African Dynamics – serie

Situating Globality challenges the dominant view that globalization is a primary threat to African societies and economies. It explores how these societies are appropriating elements of the emerging global culture, arguing the significance of this appropriation in local struggles, the expression of critical thinking, ideologies and ritual styles of behaviour. Combining an interest for micro-level processes of situating the multifaceted process of globality with the exploration of reflexivity, creativity and the production of knowledge, Situating Globality straddles the divide between anthropological and philosophical representations of Africa in the new world order. The first section examines philosophical issues relating to the production of knowledge in and about Africa from a globalizing perspective, while the other sections include case studies showing how these processes are accommodated in everyday life.

This book contains a range of original studies on one of the major challenges in Africa today: the controversial role of youth in politics, conflict and rebellious movements. The issue is not only the drafting of child soldiers into insurgent armies or predatory militias, as in Somalia, Sierra Leone or Congo, but, more generally, that of the problematic insertion of large numbers of young people in the socio-economic and political order of post-colonial Africa. Even educated youths are being confronted with a lack of opportunities, blocked social mobility, and despair about the future. Many of the political antagonisms and conflicts in which youths are involved do not only exist at the discursive level but are being produced by current demographic and socio-political contradictions in Africa. African youth, while forming a numerical majority, largely feel excluded from power, are socio-economically marginalized and thwarted in their ambitions. They have little access to representative positions or political power, which is making for a politically volatile situation in many African countries. The authors address several case studies from across Africa: the Mungiki movement in Kenya, youth agency in southern Sudan in times of war, the challenges of ‘re-integrating’ youthful ex-combatants in Sierra Leone, and street children in Togo. A common aim is to try to explain why patterns of generational conflict and violent response among younger age groups in Africa are showing such a remarkably uneven spread across the continent and to advance the comparative study of youth and generational conflict beyond mere description of the varied empirical cases.

At times of economic and political crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa, urban dwellers display a large degree of creativity in their survival strategies by developing social networks and constructing imaginative and original practices and ideas. This volume views the urban neighbourhood from two different perspectives and explores the importance of these creative processes. The first approach considers the neighbourhood as a geographical domain in which people are engaged in a variety of activities to advance their material and immaterial well-being, making use of their ‘wealth’ of opportunities, assets and diverse forms of natural, physical, financial, human and social ‘capital’. The second angle sees the neighbourhood as not necessarily geographically located or bounded but as having been created and defined by human beings. These neighbourhoods may take on the form of self-help organizations, associations or churches, or may be based on gender, generational, ethnic or occupational identities. As the contributions from all over Sub-Saharan Africa show, the two approaches do not necessarily exclude each other.

This book explores the notion of agency in a range of empirical situations in Africa. Agency directs our quest for an understanding of the dynamics and social transformations of African situations to the domains of creativity, inventiveness and reflexivity. It emphasizes the possibilities individuals and social groups perceive when faced with the constraints that tend to mark African social life. The case studies provide an alternative view of people and society in Africa by looking at the ways social strength is created in the hope of overcoming many of the structural limitations encountered in daily life. 'Strength beyond Structure' challenges the optimism that is engrained in the development rhetoric about Africa by making agency the subject of empirical scrutiny.

Mobilization against apartheid, the campaign against blood diamonds, the women's movement in Liberia where Africa's first female head of state was elected in 2005: these are all examples of socially based movements that have had a major effect on Africa's recent history. Yet the most influential theories concerning social movements worldwide have paid little heed to Africa, basing themselves more often on cases drawn from other continents. This volume draws together contributions from some leading writers on social movements in Africa, setting empirical studies alongside a couple of theoretical chapters. Africa’s social movements have distinctive features that are related to the continent’s specific history.

Health and healing are distinctive domains as far as the pursuit of people’s well-being is concerned. In Africa, both fields have increasingly become subject to monetization and commodification, in short, the market. Based on extensive fieldwork in nine African countries by scholars with diverse academic backgrounds, this volume offers different perspectives on the emerging markets and the way medical staff, patients, households and institutions navigate them in their quest for well-being. By presenting a detailed economic ethnography of this multifacetted process of navigating the market, the book sets a new agenda for research as a result of the current predicaments facing health and healing in African societies.

This volume presents a wide selection of studies on the issues of law, land dispute and conflict (mediation) in Africa, reconsidering the role of state agents and other actors in these matters. The focus is on analyzing how citizens, state institutions and concerned (inter)national actors aim to find solutions to disputes, tension and conflict that are part of social life. The authors have approached the subject of Land, Law and Politics in Africa from a variety of disciplinary angles. The issues at stake comprise land access and land use, state politics and democratization efforts, the relationship between constitutional/state law and customary law, the challenges of urban and rural conflicts, border issues and the conceptions of (human) rights. On the basis of new empirical studies, the authors plead for a more holistic perspective on the above issues and on developmental policy in general. The book has 15 chapters in four thematic parts, focusing on historical and cultural aspects of politics and authority; land law and land disputes; constitutionalism and politics; and conflict studies. The volume is also a tribute to the work of Gerti Hesseling (1946-2009), a Dutch Africanist with a successful career as a scholar of constitutional and land law, focusing on West Africa.

