REVIEWER MEETS REVIEWED
SEMINAR SERIES AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM’S ANTHROPOLOGY LIBRARY AND RESEARCH CENTRE
The Politics of Distinction: African Elites from Colonialism to Liberation in a Namibian Frontier Town
Thursday 15 November at 2.00 pm
Anthropology Library and Research Centre, British Museum
THIS IS A FREE EVENT
The British Museum’s Anthropology Library and Research Centre, in conjunction with the Royal Anthropological Institute, is pleased to present ‘Reviewer meets Reviewed’, a discussion between Dr Mattia Fumanti, author of The Politics of Distinction: African Elites from Colonialism to Liberation in a Namibian Frontier Town, and Peter Lockwood, who reviewed the book for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Scholarly definitions of elites as those who wield political power and control distribution of resources in their locales consistently leave out their capacity to shape morality, civic ethics and the legitimacy of power relations beyond material domination. In this insightful ethnography of Rundu, a frontier town in Namibia, Mattia Fumanti highlights the fundamental contribution elites make to the public space through their much-praised concept of civility and their promotion of nation-building at the local level. In centring his argument on the moral agency of elites over three generations and their attempts to achieve distinction in public life, this book counters an often found and over-generalized view of postcolonial African states as weak, ruling through authoritarian, greedy and corrupt practices.
Bookings/enquiries: Ted Goodliffe (TGoodliffe@britishmuseum.org)
Location : Anthropology Library, British Museum
Great Russell Street
London
WC1B 3DG
United Kingdom
