Different paths toward identity in Africa

Abstract

The four books under review can be considered case studies about the different aspects of identity creation and maintenance among selected groups of people in various African areas. Every one of those books inspects a similar phenomenon, but each examines it from a different perspective. The books discuss complicated and everchanging relations among individuals and their own bodies, group identity, history, institutions, ecology, and their relations toward space. What unites those books is their interest in the recent history of selected populations, and especially in practices, which helped those groups to sustain their sense of identity throughout turbulent phases of their history.