Amazon.com description: Product Description: Africanity Redefined: Collected Essays of Ali A. Mazrui, Volume I is the first of three volumes of Ali A. Mazrui's most important essays. The eventual three-volume work will provide readers with a broad spectrum of Professor Mazrui's writings during his four decades as a scholar and public intellectual. This first volume redefines the meaning of Africanity across geographical spaces, time, and cultures. The resulting definition is dynamic. It forces us to reject neo-imperialist paradigms and ontologies of what it means to be African. By encouraging us to think about Africanity as an idea rather than as point of origin, the ideas contained in these essays force us to reposition ourselves in the debate of our place in global cultures and civilizations, and they prepare us to take a more active role in social and political affairs.