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Culture and Customs of South Africa. By Funso Afolayan. Culture and Customs of Africa Series. Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004. Pp. xxiv, 301; map, photos. $45.00.
Consciousness raising about Africa is inherently good-a common refrain among academics who study and teach about Africa, and who continually bemoan the misconceptualization of the continent. Addressing this issue is the apparent purpose behind Toyin Falola's new Culture and Customs of Africa Series, of which the present work is one installment in the broader range of country-by-country analyses. It is not entirely clear who the intended audience is for this book, or indeed the entire series, but Funso Afolayan's Culture and Customs of South Africa is clearly an introductory-level work accessible to a general reader that could serve students in basic college courses on Africa. In this light, Afolayan's book is a useful and comprehensive study of elements of South African history and society with an emphasis on a broad interpretation of culture. For most Africanists familiar with the country, however, this work seems to be at once too broad and too thin in its coverage of an admittedly vast topic.
Culture and Customs of South Africa takes on an ambitious project. It seeks, according to the series introduction, to "capture the comprehensiveness of African culture and customs" (p. ix) in a set format. Afolayan has done an...