African Renaissance


Book Description

Cheru attempts to shed new light on the topic of economic development in Africa, looking at the practical lessons to be learned from both mistakes made and the initiatives which have born positive fruit.




The Inherent Rights of Indigenous Peoples in International Law


Book Description

This book highlights the cogency and urgency of the protection of indigenous peoples and discusses crucial aspects of the international legal theory and practice relating to their rights. These rights are not established by states; rather, they are inherent to indigenous peoples because of their human dignity, historical continuity, cultural distinctiveness, and connection to the lands where they have lived from time immemorial. In the past decades, a new awareness of the importance of indigenous rights has emerged at the international level. UN organs have adopted specific international law instruments that protect indigenous peoples. Nonetheless, concerns persist because of continued widespread breaches of such rights. Stemming from a number of seminars organised at the Law Department of the University of Roma Tre, the volume includes contributions by distinguished scholars and practitioners. It is divided into three parts. Part I introduces the main themes and challenges to be addressed, considering the debate on self-determination of indigenous peoples and the theoretical origins of ‘indigenous sovereignty’. Parts II and III explore the protection of indigenous peoples afforded under the international law rules on human rights and investments respectively. Not only do the contributors to this book critically assess the current international legal framework, but they also suggest ways and methods to utilize such legal instruments towards the protection, promotion and fulfi lment of indigenous peoples’ rights, to contribute to the maintenance of peace and the pursuit of justice in international relations. DOI: 10.13134/978-88-32136-92-0




Global Shadows


Book Description

DIVA collection of Ferguson's essays that bring the question of Africa into the center of current debates on globalization, modernity, and emerging forms of world order./div




Globalization and the African Experience


Book Description

This volume emphasizes the economic, political, and socio-cultural aspects of globalization from a variety of African perspectives. Although the book's emphasis is on the post-Second World War period, the ten chapters of Globalization and the African Experience also touch on the history of globalization in traditional and colonial African societies. It is a resource that can be used both as a scholarly guide to those interested in globalization in Africa and as a textbook for modern era African history courses. The book's strength lies in its ability to approach African history within a twenty-first century historiographical view; it reinforces the idea that the processes of globalization are age-old and multi-faceted and underscores the necessity of taking a local and global approach in assessing their impact. The book is divided into two sections. In the first, "Economic and Political Globalization," the authors analyze Africa's economic relations with the West and with developing world economies. The first section also addresses the relationship between conflict and globalization and the role of NGOs, the state, the market, and civil society. The second section, "Socio-Cultural and Intellectual Globalization," focuses on the junction of globalization and gender issues as well as issues of health, medicine, and the biomedical industries. It analyzes globalizing influences on African traditional societies and the very different impact on popular and youth culture while also addressing Africa's role in the intellectualization of Blackness. Individual contributors employ localized research and integrate it with larger, global themes to reveal the depth and complexity of globalization and how the processes affect Africa and Africans at the micro and macro levels. This book is part of the African World Series, edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin. "Well documented with chapter notes and chapter bibliographies. Summing Up: Recommended." -- CHOICE




Global Africa


Book Description

Global Africa is a striking, original volume that disrupts the dominant narratives that continue to frame our discussion of Africa, complicating conventional views of the region as a place of violence, despair, and victimhood. The volume documents the significant global connections, circulations, and contributions that African people, ideas, and goods have made throughout the world—from the United States and South Asia to Latin America, Europe, and elsewhere. Through succinct and engaging pieces by scholars, policy makers, activists, and journalists, the volume provides a wholly original view of a continent at the center of global historical processes rather than on the periphery. Global Africa offers fresh, complex, and insightful visions of a continent in flux.




Contemporary Issues in Africa's Development


Book Description

This volume reports on the state of crisis in Africa in the early twenty-first century. Africa, on the eve of the ‘independence revolution’, was the continent of hope and high expectations. By the third decade of independence, optimism had been replaced by dismality. African states had been beset by ethno-political squabbles, military rule, civil wars, Islamic and insurgent movements, extreme poverty and disease. With the ascent of redemocratization in the 1990s and of ‘new’ pan-Africanism derived from the formation of the African Union, Africa appeared set to claim its vaunted destiny. This book asks, with hindsight to the first decade of the twenty-first century: how real was the renaissance in African life? If the dismal African condition is a phase in the historical development of Africa, this volume does not see any golden age in the past to which Africa aspires to return. There is clearly a continuation and persistence of crisis, with an absence of good governance, personalisation of state power, widespread disease, and policy failure in education, economy and infrastructural development. Although endowed with abundant human and natural resources, Africa remains the least developed and most indebted continent. Whither then the African Renaissance? The methodologies that underpin the contributions in this book are as diverse as the specialisations of the contributors. The collection questions ideologically protected assumptions and presumptions, presenting Africa as it is, because it is only by knowing where Africa truly stands that a proper direction can be charted for it.




The Rise of China and India in Africa


Book Description

In recent years, China and India have become the most important economic partners of Africa and their footprints are growing by leaps and bounds, transforming Africa's international relations in a dramatic way. Although the overall impact of China and India's engagement in Africa has been positive in the short-term, partly as a result of higher returns from commodity exports fuelled by excessive demands from both countries, little research exists on the actual impact of China and India's growing involvement on Africa's economic transformation. This book examines in detail the opportunities and challenges posed by the increasing presence of China and India in Africa, and proposes critical interventions that African governments must undertake in order to negotiate with China and India from a stronger and more informed platform.




Something Torn and New


Book Description

Novelist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o has been a force in African literature for decades: Since the 1970s, when he gave up the English language to commit himself to writing in African languages, his foremost concern has been the critical importance of language to culture. Here, Ngugi explores Africa's historical, economic, and cultural fragmentation by slavery, colonialism, and globalization. Throughout this tragic history, a constant and irrepressible force was Europhonism: the replacement of native names, languages, and identities with European ones. The result was the dismemberment of African memory. Seeking to remember language in order to revitalize it, Ngugi's quest is for wholeness. Wide-ranging, erudite, and hopeful, this book is a cri de coeur to save Africa's cultural future.--From publisher description.




The Globalization of Renaissance Art


Book Description

In The Globalization of Renaissance Art: A Critical Review, Daniel Savoy assembles an interdisciplinary group of scholars to evaluate the global discourse on early modern European art. Over the course of eleven chapters and a roundtable, the contributors assess the discourse’s goal of transcending Eurocentric boundaries, reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of current terms, methods, theories, and concepts. Although it is clear that the global perspective has exposed the artistic and cultural pluralism of early modern Europe, it is found that more work needs to be done at the epistemological level of art history as a whole. Contributors: Claire Farago, Elizabeth Horodowich, Lauren Jacobi, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Jessica Keating, Stephanie Leitch, Emanuele Lugli, Lia Markey, Sean Roberts, Ananda Cohen-Aponte, and Marie Neil Wolff.




Towards the African Renaissance


Book Description