Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles) ISSN (Print) 0001-9909 - ISSN (Online) 1468-2621 Published by Oxford University Press[425 journals]
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Pages: 185 - 203 Abstract: AbstractDespite increasingly programmatic politics and competitive elections, political clientelism remains an enduring feature of African politics. More so, while politicians rarely deliver on political promises, citizens continue to demand and participate in patron–client relations. While moral economy and instrumentalist accounts offer insight into the puzzling persistence of political clientelism, we offer an additional framework based on demands for social recognition. Beyond expectations of materialist exchange or the performance of cultural norms, citizens expect their political leaders to recognize them as dignified human beings and members of an identity group. Drawing on evidence from three diverse African contexts—urban Ghana, rural Senegal, and coastal Kenya—we argue that citizens engage in political clientelism as a vehicle for demanding three dimensions of social recognition: (i) To be seen and heard by leaders, (ii) to be respected as agents in the political process, and (iii) to be politically included and protected from harm. By providing new insights into the enduring logics of clientelism, citizen strategies amidst unequal power relationships, and the role of emotions in democratic politics, we aim to reconcile existing approaches and bring them into a more unified framework. PubDate: Wed, 17 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adad014 Issue No:Vol. 122, No. 487 (2023)
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Pages: 205 - 224 Abstract: AbstractDeputy President William Ruto’s victorious presidential campaign in Kenya’s 2022 elections saw him champion the plight of the ‘hustlers’, young informal economy workers on low, piecemeal incomes. Reconfiguring political identities around notions of economic hardship and struggle, Ruto’s campaign appeared emblematic of what scholars have recently identified as a turn towards ‘populism’ in Africa, transmuting ethno-nationalist identities into class-based ones. However, whilst Ruto’s campaign capitalized on rising prices to devastating political effect, he also channelled discontent with the Jubilee government and its unmet promises of shared prosperity. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in central Kenya’s Kiambu region since 2017, this article understands Ruto’s victory not through the lens of ‘hustler populism’ but rather as an anti-Jubilee ‘backlash’. Ruto’s campaign took advantage of Uhuru Kenyatta’s personal unpopularity as voters increasingly questioned the nature of ‘dynastic’ authority and ‘state capture’, seeking to punish Uhuru personally for his failures to create prosperity in the region whilst enriching himself at their expense. Elaborating on these tensions, the article points towards broken ‘moral economies’ between voters and politicians as a vital field of research. PubDate: Thu, 20 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adad011 Issue No:Vol. 122, No. 487 (2023)
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Pages: 225 - 244 Abstract: AbstractUsing court records of legal disputes over transfers of land, this article explores the way transfers of landed property have impacted social relationships and the governance of land rights in Ghana in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As urbanization, commercial agriculture, and natural resource extraction pushed up the value of land, disputes over land ownership have multiplied. In adjudicating such disputes, courts are often confronted with claims based on unverifiable oral histories invoking events of the distant past. Rather than simply dismiss such forms of evidence as hearsay, judges have often supplemented them with documentary and/or oral evidence on recent histories of land use. By doing so, they have tended to sustain customary forms of ownership, effectively recognizing the authority of landholding collectivities such as families and stools alongside that of individual owners. In effect, they are inferring ownership from land use, inverting the standard economic argument. PubDate: Wed, 26 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adad013 Issue No:Vol. 122, No. 487 (2023)
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Pages: 245 - 267 Abstract: AbstractIn response to debates around land grabbing, the international community has increasingly developed and promoted global governance norms and guidelines for more responsible land investments. This concern on the part of the international community has particularly taken hold in Sierra Leone—in a post-war context, in which international donor agencies are already steering much of the country’s politics. Yet, despite the enormous influence of international guidelines and the actors promoting their use, there is a spatial variation in the conformity to and effectiveness of such norms in cases of land investments. While some projects seem to resemble ‘showcases’ for their exemplary use, these guidelines seem to be absent in other projects. This article analyses the political economy of customary land tenure, land investments, and international ‘soft laws’ in Sierra Leone. Based on 6 months of fieldwork in Sierra Leone in 2019, I compare several cases of large-scale land investments. I argue that there are important variations in the customary tenure system in the degree to which political authority over land is centralized in the authority of the paramount chief or is devolved to landholding families. This, I suggest, holds important implications for the uptake of global norms for ‘responsible’ investments. PubDate: Thu, 20 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adad009 Issue No:Vol. 122, No. 487 (2023)
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Pages: 269 - 298 Abstract: AbstractDo racial identities determine voting behaviour in post-apartheid South Africa' To address this question, we draw from a representative sample of 3,905 registered voters in five metropolitan municipalities: Johannesburg, Tshwane, Durban, Cape Town, and Nelson Mandela Bay. Our findings are mixed. On the one hand, Black voters were significantly more likely to vote for the African National Congress, whereas Coloured, Indian, and especially white voters were more likely to vote for the Democratic Alliance. This contrast comes into particular focus when we examine how voters acted over the course of a three-election period. On the other hand, race was far from a guaranteed predictor, not the least because many chose to abstain from voting—a trend that extended, though unevenly, to all racial groups. Importantly, though, the electorate did not split between party loyalists and consistent abstainers. Instead, fluidity predominated: About half of the electorate changed positions between elections, either by switching between parties or between voting and abstaining. Our findings thus demonstrate what we call ‘racialized fluidity’: Many voters are changing their voting decision from one election to the next, but in the aggregate, racial identity remains correlated with voting decisions. PubDate: Sat, 22 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adad010 Issue No:Vol. 122, No. 487 (2023)
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Pages: 313 - 315 Abstract: Coevolutionary pragmatism: approaches and impacts of China-Africa Economic Cooperation, by TangXiaoyang. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. v + 278 pp. $99.99 (hardback). ISBN 978-1-108-41529-3. PubDate: Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adad008 Issue No:Vol. 122, No. 487 (2023)
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Pages: 317 - 319 Abstract: Review of social policy in the African context, Edited by AdesinaJimi O. Dakar: CODESRIA, 2021. 323 pp. (eBook). ISBN 978-2-38234-045-5. PubDate: Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adad004 Issue No:Vol. 122, No. 487 (2023)
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Pages: 321 - 323 Abstract: Conflits et violences dans le bassin du lac Tchad [Conflicts and violence in the Lake Chad basin], edited by ChauvinEmmanuel, LangloisOlivier, SeignobosChristian and BaroinCatherine. Marseille: IRD Éditions, 2020. 354 pp. €29 (paperback), €14,99 (e-book). ISBN 978 2 70992 828 1 and ISBN 978 2 70992 830 4. PubDate: Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adad006 Issue No:Vol. 122, No. 487 (2023)
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Pages: 325 - 327 Abstract: Global norms and local action: the campaigns to end violence against women in Africa, by MediePeace A. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. xv + 236 pp. $86 (hardback), $81.70 (e-book). ISBN 9780190922962. PubDate: Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adad007 Issue No:Vol. 122, No. 487 (2023)
Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
[425 journals]
