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SUMMARY:31st Annual Lecture: 'The Political Economy of Precolonial African
  States - Metals\, Trinkets\, Land\, etc\, etc' - Professor Shadreck Chiri
 kure (University of Cape Town\, University of Oxford)
DTSTART:20191113T170000Z
DTEND:20191113T180000Z
UID:TALK133855@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Emma Jarman
DESCRIPTION:The political economy of precolonial African states is a topic
  of huge global significance for the comparative insights that it unlocks.
  And yet\, some dominant frameworks for exploring the topic are still capt
 ured by old theories\, long superseded in other world areas. For example\,
  external long-distance trade and ‘prestige goods’ are still viewed as
  major determinants of the rise\, flourishing and decline of medieval Afri
 can states. Because they evolved with no role for local (African) critique
 s\, counter-critiques and local validation of outcome knowledge\, contempo
 rary studies of African historical political economies continuously strugg
 le to move past this capture.\n\nThis lecture brings together multiple var
 iables such as craft production\, land\, trade and exchange and among othe
 rs\, ideology\, within a framework mediated by concept revision and local 
 knowledge to mint locally centred readings of deep time African political 
 economies. While raising similarities and divergences with historical poli
 tical economies elsewhere\, the lecture though provokingly argues that lan
 d and its control offered more options to those in power than trinkets bro
 ught from distance through various means\, trade included. This raises the
  point that political economies rooted in production have more potential t
 o transform contemporary Africa than those spurred by the flawed narrative
  that as with ‘the past’\, - the continent’s prosperity must be hing
 ed on exotics – both in cash and goods.   \n\n
LOCATION:Biffen Lecture Theatre\, Downing Site\, Cambridge\, CB2 1QJ
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