Civic Agency in Africa
Arts of Resistance in the 21st Century
Wendy Willems editor Professor Ebenezer Obadare editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:James Currey
Published:20th Feb '14
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Examines the variety of mostly unorganized and informal ways in which Africans exercise agency and resist state power in the 21st century, through citizen action and popular culture, and how the relationship between ruler and ruled is being reframed. The recent eruption of popular protests across North Africa and the Middle East has reopened academic debate on the meaning and strategies of resistance in the 21st century. This book argues that Western notions of state and civilsociety provide only a limited understanding of how power and resistance operate in the African context, where informality is central to the way both state officials and citizens exercise agency. With the principle of informality as a template, the chapters in this volume collectively examine the various modes - organised and unorganised, formal and informal, urban and rural, embodied and discursive, serious and ludic, online and offline, successful and failing - through which Africans contend with power. Resistance takes place against the backdrop of deep fractures in state sovereignty, the remnants of colonial rule and the constraints of a global, neoliberal economic system. Ebenezer Obadare is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas; Wendy Willems is Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Media Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
In the year of his death, Patrick Chabal . . . wrote the forward to this edited volume, which celebrates the everyday resilience, strength, and global consciousness of the continent's citizenry. His contribution is a testament to the work's scholarly importance as a beacon of interdisciplinary synergy that promotes ongoing dialogue and understanding by paving empirical pathways that lead to the facts about African resistances. * JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY HISTORY *
[A] thoughtful and important contribution to the ways in which we view and approach resistance across Africa. * AFRICAN STUDIES QUARTERLY A great book. AFRICA REVIEW OF BOOKS *
Makes innovative interventions in the debates around how we think about the agency and resilience of ordinary people. ... Reading this book [is] an unusually enjoyable experience. * AFRICA *
An excellent collection, well-edited and, without exception, well-written. * THE JOURNAL OF MODERN AFRICAN STUDIES *
A theoretically and empirically rich book [which] serves to update a number of ideas about resistance in Africa. * AFRICA AT LSE BLOG *
ISBN: 9781847010865
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 500g
256 pages