Agency in tight corners: Narrative and initiative in African history

TLDR: In this article, Terence Ranger's emphasis on the capacity of Africans to resist, and sometimes to deflect what appears to be their structural fate has inspired a generation of African and Africanist historians, whose local case studies of linkages between the personal, the social, and the political can in fact suggest answers to 'the big why questions' of larger historical process.

Abstract: This collection renders tribute on his retirement to Terence Ranger, whose emphasis on the capacity of Africans to resist, and sometimes to deflect what appears to be their structural fate has inspired a generation of African and Africanist historians This introduction first shows how Ranger has defended African historiography against structural pessimism, scepticism about its methods, and the charge of irrelevance It then argues that the nine contributors here share his view Their local case studies of linkages between the personal, the social, and the political, can in fact suggest answers to 'the big why questions' of larger historical process They do so by showing the forms in which these processes are in real life perceived, and contingently acted upon, by historically knowledgeable human agents