A01=Paulla A. Ebron
African Americans
African diaspora
Alex Haley
Anthropologist
Area studies
Arjun Appadurai
Atlantic slave trade
Author_Paulla A. Ebron
Border
Capitalism
Career
Category=ATQ
Category=ATX
Category=JBCC
Category=JHMC
Colonialism
Commodity
Criticism
Culture and Society
Curator
Dichotomy
Economic development
Entrepreneurship
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
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eq_society-politics
Ethnic group
Ethnography
Ethnomusicology
Everyday life
Generosity
Genre
Improvisation
Informant
Institution
International development
Literature
Marketing
Marxism
Masculinity
Modernity
Ms.
Music of Africa
Narration
Narrative
Nation state
Oral history
Oral tradition
Orientalism
Pan-Africanism
Political culture
Political economy
Politics
Profession
Psychoanalysis
Recitation
Renato Rosaldo
Reputation
Rhetoric
Salary
Senegal
Sensibility
Social relation
Social science
Social theory
Sociology
Storytelling
Surname
The Gambia
The Other Hand
Third World
Tour guide
Tourism
Travel
UNESCO
United States
Wealth
West Africa
Product details
- ISBN 9780691074894
- Weight: 397g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 25 Aug 2002
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The jali--a member of a hereditary group of Mandinka professional performers--is a charismatic but contradictory figure. He is at once the repository of his people's history, the voice of contemporary political authority, the inspiration for African American dreams of an African homeland, and the chief entertainment for the burgeoning transnational tourist industry. Numerous journalists, scholars, politicians, and culture aficionados have tried to pin him down. This book shows how the jali's talents at performance make him a genius at representation--the ideal figure to tell us about the "Africa" that the world imagines, which is always a thing of illusion, magic, and contradiction. Africa often enters the global imagination through news accounts of ethnic war, famine, and despotic political regimes. Those interested in countering such dystopic images--be they cultural nationalists in the African diaspora or connoisseurs of "global culture"--often found their representations of an emancipatory Africa on an enthusiasm for West African popular culture and performance arts.
Based on extensive field research in The Gambia and focusing on the figure of the jali, Performing Africa interrogates these representations together with their cultural and political implications. It explores how Africa is produced, circulated, and consumed through performance and how encounters through performance create the place of Africa in the world. Innovative and discerning, Performing Africa is a provocative contribution to debates over cultural nationalism and the construction of identity and history in Africa and elsewhere.
Paulla A. Ebron is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University.
