Global Pandemics in the Media: An African Perspective
Highlights:
In Global Pandemics in the Media: An African Perspective, Nkosinothando Mpofu, Phillip Santos, Admire Mare and Hugh Ellis have expertly put together a tour de force collection of African perspectives on the varied ways in which journalists, communicators, citizens, government communicators and other stakeholders mediated the recent global pandemics. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a critical juncture, the book underscores the political nature of (mis)representing, (mis)framing and illuminating stories in a pandemic context. Drawing mostly on case studies from Southern, East, and West Africa, the volume foregrounds the various ways in which the media covered the recent global pandemics. It also looks at how public officials were instrumental in communicating about the causes, nature, prevention, and vaccination-related interventions. It also focuses on citizen-initiated communications on social media and how these were implicated in the viral production and circulation of mis/disinformation.
ISBN 978 2 38234 102 5
Authors
Nkosinothando Mpofu is a Senior Lecturer, teaching and supervising students in the Department of Informatics, Journalism and Media Technology at the Namibia University of Science and Technology.
Phillip Santos teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in the Department of Journalism and Media Technology at the Namibia University of Science and Technology.
Admire Mare is an Associate Professor and Head of Department of Communication and Media at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Hugh Ellis is a Senior Lecturer and Head of Department of Journalism and Media Technology at the Namibia University of Science and Technology.
$12 – $20Price range: $12 through $20
African Feminist Theory Articulated and Grounded in Tanzania: A response to Western Patriarchal Neoliberalism
Highlights:
A Response to Western Patriarchal Neoliberalism
In African Feminist Theory Articulated and Grounded in Tanzania: A Response to Western Patriarchal Neoliberalism, the intricate ways Tanzanian women have defined and defended their own liberation are meticulously explored. Moving beyond the constraints of Western-centric frameworks, this work examines how local activists and scholars have articulated a unique African feminism—one deeply rooted in communal values, historical resistance, and local realities.
By investigating the intersection of patriarchal structures and neoliberal economic policies, the book highlights how Tanzanian women challenge global power dynamics while grounding their theory in the lived experiences of their communities. It is a vital contribution to decolonial thought, offering a powerful testament to the intellectual agency and resilience of African women.
This study serves as both a historical record and a forward-looking manifesto for a feminism that is authentically grounded, fiercely independent, and transformative.
Author
Rasel Madaha is a multidisciplinary scholar-activist whose work reclaims the narrative of African feminism from the shadows of Western patriarchal neoliberalism. Since 2007, he has dedicated his career to grounding feminist theory in the lived experiences of Tanzanian women and men through consistent action research and community engagement.
Re-envisioning the African and American Academies
Highlights:
This book is a true masterpiece from one of the preeminent minds in higher education today. […]
By looking across Africa and the United States in the periods before and after Covid, […].
— Ben Vinson III, President, Howard University, Washington DC, USA
In Re-envisioning the African and American Academies, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza presents a thought-provoking analysis of the state of higher education in African and American institutions, with the Covid-19 pandemic as an inflection point. […].
— Tshilidzi Marwala, Rector, United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan
Re-envisioning the African and American Academies is a seminal book for researchers, practitioners, leaders and students in wanting to interrogate and understand the state of higher education in Africa and the United States in a post-Covid world. […].
— Fanta Aw, PhD, CEO and Executive Director, NAFSA
[…], Zeleza undertakes a stringent critique of the neoliberal university and proposes concrete recommendations on how to reform and restructure the contemporary university in the world. Superb! A must-read.
— Adam Habib, Director, SOAS, University of London, England
From an academic’s and a practitioner’s perspective, Paul Zeleza intricately examines the trajectories of the development of higher education systems on two continents, with universal applicability. […].
— Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, Vice Chancellor, University of Ghana
[…]. Zeleza provides us a courageous roadmap to re-envision the African and American academies[…].
— Catherine Koverola, Director, Center for African Studies, USA
$21 – $35Price range: $21 through $35
JUSTICE DURING TRANSITIONS – Policies that Reflect African Realities
Highlights:
JUSTICE DURING TRANSITIONS – Policies that Reflect African Realities
Transitional justice interventions, particularly in Africa, have failed. In this context, there is a growing interest in tradition-based community-led practices for resolving justice. Yet little is known or understood about these practices on their own terms, and what role they play in transitional justice on the continent. This volume challenges some of the underlying assumptions of current responses to mass violence on the continent, including the way these are embedded in state-centricism and an international justice system that lacks relevance in relation to the day-to-day realities of rural African communities. Through the case studies of Zimbabwe, Burundi and Mozambique the volume explores some of the limitations and possibilities with regard to justice during transitions.
