Nigerian scam e-mails and the charms of capital

So-called '419' or 'advance-fee' e-mail frauds have proved remarkably successful. Global losses to these scams are believed to run to billions of dollars. Although it can be assumed that the promise of personal gain which these e-mails hold out is part of what motivates victims, there is more than greed at issue here. How is it that the seemingly incredible offers given in these unsolicited messages can find an audience willing to treat them as credible? The essay offers a speculative thesis in answer to this question. Firstly, it is argued, these scams are adept at exploiting common presuppositions in British and American culture regarding Africa and the relationships that are assumed to exist between their nations and those in the global south. Secondly, part of the appeal of these e-mails lies in the fact that they appear to reveal the processes by which wealth is created and distributed in the global economy. They thus speak to their readers’ attempts to map or conceptualise the otherwise inscrutable processes of that economy. In the conclusion the essay looks at the contradictions in the official state response to this phenomena

Transnational social capital: the socio‐spatialities of civil society

Civil society remains a contested concept, but one that is widely embedded in global development processes. Transnationalism within civil society scholarship is often described dichotomously, either through hierarchical dependency relations or as a more amorphous networked global civil society. These two contrasting spatial imaginaries produce very particular ideas about how transnational relations contribute to civil society. Drawing on empirical material from research with civil society organizations in Barbados and Grenada, in this article I contend that civil society groups use forms of transnational social capital in their work. This does not, however, resonate with the horizontal relations associated with grassroots globalization or vertical chains of dependence. These social relations are imbued with power and agency and are entangled in situated historical, geographical and personal contexts. I conclude that the diverse transnational social relations that are part of civil society activity offer hope and possibilities for continued civil society action in these unexpected spatial arrangements

The global development project contested: the local politics of the PRSP process in Malawi

Development, in an age of globalizations, has indeed become a global project. However, this project remains contested and contestable. While much attention has been given to this contestation at a macro-policy level, the dynamics of such contestations on the ground remain less studied. Noting that development projects, policies and programs are themselves products of power relations and social struggles, this paper focuses on the dynamics of these relations and struggles in relation to the dissemination of the global development project in Malawi. Drawing from the experiences and fractious journey from 2000 to 2006 of the broad-based civil society network involved in Malawi’s ongoing PRSP process, the paper shows how local actors draw creatively on globalized discourses of participation and representation to contest and confound the objectives of the elites, thereby complicating the channels through which the global development project is promulgated

The edge of the periphery: situating the ≠Khomani San of the Southern Kalahari in the political economy of Southern Africa

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in African Identities on 14/04/16, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14725843.2016.1154813In this article, we situate the Southern Kalahari San within the political economy of Southern Africa and within the world system. Here we draw on and critique modernization theory as a model of explanation for the lack of development found locally. In the Southern Kalahari, the ≠Khomani San won a massive land claim that should have empowered and enabled local development. Yet they remain largely impoverished, while seeking out a meaningful life on the edge of the capitalist world system. Within states, contradictions remain as local diversity continues to be reproduced and modernity itself is reproduced as local diversity. The research is premised on empirical fieldwork conducted in the Southern Kalahari in 2013 and supported by a series of earlier field research over the previous five years. The San of the Southern Kalahari are not resisting modernity but drawing on aspects of it selectively for their own vision of meaningful development

Primordialists and Constructionists: a typology of theories of religion

This article adopts categories from nationalism theory to classify theories of religion. Primordialist explanations are grounded in evolutionary psychology and emphasize the innate human demand for religion. Primordialists predict that religion does not decline in the modern era but will endure in perpetuity. Constructionist theories argue that religious demand is a human construct. Modernity initially energizes religion, but subsequently undermines it. Unpacking these ideal types is necessary in order to describe actual theorists of religion. Three distinctions within primordialism and constructionism are relevant. Namely those distinguishing: a) materialist from symbolist forms of constructionism; b) theories of origins from those pertaining to the reproduction of religion; and c) within reproduction, between theories of religious persistence and secularization. This typology helps to make sense of theories of religion by classifying them on the basis of their causal mechanisms, chronology and effects. In so doing, it opens up new sightlines for theory and research