Area studies and comparative politics: Africa in context

Der Artikel diskutiert die Relevanz der ethnologischen Feldforschungen, die sich den Einwänden der wissenschaftlichen Unwirksamkeit und der eingeschränkten Perspektive ausgesetzt sehen, für die vergleichende Politikwissenschaft. Dabei orientiert sich der Text an der Annahme, dass die Disziplin der vergleichenden Politikwissenschaft eines Wandels bedarf, um einen Verfall ihres heuristischen Wertes zu verhindern. Aus diesem Grund ist hier nach Ansicht des Autors eine stärke Berücksichtigung der Feldforschungen angebracht. Die Ausführungen behandeln drei Fragen: (1) Wie vollzieht sich die Bestimmung eines Gebietes im Rahmen der Feldforschung? (2) Wie lassen sich vergleichende Fragen formulieren, die Prozesse deutlicher beleuchten als nur Unterschiede zu betrachten? (3) Wie gestaltet sich der beste Bericht über Dynamiken und Wandel im Laufe der Zeit? Diese Fragen werden zunächst auf allgemeiner Ebene diskutiert. Anschließend zieht der Autor zur Illustrierung der entwickelten Ansichten die Herangehensweise seiner wissenschaftlichen Arbeit zu dem Forschungsgegenstand der Demokratisierung in Schwarzafrika heran. (ICG2

Jean-Pierre DOZON, Une anthropologie en mouvement : l’Afrique miroir du contemporain

In this volume, Jean-Pierre Dozon has brought together a number of articles he has published in the last thirty years. The ambition, above and beyond making them more widely available, is to reflect on the evolution of African Studies in France by means of his fieldwork experience. The author is well known for his work on Côte d’Ivoire, where he has done research since the seventies, and it is to this country that he returns time and time again in these articles. He has done fieldwork on agri..

KARINGANA UA KARINGANA: MIA COUTO, UM CONTADOR DE HISTÓRIAS MOÇAMBICANO

AO RESSALTAR A IMPORTÂNCIA DO “CONTO” NA OBRA DE MIA COUTO, O ARTIGO DEFENDE QUE MESMO SEUS ROMANCES SÃO DEVEDORES DA FÓRMULA DESENVOLVIDA COM SUCESSO NAS NARRATIVAS CURTAS. ASSOCIA-SE A DIMENSÃO DESSA MODALIDADE COM A EXPERIÊNCIA JORNALÍSTICA DO AUTOR E SEU CONHECIMENTO DAS TRADIÇÕES ORAIS MOÇAMBICANAS, DESTACANDO-SE QUE A NARRATIVA DO AUTOR MOÇAMBICANO, AO CULTIVAR A APROXIMAÇÃO COM A POESIA, SITUA-SE ENTRE ESCRITA E ORALIDADE, MODERNIDADE E TRADIÇÃO, FANTASIA E REALIDADE

Jean-Pierre DOZON, Une anthropologie en mouvement : l’Afrique miroir du contemporain

In this volume, Jean-Pierre Dozon has brought together a number of articles he has published in the last thirty years. The ambition, above and beyond making them more widely available, is to reflect on the evolution of African Studies in France by means of his fieldwork experience. The author is well known for his work on Côte d’Ivoire, where he has done research since the seventies, and it is to this country that he returns time and time again in these articles. He has done fieldwork on agri..

Las políticas de violencia y conflicto en el África contemporánea

La cuestión de la violencia en África es a menudo concebida, simplemente, como un problema de conflictos armados. De este modo, los debates sobre su resolución y la construcción de la paz toman como punto de partida los mecanismos por los que dicha violencia podría detenerse. Sin embargo, esta aproximación instrumental excluye implícitamente cualquier análisis sobre sus raíces más profundas. El argumento para el autor es que la violencia está enraizada en el contexto histórico, social, político, económico y cultural específico del África postcolonial, y la clave para entender su frecuencia reside en las formas en que el poder se ha ejercido en el continente desde su independencia. Comprender la persistencia de la violencia en África exige buscar el sentido de las razones por las que, en este contexto, la continuación del conflicto es, a veces, más “útil” o “beneficiosa” que su resolución para muchos de los actores implicados

