Africa Today articles from July 1998

Africa Today archives from July 1998

Editor's note.
July 1, 1998... We are pleased to announce that beginning in 1999, Africa Today will have a new publisher and a new editorial team. The journal will move to Indiana University's African Studies Program, where it will be published by Indiana University Press...

African perspectives on democracy and the dilemmas of postcolonial intellectuals.
July 1, 1998... This article is a preliminary assessment of the African debate on democracy. A swirl of economic, political, and social difficulties has created despair, but the difficulties also motivate us to articulate new collective social visions. An...

A research proposal funded by the Social Science Research Council: identity and the negotiation of displacement in southeastern Guinea, West Africa.
July 1, 1998... This proposed research explores how self-settled persons displaced by the Liberian civil war and their hosts in southeastern Guinea deploy multiple social institutions and idioms of identity to cope with the situation brought on by...

Commentary: area studies and the disciplines.
July 1, 1998... I was prompted to write this article after reading John Harbeson's rejoinder to Robert Bates's article, "Area Studies and the Disciplines." (1) In his essay, Harbeson questioned the veracity of Bates's claims about the paucity of methodological...

Guest editors' introduction": the multiple meanings of citizenship--rights, identity, and social justice in Africa.(Rethinking Citizenship in Africa)
July 1, 1998... Citizenship Studies and Sub-Saharan Africa As the new millennium approaches, sub-Saharan Africa is in the throes of profound political and economic change. In a majority of states, experimentation with democratic transitions has deeply...

Citizenship amid economic and political change in Kenya.(Rethinking Citizenship in Africa)
July 1, 1998... Simultaneous economic adjustment and political liberalization in Africa have affected the elaboration of state power, especially the relationship of the state to both the individual and civil society. How have adjustment and liberalization...

Who are the indigenous Tanzanians? Competing conceptions of Tanzanian citizenship in the business community.(Rethinking Citizenship in Africa)
July 1, 1998... Individual Rights Versus Group Rights and the African Citizenship Experience The indigenization debate in Tanzania provides an excellent example of how one country has dealt with citizenship in a changing political, economic, and cultural...

Cultivating citizenship through xenophobia in Gabon, 1960-1995.(Rethinking Citizenship in Africa)
July 1, 1998... Mahmood Mamdani's recent book, Citizen and Subject, examines the legacy of the bifurcated state in contemporary Africa. Under colonial rule, the full rights of citizenship were usually granted only to Europeans, while the vast majority of...

The dialectics of citizenship and ethnicity in Guinea.(Rethinking Citizenship in Africa)
July 1, 1998... In his classic essay on Africa's two publics, Peter Ekeh laments the absence of morality in the civic public realm, a problem that still plagues most sub-Saharan states some twenty years later. (1) This article argues that citizenship rights,...

Citizenship and populism in the new South Africa.(Rethinking Citizenship in Africa)
July 1, 1998... In democratic thought, citizenship is a moral conception as well as a legal category. This dual connotation is particularly pertinent to the evolution of democracy in South Africa. Since the demise of apartheid in that country, liberationist...

Citizenship and place: spatial definitions of oppression and agency in South Africa.(Rethinking Citizenship in Africa)
July 1, 1998... Citizenship has an allocative as well as an integrative function. That is, citizenship can mitigate inequalities through the allocation of socioeconomic resources, thereby securing social solidarity within communities that are divided by class,...

Identity, citizenship, and transnationalism: Ismailis in Tanzania and Burundians in the diaspora.(Rethinking Citizenship in Africa)
July 1, 1998... In Carl Brinkmann's lecture on the "Responsibilities of Citizenship," published in 1927, he clairvoyantly proffers a view of identity and citizenship that extends beyond the traditional confines of the nation-state. (1) According to Brinkmann,...

Ghanaians, Ghanaian Canadians, and Asantes: citizenship and identity among migrants in Toronto.(Rethinking Citizenship in Africa)
July 1, 1998... This article focuses on Asante (1) Ghanaian migrants in Toronto, Canada, and explores issues of ethnic identity and citizenship across transnational fields. In Ghana, as in a number of African countries, economic and social crises have...

Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa.
July 1, 1998... Frederick Cooper, DECOLONIZATION AND AFRICAN SOCIETY: THE LABOR QUESTION IN FRENCH AND BRITISH AFRICA (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xvii + 677 pages, cloth $69.95, paper $27.95. Several years ago, at a conference on...

Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier.
July 1, 1998... Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, OF REVELATION AND REVOLUTION: THE DIALECTICS OF MODERNITY ON A SOUTH AFRICAN FRONTIER, Volume 2 (London and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), xxiii + 588 pages, cloth $70.00, paper $24.95. The...

Brian Titley, Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa.
July 1, 1998... Brian Titley, DARK AGE: THE POLITICAL ODYSSEY OF EMPEROR BOKASSA (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997), xii + 257 pages, cloth $39.95. The life of Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who became president of the Central African Republic (CAR)...

Thomas G. Karis and Gail M. Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1990, Volume 5: Nadir and Resurgence, 1964-1979.
July 1, 1998... Thomas G. Karis and Gail M. Gerhart, FROM PROTEST TO CHALLENGE: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF AFRICAN POLITICS IN SOUTH AFRICA, 1882-1990, VOLUME 5: NADIR AND RESURGENCE, 1964-1979 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 840 pages, cloth...

Pat Caplan, African Voices, African Lives: Personal Narratives from a Swahili Village.
July 1, 1998... Pat Caplan, AFRICAN VOICES, AFRICAN LIVES: PERSONAL NARRATIVES FROM A SWAHILI VILLAGE (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), xiv + 267 pages, cloth $65.00, paper $18.95. Pat Caplan's most recent work, African Voices, African Lives:...

Books received.
July 1, 1998... Anthropology Jean-Loup Amselle, MESTIZO LOGICS: ANTHROPOLOGY OF IDENTITY IN AFRICA AND ELSEWHERE, trans. Claudia Royal (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), xvii + 207 pages, cloth $45.00, paper $16.95. Originally published...

Editor's Note.
July 1, 1998... We are pleased to announce that beginning in 1999, Africa Today will have a new publisher and a new editorial team. The journal will move to Indiana University's African Studies Program, where it will be published by Indiana University Press...

African Perspectives on Democracy and the Dilemmas of Postcolonial Intellectuals.
July 1, 1998... This article is a preliminary assessment of the African debate on democracy. A swirl of economic, political, and social difficulties has created despair, but the difficulties also motivate us to articulate new collective social visions. An...