Synopsis
Saying that the image of Africa in the West is negative is stating the obvious but explaining nothing. This book is about understanding how the images have evolved in the encounters between Africa and Europe over time. It shows a greater variety than is usually assumed on the two basic European themes of romanticizing “the primitive” and looking down on “the backward”. The contributions to this book have been produced within the research project “Cultural Images in and of Africa” at the Nordic Africa Institute and deal with history, music, missionary writing, development aid discourse, commercial handicraft, popular literature, and travel writing.