Civil society and the political imagination in Africa : critical perspectives

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Title:

Author:

Comaroff, Jean.

ISBN:

9780226114132

9780226114149

Publication Information:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c1999.

Physical Description:

xi, 318 p. ; 24 cm.

Contents:

1. Introduction / John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff -- 2. Practicing Citizenship in Imperial Paris / Gary Wilder -- 3. Developing Bushmen: Building Civil(ized) Society in the Kalahari and Beyond / Elizabeth Garland -- 4. Civil Society and Its Presuppositions: Lessons from Uganda / Mikael Karlstrom -- 5. Colonial Constructions: Historicizing Debates on Civil Society in Africa / William Cunningham Bissell -- 6. Staging Politisi: The Dialogics of Publicity and Secrecy in Sierra Leone / Mariane Ferme -- 7. Civil Lives: Leadership and Accomplishment in Botswana / Deborah Durham -- 8. Debating Muslims, Disputed Practices: Struggles for the Realization of an Alternative Moral Order in Niger / Adeline Masquelier -- 9. Curl Up and Dye: Civil Society and the Fashion-Minded Citizen / Amy Stambach -- 10. IBB = 419: Nigerian Democracy and the Politics of Illusion / Andrew Apter.

Subject Term:

Civil society -- Africa.

Added Author:

Comaroff, Jean.

Comaroff, John L., 1945-

Electronic Access:

Table of Contents http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/toc/99023280.html

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168015746833	320.96 C728C 1999	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

The essays in this important new collection explore the diverse, unexpected, and controversial ways in which the idea of civil society has recently entered into populist politics and public debate throughout Africa.

In a substantial introduction, anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff offer a critical theoretical analysis of the nature and deployment of the concept--and the current debates surrounding it. Building on this framework, the contributors investigate the "problem" of civil society across their regions of expertise, which cover the continent. Drawing creatively on one another's work, they examine the impact of colonial ideology, postcoloniality, and development practice on discourses of civility, the workings of everyday politics, the construction of new modes of selfhood, and the pursuit of moral community.

Incisive and original, the book shows how struggles over civil society in Africa reveal much about larger historical forces in the post-Cold War era. It also makes a strong case for the contribution of historical anthropology to contemporary discourses on the rise of a "new world order."