The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of the Pilgrim's Progress. By Isabel Hofmeyr. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. Pp. xii, 314. $65.00/£42.95 cloth, $22.95/£14.95 paper. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress of 1678 is about the voyage of a character called "Christian" through a landscape filled with labeled, aphoristic traps, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the Slough of Despond, etc., with compatriots named Faith and Hopeful and so on. It's heavy handed and repetitive, a sort of inferior C. S. Lewis, a dated book, in other words, by the usual standards of the nineteenth century, the era of Trollope and George Elliot and Yeats and Shaw. Isabel Hofmeyr's account of Pilgrim's Progress's international expansion into something else, on the other hand, is elegant and readable. Her task is to chart the vectors in which Bunyan's moralistic fable became enmeshed in different colonial and postcolonial projects. In hundreds of languages the world over Pilgrim's Progress appears to have ranked second only to the Bible in influence. As it moved, it changed. The Portable Bunyan begins with a visual example of such change. In the frontispiece of the original Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan is napping, as befits a "vagabond." "Christian," his dreamed-of "pilgrim," walks up a path in the background. When the book came out in SiNdebele in 1902, Bunyan's eyes are wide open in the frontispiece, as the pilgrim behind him has become an African schoolboy. As Hofmeyr explains, in South Africa it was inappropriate for a white man to sleep in public places: only a black man could be a tinker! Isabel Hofmeyr has given us not only a translational history of this Bunyan, but even more, an archaeology of Bunyanisms in the aftermath of empire, a history of Bunyanism "waft[ing] out from mission stations like clouds of confetti" (p. 62), being possessed and remade according to local circumstance, and reemerging in incipient nationalist discourses (including "Englishness"). The how of its literary remaking is Hofmeyr's concern, from its innocuous beginnings as a demotic low-culture tract, through its Atlantic dissemination, and on into Ngugi's and others' ironic occupation of the text or parts therein. "Christian" was an intermediary to "Christ," and also a cipher for any penitent, an almost rote mechanism for self-discipline. For mission-educated Africans, Giant Despair's Dungeon might become, metaphorically, the situation of the Coloured classes, or the vehicle for an attack in Umteteli waBantu on black elites who cannot "scale the Hill" because they keep slipping on "carpets of cash." It was "de-allegoricized and re-allegoricized." To me, the most interesting part of The Portable Bunyan is about the meaning of literacy and texts. Pilgrim's Progress itself came from a semiliterate world, and Christian and his allegorical companions struggle with their own reading and writing and verbal explaining. In their world, as in South Africa at the turn of the cent
{"title":"The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of the Pilgrim's Progress","authors":"Paul S. Landau","doi":"10.5860/choice.41-5753","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.41-5753","url":null,"abstract":"The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of the Pilgrim's Progress. By Isabel Hofmeyr. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. Pp. xii, 314. $65.00/£42.95 cloth, $22.95/£14.95 paper. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress of 1678 is about the voyage of a character called \"Christian\" through a landscape filled with labeled, aphoristic traps, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the Slough of Despond, etc., with compatriots named Faith and Hopeful and so on. It's heavy handed and repetitive, a sort of inferior C. S. Lewis, a dated book, in other words, by the usual standards of the nineteenth century, the era of Trollope and George Elliot and Yeats and Shaw. Isabel Hofmeyr's account of Pilgrim's Progress's international expansion into something else, on the other hand, is elegant and readable. Her task is to chart the vectors in which Bunyan's moralistic fable became enmeshed in different colonial and postcolonial projects. In hundreds of languages the world over Pilgrim's Progress appears to have ranked second only to the Bible in influence. As it moved, it changed. The Portable Bunyan begins with a visual example of such change. In the frontispiece of the original Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan is napping, as befits a \"vagabond.\" \"Christian,\" his dreamed-of \"pilgrim,\" walks up a path in the background. When the book came out in SiNdebele in 1902, Bunyan's eyes are wide open in the frontispiece, as the pilgrim behind him has become an African schoolboy. As Hofmeyr explains, in South Africa it was inappropriate for a white man to sleep in public places: only a black man could be a tinker! Isabel Hofmeyr has given us not only a translational history of this Bunyan, but even more, an archaeology of Bunyanisms in the aftermath of empire, a history of Bunyanism \"waft[ing] out from mission stations like clouds of confetti\" (p. 62), being possessed and remade according to local circumstance, and reemerging in incipient nationalist discourses (including \"Englishness\"). The how of its literary remaking is Hofmeyr's concern, from its innocuous beginnings as a demotic low-culture tract, through its Atlantic dissemination, and on into Ngugi's and others' ironic occupation of the text or parts therein. \"Christian\" was an intermediary to \"Christ,\" and also a cipher for any penitent, an almost rote mechanism for self-discipline. For mission-educated Africans, Giant Despair's Dungeon might become, metaphorically, the situation of the Coloured classes, or the vehicle for an attack in Umteteli waBantu on black elites who cannot \"scale the Hill\" because they keep slipping on \"carpets of cash.\" It was \"de-allegoricized and re-allegoricized.