The Yoruba

Although the Yoruba are the most populous ethnic group on the African continent, most histories tend to fossilize them in a timeless cultural past where traditions simply repeat themselves over the centuries. In his groundbreaking work, The Yoruba: A New History, Akinwumi Ogundiran examines the development of the ideas and practices that have shaped the Yoruba identity and experience going back as far as AD 800. Weaving together the threads and traces of oral traditions, rituals, and social memory, Ogundiran examines the intersecting domains of everyday Yoruba life, including economics, politics, power, religion, arts and aesthetics, and knowledge systems. Going against the grain of many histories of the Yoruba that locate cultural change in colonial encounters, Ogundiran opts for an eclectic approach that illuminates new theories of practice and cultural transition, the philosophical premises of community, and the global and regional interactions which frame and ground local experiences.