Trans-Atlantic Migration: The Paradoxes of Exile
edited by Toyin Falola and Nidi Afolabi
This book argues that a new cadre of African immigrants are finding themselves in the New World—mostly well-educated, high-income earning professionals, and belonging to the category termed African brain drain, they constitute the antinomy of those Africans who were forcibly removed from Africa during slavery. Along with this sense of freedom and voluntary migration comes a paradox—that of living in two worlds and negotiating the pleasures and agonies that come with living in exile. For the new African immigrant, the primary factor motivating migration is the desire for a better life whether fleeing political persecution, economic crisis, refugee crisis, or a combination thereof. The overall consequences include displacement, alienation, and the not so enchanting reality of exile. In its encompassing structure and multivalent perspectives, Trans-Atlantic Migration sets in motion the shifting theoretical and pragmatic verity that the new African diaspora and transatlantic migrations are paths laden with paradoxes that only time, negotiations, compromises, and evolving identities can ultimately resolve.
The Atlantic World, 1450-2000
edited by Toyin Falola and Kevin D. Roberts
his comprehensive survey of the Atlantic World from the fifteenth century to the present explores the major themes that define the study of this region. Following an examination of the emerging historiography, the book's fifteen chapters explore the Atlantic World before 1450; the contact with Europeans in Africa and the Americas; migrations and the creation of frontiers throughout the region; servitude and slavery; the slave trade; the Black Atlantic in the nineteenth century; gender, race, and women in the early Atlantic World; independence movements in Africa and in the New World; abolition; Caribbean nationalism; the Cold War; gender and identity in the twentieth century; and reform movements. Moving beyond the micro-histories of the scholarly monograph to connect the fruits of those works with broader events and processes, this book, in the editors’ words, makes “a concerted effort to re-connect elites and non-elites, Old World and New, early modern and modern, and economics and culture.”
Power and Nationalism in Modern Africa: Essays in Honor of Don Ohadike
edited by Toyin Falola and Salah M. Hassan
This book provides a forum for intellectual exchange around the connections between nationalism and power in Africa, with Africa viewed as a global presence. Various chapters explore aspects of the colonial order, the nature of change, and agencies within a comparative perspective. The book also interrogates African modernity and how it is constructed and articulated in comparison to other modernities. The chapters move from localism to globalism, and through various ideas and analyses we see modern Africa in a nuanced manner, a continent that is capable of accepting other cultures and traditions without losing all of its indigenous beliefs and values. The book exposes the power of traditions to reshape history, creating in different parts of the African diaspora the ideas to redefine lives and spaces and struggles to create a new future.
Population Movements, Conflicts, and Displacements in Nigeria
edited by Toyin Falola and Okpeh Ochayi Okpeh, Jr.
This collection of essays discusses population movements, conflicts and displacements in Nigeria within a broad multi-disciplinary framework of three interrelated and mutually reinforcing themes: historical perspectives on migrations and conflicts; population movements and national development; and the Nigerian State and the crisis of (mis)managing internal displacements. The essays underscore and illuminate the critical issues thrown up by the intersections between the themes and their implications for the social, economic and political development of contemporary Nigeria. The book affirms the historicity and significance of migration as an important conceptual and analytical paradigm for investigating, explaining and understanding identity construction, and it also provides useful and fresh insights on the historical processes linking migration with ethnicity and conflicts in multi-ethnic societies.
Migrations and Creative Expressions in Africa and the African Diaspora
edited by Toyin Falola and Niyi Afolabi, and Aderonke Adesola Adesanya
This volume provides readers with fresh insights on African migration and the attendant implications, productions and generations of the historic experiences of those who were forcefully displaced and others who willingly relocated to other spaces of the world. The book seeks to: (1) engage debates on multiple issues and factors that underpin the provocative history of African migration; (2) provoke a rethinking of the sociology and politics of migrating souls and resistant spirits in the Americas, Europe and Africa, scattered but metaphorically united in their quest to hold on to identity; (3) engender fresh understanding and interpretations of the cultural ethos of African native homelands and establish, where present, their replication in migrant communities in the diaspora; and (4) tie African migration history with modernity thereby underscoring the points of their interactions, departures, and tangentially established remembrances.
Health Knowledge and Belief Systems in Africa
edited by Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton
Health care in sub-Saharan Africa is and will continue to be an issue of utmost importance in the twenty-first century. As the HIV/AIDS pandemic ravages the continent, the stakes heighten not only to provide effective and efficient health care to African communities, but also to disseminate knowledge about health-seeking behavior and to instill belief among people in the possibility of leading a healthy existence. Health Knowledge and Belief Systems in Africa raises questions and offers analysis on many issues related to how health and illness are understood by communities in Africa, as well as how health knowledge and beliefs are disseminated and utilized to provide health services to African populations. The chapters in this book derive from many different disciplinary approaches and cover regions across sub-Saharan Africa, thus offering a holistic glimpse at the knowledge and belief systems functioning in Africa and the ways that these systems contribute to health care access and delivery in the world's most endangered continent.
Emerging Perspectives on Akinwumi Isola
edited by Toyin Falola and Akintunde Akinyemi
This book provides debates and representations of society to be found in the works of Akinwumi Isola, one of the leading contemporary writers in African languages. His numerous creative works have received national and international attention, and many of them have been translated into other languages and adapted as scripts and texts for plays and films. His imagination, vision, and craft distinguish him as a creative writer of the very first rank and one of the few literary scholars that Nigeria has produced. This book presents a systematic account of the writer's life history and a detailed analysis of his style of writing, use of language, and ideological positions. In nearly four decades of an immensely creative career, Akinwumi Isola has emerged as the outstanding Yoruba writer of our age, a worthy successor to D.O. Fagunwa, whose mantle he has assumed with remarkable grace. This book provides not only an extensive scholarly exploration of Isola's work in all its range, but, more importantly, full testimony to the qualities of imaginative conception and expressive style to which he owes his present eminence.
A History of Nigeria
edited by Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton
Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and the world's eighth largest oil producer, but its success has been undermined in recent decades by ethnic and religious conflict, political instability, rampant official corruption and an ailing economy. This book explains the context for Nigeria's recent troubles through an exploration of its pre-colonial and colonial past, and its journey from independence to statehood. By examining key themes such as colonialism, religion, slavery, nationalism and the economy, the authors show how Nigeria's history has been swayed by the vicissitudes of the world around it, and how Nigerians have adapted to meet these challenges. This book offers a unique portrayal of a resilient people living in a country with immense but unrealized potential.
