Mediations of Violence in Africa

Kapteijns (history, Wellesley College, US) and Richters (culture, health, and illness; Leiden U. Medical Center and the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research; the Netherlands) present six papers that are unified around the theme of mediation of violence in Africa, with mediation referring to "a process that connects and translates disparate worlds, people, imaginations, values, and ideas, whether in its symbolic, social, or technological form," although in this volume the emphasis lies on discursive dimensions. Coming from the fields of medical anthropology, cultural anthropology, performance and cultural studies, and cultural and social history, contributors discuss Somali poetry as memory-making and the collapse of the Somali state in 1991, Zulu song and memories of the violence between Inkatha and the African National Congress in South Africa, young men's narratives of "ethnic" violence in Nairobi in 2007, narratives of violence of the Mozambican civil war of 1976-1992, mediation of violence in Rwanda through a community-based sociotherapy program in the Byumba region, and mediated memories of violence among white former conscripts of the South African Defense Force who fought along the border between Namibia and Angola between 1966 and 1989. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Lidwien Kajneijns Ph.D. University of Amsterdam, is Professor of History at Wellesley College, USA. Her published work focuses on Sudanese and Somali history and includes Women's Voices in a Man's World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in Northern Somali Orature (1999).
She is Physician and medical anthropologist, is Professor of Culture. Health and Illness at Leiden University Medical Center and the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research. The Netherlands. Her publications focus on gender, violence and trauma, and on intercultural health care.