Allan D. Cooper – författare

This first comprehensive examination of U.S. relations with Namibia offers a critical analysis of the economic and historical determinants of current U.S. policy in southern Africa. Dr. Cooper first traces American ties to Namibia dating from the 1700s, documenting an extensive commercial interest in the area prior to German colonization. Subsequen

This first comprehensive examination of U.S. relations with Namibia offers a critical analysis of the economic and historical determinants of current U.S. policy in southern Africa. Dr. Cooper first traces American ties to Namibia dating from the 1700s, documenting an extensive commercial interest in the area prior to German colonization. Subsequen

Africa and the Global System of Capital Accumulation offers a groundbreaking analysis of the strategic role Africa plays in the global capitalist economy. The exploitation of Africa’s rich resources, as well as its labor, make it possible for major world powers to sustain their authority over their own middle-class populations while rewarding African collaborators in leadership positions for subjecting their populations into poverty and desperation. Middle-class obsessions such as computers, mobile phones, cars and the petroleum that fuels them, diamonds, chocolate – all of these products require African resources that are typically obtained by child or slave labor that helps to generate billionaires out of foreign investors while impoverishing most Africans. Oritsejafor and Cooper demonstrate that "primitive accumulation," believed by both Adam Smith and Karl Marx to be a process that precedes capitalism, is actually an integral part of capitalism. They also validate the thesis that capitalism incorporates racism as an organizing tool for the exploitation of labor in Africa and on a global scale. Case studies are presented on Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Congo, Tanzania, Somalia, Angola, Namibia, Sao Tome and Principe, and South Sudan. There are also chapters analyzing the interests of Russia and China in Africa. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, development, and economics.

Africa and the Global System of Capital Accumulation offers a groundbreaking analysis of the strategic role Africa plays in the global capitalist economy. The exploitation of Africa’s rich resources, as well as its labor, make it possible for major world powers to sustain their authority over their own middle-class populations while rewarding African collaborators in leadership positions for subjecting their populations into poverty and desperation. Middle-class obsessions such as computers, mobile phones, cars and the petroleum that fuels them, diamonds, chocolate – all of these products require African resources that are typically obtained by child or slave labor that helps to generate billionaires out of foreign investors while impoverishing most Africans. Oritsejafor and Cooper demonstrate that "primitive accumulation," believed by both Adam Smith and Karl Marx to be a process that precedes capitalism, is actually an integral part of capitalism. They also validate the thesis that capitalism incorporates racism as an organizing tool for the exploitation of labor in Africa and on a global scale. Case studies are presented on Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Congo, Tanzania, Somalia, Angola, Namibia, Sao Tome and Principe, and South Sudan. There are also chapters analyzing the interests of Russia and China in Africa. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, development, and economics.

Ovambo Politics in the Twentieth Century offers a paradigm shift from how studies typically treat the colonization of Africa. Using archival documentation from government and industry sources, Cooper offers a detailed historical analysis of the seven major communities comprising the Ovambo- Namibia's largest ethnic group. His examination reveals that these Ovambo communities engaged in competitive political relations with each other throughout the German colonial era as well as the subsequent occupation of territory by the white minority government of South Africa. Each community alternated between strategies of resistance and collaboration with colonial authorities in order to maximize their geopolitical advantage with their ethnic neighbors. Cooper provides documentation showing that even the assassination of King Mandume in 1917 by South African forces involved the participation of leaders from other Ovambo communities. Ovambo Politics in the Twentieth Century is intended for Africanists, ethnographers, Namibians seeking an understanding of their own history, labor historians, students of colonial history, and students of revolutionary movements.

The Geography of Genocide offers a unique analysis of over sixty genocides in world history, explaining why genocides only occur in territorial interiors and never originate from cosmopolitan urban centers. This study explores why genocides tend to result from emasculating political defeats experienced by perpetrator groups and examines whether such extreme political violence is the product of a masculine identity crisis. Author Allan D. Cooper notes that genocides are most often organized and implemented by individuals who have experienced traumatic childhood events involving the abandonment or abuse by their father. Although genocides target religious groups, nations, races or ethnic groups, these identity structures are rarely at the heart of the war crimes that ensue. Cooper integrates research derived from the study of serial killing and rape to show certain commonalities with the phenomenon of genocide. The Geography of Genocide presents various strategies for responding to genocide and introduces Cooper's groundbreaking alternatives for ultimately inhibiting the occurrence of genocide.

This collection takes on one of the most important and vexing issues in African development - the role played by African states in under-development on the continent - and shows how empowering resilient precolonial communities offers under-explored routes forward.Rather than comparing African states to states elsewhere, this book takes a unique bottom-up approach and compares how major ethnic communities within Africa have developed over time under various state systems. It begins with an investigation into major precolonial societies and the way in which they were affected by the slave trade and colonialism. It then offers individual case studies from the length and breadth of the continent, and in so doing, provides a near-comprehensive account of historical African community and state formation, including coverage of under-researched peoples such as the central African Fang, as well as of the Kongo, Benin, Akan, Kru, Oromo, and Ovambo communities. Each case study analyzes how postcolonial African states have functioned as self-interested political entities often times at the expense of the economic and political development of its Indigenous communities, who are forced into a pluralist state systems that set them in economic and political competition with each other. True improvement in the lives of everyday citizens proves to be possible only by empowering traditional knowledges and practices - and with that, Indigenous communities' capabilities for economic and political self-governance.Written by a significant contingent of African scholars, this collection contributes in its very practice to the decolonial policies it argues for, and is a must-read for researchers, upper-level students, and practitioners and policymakers interested in African development, African history, and post- and decolonial approaches to development.

Political philosophers from the beginning of history have articulated the significance of beauty. Allan D. Cooper argues that these writings are coded to justify patriarchal structures of power, and that each epoch of global history has reflected a paradigm of beauty that rationalizes protocols of gender performance. Patriarchy is a system of knowledge that trains men to become soldiers but is now being challenged by human rights advocates and women’s rights activists.

Allan D. Cooper demonstrates how the resistance to slavery served to unveil the nature of freedom that made possible the abolition movement and anti-colonial struggles. The corpus of human rights law that has evolved over the past two centuries is constructed around the negation of slavery. This book analyzes how slavery mutated into racial identification that governments enforce against their own population to advance more efficient methods of discipline and control. The Shadow that Lingers reveals how race is used to traumatize human beings by embodying inferiority and powerlessness, even for whites that claim privilege under racialized regimes. As an ideology of power, race becomes contextualized to fit local cultures, resulting in contradictory understandings of race from one culture to another. This book focuses attention on how racial hybridity among mixed-race communities poses challenges for racial purists, and how such communities endeavor to construct racial identities that often differentiate themselves from being black. The book concludes with an analysis of how the pursuit of freedom inevitably requires the reification of a non-racial identity.