\" To me, the most interesting part of The Portable Bunyan is about the meaning of literacy and texts. Pilgrim's Progress itself came from a semiliterate world, and Christian and his allegorical companions struggle with their own reading and writing and verbal explaining. In their world, as in South Africa at the turn of the cent","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2005-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71100970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Slavery and Beyond: The Making of Men and Chikunda Ethnic Identities in the Unstable World of South-Central Africa, 1750-1920. By Alien F. and Barbara S. Isaacman. Portsmouth N.H.: Heinemann, 2004. Social History of Africa Series. Pp. xii, 370, maps, figures, photographs. $99.95 cloth, $29.95 paper. Allen Isaacman has been writing about the Zambezi valley for 30 years, often in collaboration with Barbara Isaacman, and this study brings together many themes previously introduced around the history of the "Chikunda," the slave militias formed in the 18th century by Afro-Goan-Portuguese warlords, whose 19th-century descendants became the dominant ivory hunters and slave raiders of the area and then reacted in a variety of ways in the generation who had to come to terms with Portuguese and British colonial rule. Followers of these two formative figures in post-Salazar Mozambican historiography will recognize the prazo "estate" holders who recruited the original chikunda warriors, their status as "slaves," and the opportunities for themselves that these fugitives from the power of others created in the middle Zambezi area as "transfrontiersmen," their services as porters and canoemen along the river, and the enlistments of some in the early colonial military in Mozambique and (present-day) Malawi. All these moments have appeared over the years in articles and chapters, often written in collaboration with Alien Isaacman's able students at the University of Minnesota. The extensive research supporting this integrated narrative goes back to the late 1960s and includes thorough use of archives in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia (as well as Portugal and Britain) and the Isaacmans' characteristic and effective reliance on personal narratives of residents of the region, collected in well over a hundred interview sessions dating over the full span of their investigations and including a great many new ones conducted in 1997-98. What else is new is the sophisticated and careful integration of all this material around two issues of identity, as the title indicates: the term chikunda has had many and often contradictory meanings, as "slave" (thus shameful), as "warrior" (thus powerful), quintessentially "male" (thus proud), and as fully "ethnic" (female and young, as well as adult male) communities of several different "characters" in various parts of the valley and its environs. The Isaacmans offer a sophisticated theoretical basis for understanding ethnicity (and by extension the other kinds of identities conveyed by the label "Chikunda") as social boundary setting in response to rapidly changing circumstances. They then follow the decades of ivory trading, hunting, intervals of drought, and eventual colonial intervention in the distinct parts of the area, and the differing responses of various groups of chikunda to them, leading to the recent array of meanings attached to, and sometimes claimed by their modern descendants. This supple and detailed ha
奴隶制及以后:1750-1920年中非南部不稳定世界中男人的形成和奇昆达民族身份。作者:Alien F.和Barbara S. Isaacman。朴次茅斯:海涅曼出版社，2004年。非洲社会史丛书。第xii页，370页，地图，数字，照片。布99.95美元，纸29.95美元。Allen Isaacman已经写了30年关于赞比西河流域的文章，经常与Barbara Isaacman合作，这项研究汇集了之前围绕“Chikunda”历史介绍的许多主题，18世纪由非洲-果阿-葡萄牙军阀组成的奴隶民兵，他们的后代在19世纪成为该地区主要的象牙猎人和奴隶掠夺者，然后在不得不接受葡萄牙和英国殖民统治的一代人中以各种方式做出反应。在萨拉查之后的莫桑比克史学中，这两位塑造人物的追随者将认识到招募了最初的奇昆达战士的普拉佐“庄园”拥有者，他们的“奴隶”地位，以及这些逃离他人权力的逃亡者在赞比西河中部地区创造的“越界者”为他们自己创造的机会，他们作为搬运工和沿河划独木舟的人，以及在莫桑比克和(今天的)马拉维早期殖民军队中的一些人的入伍。多年来，所有这些时刻都出现在文章和章节中，通常是与Alien Isaacman在明尼苏达大学的优秀学生合作撰写的。支持这一综合叙述的广泛研究可以追溯到20世纪60年代末，包括对莫桑比克、津巴布韦、马拉维和赞比亚(以及葡萄牙和英国)档案的全面利用，以及艾萨曼夫妇对该地区居民个人叙述的特色和有效依赖，这些资料收集于他们整个调查期间的100多次采访中，其中包括1997年至1998年进行的许多新调查。另一个新颖之处在于，所有这些材料都围绕着两个身份问题进行了复杂而细致的整合，正如标题所表明的那样:奇昆达这个词有很多而且经常是相互矛盾的含义，作为“奴隶”(因此可耻)，作为“战士”(因此强大)，作为典型的“男性”(因此自豪)，以及作为在山谷及其周围不同地区由几个不同“角色”组成的完全“种族”(女性和年轻人，以及成年男性)社区。艾萨克森提供了一个复杂的理论基础来理解种族(以及通过扩展“奇昆达”标签所传达的其他类型的身份)作为社会边界的设置，以应对迅速变化的环境。然后，他们跟随几十年的象牙贸易，狩猎，间隔的干旱，以及最终在该地区不同地区的殖民干预，以及不同群体的奇孔达人对他们的不同反应，导致了最近一系列的意义，有时被他们的现代后代所声称。这种对种族作为历史的灵活而细致的处理表明，在非洲和世界上任何其他地方，人们主张和阐述共性的许多基础:有些是根据“起源”和繁殖(因此是通过出生，尽管不是在这种情况下)，有些是根据职业(例如，在这里，战士，运输商和象牙猎人)，甚至是性别(这里是强壮的男性，不像安哥拉的因班加拉人，尼日尔上游的塞古奴隶骑兵，或刚果河中部的博班吉人)，或者是对土地的要求和被精神化的前任要求者(对艾萨克森人来说，这是一个关键因素，主要群体保留了“奇昆达”这个名字，但放弃了它原有的所有内涵，以结婚和修炼为生)。…
{"title":"Slavery and Beyond: The Making of Men and Chikunda Ethnic Identities in the Unstable World of South-Central Africa, 1750-1920","authors":"Josephine C. Miller","doi":"10.5860/choice.42-2356","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.42-2356","url":null,"abstract":"Slavery and Beyond: The Making of Men and Chikunda Ethnic Identities in the Unstable World of South-Central Africa, 1750-1920. By Alien F. and Barbara S. Isaacman. Portsmouth N.H.: Heinemann, 2004. Social History of Africa Series. Pp. xii, 370, maps, figures, photographs. $99.95 cloth, $29.95 paper. Allen Isaacman has been writing about the Zambezi valley for 30 years, often in collaboration with Barbara Isaacman, and this study brings together many themes previously introduced around the history of the \"Chikunda,\" the slave militias formed in the 18th century by Afro-Goan-Portuguese warlords, whose 19th-century descendants became the dominant ivory hunters and slave raiders of the area and then reacted in a variety of ways in the generation who had to come to terms with Portuguese and British colonial rule. Followers of these two formative figures in post-Salazar Mozambican historiography will recognize the prazo \"estate\" holders who recruited the original chikunda warriors, their status as \"slaves,\" and the opportunities for themselves that these fugitives from the power of others created in the middle Zambezi area as \"transfrontiersmen,\" their services as porters and canoemen along the river, and the enlistments of some in the early colonial military in Mozambique and (present-day) Malawi. All these moments have appeared over the years in articles and chapters, often written in collaboration with Alien Isaacman's able students at the University of Minnesota. The extensive research supporting this integrated narrative goes back to the late 1960s and includes thorough use of archives in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia (as well as Portugal and Britain) and the Isaacmans' characteristic and effective reliance on personal narratives of residents of the region, collected in well over a hundred interview sessions dating over the full span of their investigations and including a great many new ones conducted in 1997-98. What else is new is the sophisticated and careful integration of all this material around two issues of identity, as the title indicates: the term chikunda has had many and often contradictory meanings, as \"slave\" (thus shameful), as \"warrior\" (thus powerful), quintessentially \"male\" (thus proud), and as fully \"ethnic\" (female and young, as well as adult male) communities of several different \"characters\" in various parts of the valley and its environs. The Isaacmans offer a sophisticated theoretical basis for understanding ethnicity (and by extension the other kinds of identities conveyed by the label \"Chikunda\") as social boundary setting in response to rapidly changing circumstances. They then follow the decades of ivory trading, hunting, intervals of drought, and eventual colonial intervention in the distinct parts of the area, and the differing responses of various groups of chikunda to them, leading to the recent array of meanings attached to, and sometimes claimed by their modern descendants. This supple and detailed ha","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2005-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71103929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A Sacred Trust: The League of Nations and Africa, 1929-1946. By Michael D. Callahan. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2004. Distributed by International Specialized Books Service, Portland, Oregon. Pp. x, 197, appendices. $69.50. The mandate system of the League of Nations introduced a new level of international oversight to European colonialism in Africa. Focusing on the 1930s, Michael Callahan's new study examines the operation and influence of this innovation on imperialism. It carries forward the analysis he began in his earlier book, Mandates and Empire: The League of Nations and Africa, 1914-1931 (1999). Callahan argues that the mandate system provided a significant force for the reform and internationalization of Anglo-French colonialism. Drawing on Wilsonian principles, the mandates advanced the idea of trusteeship rather than colonial annexation. The author contends that they led to a decline in militarism, an increase in commercial equality (though this generally refers to equal opportunities for expatriates in the mandates), and greater concern for the interests of Africans. Accompanying the "sacred trust" represented by the mandates was a new form of colonial accountability before the Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) in Geneva. This in turn forced a broader reexamination of European imperialism. Callahan's analysis reveals the dual nature of these relationships as colonial officials, experts, and interest groups influenced the PMC. Its agenda of gradual reforms shaped not only policies in the mandates but also the general culture of colonialism. The author bases his assessments on thorough research in British and French archives, extensive use of published primary sources, including League documents, and wide reading of secondary sources. This is a valuable study, but some of its interpretations are problematic. The research is limited by a European colonial perspective. European colonial officials report to a PMC led by men who were often former European colonial officials. Further, the desire to prevent a return of the mandates to Germany provided an incentive to emphasize the reforms that were being introduced. Petitions from the mandated territories do offer some African views on issues before the Commission. Additional African perspectives, such as those found in West African newspapers, could have provided the work with further insights on such topics as indirect rule and the Ethiopian crisis as well as on self-determination-a Wilsonian principle largely absent from contemporary Western considerations in Africa. In Africa, the study focuses on the British and French mandates in Tanganyika, Togo, and Cameroon. This selection provides a comparative basis for examining the policies of the two major European colonial powers, and the author is able to show examples of reforms introduced under the mandate system. …
{"title":"A Sacred Trust: The League of Nations and Africa, 1929-1946","authors":"B. Digre","doi":"10.5860/choice.42-6014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.42-6014","url":null,"abstract":"A Sacred Trust: The League of Nations and Africa, 1929-1946. By Michael D. Callahan. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2004. Distributed by International Specialized Books Service, Portland, Oregon. Pp. x, 197, appendices. $69.50. The mandate system of the League of Nations introduced a new level of international oversight to European colonialism in Africa. Focusing on the 1930s, Michael Callahan's new study examines the operation and influence of this innovation on imperialism. It carries forward the analysis he began in his earlier book, Mandates and Empire: The League of Nations and Africa, 1914-1931 (1999). Callahan argues that the mandate system provided a significant force for the reform and internationalization of Anglo-French colonialism. Drawing on Wilsonian principles, the mandates advanced the idea of trusteeship rather than colonial annexation. The author contends that they led to a decline in militarism, an increase in commercial equality (though this generally refers to equal opportunities for expatriates in the mandates), and greater concern for the interests of Africans. Accompanying the \"sacred trust\" represented by the mandates was a new form of colonial accountability before the Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) in Geneva. This in turn forced a broader reexamination of European imperialism. Callahan's analysis reveals the dual nature of these relationships as colonial officials, experts, and interest groups influenced the PMC. Its agenda of gradual reforms shaped not only policies in the mandates but also the general culture of colonialism. The author bases his assessments on thorough research in British and French archives, extensive use of published primary sources, including League documents, and wide reading of secondary sources. This is a valuable study, but some of its interpretations are problematic. The research is limited by a European colonial perspective. European colonial officials report to a PMC led by men who were often former European colonial officials. Further, the desire to prevent a return of the mandates to Germany provided an incentive to emphasize the reforms that were being introduced. Petitions from the mandated territories do offer some African views on issues before the Commission. Additional African perspectives, such as those found in West African newspapers, could have provided the work with further insights on such topics as indirect rule and the Ethiopian crisis as well as on self-determination-a Wilsonian principle largely absent from contemporary Western considerations in Africa. In Africa, the study focuses on the British and French mandates in Tanganyika, Togo, and Cameroon. This selection provides a comparative basis for examining the policies of the two major European colonial powers, and the author is able to show examples of reforms introduced under the mandate system. …","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2005-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71107068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Journey of Hope: The Back-to-Africa Movement in Arkansas in the Late 1800s","authors":"A. Beyan","doi":"10.5860/choice.42-5454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.42-5454","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71106957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia. By Claude A. Clegg III. