List of keywords in African Studies

for research using KUG

Please notice:

• The catalog of keywords is divided in two divisions:
  • Social Anthropology
  • and Linguistics/Language
• Besides the listed English keywords, there are German equivalents. These were used in the old keyword system and have not yet been replaced completely by English translations. Therefore, please consider using both terms for your research.
• Information in brackets is not part of the keyword, it is only for explanation.
• You can also search for countries, languages, language families, continents, etc.

Key terms: Social Anthropology

• African Studies

• Archaeology

• Bibliography

• Biological Anthropology

• Book Review

• Cartography

• Cultural Anthropology

  • Acculturation
  • Age Groups
  • Architecture
  • Art
  • Artifacts
  • Body
  • Body And Clothing
  • Bridewealth
  • Cannibalism
  • Clans
  • Conservation (Environment, Pollution, Heritage…)
  • Consumption
  • Cultural Contact
  • Cultural Heritage
  • Custom
  • Dance
  • Drug/Alcohol
  • Ethnonyms
  • Fashion
  • Fieldwork
  • Folklore
  • Food
  • Games
  • Griot
  • Indigenous Peoples
  • Instruments
  • Landscape
  • Life Cycle
  • Love
  • Matrilineage/ Patrilineage
  • Memory
  • Mobility
  • Music
  • Mutilation/ Infibulation/ Excision
  • Performance
  • Popular Culture
  • Rites of Passage, Initiation
  • Sense
  • Social Networks/Institutions
  • Sounds
  • Sports
  • Succession
  • Textiles
  • Theatre
  • Weapons

• Cyberspace

• Ecology

  • Botany
  • Climate
  • Crisis
  • Natural Sciences
  • Sustainability
  • Zoology

• Economy

  • Agriculture
  • Caravans
  • Corruption
  • Development
  • Exploitation
  • Farmers
  • Fishermen
  • Foragers
  • Gift Exchange
  • Globalisation
  • Hunters And Gatherers
  • Husbandry
  • Livelihood
  • Mining
  • Money
  • Nile-Economy
  • Nutrition
  • Pastorals/Herders
  • Pottery
  • Resources
  • Science
  • Smithing
  • Tourism
  • Trade/Commerce
  • Transport
  • Water Supply
  • Wealth

• Ethnography

• Ethnobotany

• Ethnozoology

• Festschrift

• Fieldwork

• Geography

  • Caprivi-Zipfel
  • Globalization
  • Kalahari
  • Toponyms

• Geology

• History

  • African History
    • Colonial History
    • Colonial Resistance
      • Slavery/Forced Labour
    • Oral History/Tradition
    • Postcolonial History
      • Postcolonialism
    • Precolonial History
    • Prehistory
  • Apartheid
  • Biography
  • Disaster
  • History of Discovery
  • Postapartheid
  • Research History

• Law

  • Human Rights
  • Traditional Law

• Media

  • Archives/Documentation
  • Film
  • ICT (Information & Telecommunication Technology)
  • Internet
  • Libraries
  • Museums
  • Perception (Visual)
  • Photography
  • Picture/Image
  • Radio
  • Press
  • Text
  • TV/Film/Cinema
  • Video/Audio
  • Visual Anthropology

• Medicine

  • Medical Anthropology
  • Health And Disease/Epidemics/Healing
    • AIDS/HIV

• Orientalism

• Philosophy

  • Ethics
  • Freedom
  • Négritude
    • Afrocentrism
    • Pan-Africanism
  • Production of Knowledge
  • Time
  • World View

• Politics

  • Chiefdoms
  • Citizenship
  • Constitution
  • Democracy
  • Development Politics
  • Government
  • International Relations
  • Kingdom
  • Nationality
  • Power Sharing
  • Reform Policy
  • States
  • Stateless society (acephalous)

• Postmodernism

  • Africans in Germany
  • Constructions
  • Critical Whiteness Studies
  • Diaspora
    • Diaspora Studies
  • Discourse
    • Discourse Analysis
  • Images Of Africa
  • Orientalism
  • Othering
  • Perceptions
  • Postcolonial Discourse
  • Postcolonialism
  • Postcolonial Theory
  • Prejudices
  • Racism
  • Stereotypes
  • Subaltern Studies
  • Transnational History
  • Whiteness

• Reader

• Religion

  • Ancestor Worship
  • Belief
  • Bible Translation
  • Charismatic Movements
  • Christianity
  • Divination
  • Experience
  • Fetish
  • Funeral
  • Imagination
  • Independent Churches
  • Islam
  • Judaism
  • Magic
  • Mission
  • Mysticism
  • Occultism
  • Pentecostal
  • Pilgrims
  • Prophetism
  • Resurrection
  • Rituals
  • Rasta
  • Shamanism
  • Spirit Possession (Trance)
  • Superstition
  • Syncretism
  • Theology
  • Voodoo
  • Witchcraft/Sorcery/Magic

