Reviews

This is an exciting but also frightening collection of articles. The central issue is how people in postcolonial Africa try to come to grips with ‘modernity’ – its premises and disappointments. The contributors come from the Africanist circle around Jean and John Comaroff at the University of Chicago, who have collaborated for some time…Together the essays give a powerful image of the creativity and dynamism with which African societies use their cultural heritage in order to deal with modern changes. The collection is all the more exciting since most contributions are based in recent fieldwork, using vivid scenes from the field. This makes them also quite frightening. Together they convey a forceful image of the depth of disappointment about modernity on the continent – of desperate struggles to participate at least to some degree in its dreams and the fierce internal tensions that follow from this.The introduction by the Comaroffs is overwhelming in the speed and riches of its ideas.

…a magnificent assembly of essays in which each effectively tackles the symbolic, historical, political, social, and economic forces that have continued to give life meaning in sub-Saharan Africa over the past century. As such this book should quickly establish itself as a landmark volume that finds a place of the shelves of all who are interested in processes of postcolonial change and what they signify all over the globe…The eight essays, written by current and former students and colleagues of the editors, [explore] ‘the extent to which modernity – itself always an imaginary construction of the present in terms of the mythic past – has its own magicalities, its own enchantments.’ As such, the essays all evince the strong influence of the Comaroffs who…have long charted a path toward analyzing the many imaginative representations of colonialism and its disastrous aftermath.

In the best tradition of the rethinking genre of anthropological critiques, John and Jean Comaroff and this volume’s eight contributors brilliantly review the notion of civil society — largely developed and utilized by non-anthropologists – from both theoretical and ethnographically grounded perspectives. Beginning with an expansive introduction to the concept of civil society, or what the editors and others refer to as “the Idea” or abstraction, they lay bare the concept in contexts that have to do as much with the West as Africa. The authors reexamine the concept of civil society, thought to be universally applicable in its scope because of its level of abstraction. They see it, however, as a Western-centric concept that breeds invidious comparisons when applied to Africa. The locations in sub-Saharan Africa vary, and the ethnographic sampling is eclectic, but several themes and approaches run through the essays: the tendency to savage and then salvage the concept of civil society, an awareness of the problems with relativity, and an acceptance of the ambiguities found in studying civil and state relationships…

…this is a wonderful book for lovers of Southern African cultures, as well as for students of classic ethnography and visual culture. There is value in these photographs on a number of levels. They are valuable as data and as illustrations of Schapera’s studies. They have considerable historical importance for Botswana, as documented by Kgosi Linchwe II in a letter included in the introduction to the book, and they provide convincing evidence that the various cultural/ethnic groups of Botswana were interacting in the 1930s as they are now. Finally, there is much value in the aesthetic beauty of these photographs, reminding us that cultures reassert their values in a wide range of contexts… The editors have thoughtfully considered the long career of Schapera to create the present volume. It is a book that is satisfying as a record of colonial times, enriching our understanding of Schapera and his subjects of study.

These spectacular photographs reveal a much more complex Schapera than his writings allow and provide a more complete and aesthetically charming supplement to his work. The combination of clear, insightful, and entertaining scholarship – written by some of the foremost anthropologists of the region – and stunning photographs makes this a highly original and important book with a wide appeal.

Isaac Schapera’s photographs magnificently capture everyday life among the Kgatla [chiefdom in the former Bechuanaland Protectorate, now Botswana] at a period of great social change through a seemingly artless focus on artifacts and architecture, dress and deportment. In their introduction, Jean and John Comaroff – Schapera’s most outstanding successors – provide a scintillating and thought-provoking portrait of Schapera as ethnographer and photographer. This splendid volume will be a most valuable resource to anthropologists and historians and a source of illumination and enjoyment to readers interested in southern Africa.