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The Taming of Fate
This book is about how extreme situations appearing to have a destructive potential can actually be used to produce meaningful individual and social lives. It is about the “taming of fate”. This notion means and accounts for the ability of individuals and communities to rebuild their lives against all odds. The book is based on case-studies that draw from theoretical insights derived from the sociology of disasters. It addresses some limitations of the sociology of risk, chief among which is the rejection of the relevance of the notion of risk to the study of technologically non-advanced societies. The book argues that this rejection has deprived the study of the human condition of an important analytical asset. The book claims that risk is a property of social action which can best be understood through the analytical scrutiny of its role in the historical constitution of social relations.
Dealing with Elusive Futures
The time to come - as well as the exploration thereof - remains elusive for social actors and social scientists alike. The contributors accept the challenge to depict young men and women's future-creating activities in urban contexts of sub-Saharan Africa. Very consciously, they study young graduates having obtained a university degree and provide a vivid picture of their strategies to socially grow older by doing adulthood in contexts of great uncertainty. The examples include Burkina Faso, Guinea, Ethiopia, Mali and Tanzania, visually enriched through pictures taken by young Malian photographers.
Translation Revisited
How realistic is it to expect translation to render the world intelligible in a context shaped by different historical trajectories and experiences? Can we rely on human universals to translate through the unique and specific webs of meaning that languages represent? If knowledge production is a kind of translation, then it is fair to assume that the possibility of translation has largely rested on the idea that Western experience is the repository of these human universals against the background of which different human experiences can be rendered intelligible. The problem with this assumption, however, is that there are limits to Western claims to universalism, mainly because these claims ...
Living the City in Africa
Research on cities worldwide still takes its cue from cities in Europe and the US, which are seen as the standard model. However, cities in the global South are undergoing a much more rapid transformation, including multiple interlinked transitions, with Africa featuring the highest urbanization rates world-wide. Scholars therefore call for a new approach to urban studies which examines cities from a more global comparative perspective. This book discusses the new approach, which pays added attention to the role that societal creativity plays in processes of urbanization, instead of concentrating exclusively on expert-driven planning and intervention. Especially in fast-growing cities with weaker institutional capacity for interventions, the interplay between intervention and invention, between expert and societal agency, becomes more tangible and all the more significant. (Series: Swiss African Studies / Schweizerische Afrikastudien / Etudes africaines suisses - Vol. 10)
Negotiating Modernity
An examination of Africa's experience of modernity which draws out its wider implications for social theory
Extractive Industries and Changing State Dynamics in Africa
This book uses extractive industry projects in Africa to explore how political authority and the nation-state are reconfigured at the intersection of national political contestations and global, transnational capital. Instead of focusing on technological zones and the new social assemblages at the actual sites of construction or mineral extraction, the authors use extractive industry projects as a topical lens to investigate contemporary processes of state-making at the state–corporation nexus. Throughout the book, the authors seek to understand how public political actors and private actors of liberal capitalism negotiate and redefine notions and practices of sovereignty by setting legal,...
Unraveling Ties
Unraveling Ties is a unique addition to current debates in sociology--a compilation of essays mapping the creation of community life in a modern world that often appears alienating, cold, and even threatening. Topics range from family life and friendship to the integral role of the deviant in society. The result is a thoughtful, meticulously researched volume that will be useful to sociologists, economists, and anyone interested in the creation of community in a decentralized and rapidly globalizing world.
Entangled Histories and Negotiated Universals
Entangled Histories and Negotiated Universals explores the changing field of local histories. Young researchers from around the world--including scholars from Canada, Mozambique, China, and Germany, representing fields as diverse as history, linguistics, political science, anthropology, medicine, and materials science--present their findings, all of which coincide in their understanding that local histories are inseparably intertwined and that, fundamentally, all history is the history of relationships.
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