You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The view that Africa regressed the moment that colonial governments left its shores is widespread. This volume is a counterpoint to the orthodoxy. Here 13 scholars with specializations ranging from literature and history to philosophy and economics argue that Africa has advanced since colonialism and is poised to march forward in spite of setbacks and disappointments. The contributors to the book contend that development is about human beings, so they do not rely exclusively on statistical estimates and projections. Afro-Optimism is a book with a simple thesis: Africa is marching forward, even if at times haltingly and at a different pace from the rest of the world. A common view among journ...
This book is a collection of scholarly essays from some of Nigeria’s most notable social science scholars on the character, contours, and peculiarities of democratic practices in Nigeria’s fourth attempt at constitutional rule after years of brutally absolutist military regimes. The Fourth Republic began in 1999 and continues to this day. It is coterminous with the restoration of constitutional rule after 16 years of sustained military rule, which represents the longest stretch of democratic self-rule since Nigeria won independence from British colonialism in 1960. The chapters in this book contain scholarly insights into the pitfalls of governance, institutional dysfunctions and foundational woes that continue to threaten the vitality of the Fourth Republic. Contributors to the book offer critical theoretical lenses to gaze at the decline in democratic citizenship, weakening of faith in the promises of democracy, loss of critical media engagement with the state, and deterioration of the socio-political fortunes of the state in Nigeria.
Narrating War and Peace in Africa interrogates conventional representations of Africa and African culture -- mainly in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries -- with an emphasis on portrayals of conflict and peace. While Africa has experienced political and social turbulence throughout its history, more recent conflicts seem to reinforce the myth of barbarism across the continent: in Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Kenya, Mozambique, Chad, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Sudan. The essays in this volume address reductive and stereotypical assumptions of postcolonial violence as "tribal" in nature, and offer instead various perspectives -- across disciplinary boundaries --...
"Growing Apart is an important and distinguished contribution to the literature on the political economy of development. Indonesia and Nigeria have long presented one of the most natural opportunities for comparative study. Peter Lewis, one of America's best scholars of Nigeria, has produced the definitive treatment of their divergent development paths. In the process, he tells us much theoretically about when, why, and how political institutions shape economic growth." —Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution "Growing Apart is a careful and sophisticated analysis of the political factors that have shaped the economic fortunes of Indonesia and Nigeria. Both scholars and policymake...
A political economic history of the three and a half century rivalry between competing health care systems in Senegambia. The analysis focuses on the historical agency manifested in indigenous populations and its contemporary applications.
Weiss, Christopher Wyrod, Daniel J. Young
Looking at monuments, murals, computer games, recycling campaigns, children's books, and other visual artifacts, The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures reassesses communism's historical and cultural legacy.
Africa after Modernism traces shifts in perspectives on African culture, arts, and philosophy from the conflict with European modernist interventions in the climate of colonialist aggression to present identitarian positions in the climate of globalism, multiculturalism, and mass media. By focusing on what may be called deconstructive moments in twentieth-century Africanist thought – on intellectual landmarks, revolutionary ideas, crises of consciousness, literary and philosophical debates – this study looks at African modernity and modernism from critical postcolonial perspectives. An effort to sketch contemporary frameworks of global intersubjective relations reflecting African culture...