• Research

  • Cross-cultural Comparison

• Society

  • Change
  • Class
  • Conflict
  • Conflict-Management/Mediation
  • Crime
  • Criminality
  • Death
  • Demography
  • Development Aid
  • Diaspora
  • Education (Institutions/System)
  • Ethnicity
  • Ethnodemography
  • Ethnohistory
  • Family
  • Feminism
  • Friendship
  • Gender
  • Genocide
  • Guerilla
  • Identity
  • Inclusion/Exclusion
  • Kinship
  • Marriage
  • Migration
  • Nationalism
  • Nomadism
  • Patriotism
  • Peace/ Reconciliation
  • Poverty
  • Prostitution
  • Racism
  • Refugees
  • Resistance
  • Revolution
  • Secret society
  • Security
  • Sedentarisation
  • Segregation/Integration
  • Sex
    • Homosexuality
  • Social Control
  • Social Structure
  • Sociology
  • Stratification
  • Taboo
  • Terrorism
  • Urbanization
  • Violence
  • War (Civil war, Tribal war)
    • Refugees
  • Xenophobia

• Traveller´s Guide

• Travelogues

Key terms: Linguistics/Language

• Anthropological Linguistics

  • Colour
  • Comprehension
  • Ethnography of speaking
  • Ethnolinguistic
  • Linguistic Relativity
  • Meaning
  • Naming
  • Numerals (Number Systems)
  • Opposition
  • Perception
  • Politeness
  • Space
  • Taxonomies
  • Time

• Applied Linguistics

  • Alphabetization
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Graphitization
  • Language And Education
  • Language Documentation
  • Language Planning
  • Language Policy
  • Orthographies
  • Paradigms

• Areal Linguistics

• Communication

  • Cognition
  • Discourse

• Dialectology

• Dictionary

  • Glossaries
  • Word List

• General Linguistics

• Gesture

• Grammar

  • Adjectives
  • Adverbs
  • Aktionsart
  • Auxiliaries
  • Benefactive/ Malefactive Constructions
  • Causation
  • Copula
  • Deictic
  • Demonstratives
  • Determiners
  • Directionality
  • Focus
  • Lexical Borrowing
  • Loanwords
  • Locative
  • Mood (Modality)
  • Motion
  • Negation
  • Nouns
  • Noun Classes
  • Possession
  • Pronouns
  • Reciprocity
  • Relation
  • Statives
  • Tense/Aspect
  • Transitivity
  • Translation
  • Verbs
    • Light Verbs
    • Verbal Derivation
  • Wh- (Questions: why, where,….)

• Grammaticalisation

• Historical/Comparative Linguistics

  • Comparative Method
  • Glottochronology
  • Internal Reconstruction
  • Language Change
  • Language Classification
  • Morphological Change
  • Phonetic Change
  • Semantic Change
  • Similarity
  • Syntactic Change
  • Synchrony/Diachrony

• Ideophone

• Language Acquisition

  • Productivity

• Language Course

• Language Contact/Area

  • Language Map
  • Borrowing

• Lexicography

  • Lexicon
  • Synonyms

• Lexicology

• Lingua Franca

• Linguistic Field Methods

  • Fieldwork
  • Language Description

• Literature

  • African Literature
  • Chants
  • Folk Tales
  • Inscriptions, Slogans
  • Literature Theory
  • Mythology
  • Oral Literature
  • Proverb
  • Review
  • Text/Story/Poem/Fairy Tale/Poetry
  • Riddles

• Morphology

• Phonetics

• Phonology

  • Tone
  • Vowel Harmony
  • Nasal (Harmony)

• Pidgins And Creoles

• Pragmatics

• Scripts

• Semantics

  • Iconicity
  • Metaphor
  • Metonymy
  • Semantic Derivation

• Sign Language

• Sociolinguistics

  • Attitudes (Language Loyalty)
  • Bilingualism/Multilingualism
  • Code-Switching
  • Gender (-based Language Behaviour)
  • Language Endangerment/Language Shift
  • Language Policy
  • Linguistic/Language Interference
  • Official Language
  • Register (Argot, Secret Language, Special Vocabularies)
  • Status
  • Vernacular

• Syntax

  • Reduplication
  • Relative Clause

• Tonology

  • Prosodology
  • Reduplication

• Typology

  • Case
  • Categorization
  • Lexical Typology
  • Semantic Typology
  • Serial Verb Construction
  • Word Order

• Universals