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Detailed study of how Western- style democracy has been imposed upon Africa, ignoring the indigenous politics of the region, resulting in violent conflicts
Analysis of North African revolt against authoritarianism, known as the ‘Arab Spring’, embraced reductionist explanations such as the social media, youth unemployment and citizens’ agitations to regain dignity in societies humiliated by oppressive regimes. This book illustrates that reductionist approaches can only elucidate some symptoms of a social problem while leaving unexplained the economic and political structures which contributed to it. One outcome of quiescence, resource-based ethnic and sectarian conflicts and faulty development paradigm is deepened inequality and a wedge between winners and losers or affluence, wealth and power vis-à-vis poverty and hunger among humiliated jobless and hope-less masses. The book blends theories of development and transition to explain the complex factors which contributed to North Africans’ revolt against authoritarianism and its long-term consequences for political development in the Arab World. This timely book is of great interest to researchers and students in Development Studies, Economics and Middle Eastern Studies as well as policy makers and democracy, human rights and social justice activists in the Arab world.
. . . this book gives a good overview of major challenges facing policy makers, researchers and ultimately humankind in dealing with climate change. . . The reader also gets a good understanding of how fragmented and transversal the issues of climate change and sustainable development are. Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture . . . a unified, useful and stimulating book which should act as a springboard for further work into what is a very topical and extremely important issue for everyone in the world, not just academics and policymakers. This book serves its intended audience but also deserves to be more widely read. World Entrepreneurship Society Too often, writings on climate c...
America's war on terrorism has thrown political Islam in Africa into the international spotlight. This book examines the social and political manifestations of Islamism in North-East Africa, including the Nile Valley and the Horn. Militant Islamists were a powerful force in the region in the 1990's, seizing state power in Sudan - where they pursued far-reaching programmes for comprehensive social transformation - and threaten all other governments. They suceeded in moving the socio-political consensus onto Islamist terrain, but their more ambitious aims were unattainable. By 2000, jihad-ist Islamism was in retreat, brought down both by its own political and ideological limitations and by the wars waged by its adversaries. In the meantime, however, the regional enemies of the Islamic state themselves faced exhaustion. Since 2001, a new set of dynamics is beginning to unfold in the region, reflecting American global domination and how the US agenda is refracted through local political struggles.
This state-of-the-art critical ‘development’ reader examines the inter-relationships between globalisation, poverty and conflict. It complements current debates in the field of development studies and, in an era in which development fatigue seems to have become more profound than ever before, it brings the importance of development once again to the forefront. The contributions represent current thinking on (and practice of) development policy, poverty reduction, the need for multi-level democratic institutions, and the containing and prevention of conflicts.
A critique of modern African 'democracies'
Saviours and Survivors is the first account of the Darfur crisis to consider recent events within the broad context of Sudan's history, and to examine the efficacy of the world's response to the ongoing violence. Illuminating the deeply rooted causes of the current conflict, Mamdani works from its colonial and Cold War origins to the war's intensification from the 1990s to the present day. Examining how the conflict has drawn in national, regional, and global forces, Mamdani deconstructs the powerful Western lobby's persistent calls for a military response dressed up as "humanitarian intervention". Incisive and authoritative, Saviours and Survivors will radically alter our understanding of the crisis in Darfur.