This book discusses the role of cultural practices and policy for sustainable development in West Africa across different artistic disciplines, including performance, video, theatre, community arts ...and cultural heritage. Based on ethnographic field research in local communities, the book presents findings on current debates of cultural sustainability in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Benin. It provides a unique perspective connecting cultural studies, conflict studies and practical peacebuilding approaches through the arts. The first part pays particular attention to aspects of social cohesion and the circumstances of internally displaced persons e. g. caused by the Boko Haram insurgency in Northeast Nigeria. The second part focuses on cultural policy issues and challenges in the context of sustainable development, investigating participatory approaches and bottom-up processes, the role of governments and civil society, as well as performing arts organizations and universities in policy making and implementation processes. Performing Sustainability in West Africa presents research results and new methods on the role of artistic and cultural practices in conflict situations as well as current debates in cultural policy for researchers, academics, NGOs and students in cultural studies, sustainable development studies and African studies.
This volume incorporates historical, ethnographic, art historical, and archaeological sources to examine the relationship between the production of space and political order in the West African ...Kingdom of Dahomey during the tumultuous Atlantic Era. Dahomey, situated in the modern Republic of Bénin, emerged in this period as one of the principal agents in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and an exemplar of West African state formation. Drawing from eight years of ethnohistorical and archaeological fieldwork in the Republic of Bénin, the central thesis of this volume is that Dahomean kings used spatial tactics to project power and mitigate dissent across their territories. J. Cameron Monroe argues that these tactics enabled kings to economically exploit their subjects and to promote a sense of the historical and natural inevitability of royal power.
This volume consists of multiple original comprehensive scholarship about and approaches to the history of the fortresses of Ghana and Benin. It suggests an alternative approach and view on them.
Ouidah Law, Robin
2004, 2005-10-25, Letnik:
38
eBook
Ouidah, an African town in the Republic of Benin, was the principal precolonial commercial center of its region and the second-most-important town of the Dahomey kingdom. It served as a major outlet ...for the transatlantic slave trade.
In this sensitive and personal investigation into Benin's occult world, Douglas J. Falen wrestles with the challenges of encountering a reality in which magic, science, and the Vodun religion ...converge into a single universal force. He takes seriously his Beninese interlocutors' insistence that the indigenous phenomenon known as àze ("witchcraft") is an African science, credited with fantastic and productive deeds, such as teleportation and supernatural healing.
Although the Beninese understanding of àze reflects positive scientific properties in its use of specialized knowledge to harness nature's energy and realize economic success, its boundless power is inherently ambivalent because it can corrupt its users, who dispense death and destruction. Witches and healers are equivalent to supervillains and superheroes, locked in epic battles over malevolent and benevolent human desires. Beninese people's discourse about such mystical confrontations expresses a philosophy of moral duality and cosmic balance. Falen demonstrates how a deep engagement with another lived reality opens our minds and contributes to understanding across cultural difference.
Walk into any European museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of ...origin. They do not mention that the objects are all stolen. Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes - a collection of thousands of brass plaques and carved ivory tusks depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of Benin City, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private collections. The story of the Benin Bronzes sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. In The Brutish Museums, Dan Hicks makes a powerful case for the urgent return of such objects, as part of a wider project of addressing the outstanding debt of colonialism.
The Republic of Benin struggles to find its way into socio-political modernity. The Christian churches have played various roles in this struggle. This book is an account of both the historical ...difficulties of state formation and the role the Churches have played in this process.
La grossesse et le post-partum restent une période à risque vasculaire et les modifications physiologiques augmentent le risque de survenue d’accident vasculaire cérébral (AVC). Les données cliniques ...sont limitées en raison d’absence d’études prospectives et de l’exclusion des femmes enceintes ou en post-partum des essais cliniques. En Afrique les études épidémiologiques sur les AVC dans la période de la gravido-puerpéralité sont rares, disparates avec des prévalences allant de 0,3 % à 9,8 % sur le continent. Au Bénin, seuls des cas cliniques seront rapportés. Bien qu’un faible pourcentage des femmes enceintes présente un AVC, la mortalité maternelle globale et les complications pour le couple mère-fœtus sont élevées. En dehors des facteurs de risque classiques, l’âge maternel, l’HTA gestationnelle, l’anémie, la drépanocytose, les infections et complications obstétricales sont les principaux facteurs de risque liés à la grossesse. L’hémorragie cérébrale est le type le plus souvent associé à la préclampsie et à l’éclampsie, la thrombose veineuse cérébrale étant sous-diagnostiquée. Toutes les étiologies d’AVC du sujet jeune peuvent se rencontrer, mais les désordres hypertensifs, la pré-éclampsie et l’éclampsie semblent être principalement en cause dans l’hémorragie comme dans l’ischémie cérébrale tandis que la cardiomyopathie du péri-partum est plus pourvoyeuse d’AVC ischémique. Dans notre contexte, la prise en charge neurologique n’est pas différente de celle proposée hors gestation mais demeure adaptée au terme de la grossesse et le monitoring hémodynamique rapproché en est la clé. La césarienne n’est réalisée que si l’indication obstétricale est posée. Le dépistage et la prise en charge des facteurs de risque sont indispensables pour la réduction de la morbi-mortalité liée aux AVC de la gravido-puerpéralité et un suivi de cohorte de ces femmes est la principale perspective de cet état de lieux.
PDF
