Pambazuka Press – förlag

This groundbreaking volume, the first of its kind written by African activists themselves, aims to inspire a new generation of students and teachers to study, reflect and gain fresh and critical insights into the complex issues of gender and sexuality. It opens a space - particularly for young people - to think about African sexualities in different ways. This accessible but scholarly multidisciplinary text, from a distinctly African perspective, is built around themed sections each introduced by a framing essay. The authors use essays, case studies, poetry, news clips, songs, fiction, memoirs, letters, interviews, short film scripts and photographs from a wide political spectrum to examine dominant and deviant sexualities, analyse the body as a site of political, cultural and social contestation and investigate the intersections between sex, power, masculinities and femininities. The book adopts a feminist approach that analyses sexuality within patriarchal structures of oppression while also highlighting its emancipatory potential.As well as using popular culture to help address the 'what, why, how, when and where' questions, the contributors also provide a critical mapping of African sexualities that informs readers about the plurality and complexities of African sexualities - desires, practices, fantasies, identities, taboos, abuses, violations, stigmas, transgressions and sanctions. At the same time, they pose gender-sensitive and politically aware questions that challenge the reader to interrogate assumptions and hegemonic sexuality discourses, thereby unmapping the intricate and complex terrain of African sexualities.The blend of approaches and styles enhances the book's accessibility and usefulness for teaching as well as allowing for historical and textual contextualisation.Authors include scholars, researchers, professionals, practitioners and experts from different regions of Africa and Africans in the Diaspora.

This short introduction to issues of tax justice sets out the meaning and causes of tax injustice and offers options for a more just future. In Africa, as elsewhere, tax revenues are essential for establishing independent states of free citizens but many commodity exports from Africa are exempt from taxation. Taxes in Africa are often regressive, and tax and customs administration ineffective.The 'tax consensus' promoted by multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has influenced tax policy in Africa and led to a reduction in government revenues in many countries. Multinational companies and their advisers exploit tax loopholes and secrecy jurisdictions enable tax evasion. The book explores the role of governments, parliaments and taxpayers, and asks what all stakeholders should be doing to help achieve tax justice. Options include raising awareness around tax issues and promoting a culture of tax compliance; increasing tax transparency among governments and multinational companies; increasing international cooperation on tax matters; and enhancing international assistance to support African governments in improving their tax affairs.

This three-part book 'pulls back the curtain on disturbing technological and corporate trends that are already reshaping our world and that will become crucial battlegrounds for civil society in the years ahead.'Vandana Shiva, Founder, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology'Geopiracy' analyses how Northern governments and corporations are cynically using growing concerns about the ecological and climate crisis to propose geoengineering 'quick fixes'. These threaten to wreak havoc on ecosystems, with disastrous impacts on the people of the global South. As calls for a 'greener' economy mount and oil prices escalate, corporations are seeking to switch from oil-based to plant-based energy.'The New Biomassters' exposes how a biomass economy based on using gene technologies to reprogramme living organisms to behave as microbial factories will facilitate the liquidation of ecosystems. This constitutes a devastating assault of the peoples and cultures of the South, accelerating the wave of land grabs that are becoming common in Africa, Asia and Latin America.'Capturing Climate Genes' shows how the worlds largest agribusiness companies including Monsanto, BASF, Dupont and Syngenta are pouring billions of dollars into, and claiming patents on, what are claimed to be 'climate-ready crops'. Far from helping farmers adjust to a warming world - something peasant farmers already know how to manage - these crops will allow industrial agriculture to expand plantation monocultures into lands currently cultivated by poor peasant farmers. These crops are not a solution to growing hunger, they will feed only the gluttony of corporate shareholders for profits.

In this elegantly written and incisive account, scholar Horace Campbell investigates the political and economic crises of the early twenty-first century through the prism of NATO's intervention in Libya. He traces the origins of the conflict, situates it in the broader context of the Arab Spring uprisings, and explains the expanded role of a post-Cold War NATO. This military organization, he argues, is the instrument through which the capitalist class of North America and Europe seeks to impose its political will on the rest of the world, however warped by the increasingly outmoded neoliberal form of capitalism. The intervention in Libya-characterized by bombing campaigns, military information operations, third party countries, and private contractors-exemplifies this new model. Campbell points out that while political elites in the West were quick to celebrate the intervention in Libya as a success, the NATO campaign caused many civilian deaths and destroyed the nation's infrastructure. Furthermore, the instability it unleashed in the forms of militias and terrorist groups has only begun to be reckoned with, as the United States learned when its embassy was attacked and personnel, including the ambassador, were killed. This lucid study is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand this complex and weighty course of events.