This week’s slidesHAP 10 — Course Conclusion
Read with the three histories in view. For each reading ask: what is the fact and its evidence (History 1); what theory turns the evidence into support (History 2); what conception had to be in place for the question to arise at all (History 3).
Readings
- Abímbọ́lá, Kọ́lá. “The Òrìṣà Legal Tradition.” Philosophia Africana 20(2), 2021: 107–128. PDF — the Òrìṣà tradition as a legal tradition: the worked example behind Topic 9’s “Law: charters, ubuntu, and restorative justice”.
- UN News, “UN tells the world: stop making Africa look small” (4 Sept. 2026); see also NPR’s report on the “Correct the Map” vote.
- Eglash, Ron. African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design. Rutgers University Press, 1999. (Chapters 1 and 7)
- Twining, William. “General Jurisprudence.” University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review 15 (2007): 1–71. Open access — the article from which General Jurisprudence: Understanding Law from a Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2009) grew; ch. 1 of the book is also on SSRN, and see Twining’s Princeton LAPA seminar paper (10 February 2011).
- Schmidt, Peter & Donald Avery. “Complex Iron Smelting and Prehistoric Culture in Tanzania.” Science 201 (1978): 1085–1089.
- Hallen, Barry. A Short History of African Philosophy. 2nd ed. Indiana University Press, 2009. (Conclusion)
Further reading
- Guyer, Jane I. Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa. University of Chicago Press, 2004. — value, worth and “the market” as a conception.
- Verran, Helen. Science and an African Logic. University of Chicago Press, 2001. (Google Books preview)
- Zara Yaqob & Walda Heywat. The Hatata Inquiries: Two Texts of Seventeenth-Century African Philosophy from Ethiopia. Ed. R. Lee, M. Worku & W. L. Belcher. De Gruyter, 2023. — the new scholarly translation (preface open access; full text via Howard Library’s De Gruyter access), superseding Sumner’s 1976 edition. See also Cantor, Egid & Merawi (eds.), In Search of Zär’a Ya‘ǝqob (De Gruyter, 2024) — open access on OAPEN.
- Sofowora, A., E. Ogunbodede & A. Onayade. “The Role and Place of Medicinal Plants in the Strategies for Disease Prevention.” African Journal of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicines 10(5), 2013: 210–229. Open access — the same author’s later summary of Medicinal Plants and Traditional Medicine in Africa (1993).
- “The Boston Smallpox Epidemic, 1721.” Harvard Library, Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics. Open — with Boylston’s 1726 account and the pamphlet war digitised; replaces Blake, “The Inoculation Controversy in Boston: 1721–1722,” New England Quarterly 25 (1952), which is JSTOR only.