Africa and the Disruptions of the Twenty-first Century
$18 – $30
This collection of essays interrogates the repositioning of Africa and its diasporas in the unfolding disruptive transformations of the early twenty-first century. It is divided into five parts focusing on America’s racial dysfunctions, navigating global turbulence, Africa’s political dramas, the continent’s persistent mythologisation and disruptions in higher education. It closes with tributes to two towering African public intellectuals, Ali Mazrui and Thandika Mkandawire, who have since joined the ancestors.
Book Format / Format du livre | Hard Copy / Format papier, Soft Copy / Format electronique |
---|
Related products
Les matérialités contemporaines du religieux aux frontières du privé
Les matérialités contemporaines du religieux aux frontières du privé
Dans les sociétés ouest-africaines, l’espace public est fortement imprégné de religiosités. Il s’y édicte une kyrielle de conduites à tenir susceptibles d’influencer les croyants. Comprendre ces dynamiques religieuses implique de saisir comment ces normes pénètrent la vie privée des individus, et comment les croyants – chrétiens et musulmans – se saisissent de ces normes, les mettent en scène ou les détournent dans leur quotidien. Fruit d’un travail collectif mené dans l’ANR « Priverel », en partenariat avec les universités de Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Abomey Calavi (Bénin) et Gaston Berger (Saint-Louis, Sénégal), cet ouvrage s’appuie sur la notion « d’espace privé religieux » pour analyser l’appropriation par les croyants des normes religieuses au Bénin, au Burkina Faso, en Côte d’Ivoire et au Sénégal.
Recently Viewed
Genre et fondamentalismes/Gender and Fundamentalisms
À partir de quels moments, pour quelles raisons et de quelles manières, la religion et la culture, lorsqu’elles se lient au politique, peuvent-elles être à la fois sources et lieux d’expression des fondamentalismes ? Ce sont les questions centrales qui traversent ce livre. Ce qui est considéré ici, c’est « la religion » lorsqu’elle est idéologie qui fonde la culture et devient outil d’accès au pouvoir moral, au pouvoir social et surtout au pouvoir politique. Les messages culturels et religieux et leurs interprétations sous-tendent souvent les décisions, les lois et les programmes prises par le politique. Ils ont des effets directs sur la société, en général, et sur les femmes et les rapports de genre, en particulier. Les contributions à cet ouvrage analysent les diverses formes du fondamentalisme dans quelques pays africains, leurs contextes d’émergence et la manière dont elles (re)façonnent les identités et les rapports hommes/femmes. Ces fondamentalismes constituent des sources de préoccupations persistantes dans les débats de société, aussi bien des organisations féministes et féminines que des mondes académiques et politiques. Les manipulations des cultures et des religions se font de plus en plus politiques et finissent par occasionner des discriminations sociales, voire des violences physiques, morales et symboliques assurément insoutenables.
Fatou Sow, sociologue, est titulaire d’un Doctorat de 3e cycle (Paris-Sorbonne) et d’une Habilitation à diriger des recherches en sociologie (Paris denis-Diderot). Elle est, depuis 2008, la directrice du Réseau international de solidarité Women Living Under Muslim Laws (Londres, UK).
Higher Education in Africa:Crises, Reforms and Transformation/ Enseignement supérieur en afrique francophone: crises, reformes et transformations (Printed)
Higher Education in Africa:Crises, Reforms and Transformation/ Enseignement supérieur en afrique francophone: crises, reformes et transformations (Printed)
This book provides theoretical tools for analysing contemporary African higher education systems and institutions. It also examines policy challenges and the prospects for social progress. It points to critical areas of investigation for the CODESRIA Multinational Working Group (MWG) research network on higher education. Conceived as a background text for this network, the book traces the historical roots and the global factors of the African higher education crises and the search for transformation to address issues of legitimacy and relevance. It analyses the origins, nature, and mission of African higher education, the problems associated with cultural colonization and the dependency trap, the local/global nexus in the crises with a special attention to the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), and the various waves of reforms and innovations. Furthermore, the book presents a synopsis of studies that were conducted on the crises, highlighting both their findings and recommendations.
