The Spirits of Neoliberal Reforms and Everyday Politics of the State in Africa

The Spirits of Neoliberal Reforms and Everyday Politics of the State in Africa PDF

Author: Béatrice Hibou

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9782359260670

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This book proposes an original interpretation of neoliberalism in Africa. Instead of seeing neoliberal reforms as inherently destructive of the post-colonial state, the authors, who include some of Africa's best-known social scientists, focus on the resilience and adaptability of African state structures, economic systems and survival mechanisms.

The Politics of Neoliberal Reforms in Africa

The Politics of Neoliberal Reforms in Africa PDF

Author: Piet Konings

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2011-07-26

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 995671710X

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Neoliberalism has become the dominant development agenda in Africa. Faced with a deep economic and political crisis, African governments have been compelled by powerful external agencies, in particular the Bretton Woods institutions and western states, to pursue this agenda as a necessary precondition for the receipt of development aid. What is particularly striking in Africa, however, is that neoliberal experiments there have displayed such remarkable diversity. This may be due not only to substantial differences in historical, economic and political trajectories on the African continent but also, and maybe more importantly, in the degree of resistance internal actors have demonstrated to the neoliberal reforms imposed on them. This book focuses on Cameroon which has had a complex economic and political history and is currently witnessing resistance to the neoliberal experiment by the authoritarian and neopatrimonial state elite and various civil-society groups. It is the culmination of over twenty years of fine and refined research by one of the leading scholars of Cameroon today.

Everyday State and Democracy in Africa

Everyday State and Democracy in Africa PDF

Author: Wale Adebanwi

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2022-07-12

Total Pages: 606

ISBN-13: 0821447793

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Bottom-up case studies, drawn from the perspective of ordinary Africans’ experiences with state bureaucracies, structures, and services, reveal how citizens and states define each other. This volume examines contemporary citizens’ everyday encounters with the state and democratic processes in Africa. The contributions reveal the intricate and complex ways in which quotidian activities and experiences—from getting an identification card (genuine or fake) to sourcing black-market commodities to dealing with unreliable waste collection—both (re)produce and (re)constitute the state and democracy. This approach from below lends gravity to the mundane and recognizes the value of conceiving state governance not in terms of its stated promises and aspirations but rather in accordance with how people experience it. Both new and established scholars based in Africa, Europe, and North America cover a wide range of examples from across the continent, including bureaucratic machinery in South Sudan, Nigeria, and Kenya infrastructure and shortages in Chad and Nigeria disciplinarity, subjectivity, and violence in Rwanda, South Africa, and Nigeria the social life of democracy in the Congo, Cameroon, and Mozambique education, welfare, and health in Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burkina Faso Everyday State and Democracy in Africa demonstrates that ordinary citizens’ encounters with state agencies and institutions define the meanings, discourses, practices, and significance of democratic life, as well its distressing realities. Contributors: Daniel Agbiboa Victoria Bernal Jean Comaroff John L. Comaroff E. Fouksman Fred Ikanda Lori Leonard Rose Løvgren Ferenc Dávid Markó Ebenezer Obadare Rogers Orock Justin Pearce Katrien Pype Edoardo Quaretta Jennifer Riggan Helle Samuelsen Nicholas Rush Smith Eric Trovalla Ulrika Trovalla

The Political Anatomy of Domination

The Political Anatomy of Domination PDF

Author: Béatrice Hibou

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-03-22

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 3319493914

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Rereading Marx, Weber, Gramsci and, more recently, Foucault, Béatrice Hibou tackles one of the core questions of political and social theory: state domination. Combining comparative analyses of everyday life and economics, she highlights the arrangements, understandings and practices that make domination conceivable, bearable, even acceptable or reassuring. To carry out this demonstration, Hibou examines authoritarian situations—especially comparing the paradigmatic European cases of fascism, Nazism and Soviet socialism and those of contemporary China or North and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Identification and Citizenship in Africa

