The Politics of Heritage in Africa: Economies, Histories, and Infrastructures (The International African Library, Series Number 48)

"Heritage work has had a uniquely wide currency in Africa's politics. Secure within the pages of books, encoded in legal statutes, encased in glass display cases and enacted in the panoply of court ritual, the artefacts produced by the heritage domain have become a resource for government administration, a library for traditionalists and a marketable source of value for cultural entrepreneurs. The Politics of Heritage in Africa draws together disparate fields of study -- history, archaeology, linguistics, the performing arts and cinema -- to show how the lifeways of the past were made into capital, a store of authentic knowledge that political and cultural entrepreneurs could draw from. This book shows African heritage to be a mode of political organisation, a means by which the relics of the past are shored up, reconstructed and revalued as commodities, as tradition, as morality or as patrimony"--Provided by publisher Cover Half title Epigraph Series Title Copyright Contents List of Maps and Figures Notes on Contributors Preface and Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: Heritage Management in Colonial and Contemporary Africa 2 Heritage and Legacy in the South African State and University 3 Seeing Beyond the Official and the Vernacular: The Duncan Village Massacre Memorial and the Politics of Heritage in South Africa 4 Fences, Signs, and Property: Heritage, Development, and the Making of Location in Lwandle 5 Monuments and Negotiations of Power in Ghana 6 Of Chiefs, Tourists, and Culture: Heritage Production in Contemporary Ghana 7 Human Remains, the Disciplines of the Dead, and the South African Memorial Complex 8 Heritage vs Heritage: Reaching for Pre-Zulu Identities in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa 9 9/11and the Painful Death of an Asante King: National Tragedies in Comparative Perspective 10 Language as Cultural ‘Heritage’: Visions of Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century African Linguistics 11 The Role of Language in Forging New Identities: Countering a Heritage of Servitude 12 Folk Opera and the Cultural Politics of Post-Independence Ghana: Saka Acquaye’s The Lost Fishermen 13 Flashes of Modernity: Heritage According to Cinema 14 Conclusion Bibliography Index Heritage work has had a uniquely wide currency in Africa's politics. Secure within the pages of books, encoded in legal statutes, encased in glass display cases and enacted in the panoply of court ritual, the artifacts produced by the heritage domain have become a resource for government administration, a library for traditionalists and a marketable source of value for cultural entrepreneurs. The Politics of Heritage in Africa draws together disparate fields of study - history, archaeology, linguistics, the performing arts and cinema - to show how the life ways of the past were made into capital, a store of authentic knowledge that political and cultural entrepreneurs could draw from. This book shows African heritage to be a mode of political organization, a means by which the relics of the past are shored up, reconstructed and revalued as commodities, as tradition, as morality or as patrimony This book draws together studies from history, archaeology, linguistics, the performing arts and cinema to show how the lifeways of the past were made into a store of authentic knowledge that political and cultural entrepreneurs could draw from - showing African heritage to be a mode of political organisation.