Everyday State and Democracy in Africa : Ethnographic Encounters

Authors

Wale Adebanwi

Files

Series

Cambridge Centre of African Studies Series

Description

Bottom-up case studies, drawn from the perspective of ordinary Africans’ experiences with state bureaucracies, structures, and services, reveal how citizens and states define each other.

This volume examines contemporary citizens’ everyday encounters with the state and democratic processes in Africa. The contributions reveal the intricate and complex ways in which quotidian activities and experiences—from getting an identification card (genuine or fake) to sourcing black-market commodities to dealing with unreliable waste collection—both (re)produce and (re)constitute the state and democracy. This approach from below lends gravity to the mundane and recognizes the value of conceiving state governance not in terms of its stated promises and aspirations but rather in accordance with how people experience it.

Both new and established scholars based in Africa, Europe, and North America cover a wide range of examples from across the continent, including:

bureaucratic machinery in South Sudan, Nigeria, and Kenya
infrastructure and shortages in Chad and Nigeria
disciplinarity, subjectivity, and violence in Rwanda, South Africa, and Nigeria
the social life of democracy in the Congo, Cameroon, and Mozambique
education, welfare, and health in Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burkina Faso

Everyday State and Democracy in Africa demonstrates that ordinary citizens’ encounters with state agencies and institutions define the meanings, discourses, practices, and significance of democratic life, as well its distressing realities.

Contributors:

Daniel Agbiboa
Victoria Bernal
Jean Comaroff
John L. Comaroff
E. Fouksman
Fred Ikanda
Lori Leonard
Rose Løvgren
Ferenc Dávid Markó
Ebenezer Obadare
Rogers Orock
Justin Pearce
Katrien Pype
Edoardo Quaretta
Jennifer Riggan
Helle Samuelsen
Nicholas Rush Smith
Eric Trovalla
Ulrika Trovalla

Copyright Statement

Everyday State and Democracy in Africa © 2022 by Ohio University Press is licensed under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language

eng

ISBN

9780821447796

Publication Date

7-2022

Publisher

Ohio University Press

City

Athens

Keywords

political science, government, public affairs administration, social aspects, africa

Disciplines

African Studies | Ethnic Studies | Political Science | Public Administration | Social Policy

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Adebanwi, Wale, "Everyday State and Democracy in Africa : Ethnographic Encounters" (2022). Ohio University Press Open Access Books. 39.
https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/39