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Subject Area: Africa-Kenya
Talbott, I. D.1991 0-88946-262-3 204 pages
Aims to uncover the role played by African agriculture during the Great Depression of the 1930's with particular emphasis on innovation and change. Examines the factors that prompted the colonial administration to take action to alter the nature of African farming in Kenya.
Wright, Kristina Dziedzic
2010 0-7734-3874-2 200 pages
This book employs an ethnographic approach to understand the evolution of jua kali (Swahili for “hot sun”) art forms, especially in response to the international tourism industry. The importance of ethnicity to Lamu’s jua kali artists and the ways that ethnic identity is expressed visually in their artwork offers a unique approach to analyzing processes of cultural commoditization.
Osotsi, Njoki W.
2002 0-7734-7003-4 460 pages
House-Midamba, Bessie
1991 0-7734-9754-4 168 pages
Provides insight into the issue of women in third world development processes. Examines the role of women in Kenyan society, focusing particular attention on the participation of women in economic activities and key political institutions in the society.
Ogembo, Justus M.
2006 0-7734-5722-4 220 pages
This book is about a spate of witch-killings that has been underway in Gusii, southwestern Kenya, since 1992. It integrates the testimony of participants of and witnesses to the incidents of witch-killing with other ethnographic and socioeconomic information in order to understand what led to the sudden rise of this violence in November 1992 and its rapid decline in July 1994.
The book brings into the literature on witchcraft an analysis of the interface between the global and the local that is at the crux of individual experience. The significance of this book lies in its contribution to our understanding of how, in this era of globalization, the forces of the free market that are set into motion in one part of the world are experienced and interpreted in another as the workings of the supernatural.
By focusing on collective violence, the book sheds light on our understanding of human aggression and is therefore of interest to many fields including sociology, anthropology, political science, social psychology, philosophy, and religion.
Webster, Kate L.
2010 0-7734-3801-7 244 pages
This book examines socio-cultural and gender-based barriers Kenyan secondary school girls face. Currently, research has focused on increasing girls’ enrollment rates to ameliorate the gender gap in African education. This research demonstrates that while it is important to have more girls attend school, girls today are disproportionately placed in inferior schools and confronted with gender-based attitudes that negatively impact their educational opportunities.
Akama, John S.
2006 0-7734-5801-8 400 pages
This book represents a contribution by scholars, who are primarily social scientists, addressing various aspects of the traditional history and culture of the Gusii people of southwestern Kenya. Today, the Gusii are the fifth largest ethnic group in that East African nation, but their past and cultural heritage have not been featured very prominently in recent scholarly studies. This book sets to redress this through contributions which range from a detailed summary of traditional history to an examination of pre-colonial social and political organizations to chapters which focus on such diverse topics as language, music, folklore, witchcraft, and land tenure practices. Particular attention is paid to detailing the indigenous Gusii system of education, including an account of initiation rites. This book fulfills a crucial function in setting out and analyzing the values and practices of the Gusii for the edification of contemporary readers in Kenya and outside.
Brettschneider, Marla
2023 1-4955-1278-9 344 pages
(SOFTCOVER EDITION) "The Jewish phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa continues to be rich and diverse. While the world has long known about the prestigious and often ancient Jewish world in North Africa, dynamic Jewish engagements below the Sahara are news to many. ...This work brings to the world stage indigenous Africans involved in Jewish communities in the region speaking for themselves. The bulk of the book consists of adaptions from recorded and transcribed conversations and interviews conducted throughout the region over nearly a decade." -Dr. Marla Brettschneider, Introduction I "All of the testimonies in this book are unique in their own ways. At the same time, however, we can detect several recurring themes running through most or all of them. To my surprise, many of the issues that they discuss are the same ones that more established Jewish communities face all over the world: the struggles to build community, to have a place to pray, to learn how pray and read from the Torah, to educate themselves and their communities, to access information, and to address economic and financial needs. Some confronted antisemitic attitudes and family rejection; others discussed the problems of community continuity, whom to marry, and how to attract new members." Dr. Bonita Nathan Sussman, Introduction II
Anonby, John A.
2007 0-7734-5496-9 236 pages
This book focuses on one of Africa’s major novelists, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who depicts and analyses many of the tensions associated with the colonization of East Africa by Europeans. A recipient of a Christianized education in Kenya, Ngugi became highly knowledgeable of both the Old and New Testament Scriptures and of inconsistencies between the political policies of foreign-controlled imperial administrations and their lip-service to Christian beliefs. Ngugi’s grievances with the Western world in its dealings with East Africa focus on three major issues: cultural intrusion, political domination, and economic exploitation. The chronological unfolding of these sequential matters is vividly portrayed in his novels.
Adano, Wario R.
2008 0-7734-5043-2 1404 pages
This study shows how mainstream academic thinking on pastoralism still largely ignores the developments within pastoral societies themselves, and why contrasting the mobility paradigm and sedentarisation polices is unfruitful. It argues for a redefinition of ‘pastoralism’ as a production system and as a social identity marker. This book contains fourteen color photographs.
Sold only as a two-book set.
Wambuii, Henry Kiragu
2006 0-7734-5649-X 260 pages
Taking the responses against HIV/AIDS as a political arena for the interaction between the state and civil society in Kenya, this book explores the relationship between the resulting mobilization against HIV/AIDS and the ongoing process of democratic consolidation in Kenya. Evidence from the country’s mobilization against HIV/AIDS in the early part of the 21st century reveals an explicit positive impact on the buildup of democracy in the country. This is mainly as a result of emergent institutional mechanisms in the response against the pandemic. While HIV/AIDS has been widely portrayed as a negative force to reverse political gains made in many sub-Sahara African countries in recent years, this book concludes that mobilization against this human catastrophe is inadvertently contributing to the process of democratic consolidation in Kenya. The book advances the ‘theory of democratic enrichment’ which makes the case that mobilization against an external shock can serve as an ‘enhancement’ as opposed to an ‘interruption’ for democratic consolidation.
Cotter, George
1992 0-7734-9695-5 652 pages
A collection of 4,800 proverbs and sayings showing how God has revealed his wisdom in nature through these colorful, profound and witty expressions. This work is intended to help the Oromo people preserve and understand their cultural wisdom.
Okwany, Auma
2012 0-7734-1583-1 176 pages
This book examines early childhood development (ECD) in Africa. The authors study the positive and negative cultural practices of ethnic groups in Kenya and Uganda and their influence on ECD. While emphasizing the positive, the authors argue that negative local practices such as female genital mutilation, child marriage, and child labor must be challenged because they may violate human rights and are detrimental to the well-being of children. Significantly, the authors conclude that while the forces of globalization have begun to transform education and have led to cultural dissociation in Africa, positive ECD strategies must strengthen rather than supplant the natural and local realities for children.
Wortham, Robert A.
1991 0-7734-9954-7 365 pages
Provides a historical overview of Kenya: the country, its government, its religions, and its spatial development.
Amutabi, Maurice Nyamanga
2010 0-7734-3907-2 752 pages
This book examines the economic history of Kenya from the colonial period to the present, integrating historical methodologies with those of anthropology, economics, education, geography, history, political science and sociology. the book covers topics that have been ignored by previous texts on economic history of Kenya, such as women, indigenous people (Ogiek), pastoralism, irrigation agriculture, livestock, fisheries, religion, community-based organizations (CBOs), NGOs, education and information and communication technology (ICT).