Cultural Engineering and Nation-building in East Africa

Cultural Engineering and Nation-building in East Africa
Author :
Publisher : Evanston, Ill. : Northwestern University Press
Total Pages : 398
Release :
ISBN-10 : STANFORD:36105034900923
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (23 Downloads)

Synopsis Cultural Engineering and Nation-building in East Africa by : Ali AlʼAmin Mazrui

Study of the impingement of cultural factors on issues of social reform, economic development and African nationalism, with particular reference to cultural policy in East African developing countries - discusses ideologycal implications of a written history and literature, considers social implications and political aspects involved in the choice of language, and covers political participation, elites, traditional culture, social change, cultural change, social integration, social class, tribal peoples, etc. Maps and references.

The Mazruiana Collection Revisited

The Mazruiana Collection Revisited
Author :
Publisher : Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd
Total Pages : 468
Release :
ISBN-10 : 1932705376
ISBN-13 : 9781932705379
Rating : 4/5 (76 Downloads)

Synopsis The Mazruiana Collection Revisited by : Ali AlʼAmin Mazrui

Consists of 650 annotated entries covering Mazrui's books, dissertations, edited works about him, major essays in books, academic journals and conference papers. This work contains essays, including pamphlets, magazine and newspaper articles, and audio-visual recordings.

The Global African

The Global African
Author :
Publisher : Africa World Press
Total Pages : 422
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0865435332
ISBN-13 : 9780865435339
Rating : 4/5 (32 Downloads)

Synopsis The Global African by : Omari H. Kokole

Anticipating the auspicious convergence of his 60th birthday and the 30th anniversary of his professorial debut, Ali A. Mazrui's students, friends, and colleagues seized the opportunity to critically assess the significance of the prodigious body of scholarship affectionately dubbed "Mazruiana". In November 1992, in Seattle, Washington, four panels devoted exclusively to Mazruiana were convened at the annual meetings of the African Studies Association, with the added attraction of Mazrui's attendance at the convocation and his immediate personal response to the original papers presented there. While no single volume could do justice to Mazrui's colossal literary output, here at least is gathered the collective investigative insight of a team of well-informed critics into select, salient facets of this provocative but stimulating literary and intellectual phenomenon. The long list of contributors to this Festschrift includes: John W. Harbeson, Dunstan M. Wai, Darryl C. Thomas, Negussay Ayele, Parviz Morewedge, Hussein M. Adam, Alamin M. Mazrui, Claude E. Welch, Peter N. Thuynsma, Richard L. Sklar, Betty J. Craige, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Chaly Sawere, Bujor Avari, Diana Frank, Omari H. Kokole, and Ali A. Mazrui himself.

The Harvard-Yenching Institute and Cultural Engineering

The Harvard-Yenching Institute and Cultural Engineering
Author :
Publisher : Lexington Books
Total Pages : 289
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780739168516
ISBN-13 : 0739168517
Rating : 4/5 (16 Downloads)

Synopsis The Harvard-Yenching Institute and Cultural Engineering by : Shuhua Fan

Through an empirical, multi-archival study of a transnational foundation—the Harvard-Yenching Institute (HYI) from the 1920s to the early 1950s—this book presents the story of transplanting Western/American humanities scholarship into Asia/China and addresses central questions in U.S.-China relations. This book focuses on the HYI’s programs in teaching, research, and publication of Chinese humanities within China to the early 1950s and, to a lesser extent, its activities at Harvard that had close ties with its China side. Through the HYI story, the author examines in depth the cooperation, tensions, adaptation, and integration in the operation, management, and governance of the HYI’s programs on both sides of the Pacific, and the complex multi-layered interactions between American educators and their Chinese partners, treating each side sympathetically but without losing sight of the big picture. As the first comprehensive study on the subject, the book adopts a concept of “cultural engineering,” which is defined as a conscious design to use cultural heritage to recreate culture in order to promote a society's development, to look at key issues in a way which accounts for interactions and initiatives on both sides and shows the difficult path toward developing common interests without neglecting tensions and conflicts, thus going beyond the various one-sided historiographies which pit Chinese against Americans or nativist rejection of modernity against cultural imperialism. The HYI experience in China from the 1920s to the early 1950s resonates down to the present day in American relations with the world. The United States faces many similar challenges in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America today as in revolutionary China of the 1920s to 1950s. Therefore, this study offers a window onto many issues relating to cross-cultural interactions today, especially between the United States and non-Western nations.

Nationalism and the State

Nationalism and the State
Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Total Pages : 488
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780226074146
ISBN-13 : 0226074145
Rating : 4/5 (46 Downloads)

Synopsis Nationalism and the State by : John Breuilly

Since its publication this important study has become established as a central work on the vast and contested subject of modern nationalism. Placing historical evidence within a general theoretical framework, John Breuilly argues that nationalism should be understood as a form of politics that arises in opposition to the modern state. In this updated and revised edition, he extends his analysis to the most recent developments in central Europe and the former Soviet Union. He also addresses the current debates over the meaning of nationalism and their implications for his position. Breuilly challenges the conventional view that nationalism emerges from a sense of cultural identity. Rather, he shows how elites, social groups, and foreign governments use nationalist appeals to mobilize popular support against the state. Nationalism, then, is a means of creating a sense of identity. This provocative argument is supported with a wide-ranging analysis of pertinent examples—national opposition in early modern Europe; the unification movement in Germany, Italy, and Poland; separatism under the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires; fascism in Germany, Italy, and Romania; post-war anti-colonialism and the nationalist resurgence following the breakdown of Soviet power. Still the most comprehensive and systematic historical comparison of nationalist politics, Nationalism and the State is an indispensable book for anyone seeking to understand modern politics.

