Medicinal Rule : : A Historical Anthropology of Kingship in East and Central Africa / / Koen Stroeken.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2018
• VerfasserIn: Stroeken, Koen,
• Place / Publishing House: New York ;, Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2018]; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Series: Methodology & History in Anthropology ; 35
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (328 p.)
• Other title: Frontmatter --; CONTENTS --; List of Figures and Tables --; Acknowledgements --; Note on Language --; List of Abbreviations of Referenced Works --; Introduction. Endogenous Kingship --; Part I. Divinatory Societies --; Chapter 1. The Forest Within --; Chapter 2. Beyond Turner’s Watershed Division --; Part II. Medicinal Rule --; Chapter 3. A Sukuma Chief on Medicine --; Chapter 4. Endogenizing Vansina’s Equatorial Tradition --; Chapter 5. From Cult to Dynasty: Nilotic and Niger–Congo Extensions --; Chapter 6. Magic and the Sole Mode of Production --; Chapter 7. Tio Shrines of the Forest Master --; Part III. The Ceremonial State --; Chapter 8. Kuba, Kongo and Buganda ‘Miracles’: Reversions in Transition --; Chapter 9. From Divinatory to Ceremonial State: Narrative Proof from Rwanda --; Conclusion. Reversible Transitions --; References --; Index
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9781785339851; 9783110998115
• DOI: 10.1515/9781785339851?locatt=mode:legacy
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Koen Stroeken.

As soon as Europeans set foot on African soil, they looked for the equivalents of their kings – and found them. The resulting misunderstandings have lasted until this day. Based on ethnography-driven regional comparison and a critical re-examination of classic monographs on some forty cultural groups, this volume makes the arresting claim that across equatorial Africa the model of rule has been medicine – and not the colonizer’s despotic administrator, the missionary’s divine king, or Vansina’s big man. In a wide area populated by speakers of Bantu and other languages of the Niger-Congo cluster, both cult and dynastic clan draw on the fertility shrine, rainmaking charm and drum they inherit.