Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2015 - Social & Behavioral Sciences — African and African American Studies

Rabaka (ethnic studies, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) contributes to radical black politics and Africana critical social theory and exceeds expectations on both counts.  Six chapters guide readers through a corpus that draws from a diverse array of often eclectic and enigmatic sources and, therefore, offers no closed system or absolute truths.  Nonetheless, the book offers significant contributions to those who do not become lost within the complex and often conflated intellectual streams presented throughout.  Rabaka's critical introduction outlines Cabrals biography and the genealogy of his thought.  Chapter 1 begins with a provocative claim: in many respects Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral represent the pillars and pinnacle of the Africana tradition of critical theory in the second half of the 20th century.  The author situates the dialectic task before black thinkers as challenging both whites demonization and Blacks romanticism of Africa.  Chapter 2 carefully outlines Fanons challenge to negritude.  Fanons method for apprehending the totalizing effects of European colonialism becomes cartographic in Rabakas reading of Cabrals engagement with colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, Marxism, and history.  The book ends by articulating Cabrals usefulness for Rabakas larger vision of Africana critical theory.  An original contribution to Africana philosophy and studies, critical theory, and currently reemerging anticolonial paradigms throughout the academy.  A must-have.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

In 19 essays, contributors investigate the interplay of group identity and sacred space, featuring both theoretical and empirical explorations of the creation, maintenance, and contestation of sacred places.  The volumes geographic focus on the Netherlands and South Africa is due to the editors' and contributors' institutional frameworks emerging from the South AfricaNetherlands Programme on Alternatives in Development.  Initially, the unusual geographic scope of the collection appeared awkward and contrived.  A closer reading, however, revealed that the contributors eschewed a Western versus other trope and avoided any strained search for a unifying metanarrative.  Instead, the collection offers a wonderful diversity of case studies that explore homo religious through a spatial-turn epistemology.  Post (ritual studies, Tilburg Univ., Netherlands), Nel (African studies, Univ. of the Free State, South Africa), and Van Beek (anthropology of religion, Tilburg Univ.) lend their expertise in this highly effective collaboration.  The strong scholarship, vivid and in-depth case studies, and contemporary framing of sacred space creates a compelling volume and an essential resource for faculty and students interested in the triad of identity, sacredness, and place or the politics of sacred space in South Africa and Europe.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.