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In contemporary Mozambique, avenging spirits may be appeased by marrying them to young women. For instance, when the spirit of a man who was a homicide victim keeps haunting the murderer’s family, ritually making it a spirit spouse turns it into an official family...

Ambiguities, this chapter argues, are present in the execution of wedding arrangements in Botswana, which, in some locations in the country, revolve around particular ritual practices that are crucial to how people are prepared for marriage. A point concerning knowing...

Namibia was one of the final African states to gain independence, a political transformation which was the outcome of a decades-long liberation struggle. The global dimension of the struggle has been duly recognised by generations of historians. As a result, archival...

In the Dogon funeral proceedings, a major song cycle called baja ni is performed in a session of at least seven hours. The texts of the chants are attributed to a legendary figure called Abire, who as a blind singer in the nineteenth century roamed the heartland of the Dogon...

The chapter surveys research into the relations among language, culture, and cognition in Africa. A leitmotif is linguistic relativity; the hypothesis that our habitual linguistic practices influence the way we categorize and express the perceptual flow of daily experiences....

This book is based on Tamia Botes’s Master’s thesis ‘Where Have the Midwives Gone? Everyday Histories of Voetvroue in Johannesburg’, winner of the African Studies Centre, Leiden’s 2021 Africa Thesis Award. This annual award for Master’s...