Kathleen Klaus, Jeffrey W. Paller, Martha Wilfahrt
Despite increasingly programmatic politics and competitive elections, political clientelism remains an enduring feature of African politics. More so, while politicians rarely deliver on political promises, citizens continue to demand and participate in patron–client relations. While moral economy and instrumentalist accounts offer insight into the puzzling persistence of political clientelism, we offer an additional framework based on demands for social recognition. Beyond expectations of materialist exchange or the performance of cultural norms, citizens expect their political leaders to recognize them as dignified human beings and members of an identity group. Drawing on evidence from three diverse African contexts—urban Ghana, rural Senegal, and coastal Kenya—we argue that citizens engage in political clientelism as a vehicle for demanding three dimensions of social recognition: (i) To be seen and heard by leaders, (ii) to be respected as agents in the political process, and (iii) to be politically included and protected from harm. By providing new insights into the enduring logics of clientelism, citizen strategies amidst unequal power relationships, and the role of emotions in democratic politics, we aim to reconcile existing approaches and bring them into a more unified framework.
{"title":"Demanding recognition: a new Framework for the Study of Political Clientelism","authors":"Kathleen Klaus, Jeffrey W. Paller, Martha Wilfahrt","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adad014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adad014","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Despite increasingly programmatic politics and competitive elections, political clientelism remains an enduring feature of African politics. More so, while politicians rarely deliver on political promises, citizens continue to demand and participate in patron–client relations. While moral economy and instrumentalist accounts offer insight into the puzzling persistence of political clientelism, we offer an additional framework based on demands for social recognition. Beyond expectations of materialist exchange or the performance of cultural norms, citizens expect their political leaders to recognize them as dignified human beings and members of an identity group. Drawing on evidence from three diverse African contexts—urban Ghana, rural Senegal, and coastal Kenya—we argue that citizens engage in political clientelism as a vehicle for demanding three dimensions of social recognition: (i) To be seen and heard by leaders, (ii) to be respected as agents in the political process, and (iii) to be politically included and protected from harm. By providing new insights into the enduring logics of clientelism, citizen strategies amidst unequal power relationships, and the role of emotions in democratic politics, we aim to reconcile existing approaches and bring them into a more unified framework.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41598857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Adriaan van Klinken, Barbara Bompani, Damaris Parsitau
{"title":"Religious leaders as agents of LGBTIQ inclusion in East Africa","authors":"Adriaan van Klinken, Barbara Bompani, Damaris Parsitau","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adad012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adad012","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44360436","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
With ten essays and an editorial introduction, Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities: Scientifically Modifying the Black Body in Posthuman Literature and Culture, edited by Melvin G. Hill, offers an array of insightful perspectives on the intersections of science, technology, and Black subjectivity, particularly in works of African American literature and culture. Focused on American histories and experiences of race, these essays present compelling frameworks for examining Black identity and being in an effort to transcend and enhance the human—understood as “transhumanism”—through medical, algorithmic, digital, and other technologies. The collection’s focus on transhumanismmeans that the essays also touch on the debates surrounding posthumanism and Afrofuturism. Several essays focus on the problems and possibilities that arise from miscegenation and reproduction, which the authors argue can be read as transhumanist technologies for modifying the human. In the case of the British colonies in the Caribbean, Md. Monirul Islam (Chapter One) shows how racial mixing was proposed as a new method of colonial subject formation and control, the thinking being that “miscegens” would embody both European intellect and African strength to improve production in the plantations. Miscegenation would also hinder any slave rebellions organized on the basis of skin color. In an instance of undermining the biological fixtures of race, Melvin G. Hill (Chapter Five) presents George S. Schuyler’s Black NoMore (1931[reprint Dover 2011]) as an Afro-transhumanist novel in which its protagonist, Max Disher, who is Black, undergoes genetic transformation to become white. This subsequently upends the racial and racist binaries that define the United States, which later culminates in white nativist riots. These essays contend that the Black self, formed through histories of slavery and racism, is already a site for transhuman endeavors, imagination, and disruption.
