Affect and Society in Precolonial Africa

Oral traditions, recovered burial sites, words' shifting meanings, and other residue of early African life also resonate with affectivity, but all too often our narratives of the deep African past do not capture the emotional experiences of the subjects who shared stories of estranged families...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The International journal of African historical studies Vol. 46; no. 1; pp. 123 - 150
Main Author: de Luna, Kathryn M.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Boston, MA Boston University African Studies Center 01.01.2013
African Studies Center
Boston University
Subjects:
Africa
African history
Burial
Burials
Communities
Emotion
Emotion theories
Emotional development
Emotional experiences
Emotional states
Emotions
Ethnology
Family
Friendship
Graves
Historical analysis
Historical source materials
History
History instruction
Husbands
Meaning
Narratives
New technology
Nouns
Oral tradition
Political institutions
Political power
Politics
Review Essay
Social change
Social history
Sources and methods
Spouses
Stories
Verbs
Women
Precolonial period
Africa
Society
ISSN:0361-7882, 2326-3016
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Oral traditions, recovered burial sites, words' shifting meanings, and other residue of early African life also resonate with affectivity, but all too often our narratives of the deep African past do not capture the emotional experiences of the subjects who shared stories of estranged families and jealous husbands,6 who visited gravesites carrying worn pebbles to purposefully deposit on the newly mounded earth of fresh graves,7 and who drew on familiar concepts and words to name new sources of both terror and honor.8 Our precolonial histories, which illuminate the causal power of, for example, novel technologies and political institutions in explaining historical change, might seem dry and overly instrumental to colleagues (and students) studying more recent periods or other world regions because they lack the narrative depth of human emotion.
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ISSN:0361-7882
2326-3016