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Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa Charles Piot At first glance, the remote villages of the Kabre people of northern Togo appear to have all the trappings of a classic "out of the way" African culture—subsistence farming, straw-roofed houses, and rituals to the spirits and ancestors. Arguing that village life is in fact an effect of the modern and the global, Charles Piot suggests that Kabre culture is shaped as much by colonial and postcolonial history as by anything "indigenous" or local. Through analyses of everyday and ceremonial social practices, Piot illustrates the intertwining of modernity with tradition and of the local with the national and global. In a striking example of the appropriation of tradition by the state, Togo's Kabre president regularly flies to the region in his helicopter to witness male initiation ceremonies.
Confounding both anthropological theorizations and the State Department's stereotyped images of African village life, Remotely Global aims to rethink Euroamerican theories that fail to come to terms with the fluidity of everyday relations in a society where persons and things are forever in motion.
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Do They Hear You When You Cry Fauziya Kassindja, Layli Miller Bashir For Fauziya Kassindja, an idyllic childhood in Togo, West Africa, sheltered from the tribal practices of polygamy and genital mutilation, ended with her beloved father's sudden death. Forced into an arranged marriage at age seventeen, Fauziya was told to prepare for kakia, the ritual also known as female genital mutilation. It is a ritual no woman can refuse. But Fauziya dared to try.
This is her story--told in her own words--of fleeing Africa just hours before the ritual kakia was to take place, of seeking asylum in America only to be locked up in U.S. prisons, and of meeting Layli Miller Bashir, a law student who became Fauziya's friend and advocate during her horrifying sixteen months behind bars. Layli enlisted help from Karen Musalo, an expert in refugee law and acting director of the American University International Human Rights Clinic. In addition to devoting her own considerable efforts to the case, Musalo assembled a team to fight with her on Fauziya's behalf. Ultimately, in a landmark decision in immigration history, Fauziya Kassindja was granted asylum on June 13, 1996. Do They Hear You When You Cry is her unforgettable chronicle of triumph. |
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Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (America in the World) Andrew Zimmerman In 1901, the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, sent an expedition to the German colony of Togo in West Africa, with the purpose of transforming the region into a cotton economy similar to that of the post-Reconstruction American South. Alabama in Africa explores the politics of labor, sexuality, and race behind this endeavor, and the economic, political, and intellectual links connecting Germany, Africa, and the southern United States. The cross-fertilization of histories and practices led to the emergence of a global South, reproduced social inequities on both sides of the Atlantic, and pushed the American South and the German Empire to the forefront of modern colonialism. Zimmerman shows how the people of Togo, rather than serving as a blank slate for American and German ideologies, helped shape their region's place in the global South. He looks at the forms of resistance pioneered by African American freedpeople, Polish migrant laborers, African cotton cultivators, and other groups exploited by, but never passive victims of, the growing colonial political economy. Zimmerman reconstructs the social science of the global South formulated by such thinkers as Max Weber and W.E.B. Du Bois, and reveals how their theories continue to define contemporary race, class, and culture. Tracking the intertwined histories of Europe, Africa, and the Americas at the turn of the century, Alabama in Africa shows how the politics and economics of the segregated American South significantly reshaped other areas of the world. |
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The Legacies of Transition Governments in Africa: The Cases of Benin and Togo Jennifer C. Seely The revolutionary political upheavals in Africa in the early 1990s continue to have an impact almost two decades later. Drawing on original interviews, this book argues we must look to the defining period of transition, and the workings of the transition governments, to understand how politics in these countries changed since the fall of dictatorial one-party states. Transition governments leave legacies with respect to the relevant political players and their strategies, the institutions of government, and the nature of the political agenda. These legacies are apparent in Benin, which successfully transitioned to democracy, as well as Togo, which failed to democratize. |