Africa abounds with examples of material and immaterial innovations that were envisaged, developed and designed elsewhere yet came to be innovatively and sometimes unexpectedly transformed in Africa. The authors in this volume explore how external innovations (products, technologies, services, institutions and processes) have been appropriated in African societies in order to be acceptable and relevant to local conditions, expectations and demands. Written from different disciplinary perspectives, the chapters demonstrate the depth and richness of innovation in Africa with, in some cases, surprising outcomes. The case studies presented are on subjects as diverse as the wine industry, trading stores, land reforms, washing powder, M-Pesa, cassava, weddings, international borders, guest houses, urban water supply, car technology, shallow wells, and railways and blacksmithing.

This volume attempts to dig deeper into what is currently happening in Africa’s agricultural and rural sector and to convince policymakers and others that it is important to look at the current African rural dynamics in ways that connect metropolitan demands for food with value chain improvements and agro-food cluster innovations. It is essential to go beyond a ‘development bureaucracy’ and a state-based approach to rural transformation, such as the one that often dominates policy debate in African government circles, organizations like the African Union and the UN, and donor agencies.

This book brings together in a comparative analysis the results of studies of the various cultural, social, economic and historical aspects that are formative in African societies’ experiences of how people negotiated the spaces and times of being in transit on the road to prosperity. The book analyses the various outcomes of the process of mobility and the experience of spaces and times of transit across gender, generational, and class-differences. These experiences are explored and give insight into the socio-cultural and economics transformations that have taken place in African societies in the past century.Contributors are: Akinyinka Akinyoade, Walter van Beek, Marleen Dekker, Ton Dietz, Rijk van Dijk, Isaie Dougnon, Jan-Bart Gewald, Meike de Goede, Benjamin Kofi Nyarko, Samuel Ntewusu Aniegye, Taiwo Olabisi Oluwatoyin, Shehu Tijjani Yusuf, Augustine Tanle and Amisah Zenabu Bakuri.

Historically, entrepreneurs have always played a central role in the development of nation states. Aside from rentier states, which depend extensively on the availability of mineral resource rents, most economically prosperous nations in the world have strong, innovative and competitive business enterprises and entrepreneurs as the bedrock of their economic development and prosperity. It was arguably because of the above historical fact that the World Bank in 1989 declared that entrepreneurs will play a central role in transforming African economies. Chapters in this book contribute to our understanding of the theory, structure and practice of entrepreneurship in diverse African countries. Case studies examined include: African multinational banks and businesses, female entrepreneurs, culture and entrepreneurship, finance and entrepreneurship and SMEs. Contributors include: Akinyinka Akinyoade, Kenneth Amaeshi, Crescence Marie France Okah Atenga, Ton Dietz, Françoise Okah Efogo, Emiel L. Eijdenberg, Abel Ezeoha, Yagoub Ali Gangi, Miguel Heilbron, Uwafiokun Idemudia, Nsubili Isaga, Afam Ituma, Jane N. O. Khayesi, Rebecca I. Kiconco, Jerry Kolo, Peter Knorringa, Addisu Lashitew, André Leliveld, Marta Lindvert, Nnamdi Madichie, Hesham E. Mohamed, Knowledge C. Mpofu, Albogast Kilangi Musabila, Ayodeji Olukoju, Eunice Abam Quaye, Miriam Siun, Arthur Sserwanga, Rob van Tulder, Chibuike Uche and Jaap Voeten.

Nature conservation in southern Africa has always been characterised by an interplay between Capital, specific understandings of Morality, and forms of Militarism, that are all dependent upon the shared subservience and marginalization of animals and certain groups of people in society. Although the subjectivity of people has been rendered visible in earlier publications on histories of conservation in southern Africa, the subjectivity of animals is hardly ever seriously considered or explicitly dealt with. In this edited volume the subjectivity and sentience of animals is explicitly included. The contributors argue that the shared human and animal marginalisation and agency in nature conservation in southern Africa (and beyond) could and should be further explored under the label of ‘sentient conservation’. Contributors are Malcolm Draper, Vupenyu Dzingirai, Jan-Bart Gewald, Michael Glover, Paul Hebinck, Tariro Kamuti, Lindiwe Mangwanya, Albert Manhamo, Dhoya Snijders, Marja Spierenburg, Sandra Swart, Harry Wels.

This volume investigates the development of biographical study in African history and historiography. Consisting of 10 case studies, it is preceded by an introductory prologue, which deals with the relationship between historiography and different forms of biographical study in the context of Western history-writing but especially African (historical and anthropological) studies. The first three case studies deal with the methodological insights of biographical studies for African history. This is followed by three case studies dealing with personas living through fundamental societal transitions, and four case studies focusing on the discursive dimensions of biographical subjects (including religion, cosmology and ideology). Countries or regions discussed include South Africa, Zambia, Gold Coast, Cameroon, Tanganyika, Congo-Kinshasa and the Central African Republic in colonial times.Contributors are Lindie Koorts, Elena Moore, Iva Peša, Paul Glen Grant, Jacqueline de Vries, Duncan Money, Morgan Robinson, Eve Wong, Klaas van Walraven, Erik Kennes.