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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.
Public policies, development projects, and NGO interventions often have large gaps between the planning and execution. Standardized public policies, especially development ones, ignore the multiple contexts in which they are implemented. Local actors (those targeted by public policies or responsible for implementing them) play a major role in the implementation of planning and execution. Their many strategies for circumventing official directives and protocols follow implicit "practical norms" that are ignored by international experts. This book examines how different modes of governance that deliver services of general interest experience significant gaps between explicit rules and implicit practices, between planned actions and daily routines, in Africa and beyond.
Kinshasa is sub-Saharan Africa‘s second largest city. The seven million Congolese who live there have a rich reputation for the courageous and innovative ways in which they survive in a harsh urban environment. They have created new social institutions, practices, networks and ways of living to deal with the collapse of public provision and a malfunctioning political system. This book describes how ordinary people, in the absence of formal sector jobs, hustle for a modest living; the famous ‘bargaining‘ system ordinary Kinois have developed; and how they access food, water supplies, health and education. The NGO-ization of service provision is analysed, as is the quite rare incidence of urban riots. The contributors also look at popular discourses, including street rumor, witchcraft, and attitudes to ‘big men‘ such as musicians and preachers. This is urban sociology at its best - richly empirical, unjargonized, descriptive of the lives of ordinary people, and weaving into its analysis how they see and experience life.
This book draws together essential readings from the journal African Affairs together with a series of new essays on key themes written by the journal editors.
International scholars offer ethnographic analyses of the relations between transnationalism, law, and culture The recent surge of right-wing populism in Europe and the United States is widely perceived as evidence of ongoing challenges to the policies and institutions of globalization. But as editors Carol J. Greenhouse and Christina L. Davis observe in their introduction to Landscapes of Law, the appeal to national culture is not restricted to the ethno-nationalisms of the developing world outside of industrial democracies nor to insurgent groups within them. The essays they have collected in this volume reveal how claims of national culture emerge in the pursuit of transnationalism and, u...
This collection of essays questions the adequacy of explaining today's internal armed conflicts purely in terms of economic factors and re-establishes the importance of identity and grievances in creating and sustaining such wars. Countries studied include Lebanon, Angola, Colombia and Afghanistan.
This book is a comprehensive reference for conducting political analyses of emerging welfare systems in the Global South. It places a central emphasis on decolonizing social policy literature by developing empirically grounded theories and concepts illuminating societies in both the Global South and North. These case studies contribute to theoretical generalizations capable of explaining universal principles that are relevant to both the Global South and North.
Cameroun was conceived in 1947 at the Unicafra Congress in Douala, attended by all the aspiring political actors, from which sprung Racam (Rassemblement Camerounais) that declared itself the Cameroun government in embryo. Shocked by that effrontery, the French colonial state immediately banned Racam. From the ruins of Racam emerged Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) in 1948 that stood opposed to French policies in Cameroun. It opposed France in Cameroon for ten years until the French assassinated its leaderRuben Um Nyobein September 1958. In January 1959 France decolonized and granted Cameroun independence at a time when the people were still reeling from the trauma of Um Nyobes death. ...
When we think of Catholicism, we think of Europe and the United States as the seats of its power. But while much of Catholicism remains headquartered in the West, the Church’s center of gravity has shifted to Africa, Latin America, and developing Asia. Focused on the transnational Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Unequal Partners explores the ways gender, race, economic inequality, and colonial history play out in religious organizations, revealing how their members are constantly negotiating and reworking the frameworks within which they operate. Taking us from Belgium and the United States to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sociologist Casey Clevenger offers rare insight into how the sisters of this order work across national boundaries, shedding light on the complex relationships among individuals, social groups, and formal organizations. Throughout, Clevenger skillfully weaves the sisters’ own voices into her narrative, helping us understand how the order has remained whole over time. A thoughtful analysis of the ties that bind—and divide—the sisters, Unequal Partners is a rich look at transnationalism’s ongoing impact on Catholicism.
Bereits Jacob Grimm bemerkte im Band 2 seiner Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (1848), dass adjektivische Genuskongruenz mit gemischtgeschlechtlichem Personenbezug in den älteren Sprachstufen des Deutschen häufig das Neutrum aufweist. Askedal (1973) widmete diesem Thema eine ausführliche Studie auf Basis kritischer Editionen einer Handvoll alt- und mittelhochdeutscher literarischen Werke. Die Standardwerke zur historischen Grammatik des Deutschen beschränken sich bislang darauf, diese Regel undifferenziert nach grammatischem Kontext lediglich zu konstatieren. Die vorliegende Studie zeichnet das Phänomen der Gender Resolution (Corbett 1983) im Mittelhochdeutschen nach. Dies geschieht auf...