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. xi, 330; 39 illustrations, 4 maps, 7 figures, 4 tables, notes, index, bibliography. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper. At last scholars are beginning to focus on a much larger segment of AfricanAmericans who emigrated to Liberia in the nineteenth century. Claude Clegg's The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia, is part of an emergent literature that gives voice to the obscure immigrants historians are wont to characterize simply as "free Negroes." This history-from-below approach is a refreshing departure from the current historiography with its fixation on the American Colonization Society (ACS) and the elite "merchant princes" and politicians who dominated Liberia. The subject of Clegg's study is 2,030 black North Carolinians repatriated to Liberia by the ACS and some independent colonization societies. While the North Carolinians represented a small percentage of the estimated 18,000 black emigrants from the United States, they nonetheless constituted the third largest number from the twenty-eight or so states that contributed colonists. The book is organized into eight chapters, along with an introduction that briefly traces the origins of the American colonization movement. A short epilogue summarizes the political turmoil that has bedeviled Liberians since 1980. In the first two chapters, the author illustrates how Quakers in North Carolina, who were actively involved in holding and selling slaves, had a change of heart in the late 170Os. The turnaround by this Christian denomination provided the initial organized impulse for manumission in that state. This apparent humanitarianism of the Quakers later melded with northern antislavery sentiments and a growing national interest to relocate free blacks outside the United States, to form the ACS in 1816; Liberia was established six years later as a refuge for free blacks. Chapters 3-4 discuss immigration and the ACS's attempt to promote Liberian colonization to an apprehensive black population. Chapter 5 is the heart of the book. Here, the author broadens his thesis-i.e., "The Price of Liberty." Quite often, North Carolinian slave masters made freedom for their bondspeople contingent on repatriation to Liberia. Naturally, slaves preferred freedom in unknown Liberia to continual enslavement in the United States. As it turned out, however, freedom meant an inescapable encounter with West Africa's virulent malarial epidemic, which resulted in the death of a large percentage of the newcomers. Chapter 6 explores the reasons behind the resurgence in emigration in the 185Os, following a precipitous decline throughout the 184Os. …
《自由的代价:非裔美国人与利比里亚的形成》克劳德·克莱格三世著。教堂山:北卡罗来纳大学出版社，2004年。第11页，330页;39幅插图，4幅地图，7幅图，4张表格，注释，索引，参考书目。布55美元，纸19.95美元。最后，学者们开始关注十九世纪移民到利比里亚的非裔美国人。克劳德·克莱格(Claude Clegg)的《自由的代价:非裔美国人与利比里亚的形成》(The Price of Liberty: African Americans and The Making of Liberia)是一种新兴文学的一部分，它为历史学家习惯于简单地描述为“自由黑人”的默默无闻的移民发出了声音。这种从下而上的历史方法是一种令人耳目一新的方式，它与当前的史学不同，它专注于美国殖民协会(ACS)和统治利比里亚的精英“商人王子”和政治家。克莱格的研究对象是2030名北卡罗莱纳黑人，他们被美国黑人协会和一些独立的殖民协会遣返回利比里亚。虽然北卡罗莱纳人只占美国大约18,000名黑人移民的一小部分，但他们在大约28个提供殖民者的州中仍然是第三多的。这本书分为八章，并附有简要追溯美国殖民运动起源的引言。一个简短的结语总结了自1980年以来困扰利比里亚人的政治动荡。在前两章中，作者阐述了积极参与持有和贩卖奴隶的北卡罗来纳州贵格会教徒在17世纪后期如何改变了主意。这个基督教教派的转变为该州的传教提供了最初的有组织的推动力。贵格会的这种明显的人道主义后来与北方的反奴隶制情绪以及将自由黑人迁出美国的日益增长的国家利益融合在一起，于1816年成立了ACS;六年后，利比里亚作为自由黑人的避难所成立。第3-4章讨论了移民和ACS试图向忧虑的黑人人口推广利比里亚殖民化。第五章是本书的核心。在这里，作者拓宽了他的论题。《自由的代价》。北卡罗莱纳的奴隶主经常以遣返利比里亚为条件来释放奴隶。当然，奴隶们宁愿在不知名的利比里亚享受自由，也不愿在美国继续受奴役。然而，事实证明，自由意味着不可避免地遭遇了西非致命的疟疾流行病，这导致了大部分新来者的死亡。第六章探讨了在19世纪40年代急剧下降之后，19世纪50年代移民潮复苏背后的原因。…
{"title":"The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia","authors":"W. Allen","doi":"10.5860/choice.42-2355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.42-2355","url":null,"abstract":"The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia. By Claude A. Clegg III. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. xi, 330; 39 illustrations, 4 maps, 7 figures, 4 tables, notes, index, bibliography. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper. At last scholars are beginning to focus on a much larger segment of AfricanAmericans who emigrated to Liberia in the nineteenth century. Claude Clegg's The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia, is part of an emergent literature that gives voice to the obscure immigrants historians are wont to characterize simply as \"free Negroes.\" This history-from-below approach is a refreshing departure from the current historiography with its fixation on the American Colonization Society (ACS) and the elite \"merchant princes\" and politicians who dominated Liberia. The subject of Clegg's study is 2,030 black North Carolinians repatriated to Liberia by the ACS and some independent colonization societies. While the North Carolinians represented a small percentage of the estimated 18,000 black emigrants from the United States, they nonetheless constituted the third largest number from the twenty-eight or so states that contributed colonists. The book is organized into eight chapters, along with an introduction that briefly traces the origins of the American colonization movement. A short epilogue summarizes the political turmoil that has bedeviled Liberians since 1980. In the first two chapters, the author illustrates how Quakers in North Carolina, who were actively involved in holding and selling slaves, had a change of heart in the late 170Os. The turnaround by this Christian denomination provided the initial organized impulse for manumission in that state. This apparent humanitarianism of the Quakers later melded with northern antislavery sentiments and a growing national interest to relocate free blacks outside the United States, to form the ACS in 1816; Liberia was established six years later as a refuge for free blacks. Chapters 3-4 discuss immigration and the ACS's attempt to promote Liberian colonization to an apprehensive black population. Chapter 5 is the heart of the book. Here, the author broadens his thesis-i.e., \"The Price of Liberty.\" Quite often, North Carolinian slave masters made freedom for their bondspeople contingent on repatriation to Liberia. Naturally, slaves preferred freedom in unknown Liberia to continual enslavement in the United States. As it turned out, however, freedom meant an inescapable encounter with West Africa's virulent malarial epidemic, which resulted in the death of a large percentage of the newcomers. Chapter 6 explores the reasons behind the resurgence in emigration in the 185Os, following a precipitous decline throughout the 184Os. …","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71103443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Urban Experience in Eastern Africa c. 1750-2000. Edited by Andrew Burton. Azania, special volume xxxvi-xxxvii. Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa, 2002. Pp. ix, 264; 48 illustrations. $24.00/ £15.00 / Kenyan Shs.1,600 paper. In recent years Africanist literature has seen a surge in work on urban history. Arising out of broader trends in social and cultural history, this work has returned to and reinvigorated a terrain explored primarily by economic historians, geographers, and sociologists in the decades prior to the 1980s. The Urban Experience in Eastern Africa c. 1750-2000, edited by Andrew Burton and emerging out of an international conference held in Nairobi in 2000, not only exemplifies this new wave of urban history but also extends it in a number of topically unique and analytically productive directions. In addition to strong essays exploring colonial cities, the volume devotes considerable attention to precolonial urban forms and the social landscapes of small towns. Its geographical coverage is impressive (Eastern Africa being broadly interpreted here to encompass countries stretching from Ethiopia to Zimbabwe). Not least of its virtues, it brings together scholars based in Africa with colleagues working in North America, the United Kingdom, and Japan to showcase a breadth of methodologies and theoretical concerns. The collection is organized both thematically and broadly chronologically. Following Burton's well-written and comprehensive introduction tracing urban history in the region from the late eighteenth century onwards, the book is divided into four sections: precolonial urban centers, colonial order in urban East Africa, rural-urban interactions, and town life in colonial Nairobi and beyond. In extensively exploring topics that are too often given short shrift in African urban studies, the first and third sections -on precolonial urban formations and the importance to the urban experience of a rural and small-town scene-exhibit what are thematically the volume's most unique contributions. Giacomo Macola's examination of the royal capitals of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Eastern Lunda polities southwest of Lake Tanganyika is notable for his focus on the centrality of these capitals for the construction of a "Lunda imperial mystique" that was critical to maintaining royal power. Macola's paper nicely complements Richard Reid's comparative investigation of the relationship between warfare and towns in the Ethiopian highlands and Buganda in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with both contributions making interesting arguments about the place of the urban, both physically and ideologically, in precolonial power. And underlining the importance of the precolonial urban past to the histories of colonial town planning that followed, Abdul Sheriff traces a history of Zanzibar town's precolonial development, one that compellingly situates the notion of a strictly segregated town as a colonial fantasy at odds
{"title":"The Urban Experience in Eastern Africa C. 1750-2000","authors":"Andrew Ivaska","doi":"10.2307/3556935","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3556935","url":null,"abstract":"The Urban Experience in Eastern Africa c. 1750-2000. Edited by Andrew Burton. Azania, special volume xxxvi-xxxvii. Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa, 2002. Pp. ix, 264; 48 illustrations. $24.00/ £15.00 / Kenyan Shs.1,600 paper. In recent years Africanist literature has seen a surge in work on urban history. Arising out of broader trends in social and cultural history, this work has returned to and reinvigorated a terrain explored primarily by economic historians, geographers, and sociologists in the decades prior to the 1980s. The Urban Experience in Eastern Africa c. 1750-2000, edited by Andrew Burton and emerging out of an international conference held in Nairobi in 2000, not only exemplifies this new wave of urban history but also extends it in a number of topically unique and analytically productive directions. In addition to strong essays exploring colonial cities, the volume devotes considerable attention to precolonial urban forms and the social landscapes of small towns. Its geographical coverage is impressive (Eastern Africa being broadly interpreted here to encompass countries stretching from Ethiopia to Zimbabwe). Not least of its virtues, it brings together scholars based in Africa with colleagues working in North America, the United Kingdom, and Japan to showcase a breadth of methodologies and theoretical concerns. The collection is organized both thematically and broadly chronologically. Following Burton's well-written and comprehensive introduction tracing urban history in the region from the late eighteenth century onwards, the book is divided into four sections: precolonial urban centers, colonial order in urban East Africa, rural-urban interactions, and town life in colonial Nairobi and beyond. In extensively exploring topics that are too often given short shrift in African urban studies, the first and third sections -on precolonial urban formations and the importance to the urban experience of a rural and small-town scene-exhibit what are thematically the volume's most unique contributions. Giacomo Macola's examination of the royal capitals of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Eastern Lunda polities southwest of Lake Tanganyika is notable for his focus on the centrality of these capitals for the construction of a \"Lunda imperial mystique\" that was critical to maintaining royal power. Macola's paper nicely complements Richard Reid's comparative investigation of the relationship between