Bilden av Afrika och dess historia : en diskursanalytisk studie av ett biblioteks böcker om Afrikas historia, utifrån omslag, baksides- och innersidestexter

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine how a Swedish public library's collection of books on African history looks like, who the writers are and how Africa and its history areportrayed. The focus of the analysis is on the front and back covers and in some cases on theinformation texts inside the books. The chosen library is the city library of Umeå. The 15books examined were found on the shelf classified as Kp – the classification for African history according to the Swedish SAB-classification system. The analysis is based on discourse analysis and on Norman Fairlough's critical discourse analysis in particular. Edward Said's postcolonial theories are also used. The results show that the majority of the writers are Western European or North American men, active as historians or journalists. There are veryfew female writers or writers of African heritage. The views on Africa and its history are generally positive when it comes to the pre-colonial history of the continent, while the history of the colonial era or contemporary history tends to be viewed upon negatively.