<p>Based on Cohen's fieldwork in the 1960s among the Hausa migrants, a people of the Yoruba area (then the western region of the Federation of Nigeria), Custom and Politics in Urban Africa looks at how ethnic groups use elements of tradition in jostling for power and privilege in new urban situations. This is a landmark work in urban anthropology and provides a comparative framework for studying political processes in African societies.</p>

Custom and Politics in Urban Africa (Routledge Classic Ethnographies)

Politics & Social Sciences

Cohen, Abner

Social Sciences

Routledge

Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns

A discussion of the process by which some ethnic groups manipulate values, myths, symbols and ceremonials from their traditional culture in order to develop an informal political organisation. This organisation is then used as a weapon in the struggle for power and privilege within contemporary society.

<p>Cohen, Abner, Custom And Politics In Urban Africa: A Study Of Hausa Migrants In</p>

Univ. of California Press

Two-dimensional man;: An essay on the anthropology of power and symbolism in complex society

Anthropology

University of California Press

<p>Proposes guidelines for the analysis of the causal interconnections between the cultural diversity of American cities and the struggle for economic and political power among the various groups in the cities</p>

Two-Dimensional Man: An Essay on the Anthropology of Power and Symbolism in Complex Society

The Politics of Elite Culture: Explorations in the Dramaturgy of Power in a Modern African Society

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Politics of Elite Culture: Explorations in the Dramaturgy of Power in a Modern African Society

Univ. Of California Pr.

<p>Carnival, that image of sensuous frivolity, is shown by Abner Cohen to be a masquerade for the dynamic relations between culture and politics. His masterful study details the transformation of a local, polyethnic London fair to a massive, exclusively West Indian carnival, known as "Europe's biggest street festival," which in 1976 occasioned a bloody confrontation between black youth and the police and which has since become a fiercely contested cultural event.<br><br>Cohen contrasts the development of the London carnival with the development of other carnivalesque movements, including the Renaissance Pleasure Faire of California. His valuable analysis of these relatively little-explored urban cultural movements advances further the theoretical formulations developed in his previous studies.</p>

Masquerade Politics: Explorations in the Structure of Urban Cultural Movements

Classics

<p><div>This title focuses on the dramatic process underlying the development of cultural mystique in the articulation of elite organization. The symbolic beliefs and practices involved act to reconcile, camouflage, or mystify a major contradiction in the development and functioning of elite groups, a contradiction between their universalistic functions and particularistic interests, between their duties to serve wider publics and their simultaneous endeavor to promote their own sectional power.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>Concentrating on the detailed, experimental study of one power elite within a modern small-scale nation-state--Sierra Leone--Cohen analyzes these processes. But his findings are systematically worked out within a general, cross-cultural comparative perspective, and he thereby further develops his earlier formulations about the instrumental functions of culture in politcal organization. Culture is analyzed in terms of symbolic forms, symbolic functions, and dramaturgical techniques. Politico-cultural causation is explored as it operates in chains of dramatic performances on different levels of social organization. Familiar, everyday symbolic events are taken out of their ordinary ideological sequences and, as Brecht would put it, thrown into crisis by showing their involvement in major power struggles.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div></p>

<p>This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1969.</p>

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cohen, Abner. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Cohen, Abner

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cohen, Abner. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Custom and Politics in Urban Africa (Routledge Classic Ethnographies)

Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns

Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns

Two-dimensional man;: An essay on the anthropology of power and symbolism in complex society

Two-Dimensional Man: An Essay on the Anthropology of Power and Symbolism in Complex Society

The Politics of Elite Culture: Explorations in the Dramaturgy of Power in a Modern African Society

Politics of Elite Culture: Explorations in the Dramaturgy of Power in a Modern African Society

Masquerade Politics: Explorations in the Structure of Urban Cultural Movements

Politics of Elite Culture: Explorations in the Dramaturgy of Power in a Modern African Society

Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns