{"title":"The death of political possibility? Reading State and society in Nigeria 40 years on","authors":"P. Roelofs","doi":"10.1080/03056244.2022.2033521","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this 2019 reboot of his collection of essays from the 1970s, Gavin Williams traces the lingering the impact of colonialism and international capital on Nigeria’s political economy, the shaky development of an indigenous industrial class and the changing role of the state in national development. However, reading the book, it is not clear what such an analysis is for. Is it intended as a diagnosis? An indictment? Williams leftist commitments are clear, but amid the painstaking analysis one can ask: what is the point of studying politics? In this review article the author unpicks Williams’ at times contradictory answers to this question and argues that the book demonstrates the relevance of mid twentieth-century Nigerian politics to readers today. She poses the question of how we can navigate the possibility and risks of newly volatile twenty-first-century politics, unchained as it is from the liberal orthodoxy of the past 40 years.","PeriodicalId":47526,"journal":{"name":"Review of African Political Economy","volume":"49 1","pages":"184 - 191"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Review of African Political Economy","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2022.2033521","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AREA STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
ABSTRACT In this 2019 reboot of his collection of essays from the 1970s, Gavin Williams traces the lingering the impact of colonialism and international capital on Nigeria’s political economy, the shaky development of an indigenous industrial class and the changing role of the state in national development. However, reading the book, it is not clear what such an analysis is for. Is it intended as a diagnosis? An indictment? Williams leftist commitments are clear, but amid the painstaking analysis one can ask: what is the point of studying politics? In this review article the author unpicks Williams’ at times contradictory answers to this question and argues that the book demonstrates the relevance of mid twentieth-century Nigerian politics to readers today. She poses the question of how we can navigate the possibility and risks of newly volatile twenty-first-century politics, unchained as it is from the liberal orthodoxy of the past 40 years.
期刊介绍：
The Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) is a refereed journal committed to encouraging high quality research and fostering excellence in the understanding of African political economy. Published quarterly by Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group for the ROAPE international collective it has since 1974 provided radical analysis of trends and issues in Africa. It has paid particular attention to the political economy of inequality, exploitation and oppression, whether driven by global forces or local ones (such as class, race, community and gender), and to materialist interpretations of change in Africa. It has sustained a critical analysis of the nature of power and the state in Africa.
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