Through ethnography of a performatively Western-inspired coffeehouse in a “traditionally” identifying town of Hargeisa in Somaliland, Serunkuma uses Cup of Art Italian Coffeehouse to debate the political-conceptual dilemma—and potential dangers—of the renewed longing for cultural authenticity and “total revolution” in post-colonial Africa. While acknowledging the failure of the dreams that animated the anti-colonial struggle, manifest in the collapse in public service delivery, governance challenges, and civil war, Serunkuma contends that taking this to be the product of the “legacy of late colonialism,” and thus seeking to protect supposedly “authentic” African traditions and religious practices from Western corruption is itself a poisoned chalice. Using Cup of Art, Serunkuma urges humility toward the permanence of a colonial modernity and constant awareness of the new “problem space,” in which actors exercise their agency.
{"title":"“These Somalis are not Somalis:” Cup of Art Italian Coffeehouse, Authentic Identities, and Belonging in Hargeisa, Somaliland","authors":"Yusuf Serunkuma","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.105","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Through ethnography of a performatively Western-inspired coffeehouse in a “traditionally” identifying town of Hargeisa in Somaliland, Serunkuma uses Cup of Art Italian Coffeehouse to debate the political-conceptual dilemma—and potential dangers—of the renewed longing for cultural authenticity and “total revolution” in post-colonial Africa. While acknowledging the failure of the dreams that animated the anti-colonial struggle, manifest in the collapse in public service delivery, governance challenges, and civil war, Serunkuma contends that taking this to be the product of the “legacy of late colonialism,” and thus seeking to protect supposedly “authentic” African traditions and religious practices from Western corruption is itself a poisoned chalice. Using Cup of Art, Serunkuma urges humility toward the permanence of a colonial modernity and constant awareness of the new “problem space,” in which actors exercise their agency.","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138945766","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Since at least the colonial era, the Central African Republic (CAR) has been a hotbed of rural rebellion and protest. This article explores the political discourses of members of the Anti-Balaka, a diffuse protest movement and armed rebellion, comparing discourses to see how they vary in relation to demographic categories: urban and rural, elites and peasants. Lombard and Vlavonou find that rural peasants demand a moral economy of interpersonal respect, while elite (usually urban) adherents claim inclusion in a system of official recognition and patronage. Both are concerned with respect, but what is radical about the vision of the peasants is that they can enact it on their own.
{"title":"Radical Autochthony? Proprietary Political Discourse Among Elites and Peasants in the Anti-Balaka Armed Movement in the Central African Republic","authors":"Louisa Lombard, Gino Vlavonou","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.68","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.68","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Since at least the colonial era, the Central African Republic (CAR) has been a hotbed of rural rebellion and protest. This article explores the political discourses of members of the Anti-Balaka, a diffuse protest movement and armed rebellion, comparing discourses to see how they vary in relation to demographic categories: urban and rural, elites and peasants. Lombard and Vlavonou find that rural peasants demand a moral economy of interpersonal respect, while elite (usually urban) adherents claim inclusion in a system of official recognition and patronage. Both are concerned with respect, but what is radical about the vision of the peasants is that they can enact it on their own.","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138944721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Michaël Andrianaly, dir. Nofinofy (Dream). 2019. 73 minutes. Malagasy, with French subtitles. Madagascar and France, Les Films de la Pluie and Imasoa Films. 15€.","authors":"Sarah B. Buchanan","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.111","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138954250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 2020, Nigerian youths took to the streets to demand the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a unit of the Nigerian Police with a long history of extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, extortion, torture, and other atrocities. The Nigerian government created the division in 1992 following the killing of an army colonel, under the pretense of fighting a crime wave which was sweeping the country. In the “societies of enmity” (Achille Mbembe, “The Society of Enmity” [Radical Philosophy Vol. 200, No. 1], 23–25) we live in today, the growing militarization of law enforcement in the context of the “war on crime” has put even solid democracies in grave danger and continues to justify authoritarianism and military regimes worldwide. The expansion of state powers through the violent exploitation of its growing “margins,” (V. Das and D. Poole, eds., Anthropology at the Margins of the State [School of American Research Press, 2004]) tarnished with the signs of danger, illegality, and precariousness, has shown that bureaucratic power and state violence walk hand in hand in instituting highly unequal but economically viable social orders in postcolonial Africa and elsewhere. Those movements configure an emergent threat coming from a tactical level of political action and show that contemporary political power can indeed emerge from the tip of a machine gun, proving Walter Benjamin’s critique of Hannah Arendt’s famous image (“Critique of Violence” in Deconstruction, a Reader [Routledge, 2017], 62–70).
