Critical Perspectives on African Politics
Critical Perspectives on African Politics

Author: Clive Gabay

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-05-09

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1317686136

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Strong states and strong civil societies are now increasingly hailed as the twin drivers of a ‘rising Africa’. Current attempts to support growth and democracy are part of a longer history of promoting projects of disciplinary, regulatory and liberal rule and values beyond ‘the West’. Yet this is not simply Western domination of a passive continent. Such an interpretation misses out on the complexities and nuances of the politics of state-building and civil society promotion, and the central role of African agency. Drawing upon critical theory, including postcolonial and governmentality approaches, this book interrogates international practices of state-building and civil society support in Africa. It seeks to develop a theoretically informed critical approach to discourses and interventions such as those associated with broadly ‘Western’ initiatives in Africa. In doing so, the book highlights the power relations, inequalities, coercion and violence that are deeply implicated within contemporary international interventions on the African continent. Providing a range of empirical cases and theoretical approaches, the chapters are united by their critical treatment of political dynamics in Africa. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, development studies, postcolonial theory, International Relations, international political economy and peacekeeping/making.

Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa
Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa

Author: John L. Comaroff

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780226114149

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The essays in this important new collection explore the diverse, unexpected, and controversial ways in which the idea of civil society has recently entered into populist politics and public debate throughout Africa. In a substantial introduction, anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff offer a critical theoretical analysis of the nature and deployment of the concept—and the current debates surrounding it. Building on this framework, the contributors investigate the "problem" of civil society across their regions of expertise, which cover the continent. Drawing creatively on one another's work, they examine the impact of colonial ideology, postcoloniality, and development practice on discourses of civility, the workings of everyday politics, the construction of new modes of selfhood, and the pursuit of moral community. Incisive and original, the book shows how struggles over civil society in Africa reveal much about larger historical forces in the post-Cold War era. It also makes a strong case for the contribution of historical anthropology to contemporary discourses on the rise of a "new world order."

Critical Perspectives on African Genocide
Critical Perspectives on African Genocide

Author: Alfred Frankowski

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-02-23

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 1538150018

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Genocide has become a part of the contemporary global expression of political violence. After all, every continent has had its genocide, but genocide in Africa and the African diaspora is distinctly different from those in Europe or the West. This text approaches genocide from within the context of Africa and the African diaspora to examine political and philosophical after-effects of global colonialism. As genocidal state violence has become prominent through colonialism, its appearance in Europe and the West have developed sharply against how it appears in colonized spaces within the African diaspora. This text argues that such a difference in orientation is needed to develop new concepts, critical approaches, and perspectives on the intersections between colonialism, political violence, and anti-black politics as a way of critically understanding global genocide and the presence of continual genocidal violence.

Civil Society and Democracy in Africa
Civil Society and Democracy in Africa

Author: Nelson Kasfir

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-04-03

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 1136323112

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This work critically reviews the conventional uses of the concept of civil society in promoting democratization in Africa and suggests omissions and modifications are needed for more accurate analyses.

Language and Politics in Africa
Language and Politics in Africa

Author: John Obiero Ogone

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2020-05-15

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 1527551555

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Language and Politics in Africa is a fine collection of both empirically and theoretically based articles from across the African continent and beyond, but all focusing on the twin issues of Language and Politics in post colonial African countries. The authors offer critical perspectives on contemporary theoretical, empirical and policy issues related to language and how such issues manifest themselves at the inevitable interface with politics in a number of African countries. Coming at a time when most African countries are still grappling with language policy and planning issues while others are increasingly having to contend with the political outcomes of linguistically and ethnically heterogeneous nation-states, the present volume is a must read for scholars and students who are interested on the twin issues of language and politics since it represents one of the first attempts at documenting how language and politics affect each other in a number of African countries. The volume is divided into two sections dealing with the politics of language and the language of politics in African countries.

