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"Power (Social sciences) -- Africa -- Case studies"
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African conflicts and informal power
In the aftermath of an armed conflict in Africa, the international community both produces and demands from local partners a variety of blueprints for reconstructing state and society. The aim is to re-formalize the state after what is viewed as a period of fragmentation. In reality, African economies and polities are very much informal in character, with informal actors, including so-called Big Men, often using their positions in the formal structure as a means to reach their own goals. Through a variety of in-depth case studies, including the DRC, Sierra Leone and Liberia, this comprehensive volume shows how important informal political and economic networks are in many of the continent’s conflict areas. Moreover, it demonstrates that without a proper understanding of the impact of these networks, attempts to formalize African states, particularly those emerging from wars, will be in vain.
eBook
Hegemonic masculinity: combining theory and practice in gender interventions
The concept of hegemonic masculinity has been used in gender studies since the early-1980s to explain men's power over women. Stressing the legitimating power of consent (rather than crude physical or political power to ensure submission), it has been used to explain men's health behaviours and the use of violence. Gender activists and others seeking to change men's relations with women have mobilised the concept of hegemonic masculinity in interventions, but the links between gender theory and activism have often not been explored. The translation of 'hegemonic masculinity' into interventions is little examined. We show how, in South Africa and Sweden, the concept has been used to inform theoretically-based gender interventions and to ensure that men are brought into broader social efforts to build gender equity. We discuss the practical translational challenges of using gender theory broadly, and hegemonic masculinity in particular, in a Swedish case study, of the intervention Machofabriken [The Macho Factory], and illustrate how the concept is brought to life in this activist work with men. The concept has considerable practical application in developing a sustainable praxis of theoretically grounded interventions that are more likely to have enduring effect, but evaluating broader societal change in hegemonic masculinity remains an enduring challenge.
Journal Article
Does the Black Middle Class Exist and Are We Members?: Reflections from a Research Team
Does the Black Middle Class Exist And Are We Members makes two contributions into the research of the black middle class. First, it explores how Black South Africans conceptualize middle classness. Second, it demonstrates how this conceptualization informs researchers' social identity within the Black middle class.
eBook
Urban Energy Policies and the Governance of Multilevel Issues in Cape Town
The multiscalar challenges associated with urban energy policies are the cause of extensive interaction among multiple levels of government and social forces. However, these multilevel systems of action tend to reflect complex and unstable power and resistance patterns rather than stable co-operation processes. Thus, in this paper, a multilevel governance perspective is used as a starting point for understanding where and how multilevel interactions arise in an energy system as well as which issues are creating political conflict and the related consequences for the governance of urban energy policies. This approach is illustrated through a case study of Cape Town, which exemplifies a situation of conflicting policy and agendas at different levels of government, thus creating a great dispersion of initiatives across different scales. Integrating these initiatives within a broader coherent framework, however, is not only a technical matter. As urban energy policies deal with multilevel issues, they imply negotiating dynamic and complex compromises between different types of organisations and authorities while shaping their governance is also a matter of politics.
Journal Article
Chinese covid diplomacy in Africa: Interrogating Zimbabwe's experience
The COVID-19 pandemic has not only become a humanitarian issue but a geopolitical and geostrategic one as well. Informed by a soft power perspective and utilising a mainly qualitative-narrative analysis approach, this paper analyses China's medical assistance to African states in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Zimbabwe is used as a case study. The study establishes that China's medical assistance to African countries did not start in the COVID-19 era. It is a historical relationship that has evolved over the years. Chinese vaccine diplomacy in the COVID-19 era has positively assisted a number of African states to kick start and sustain their vaccination campaigns. However, through this assistance China has also intentionally or unintentionally managed to keep its African allies happy while at the same time sending signals to its geopolitical competitors (especially the USA) that Africa is its sphere of influence. Further, although judged less effective than western produced vaccines, Chinese COVID-19 vaccines (especially SinoVac and SinoPharm) and other forms of assistance have been used as a tool for global influence. It is, thus, concluded that China's projection of soft power in the form of medical assistance towards African countries in the COVID era is both a way of oiling its public diplomacy as well as playing the role of a responsible international power by providing international public goods.
Journal Article
The Nexus Between Sources of Workers’ Power in the Garment Manufacturing Industries of Lesotho and Eswatini
Workers in the garment manufacturing industry are often subjected to violations of their rights and are exposed to low wages and difficult working conditions. In response to the exposure of these violations in the media, major fashion brands and retailers subject their suppliers to labour codes of conduct. Despite these codes of conduct being largely ineffective, this comparative case study of garment manufacturers operating from Lesotho and Eswatini illustrates that such codes provide workers and trade unions with access to bargaining leverage that they would otherwise not have. A framework with a synthesis of potential sources of workers’ power is developed and related to global production networks, collective mobilisation, the nature of the state, as well as national and transnational scales of organising. Based on historical case studies of the two countries, this paper illustrates how unions in the two countries followed different approaches to using this source of power in relation to other sources of power. These approaches were shaped by their contexts and strategic choices. Theoretically, it is argued that sources of workers’ power are analytically distinct, but are relational and operate best when seen as mutually reinforcing. The term ‘power resource nexus’ is used to frame this potential mutual reinforcement of sources of power.
Journal Article
Negotiating statehood
Negotiating Statehood: Dynamics of Power and Domination in Africa provides a conceptual framework for analysing dynamic processes of state-making in Africa.Features a conceptual framework which provides a method for analysing the everyday making, contestation, and negotiation of statehood in contemporary Africa Conceptualizes who negotiates.
eBook
Human Security in a Transboundary Context: A Case Study of the Chinese-Built Road Project in Kenya
This article measures human security in a China-Kenya project under UNDP’s framework through questionnaires. We compare the perceived human security of Chinese employees with that of their Kenyan counterparts and reveal an imbalance in human security. Both groups perceive most insecure about community and politics and the Kenyan group exhibits a greater overall sense of insecurity. The company provides a highly-imbalanced level of support to each group. Payment, working time, and working environment threaten both groups, and the Kenyan group remains particularly concerned about job security. Irrespective of nationality, individuals in managerial roles perceive more security and supports compared to regular workers. These trans-hierarchical disparities in human security intersect with transboundary differences during globalization.
Journal Article
Evolution of Mining Company Responses to Civil Society Mobilization in South Africa
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the social license to operate (SLO) are widespread global phenomena in mining-dependent countries. These self-regulated frameworks are used to ensure local ownership and as a response to conflict by mining companies. Over the past two decades, CSR in the mining industry has only been more prevalent in Africa and South Africa. Studies on CSR and SLO primarily focus on community perspectives. This paper interrogates how mining companies respond to civic social pressure by considering two cases that have experienced much conflict in South Africa. Based on eighteen in-depth interviews and an analysis of company and media reports, our case studies demonstrate that mining companies primarily use CSR and SLO to assert and maintain corporate control under the guise of promoting local ownership and sustainable mining. Such strategies provide temporary relief and gradually erode CSR and SLO’s legal and political imperatives.
Journal Article