warfare and towns in the Ethiopian highlands and Buganda in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with both contributions making interesting arguments about the place of the urban, both physically and ideologically, in precolonial power. And underlining the importance of the precolonial urban past to the histories of colonial town planning that followed, Abdul Sheriff traces a history of Zanzibar town's precolonial development, one that compellingly situates the notion of a strictly segregated town as a colonial fantasy at odds ","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3556935","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68717696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Algeria's Bloody Years. A film directed by Malek Bensmafl, produced by Patrice Barrat with the BBC. New York: First Run/Icarus Films, 2003. Color, 59 minutes. $390; $75 rental. The documentary "Algeria's Bloody Years" chronicles the history of that nation since 1988, focusing primarily on the violent civil conflict between government forces and armed Islamic fundamentalist groups that has killed more than 100,000 Algerians since 1992. The documentary's real strength lies in its mix of shockingly honest interviews with army generals and the leaders of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), brutally graphic scenes of the aftermath of massacres in tiny villages,1 and archival footage of such crucial turning points in the nation's history as the assassination of President Boudiaf, which was televised live throughout the country in June 1992. This triple-pronged approach allows director Malek Bensma'il to recount Algeria's complex recent history quickly and powerfully. In the span of a few minutes he traces the beginnings of the violence triggered by the army's suppression of massive labor strikes in 1988, the rise in popularity of the fundamentalist FIS party during the brief period of relative freedom from 1988 to 1991, and the military's cancellation of national elections and assumption of power in 1992, once FIS victory at the polls seemed inevitable. The bulk of the film details the rise of competing armed guerilla fundamentalist groups, who quickly turned from the targeted assassination of policemen and soldiers to the killing of pro-democracy journalists, intellectuals, and white-collar professionals and then to the wide-scale massacre of common villagers throughout rural Algeria in attempts to ensure local loyalties. In addition Bensma'il depicts the military's equally brutal record of indiscriminate arrests, torture, and vengeful reprisals. Finally, "Algeria's Bloody Years" recounts the death of the vestiges of democracy during the 1990s-a decade when military generals working through the puppet civilian government ruled by decree, without regard for the constitution and only the slightest pretense of legality. Throughout the film, interviews highlight the intransigence of key figures on both sides of the fight, as well as the tragic impotence of the millions of average Algerians caught in the middle. Interview clips include Minister of Defense General Khalid Nezzar's unrepentant contention that there was "no alternative" to the army's shooting of several hundred labor protesters in 1988, and exiled FIS leader Mourad Dina's explanation that "intellectuals of the left should have the courage of their convictions: they should say 'we are at war and some of us will pay with our lives'" when asked about the fundamentalist group's assassinations of Algerian journalists, doctors, and university professors. …
{"title":"Algeria's Bloody Years","authors":"S. Davis","doi":"10.1037/e664312010-001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/e664312010-001","url":null,"abstract":"Algeria's Bloody Years. A film directed by Malek Bensmafl, produced by Patrice Barrat with the BBC. New York: First Run/Icarus Films, 2003. Color, 59 minutes. $390; $75 rental. The documentary \"Algeria's Bloody Years\" chronicles the history of that nation since 1988, focusing primarily on the violent civil conflict between government forces and armed Islamic fundamentalist groups that has killed more than 100,000 Algerians since 1992. The documentary's real strength lies in its mix of shockingly honest interviews with army generals and the leaders of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), brutally graphic scenes of the aftermath of massacres in tiny villages,1 and archival footage of such crucial turning points in the nation's history as the assassination of President Boudiaf, which was televised live throughout the country in June 1992. This triple-pronged approach allows director Malek Bensma'il to recount Algeria's complex recent history quickly and powerfully. In the span of a few minutes he traces the beginnings of the violence triggered by the army's suppression of massive labor strikes in 1988, the rise in popularity of the fundamentalist FIS party during the brief period of relative freedom from 1988 to 1991, and the military's cancellation of national elections and assumption of power in 1992, once FIS victory at the polls seemed inevitable. The bulk of the film details the rise of competing armed guerilla fundamentalist groups, who quickly turned from the targeted assassination of policemen and soldiers to the killing of pro-democracy journalists, intellectuals, and white-collar professionals and then to the wide-scale massacre of common villagers throughout rural Algeria in attempts to ensure local loyalties. In addition Bensma'il depicts the military's equally brutal record of indiscriminate arrests, torture, and vengeful reprisals. Finally, \"Algeria's Bloody Years\" recounts the death of the vestiges of democracy during the 1990s-a decade when military generals working through the puppet civilian government ruled by decree, without regard for the constitution and only the slightest pretense of legality. Throughout the film, interviews highlight the intransigence of key figures on both sides of the fight, as well as the tragic impotence of the millions of average Algerians caught in the middle. Interview clips include Minister of Defense General Khalid Nezzar's unrepentant contention that there was \"no alternative\" to the army's shooting of several hundred labor protesters in 1988, and exiled FIS leader Mourad Dina's explanation that \"intellectuals of the left should have the courage of their convictions: they should say 'we are at war and some of us will pay with our lives'\" when asked about the fundamentalist group's assassinations of Algerian journalists, doctors, and university professors. …","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57931341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Peasant Cotton Revolution in West Africa: Cote d'Ivoire, 1880-1995. By Thomas J. Bassett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xix, 243; 29 plates (photos), 30 figures. $64.95. Thomas Bassett brings solid historical analysis, data from longitudinal farming systems surveys, insightful interpretations from current documents, and extensive interviews over time to weave an important story of African agrarian development and policy. This book convincingly achieves the author's goal of contradicting "the dominant development narrative which portrays peasants as the simple recipients of technological innovations conceived and diffused by Western development experts" (p. xiv). Current enthusiasts for introducing genetically modified cotton as a technological breakthrough for African development would do well to heed Bassett's sound advice "to consider the temporal and social dimensions to innovation as much as the technological and institutional forms that an innovation assumes" (p. 7). Unfortunately, most of these enthusiasts have little time for Bassett's indispensable historical lessons, institutional insights, and farmer-level understanding that could lead them to reconsider their current project. Others-from historians to practitioners-should readily welcome the rich harvest from the author's historical and development analyses. Those familiar with African agrarian history will welcome Bassett's careful use of colonial archives in the Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, Senegal, and France to substantiate a decidedly non-romanticized view of the complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which "African farmers' actions are constitutive of the institutional environment which in turn influences their activities.... " (p. 3). The author's analysis nicely complements other historical studies of "the interplay of local forces with the larger world economy."1 It also fills an important gap in understanding the role of cotton, not just coffee and cocoa, as cultures revolutionnaires in the history of the Cote d'Ivoire.2 In addition to the invaluable socioagronomice history of cotton varieties, Bassett's concepts of the "rational peasant," "compulsory development," and "paternalistic development" discourses successfully capture his richly documented story of the colonial debates and conflicts among and between administrators and businesses. Students of contemporary West African agrarian development should find such concepts useful tools to cut through current development rhetoric. By focusing on the broad sweep of social and political changes surrounding one crop from the late 1880s into the mid-1990s, Bassett persuasively demonstrates the significance and contribution of historical analysis to a richer understanding of current development efforts. A shorter period of study would have confirmed the generally accepted "failure" of colonial project and the inability of the "repeated attempts" by colonial administrators to intensify cotton cultivation over th
{"title":"The Peasant Cotton Revolution in West Africa: Côte d'Ivoire, 1880-1995","authors":"J. Bingen","doi":"10.5860/choice.39-4736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.39-4736","url":null,"abstract":"The Peasant Cotton Revolution in West Africa: Cote d'Ivoire, 1880-1995. By Thomas J. Bassett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xix, 243; 29 plates (photos), 30 figures. $64.95. Thomas Bassett brings solid historical analysis, data from longitudinal farming systems surveys, insightful interpretations from current documents, and extensive interviews over time to weave an important story of African agrarian development and policy. This book convincingly achieves the author's goal of contradicting \"the dominant development narrative which portrays peasants as the simple recipients of technological innovations conceived and diffused by Western development experts\" (p. xiv). Current enthusiasts for introducing genetically modified cotton as a technological breakthrough for African development would do well to heed Bassett's sound advice \"to consider the temporal and social dimensions to innovation as much as the technological and institutional forms that an innovation assumes\" (p. 7). Unfortunately, most of these enthusiasts have little time for Bassett's indispensable historical lessons, institutional insights, and farmer-level understanding that could lead them to reconsider their current project. Others-from historians to practitioners-should readily welcome the rich harvest from the author's historical and development analyses. Those familiar with African agrarian history will welcome Bassett's careful use of colonial archives in the Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, Senegal, and France to substantiate a decidedly non-romanticized view of the complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which \"African farmers' actions are constitutive of the institutional environment which in turn influences their activities.... \" (p. 3). The author's analysis nicely complements other historical studies of \"the interplay of local forces with the larger world economy.\"1 It also fills an important gap in understanding the role of cotton, not just coffee and cocoa, as cultures revolutionnaires in the history of the Cote d'Ivoire.2 In addition to the invaluable socioagronomice history of cotton varieties, Bassett's concepts of the \"rational peasant,\" \"compulsory development,\" and \"paternalistic development\" discourses successfully capture his richly documented story of the colonial debates and conflicts among and between administrators and businesses. Students of contemporary West African agrarian development should find such concepts useful tools to cut through current development rhetoric. By focusing on the broad sweep of social and political changes surrounding one crop from the late 1880s into the mid-1990s, Bassett persuasively demonstrates the significance and contribution of historical analysis to a richer understanding of current development efforts. A shorter period of study would have confirmed the generally accepted \"failure\" of colonial project and the inability of the \"repeated attempts\" by colonial administrators to intensify cotton cultivation over th","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71089612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1787","authors":"Linda Heywood","doi":"10.5860/choice.41-1919","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.41-1919","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71098263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourses and Good Governance in Africa. By Rita Abrahamsen. London: Zed Books, 2000. Pp. xv, 168. $65.00 cloth, $22.50 paper. The nature of global politics has changed tremendously since the Soviet collapse. Optimistic pronouncements that world had reached the "end of history" in 1989 ring hollow in a post-9/11 world.1 While communism has all but disappeared as a geopolitical force, terrorism has replaced it as the global antithesis of Western liberal democracy. Western politicians describe terrorists in terms not unlike those used to describe communists at the height of the Cold War. Like communists, terrorists are said to harbor an abiding hatred for freedom and democracy. They also hate free enterprise, as suggested by their alleged plans to attack the New York Stock Exchange and the World Bank. In the days following the 9/11 attacks George W. Bush told Americans that the most patriotic thing they could do would be to go shopping. America's current occupation of Iraq is also justified in terms of replacing terrorism with free elections and free enterprise. This conflation of democracy and free market capitalism lies at the center of Rita Abrahamsen's Disciplining Democracy. While written prior to the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the book continues to hold relevance for politics in Africa and on a global scale. Following in the footsteps of Escobar, Ferguson, and Sachs, Abrahamsen argues that the language of democracy and capitalism is used to construct a discursive other-a "Third World" that is defined more by what it is not than by what it is. The absence of traits like "democratic culture" and "entrepreneurial spirit" in this constructed Other in turn suggests certain types of interventions. Significantly, these interventions serve to extend the control of states and international financial institutions over their ostensible beneficiaries, while concealing their own essentially political character. They also mask inequalities, while defining complex political problems as simple technical ones.2 This oft-repeated Foucauldian argument detracts somewhat from the central strengths of Abrahamsen's book. Those familiar with Foucauldian critiques of development will know most of its details by heart, while those not familiar with it are unlikely to be convinced-or even to read a book titled Disciplining Democracy, for that matter. Of course Abrahamsen's title is meant to invoke Foucault's widely known (but less often read) Discipline and Punish. In this respect it is a bit misleading, since she leans heavily on the idea that discourses shape reality. In fact, Discipline and Punish represents a radical break with this position, since it is the first work in which Foucault suggests that that the role of discourse in shaping reality is only "intelligible as part of a larger set of organized and organizing practices," to which he referred as biopower or disciplining techniques.3 While these techniques are c
{"title":"Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourses and Good Governance in Africa","authors":"J. Igoe, R. Abrahamsen","doi":"10.2307/4129062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4129062","url":null,"abstract":"Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourses and Good Governance in Africa. By Rita Abrahamsen. London: Zed Books, 2000. Pp. xv, 168. $65.00 cloth, $22.50 paper. The nature of global politics has changed tremendously since the Soviet collapse. Optimistic pronouncements that world had reached the \"end of history\" in 1989 ring hollow in a post-9/11 world.1 While communism has all but disappeared as a geopolitical force, terrorism has replaced it as the global antithesis of Western liberal democracy. Western politicians describe terrorists in terms not unlike those used to describe communists at the height of the Cold War. Like communists, terrorists are said to harbor an abiding hatred for freedom and democracy. They also hate free enterprise, as suggested by their alleged plans to attack the New York Stock Exchange and the World Bank. In the days following the 9/11 attacks George W. Bush told Americans that the most patriotic thing they could do would be to go shopping. America's current occupation of Iraq is also justified in terms of replacing terrorism with free elections and free enterprise. This conflation of democracy and free market capitalism lies at the center of Rita Abrahamsen's Disciplining Democracy. While written prior to the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the book continues to hold relevance for politics in Africa and on a global scale. Following in the footsteps of Escobar, Ferguson, and Sachs, Abrahamsen argues that the language of democracy and capitalism is used to construct a discursive other-a \"Third World\" that is defined more by what it is not than by what it is. The absence of traits like \"democratic culture\" and \"entrepreneurial spirit\" in this constructed Other in turn suggests certain types of interventions. Significantly, these interventions serve to extend the control of states and international financial institutions over their ostensible beneficiaries, while concealing their own essentially political character. They also mask inequalities, while defining complex political problems as simple technical ones.2 This oft-repeated Foucauldian argument detracts somewhat from the central strengths of Abrahamsen's book. Those familiar with Foucauldian critiques of development will know most of its details by heart, while those not familiar with it are unlikely to be convinced-or even to read a book titled Disciplining Democracy, for that matter. Of course Abrahamsen's title is meant to invoke Foucault's widely known (but less often read) Discipline and Punish. In this respect it is a bit misleading, since she leans heavily on the idea that discourses shape reality. In fact, Discipline and Punish represents a radical break with this position, since it is the first work in which Foucault suggests that that the role of discourse in shaping reality is only \"intelligible as part of a larger set of organized and organizing practices,\" to which he referred as biopower or disciplining techniques.3 While these techniques are c","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2004-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4129062","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69308561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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