The Political Economy Of Everyday Life In Africa

Multi-disciplinary examination of the role of ordinary African people as agents in the generation and distribution of well-being in modern Africa.

This handbook constitutes a specialist single compendium that analyses African political economy in its theoretical, historical and policy dimensions. It emphasizes the uniqueness of African political economy within a global capitalist system that is ever changing and complex. Chapters in the book discuss how domestic and international political economic forces have shaped and continue to shape development outcomes on the continent. Contributors also provoke new thinking on theories and policies to better position the continent’s economy to be a critical global force. The uniqueness of the handbook lies in linking theory and praxis with the past, future, and various dimensions of the political economy of Africa.

This book explores the way that forms of economic policymaking are sustained and challenged by everyday practices across Southeast Asia.

Based on rich oral histories, this is an engaging study of citizenship construction and practice in Liberia, Africa's first black republic.

Civil wars, corporate exploitation, AIDS, and Ebola—but also democracy, burgeoning cities, and unprecedented communication and mobility: the future of Africa has never been more uncertain. Indeed, that future is one of the most complex issues in contemporary anthropology, as evidenced by the incredible wealth of ideas offered in this landmark volume. A consortium comprised of some of the most important scholars of Africa today, this book surveys an intellectual landscape of opposed perspectives in order to think within the contradictions that characterize this central question: Where is Africa headed? The experts in this book address Africa’s future as it is embedded within various social and cultural forms emerging on the continent today: the reconfiguration of the urban, the efflorescence of signs and wonders and gospels of prosperity, the assorted techniques of legality and illegality, lotteries and Ponzi schemes, apocalyptic visions, a yearning for exile, and many other phenomena. Bringing together social, political, religious, and economic viewpoints, the book reveals not one but multiple prospects for the future of Africa. In doing so, it offers a pathbreaking model of pluralistic and open-ended thinking and a powerful tool for addressing the vexing uncertainties that underlie so many futures around the world.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial; min-height: 11.0px} This book analyses the main factors influencing the political economy of Africa’s asymmetrical regionalism, focusing on regional and sub-regional trade, investment, movement of people, goods and services. It pays particular attention to the way in which regional and sub-regional dynamics are impacted by extra-regional relations, such with the EU, US, China and India. Because African regionalism is influenced not only by economic processes, peace and security are also analysed as important factors shaping both regional and sub-regional relations and dynamics.

From 2013 to 2015, over 11,000 people across West Africa lost their lives to the deadliest outbreak of the Ebola virus in history. Crucially, this epidemic marked the first time the virus was able to spread beyond rural areas to major cities, overturning conventional assumptions about its epidemiology. With backgrounds ranging from development to disease control, the contributors to this volume - some of them based in countries affected by the Ebola epidemic - consider the underlying factors that shaped this unprecedented outbreak. While championing the heroic efforts of local communities and aid workers in halting the spread of the disease, the contributors also reveal deep structural problems in both the countries and humanitarian agencies involved, which hampered the efforts to contain the epidemic. Alarmingly, they show that little has been learned from these events, with health provision remaining underfunded and poorly equipped to deal with future outbreaks. Such issues, they argue, reflect the wider challenges we face in tackling epidemic disease in an increasingly interconnected world.