2020 年，尼日利亚青年走上街头，要求解散特别反劫匪小组（SARS），这是尼日利亚警方的一个部门，长期以来犯下法外处决、强迫失踪、敲诈勒索、酷刑和其他暴行。1992 年，一名陆军上校被杀，尼日利亚政府以打击席卷全国的犯罪浪潮为借口，成立了这个部门。在我们今天所处的 "敌意社会"（阿奇尔-姆本贝，《敌意社会》[《激进哲学》第 200 卷第 1 期]，23-25 页）中，在 "向犯罪宣战 "的背景下，执法部门日益军事化，这甚至使稳固的民主国家也面临严重危险，并继续为世界各地的独裁主义和军事政权辩护。国家权力通过暴力利用其日益增长的 "边缘"（V. Das 和 D. Poole 编著，《国家边缘的人类学》[美国研究学院出版社，2004 年]）来扩张，这些 "边缘 "玷污了危险、非法和不稳定的迹象，表明官僚权力和国家暴力携手在后殖民非洲和其他地区建立高度不平等但经济上可行的社会秩序。这些运动配置了一种来自政治行动战术层面的新兴威胁，并表明当代政治权力确实可以从机关枪的枪尖上产生，这证明了瓦尔特-本雅明对汉娜-阿伦特著名形象的批判（《暴力批判》，载于《解构》，一本读本[Routledge, 2017]，62-70）。
{"title":"Crime and Policing in Africa: Tactical Politics, Authoritarianism, and the Rule of Law","authors":"Elizabete Albernaz","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.102","url":null,"abstract":"In 2020, Nigerian youths took to the streets to demand the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a unit of the Nigerian Police with a long history of extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, extortion, torture, and other atrocities. The Nigerian government created the division in 1992 following the killing of an army colonel, under the pretense of fighting a crime wave which was sweeping the country. In the “societies of enmity” (Achille Mbembe, “The Society of Enmity” [Radical Philosophy Vol. 200, No. 1], 23–25) we live in today, the growing militarization of law enforcement in the context of the “war on crime” has put even solid democracies in grave danger and continues to justify authoritarianism and military regimes worldwide. The expansion of state powers through the violent exploitation of its growing “margins,” (V. Das and D. Poole, eds., Anthropology at the Margins of the State [School of American Research Press, 2004]) tarnished with the signs of danger, illegality, and precariousness, has shown that bureaucratic power and state violence walk hand in hand in instituting highly unequal but economically viable social orders in postcolonial Africa and elsewhere. Those movements configure an emergent threat coming from a tactical level of political action and show that contemporary political power can indeed emerge from the tip of a machine gun, proving Walter Benjamin’s critique of Hannah Arendt’s famous image (“Critique of Violence” in Deconstruction, a Reader [Routledge, 2017], 62–70).","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139000634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Itamar Dubinsky. Entrepreneurial Goals: Development and Africapitalism in Ghanaian Soccer Academies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2022. iii + 177 pp. Works Cited. Photographs. Index. $79.95. Cloth. ISBN: 978-0-299-33560-1.","authors":"Augustine Enow Ayuk","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.74","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.74","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139006301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Judith A. Byfield. The Great Upheaval: Women and Nation in Postwar Nigeria. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2021. 320 pp. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. $36.95. Paper. ISBN: 978-0-8214-2398-1","authors":"F. Agbaje","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.107","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139009642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Studies of protest in contemporary Africa often fail to address three related dynamics. First, rural radicalism has long been more central to African political struggles, even urban ones, than is commonly recognized. Second, the ongoing transformation of rural political economies links them to those of urban areas and has changed struggles over land and resources. Finally, these changes have reduced the power of traditional authorities and increased the appeal of nonviolent protest, as well as shifting protest toward a more national mode in which rural populations are increasingly central. Mampilly elaborates on these propositions, which are derived from brief examinations of both historical and contemporary examples of rural protest across Africa, before applying them to a deep analysis of LUCHA, a social movement in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
{"title":"Global Forces, Rural Radicalism, and the Dual Transformation of Urban and Rural Protest in Africa","authors":"Z. Mampilly","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.81","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.81","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Studies of protest in contemporary Africa often fail to address three related dynamics. First, rural radicalism has long been more central to African political struggles, even urban ones, than is commonly recognized. Second, the ongoing transformation of rural political economies links them to those of urban areas and has changed struggles over land and resources. Finally, these changes have reduced the power of traditional authorities and increased the appeal of nonviolent protest, as well as shifting protest toward a more national mode in which rural populations are increasingly central. Mampilly elaborates on these propositions, which are derived from brief examinations of both historical and contemporary examples of rural protest across Africa, before applying them to a deep analysis of LUCHA, a social movement in the Democratic Republic of Congo.","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138593394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Olufemi Amao. African Union Law: The Emergence of a Sui Generis Legal Order. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. 220 pp. Appendix. Index. $170.00. Cloth. ISBN:978-1-138-91494-0.","authors":"Rui Garrido","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.108","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138597532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Daniel Plaatjies, ed. Making Institutions Work in South Africa. Cape Town: Best Red, 2021. viii + 240 pp. Foreword. List of Tables and Figures. Index. $32.00. Paper. ISBN: 978-1-928246-36-7.","authors":"Ryan Brunette","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.80","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.80","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138602588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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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