Francis Nyamnjoh: Rights and the Politics of Recognition in Africa

About Francis Nyamnjoh

Francis B. Nyamnjoh is Professor of anthropology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa
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Rights and the Politics of Recognition in Africa

Edited by Harri Englund and Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Series: Postcolonial Encounters Series

An innovative perspective on rights and recognition which adds to our understanding of identity politics

All over the world, people are claiming their rights. Are these claims prompted by similar values and aspirations? And even if human rights are universal, what are the consequences of claiming them in different historical, cultural and material realities? The diversity of African countries considered in this book compels careful thought about these questions. The contributors show how African aspirations for democracy and rights are often fed by both individuals' and groups' desire for recognition and representation.

By laying bare some of the inadequacies of liberal individualism in highly plural societies, these detailed studies provide innovative critiques of such taken-for-granted concepts as civil society, democracy, citizenship and human rights. The book affirms the far-reaching importance of studying Africa as a unit of analysis in its own right, and unsettles dominant Euro-American paradigms.

'This book offers a diverse range of contributions whose collective merit is to show how local level, popular and personal quests for democracy and rights shape and are shaped by collective values and aspirations that add variety and colour to a global order that is dominated by neo-liberal policy preferences. The multi-disciplinary approach of the authors means that many students of Africa from various backgrounds will find the volume both stimulating and rewarding.' - Adebayo Olukoshi, Executive Secretary, CODESRIA

'This rich collection will be essential reading for anyone concerned with the interplay among identity and belonging, community, the nation and their fragments, and the mediation of power and politics by material and symbolic resources.' - Achille Mbembe, author of On the Postcolony

Contents:

Introduction: Recognising Identities, Imagining Alternatives - Harri Englund::Part 1: The Rhetoric of Rights::1. Reconciling 'the Rhetoric of Rights' with Competing Notions of Personhood and Agency in Botswana - Francis B. Nyamnjoh::2. The Rhetoric of Human Rights in Malawi: Individualization and Judicialization - Fidelis Edge Kanyongolo::3. Democratization and the Rhetoric of Rights: Contradictions and Debate in Post-Apartheid South Africa - Krista Johnson & Sean Jacobs::4. Taking Rights Talk Seriously: Reflections on Ugandan Political Discourse - Ulrik Halsteen::Part 2: Disadvantage, Misrecognition, Subjection::5. Deaf Culture: Problems of Recognition in Contemporary Kenyan Politics - Marianne Andersen::6. Neoliberal Ideologies, Identity and Gender: Managing Diversity in Mauritius - Sheila Bunwaree::7. 'It Will Rain until We Are in Power': Floods, Elections and Memory in Mozambique - Bjorn Enge Bertelsen::Part 3: Elites and Communities ::8. Ethnic Identification in Voluntary Associations: The Politics of Development and Culture in Burkina Faso - Sten Hagberg::9. Perilous Dualisms: Language, Religion and Identity in Poly-Ethnic Eritrea - Redie Bereketeab::10. Ecology, Belonging and Xenophobia: The 1994 Forest Law in Cameroon and the Issue of 'Community' - Peter Geschiere::Epilogue: The New Dialogue with Post-Liberalism - Richard Werbner

Notes Bibliography Index 304 pp BIC:/JP/JBK/GTF/GTBH
Political Science | Anthropology | Development | African Studies

Published by Zed Books, UK

Francis Nyamnjoh, formerly Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Botswana, is now Director of Publications at CODESRIA, Dakar. He has published widely in the fields of culture and development in Africa. Harri Englund is University Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK