Democratization in Africa

Democratization in Africa
Author: Larry Jay Diamond
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 570
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801862731

"The country-specific chapters serve to underline the differences between African democracy and liberal democracy, yet some authors are at pains to emphasize that whatever their limitations, African democracies are an advance over what had gone before." -- African Studies Review

Electoral Politics in Africa since 1990

Electoral Politics in Africa since 1990
Author: Jaimie Bleck
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2018-11-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108680623

Democratic transitions in the early 1990s introduced a sea change in Sub-Saharan African politics. Between 1990 and 2015, several hundred competitive legislative and presidential elections were held in all but a handful of the region's countries. This book is the first comprehensive comparative analysis of the key issues, actors, and trends in these elections over the last quarter century. The book asks: what motivates African citizens to vote? What issues do candidates campaign on? How has the turn to regular elections promoted greater democracy? Has regular electoral competition made a difference for the welfare of citizens? The authors argue that regular elections have both caused significant changes in African politics and been influenced in turn by a rapidly changing continent - even if few of the political systems that now convene elections can be considered democratic, and even if many old features of African politics persist.

Africa in the United Nations System, 1945-2005

Africa in the United Nations System, 1945-2005
Author: Issaka K. Souare
Publisher: Adonis & Abbey Publishers
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2006
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Though there have been numerous studies on the United Nations, only a few have dealt comprehensively with Africa's relations with the world body. This book attempts to fill this lacuna by providing a systematic assessment of Africa's relationship with the World body, from its foundation in 1945 to its sixtieth anniversary in 2005. The premise of the book's argument is that to properly understand Africa's current relationship with the UN, it is necessary to first understand the history and theoretical underpinnings behind the formation of the world body, including the expectations and motives of the different stakeholders. The book shows that there have been some real successes in Africa's relationship with the world body - such as the joint efforts against the Apartheid regime in South Africa - as well as real failures - such as in the genocide in Rwanda. Based on this, it concludes that Africa's relationship with the United Nations has worked for the most part, and will work even better, if Africa sees its partnership with the UN as complementary to it own efforts, projects and initiatives rather than something to depend on.

Youth Cultures

Youth Cultures
Author: Vered Amit
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2022-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 100077581X

First published in 1995, Youth Cultures critically studies an anthropologically neglected population: the youth. The book broadens the scope for analysing young people’s behaviour by moving away from notions of resistance and deviance and offers a range of ethnographically based studies of different kinds of youth in varied national contexts. From Nepal to Canada, Europe, the Solomon Islands and Algeria, it addresses issues relating to globalisation in Third World cities, ethnic diversity in European cities and consumption practices, and places the lives of these young people in the contexts of wider cultures. Youth Cultures contributes to the general concern in anthropology with ‘rewriting’ culture, even while it seeks to close particular gaps in studies on youth culture. By challenging the limitation of previous youth research and acknowledging children and young adults as agents to be respected rather than objectified, this book will be invaluable reading to students of anthropology, sociology, education, psychology, and cultural studies.

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.

Identification and Citizenship in Africa

Identification and Citizenship in Africa
Author: Séverine Awenengo Dalberto
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2021-05-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000380084

In the context of a global biometric turn, this book investigates processes of legal identification in Africa ‘from below,’ asking what this means for the relationship between citizens and the state. Almost half of the population of the African continent is thought to lack a legal identity, and many states see biometric technology as a reliable and efficient solution to the problem. However, this book shows that biometrics, far from securing identities and avoiding fraud or political distrust, can even participate in reinforcing exclusion and polarizing debates on citizenship and national belonging. It highlights the social and political embedding of legal identities and the resilience of the documentary state. Drawing on empirical research conducted across 14 countries, the book documents the processes, practices, and meanings of legal identification in Africa from the 1950s right up to the biometric boom. Beyond the classic opposition between surveillance and recognition, it demonstrates how analysing the social uses of IDs and tools of identification can give a fresh account of the state at work, the practices of citizenship, and the role of bureaucracy in the writing of the self in African societies. This book will be of an important reference for students and scholars of African studies, politics, human security, and anthropology and the sociology of the state.