KARINGANA UA KARINGANA: MIA COUTO, UM CONTADOR DE HISTÓRIAS MOÇAMBICANO

AO RESSALTAR A IMPORTÂNCIA DO “CONTO” NA OBRA DE MIA COUTO, O ARTIGO DEFENDE QUE MESMO SEUS ROMANCES SÃO DEVEDORES DA FÓRMULA DESENVOLVIDA COM SUCESSO NAS NARRATIVAS CURTAS. ASSOCIA-SE A DIMENSÃO DESSA MODALIDADE COM A EXPERIÊNCIA JORNALÍSTICA DO AUTOR E SEU CONHECIMENTO DAS TRADIÇÕES ORAIS MOÇAMBICANAS, DESTACANDO-SE QUE A NARRATIVA DO AUTOR MOÇAMBICANO, AO CULTIVAR A APROXIMAÇÃO COM A POESIA, SITUA-SE ENTRE ESCRITA E ORALIDADE, MODERNIDADE E TRADIÇÃO, FANTASIA E REALIDADE

Swings and roundabouts: the vagaries of democratic consolidation and ‘electoral rituals’ in Sierra Leone

YesThe history of the electoral process in Sierra Leone is at the same time tortuous and substantial. From relatively open competitive multi-party politics in the 1960s, which led to the first turnover of power at the ballot box, through the de facto and de jure one-party era, which nonetheless had elements of electoral competition, and finally to contemporary post-conflict times, which has seen three elections and a second electoral turnover in 2007, one can discern evolving patterns. Evidence from the latest local and national elections in 2012 suggests that there is some democratic consolidation, at least in an electoral sense. However, one might also see simultaneous steps forward and backward – What you gain on the swings, you may lose on the roundabouts. This is particularly so in terms of institutional capacities, fraud and violence, and one would need to enquire of the precise ingredients – in terms of political culture or in other words the attitudes and motivations of electors and the elected – of this evolving Sierra Leonean, rather than specifically liberal type, of democracy. Equally, the development of ‘electoral rituals’, whether peculiar to Sierra Leone or not and whether deemed consolidatory or not, has something to say as part of an investigation into the electoral element of democratic consolidation.1 The literature on elections in Africa most often depicts a number of broad features, such as patronage, ethno-regionalism, fraud and violence, and it is the intention of this article to locate contemporary Sierra Leone, as precisely as possible, within the various strands of this discourse

Regionalism and African agency : negotiating an Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and SADC-Minus

This article investigates the regional dynamics of African agency in the case of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the EU and a group of Southern African countries, known as SADC-Minus. I argue that these negotiations were shaped by a pattern of differentiated responses to the choice set on offer under the EPAs by SADC-Minus policymakers and by a series of strategic interactions and power plays between them. I offer two contributions to an emerging literature on the role of African agency in international politics. First, I argue for a clear separation between ontological claims about the structure-agency relationship and empirical questions about the preferences, strategies and influence of African actors. Second, I suggest that in order to understand the regional dynamics of African agency it is important to pay close attention to the diversity and contingency of African preferences and to the role of both power politics and rhetorical contestation in regional political processes

Natural resource wars in the shadow of the future: Explaining spatial dynamics of violence during civil war

Previous studies on natural resources and civil wars find that the presence of natural resources increases both civil conflict risk and duration. At the same time, belligerents often cooperate over resource extraction, suggesting a temporal variation in the contest over this subnational space. This study argues that parties fight over natural resources primarily when they expect that the conflict is about to end, as the importance of controlling them increases in the post-conflict setting. In contrast, belligerents that anticipate a long war have incentives to avoid fighting near natural resources since excessive violence will hurt the extraction, trade, and subsequent taxation that provide conflict actors with income from the resource. We test our argument using yearly and monthly grid-cell-level data on African civil conflicts for the period 1989–2008 and find support for our expected spatial variation. Using whether negotiations are underway as an indicator about warring parties’ expectations on conflict duration, we find that areas with natural resources in general experience less intense fighting than other areas, but during negotiations these very areas witness most of the violence. We further find that the spatial shift in violence occurs immediately when negotiations are opened. A series of difference-in-difference estimations show a visible shift of violence towards areas rich in natural resources in the first three months after parties have initiated talks. Our findings are relevant for scholarship on understanding and predicting the trajectories of micro-level civil conflict violence, and for policymakers seeking to prevent peace processes being derailed