This thesis investigates the roles, themes, techniques and contexts of composition in hip-hop. It seeks to explain how hip-hop artists view and define their work, while also taking into consideration the viewpoints of other participants in the marketing pool of hip-hop production and consumption. The conceptual plan on which the study is based is Afrocentric; coupled with Ethnographic method of data processing and interpretation. This method is comprised of personal interviews, participant observation, sonic analysis and the use of bibliographic entries and notes that allows for sense and meaning in text. Also used are documented data, which contain descriptions of hip-hop lyrics, interviews, opinions, journalistic notes, and scholarly reports as a means of evolving a cohesive sense of the message's intent, opinion, knowledge of its roles, themes, techniques, images, and contexts The study found that the issues and themes that dominate hip-hop include bondage impairment, concern over currently warped social values and trends, and challenges over oppressive cultural values and social institutions. The artists whose compositions and renderings were used for the purpose of this study not only demonstrated an ability to isolate and construct themes about issues, but were also familiar with the issues that reveal them as agents for the liberation of the minds of their Diaspora Africa peoples and communities. Their music and grassroots commentaries were found to be appropriately designed to persuade their targeted audience to greater awareness. They conveyed messages that encouraged positive attitude and behavioral change in respect to addressed themes that were, in the main, issues of disenfranchisement. They addressed negative, disapproving behaviors which the atmosphere of disenfranchisement has spurned, and were being expressed through the media of the hip-hop rap musicals. The study also highlights the connection between classical African musical expressions and postmodern Diaspora African musical innovations. / African American Studies

This study examines the role of African novelists as major sources of historiography of Africa, and the socio-cultural experience of its people. Although many African novelists have over the years reflected issues of social and political significance in their works, only a few scholarly works seem to have addressed this phenomenon adequately. A major objective of this dissertation then is to help fill this gap by explicating these issues in the fiction of Chinua Achebe, a great iconic figure in African Literature. Utilizing the conceptual and analytical framework suggested in C.T. Keto's, Africa-Centered Perspective on History (1989), the contexts, themes, structures and techniques of the following five novels were examined: Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). The novels were shown to be replete with cogent social and political insights which provide an accurate portraiture of African/ Nigerian history of the 19th and 20th Century. The study seeks to make a modest contribution to the steadily mounting body of Africa centered criticism of the African novel/fiction within the context of African social and political history. / African American Studies

This thesis seeks to offer new perspectives on the role of women in African-American Christian denominations in the United States in the period between the Civil War and the turn of the twentieth century. It situates the changes in the roles available to black women in their churches in the context of ecclesiastical politics. By offering explanations of the growth of black denominations in the South after the Civil War and the political alignments in the leadership of the churches, it seeks to offer more powerful explanations of differences in the treatment of women in distict denominations. It explores the distinct worship practices of African-American Christianity and reflects on their relationship to denominational structure and character, and gender issues. Education was central to the participation of women in African-American Christianity in the late nineteenth century, so the thesis discusses the growth of black colleges under the auspices of the black churches. Finally it also explores the complex relationship between domestic ideology, the politics of respectability, and female participation in the black churches.

American concern for South Africa during the Boer War focused on how the war affected wider American interests, and especially a budding rapprochement with Britain. It was not related to commercial or other interests intrinsic to the region. The Boer War could have evolved into a world war, and could have involved the United States, even emboldened a European power to attack the United States. The McKinley and Roosevelt administrations realized the danger, and sought to develop a sound working relationship with Britain that would not be attacked by a contentious and still largely anti-British public and Congress. Inept diplomatic representation in Southern Africa and agitation by Boer envoys and sympathizers in America further complicated matters. / Guided by Secretary of State John Hay, the United States emerged from this diplomatic cauldron unscathed. Mr. Hay was accused of subordinating the interests of his own country to Britain. In reality, he consistently pressed Britain for concessions, which the British made to garner American diplomatic support in response to the pressures of an enormous war effort little appreciated today. Hay achieved the essence of successful diplomacy: The United States attained its goals peacefully and with the gratitude of the British Empire. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-11, Section: A, page: 4047. / Major Professor: Thomas M. Campbell, Jr. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.

