This book is a study of the interplay of vernacular and global languages of politics during Africa's decolonization.

The essays collected in African Print Cultures claim African newspapers as subjects of historical and literary study. Newspapers were not only vehicles for anticolonial nationalism. They were also incubators of literary experimentation and networks by which new solidarities came into being. By focusing on the creative work that African editors and contributors did, this volume brings an infrastructure of African public culture into view. The first of four thematic sections, “African Newspaper Networks,” considers the work that newspaper editors did to relate events within their locality to happenings in far-off places. This work of correlation and juxtaposition made it possible for distant people to see themselves as fellow travellers. “Experiments with Genre” explores how newspapers nurtured the development of new literary genres, such as poetry, realist fiction, photoplays, and travel writing in African languages and in English. “Newspapers and Their Publics” looks at the ways in which African newspapers fostered the creation of new kinds of communities and served as networks for public interaction, political and otherwise. The final section, “Afterlives, ” is about the longue durée of history that newspapers helped to structure, and how, throughout the twentieth century, print allowed contributors to view their writing as material meant for posterity.

“We will never be silent until we get land to cultivate and freedom in this country of ours” …so sang Mau Mau activists. The struggle for independence in Kenya was waged at many levels. Never be Silent explores how this struggle was reflected in the communications field. It looks at publishing activities of the main contending forces and explores internal contradictions within each community. It documents the major part played by the communications activities of the organised working class and Mau Mau in the achievement of independence in Kenya. The book contributes to a reinterpretation of colonial history in Kenya from a working class point of view and also provides a new perspective on how communications can be a weapon for social justice in the hands of liberation forces.

In this rich and multi-layered deconstruction of German colonial engagement with Islam, Jörg Haustein shows how imperial agents in Germany’s largest colony wielded the knowledge category of Islam in a broad set of debates, ranging from race, language, and education to slavery, law, conflict, and war. These representations of ‘Mohammedanism’, often invoked for particular political ends, amounted to a serious misreading of Muslims in East Africa, with significant long-term effects. As the first in-depth account of the politics of Islam in German East Africa, the book makes an essential contribution to the history of religion in Tanzania before British rule. It also offers a template for re-reading the colonial archive in a manner that recovers Muslim agency beyond a European paradigm of religion.

Taifa is a story of African intellectual agency, but it is also an account of how nation and race emerged out of the legal, social, and economic histories in one major city, Dar es Salaam. Nation and race—both translatable as taifa in Swahili—were not simply universal ideas brought to Africa by European colonizers, as previous studies assume. They were instead categories crafted by local African thinkers to make sense of deep inequalities, particularly those between local Africans and Indian immigrants. Taifa shows how nation and race became the key political categories to guide colonial and postcolonial life in this African city. Using deeply researched archival and oral evidence, Taifa transforms our understanding of urban history and shows how concerns about access to credit and housing became intertwined with changing conceptions of nation and nationhood. Taifa gives equal attention to both Indians and Africans; in doing so, it demonstrates the significance of political and economic connections between coastal East Africa and India during the era of British colonialism, and illustrates how the project of racial nationalism largely severed these connections by the 1970s.

This groundbreaking handbook provides a comprehensive picture of the ethical dimensions of communication in a global setting. Both theoretical and practical, this important volume will raise the ethical bar for both scholars and practitioners in the world of global communication and media. Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2011 Brings together leading international scholars to consider ethical issues raised by globalization, the practice of journalism, popular culture, and media activities Examines important themes in communication ethics, including feminism, ideology, social responsibility, reporting, metanarratives, blasphemy, development, and "glocalism", among many others Contains case studies on reporting, censorship, responsibility, terrorism, disenfranchisement, and guilt throughout many countries and regions worldwide Contributions by Islamic scholars discuss various facets of that religion's engagement with the public sphere, and others who deal with some of the religious and cultural factors that bedevil efforts to understand our world

The Global Handbook of Media Accountability brings together leading scholars to de-Westernize the academic debate on media accountability and discuss different models of media self-regulation and newsroom transparency around the globe. With examination of the status quo of media accountability in 43 countries worldwide, it offers a theoretically informed comparative analysis of accountability regimes of different varieties. As such, it constitutes the first interdisciplinary academic framework comparing structures of media accountability across all continents and creates an invaluable basis for further research and policymaking. It will therefore appeal to scholars and students of media studies and journalism, mass communication, sociology, and political science, as well as policymakers and practitioners.

The Swahili coast of Africa is often described as a paragon of transnational culture and racial fluidity. Yet, during a brief period in the 1960s, Zanzibar became deeply divided along racial lines as intellectuals and activists, engaged in bitter debates about their nation's future, ignited a deadly conflict that spread across the island. War of Words, War of Stones explores how violently enforced racial boundaries arose from Zanzibar's entangled history. Jonathon Glassman challenges explanations that assume racial thinking in the colonial world reflected only Western ideas. He shows how Africans crafted competing ways of categorizing race from local tradition and engagement with the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds.