ABSTRACT

Contested Terrains and Constructed Categories brings together intellectuals from a variety of fields, backgrounds, generations, and continents to deepen and reinvigo-rate the theoretical and intellectual integrity of African studies. Building on recent debate within African studies that has revolved around the role of Africanists in the United States as “gatekeepers” of knowledge about Africa and Africans, this volume of interdisciplinary essays focuses on the contested character of the production of knowledge itself. In every chapter, case studies and ethnographic materials, drawn from such regions as South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, the Malagasy Republic, Angola, Ghana, and Senegal, demonstrate the application of theory to concrete situations.

chapter |34 pages

Introduction

African Studies in Contention

part One|50 pages

Challenging Modes of Thinking: Making Maps and Mapping History

part Two|148 pages

Contested Categories: Economy, Politics, and Society

chapter 3|18 pages

Structural Adjustment

chapter 4|12 pages

Poverty Profile in Sub-Saharan Africa

The Challenge of Addressing an Elusive Problem

chapter 6|27 pages

Beyond the State and Civil Society

Labor Movements and Economic Adjustment in African Transitions—South Africa and Nigeria Compared

chapter 7|21 pages

Silencing Power

Mapping the Social Terrain in Post-Apartheid South Africa

chapter 8|18 pages

Negotiating Identity in Post-Settlement South Africa

Ethnicity, Class, and Race in a Regional Frame

chapter 9|20 pages

Negotiable Property

Making Claims on Land and History in Asante, 1896–1996

part Three|146 pages

Violence of the Word/Violence Against the Body

chapter 10|24 pages

Mapping Africa’s Presences

Merleau-Ponty, Mannoni, and the Malagasy Massacre of 1947 in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks

chapter 11|18 pages

Contesting Terrains Over a Massacre

The Case of Wiriyamu

chapter 12|22 pages

Negotiating Postwar Identities

Child Soldiers in Mozambique and Angola

chapter 13|22 pages

Sex and the Politics of Space in Colonial Zimbabwe

The Story of Chibheura (Open Your Legs) Exams

chapter 15|19 pages

The Moving Frontier of AIDS in Uganda

Contexts, Texts, and Concepts