$12 – $20Price range: $12 through $20
Beyond Disciplines: African Perspectives on Theory and Method
Highlights:
Beyond Disciplines: African Perspectives on Theory and Method
To what extent can we go beyond disciplinary boundaries to produce knowledge on Africa that has emancipatory and transformational power? Beyond Disciplines: African Perspectives on Theory and Method, attempts to address this question. Among the critical issues covered by contributors to the book include the limitations of Eurocentric approaches on illuminating and explaining African social contexts; the value of critical African scholarship to our understanding of the continent’s political economy of development; the descriptive, explanatory, and predictive potency of interpretivist emancipatory approaches vis-à-vis positivist developmental ones; the significance of gender power analysis for understanding women’s experiences of violent extremism; application of social science research across research communities on the critical issue of environmentalism; as well as theorising the confluence of internal displacement, weaponisation and agency of women and violent extremism. The book, authored by scholars from multiple disciplinary backgrounds based at institutions across three continents, underscores the imperative value of transformational epistemologies for Africa and demonstrates that the generation of such epistemologies is contingent upon collaborative knowledge-production projects across epistemic communities.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.57054/codesria.pub.555
ISBN : 978 2 38234 092 9
Shadrack Wanjala Nasong’o, PhD, is a Professor of International Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. His research interest lies in democratisation, identity politics, social conflict, governance and development. Nasong’o has been honoured with the Rhodes College’s Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity, and the Ali Mazrui Award for Research and Scholarly Excellence from the University of Texas at Austin.
Eka Ikpe, PhD, is a Reader and Director, African Leadership Centre at King’s College London. Her themes of interest include developmentalism, industrial development and structural transformation, peacebuilding, post-conflict reconstruction and the economic costs of conflict and creative economies.
$9 – $15Price range: $9 through $15
Études africaines de géographie par le bas / African Studies in Geography from Below (Printed)
Highlights:
Études africaines de géographie par le bas / African Studies in Geography from Below (Printed)
Il est largement admis, aujourd’hui, que les conceptions de l’espace et du temps sont « socialement construites » au sens où chaque société les élabore en fonction de ses modes de production, de son organisation interne et de ses valeurs. Ces conceptions deviennent toutefois si familières. Elles acquièrent une telle force d’évidence qu’elles prennent l’importance de faits objectifs. C’est pourquoi elles orientent ou canalisent les processus de reproduction sociale. C’est aussi pourquoi elles sont si fortement contestées lors des moments de grande transformation : quand changent les modes de production économique, les conceptions de l’espace et du temps doivent elles-mêmes changer pour permettre de nouvelles pratiques matérielles de reproduction sociale. La Géographie par le Bas désigne, en première approche, une critique de la pensée territoriale dominante. L’hypothèse centrale de ce livre est que les manières dont nous sommes éduqués à voir le territoire, à le concevoir et, partant, à l’organiser, déterminent nos capacités à résoudre les problèmes qui s’y posent.
$30
Public Humanities – Thinking Freedom in the African University
Highlights:
“This is a major intellectual intervention since the neo-liberalisation of our universities which has had devastating effect on intellectual freedom, critical thought and creativity. It is my hope that the essays in this book will rekindle the debate on the University as a public space and reignite the struggle to reclaim education as the commons and not a commodity for sale.”
Issa Shivji, Professor Emeritus, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
“The essays composing this book are an excellent illustration of how, through an exercise of interdisciplinarity, it is possible to combine theory and practice in the analysis of the context of knowledge production on the continent, addressing themes that are fundamental to African academics. The questions raised become more important in the context of an uncertain future generated by the threats
from COVID-19, which force us to rethink our institutions and their role, but also to permanently find alternatives to produce scientific knowledge from within.”
