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"Don't sit on your stool, watching life go by," insists Soutcho Lydie Touré. In this collection of reflections written over a decade, she explores insecurities and vulnerabilities, with which many a reader will relate. She shares about loneliness and feeling different and goes on to ponder everyday life in "Politicking" and "VDN" - a memorable highway in Dakar which pedestrians must cross "under the mocking smile of the sun." Touré draws on experiences and insights from her life betwixt and between West Africa and North America. In her verses, spiced with nature, color, joy, humor and fantasy, questions and answers compete equally for the reader's attention. A veritable source of confidence in the force of life and love. Confidence that makes one grow wings.

Corrupt business and management practices exist at all levels within the public hospital system (PHS) in Cameroon and are of increasing concern among the polity as the perceptions of key stakeholders who work within the system has not been examined for helping to diminish it. In particular, these practices are affecting the well-being and socioeconomic development of its denizens. The purpose of this research was to provide further understanding of how to diminish corrupt business and management practices that continue to lead to increased monetary cost to individuals and delays in seeking preventative care within the PHS. Stakeholder theory provided a starting point for understanding and explaining the perceptions of stakeholders about corruption within the context of agency governance. The results indicated that staff/client influence rather than only lack of motivation was a rationale for accepting bribes. It also revealed diversion, where physicians keep drugs and sell to patients.

Botlhodi - The Abomination is a powerful story about British colonialism and its aftermath in Molepolole, Botswana. It is a compelling juxtaposition between Traditional Setswana ways and Christianity. The protagonist, Modiko, finds himself conflicted when both his strict father, a pastor of Motlhaoetla church, and his grandfather, an unapologetic traditionalist, expect him to choose between Setswana tradition and Christianity. Torn between the two worlds, Modiko at the end makes an informed personal decision. The road is not smooth though, as he experiences persecution, bullying, abuse, witchcraft and nightmares along the way. Other characters in the novel engage in some serious conversations that allude to some important historical developments. In this work, T.J. Pheto presents to his readers a hilarious story pregnant with themes of identity, social change, discrimination, racism, colonialism, love and, 'tradition' versus 'modernity'. This pioneering literary response to British colonialism in Botswana is an outstanding postcolonial fiction of resistance. Pheto's humor makes the book all the more hard for a reader to put down.

It took two years for this collection of poems to see the light of day. Two years. Two whole years. But two whole years of thinking, feeling and working through and from one of the strangest and certainly most torturous facts of life on Earth, and one of the least explored themes in the world of the modern woman of Africa, or my world, at least. This is the fact of Death. But not the fact of the death of all. Not the fact of the death of any. It is that of the modern man, the man, of Africa.

Wholesome Whole Poetry is a collection of poems that capture the true essence of a person who has learned to give voice to emotions and to personify such emotions from personal experiences. It is a riveting work that speaks to the human condition.

Genocide has been called the 'crime of crimes' and an 'odious scourge.' With millions of victims in the last century alone, it is one of the great moral and political challenges of our age. Despite the challenges, such human cruelty has not stopped. The 21st century is recording its first genocide in Cameroon with only a scanty few raising a finger. The significance of the 'odious scourge' has compelled Tatah Mentan to research on the trajectory of the 'scourge' in Africa over the past centuries. The targeted ongoing mass killings in Cameroon, like those of Rwanda before, have driven the scholar to expand his focus beyond the Holocaust, which had long been the primary case study.In this book, Tatah Mentan explains that these cases were not merely a human catastrophe, nor an atavistic reversion to the barbarism of a past epoch, but rather an event produced by the unfolding of the logic of capitalism itself. This book therefore critically explores the essence of capitalism as genocide in Africa and its consequences on Africans during their colonisation and incorporation into the European-dominated racialised capitalist world system in the late 18th century. It uses multidimensional, comparative methods, and critical approaches to explain the dynamic interplay among social structures, human agency, and terror to explain the connection between structural capitalist terrorism and the emergence of the capitalist world system. Tatah Mentan proposes a genuine participatory democratic alternative to the unending genocide nightmares. Nurturing participatory attitudes, would facilitate and reinforce self-management, and educate and empower individuals and dispossessed and under-represented communities to seek self-determination and democratic participation in the political arena. Tatah Mentan concludes that the same fundamental commitments that urge humanity to promote participatory political democracy should compel them to promote truly inclusive economic democracy as well.Political economists, historians, students, corporate managers and policy makers at national and international levels are invited to share the insights of this book.