由梅尔文·g·希尔编辑的《黑人身体和超人类现实:后人类文学和文化中的黑人身体的科学修改》一书包含十篇文章和一篇社论导言，提供了一系列关于科学、技术和黑人主体性交叉的深刻观点，特别是在非裔美国人文学和文化作品中。这些文章聚焦于美国的种族历史和经验，提出了令人信服的框架来审视黑人身份，并通过医疗、算法、数字和其他技术努力超越和增强人类——被理解为“超人类主义”。该文集的重点是超人类主义，这意味着这些文章也触及了围绕后人类主义和非洲未来主义的辩论。几篇文章聚焦于杂交和繁殖所带来的问题和可能性，作者认为这可以被解读为改造人类的超人类主义技术。以英国在加勒比海的殖民地为例，Md. Monirul Islam(第一章)展示了种族混合是如何作为殖民地主体形成和控制的一种新方法被提出的，他的想法是，“混血”将体现欧洲的智慧和非洲的力量，以提高种植园的生产。通婚还会阻碍任何基于肤色组织的奴隶叛乱。梅尔文·g·希尔(第五章)将乔治·s·斯凯勒(George S. Schuyler)的《黑色的诺莫尔》(Black NoMore, 1931)作为一部非裔超人类主义小说，在这部小说中，黑人主人公马克斯·迪舍(Max Disher)经历了基因转变，变成了白人，这是一个破坏种族生物固定的例子。这随后颠覆了定义美国的种族和种族主义二元对立，这种二元对立后来在白人本土主义骚乱中达到高潮。这些文章认为，通过奴隶制和种族主义的历史形成的黑人自我，已经是一个超越人类的努力、想象和破坏的场所。
{"title":"Book Review","authors":"R. Aidoo","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adad008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adad008","url":null,"abstract":"With ten essays and an editorial introduction, Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities: Scientifically Modifying the Black Body in Posthuman Literature and Culture, edited by Melvin G. Hill, offers an array of insightful perspectives on the intersections of science, technology, and Black subjectivity, particularly in works of African American literature and culture. Focused on American histories and experiences of race, these essays present compelling frameworks for examining Black identity and being in an effort to transcend and enhance the human—understood as “transhumanism”—through medical, algorithmic, digital, and other technologies. The collection’s focus on transhumanismmeans that the essays also touch on the debates surrounding posthumanism and Afrofuturism. Several essays focus on the problems and possibilities that arise from miscegenation and reproduction, which the authors argue can be read as transhumanist technologies for modifying the human. In the case of the British colonies in the Caribbean, Md. Monirul Islam (Chapter One) shows how racial mixing was proposed as a new method of colonial subject formation and control, the thinking being that “miscegens” would embody both European intellect and African strength to improve production in the plantations. Miscegenation would also hinder any slave rebellions organized on the basis of skin color. In an instance of undermining the biological fixtures of race, Melvin G. Hill (Chapter Five) presents George S. Schuyler’s Black NoMore (1931[reprint Dover 2011]) as an Afro-transhumanist novel in which its protagonist, Max Disher, who is Black, undergoes genetic transformation to become white. This subsequently upends the racial and racist binaries that define the United States, which later culminates in white nativist riots. These essays contend that the Black self, formed through histories of slavery and racism, is already a site for transhuman endeavors, imagination, and disruption.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43128665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Using court records of legal disputes over transfers of land, this article explores the way transfers of landed property have impacted social relationships and the governance of land rights in Ghana in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As urbanization, commercial agriculture, and natural resource extraction pushed up the value of land, disputes over land ownership have multiplied. In adjudicating such disputes, courts are often confronted with claims based on unverifiable oral histories invoking events of the distant past. Rather than simply dismiss such forms of evidence as hearsay, judges have often supplemented them with documentary and/or oral evidence on recent histories of land use. By doing so, they have tended to sustain customary forms of ownership, effectively recognizing the authority of landholding collectivities such as families and stools alongside that of individual owners. In effect, they are inferring ownership from land use, inverting the standard economic argument.
