Regionalkurs: Einführung in die Ethnographie Westafrikas

Dozent/in	Till Förster
Veranstaltungsart	Vorlesung und Übung
Wann	Do 8-12 Uhr
Ort	HS 118 • Alte Universität • Rheinsprung 9
Sprechstunde	nach Vereinbarung

Inhalt

West Africa is a region that fascinated many ethnographers because of its extremely high variety in natural, societal and cultural forms. It covers thinly inhabited deserts but also wetlands, intensively cultivated, as well as rapidly growing urban centres like Dakar, Abidjan and Lagos. Since the middle ages, West Africa has been the heartland of mighty kingdoms while other societies resisted any centralized rule. Today, the continuity of old types of social organisation and culture merges with modern and post-colonial life, thus creating new societal fields. This course – part lecture and part seminar, part conceptual and part ethnographic – provides an introduction to the societies of West Africa and situates them in relation to the natural environment and historical and contemporary developments in economics, politics and culture. It later focuses on two or three societies in each major region, emphasising particular societal and cultural forms and addresses specific questions of research. The course will also survey principal changes in institutions and ideologies which have taken place in rural and in urban communities up to the present. Ethnographic descriptions will also draw on the modern African nations and post-colonial societies: Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Mali.