From the Paper
"This study will provide a summary of Colin M. Turnbull's The Forest People: A Study of the Pygmies of the Congo. Turnbull has a deep respect for the Pygmies of the Ituri Forest in the Congo after living with them for years, and his emphasis in the book is on life as seen, experienced and loved by the Pygmies themselves:


This book tries to convey something of the lives and feelings of a people who live in a forest world, something of their intense love for that world and their trust in it. It is a world that will soon be gone forever, and with it the people (5).


Turnbull wants to show the reader how the people themselves feel about their world, the forest, the sounds, the animal and plant life, their culture, their practices, social system and beliefs. Outsiders---even villagers who live near the forest--..."

Abstract
This is a serious look at the way women are treated in Kenya. The paper goes out to explain the various consequences and types of Female Gentalia Mutilation . It also tries to justify why the practice is still carried out through the eyes of the traditional people. . The author argues that there is a need for strong outreach, education at the grassroots and family life education: that involves the communities and addresses the main reasons to discontinue the practice. This should be done in compromise but not by attacking the practicing few.

From the Paper
"According to the Kenya demographic Health Survey (KDHS), female circumcision is the partial or complete cutting away of a woman's external genitalia. While the practice is thought to be a cultural tradition in Kenya, KDHS says its origin and underlying cultural rational is not clearly understood. It is commonly referred to as female circumcision mostly to imply that it is similar to male circumcision. However, the degree of cutting is more extreme and often impairs a woman's sexual and reproductive functions. It is because of this that the name female genital mutilation is starring."

Tags:circumscision, clitoridectomy, passage, rights, rite, womanhood, women

Abstract
This paper looks at the findings from the site Olduvai Gorge. Despite the many years since the first discoveries, Olduvai remains an extremely important archaeological site. Debate over the significance of the Olduvai artifacts continues and new information may be revealed as new archaeological analysis techniques come into use.

From the Paper
"Olduvai Gorge has been described as the most important Palaeolithic site in Africa (Bray, 1970). Excavations of Olduvai, by Drs. Mary and Louis Leakey after 1931 [although conducted by Hans Reck prior to this (Ecco Homo, 1986)] unearthed a treasure of hominid fossils and stone tools (Potts, 1988). Oduvai has influenced views on evolution and shaped our ideas about the origins of human hunting and gathering (as well as cultural learning) behaviours. (Potts, 1988). Discoveries at Olduvai also include faunal remains, living floors and what is probably the oldest known human structure (Leakey, 1971)."

Tags:archeology

From the Paper
"There are few true hunter-gatherer societies living in the modern world. One of those societies, the !Kung-San Bushmen of Botswana and southern Africa, provide a unique and provocative look into societal evolution and the behavior of pre-agricultural and industrial societies. The life of the !Kung represents a way of life that was universal for Homo Sapiens until about 10,000 years ago, or with the advent of the agricultural revolution and all it entailed. With the !Kung, modern Anthropologists are able to glean "basic human social forms, language, and human nature.".
This paper will present an overview of the !Kung Bushmen, commenting on their physical and social environment, population and health, sex roles, childhood, family and marriage, kinship, and division of labor. One initial linguistic note: the Bushmen's oral language consists of a number of clicking sounds ... "

Abstract
In this review of Tsitsi Dangarembga's "Nervous Conditions", the author of the paper shows how the theme of African identity and culture is woven through the storyline. The paper investigates the importance of the narrators and women in the book, themes and the relevance of the story.

From the Paper
"With any story, the meaning within the story does not have impact unless we care about the character. Tambu is the main character that we care about in the novel. She engages the reader into the story because we want to know about her, we want to know about her struggle and we want to know why that struggle has occurred. The only way to learn of that struggle, is to learn about the culture and so the reader, while reading the novel, attempts to understand the culture. "

Tags:Nyasha, Tambu, women

Abstract
In his ethnography "The Forest People," Colin Turnbull has done an excellent job of providing details of the different aspects of the BaMbuti. This essay gives a descriptive analysis of three cultural traits of the BaMbuti's culture from a functionalist perspective. The three topics discussed in this paper include politics, economics, and religion. There are many examples that could be included within each topic; however, for the purpose of this paper, it focuses mainly on one particular example for each section.

From the Paper
"With regards to political organization, the BaMbuti is a tightly knit hunter-gatherer tribe that has its own unique set of checks and balances. From a structural-functionalist perspective, peoples of the BaMbuti have no formal political authority; there are neither formal written laws, nor law enforcement agencies needed in the BaMbuti's relatively simple social structure. To the BaMbuti, cooperation is key concerning decisions affecting the group as a whole (Turnbull 124)."

