Special issue: Heritage, history and memory: new research from East and Southern Africa

This special issue of ‘African Studies’ came out of collaborative research carried out in Kenya since October 2008 by Lotte Hughes, Annie Coombes and Karega-Munene for the project ‘Managing Heritage, Building Peace: Museums, Memorialisation and the Uses of Memory in Kenya’. The central theme is heritage, and the concomitant production of multiple narratives about history, memory and culture. Understanding how the legacy of the past re-emerges in the present is central to the investigation. Research focused on exploring how the idea of heritage is conceptualized in both its tangible and intangible manifestations. It probed the uses of heritage and memory in a variety of national and local contexts where the representation of history is foregrounded, through national museums, community peace museums run by non-professionals, monuments, mausolea and cultural festivals. While the majority of the articles focus on Kenya, new research opening up definitions of heritage in South Africa, Ethiopia, Namibia and Rwanda is also incorporated. Contents: ‘Truth be told’: some problems with historical revisionism in Kenya (Lotte Hughes) – Monumental histories: commemorating Mau Mau with the statue of Dedan Kimathi (Annie E. Coombes) – Museums in Kenya: spaces for selecting, ordering and erasing memories of identity and nationhood (Karega-Munene) – Reviving Yaaku: identity and indigeneity in Northern Kenya (Neil Carrier) – Notions of nation in Nairobi’s Nyayo-era monuments (Laragh Larsen) – Idioms of return: homecoming and heritage in the rebuilding of Protea village, Cape Town (South Africa) (Anna Bohlin) – Linking centralised politics to custodianship of cultural heritage in Ethiopia: examples of national-level museums in Addis Ababa (Belle Asante Tarsitani) – Review article: Beyond trauma: new perspectives on the politics of memory in East and Southern Africa (Heike Becker). [ASC Leiden abstract]