Collective Mobilisations in Africa / Mobilisations collectives en Afrique

Collective Mobilisations in Africa / Mobilisations collectives en Afrique
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2015-06-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004300007

This book uses empirical research to bring together a broad range of protest contexts in twelve chapters. From the formation of Maroon societies in the early colonial period, to female mobilisation in authoritarian contexts, via urban youth culture, women or mineworkers in trade unionism, as well as pro- and anti- gay rights activists, the protagonists here all insist upon their rights to protest in a variety of ways. Sometimes popular protest is expressed through religion, often (and sometimes violently) by young people, exasperated by their long wait for social achievement. Electoral wars and the formation of militias reveal a geography of violence in urban areas, which, in some sectarian excesses, can be displaced to rural areas, as described in the study on Boko Haram. Cet ouvrage regroupe un éventail comprenant douze contextes de contestation. De la formation de communautés marronnes au début de la colonisation, aux mobilisations féminines en contexte autoritaire, en passant par les cultures urbaines, les cultures syndicales des femmes et des travailleurs dans les mines, les contestations pro ou contre la liberté des homosexuels, tous font prévaloir leur pouvoir de contestation de manière plurielle. La voie religieuse est un domaine où s’exerce parfois de manière violente, les protestations de populations souvent jeunes, en attente de mobilité sociale. Les guerres électorales et la constitution de milices dessinent une géographie de la violence en milieu urbain, violence qui trouve à se déplacer en milieu rural dans certaines dérives sectaires comme en témoigne l’étude sur Boko Haram. Contributors are: Rémy Bazenguissa-Ganga, Raphaël Botiveau, Christophe Broqua, Michel Cahen,Thomas Fouquet, Adam Hizagi, Alcinda Honwana, Alexander Keese, Marie-Nathalie LeBlanc, Dominique Malaquais, Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle, Ophélie Rillon, Johanna Siméant, Benjamin Soares, Kadya Tall.

Contemporary West African States

Contemporary West African States
Author: Donal Cruise O'Brien
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1989
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521368933

A provocative contribution to the debate on the nature of the state and political processes in Africa.

Youth and Higher Education in Africa. The Cases of Cameroon, South Africa, Eritrea and Zimbabwe

Youth and Higher Education in Africa. The Cases of Cameroon, South Africa, Eritrea and Zimbabwe
Author: P. Chimanikire
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2009-08-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 2869784252

Student activism in Africa, at least since the early 1990s, has been preoccupied with popular struggles for democracy in both their respective countries and institutions of higher learning. The changing socio-economic and political conditions in many African countries, characterized by the decline in economic growth and the introduction of multi-party politics, among several other factors, have had different impact on students and student political organizations in African universities. This book recounts the responses of students to these changes in their attempt to negotiate better living and studying conditions. The four case studies contained in the book - Cameroon, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Eritrea - clearly reveal the very important aspects of the situation in which African students find themselves in many countries, and underscores the need to understand the character and development of higher education on the continent. Ministries of Higher Education, Vice Chancellors, Deans of Students, Student Unions and parents will find this book very useful in terms of understanding the tensions that often arise at institutions of higher learning and why solutions seem to be elusive.

Nation-Building, Propaganda, and Literature in Francophone Africa

Nation-Building, Propaganda, and Literature in Francophone Africa
Author: Dominic Thomas
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2002-11-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780253109545

What characterizes the relationship between literature and the state? Should literature serve the needs of the state by constructing national consciousness, espousing state propaganda, and molding good citizens? Or should it be dedicated to a different kind of creative social endeavor? In this important book about literature and the politics of nation-building, Dominic Thomas assesses the contributions of Francophone African writers whose works have played a key role in the recent transition to democracy in the Congo. Exploring the works of Sony Labou Tansi, Henri Lopes, and Emmanuel Dongala, among others, Thomas highlights writers intimately involved with government and politics -- whether in support of the state's vision or with the intention of articulating a more open view of citizens and society. Focusing on themes such as collaboration, reconciliation, identity, history, and memory, Nation-Building, Propaganda, and Literature in Francophone Africa elaborates a broader understanding of the circumstances of African colonization, modern African nation-state formation, and the complex cultural dynamics at work in Africa since independence.

