
Mortgaging the Ancestors
Ideologies of Attachment in Africa
Parker MacDonald Shipton(Author)
Yale University Press
Published on 6. January 2009
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-0-300-11602-1 (ISBN)
Description
This fascinating interdisciplinary book is about land, belonging, and the mortgage-and how people of different cultural backgrounds understand them in Africa. Drawing on years of ethnographic observation, Parker Shipton discusses how people in Africa's interior feel about their attachment to family, to clan land, and to ancestral graves on the land. He goes on to explain why systems of property, finance, and mortgaging imposed by outsiders threaten Africa's rural people.
The book looks briefly at European and North American theories on private property and the mortgage, then shows how these theories have played out as attempted economic reforms in Africa. They affect not just personal ownership and possession, he suggests, but also the complex relationships that add up to civil order and episodic disorder over a longer history. Focusing particular attention on the Luo people of Kenya, Shipton challenges assumptions about rural economic development and calls for a broader understanding of local realities in Africa and beyond.
The book looks briefly at European and North American theories on private property and the mortgage, then shows how these theories have played out as attempted economic reforms in Africa. They affect not just personal ownership and possession, he suggests, but also the complex relationships that add up to civil order and episodic disorder over a longer history. Focusing particular attention on the Luo people of Kenya, Shipton challenges assumptions about rural economic development and calls for a broader understanding of local realities in Africa and beyond.
Reviews / Votes
"In lithe and lucid prose, Shipton provides a lens through which scholars and students of changing societies may better see and understand the contexts in which they themselves work. Not all books do that." - Christian Lund, African Studies Review -- Christian Lund * African Studies Review * 'Accessible, provocative book, which should be of particular interest to development experts and policy makers.' - Carol Lentz, African Affairs -- Carol Lentz * African Affairs *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
19 b-w illus in gallery; 1 map
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
713 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-300-11602-1 (9780300116021)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
12/2009
1st Edition
Yale University Press
€97.19
Available for download
Person
Parker Shipton is associate professor of anthropology and research fellow in African studies, Boston University. He is the author or editor of numerous scholarly publications on Africa and anthropological topics, including The Nature of Entrustment: Intimacy, Exchange, and the Sacred in Africa, published by Yale University Press. He lives in Cambridge, MA.