Publications

Stephen Ellis' response to the review of his book "External mission: the ANC in exile, 1960-1990" written by Hugh Macmillan.

New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa casts a critical look at Africa's rapidly evolving religious media scene. Following political liberalization, media deregulation, and the proliferation of new media technologies, many African religious leaders and activists...

This thesis focuses on liberal peace building in the DRC. The thesis takes a critical approach which emphasises local agencies and their engagements with liberal peace building. However, it seeks to bring this critique back to the institutions with which liberal peace...

ASA Online provides a quarterly overview of journal articles and edited works on Africa in the field of the social sciences and the humanities available in the ASC library. Issue 49 (2015). African Studies Centre, Leiden.

Previous analyses of the formation and composition of community-based organizations (CBOs) have used cross section data. So, causal inference has been compromised. We obviate this problem by using data from a quasi-experiment in which villages were formed by government...

This article is aimed to shed light on the Swahili-‘Ajam ī manuscripts, focusing on the major Swahili classical genre: the "utendi". Through a philological approach of the text, some critical reflections in the structure and orthography will be pointed out....

In what ways do norms and expectations about the actual processes of saving and borrowing create a disjuncture between the formal sector and indigenous experiences? Bridging this divide between every day and formal financial concepts and practices is part of the key to being...

When the Canadian company Bedford Biofuels (BB) started talks with local ranch owners in Tana Delta district (Kenya) about subleasing their land for a large jatropha plantation, they were not the first ones to come to the region for a large-scale agricultural project. Nor...

This article explores financial strategies used by smallholder farmers in the face of the challenging conditions following the economic crisis in the early 2000s in Zimbabwe. It considers the sources, circulation and importance of cash among farmers in the cash-scarce society...

Les contes présentés dans ce livre ont été recueillis chez les Kapsiki au Cameroun en 1972-1973. Ils se répartissent en quatre groups: Écureuil le rusé; Panthère, hyène et les autres animaux; La mort, la pluie et les hommes; Le monde des humains. Les contes sont précédés d'...

Rite and revenge : the taste of justice. Reciprocity is one of the main rules in human interaction, as people balance what they receive from and give to others quite meticulously, both in kind and in acts. Negative reciprocity, the proportionality of how others inflict on us...

This volume analyses the relationship between sacred space, identity, contested ownership and boundaries of the sacred in Africa and Europe, notably South Africa and the Netherlands. Contributions: Introduction: dynamics of construction of the sacred (Paul Post, Walter van...

In this chapter the author explores the notion of agency as a theory of causation, as a culturally viable way to explain "why things happen". He points out that not only "good" is attributed to agency, but also "evil". If an event is attributable to well-known regularities,...