Skip to content
You are not logged in |Login  
     
Limit search to available items
Record:   Prev Next
Resources
More Information
Bestseller
BestsellerE-book

Title African realities : body, culture and social tensions / edited by Josep Martí.

Publication Info. Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.
©2014

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (277 pages) : illustrations
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references.
Contents Part I. Youth's bodies -- Part II. Gender issues -- Part III. Tradition-modernity dialectics -- Part IV. Bodies as strategies in the social arena.
Summary "African Realities: Body, Culture and Social Tensions is the result of research anthropology work carried out in different African countries, mainly in Equatorial Guinea, but also in Senegal, Cabo Verde, Benin and Ethiopia. All the different chapters of this volume address a diversity of subjects related to relevant issues, such as gender, age, social class, ethnicity and coloniality, which are indispensable for understanding current African realities. Furthermore, all of these chapters investigate the importance people place on the body and, more concretely, the manner in which these people present it to others as a common denominator. After a brief theoretical introduction about the key concept of the book -- the social presentation of the body -- the contributors analyse the results of their own fieldwork, taking as a starting point the central role that the body plays in the relationship between the individual and society. As is clearly shown in this book, the social presentation of the body matters. From a general and structural point of view it matters because of its great significance within social logics, but it also matters because of its relevant role in situational dynamics of social interaction, and because of its close relationship with the emotional registers of individuals. If the issue related to the social presentation of the body has an undoubted interest for the academic milieu, it is also true that it has great social relevance and constitutes an undeniable political concern. The policies related to the social presentation of the body serve to mark, justify, maintain or even build hierarchical relationships of social order, at the level of class, gender, ethnicity or age. Throughout the book, and from the African studies perspective, different views are offered concerning how the body, being not only medium of expression, but at the same time a site of experience and construction of the self, appears in the centre of social tensions and is an object of strategy, control or resistance"--Provided by publisher.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Human body -- Social aspects -- Africa.
Human body -- Social aspects.
Africa.
Human body -- Symbolic aspects -- Africa.
Human body -- Symbolic aspects.
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Added Author Martí i Pérez, Josep, editor.
Other Form: Print version: African realities. Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014 1443860263 (OCoLC)885014587
ISBN 9781443868402 (electronic book)
144386840X (electronic book)
9781443860260 (cloth)
1443860263 (cloth)