Cotton, Colonialism, and Social History in Sub-Saharan Africa

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 362
Author(s):  
Leroy Vail ◽  
Allen Isaacman ◽  
Richard Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan

Urban Studies of Accra

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Grant
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Contact Points ◽  
Urban Impacts ◽  
Sub Saharan

Accra is one of the largest and most important cities in sub-Saharan Africa. The aim of this article is to assess the evolution of urban studies in Accra and its main historical and contemporary foci. Early knowledge on urban Accra is fragmentary and orientated toward European contact points and urban plans, ostensibly from the gaze of Europeans. Writings from Euro-Africans such as Carl Reindorf provide a different prism into the precolonial, indigenous, urban society, whereas most indigenous urban knowledge was situated in the oral tradition at this time. Around independence, officially appointed social anthropologists wrote about an indigenous community in Tema and surveyed the multiethnic Accra environment. From independence in 1957 until the early 1980s, social scientists viewed the urban settlement as an alien, Western intervention. Local scholarship on Accra was sidelined as the academy in a poor, emergent nation became preoccupied with the genesis of nation-state building and the establishment of viable academic departments in national universities, and growing proportions of migrants regarded “home” as somewhere else, that is, ancestral villages. In the 1970s Accra was inserted into world history and social history, and social scientists began to study residential geographies, but scholarship at the city-scale remained sparse. Engagement with world and social histories and the social sciences demonstrated that history matters, but not in linear and teleological ways. The liberalization era ushered in by structural adjustment policies (SAPs) in 1983 invigorated studies of Accra’s urban impacts and effects. Much of this research was disseminated by international scholars, as Ghanaian scholars had to contend with the negative impacts of SAPs on their own universities and households. Since the turn of the 21st century, scholarship on Accra, and African cities in general, has been increasing. Diverse research questions and a multiplicity of methodologies and frameworks seek to engage Western urban theories and other variants, undertake policy-relevant work, assess ethnic and residential dynamics, contribute to international urban debates, and advance postcolonial and revisionist accounts of urbanism. Viewed at the third decade of the 21st century, scholarship on Accra is of diverse origins, encompassing scholarship from locals, members of the diaspora, and international urbanists, and a promising tilt is local–international collaborations co-producing knowledge.

When the History Turns Stronger than the Rhetoric

2013 ◽  
pp. 118-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ullamaija Kivikuru
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Social History ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Editorial Office ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Professionals ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Definition Of

The 1990s brought radical changes to Sub-Saharan Africa. In the rhetoric, the ownership mode appeared as a crucial marker of freedom. However, neither the access to the media nor the media content has changed much. The media mode, inherited from previous phases of social history, seems to change slowly. Old modes reproduce themselves in new media titles disregarding ownership mode. In this chapter, empirical evidence is sought from Namibia and Tanzania. The empirical evidence is based on two sets of one-week samples (2007, 2010) of all four papers. In this material, a government paper and a private paper from one particular country resemble each other more than when ownership modes are compared. Bearers of the journalistic culture seem to be to a certain extent media professionals moving from one editorial office to another, but the more decisive factors are the ideals set for journalism. The “first definition of journalism” reflects old times.

Cotton, Colonialism, and Social History in Sub-Saharan Africa

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 293
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Rockel ◽  
Allen Isaacman ◽  
Richard Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan

Reproduction, Production, Social Science, and the Past: A Dissenting Review

1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. L. Cornell
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Definition Of

Social Scientists use historical data. Historians use social science concepts. The intersection of these two disciplines, history and social science, has been a vibrant source of research questions over the last fifteen years but also raises the issue of how they are to be interrelated. The search for an answer to this question has resulted in the publication of Theda Skocpol’s Vision and Method in Historical Sociology and Olivier Zunz’s Reliving the Past: The Worlds of Social History, which juxtapose the two words in different order. In Skocpol (1984) history modifies sociology; in Zunz (1985) social science modifies history. Both books are collections of articles. Skocpol’s volume contains nine reviews of the work of masters in this field along with an introduction and conclusion by the editor. Zunz’s has an introduction which reviews the literature of social history in five areas of the world: Western Europe, the United States, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and China. This review highlights the strength of Skocpol’s method and of Zunz’s commitment to analysis of non-Western societies but argues that both authors, in limiting their definition of the field to studies of production, ignore an equally vital topic for social analysis of the past, reproduction.

