Palgrave Series in African Borderlands Studies (original) (raw)
Related papers
Centring the Margins: Fifty Years of African Border Studies
2011
Notes for Contributors The Africa Review of Books presents a biannual review of works on Africa in the social sciences, humanities and creative arts. It is also intended to serve as a forum for critical analyses, reflections and debates about Africa. As such, the Review solicits book reviews, reviews of articles and essays that are in line with the above objectives. Contributions that traverse disciplinary boundaries and encourage interdisciplinary dialogue and debate are particularly welcome. Reviews and essays should be original contributions: they should not have been published elsewhere prior to their submission, nor should they be under consideration for any other publication at the same time. The recommended length of the reviews is 2,000 words, with occasional exceptions of up, to 3,000 words for review articles or commissioned essays. Notes (which should be submitted as endnotes rather than as footnotes) should be used sparingly. Contributions should begin with the following publication details: title of the book; author; publisher; number of pages; price; and ISBN. Contributions are best sent electronically as e-mail attachments. If sent by post as hard copy, they should be accompanied by soft versions on CD in the MS Word or RTF format. Authors should also send with their submissions their full address and institutional affiliation as well as a short bio-data (including a sample of recent publications) for inclusion in the "Notes on Contributors" section. Authors are entitled to two copies of the issue of the Review in which their contribution is published.
2013
From the intro: This volume is on borders, and concentrates on the marked influence borders and boundaries, whether “real” or “imaginary,” have on the lives of those who happen to live near them or are involved in making them. As Filip De Boeck pointed out in his keynote address to the conference on Borders and Frontiers in Africa —the event that led to this book: "The notion of frontier is increasingly used to convey the post-colonial cosmogonies of the interstitial, the fold (le pli). The world of the frontier is currently portrayed as one of fluid margins rather than fixed boundaries. In this interpretation, the notion of frontier as “spatial boundary” becomes one of “borderlands.” As such it deconstructs and dissolves the clearcut center/periphery or the local/global binarism embodied in the traditional border fetishism of the nation state ideology and its imperialist extension in the colony." [De Boeck 2007:1] This perspective is the point of departure for the seven contributions collected here, whether they look at how political and symbolic borders took concrete form or at how borders and boundaries shape life in the city, mould the experience of “state,” or morph the relations between those in power and the not-so-powerful. Important is that from the outset this volume argues that borders and boundaries do more than simply indicate where one territory stops and another begins. They are much more than spatial designations, and more than simple markers of “otherness” (see Das and Poole 2004:8). Therefore, the contributors to this volume see borders and borderlands in line with what Ana Tsing (1994:279) has argued with regard to the notion of margins, “the zones of unpredictability at the edges of discursive stability, where contradictory discourses overlap, or where discrepant kinds of meaning-making converge.” In Tsing’s understanding, then, margins appear as an “analytical placement that makes evident both the constraining, oppressive quality of cultural exclusion and the creative potential of rearticulating, enlivening, and rearranging the very social categories that peripheralize a group's existence” (Tsing 1994:279).
This publication based dissertation offers a comparative examination of the making and contestation of the Namibia-Zambia and Uganda-South Sudan borders in everyday relations between state and non-state actors. While events in the former borderland were strongly determined by the annual floods of the Zambezi, the movements of massive numbers of people fleeing from past and fearing future conflict characterized the latter. Past and present events in both borderlands, despite their peripheral location, are shown to be an integrate and crucial part of state formation in both countries. The key question guiding the analysis is: How are competing claims of territory, authority and citizenship negotiated between state representatives and residents in these borderlands, and what kinds of governance regimes emerge as a result of these negotiations? This is the synthesis of two lines of investigation pursued by the author. The first seeks to clarify how pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial governments’ power is broadcast from the centre to the territorial and social margins in African borderlands. The second seeks to clarify in what ways those who inhabit these borderlands exercise their own power. With the answers to these questions the author contributes to the ethnographic and historiographic study of borderlands worldwide and in Africa, as well as the literature that examines state formation as a continuous processes constituted in everyday-encounters between representatives of the state and its citizens. The author conceptualizes borderlands as dynamic sites where the actual meanings and practices of state-society relations are contested and forged on a daily and continuous basis in the relationships between borderland inhabitants with each other across the border, and with those who represent central state authority. The central argument of this dissertation is that this lived quality is what makes the border ‘real’: The border does not only exist as an abstract construct separate from or ‘above’ the people and territories it is supposed to separate. Borderland actors actively engage, challenge and thereby reshape the state, over time and repeatedly. They contribute to fine-tuning the state in ways that do not necessarily undermine or hollow it out. This working practice of the border is what brings it to life in the sense in which a relationship between people is only alive - and therefore real - if it is filled by meaningful and ongoing exchange and interaction.