{"title":"Acting Like an Owner: Land Claims and Judicial Practices in Twentieth-Century Ghana","authors":"S. Berry","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adad013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adad013","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Using court records of legal disputes over transfers of land, this article explores the way transfers of landed property have impacted social relationships and the governance of land rights in Ghana in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As urbanization, commercial agriculture, and natural resource extraction pushed up the value of land, disputes over land ownership have multiplied. In adjudicating such disputes, courts are often confronted with claims based on unverifiable oral histories invoking events of the distant past. Rather than simply dismiss such forms of evidence as hearsay, judges have often supplemented them with documentary and/or oral evidence on recent histories of land use. By doing so, they have tended to sustain customary forms of ownership, effectively recognizing the authority of landholding collectivities such as families and stools alongside that of individual owners. In effect, they are inferring ownership from land use, inverting the standard economic argument.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47050322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Do racial identities determine voting behaviour in post-apartheid South Africa? To address this question, we draw from a representative sample of 3,905 registered voters in five metropolitan municipalities: Johannesburg, Tshwane, Durban, Cape Town, and Nelson Mandela Bay. Our findings are mixed. On the one hand, Black voters were significantly more likely to vote for the African National Congress, whereas Coloured, Indian, and especially white voters were more likely to vote for the Democratic Alliance. This contrast comes into particular focus when we examine how voters acted over the course of a three-election period. On the other hand, race was far from a guaranteed predictor, not the least because many chose to abstain from voting—a trend that extended, though unevenly, to all racial groups. Importantly, though, the electorate did not split between party loyalists and consistent abstainers. Instead, fluidity predominated: About half of the electorate changed positions between elections, either by switching between parties or between voting and abstaining. Our findings thus demonstrate what we call ‘racialized fluidity’: Many voters are changing their voting decision from one election to the next, but in the aggregate, racial identity remains correlated with voting decisions.
{"title":"Voting Decisions and Racialized Fluidity in South Africa’s Metropolitan Municipalities","authors":"Marcel Paret, Carin Runciman","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adad010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adad010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Do racial identities determine voting behaviour in post-apartheid South Africa? To address this question, we draw from a representative sample of 3,905 registered voters in five metropolitan municipalities: Johannesburg, Tshwane, Durban, Cape Town, and Nelson Mandela Bay. Our findings are mixed. On the one hand, Black voters were significantly more likely to vote for the African National Congress, whereas Coloured, Indian, and especially white voters were more likely to vote for the Democratic Alliance. This contrast comes into particular focus when we examine how voters acted over the course of a three-election period. On the other hand, race was far from a guaranteed predictor, not the least because many chose to abstain from voting—a trend that extended, though unevenly, to all racial groups. Importantly, though, the electorate did not split between party loyalists and consistent abstainers. Instead, fluidity predominated: About half of the electorate changed positions between elections, either by switching between parties or between voting and abstaining. Our findings thus demonstrate what we call ‘racialized fluidity’: Many voters are changing their voting decision from one election to the next, but in the aggregate, racial identity remains correlated with voting decisions.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43696337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Deputy President William Ruto’s victorious presidential campaign in Kenya’s 2022 elections saw him champion the plight of the ‘hustlers’, young informal economy workers on low, piecemeal incomes. Reconfiguring political identities around notions of economic hardship and struggle, Ruto’s campaign appeared emblematic of what scholars have recently identified as a turn towards ‘populism’ in Africa, transmuting ethno-nationalist identities into class-based ones. However, whilst Ruto’s campaign capitalized on rising prices to devastating political effect, he also channelled discontent with the Jubilee government and its unmet promises of shared prosperity. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in central Kenya’s Kiambu region since 2017, this article understands Ruto’s victory not through the lens of ‘hustler populism’ but rather as an anti-Jubilee ‘backlash’. Ruto’s campaign took advantage of Uhuru Kenyatta’s personal unpopularity as voters increasingly questioned the nature of ‘dynastic’ authority and ‘state capture’, seeking to punish Uhuru personally for his failures to create prosperity in the region whilst enriching himself at their expense. Elaborating on these tensions, the article points towards broken ‘moral economies’ between voters and politicians as a vital field of research.