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Admiral Togo: The Nelson of the East Jonathan Clements Togo Heihachiro (1848–1934) was born into a feudal society that had withdrawn into seclusion for 250 years. As a teenage samurai, he witnessed the destruction wrought upon his native land by British warships. As the legendary "Silent Admiral," he was at the forefront of innovations in warfare, pioneering the Japanese use of modern gunnery and wireless communication. Togo is best known as the "Nelson of the East" for his resounding victory over the tsar’s navy in the Russo-Japanese War, but he also lived a remarkable life, studying at a British maritime college and witnessing the Sino-French War, the Hawaiian Revolution, and the Boxer Uprising. After his retirement, he was appointed to oversee the education of Emperor Hirohito. This new biography spans Japan’s sudden, violent leap out of its self-imposed isolation and into the twentieth century. Delving beyond Togo’s finest hour at the Battle of Tsushima, it portrays the life of a diffident Japanese sailor in Victorian Britain; his reluctant celebrity in America, where he was laid low by Boston cooking and welcomed by his biggest fan, Theodore Roosevelt; his role in forgotten wars over the short-lived Republics of Ezo and Formosa; and the accumulation of peacetime experience that forged a wartime hero. Jonathan Clements studied Chinese and Japanese at the University of Leeds before receiving a master’s degree from the University of Stirling. He has written books on many prominent figures in Asian history, including Marco Polo, Chairman Mao, Confucius, and the Japan volume in the Makers of the Modern World series on Prince Saionji. |
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The Village of Waiting George Packer Stationed as a Peace Corps instructor in the village of Lavie in Togo, George Packer describes the life of villagers for whom catastrophe is a familiar theme. The essays and reviews of George Packer have appeared in "The New York Times Book Review", "The Nation" and "Dissent". |
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An African in Greenland (Ulverscroft Large Print Series) Tete-Michel Kpomassie Tété-Michel Kpomassie was a teenager in Togo when he discovered a book about Greenland—and knew that he must go there. Working his way north over nearly a decade, Kpomassie finally arrived in the country of his dreams. This brilliantly observed and superbly entertaining record of his adventures among the Inuit is a testament both to the wonderful strangeness of the human species and to the surprising sympathies that bind us all. |
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Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War Charles Piot Since the end of the cold war, Africa has seen a dramatic rise in new political and religious phenomena, including an eviscerated privatized state, neoliberal NGOs, Pentecostalism, a resurgence in accusations of witchcraft, a culture of scamming and fraud, and, in some countries, a nearly universal wish to emigrate. Drawing on fieldwork in Togo, Charles Piot suggests that a new biopolitics after state sovereignty is remaking the face of one of the world’s poorest regions.
In a country where playing the U.S. Department of State’s green card lottery is a national pastime and the preponderance of cybercafés and Western Union branches signals a widespread desire to connect to the rest of the world, Nostalgia for the Future makes clear that the cultural and political terrain that underlies postcolonial theory has shifted. In order to map out this new terrain, Piot enters into critical dialogue with a host of important theorists, including Agamben, Hardt and Negri, Deleuze, and Mbembe. The result is a deft interweaving of rich observations of Togolese life with profound insights into the new, globalized world in which that life takes place. |
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Combate-Naval 3: La Batalla de Tsushima (1905) (en español) (Spanish Edition) Victor Aguilar-Chang Este es el tercer libro de la serie Combate-Naval, en el cual se explica la evolución de las batallas navales y los barcos desde mediados del siglo XIX hasta principios del siglo XX. En ellas se dan detalles de las batallas de Lissa (1866) y el río Yalu (1894) y la totalidad de las acciones navales en la Guerra Ruso-Japonesa (1904-1905).
Toda la serie de siete libros se centra en la evolución de las naves de guerra, sus armas, y las tácticas usadas en batalla. En el primero de los libros ilustraremos dicha evolución explicando como peleaban las naves conocidas como galeras; a partir de ese libro se pasara a los barcos impulsados por velas, luego seguiré con las naves impulsadas por motores de combustión interna, y analizaremos batallas y campañas como la que involucró a la Armada Invencible, Trafalgar, Tsushima, Jutlandia, Midway y la Guerra de las Malvinas.
Siempre muchas gracias, y esperando que les gusten mis libros,
Victor Aguilar-Chang |
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Admiral Togo Arthur Lloyd This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. |