Full Description
This book presents African scholars' views of why conflicts start in their continent.
Violent conflicts have exacted a heavy toll on Africa's societies, polities and economies. The causes of conflict are too often examined by scholars from the countries that run the proxy wars and sell the arms to fuel them. This volume offers theoretically sophisticated, empirically grounded and compelling analyses of the roots of African conflicts.
'...The studies in these two books seek to advance our understanding of African conflicts by going beyond the conventional and fashionable analyses of Africanist scholarship, often inflected with, if not infected by, Afropessimism, or the simplistic stereotypes conveyed in the western media that is infused with Afrophobia....these conflicts must be understood in comparative perspective, not in isolation. Violent conflict in Africa is indeed part of the human drama, but the tendency to impose universalist models of conflict driven from stylized westernexperiences or faddish theorising must be resisted... such paradigms lead to poor analysis and bad policy. Conflict is too serious a matter, and its costs too grave, for glib modeling or lazy journalistic speculation uninformed by the histories of, and unmindful of the concrete conditions in, the societies under scrutiny.' - From the introduction by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
Published in association with OSSREA
North America: Ohio U Press; South Africa: Unisa Press
Contents
Introduction by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza; Conflict in Africa by Ali A. Mazrui; When states implode: Africa's civil wars, 1950-92 by Errol A. Henderson; The Sudan conundrum by Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed; Citizenship, the State & Africa's conflicts: reflections on the Ivory Coast by John Akokpari; The terrible toll of post-colonial 'rebel movements' in Africa by Thandika Mkandawire; Fanon & the African woman combatant by Aaronette M. White; Fighting locally, connecting globally by Sandra J. MacLean; Legislative responses to terrorism & the protection of human rights by Cephas Lumina; Conflicts & implications for poverty & food security policies in Africa by Fondo Sikod; Two Africas? Two Ugandas? An African 'democratic developmental state'? Or another 'failed state'? by Timothy M. Shaw & Pamela K. Mbabazi.
