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Citizen and Subject : Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism / Mahmood Mamdani.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextSeries: Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/HistoryPublisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©2018Description: 1 online resource (384 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780691180427
  • 9781400889716
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 320.96/09/045 23
LOC classification:
  • JV246
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Thinking through Africa's Impasse -- The structure of power -- Decentralized Despotism -- Indirect Rule: the Politics of Decentralized Despotism -- Customary law: the Theory of Decentralized Despotism -- The Native Authority and the Free Peasantry -- The anatomy of resistance -- The Other Face of Tribalism: Peasant Movements in Equatorial Africa -- The Rural in the Urban: Migrant Workers in South Africa -- Conclusion: Linking the Urban and the Rural -- Notes -- Index
Summary: In analyzing the obstacles to democratization in post- independence Africa, Mahmood Mamdani offers a bold, insightful account of colonialism's legacy--a bifurcated power that mediated racial domination through tribally organized 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 (decentralized 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. The result is a groundbreaking reassessment of colonial rule in Africa and its enduring aftereffects. Reforming a power that institutionally enforces tension between town and country, and between ethnicities, is the key challenge for anyone interested in democratic reform in Africa.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781400889716

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Thinking through Africa's Impasse -- The structure of power -- Decentralized Despotism -- Indirect Rule: the Politics of Decentralized Despotism -- Customary law: the Theory of Decentralized Despotism -- The Native Authority and the Free Peasantry -- The anatomy of resistance -- The Other Face of Tribalism: Peasant Movements in Equatorial Africa -- The Rural in the Urban: Migrant Workers in South Africa -- Conclusion: Linking the Urban and the Rural -- Notes -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

In analyzing the obstacles to democratization in post- independence Africa, Mahmood Mamdani offers a bold, insightful account of colonialism's legacy--a bifurcated power that mediated racial domination through tribally organized 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 (decentralized 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. The result is a groundbreaking reassessment of colonial rule in Africa and its enduring aftereffects. Reforming a power that institutionally enforces tension between town and country, and between ethnicities, is the key challenge for anyone interested in democratic reform in Africa.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 27. Sep 2021)