Postcolonial Identities in Africa

Postcolonial Identities in Africa
Author: Pnina Werbner
Publisher: Zed Books
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1996-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Making a break with conventional wisdom in post-colonial discourse, this book explores contemporary African identities in transition. The contributors look at the colonial legacy and how colonial identities are being reconstructed in the face of deepening social inequality across the continent.

Rhetorics of Self-Making

Rhetorics of Self-Making
Author: Debbora Battaglia
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2023-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520915259

Departing from an essentialist concept of the self, this highly original volume advances the cross-cultural study of selfhood with three contributions to the literature: First, it approaches the self as an ideological process, arguing that selfhood is culturally situated and emergent in social practices of persuasion. Second, it demonstrates how postmodernity problematizes the experience and concept of the self. Finally, the book challenges the pervasive practice of equating an individuated self with the Western world and a relational self with the non-Western world. Contributions cover a broad range of topics—from the development of the eccentric self to the ritual circumcision of Jewish males.

The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa

The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa
Author: Alex de Waal
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2015-10-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745695612

The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa delves into the business of politics in the turbulent, war-torn countries of north-east Africa. It is a contemporary history of how politicians, generals and insurgents bargain over money and power, and use of war to achieve their goals. Drawing on a thirty-year career in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, including experience as a participant in high-level peace talks, Alex de Waal provides a unique and compelling account of how these countries’ leaders run their governments, conduct their business, fight their wars and, occasionally, make peace. De Waal shows how leaders operate on a business model, securing funds for their ‘political budgets’ which they use to rent the provisional allegiances of army officers, militia commanders, tribal chiefs and party officials at the going rate. This political marketplace is eroding the institutions of government and reversing statebuildingÑand it is fuelled in large part by oil exports, aid funds and western military assistance for counter-terrorism and peacekeeping. The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa is a sharp and disturbing book with profound implications for international relations, development and peacemaking in the Horn of Africa and beyond.

Johannesburg

Johannesburg
Author: Sarah Nuttall
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2008-10-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822381214

Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis is a pioneering effort to insert South Africa’s largest city into urban theory, on its own terms. Johannesburg is Africa’s premier metropolis. Yet theories of urbanization have cast it as an emblem of irresolvable crisis, the spatial embodiment of unequal economic relations and segregationist policies, and a city that responds to but does not contribute to modernity on the global scale. Complicating and contesting such characterizations, the contributors to this collection reassess classic theories of metropolitan modernity as they explore the experience of “city-ness” and urban life in post-apartheid South Africa. They portray Johannesburg as a polycentric and international city with a hybrid history that continually permeates the present. Turning its back on rigid rationalities of planning and racial separation, Johannesburg has become a place of intermingling and improvisation, a city that is fast developing its own brand of cosmopolitan culture. The volume’s essays include an investigation of representation and self-stylization in the city, an ethnographic examination of friction zones and practices of social reproduction in inner-city Johannesburg, and a discussion of the economic and literary relationship between Johannesburg and Maputo, Mozambique’s capital. One contributor considers how Johannesburg’s cosmopolitan sociability enabled the anticolonial projects of Mohandas Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. Journalists, artists, architects, writers, and scholars bring contemporary Johannesburg to life in ten short pieces, including reflections on music and megamalls, nightlife, built spaces, and life for foreigners in the city. Contributors: Arjun Appadurai, Carol A. Breckenridge, Lindsay Bremner, David Bunn, Fred de Vries, Nsizwa Dlamini, Mark Gevisser, Stefan Helgesson, Julia Hornberger, Jonathan Hyslop, Grace Khunou, Frédéric Le Marcis, Xavier Livermon, John Matshikiza, Achille Mbembe, Robert Muponde, Sarah Nuttall, Tom Odhiambo, Achal Prabhala, AbdouMaliq Simone