Critical Perspectives on African Politics
Critical Perspectives on African Politics

Author: Clive Gabay

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-05-09

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1317686128

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Strong states and strong civil societies are now increasingly hailed as the twin drivers of a ‘rising Africa’. Current attempts to support growth and democracy are part of a longer history of promoting projects of disciplinary, regulatory and liberal rule and values beyond ‘the West’. Yet this is not simply Western domination of a passive continent. Such an interpretation misses out on the complexities and nuances of the politics of state-building and civil society promotion, and the central role of African agency. Drawing upon critical theory, including postcolonial and governmentality approaches, this book interrogates international practices of state-building and civil society support in Africa. It seeks to develop a theoretically informed critical approach to discourses and interventions such as those associated with broadly ‘Western’ initiatives in Africa. In doing so, the book highlights the power relations, inequalities, coercion and violence that are deeply implicated within contemporary international interventions on the African continent. Providing a range of empirical cases and theoretical approaches, the chapters are united by their critical treatment of political dynamics in Africa. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, development studies, postcolonial theory, International Relations, international political economy and peacekeeping/making.

Critical Perspectives in Politics and Socio-Economic Development in Ghana
Critical Perspectives in Politics and Socio-Economic Development in Ghana

Author: Wisdom J. Tettey

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 9789004130135

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This volume provides a comprehensive and integrated analysis of contemporary Ghanaian politics and economy and their relationship to culture. It combines rich, recent, empirical material with sophisticated theoretical analyses, bringing fresh and unique interdisciplinary perspectives to bear on the issues examined.

Corruption, Good Governance, and the African State
Corruption, Good Governance, and the African State

Author: Ganahl, Joseph Patrick

Publisher: Universitätsverlag Potsdam

Published: 2014-02-18

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 386956248X

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African states are often called corrupt, indicating that the political system in Africa differs from the one prevalent in economically advanced democracies. This, however, does not give us any insight into what makes corruption the dominant norm of African statehood. Thus we must turn to the overly neglected theoretical work on the political economy of Africa in order to determine how the poverty of governance in Africa is firmly anchored both in Africa’s domestic socioeconomic reality, as well as in the region’s role in the international economic order. Instead of focusing on increased monitoring, enforcement and formal democratic procedures, this book combines economic analysis with political theory in order to arrive at a better understanding of the political-economic roots of corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The New South Africa at Twenty
The New South Africa at Twenty

Author: Peter C. J. Vale

Publisher: University of Kwazulu Natal Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781869142896

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In this book, some of South Africa's finest academic minds reflect on 20 years of democratic rule in the country. How far have South Africans really come? Is race still an entrenched issue in the country? Why does gender discrimination continue? Why are the poor in revolt? Is free expression under threat? What happened to South African Marxism? What drives Julius Malema? How have the unions experienced the post-apartheid years? These (and many other) questions are examined. Analytical and accessible, the book continues a long tradition of engaging South Africa's politics and society in a non-partisan, but critical, fashion. It opens the way for innate explanations and provides insights that lie beyond the workaday accounts usually offered by pundits. [Subject: Sociology, African Studies, Politics]

African Sociology
African Sociology

Author: Bernard Magubane

Publisher: Africa Research and Publications

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 648

ISBN-13:

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The sociological and political writings of Bernard Makhosezwe Magubane on African political history, political economy and political philosophy constitute a vital portion of a monumental legacy to later generations by an African intellectual who came to maturity through an historical consciousness that emerged during the 1960s. This was a period characterized by the radical contentious philosophies of history: African marxism, African nationalism and the reactionary ideologies aligned with imperialism and colonialism.The essays of Bernard Makhosezwe Magubane stand at a fascinating intersection with the intellectual systems of Frantz Fanon, H.I.E. Dhlomo, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Amilcar Cabral. They are first and foremost what Cabral and Fanon were clamoring for: an instrumentarium of the construction of a progressive African ideology or African ideologies. What enabled them to realize this remarkable breakthrough is that they are a continuation of the revolutionary thought of Fanon and Cabral. Magubane was among the first African academic scholars to have seen the historical significance of Fanon and Cabral, respectively in the mid 1960s and in the early 1970s.Written in exile during the exile period in South African intellectual and cultural history these essays until recently were not easily historically locatable within the genealogical structure of South African intellectual traditions. Undoubtedly, this had been due to the 'political philosophy' of apartheid and its ideological manifestations.