Vernacular Politics

The second part of my review of Patrick Chabal, Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling, is posted at African Arguments. In this, I try to trace some of the key features of rule by the Sudanic kingdoms, arguing that

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This is the second in a two-part review of Patrick Chabal’s book, Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling. This posting applies the account to an area of the continent that the author deliberately neglects, namely Ethiopia and the Sahelian-Sudanic

Read the rest of Ethics and Power in Sudanic Africa »

I have published the first part of a two-part review of Patrick Chabal’s Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling, on the African Arguments website. The first part is a general review of Bayart’s book, focusing on his treatment of

Read the rest of Ethics and Power in Africa »

This is the first in a two-part review of Patrick Chabal’s book, Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling . Part one is a general review, part two applies the account to a part of the continent that the author

Read the rest of Ethics and Power in Africa »

This is the final installment of a five part critical review of Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (2009). Bayart’s thesis is provocative, deliberately shorn of moralism and disrespectful of any political correctness. He doesn’t

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This is the fourth in a five part review of Jean-François Bayart’s The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. In this part, I address the questions of democracy, war and the internationalization of African governance. In the first

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This is part three of a five part expansive critical review of Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (2009), focusing on the moral dimensions of African governance—in the sense of how ethics and legitimacy are

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This is part two of a five part critical review of Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (2009), analyzing and applying the concept of “extraversion” and examining the historicism of regional political-economic orbits. Another major

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The republication of Jean-François Bayart’s classic book-length essay, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, is an opportunity to reflect on the hypotheses he raises and their application to Sudan and especially Darfur. Bayart’s book mentions Sudan only

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