TRENDS IN AFRICA BORDERLANDS AND THE DYNAMISN OF SOCIAL CHANGES
Vuna Journal of Politics and Diplomatic Studies (VUNAJOPODS) A Journal of Political Science and Diplomacy, Veritas University Abuja. , 2017
The post world war era provided an opening for renunciation of empire and race as organizing principles of society. African states obtained their independence with poorly demarcated borders that considered the most potent source of conflict and insecurity. Most vulnerable local minorities are found in border regions of Africa. The politics of homogenization are played out in the remote corners of the country in relation to language, religion and way of life. Border regions in Africa have developed a highly specific culture of social changes. Thus, in the context of economic expansion, border towns are booming and rapidly growing. The activities of transport corridors, human and drug traffickers, trans frontier parks, regional integration, cross-river boat operators, long-distance truck operators and women involved in long-distance trade strive, the members of frontier communities are active participants in the creation and maintenance of borders and habitants are eager to benefit from the resources which borders create. This study observed that dynamism of borderlands have created opportunities for political and economic activism and at the same time resulting to social changes. This paper investigates the real world social changes and its visibility in borderland using Chad, Cameroun, Benin, Togo and Nigeria despite the political instability. The Trans border cooperation on historical linkages would considerably reduce conflicts and litigation, and the borders converted to bridges rather than barriers from the grassroots as opposed to the state-centric views.
An Overview of the Borderlands of the Horn of Africa
2020
The World Bank Group's Horn of Africa Regional Initiative promotes resilience and economic opportunity in one of the world’s most challenging regions for security and development. Within the region, extreme poverty, vulnerability, fragility, and food insecurity are disproportionately concentrated in the arid and remote border regions. But despite its challenges, there are areas in the borderlands with real economic potential. For example, the region's international borders have long allowed communities to benefit from price differentials through licit and illicit trade (Scott-Villiers 2015). Pastoralism and trade, the dominant livelihoods in the Horn of Africa, require the easy movement of people and goods within and across borders—and continue to heavily rely on cross-country clan and ethnic affiliations. Local institutions therefore still play a key role in regulating and facilitating economic activity and managing conflict, especially as the formal institutions are often ...
Symposium on Border Regions in Southern Africa
2015
This paper examines the cross-border economic and sociocultural activities of the inhabitants of the contiguous border areas of Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique. Specifically, it compares the economic activities of informal cross-border traders (ICBTs) in these areas and the sociocultural practices of the inhabitants including accessing social services as well as the fulfillment of ethno-cultural obligations across borders. Further, it compares perceptions towards each of these practices by various actors including, among others, the ICBTs, ordinary locals, non-governmental organization (NGOs), and State and local authorities. Legislations, policy reports and scientific publications are thoroughly reviewed and interviews with key policymakers, ICBTs, and locals are conducted. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of data collected from the interviews are also performed. Various stakeholders generally regard accessing social services (such as education and health) across borders by nationals of neighboring countries as something that is acceptable and normal while some forms of informal crossborder trade are considered undesirable. However, both economic and ethno-or sociocultural actors engage in cross-border activity out of necessity, convenience, as means of survival, and something that they have traditionally engaged in as inhabitants of the borderlands. Representatives from State and local governments of the adjacent provinces in the contiguous border areas should establish trans-border coordinating committees to establish systems for addressing and coordinating, especially, the sharing of the burden of providing social services.