Professor Teresa Cruz e Silva, Centro de Estudos Africanos,
Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique
$7 – $12Price range: $7 through $12
African Land Questions, Agrarian Transition and the State, Contradictions of Neo-liberal Land Reforms (Printed)
Highlights:
African Land Questions, Agrarian Transition and the State, Contradictions of Neo-liberal Land Reforms (Printed)
This empirically grounded study provides a critical reflection on the land question in Africa, research on which tends to be tangential, conceptually loose and generally inadequate. It argues that the most pressing research concern must be to understand the precise nature of the African land question, its land reforms and their effects on development. To unravel the roots of land conflicts in Africa requires thorough understanding of the complex social and political contradictions which have ensued from colonial and post-colonial land policies, as well as from Africa’s ‘development’ and capital accumulation trajectories, especially with regard to the land rights of the continent’s poor. The study thus questions the capacity of emerging neo-liberal economic and political regimes in Africa to deliver land reforms which address growing inequality and poverty. It equally questions the understanding of the nature of popular demands for land reforms by African states, and their ability to address these demands under the current global political and economic structures dictated by neo-liberalism and its narrow regime of ownership. The study invites scholars and policy makers to creatively draw on the specific historical trajectories and contemporary expression of the land and agrarian questions in Africa, to enrich both theory and practice on land in Africa.
$15
Reforming the African Public Sector, Retrospect and Prospects (Printed)
Highlights:
Reforming the African Public Sector, Retrospect and Prospects (Printed)
Reforming the African Public Sector: Retrospect and Prospects is an in-depth and wide-ranging review of the available literature on African public sector reforms. It illustrates several differing country experiences to buttress the main observations and conclusions. It adopts a structural/institutional approach which underpins most of the reform efforts on the continent. To contextualize reform of the public sector and understand its processes, dynamics and intricacies, the book examines the state and state capacity building in Africa, especially when there can be no state without an efficient public sector. In addition, the book addresses a number of theories such as the new institutional economics, public choice and new public management, which have in one way or another influenced most of the initiatives implemented under public sector reform in Africa. There is also a survey of the three phases of public sector reform which have emerged and the balance sheet of reform strategies, namely, decentralization, privatization, deregulation, agencification, co-production and public-private partnerships. It concludes by identifying possible alternative approaches such as developing a vigorous public sector ethos and sustained capacity building to promote and enhance the renewal and reconstruction of the African public sector within the context of the New Partnerships for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), good governance and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
$15
African Anthropologies: History, Critique and Practice (Printed)
Highlights:
African Anthropologies: History, Critique and Practice (Printed)
This overview of the history, application and teaching of anthropology in post-colonial Africa shows how the continent’s anthropologists are redefining the historical legacy of European and American disciplinary hegemony, and developing distinctively African contributions to anthropological theory and practice. The contributors illustrate the diverse national traditions of anthropological practice that have developed in sub-Saharan Africa since decolonisation and exemplify the diversity of professional work carried out by the discipline’s practitioners. Their commitment to a common disciplinary identity demonstrates the place that exists for a critical anthropology that is reflective about both its potentials and limitations.
$20
African Literature as Political Philosophy (Printed)
Highlights:
African Literature as Political Philosophy (Printed)
The politics of development in Africa have always been central concerns of the continent’s literature. Yet ideas about the best way to achieve this development, and even what development itself should look like, have been hotly contested.
African Literature as Political Philosophy looks in particular at Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah and Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, but situates these within the broader context of developments in African literature over the past half-century, discussing writers from Ayi Kwei Armah to Wole Soyinka. M.S.C. Okolo provides a thorough analysis of the authors’ differing approaches and how these emerge from the literature. She shows the roots of Achebe’s reformism and Ngugi’s insistence on revolution and how these positions take shape in their work. Okolo argues that these authors have been profoundly affected by the political situation of Africa, but have also helped to create a new African political philosophy.
$20
African linguistics and the Development of African Communities / la linguistique africaine et le développement des communautés africaines (Printed)
Highlights:
African linguistics and the Development of African Communities / la linguistique africaine et le développement des communautés africaines
This diverse and comprehensive collection of essays embraces the main discourses in the field of African languages and linguistics. Overall, it argues for the absolute necessity of developing African languages as a condition of socio-economic development. The work further advocates the involvement of all sectors of society in language development efforts, language identification, and the imperative of validating African languages as equal to the colonial languages.
This edited collection of papers in both English and French offers a continent-wide approach to matters linguistic, focusing in particular on countries such as: Chad, Nigeria, Gabon and Cameron. It highlights the historic role African languages must play in the realisation of NEPAD to jumpstart social and economic development on the continent. The authors provide in-depth analysis of subjects such as: the development of African languages and their role in African renaissance; the difficulties and controversies around African mother tongue education; and endangered minority languages threatened with extinction.
$20