An analysis of the ties between culture and every aspect of African
life, using Africa's past to explain present situations.
This book focuses on the modern cultures of Africa, from the
consequences of the imposition of Western rule to the current struggles
to define national identities in the context of neo-liberal economic
policies and globalization.The book argues that it is against the
backdrop of foreign influences that Africa has defined for itself
notions of identity and development. African cultures have been evolving
in response to change, and in other ways solidly rooted in a shared
past. The book successfully deconstructs the last one hundred and fifty
years of cultures that have been disrupted, replaced, and resurrected.
The Power of African Cultures challenges many preconceived notions, such
as male dominance and female submission, the supposed unity of ethnic
groups, and contemporary Western stereotypes of Africans.
It also shows the dynamism of African cultures to adapt to foreign
imposition: even as colonial rule forced the adoption of foreign
institutions and cultures, African cultures appropriated these elements.
Traditions were reworked, symbols redefined, and the past situated in
contemporary problems in order to accommodate the modern era.
Toyin Falola is a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and Fellow
of the Historical Society of Nigeria. He is the recipient of the 2006
Cheikh Anta Diop Award for Exemplary Scholarship in AfricanStudies, and
the 2008 Quintessence Award by the Africa Writers Endowment. He holds an
honorary doctorate from Monmouth University and he is University
Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin
where heis also the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the
Humanities. His books include Nationalism and African Intellectuals and
Violence in Nigeria, both from the University of Rochester Press.