Generations Past

Generations Past
Author :
Publisher : Ohio University Press
Total Pages : 311
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780821443439
ISBN-13 : 0821443437
Rating : 4/5 (39 Downloads)

Synopsis Generations Past by : Andrew Burton

Contemporary Africa is demographically characterized above all else by its youthfulness. In East Africa the median age of the population is now a striking 17.5 years, and more than 65 percent of the population is age 24 or under. This situation has attracted growing scholarly attention, resulting in an important and rapidly expanding literature on the position of youth in African societies. While the scholarship examining the contemporary role of youth in African societies is rich and growing, the historical dimension has been largely neglected in the literature thus far. Generations Past seeks to address this gap through a wide-ranging selection of essays that covers an array of youth-related themes in historical perspective. Thirteen chapters explore the historical dimensions of youth in nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first–century Ugandan, Tanzanian, and Kenyan societies. Key themes running through the book include the analytical utility of youth as a social category; intergenerational relations and the passage of time; youth as a social and political problem; sex and gender roles among East African youth; and youth as historical agents of change. The strong list of contributors includes prominent scholars of the region, and the collection encompasses a good geographical spread of all three East African countries.

Social Construction of International Politics

Social Construction of International Politics
Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Total Pages : 324
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0801487919
ISBN-13 : 9780801487910
Rating : 4/5 (19 Downloads)

Synopsis Social Construction of International Politics by : Ted Hopf

In this deeply researched book Ted Hopf challenges contemporary theorizing about international relations. He advances what he believes is a commonsensical notion: a state's domestic identity has an enormous effect on its international policies. Hopf argues that foreign policy elites are inextricably bound to their own societies; in order to understand other states, they must first understand themselves. To comprehend Russian and Soviet foreign policy, "it is just as important to read what is being consumed on the Moscow subway as it is to conduct research in the Foreign Ministry archives," the author says.Hopf recreates the major currents in Russian/Soviet identity, reconstructing the "identity topographies" of two profoundly important years, 1955 and 1999. To provide insights about how Russians made sense of themselves in the post-Stalinist and late Yeltsin periods, he not only uses daily newspapers and official discourse, but also delves into works intended for mass consumption--popular novels, film reviews, ethnographic journals, high school textbooks, and memoirs. He explains how the different identities expressed in these varied materials shaped the worldviews of Soviet and Russian decisionmakers. Hopf finds that continuous renegotiations and clashes among competing domestic visions of national identity had a profound effect on Soviet and Russian foreign policy. Broadly speaking, Hopf shows that all international politics begins at home.

Tribalism and Political Power in the Gulf

Tribalism and Political Power in the Gulf
Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages : 224
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781838606091
ISBN-13 : 1838606092
Rating : 4/5 (91 Downloads)

Synopsis Tribalism and Political Power in the Gulf by : Courtney Freer

Gulf societies are often described as being intensely tribal. However, in discussions of state building and national identity, the role of tribalism and tribal identity is often overlooked. This book analyses the political role of tribes in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE aiming to understand the degree to which tribes hinder or advance popular participation in government and to what extent they exert domestic political power. The research traces the historical relationship between ruling elites and nomadic tribes, and, by constructing political histories of these states and analysing the role of tribes in domestic political life and social hierarchies, reveals how they serve as major political actors in the Gulf. A key focus of the book is understanding the extent to which societies in the Gulf have become 're-bedouinised' in the modern era and how this has shaped these states' political processes and institutions. The book explores the roles that tribes play in the development of “progressive” citizenship regimes and policymaking today, and how they are likely to be influential in the future within rentier environments.

Scarcity, Choice and Public Policy in Middle Africa

Scarcity, Choice and Public Policy in Middle Africa
Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Total Pages : 335
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780520312159
ISBN-13 : 0520312155
Rating : 4/5 (59 Downloads)

Synopsis Scarcity, Choice and Public Policy in Middle Africa by : Donald Rothchild

New challenges and opportunities have come to the fore as the middle African States have consolidated their independence. In grappling with economic scarcity and restricted choice, decision-makers must transform domestic institutions and practices and reformulate their relationship to the global economy. The authors of this book believe that their efforts can be advanced by resorting to a problem-solving focus. Such an approach will, in their opinion. allow social scientists to remain true to their professional disciplines while permitting them to embrace African-designated objectives. By inquiring into decision processes and results, policy analysis seeks to identify optimal courses of action in the context of prevailing societal demands and constraints. In general, African decision-makers have adopted three choice strategies with an eye to reducing scarcity and expanding alternatives: accommodation, reorganization, and transformation. When these choice strategies are related to system goals, striking variations in preferences and priorities emerge, the most significant of which concern decision on mobilizing and distributing resources and achieving freedom from external control. In various trade--off situations (involving negotiations by producer cartels, bargaining between multinational companies and African host countries, and external economic assistance) diverse policy patters among the groups in relating to the benefits and costs of particular lines of action appear. Each choice strategy has its own benefit-cost combination. Since no approach may be equally valid cross-nationally, the decision elites of each country are left with the responsibility for determining their own goals and priorities. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.