Earlier research has shown that improvements in government institutional performance will lead citizens to collectively increase their trust or collective memory toward that institution; as well as leading those citizens to increase their trust or social capital toward other citizens. This study within six District Assemblies in Ghana sought to examine if these same relationships existed. Improvements in performance of the members in these six District Assemblies were defined by increases in District Assembly Common Fund expenditures. Greater collective memory among members within a District Assembly was defined as decreases in the percentage of members believing that corruption was present or increases in the percentage of members believing that social capital was present in other District Assemblies. Greater social capital was defined as increases in the percentage of members reporting working with other members and perceiving that relationship as equal and trusting. Using the permutation test, significant positive correlations were observed between collective memory and social capital but these correlations were not consistent with performance. Rather, performance was either poor for all District Assemblies or increased as social capital and collective memory declined. Unequal patron-client relations and low risks to political actors are discussed as possible factors influencing performance and democratic consolidation / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation investigates the notion of bourgeoisification, the bourgeois, and the bourgeoisie in African Francophone literature of the colonial and post-colonial periods. The origins of the African bourgeoisie can be traced to the Western colonialist project. Three institutions have been especially implicated in its creation: the Western colonial educational system, commercial activities, and the modern town and the trend toward urbanization. These three came together to engender new forms of human relationships in Africa. Such relationships destabilized and tended to displace, the traditional family and communal structures, as well as the caste system. In this new society which would be marked by extreme alienation, new human types were born: the 'haves' and the 'have-nots.' The 'haves,' who constitute the center bolt of the present study, we can characterize as the African bourgeoisie My project is not intended as a critique of the bourgeoisie and its discursive practices. Rather, it is a critical analysis of the representation of the bourgeois(ie). Therefore, any less-than-positive picture of the class and/or its members that may seem to emanate from my analysis should be understood as a reflexion of a generally negative pattern of representation in the texts under consideration. My real goal is to examine the strategies used by certain novelists and playwrights in their efforts to paint a portrayal of the class and its members. Furthermore, my analysis of such strategies will help to reveal each writer's attitudes toward the class, for it is my view that representation of any universe of discourse is never an entirely innocent activity. My study will also provide a historiographical perspective not only on the origin and development of the bourgeoisie in Francophone sub-Saharan Africa, but also on the evolution of its figurations in literary texts My dissertation is divided into four chapters. In Chapter I, I examine the issue of the literary invention of the African bourgeoisie and its relationship to the reality that it draws upon as well as points to. I focus mainly on the use by African writers of such devices as metaphor as a privileged instrument of representation. Chapter II considers another side of invention, that is historical invention. It focuses on the French colonial school as the birthplace of what later came to be known as the Sub-Saharan bourgeoisie. Chapter IV studies the elaboration in certain novels of what I call an African discourse of transgression. It puts into deeper perspective the bourgeoisification of lower castes in the colonial school and the impact this has on contemporary African political reality. Chapter III presents a case study of a specific bourgeois type: the arriviste. This is the type most encountered in African anti-bourgeois literature, and widely considered to be a negative presence on the African sociopolitical and economic scene. An important aspect of this chapter is the making of the bourgeois arriviste in Africa / acase@tulane.edu

From the unique perspective of the oath, this study investigates the entanglements of change in Kenya during the Mau Mau period, 1952-1960. Specifically, it challenges the prevailing Mau Mau narrative, revealing the oath as a complex, adaptive, and rational process ordered around symbols, gestures, and statements with long standing meaning and power. All Mau Mau initiates were required to take a secret oath of unity in order to join the struggle. Breaking the oath invoked an unstoppable curse on oathers and their families. As a result, the oath became a powerful mechanism in the formation of Mau Mau and served as a precursor to Kenyan Independence in 1963. Contrary to the long standing discourse of savagery, the Mau Mau oath was actually an elaborate, dynamic, and sophisticated ceremony based on ancient oathing traditions, symbolism, and beliefs. It was reconstituted from its former state to one that was much more offensive, secretive, dangerous, and inclusive of other groups such as women who were previously excluded. The oath was a product of the economic, political, cultural, and social unrest of the time. In addition to tracing historical developments and modeling the oath experience, this study explores the radicalization of the oath during the Mau Mau period forming new relationships to gender, crime, and purification that did not exist prior to the 1950s. This study centers the oath as the object for historical analysis through the investigation and documentation of African rituals, beliefs, and memories. The past is reconstructed from oral tradition, personal narratives, ceremonial reenactments, survey data, archived documents, ethnography, and myths. The sources reveal that Mau Mau oathers had their own imaginations, dreams, and objectives associated with the restoration of their stolen land and freedom. These varied perspectives demonstrate colonial contradictions juxtaposed with African oral accounts and memory. This study offers a fresh way to look at the contested Mau Mau past through the lens of the often misunderstood and misinterpreted oath. It intervenes with a new African Mau Mau story of reinvention, renewal, and power.

Imperialism, as understood by the British in the year 1850, was sentimental in essence as opposed to later utilitarianism. Lord Beaconsfield and his party assumed ‘’an attitude of superiority towards other civilized nations.” “Trade follows the flag” had not yet become an Imperial slogan. [...]

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2010. / "Graduate Program in History." Includes bibliographical references (p. 291-302).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in History." Includes bibliographical references (p. 313-332).