Fipa Families

Fipa Families
Author: Kathleen R. Smythe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2006-05-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0313094373

Ufipa, a labor reserve for Tanganyika, witnessed minimal colonial development. Instead, evangelization by White Fathers' Catholic missionaries began in the 1870s. By the 1950s, the missionaries had secured varying degrees of political, economic and social authority in the region, witnessed by the fact that the vast majority of Fipa had converted to Catholicism. Fipa Families examines how this happened from the Fipa perspective. Written primarily for scholars and students of African colonial history, mission history, and family and childhood history, this study is based on a rich collection of oral and documentary sources. Working with this wealth of information, Smythe breaks new ground in placing African social and moral concerns parallel to those of missionaries, resurrecting the study of the family (rather than kinship, lineage, or clan) within African history, and demonstrating at the level of the family and village the ways in which ideas of socialization, reproduction, and education were challenged and re-created in the colonial context in Ufipa. Initially, employees of the mission sought to oversee the education and moral upbringing of at least one child from each family, substituting boarding school for the care relatives would otherwise have provided. A few mission parents even opted to forego the multiple benefits of grandchildren so a child could pursue the celibate path of a religious vocation. The opportunities of the Catholic Church complemented and competed with Fipa processes of social and biological reproduction, and Catholicism became part of the fabric of Fipa society because of, and despite, its resonance with Fipa culture. At the heart of both Fipa and missionary concerns were the processes of socialization (social reproduction) and biological reproduction, processes carried out within the context of the family.

Food Connections

Food Connections
Author: Maria Abranches
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2022-05-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1800733739

Food Connections follows the movement of food from its production sites in West Africa to its final spaces of consumption in Europe. It is an ethnographic study of economic and social life amongst a close-knit community of food producers, traders and consumers and a wide range of small intermediaries that operate in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal. By investigating the way meanings of food and land are embedded in everyday experiences and relationships in the various phases of the movement, on both sides of the migration, it reveals the connections that transnational processes of food production, exchange and consumption generate between two lifeworlds.

The Colonial Legacy in France

The Colonial Legacy in France
Author: Nicolas Bancel
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2017-05-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0253026512

Debates about the legacy of colonialism in France are not new, but they have taken on new urgency in the wake of recent terrorist attacks. Responding to acts of religious and racial violence in 2005, 2010, and 2015 and beyond, the essays in this volume pit French ideals against government-sponsored revisionist decrees that have exacerbated tensions, complicated the process of establishing and recording national memory, and triggered divisive debates on what it means to identify as French. As they document the checkered legacy of French colonialism, the contributors raise questions about France and the contemporary role of Islam, the banlieues, immigration, race, history, pedagogy, and the future of the Republic. This innovative volume reconsiders the cultural, economic, political, and social realities facing global French citizens today and includes contributions by Achille Mbembe, Benjamin Stora, Françoise Vergès, Alec Hargreaves, Elsa Dorlin, and Alain Mabanckou, among others.

The Intestines of the State

The Intestines of the State
Author: Nicolas Argenti
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2008-09-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226026132

The young people of the Cameroon Grassfields have been subject to a long history of violence and political marginalization. For centuries the main victims of the slave trade, they became prime targets for forced labor campaigns under a series of colonial rulers. Today’s youth remain at the bottom of the fiercely hierarchical and polarized societies of the Grassfields, and it is their response to centuries of exploitation that Nicolas Argenti takes up in this absorbing and original book. Beginning his study with a political analysis of youth in the Grassfields from the eighteenth century to the present, Argenti pays special attention to the repeated violent revolts staged by young victims of political oppression. He then combines this history with extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the Oku chiefdom, discovering that the specter of past violence lives on in the masked dance performances that have earned intense devotion from today’s youth. Argenti contends that by evoking the imagery of past cataclysmic events, these masquerades allow young Oku men and women to address the inequities they face in their relations with elders and state authorities today.

Publishing from the South

Publishing from the South
Author: Sarah Nuttall
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2024-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1776149246

In 2022 Wits University Press marked its centenary, making it the oldest, most established university press in sub-Saharan Africa. While in part modelled on scholarly publishers from the global North, it has had to contend with the constraints of working under global South conditions: marginalisation within the university, budgetary limitations, small local markets, unequal access to international sales channels, and the privileging of English language publishing over indigenous languages. This volume explores what the Press has achieved, and what its modes of reinvention might look like. In widening and deepening our understanding of the Press as an example of a global South scholarly publisher, this volume asks how publishing can contribute to a broader understanding of Southern knowledge production. Featuring contributions from scholars, publishers and authors this multi-voiced volume showcases the history of the Press’s publishing activities over 100 years: from documenting its evolution through book covers and giving credence to some of the leading black intellectuals and writers of the early 20th century and the success of those works in spite of their authors’ racial marginalisation, to the role of women, both in publishing and in the spaces afforded to women’s writing on the Press’s list. The collection concludes with essays by contemporary authors who detail not only their experiences of working with Southern publishers, but also the politics and influences governing their decisions to choose the Press over a Northern publisher. Publishing from the South shows the strategies deployed by the Press to professionalise Southern knowledge making, and in the process demonstrating how university presses in the global South support the scholarly missions of their universities for both local and global audiences.