Identification and Citizenship in Africa PDF

Author: Séverine Awenengo Dalberto

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-09

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 1000380033

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In the context of a global biometric turn, this book investigates processes of legal identification in Africa ‘from below,’ asking what this means for the relationship between citizens and the state. Almost half of the population of the African continent is thought to lack a legal identity, and many states see biometric technology as a reliable and efficient solution to the problem. However, this book shows that biometrics, far from securing identities and avoiding fraud or political distrust, can even participate in reinforcing exclusion and polarizing debates on citizenship and national belonging. It highlights the social and political embedding of legal identities and the resilience of the documentary state. Drawing on empirical research conducted across 14 countries, the book documents the processes, practices, and meanings of legal identification in Africa from the 1950s right up to the biometric boom. Beyond the classic opposition between surveillance and recognition, it demonstrates how analysing the social uses of IDs and tools of identification can give a fresh account of the state at work, the practices of citizenship, and the role of bureaucracy in the writing of the self in African societies. This book will be of an important reference for students and scholars of African studies, politics, human security, and anthropology and the sociology of the state.

The Politics of Neoliberal Democracy in Africa

The Politics of Neoliberal Democracy in Africa PDF

Author: Usman A. Tar

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2008-10-30

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0857715763

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Since the late 1980s the changing dynamic of global development has driven the tide of democratic expansion in the developing world. In Africa, western donors have sought to impose 'neo-liberal' visions of socio-economic and political institution-building, spreading political reforms and economic liberalisation with far-reaching consequences. Associated with external interventions, but also sometimes conflicting with them, are internal protests against authoritarianism, which have problematically reinforced and/or undermined the donor agenda for democratic reform.Here, Usman Tar questions the assumption that Africa was lacking the essential components for a spontaneous transition to democracy. He explores the dynamic, but contradictory, links between external and internal dimensions of neo-liberal democratic expansion in Africa, focusing on Nigeria. Tar dissects the struggles for democracy, and for democratic policy and practice in a country with rich economic potential but a troubled political dispensation.

A Brief History of Neoliberalism

A Brief History of Neoliberalism PDF

Author: David Harvey

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2007-01-04

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 019162294X

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Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Its spread has depended upon a reconstitution of state powers such that privatization, finance, and market processes are emphasized. State interventions in the economy are minimized, while the obligations of the state to provide for the welfare of its citizens are diminished. David Harvey, author of 'The New Imperialism' and 'The Condition of Postmodernity', here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. While Thatcher and Reagan are often cited as primary authors of this neoliberal turn, Harvey shows how a complex of forces, from Chile to China and from New York City to Mexico City, have also played their part. In addition he explores the continuities and contrasts between neoliberalism of the Clinton sort and the recent turn towards neoconservative imperialism of George W. Bush. Finally, through critical engagement with this history, Harvey constructs a framework not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.

Neoliberalism and Globalization in Africa

Neoliberalism and Globalization in Africa PDF

Author: Joseph Mensah

Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan

Published: 2008-11-15

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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Discusses Africa's involvement in contemporary neoliberal globalization from a social, economic, political and cultural perspective. This book describes the unbalanced structure of global wealth and power between Africa and the rest of the world.

The Politics of Trade and Industrial Policy in Africa

The Politics of Trade and Industrial Policy in Africa PDF

Author: Charles Chukwuma Soludo

Publisher: IDRC

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1592211658

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This book maps the process and political economy of policy making in Africa. It's focus on trade and industrial policy makes it unique and it will appeal to students and academics in economics, political economy, political science and African studies. Detailed case studies help the reader to understand how the process and motivation behind policy decisions can vary from country to country depending on the form of government, ethnicity and nationality and other social factors.

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism PDF

Author: Alfredo Saad-Filho

Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)

Published: 2005-02-03

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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Leading writer Boris Kagarlitsky offers an ambitious account of 1000 years of Russian history.