First Published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Post-colonial South Asia and Africa invite comparison: along with their political boundaries, they inherited from colonial regimes administrative languages, a cluster of sovereign state institutions and modern economic nuclei. When they became independent, South Asian and African states were - for all their diversity - thrust into a common position in the international system, and embarked on a common history as 'emergent', 'non-aligned', 'developing nations'. This is the first book to offer a single-volume comparative history of postcolonial South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa in the first generation since independence. South Asia and Africa After Independence draws together the political and economic history of these two regions, assessing the colonial impact, establishing breaks and continuities, and highlighting their diversity and interplay. Waites sets out a framework for analysing the first generation of post-colonial history, offering an interpretation of 'post-colonialism' as a historical phenomenon, and provocatively challenging us to re-think this term in relation to South Asian and African history. This book is an important reference for the study of global, world, African and South Asian history.

The second edition of Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation is both an introduction to the cultures of Africa and a history of the interpretations of those cultures. Key essays explore the major issues and debates through a combination of classic articles and the newest research in the field. Explores the dynamic processes by and through which scholars have described and understood African history and culture Includes selections from anthropologists, historians, philosophers, and critics who collectively reveal the interpenetration of ideas and concepts within and across disciplines, regions, and historical periods Offers a combined focus on ethnography and theory, giving students the means to link theory with data and perspective with practice Newly revised and updated edition of this popular text with 14 brand new chapters and two new sections: Conflict and Violent Transformations; and Development, Governance and Globalization

Unlike most Asian and Latin American countries, sub-Saharan Africa has seen both an increase in population growth rates and a weakening of traditional patterns of child-spacing since the 1960s. It is tempting to conclude that sub-Saharan countries have simply not reached adequate levels of income, education, and urbanization for a fertility decline to occur. This book argues, however, that such a socioeconomic threshold hypothesis will not provide an adequate basis for comparison. These authors take the view that any reproductive regime is also anchored to a broader pattern of social organization, including the prevailing modes of production, rules of exchange, patterns of religious systems, kinship structure, division of labor, and gender roles. They link the characteristic features of the African reproductive regime with regard to nuptiality, polygyny, breastfeeding, postpartum abstinence, sterility, and child-fostering to other specifically African characteristics of social organization and culture. Substantial attention is paid to the heterogeneity that prevails among sub-Saharan societies and considerable use is made, therefore, of interethnic comparisons. As a result the book goes considerably beyond mere demographic description and builds bridges between demography and anthropology or sociology. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.

First published in 1987. The object of this book is to show the nature and the constraints of the commercialization of agriculture in one of the world's major problem areas, Sub-Saharan Africa. Agricultural commercialization started here centuries ago, albeit in small, pockets. It expanded sharply during the colonial period when the sub-continent became integrated into the world's economy. After independence the nature of this integration did not structurally change and the basic characteristics o agricultural commercialization remained unaltered. After an analysis of this process during the colonial period, the study focuses on post-colonial government policies and on spatial variation in the commercialization of Africa's agriculture. Differences in environmental and socio-economic conditions, production performance and government policy are dealt with on two geographical scales: in the fist at the level of macro-regions and individual countries, and the second, by means of case studies at the regional, village and project level. Thee field-work based studies each centre on a specific aspect of commercialization process in a wide variety of countries, viz Swaziland, Sudan, Botswana, Ivory Coast, Mali and Kenya. The final part of the book relates the subject of commercialization and rural development to Africa's present agricultural crisis.