General Information

Author/Creator

Mamdani, Mahmood, 1946-

Language

English.

Published

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1996.

Physical Description

xii, 353 p. : 25 cm.

Series

Princeton studies in culture/power/history

Contents/Summary

Summary

In analyzing the obstacles to democratization in post- independence Africa, Mahmood Mamdani offers a bold, insightful account of colonialism's legacy--a bifurcated power that mediated racial domination through tribally organized local authorities, reproducing racial identity in citizens and ethnic identity in subjects. Many writers have understood colonial rule as either "direct" (French) or "indirect" (British), with a third variant--apartheid--as exceptional. This benign terminology, Mamdani shows, masks the fact that these were actually variants of a despotism. While direct rule denied rights to subjects on racial grounds, indirect rule incorporated them into a "customary" mode of rule, with state-appointed Native Authorities defining custom. By tapping authoritarian possibilities in culture, and by giving culture an authoritarian bent, indirect rule (decentralized despotism) set the pace for Africa the French followed suit by changing from direct to indirect administration, while apartheid emerged relatively later. Apartheid, Mamdani shows, was actually the generic form of the colonial state in Africa. Through case studies of rural (Uganda) and urban (South Africa) resistance movements, we learn how these institutional features fragment resistance and how states tend to play off reform in one sector against repression in the other. Reforming a power that institutionally enforces tension between town and country, and between ethnicities, is the key challenge for anyone interested in democratic reform in Africa.

Subjects

Subject

Colonies > Africa > Administration.

Despotism > Africa.

Democracy > Africa.

Apartheid > Africa.

Indigenous peoples > Africa.

Africa > Colonial influence.

Africa > Politics and government.

Bibliographic Information

Responsibility

Mahmood Mamdani.

Content

I. Introduction: Thinking through Africa's impasse -- Pt. I. The structure of power -- II. Decentralized despotism -- III. Indirect rule: the politics of decentralized despotism -- IV. Customary law: the theory of decentralized despotism -- V. The native authority and the free peasantry -- Pt. II. The anatomy of resistance -- VI. The other face of tribalism: peasant movements in equatorial Africa -- VII. The rural in the urban: migrant workers in South Africa -- VIII. Conclusion: linking the urban and the rural.

ISBN

0691011079

0691027935

Holdings

Item Type	Current Location	Collection	Call Number	Volume Info	Shelving Location	Public Note
Book	OSA Archivum Library	General collection	320.96/09/045 MAM		OSA Repository	Donation of School of Public Policy.

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