Tags:figureheads, Belgian, Epulu, hunter

Abstract
This paper looks at the production of social memory, using case studies from NE Africa. It seeks to examine the process through which social memory is created and the uses to which it is put. It traces the differences between narratives and historical tradition as embodied both in ritual and in objects and argues that one can discern a difference between the sense of history embodied in oral narrative, which can often shift quickly in response to the demands of the present and the sense of history present in habitus.

Outline
Memories, Spoken and Silent
Speaking History
Silent Memories
Practice

From the Paper
"To understand the myriad of uses people have for social memory, it is perhaps wise to consider the uses that anthropologists have put such social memory to in the past. Cunnison (1971), in his analysis of the problematic genealogy of the Baqqara belt, notes that one of the foremost tools of the anthropologist has been the construction of genealogical lists. These oral histories have enabled anthropologists to construct historical continuities and group categories. However, these lists best reflect the local political organisation. As groups move away, and strangers are incorporated, oral genealogies change to reflect the demands of the present. That is to say, while these lists are indeed useful, they are useful not in establishing categorical group lines that reassert a sense of timeless boundary, but in understanding the contemporary social being of truth - the requirements of organisation and politics at the time the oral genealogy is taken."

Tags:geneaology, refugee, tradition, sudan

Abstract
This paper analyses five local hermeneutics from the Sudan and their relationship with Islam. It argues that to understand Islamic practice in North East Africa, it must be understood as a way of life (or rather, as a series of ways of life, the practice(s) drawn from a cultural heteroglossia), not as a religion. It looks at how in the Sudan, the relationship of communities to Islam is intricately entangled with a change in material culture and it examines the changes that Arabicisation brings. It also explores how this relationship to the outsider brings up a whole set of considerations about exteriority: interiority in these communities that helps one to see one of the characterising features of Islamic practice in the Sudan in the 20th century.

From the Paper
"The contours of the centre have often been thought to be hegemonic in Islam. Indeed, Islam may be said to be hegemonic in the sense that the sacred quality of the central texts and the necessity or correctness of reciting them in critical contexts are unquestioned. However, these enunciations, as noted in the introduction, are situated in social practice. That said, Islam does have a tendency to encapsulate or explicitly devalue other forms of thought and practice so they will be legitimated by reference to Islam. In the case studies we will analyse we will observe a tension between the necessity for other forms of thought to be legitimated by Islam, and the equally compelling need for them to remain apart."

Tags:anthropology, global, hegemony, religion, resistance, sudan

Abstract
This paper explains that, although purpose of this epic book, "Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali", is to tell a story for entertainment, it also teaches about the history of Africa, proving that Africa does have a history, and it does have culture and adventure. The author points out that the theme of religion is complicated by the references to both animal gods and magical powers and to Islam. The paper relates that the book depicts a male-oriented society in Western Africa, where women are the child care givers and tend the animals and the gardens, while men are the hunters, managers of family matters, and keepers of the structure of the house.

From the Paper
"Having more than one wife is another aspect of the gender culture in their ancient society. Polygamy was practiced amongst the kings in this book. Sogolon and her children lived in an old hut outside of the palace because the queen mother Sassouma Berete kicked them out after the king died. Against the king's wishes, her son Dankaran Touman was proclaimed king instead of Sundiata. Having many wives created a conflict when more than boy was born by more than one of the king's wives. The king's first wife was bitterly jealous and was the reason for Sogolon and her children having to go into exile. The queen mother took on almost a male gender role in this story because she wanted her son to the king."

Tags:men, women, islam, history, king

Abstract
This paper examines the construction of Africa as a ?naturally violent place? by attempting to show that such portrayals misrepresent a complex and ambiguous picture. It looks at how such portrayals form a representation that affects the social world, both in the global North and in the South. It argues that contrary to journalistic depictions, which tend to naturalise and remove African conflict to some ahistorical realm far away from the global North, the roots of many of the conflicts plaguing the Horn of Africa can be found in the intersection of the global and the local. It also examines some of the conflicts in North East Africa and argues how one of the elements critical to these conflicts is not just the weapons flows and economic interests of the Global north but the way global narratives ? of progress, of modernity ? are taken up and played out.

From the Paper
"Before examining the construction of "natural violence", it is important to consider what violence is. When confronted by Alice Lakwena, an Acholi woman from northern Uganda who was possessed by a Christian sprit known as Lakwena and started a guerrilla group - journalists employed terms like "voodoo priestess." Journalists, in being asked to report on the now, especially in a place so far from their understanding, tend to neglect history - Johnson (2003) called it an institutional amnesia. This is not simply the fault of journalists; violence, a war, has this compelling property. So great are the upheavals of war, and the apparent discontinuities they bring with them, that they can often mask the deep rooted reasons for such struggle."

Tags:economy, sudan, war, witchcraft