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Apartheid posed profound challenges to the conceptions of humanity and development that dominated the world stage after World War II. Embroiled analyzes the manner in which international religious organizations dealt with the formulation and implementation of apartheid. The book studies this through an examination of the Swiss Mission in South Africa (SMSA), an institution that acted in South Africa, Switzerland, and the international ecumenical community. As a socially embedded institution, the SMSA mirrored divisions present within Swiss and South African societies on the issue of apartheid. *** Embroiled brings out the complex, even turbulent, nature of a missionary society: at once political intermediary, spiritual guide and non-government organisation. Caught between different communities and discrete continents, missionaries discussed and debated their role in South Africa and attempted, however fitfully, to respond to the changes that swept through the country, particularly as opposing nationalisms fought to seize hold of it. ~ From the Preface (Series: Schweizerische Afrikastudien - Etudes africaines suisses - Vol. 9)
Given the circularity of the witchcraft complex in Africa, given its performative potential, isn’t the flood of anthropological publications on the topic counter-productive insofar as it feeds what it pretends to analyse, and even stigmatize? Wouldn’t the social scientists be well advised not to emulate the media and the Evangelical preachers and to avoid bestowing on Africa the dubious privilege of being no more than a shadow theatre devoid of substance on the stage of which everything – power, work, production, economy, the family – would actually be played in the occult? In this publication, eight scholars – namely: Jean-Pierre Warnier, Didier Péclard, Julien Bonhomme, Patrice Yengo, Jane Guyer, Joseph Tonda, Francis Nyamnjoh and Peter Geschiere – engage in a lively and contradictory debate on witchcraft/sorcery in Africa in a controversial historical context.
Over two separate twelve-year periods, two opposing ‘states’ governed in parallel in Angola (1979–1991) and Sudan (1990–2002), each with competing conceptions of society, history and national identity. Deeply dividing communities with their counter-nationalist programmes, rebel parties UNITA in Angola and the SPLM/A in Sudan, which had fought Africa’s longest and bloodiest civil wars, built political and military enterprises in opposition to the established governments. Insurgent Nations unpacks the complexities of these movements, exploring the charisma of their leaders, the ruthlessness of their military operations, their political manoeuvrings, and their multiple transformations...
Negotiating Statehood: Dynamics of Power and Domination in Africa provides a conceptual framework for analysing dynamic processes of state-making in Africa. Features a conceptual framework which provides a method for analysing the everyday making, contestation, and negotiation of statehood in contemporary Africa Conceptualizes who negotiates statehood (the actors, resources and repertoires), where these negotiation processes take place, and what these processes are all about ncludes a collections of essays that provides empirical and analytical insights into these processes in eight different country studies in Africa Critically reflects on the negotiability of statehood in Africa
Based on intellectual openness and an interest in transdisciplinary perspectives, this edited volume introduces scholars of African Peace and Security to innovative methodological and conceptual approaches, offering new insights into the inner life of APSA.
This book is a unique intersectional analysis combining culture, gender struggles and structural including economic transformations, both in the formation of gendered class society, patriarchy and capitalism.
Although international development discourse considers the state as a crucial development actor, there remains a significant discrepancy between the official norms of the state and public services and the actual practices of political elites and civil servants. This text interrogates the variety of ways in which state policies and legal norms have been translated into the set of practical norms which make up real governance in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that the concept of practical norms is an appropriate tool for an ethnographic investigation of public bureaucracies, interactions between civil servants and users, and the daily functioning of the state in Africa. It demonstrates that practical norms are usually different from official norms, complementing, bypassing and even contradicting them. In addition, it explores the positive and negative effects of different aspects of this ‘real governance’. This text will be of key interest to academics, students and researchers in the fields of development, political science, anthropology and development studies, African studies, international comparative studies, implementation studies, and public policy.
Since 2012, ceasefires have been used in Syria to halt violence and facilitate peace agreements. However, in this book, Marika Sosnowski argues that a ceasefire is rarely ever just a 'cease fire'. Instead, she demonstrates that ceasefires are not only military tactics but are also tools of wartime order and statebuilding. Bringing together rare primary documents and first-hand interviews with over eighty Syrians and other experts, Sosnowski offers original insights into the most critical conflict of our time, the Syrian civil war. From rebel governance to citizen and property rights, humanitarian access to economic networks, ceasefires have a range of heretofore underexamined impacts. Using the most prominent ceasefires of the war as case studies, Sosnowski demonstrates the diverse consequences of ceasefires and provides a fuller, more nuanced portrait of their role in conflict resolution.