, Race, Gender, Class and Power 9. In the Company of Women: Love, Struggle, Class and Our Feminisms

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Re-inventing Africa : matriarchy, religion and culture

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