Review of Practicing History by G. Maddox

Gregory Maddox, in Practicing History, offers an insightful, if somewhat inconclusive, meditation on the discipline of history. Presenting the autobiography of his collaborator Ernest Kongola as a pathway through the 20th century history of Gogo people in central Tanzania, he addresses the elusive issue of agency in the ‘construction’ of history. Building an analysis of social change in the twentieth century around Kongola’s narrative that “melds together a sense of local community rooted in a particular place, of membership in a modern nation, and of a broader, ‘universal,’ spirituality,” (15) Maddox seeks to distinguish his own scholarly interpretation from Kongola’s work.