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Agency in African History is the first edited volume of African history to offer sustained engagement with the idea of agency. Agency is ubiquitous and invisible, contested and yet foundational to the field. These contradictory qualities contribute to the polarization of the term and a stalemate in debates surrounding its use. This volume proposes a way forward by breaking agency down into parts, disaggregating the terms and concepts often associated with agency, and reckoning with historians’ uses and misuses of the term. The book explores how agency has shaped the field of African history and the historical discipline more broadly. Tracing the concept back to the contributions of Black abolitionists and intellectuals in the eighteenth century, the volume challenges popular genealogies of agency in Western academe. Simultaneously, it suggests productive future possibilities for the framework.

The volume contributes to lively debates on the concept of agency in adjoining fields. Recent works in cultural theory, including Naminata Diabate’s Naked Agency (Duke University Press, 2020) and Olúf?´mi Táíwò’s Against Decolonisation (Hurst, 2022), have reinvigorated discussions within African studies about the applicability of agency. In the broader historical discipline, special issues of the Journal of Social History and the American Historical Review (both 2023) have centered on the problems and promises of agency as a historiographical framework, mostly from a Euro-American perspective. This volume makes an urgent intervention in these important conversations, arguing that historians of Africa must both adapt to new scholarly insights and contribute their unique perspectives from a field typically ignored in the formulation of world-historical concepts.

Agency in African History is addressed to historians of Africa and to a broader interdisciplinary audience interested in agency. This interdisciplinary audience includes scholars of African studies—cultural theorists, political scientists, anthropologists, and others—as well as historians of world regions beyond Africa. Individual contributions cover the seventeenth century to the present day and range in subject matter from histories of decolonization and international relations to the Atlantic slave trade, art history, urban studies, sports studies, and cultural theory.

Contributors

Mathew Ayodele
Felicitas Becker
Emily S. Burrill
Robin P. Chapdelaine
Kate Cowcher
Naminata Diabate
Walter Hawthorne
Lauren V. Jarvis
Rachel M. Petrocelli
Ian Read
Jodie Yuzhou Sun
Wallace Teska
Chepchirchir Tirop

Individual agents are frequently evident in early writing and notational systems, yet these systems have rarely been subjected to the concept of agency as it is traceable in archeology. Agency in Ancient Writing addresses this oversight, allowing archeologists to identify and discuss real, observable actors and actions in the archaeological record.

Embracing myriad ways in which agency can be interpreted, ancient writing systems from Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Crete, China, and Greece are examined from a textual perspective as both archaeological objects and nascent historical documents. This allows for distinction among intentions, consequences, meanings, and motivations, increasing understanding and aiding interpretation of the subjectivity of social actors. Chapters focusing on acts of writing and public recitation overlap with those addressing the materiality of texts, interweaving archaeology, epigraphy, and the study of visual symbol systems.

Agency in Ancient Writing leads to a more thorough and meaningful discussion of agency as an archaeological concept and will be of interest to anyone interested in ancient texts, including archaeologists, historians, linguists, epigraphers, and art historians, as well as scholars studying agency and structuration theory.

Every child in America deserves to know that a path to a successful life exists and that they have the power to follow it. But many never set foot on that path because they grow up hearing the message that systemic forces control their destinies, or that they are at fault for everything that has gone wrong in their lives. 

These children often come from difficult circumstances. Many are raised by young, single parents, live in disadvantaged neighborhoods, attend substandard schools, and lack the moral safeguards of religious and civic institutions. As a result, they can be dispirited into cycles of learned helplessness rather than inspired to pursue their own possibilities.

Yet this phenomenon is not universal. Some children thrive where others do not. Why? Are there personal behaviors and institutional supports that have proven to make a difference in helping young people chart a course for their futures? Agency answers with a loud and clear “yes!” 
This book describes four pillars that can uplift every young person as they make the passage into adulthood: Family, Religion, Education, and Entrepreneurship. Together, these pillars embody the true meaning of freedom, wherein people are motivated to embrace the ennobling responsibilities of building healthy social structures and shaping the outcomes of their own lives. 

For that reason, Ian Rowe calls the four pillars the FREE framework. With this framework in place, children are empowered to develop agency, which Rowe defines as the force of one’s free will, guided by moral discernment. Developing agency is the alternative to the debilitating ‘blame-the-system’ and ‘blame-the-victim’ narratives. It transcends our political differences and beckons all who dare to envision lives unshackled by present realities. 

In addition to making the case for agency, Rowe shares his personal story of success coming from an immigrant family. He defends America as an ever-improving country worthy of our esteem. He corrects misguided calls for “anti-racism” and “equity,” and champions a game plan for creating new agents of agency, dedicated to promoting the aspirational spirit of America’s children, and showing them the path that will set them FREE.