This debate style textbook allows students to explore diverse, well-founded views on controversial African issues, pushing them to go beyond superficial interpretations and complicate and ground their understanding of the continent. From the positive images in the film Black Panther, to the derogatory remarks of former American President Donald Trump, the African continent often figures prominently in the collective, global imagination. This interdisciplinary collection covers 20 enduring and contemporary debates across a broad range of subjects affecting Africa, from development and health to agriculture, climate change, and urbanization. Each chapter has a pro and con view penned by a leading expert on the topic in an accessible and engaging style. These contrasting views on each issue are framed by an introduction that helps the student contextualize the debate and draw on further resources. Moreover, they enable readers to deepen their understanding of the topic, develop a more nuanced perspective, and foster classroom debates. This book is an excellent resource for Africa related courses across a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields including African studies, anthropology, development studies, economics, environmental studies, geography, history, international studies, political science and public health.

This second edition of TAKING SIDES: CLASHING VIEWS ON AFRICAN ISSUES presents current controversial issues in a debate-style format designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills. Each issue is thoughtfully framed with an issue summary, an issue introduction, and a postscript. An instructor's manual with testing material is available for each volume. USING TAKING SIDES IN THE CLASSROOM is also an excellent instructor resource with practical suggestions on incorporating this effective approach in the classroom. Each TAKING SIDES reader features an annotated listing of selected World Wide Web sites and is supported by our student website, www.mhcls.com/online.

Is Ali Mazrui a visonary or a "vacuous" intellectual? Is he recationary, revolutionary or essentially a radical pragmatist? These questions were the focus of a special plenary session of the Conference of the African Assocation of Political Science that took place in Harrare, Zimbabwe, in June 2003. The forum was intended to interrogate Ali Mazrui's contributions in the last forty years or so of his career as an academic. The question themselves capture the magnitude of polarization among different sections of Mazrui's audiences generated by his often provocative propositions amd prescriptions on a wide range of issues---from the role of intellectuals in Africa's transformation to the imperative of pax-Africana, from Tanza-philia to Islamophobia, from the condition of the Black woman to the destiny of the Black race. It is some the exchanges, sometimes intense and even acrimonious, arising from Mazrui's ideas on continetal and global African affairs, from the 1960s ti the present, that constitute the subject matter. Together, they are not only a celebration of Ail Mazrui's own intellectual life as one long debate, but also an intellectual mirror of the conours of some of the hotly contested terrains in Africa's quest for self-realization.

Presents opposing views on a wide variety of issues affecting Africa as a whole including: Development -- Agriculture, food and the environment -- Social issues -- Politics, goverance and conflict resolution.

Is Ali Mazrui a visionary or a vacuous' intellectual? Is he reactionary, revolutionary or essentially a radical pragmatist? These questions were the focus of a forum intended to interrogate Ali Mazrui's contributions over the last forty years or so of his career as an academic. The questions themselves capture the magnitude of the polarisation among different sections of Mazrui's audiences generated by his often provocative propositions and prescriptions on a wide range of issues - from the condition of the black woman to the destiny of the black race.'

Is Ali Mazrui a visionary or a vacuous' intellectual? Is he reactionary, revolutionary or essentially a radical pragmatist? These questions were the focus of a forum intended to interrogate Ali Mazrui's contributions over the last forty years or so of his career as an academic. The questions themselves capture the magnitude of the polarisation among different sections of Mazrui's audiences generated by his often provocative propositions and prescriptions on a wide range of issues - from the condition of the black woman to the destiny of the black race.'

The Taking Sides series is a debate-style reader designed to introduce students to current global controversies and world issues. The readings, which represent the arguments of leading political scientists, social commentators, and experts in the field, reflect a variety of viewpoints, and are presented in pro/con format. Dushkin Online is a student Web site designed to support Taking Sides titles. (www.dushkin.com/online/).

A collection of articles debating the economic, social, and political problems of Africa. Includes critical thinking activities.

Contemporary Issues: Science, Africa, and More attends to very sensitive and contemporary issues pertaining to biotechnology such as human cloning and genetic engineering. It also comprises such areas as Affirmative Action, one's right to abortion, one's right to sexual choice(s), questions relating to whether Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a hero or not and other similar but controversial issues. In addition, there are topics included in "Contemporary Issues: Science, Africa, and More" relating to matters of ethnicity, culture, and development, in particular as they impact Africa. Those studying Philosophy or Law will augment their own skills of debate and their organizing and presentation of arguments. Students of History and Social Studies, as well as students of African Studies, will benefit immensely from this text and will acquire a new outlook on culture and its usefulness in Africa. Students of Science will sharpen their knowledge and skills in the areas of biotechnology, specifically, in areas such as Molecular/Cellular Biology, and in particular in the understanding of biological concepts such as cloning, genetic engineering, Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA), stem cells, embryonic stems cells, and so on. Teachers not trained in Science or pressed with time to do research, will have a simple reference guide in "Contemporary Issues: Science, Africa, and More". One's debating skills, one's skills and knowledge in Science and overall knowledge of contemporary issues will be greatly enhanced after reading this book.

Making the radical argument that the nation-state was born of colonialism, this book calls us to rethink political violence and reimagine political community beyond majorities and minorities. In this genealogy of political modernity, Mahmood Mamdani argues that the nation-state and the colonial state created each other. In case after case around the globe—from the New World to South Africa, Israel to Germany to Sudan—the colonial state and the nation-state have been mutually constructed through the politicization of a religious or ethnic majority at the expense of an equally manufactured minority. The model emerged in North America, where genocide and internment on reservations created both a permanent native underclass and the physical and ideological spaces in which new immigrant identities crystallized as a settler nation. In Europe, this template would be used by the Nazis to address the Jewish Question, and after the fall of the Third Reich, by the Allies to redraw the boundaries of Eastern Europe’s nation-states, cleansing them of their minorities. After Nuremberg the template was used to preserve the idea of the Jews as a separate nation. By establishing Israel through the minoritization of Palestinian Arabs, Zionist settlers followed the North American example. The result has been another cycle of violence. Neither Settler nor Native offers a vision for arresting this historical process. Mamdani rejects the “criminal” solution attempted at Nuremberg, which held individual perpetrators responsible without questioning Nazism as a political project and thus the violence of the nation-state itself. Instead, political violence demands political solutions: not criminal justice for perpetrators but a rethinking of the political community for all survivors—victims, perpetrators, bystanders, beneficiaries—based on common residence and the commitment to build a common future without the permanent political identities of settler and native. Mamdani points to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa as an unfinished project, seeking a state without a nation.