Challenges to Identifying and Managing Intangible Cultural Heritage in Mauritius, Zanzibar and Seychelles (Printed)
Challenges to Identifying and Managing Intangible Cultural Heritage in Mauritius, Zanzibar and Seychelles (Printed)
Africa is richly blessed with cultural and natural heritage, key resources for nation building and development. Unfortunately, heritage is not being systematically researched or recognised, denying Africans the chance to learn about and benefit from heritage initiatives. This book offers a preliminary discussion of factors challenging the management of intangible cultural heritage in the African communities of Zanzibar, Mauritius and Seychelles. These islands are part of an overlapping cultural and economic zone influenced by a long history of slavery and colonial rule, a situation that has produced inequalities and underdevelopment. In all of them, heritage management is seriously underfinanced and under-resourced. African descendant heritage is given little attention and this continues to erode identity and sense of belonging to the nation. In Zanzibar tensions between majority and minority political parties affect heritage initiatives on the island. In Mauritius, the need to diversify the economy and tourism sector is encouraging the commercialisation of heritage and the homogenisation of Creole identity. In Seychelles, the legacy of socialist rule affects the conceptualisation and management of heritage, discouraging managers from exploring the island’s widerange of intangible heritages. The author concludes that more funding and attention needs to be given to heritage management in Africa and its diaspora. Rosabelle Boswell is a senior lecturer in the Anthropology Department at Rhodes University, South Africa and a specialist of the southwest Indian Ocean islands. Her research interests include ethnicity, heritage, gender and development. Boswell’s PhD was on poverty and identity among Creoles in Mauritius and her most recent work is onthe role of scent and fragrances in the heritage of the Swahili islands of the Indian Ocean region.
Public Humanities – Thinking Freedom in the African University
“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
Education and Financing in Africa : The Kenyan Case Study (Printed)
Education and Financing in Africa : The Kenyan Case Study
The Kenya study, part of a series of case studies by the Education and Finance Working Group, explores ways of reinforcing the capacity and competence of the Ministry of Education in Kenya in building a framework for collaboration, information exchange and the optimal use of financial resources. The series analyses the best practices used in managing and allocating resources, and evaluating the education sector.
The study further highlights challenges in determining who should finance what in the cost-sharing scheme, how to counter the imbalance in allocations between personnel and non personnel salaries, poor management of resources and lack of accountability, and effectively handle centralised budgeting and management systems and the weaknesses in the harmonisation of policy, planning and budgeting. The study is rich in detail and offers original directions for a comparison with other African experiences.
Reforming the African Public Sector, Retrospect and Prospects (Printed)
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).
The Study of Africa, Volume 1: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Encounters (Printed)
The Study of Africa, Volume 1: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Encounters (Printed)
This is the first of a two-volume work which takes stock of the study of Africa in the twenty-first century: its status, research agenda and approaches, and place. It is divided into two parts, the first on the academic disciplines and African Studies, the second on interdisciplinary studies.
Topics addressed in part one include: anthropology, race, ethnography and sociology in relation to area studies; African historiography, and the research and teaching of history in Africa in an era of institutional crisis and ‘global history’; and the need to rethink Africanist political sciences.
Africa and the Challenges of Citizenry and Inclusion: The Legacy of Mario de Andrade (Printed)
Africa and the Challenges of Citizenry and Inclusion: The Legacy of Mario de Andrade (Printed)
At the 11th General Assembly of CODESRIA, held in Maputo in December 2005, Carlos Lopes presented the Cheikh Anta Diop Lecture on “Africa and the Challenges of Citizenry and Inclusion”, through the legacy of Mario de Andrade of Angola.
He discusses the life and times of Mário Andrade; African nationalism and its revolutionary proposals; and the triumphs and vicissitudes of Negritude and Pan-Africanism. He analyses the consequences for a country’s citizenry, inclusion and respect for identities, and concludes with implications for African intellectuals. Like Mário Andrade, who abhorred the rites associated with power and despaired at exclusionary notions of citizenship, Lopes is critical of narrow nationalism that jeopardises pan-Africanism, and calls on African intellectuals to denounce these practices in the interest of universal identity rights, based on the principle that development brings with it greater opportunities and freedom of choice.