Culture e congiunture : saggi di etnografia e storia mangbetu

Conquerors, fine artists and ferocious cannibals from the skull artificially deformed. This is the image of the Mangbetu of northeastern Congo that emerges from accounts of travelers and explorers ventured into the center of Africa between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The ethno-anthropological and historical research of recent decades have helped to raise awareness of the Mangbetu groups beyond the imaginations of them popular in Europe and the United States. In this volume, the author gives some results of his ethnographic research conducted in the region, without neglecting the interest in the construction and reconstruction of imaginary scenarios in the colonial period between the two world wars.