Global Subjects: A Political Critique of Globalization

<p>In this new book, Jean-François Bayart offers a radically new account of globalization which challenges the way it is interpreted by neo-liberals and by the anti-globalization movement. He develops an illuminating account of how the social relations constitutive of globalization produce new forms of subjectivity, lifestyles and 'moral subjects'.</p>

Politics & Social Sciences

Jean-François Bayart

Social Sciences

Polity

This book examines the growth of fraud and smuggling in African states, the plundering of natural resources, the privatization of state institutions, the development of an economy of plunder and the growth of private armies. It suggests that the state itself is becoming a vehicle for organized criminal activity. The authors propose criteria for gauging the criminalization of African states and present a novel prognosis: they distinguish between the corruption of previous decades and the criminalization of some African states now taking place. Major operators are now able to connect with global criminal networks. Also, the notion of social capital has led to current attitudes towards the use of public office for personal enrichment, or even systematic illegality. Looking at South Africa, the authors examine the decades-long tradition of association between crime and politics in this area. South Africa is now the centre of important international patterns of crime, notably in the drug trade. It has Africa's largest formal economy and the continent's largest criminal economy. Considering the economic origins of official implication in crime, the authors conclude that new forms of corruption have been unintentionally helped by liberal economic reforms. In association with the International African Institute North America: Indiana U Press

The Criminalization of the State in Africa (African Issues)

Literature & Fiction

World Literature

James Currey

Criminalisation of the State in Africa (African Issues)

Stephen Ellis

Béatrice Hibou

James Currey Ltd.

An examination of the fluidity of ideas of culture with relation to identity, state-builfing and political action. Does the West impose its own definition of human rights and democracy on the rest of the world? Does globalisation threaten British, French or other European identities? Was Confucianism really the motor of the Asian economic miracle? Is African culture compatible with multi-party politics? Is Islam an insurmountable obstacle to the integration of North Africans and Turks into Western Europe? There are so many uncertainties - or perhaps false certainties - which we meet all the time and which assume the permanence of culture. It is the very idea of culture that prevents us from grasping the cultural dimension of political action and economic development. For state formation brings into play aesthetic and moral concepts - just as it involves sexual practices, culinary traditions, clothes and hair-styles. After an ironical, and sometimes comical, journey through the political 'imaginaires' and passions of the contemporary world, this probing work invites the reader to reinvent the democratic concept in its entirety in order to confront those engaged in contemporary identity conflicts or movements. The murderous force of the most recent events of this kind - the wars in former Yugoslavia, in the Caucasus, in Algeria and in Black Africa, the communal riots in India and Pakistan - derives from the belief that for each imagined 'cultural identity' there is a corresponding 'political identity'. This is a total illusion, for these identities are often fairly recent constructions. There is no such thing as a 'native identity' which imposes itself through force of circumstances. There are only strategies pertaining to identities, which are rationally pursued by identifiable actors, and identity-related dreams or nightmares to which we adhere due to their power to seduce or terrify us. But we are not condemned to remain in thrall to these enchantments. The 'clash of civilisations' is not fatal.

The Fictions of Cultural Identity

C. Hurst & Co. Publishers Ltd.

Le Politique par le bas en Afrique noire: Contributions a une problematique de la democratie (French Edition)

Reference

Achille Mbembe

Comi Toulabor

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Karthala

África en el espejo. Colonización, criminalidad y Estado (Spanish Edition)

Politics & Government

FONDO DE CULTURA ECONOMICA*

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Books by Jean-François Bayart