New Labor History in Sub-Saharan Africa: Colonial Enslavement and Forced Labor

2014 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 159-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Rockel
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Labor History ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Forced Labor ◽  
Rural Workers ◽  
Migrant Laborers ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sub Saharan

African labor history is undergoing a resurgence judging by the appearance of these three important books. During the 1990s and into the early twenty-first century, historians working in East, West, and southern Africa published a remarkable number of first-rate histories of migrant laborers, rural workers, and the emerging urban working class, notably in the innovative Heinemann Social History of Africa series founded by Allen Isaacman and Jean Hay. Other historians published fine works elsewhere. Labor history of all kinds flourished. However, with new academic trends and the demise of the Social History series in the mid-2000s, African labor history seems to have entered a decline, although studies of precolonial slavery have continued to appear regularly. It is therefore gratifying to see a number of new labor histories published in the last two or three years.

When the History Turns Stronger than the Rhetoric

2015 ◽  
pp. 117-146
Author(s):  
Ullamaija Kivikuru
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Social History ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Editorial Office ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Professionals ◽  
Sub Saharan

The 1990s brought radical changes to Sub-Saharan Africa. In the rhetoric, the ownership mode appeared as a crucial marker of freedom. However, the media mode, inherited from previous phases of social history, seems to change slowly. Old modes reproduce themselves in new media titles disregarding ownership mode. In exceptional cases such as pre-election reporting, ownership mode might have a role: government papers tend to give more support to the existing leadership. In this chapter, evidence is sought from Namibia and Tanzania. The analysis is based on two one-week samples (2007, 2010) of all four papers. In this material, a government paper and a private paper from one particular country resemble each other more than when ownership modes are compared. Bearers of the journalistic culture seem to be media professionals moving from one editorial office to another, but the most decisive factors are the ideals set for journalism.

RTS,S/AS01, a vaccine targeting pre-erythrocytic stages of Plasmodium falciparum

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (6) ◽  
pp. 533-537
Author(s):  
Lorenz von Seidlein ◽  
Borimas Hanboonkunupakarn ◽  
Podjanee Jittmala ◽  
Sasithon Pukrittayakamee
Keyword(s):  
Protective Efficacy ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Phase Iii ◽  
European Medicines Agency ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Pivotal Phase ◽  
Malaria Epidemiology ◽  
Maximum Benefit ◽  
Sub Saharan

RTS,S/AS01 is the most advanced vaccine to prevent malaria. It is safe and moderately effective. A large pivotal phase III trial in over 15 000 young children in sub-Saharan Africa completed in 2014 showed that the vaccine could protect around one-third of children (aged 5–17 months) and one-fourth of infants (aged 6–12 weeks) from uncomplicated falciparum malaria. The European Medicines Agency approved licensing and programmatic roll-out of the RTSS vaccine in malaria endemic countries in sub-Saharan Africa. WHO is planning further studies in a large Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme, in more than 400 000 young African children. With the changing malaria epidemiology in Africa resulting in older children at risk, alternative modes of employment are under evaluation, for example the use of RTS,S/AS01 in older children as part of seasonal malaria prophylaxis. Another strategy is combining mass drug administrations with mass vaccine campaigns for all age groups in regional malaria elimination campaigns. A phase II trial is ongoing to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of the RTSS in combination with antimalarial drugs in Thailand. Such novel approaches aim to extract the maximum benefit from the well-documented, short-lasting protective efficacy of RTS,S/AS01.

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