Civic agency in Africa : arts of resistance in the 21st century / edited by Ebenezer Obadare & Wendy Willems ; foreword by Patrick Chabal.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Obadare, Ebenezer.

Willems, Wendy

Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Power (Social sciences)--Africa.

Power (Social sciences).

Government, Resistance to--Africa.

Government, Resistance to.

Political participation--Africa.

Political participation.

Africa.

Political culture--Africa.

Political culture.

Civil society--Africa.

Civil society.

Africa--Politics and government--1960-.

Politics and government.

Physical Description:

xx, 236 pages ; 24 cm

Distribution:

Rochester, NY : Boydell & Brewer Inc.

Place of Publication:

Woodbridge, Suffolk : James Currey, [2014].

Summary:

"The recent eruption of popular protests across North Africa and the Middle East has reopened academic debate on the meaning and strategies of resistance in the 21st century. This book argues that Western notions of state and civil society provide only a limited understanding of how power and resistance operate in the African context, where informality is central to the way both state officials and citizens exercise agency. With the principle of informality as a template, the chapters in this volume collectively examine the various modes - organised and unorganised, formal and informal, urban and rural, embodied and discursive, serious and ludic, online and offline, successful and failing - through which Africans contend with power. Resistance takes place against the backdrop of deep fractures in state sovereignty, the remnants of colonial rule and the constraints of a global, neoliberal economic system." --Publisher website.

Contents:

Notes on contributors

Foreword by Patrick Chabal

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: African resistance in an age of fractured sovereignty / Wendy Willems and Ebenezer Obadare

Part I. Postcolonial state formation & parallel infrastructures. 2. Global technologies of domination: from colonial encounters to the Arab Spring / Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni

3. Citizenship from below: the politics of citizen action & resistance in South Africa & Angola / Bettina von Lieres

Part II. Embodied modes of resistance & the postcolonial state. 4. The politics of confinement & mobility: informality, relocations & urban re-making from above & below in Nairobi / Ilda Lindell and Markus Ihalainen.

5. Overcoming socio-economic marginalisation: Young West African hustlers & the reinvention of global capitalism / Basile Ndjio

6. Accepting authoritarianism? Everyday resistance as political consciousness in post-genocide Rwanda / Susan Thomson

Part III. Popular culture as discursive forms of resistance. 7. Participatory politics in South Africa: social commentary from above & resistance from below / Innocentia J. Mhlambi

8. Laughing at the rainbow's cracks? Blackness, whiteness & the ambivalences of South African stand-up comedy / Grace A. Musila

9. 'Beasts of no nation': Resistance & civic activism in Fela Anikulapo-Kuti's music / Jendele Hungbo

Part IV. Publics as everyday sites of resistance. 10. The power of resonance: Music, local radio stations, & the sounds of cultural belonging in Mali / Dorothea Schulz

11. Narrating the contested public sphere: Zapiro, Zuma & freedom of expression in South Africa / Daniel Hammett

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

1847010865

OCLC:

873595220

Publisher Number:

99963281980