World Cultures

Pass down the powerful teachings of African and African American oral traditions with these 50 beautifully illustrated cultural folktales. In this captivating collection of folklore from the African diaspora, discover the stories that have been passed down through generations and continue to teach valuable lessons today through their vibrant, illustrative language. Through its 50 folktales, Roots & Legends celebrates the richness of the African and African American cultures and champions the importance of oral tradition, a practice that rose up through the dark times of slavery and oppression. Thoughtfully curated and richly illustrated, Roots & Legends features the wonder and educational lessons of cultural stories and figures such as: The Flying Africans Sukey and the Mermaid The Legend of Big Momma How the Leopard Got Its Spots Coyote Steals the Sun The Haunting of Sweet Hollow Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock And more! Divided into seven sections covering the spiritual nature of animals, people, the land and its sometimes spooky inhabitants, and more, each page is filled with timeless tales of heroes, tricksters, and everyday wisdom, and invites you to immerse yourself in the depth and beauty of African and African American folklore. A perfect choice for families interested in passing down African and African American heritage through storytelling traditions, Roots & Legends will enchant readers of all ages through its beautifully illustrated and accessible collection of folklore.

Today, the majority of the world's Christian population lives in the Global South. This textbook offers in one volume a compact and vivid overview of the history of Christianity in Asia, Africa and Latin America since 1450, focussing on diversity and interdependence, local actors and global entanglements.

The Sahara is Libya's outstanding landscape feature and is the source of most of its significant natural resources. This desert region is also extraordinarily rich in historical and cultural heritage that is in itself another valuable resource, through exploitation by Libya's tourism industry. This volume draws attention to the link between the benefits that Libya draws from its Saharan resources (oil, gas, water, minerals and tourism) and the need to safeguard and record aspects of its cultural heritage. The book also provides a summary of important developments in Saharan studies and shows how these can contribute to modern planning and development of the desert regions.

Northern Africa is dominated by the Sahara Desert, stretching across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. This book is about the people who lived around the edges of the Desert and the different ways in which they responded to its challenges, establishing networks of communication across its expanse. But the Sahara has not always been a desert. From about 9000 BC the region began to enjoy a warm, humid period allowing vegetation to flourish and wild animals to move in. Humans soon followed practising pastoral economies but with the onset of harsher conditions once more around 3000 BC the desert reclaimed its own. Since then fluctuations in climate have continued to affect the lives of people living around the desert fringes. The communities occupying the North African Coast and in the Nile Valley have come under the influence of the states dominating the Near East and the Mediterranean but those living in in the Sahel to the south of the desert have developed their own distinctive cultures. The book tells the story of the growing links between the two worlds, showing that Africa played a crucial part in the development of the Old World before it was drawn into the story of the New World.

Africa's unique and diverse culture, embedded in age-long business practices, presents an interesting proposition for advancing indigenous knowledge and building sustainable structures. Casebook of Indigenous Business Practices in Africais a collection of case studies across Northern, Eastern, Central, Western and Southern parts of Africa. Indigenous enterprises contribute to the economic prosperity of Africa and are an essential part of the continent's business ecosystem. Contributing authors to this two-volume edited work explore the inherent potential of indigenous practices in bolstering business performance and stimulating social and economic development. This first volume focuses on Apprenticeship, Craft, and Healthcare, while the second volume considers Trade, Production and Financial Services, in featured African countries. Indigenous business practices hold great prospects for economic advancement in Africa, despite the dominance of Western business methods, which, although beneficial, are yet to drive the continent's developmental agenda. By identifying and exploring the unique features of these practices, multiple actors, including entrepreneurs, policymakers, students, educators, and practitioners, are provided with context-based information that can foster social and economic empowerment across the continent. The book extends the frontier of knowledge on the role of cultural orientation, values, and traditions in achieving a more prosperous Africa through the development of indigenous business knowledge.

Africa's unique and diverse culture, embedded in age-long business practices, presents an interesting proposition for advancing indigenous knowledge and building sustainable structures. Casebook of Indigenous Business Practices in Africais a collection of case studies across Northern, Eastern, Central, Western and Southern parts of Africa. Indigenous enterprises contribute to the economic prosperity of Africa and are an essential part of the continent's business ecosystem. Contributing authors to this two-volume edited work explore the inherent potential of indigenous practices in bolstering business performance and stimulating social and economic development. The first volume focuses on Apprenticeship, Craft, and Healthcare, while this second volume considers Trade, Production and Financial Services, in featured African countries. Indigenous business practices hold great prospects for economic advancement in Africa, despite the dominance of Western business methods, which, although beneficial, are yet to drive the continent's developmental agenda. By identifying and exploring the unique features of these practices, multiple actors, including entrepreneurs, policymakers, students, educators, and practitioners, are provided with context-based information that can foster social and economic empowerment across the continent. The book extends the frontier of knowledge on the role of cultural orientation, values, and traditions in achieving a more prosperous Africa through the development of indigenous business knowledge.

The voices in this book offer a multi-perspectival approach to Africa, focusing on the skills and the knowledge underpinning visual cultural expressions ranging from Akan symbolism to embodied performances by dancers and storytellers, even re-designed models of Western cars. Educators, designers, artists, critics, curators, and custodians based both in Africa and in Europe are configuring spaces for public, private, institutional as well as digital conversation - whether through pottery or portraiture, furniture or film, shoes or selfies, buildings or books. Readers are encouraged to question how African visual cultures are both 'in' and 'of'; identifying and confrontational; post- and decolonial; preserved and practised; old and new; borrowed and authentic; composite and complete; rooted and soaring. Disciplines being engaged include visual culture studies, media studies, performance studies, orature, literature, art and design - as well as their histories. The editors Mary Clare Kidenda, Lize Kriel and Ernst Wagner represent three nodes in the Exploring Visual Cultures north-south collaborative network: The Technical University of Kenya, the University of Pretoria in South Africa and Munich Academy of Fine Arts in Germany.

How can we map differing perceptions of the living environment? Mapping the Unmappable? explores the potential of cartography to communicate the relations of Africa's indigenous peoples with other human and non-human actors within their environments. These relations transcend Western dichotomies such as culture-nature, human-animal, natural-supernatural. The volume brings two strands of research cartography and »relational« anthropology into a closer dialogue. It provides case studies in Africa as well as lessons to be learned from other continents (e.g. North America, Asia and Australia). The contributors create a deepened understanding of indigenous ontologies for a further decolonization of maps, and thus advance current debates in the social sciences.

By employing the innovative lenses of 'thing theory' and material culture studies, this collection brings together essays focused on the role played by Arabia's things - from cultural objects to commodities to historical and ethnographic artifacts to imaginary things - in creating an Arabian identity over time. The Arabian identity that we convey here comprises both a fabulous Arabia that has haunted the European imagination for the past three hundred years and a real Arabia that has had its unique history, culture, and traditions outside the Orientalized narratives of the West. All Things Arabia aims to dispel existing stereotypes and to stimulate new thinking about an area whose patterns of trade and cosmopolitanism have pollinated the world with lasting myths, knowledge, and things of beauty. Contributors include: Ileana Baird, Marie-Claire Bakker, Joseph Donica, Holly Edwards, Yannis Hadjinicolaou, Victoria Hightower, Jennie MacDonald, Kara McKeown, Rana Al-Ogayyel, Ceyda Oskay, Chrysavgi Papagianni, James Redman, Eran Segal, Hülya Yağcıoğlu, and William Gerard Zimmerle.