Nic Cheeseman

Lindsay Whitfield

Carl Death

African Affairs is the top journal in African Studies and has been for some time. This book draws together some of the most influential, important, and thought provoking articles published in its pages over the last decade. In doing so, it collates essential cutting-edge research on Africa and makes it easily available for students, teachers, and researchers alike. The African Affairs Reader is broken down into four sections that cover some of the biggest themes and questions facing the continent today, including: the African State, the Political Economy of Development, Africa's Relationship with the World, and Elections, Representation & Democracy. Within each section, articles deal with some of the most significant recent trends and events, such as the prospects for democratization in Ghana and Nigeria, the factors underpinning Rwanda's economic success, the rise of political corruption in South Africa, the spread of the drugs trade, the struggle against gender based violence, and the growing influence of China. Each section is introduced by a new purpose-written essay by the journal's editors that explains the evolution of the wider debate, highlights key contributions, and suggests new ways in which the discussion can be taken forward. Taken together, the essays and articles included in the volume provide both a coherent introduction to the study of Africa and a compelling commentary on the current state of play on the continent.

Key Texts in Politics, Development, and International Relations

The African Affairs Reader

Louiza Odysseos

Helle Malmvig

Theorising the Subjects and Practices of Contesting Conduct

Counter-conduct in Global Politics

The aim of this book is to review central concepts in the study of environmental politics and to open up new questions, problems, and research agendas in the field. The volume does so by drawing on a wide range of approaches from critical theory to poststructuralism, and spanning disciplines including international relations, geography, sociology, history, philosophy, anthropology, and political science. The 28 chapters cover a range of global and local studies, illustrations and cases. These range from the Cochabamba conference in Bolivia to climate camps in the UK; UN summits in Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg to climate migrants from Pacific islands; forests in Indonesia to Dutch energy governance reform; indigenous communities in Namibia to oil extraction in the Niger Delta; survivalist militias in the USA to Maasai tribesmen in Kenya. Rather than following a regional or issue-based (e.g. water, forests, pollution, etc) structure, the volume is organised in terms of key concepts in the field, including those which have been central to the social sciences for a long time (such as citizenship, commodification, consumption, feminism, justice, movements, science, security, the state, summits, and technology); those which have been at the heart of environmental politics for many years (including biodiversity, climate change, conservation, eco-centrism, limits, localism, resources, sacrifice, and sustainability); and many which have been introduced to these literatures and debates more recently (biopolitics, governance, governmentality, hybridity, posthumanism, risk, and vulnerability). Features and benefits of the book: Explains the most important concepts and theories in environmental politics. Reviews the core ideas behind crucial debates in environmental politics. Highlights the key thinkers – both classic and contemporary – for studying environmental politics. Provides original perspectives on the critical potential of the concepts for future research agendas as well as for the practice of environmental politics. Each chapter is written by leading international authors in their field. This exciting new volume will be essential textbook reading for all students of environmental politics, as well as provocatively presenting the field in a different light for more established researchers.

Critical Environmental Politics

Clive Gabay

Strong states and strong civil societies are now increasingly hailed as the twin drivers of a ‘rising Africa’. Current attempts to support growth and democracy are part of a longer history of promoting projects of disciplinary, regulatory and liberal rule and values beyond ‘the West’. Yet this is not simply Western domination of a passive continent. Such an interpretation misses out on the complexities and nuances of the politics of state-building and civil society promotion, and the central role of African agency. Drawing upon critical theory, including postcolonial and governmentality approaches, this book interrogates international practices of state-building and civil society support in Africa. It seeks to develop a theoretically informed critical approach to discourses and interventions such as those associated with broadly ‘Western’ initiatives in Africa. In doing so, the book highlights the power relations, inequalities, coercion and violence that are deeply implicated within contemporary international interventions on the African continent. Providing a range of empirical cases and theoretical approaches, the chapters are united by their critical treatment of political dynamics in Africa. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, development studies, postcolonial theory, International Relations, international political economy and peacekeeping/making.

Liberal interventions, state-building and civil society

Critical Perspectives on African Politics

Carl Death

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