Christianity and Social Change in Africa is the most comprehensive look at the African encounter with Christianity in recent years. The book's themes are drawn from the pioneering work of J.D.Y. Peel, building on his creative explanation of the African experience of Christianity. The volume covers a broad range of themes, including religious expansion, the rise of Pentecostalism, and the use of new media and technologies to convert people and reform believers. The various manifestations of religious impact run through all the chapters, covering aspects of culture, politics, the economy, and the landscape. The volume also explores the success of Africans in exporting Christianity to other parts of the globe, a phenomenon that has redefined both the message and meaning of this religion. The contributors are a distinguished roster of scholars who draw on years of experience and research to present remarkable ideas and original interpretations of the forces Christianity exerts in Africa. The essays reflect the importance of comparative historical inquiry, inter-disciplinary perspectives, Peel's contributions to the transformation of history and sociology, and the paths that a new generation of scholars must chart to comprehend the power of African Christianity. "For all interested in the processes and power relations of cultural (self)representation and (self)determination in the African context, this book is essential." -- The International Journal of African Historical Studies "The chapters are well written, persuasive and well structured. The book is a useful tool for the study of social transformation and cultural persistence in African, diaspora and cultural studies." -- Journal of African History "This is an important book for scholars of Nigeria and the Yoruba world, but also for those interested in the ongoing question of religious change in Africa and the diaspora. Indeed, some of the individual essays have the potential to become classics... This book is a fitting salute to the legacy of John Peel." -- African Studies Review "At a time when Christianity in Africa is experiencing a great leap forward, Christianity and Social Change in Africa facilitates an exploration of some of the themes more critical to this development... The book signals interesting directions for future research and should be welcomed by anyone interested in the still unfolding landscape that is Christianity in Africa." -- Pneuma

The 1970s and 1980s were times of political and religious turmoil in Nigeria, characterized by governmental upheaval, and aggressive confrontations between the Sufi brotherhoods and the Izala movement. In Islamic Reform and Political Change in Northern Nigeria, Roman Loimeier explores the intermeshing of religion in the struggle for political influence and preservation of the interests of Nigerian Muslims. Loimeier's careful scholarship combines astute readings of the work of previous scholars--both published and unpublished--with archival material and the findings of his own fieldwork in Nigeria. His work fills a substantial gap in contemporary Nigerian studies. This book provides invaluable and essential reading for serious students of Nigerian politics and of Islamic movements in Africa.

AIDS and Africa are indelibly linked in popular consciousness, but despite widespread awareness of the epidemic, much of the story remains hidden beneath a superficial focus on condoms, sex workers, and antiretrovirals. Africa gets lost in this equation, Daniel Jordan Smith argues, transformed into a mere vehicle to explain AIDS, and in AIDS Doesn’t Show Its Face, he offers a powerful reversal, using AIDS as a lens through which to view Africa. Drawing on twenty years of fieldwork in Nigeria, Smith tells a story of dramatic social changes, ones implicated in the same inequalities that also factor into local perceptions about AIDS—inequalities of gender, generation, and social class. Nigerians, he shows, view both social inequality and the presence of AIDS in moral terms, as kinds of ethical failure. Mixing ethnographies that describe everyday life with pointed analyses of public health interventions, he demonstrates just how powerful these paired anxieties—medical and social—are, and how the world might better alleviate them through a more sensitive understanding of their relationship.

This volume brings together seven empirically grounded contributions by African social scientists of different disciplinary backgrounds. The authors explore the social impact of religious innovation and competition in present day Africa. They represent a selection from an interdisciplinary initiative that made 23 research grants for theologians and social scientists to study Christianity and social change in contemporary Africa. These contributions focus on a variety of dynamics in contemporary African religion (mostly Christianity), including gender, health and healing, social media, entrepreneurship, and inter-religious borrowing and accommodation. The volume seeks to enhance understanding of religions vital presence and power in contemporary Africa. It reveals problems as well as possibilities, notably some ethical concerns and psychological maladies that arise in some of these new movements, notably neo-Pentecostal and militant fundamentalist groups. Yet the contributions do not fixate on African problems and victimization. Instead, they explore sources of African creativity, resiliency and agency. The book calls on scholars of religion and religiosity in Africa to invest new conceptual and methodological energy in understanding what it means to be actively religious in Africa today.

In analysing a range of materials that testify to the wide spectrum of women's experiences in Nigeria, this groundbreaking collection seeks to draw attention to neglected aspects of women's lives in Nigerian society as a whole. Exploring the historical, developmental and socio-cultural experiences of women across Nigeria's cultures, it reappraises their role as historical actors and helps to facilitate a more encompassing view of their place in society and their still underestimated contribution to social development.

Anthony Smith's important work on the concept of social change, first published in 1973, puts forward the paradigm of historical change as an alternative to the functionalist theory of evolutionary change. He shows that, in attempting to provide a theory of social change, functionalism reveals itself as a species of 'frozen' evolutionism. Functionalism, he argues, is unable to cope with the mechanisms of historical transitions or account for novelty and emergence; it confuses classification of variations with explanation of processes; and its endogenous view of change prevents it from coming to grips with the real events and transformations of the historical record. In his assessment of functionalism, Dr Smith traces its explanatory failures in its accounts of the developments of civilisation, modernisation and revolution. He concludes that the study of 'evolution' is largely irrelevant to the investigation of social change. He proposes instead an exogenous paradigm of social change, which places the study of contingent historical events at its centre.