CThis collection of essays from seventeen authors from all parts of Africa, and a variety of social science disciplines, examines different areas of contact between globalisation and the lives of ordinary people in Africa.
Drawing for the most part on empirical and historical studies, the contributors elucidate how ordinary African understand, confront and relate to the complex and competing forces of globalisation. They examine how contemporary and historical dynamics have shaped the ways in which globalisation is interacting with, and defining oft-neglected areas of social policy. The authors engage with, and question current, dominant orthodoxies, showing how prevailing economic thinking, particularly that of the dominant multilateral institutions, has undermined a sense of the importance of social policies relevant to a mode of economic development attuned to social transformation in Africa.
Tade Akin Aina is Professor of Sociology and formerly Deputy Executive Secretary (Publications) at CODESRIA. He taught at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and he is currently the Regional Representative, the Ford Foundation, Office for Eastern Africa. His publications include Health, Habitat and Development (London: IIED, 1986), The Challenge of Sustainable Development in Nigeria, co-edited with Ademola Salau (Ibadan: NEST, 1990), Child Development and Nutrition in Nigeria, co-edited with M.F. Zeitlin and F.E. Etta (Lagos: UNICEF, 1992), The Experience of Migration in Africa, co-edited with Jonathan Baker (Uppsala: NAI), Globalization and Social Policy in Africa: Issues and Research Directions (Dakar: CODESRIA, 1997).
Chachage S.L. Chachage is currently Professor and head of department of Sociology at the University of Dar es Salaam, where he has served as Associate Dean (Research and Publications). Professor Chachage has also taught at the University of Cape Town, held many positions of distinction and served on the editorial boards of several journals. He has published extensively on Sociology, and is a well renowned Swahili language novelist.
Elizabeth Annan-Yao is currently Professor of Sociology at the University of Cocody-Abidjan, Deputy Director of Research at the Institute of Ethno-Sociology of the same university, and co-edits the African Sociological Review. She is specialized in Population and Development with emphasis on Migrations, Reproductive Health and Education.
ISBNÂ : 2-86978-130-x
CODESRIA 2004
The ‘counter-revolution’ in Development Economics in the 1980s fundamentally altered the way the state ‘thinks’, which is evident in the state’s retrenchment and reconstitution of the state’s relationship to its citizens. The combination of deflationary macroeconomic policies and a residual approach to social policy, broadly, and social provisioning, more specifically, fundamentally altered the post-colonial trajectory of public policy in Africa. Despite the neoliberal ascendance that nurtured the more residual direction of social policy, the contention for an alternative vision of social policy remained and advanced with vigour. Specific contributions range from the deployment of social policy in framing the nation-building project, endogenous mutual support institutions, land and agrarian reform as a social policy instrument, the gender dynamics of social policy, and the mechanism enabling the spread of cash transfer schemes on the continent.
Jimi O. Adesina is Professor and the DSI/NRF SARChI Chair in Social Policy at the College of Graduate Studies, University of South Africa (Unisa) in South Africa. A past President of the South African Sociological Association (2004–2006), Professor Adesina was elected to the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) in 2005. He served on the Board of the UN Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva (2013–2019) and on the Board of RC19 of the International Sociological Association (2014 to 2018). His research interests include Sociology, Social Policy and the Political Economy of Africa’s Development. He has published widely in these areas.
ISBN: 978 2 38234 045 5
CODESRIA 2021