BOOK REVIEWS: Africa

Beginning with an introduction that discusses these dual representations of Africa, as well as its geographic size and environmental diversity, Africa contains contributions from established and emerging scholars from the fields of anthropology, art history, comparative literature, geography, folklore/ethnomusicology, history, and political science. Africa pays particular attention to popular culture as an analytical lens for examining contemporary life. Unlike many introductory texts that focus mostly on electoral politics and economic development, this book devotes only two of the fifteen chapters to these issues, with a new chapter shifting the traditional language of democratization and social change to concepts of human rights in a historical framework.