Africa Works

Are there social, political and cultural factors in Africa which aspire to the continuation of patrimony and conspire against economic development?

In association with the International African Institute
North America: Indiana U Press



No US rights

Reviews

... provocative new book... - Martin Woollacott in THE GUARDIAN
...for those interested in international affairs, but lacking detailed knowledge of Africa, if you read only one book about Africa this year it should be this one. Two distinguished scholars of Africa have written a short, lucid and astringent corrective to the lazy complacency of much conventional wisdom about the plight of the continent. Indeed, if all the litany of disaster is true, it is astonishing that anything works in Africa at all. And yet it does. - Gwyn Prins in INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
...Despite its iconoclastic tenor, however, the book's value is paradoxically as a good summary of the present orthodoxy in the study of African politics - Jan Kees Van Donge in COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS

Details

First Published: 21 Sep 1999
13 Digit ISBN: 9780852558140
Pages: 192
Size: 21.6 x 13.8
Binding: Paperback
Imprint: James Currey
Series: African Issues
Subject: African Studies
BIC Class: GTB

Details updated on 25 May 2013

Contents

• 1  Introduction: The Question of Analysis
• 2  I THE INFORMALIZATION OF POLITICS - W(h)ither the State?
• 3  The Illusions of Civil Society
• 4  Recycled Elites
• 5  II THE 'RE-TRADITIONALIZATION' OF SOCIETY Of Masks & Men: the Question of Identity
• 6  The Taming of the Irrational: Witchcraft & Religion
• 7  Crime & Enrichment: the Profits of Violence
• 8  III THE PRODUCTIVITY OF ECONOMIC 'FAILURE' The Ab(use) of Corruption
• 9  The Bounties of Dependence
• 10  The (In)significance of Development
• 11  IV A NEW PARADIGM The Political Instrumentalization of Disorder