Positive images of Africa contrast with negative images of misery, war and catastrophes often conveyed by the mass media. This selection of papers debate the images and stereotypes of Africa.

Breaking new ground in the study of European colonialism, this book focuses on a nation historically positioned between the Western and Eastern Empires of Europe – Finland. Although Finland never had overseas colonies, the authors argue that the country was undeniably involved in the colonial world, with Finns adopting ideologies and identities that cannot easily be disentangled from colonialism. This book explores the concepts of ‘colonial complicity’ and ‘colonialism without colonies’ in relation to Finland, a nation that was oppressed, but also itself complicit in colonialism. It offers insights into European colonialism on the margins of the continent and within a nation that has traditionally declared its innocence and exceptionalism. The book shows that Finns were active participants in various colonial contexts, including Southern Africa and Sápmi in the North. Demonstrating that colonialism was a common practice shared by all European nations, with or without formal colonies, this book provides essential reading for anyone interested in European colonial history. Chapters 1, 7 and 8 are available open access under a via link.springer.com.>

"Africa Writing Europe" offers critical readings of the meaning and presence of Europe in a variety of African literary texts. Authors discussed include Leila Aboulela, Tatamkhulu Afrika, Alice Solomon Bowen, Ken Bugul, and Tayeb Salih.

This book aims to define new theoretical, practical, and methodological directions in educational research centered on the role of the body in teaching and learning. Based on our phenomenological experience of the world, it draws on perspectives from arts-education and aesthetics, as well as curriculum theory, cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology. These are arenas with a rich untapped cache of experience and inquiry that can be applied to the notions of schooling, teaching and learning. The book provides examples of state-of-the-art, empirical research on the body in a variety of educational settings. Diverse art forms, curricular settings, educational levels, and cultural traditions are selected to demonstrate the complexity and richness of embodied knowledge as they are manifested through institutional structures, disciplines, and specific practices.

Africa’s Media Image in the 21st Century is the first book in over twenty years to examine the international media’s coverage of sub-Saharan Africa. It brings together leading researchers and prominent journalists to explore representation of the continent, and the production of that image, especially by international news media. The book highlights factors that have transformed the global media system, changing whose perspectives are told and the forms of media that empower new voices. Case studies consider questions such as: how has new media changed whose views are represented? Does Chinese or diaspora media offer alternative perspectives for viewing the continent? How do foreign correspondents interact with their audiences in a social media age? What is the contemporary role of charity groups and PR firms in shaping news content? They also examine how recent high profile events and issues been covered by the international media, from the Ebola crisis, and Boko Haram to debates surrounding the "Africa Rising" narrative and neo-imperialism. The book makes a substantial contribution by moving the academic discussion beyond the traditional critiques of journalistic stereotyping, Afro-pessimism, and ‘darkest Africa’ news coverage. It explores the news outlets, international power dynamics, and technologies that shape and reshape the contemporary image of Africa and Africans in journalism and global culture.

Complying with Colonialism presents a complex analysis of the habitual weak regard attributed to the colonial ties of Nordic Countries. It introduces the concept of ’colonial complicity’ to explain the diversity through which northern European countries continue to take part in (post)colonial processes. The volume combines a new perspective on the analysis of Europe and colonialism, whilst offering new insights for feminist and postcolonial studies by examining how gender equality is linked to ’European values’, thus often European superiority. With an international team of experts ranging from various disciplinary backgrounds, this volume will appeal not only to academics and scholars within postcolonial sociology, social theory, cultural studies, ethnicity, gender and feminist thought, but also cultural geographers, and those working in the fields of welfare, politics and International Relations. Policy makers and governmental researchers will also find this to be an invaluable source.

This volume brings together contributions from various disciplines in the humanities exploring a variety of cultural, social and political configurations produced by the African presence in Europe, and attempting to consolidate a comparative framework for the study of contemporary black literatures and identities across different national and linguistic contexts. From the circumstances of black students in Russia to the recovery of a forgotten African identity in the Canary Islands, from the specificities of Portuguese postcoloniality to the representations of Africans in Iceland, the essays collected here provide a wide spectrum of research on African Diasporas in Eastern, Western, Southern and Northern Europe offering insights into previously little explored areas.

Re-Viewing Resistance in Namibian History brings together the work of experienced academics and a new wave of young Namibian historians - architects of the past. They are working on a range of public history and heritage projects, from late nineteenth century resistance to the use of songs; from the role of gender in SWAPO’s camps to memorialisation; and from international solidarity to aspects of the history of Kavango and Caprivi. In a culturally and politically diverse democracy such as Namibia, there are bound to be different perspectives on the past, and history will be as plural as the history-tellers. The chapters in this book reflect this diversity, and combine to create a remarkable collection of divergent voices, providing alternative perspectives on the past. The book writes ‘forgotten’ people into history; provides a reading of the past that reflects the tensions and competing identities that pervaded ‘the struggle’; and deals with ‘heritage that hurts’.

The musics of Africa play a particularly important role in expressing and forming identities. This book brings together African and Nordic scholars from both musicology and other disciplines in an attempt to analyse various aspects of the complex playing with volatile identities in music in Africa today. Taken together the papers put new light on the assumed or real dichotomies between countryside and city, collective and individual, tradition and modernity, authentic and alien. The papers are based on contributions for a conference organized by the research project “Cultural Images in and of Africa†of the Nordic Africa Institute together with the Sibelius Museum/Department of Musicology and the Centre for Continuing Education at Ã...bo Akademi University in Ã...bo (Turku), Finland in October 2000. The book includes a keynote speech by Christopher Waterman (UCLA), and an introduction by Annemette Kirkegaard, Copenhagen University. Southern, West and East Africa are represented in the studies, which cover a great variety of musics.