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Secessionism perseveres as a complex political phenomenon in Africa, yet often a more in-depth analysis is overshadowed by the aspirational simplicity of pursuing a new state. Using historical and contemporary approaches, this edited volume offers the most exhaustive collection of empirical studies of African secessionism to date. The respected expert contributors put salient and lesser known cases into comparative perspective, covering Biafra, Katanga, Eritrea and South Sudan alongside Barotseland, Cabinda, and the Comoros, among others. Suggesting that African secessionism can be understood through the categories of aspiration, grievance, performance, and disenchantment, the book's analytical framework promises to be a building block for future studies of the topic.
Moving beyond the current fixation on "state construction," the interdisciplinary work gathered here explores regulatory authority in South Sudan's borderlands from both contemporary and historical perspectives. Taken together, these studies show how emerging governance practices challenge the bounded categorizations of "state" and "non-state."
An introduction to African history and politics since decolonization, emphasising the political, economic and socio-economic diversity of the continent.
International peacebuilding has reached an impasse. Its lofty ambitions have resulted in at best middling success, punctuated by moments of outright failure. The discrediting of the term ‘liberal peacebuilding’ has seen it evolve to respond to the numerous critiques. Notions such as ‘inclusive peace’ merge the liberal paradigm with critical notions of context, and the need to refine practices to take account of ‘the local’ or ‘complexity’. However, how this would translate into clear guidance for the practice of peacebuilding is unclear. Paradoxically, contemporary peacebuilding policy has reached an unprecedented level of vagueness. Peace in political unsettlement provides a...
Political conflict in many parts of the world has been shaped by notions of who rightfully belongs to a place. The concept of autochthony--that a true, original people are born of a land and belong to it above all others--has animated struggles across postcolonial Africa. But is this sense of rootedness from time immemorial necessary to assertions of original being and thus political supremacy? Belonging, Identity, and Conflict in the Central African Republic examines how political conflict unfolds when the language of autochthony is detached from historical land claims. Focusing on violent struggles in the Central African Republic between 2012 and 2019, Gino Vlavonou explores the social pra...
South Sudan, the world's youngest country, has experienced a rocky start to its life as an independent nation. Less than three years after gaining independence in 2011 following a violent liberation war, the country slid back into conflict. In the wake of infighting within the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), violence erupted in South Sudan's capital, Juba, in December 2013. The conflict pitted President Salva Kiir's predominantly Dinka presidential guard against Nuer fighters loyal to the former Vice President Riek Machar. As fighting spread across the country, it has taken on an increasingly ethnic nature. Ceasefires have been agreed, but there have been repeated violation...
This is the first book of its kind on Sudan, and arguably one of the first in North Africa. We are part of an emerging, more cosmopolitan approach that calls for a reassessment of ideas about not only the concept of identities, but also about migration and technology, especially social media. Our essayists engage in redefinitions, the broadening of our key variables, the linking and intersecting of concepts, and the investigations of methods and ethics, and opt for an approach that is, at once, culturally specific to Sudan (one of the most fluid social landscapes in the world) and transnational. Our essays address the narrowness of studies of migration and note the almost total neglect in th...
This pathbreaking work integrates African countries into broader comparative theories of how spatial inequality shapes political competition over the construction of markets, states, and nations. Existing literature on African countries has found economic cleavages, institutions, and policy choices to be of low salience in national politics. This book inverts these arguments. Boone trains our analytic focus on the spatial inequalities and territorial institutions that structure national politics in Africa, showing that regional cleavages find expression in both electoral competition and policy struggles over redistribution, sectoral investment, market integration, and state design. Leveraging comparative politics theory, Boone argues that African countries' regional and core-periphery tensions are similar to those that have shaped national economic integration in other parts of the world. Bringing together electoral and economic geography, the book offers a new and powerful map of political competition on the African continent.
The first in-depth account of Darfur's history during the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (from 1916).
An exploration of the scale, practical reality, and future implications of the growing integration of biodiversity conservation with global security concerns “There are few keener observers of international biodiversity conservation than Rosaleen Duffy. With a ferocity of purpose, she investigates the tenuous connection and nuances among illegal wildlife trade, terrorism threats, and national security.”—Steven R. Brechin, Rutgers University, New Brunswick Debates regarding environmental security risks have generally focused on climate change and geopolitical water conflicts. Biodiversity conservation, however, is increasingly identified as a critical contributor to national and global ...