{"title":"Hustler populism, anti-Jubilee backlash and economic injustice in Kenya’s 2022 elections","authors":"P. Lockwood","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adad011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adad011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Deputy President William Ruto’s victorious presidential campaign in Kenya’s 2022 elections saw him champion the plight of the ‘hustlers’, young informal economy workers on low, piecemeal incomes. Reconfiguring political identities around notions of economic hardship and struggle, Ruto’s campaign appeared emblematic of what scholars have recently identified as a turn towards ‘populism’ in Africa, transmuting ethno-nationalist identities into class-based ones. However, whilst Ruto’s campaign capitalized on rising prices to devastating political effect, he also channelled discontent with the Jubilee government and its unmet promises of shared prosperity. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in central Kenya’s Kiambu region since 2017, this article understands Ruto’s victory not through the lens of ‘hustler populism’ but rather as an anti-Jubilee ‘backlash’. Ruto’s campaign took advantage of Uhuru Kenyatta’s personal unpopularity as voters increasingly questioned the nature of ‘dynastic’ authority and ‘state capture’, seeking to punish Uhuru personally for his failures to create prosperity in the region whilst enriching himself at their expense. Elaborating on these tensions, the article points towards broken ‘moral economies’ between voters and politicians as a vital field of research.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44335035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In response to debates around land grabbing, the international community has increasingly developed and promoted global governance norms and guidelines for more responsible land investments. This concern on the part of the international community has particularly taken hold in Sierra Leone—in a post-war context, in which international donor agencies are already steering much of the country’s politics. Yet, despite the enormous influence of international guidelines and the actors promoting their use, there is a spatial variation in the conformity to and effectiveness of such norms in cases of land investments. While some projects seem to resemble ‘showcases’ for their exemplary use, these guidelines seem to be absent in other projects. This article analyses the political economy of customary land tenure, land investments, and international ‘soft laws’ in Sierra Leone. Based on 6 months of fieldwork in Sierra Leone in 2019, I compare several cases of large-scale land investments. I argue that there are important variations in the customary tenure system in the degree to which political authority over land is centralized in the authority of the paramount chief or is devolved to landholding families. This, I suggest, holds important implications for the uptake of global norms for ‘responsible’ investments.
{"title":"Variations of customary tenure, chiefly power, and global norms for responsible land investments in Sierra Leone","authors":"C. Dieterle","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adad009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adad009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In response to debates around land grabbing, the international community has increasingly developed and promoted global governance norms and guidelines for more responsible land investments. This concern on the part of the international community has particularly taken hold in Sierra Leone—in a post-war context, in which international donor agencies are already steering much of the country’s politics. Yet, despite the enormous influence of international guidelines and the actors promoting their use, there is a spatial variation in the conformity to and effectiveness of such norms in cases of land investments. While some projects seem to resemble ‘showcases’ for their exemplary use, these guidelines seem to be absent in other projects. This article analyses the political economy of customary land tenure, land investments, and international ‘soft laws’ in Sierra Leone. Based on 6 months of fieldwork in Sierra Leone in 2019, I compare several cases of large-scale land investments. I argue that there are important variations in the customary tenure system in the degree to which political authority over land is centralized in the authority of the paramount chief or is devolved to landholding families. This, I suggest, holds important implications for the uptake of global norms for ‘responsible’ investments.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42744783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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