Citizen and subject : contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Citizen and subject : contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism
(Princeton studies in culture/power/history)
Princeton University Press, c1996
- : hbk
Available at 6 libraries
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Library, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization図
: hbk||30||Ci100111196821
Note
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In analysing the obstacles to democratisation in post-independence Africa, Mahmood Mamdani offers a bold, insightful account of colonialism's legacy - a bifurcated power that mediated racial domination through tribally organised local authorities, reproducing racial identity in citizens and ethnic identity in subjects. Many writers have understood colonial rule as either "direct" (French) or "indirect" (British), with a third variant - apartheid - as exceptional. This benign terminology, Mamdani shows, masks the fact that these were actually variants of a despotism. While direct rule denied rights to subjects on racial grounds, indirect rule incorporated them into a "customary" mode of rule, with state-appointed Native Authorities defining custom. By tapping authoritarian possibilities in culture, and by giving culture an authoritarian bent, indirect rule (decentralised despotism) set the pace for Africa; the French followed suit by changing from direct to indirect administration, while apartheid emerged relatively later. Apartheid, Mamdani shows, was actually the generic form of the colonial state in Africa.
Through case studies of rural (Uganda) and urban (South Africa) resistance movements, we learn how these institutional features fragment resistance and how states tend to play off reform in one sector against repression in the other. Reforming a power that institutionally enforces tension between town and country, and between ethnicites, is the key challenge for anyone interested in democratic reform in Africa.
by "Nielsen BookData"