The final is scheduled for Monday May 11^th at 3PM and yes it will be cumulative/comprehensive.  My expectations of you will be less for the earlier material and greater for the recent information covered. For material from the first half of the course go back and consult the previous review sheets. How should you approach it? The older the material the lower my expectations as far as you retaining details.

The following is intended to provide guideposts as you navigate your way through the material. If you have been keeping up on the reading then it won't be so bad. If you've been avoiding it, intending to do it all the night before the exam then all I can say is best of luck because it's probably all going to run together. Reality is complex and it's no different in Africa. Pole sana (very sorry)    

Kinship and Family

Lectures; Gordon and Gordon chapter 9 -- only read pages 265-267 & 284-288;
two handouts on African kinship and families; Video: T Shirt Travels

• What kinds of descent principles tend to be found in Africa and how do they compare with ours?

• Marriage practices in Africa  – how are they both similar to and different from ours?

• How do African families compare with ours in the west? Is this changing? If so, how?

• How is age used in organizing social relations in African societies?

  Women in Africa

  Lectures,  Gordon and Gordon Chapter 10; Video: Ladies First
   

• What kinds of things can be said about women's status in pre-colonial Africa?

• How were those situations altered by colonial rule?

• What has the post-independence era brought for women in various African countries?

• What is the future likely to hold for African women?

Religion in Africa

Lectures; Gordon and Gordon chapter 11, Video: Witchcaft Among the Azande

• Ivan Karp claims that Africans don't necessarily think the same way that we westerners do. Be aware of some of the most significant differences.

• What kinds of generalizations might be made about indigenous African religions?

• What roles do magic and witchcraft play in African ways of explaining the workings of the world?

• What has been the impact of Islam and Christianity upon religion (both beliefs and practices) in Africa?

Environmental Issues in Africa

Lectures; Gordon and Gordon chapter 8; Video clip on climate change in northern Kenya. 

• How do most Africans make a living?

• What kind of geographic patterns can be identified in terms of food production?

• What are some of the complicating environmental factors for African farmers?

• What are the major contemporary environmental problems Nyang'oro identifies?

• How are they interconnected?

Lectures (including the one by Jered Ulschmid); Gordon and Gordon chapters 7 and 13.  

• What accounts for the rapid rates of population growth in Africa?  

• What approaches are being taken reduce fertility and population growth?

• What is happening to populations in urban areas?

• What policies are governments using toward the urban growth phenomenon and what's happening in the rural areas meanwhile?

• How do rates of HIV infection in Africa compare with the rest of the world? What parts of Africa are worst affected?

• What are some of the structural and cultural factors that affect transmission of HIV?

• What are ARVs and what could they do for HIV positive patients?

• What factors do Gordon and Gordon identify as contributing to poverty in Africa?

• Why does Africa have such problems with debt?

• What are structural adjustment policies/programs and why have they had such a devastating impact on African countries since the 1990s?   (this was illustrated masterfully in T Shirt Travels).

• Is new information technology likely to change Africa? How?

A Bagful of Locusts and the Baboon Woman:
Constructions of Gender, Change, and Continuity in Botswana
David Suggs

• What were the traditional bases of Kgatla social organization? What were the prerequisites for status based on age and gender?

• How/why have these now changed in BaKgatla society? How do people of these different age and gender categories react to the changed circumstances?

• How is all of this played out through the vehicle of public alcohol consumption? How/why has this element of BaKgatla culture changed?