Humanity has extensively exploited natural and physical resources, since the Industrial Revolution in Europe. A geological era, now called the Anthropocene, has been coined in environmental and developmental circles, to mark the increased domination of humanity on Earth and its resources. Today, the ecological footprint on the fragile planet continues to increase. Mass industrialisation, like what China is doing and pushing for, is one of the drivers for increased urbanisation that results in increased demand for land. It is also the stimulus behind increased deforestation, overfishing, and pollution. As the fragility of the Earth increases, global bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are pushing to reduce the Earth's temperature. Human efforts to manage the problem cascade from a global to a regional, to a national, as well as to much localised scales. Missing though are nuanced contributions at national and community levels, which this book is an attempt to bridge. The nagging sense of responsibility is what this book explores under the label of "sustainability ethic". As a case study, the book examines the use of sustainability ethic in the management of the physical, infrastructural and natural resources of Zimbabwe. This ethic is built on pillars that include participation of people (households) in their pursuit for sustainable livelihoods, appropriate technology, tools and techniques for environmental protection. It also hinges on stewardship and structures, institutions, policies and processes of governance and sustainability. There are also the aspects of ethics, laws and indigenous technical knowledge for sustainability, capacity building and education plans and programmes for sustainability and population and demographic determinants, processes and outcomes for sustainability. The book is a timely contribution to an urgent global concern and climate change debate.

Très peu de personnes auront eu à traverser des temps aussi troublés que ceux que vécut Agathe Uwilingiyimana comme Premier ministre du Rwanda avant le génocide.Au sujet de cette femme de tête, ses idées et son action, bien des questions demeurent sans réponse. Qui l'a assassinée et pourquoi ? Aurait-elle tenté un putsch contre le Président Habyarimana ? Aurait-elle trempé dans le complot visant à assassiner ce dernier ? Comment entendait-elle sauver le pays du chaos et de la descente aux enfers après la disparition inopinée du Président de la République qu'elle avait si âprement combattu ? Était-elle maîtresse de ses décisions ou était-elle désinformée ou manipulée ? Pourquoi et comment cette enseignante récemment embarquée en politique a-t-elle été la cible privilégiée de la presse de caniveau, entre 1992 et 1994 ? Quel comportement exceptionnel a-t-elle eu pour que la patrie reconnaissante l'élève au rang des héros dans l'ordre d'Imena ? Son royaume d'enfance, son adolescence et sa jeunesse préfiguraient-ils un destin si singulier ?À travers lectures, souvenirs, témoignages et anecdotes, son ami d'enfance nous offre un récit édifiant, court mais dense, qui nous fait découvrir la vie et la personnalité complexe et polymorphe de cette flamme éphémère dans la nuit rwandaise.

Colonial scholars have taken immense pleasure in portraying Africans as possessed by spirits but as lacking possession and ownership of their resources, including land. Erroneously deemed to be thoroughly spiritually possessed but lacking senses of material possession and ownership of resources, Africans have been consistently dispossessed and displaced from the era of enslavement, through colonialism, to the neocolonial era. Delving into the historiography of dispossession and displacement on the continent of Africa, and in particular in Zimbabwe, this book also tackles contemporary forms of dispossession and displacement manifesting in the ongoing transnational corporations land grabs in Africa, wherein African peasants continue to be dispossessed and displaced.Focusing on the topical issues around dispossession and repossession of land, and the attendant displacements in contemporary Zimbabwe, the book theorises displacements from a decolonial Pan-Africanist perspective and it also unpacks various forms of displacements - corporeal, noncorporeal, cognitive, spiritual, genealogical and linguistic displacements, among others. The book is an excellent read for scholars from a variety of disciplines such as Geography, Sociology, Social Anthropology, History, Linguistics, Development Studies, Science and technology Studies, Jurisprudence and Social Theory, Law and Philosophy. The book also offers intellectual grit for policy makers and implementers, civil society organisations including activists as well as thinkers interested in decolonisation and transformation.

Anthropological reflections on citizenship focus on themes such as politics, ethnicity and state management. Present day scholarship on citizenship tends to problematise, unsettle and contest often taken-for- granted conventional connotations and associations of citizenship with imagined culturally bounded political communities of rigidly controlled borders. This book, the result of two years of research conducted by South African and Japanese scholars within the framework of a bilateral project on citizenship in the 21st century, contributes to such ongoing efforts at rethinking citizenship globally, and as informed by experiences in Africa and Japan in particular. Central to the essays in this book is the concept of flexible citizenship, predicated on a recognition of the histories of mobility of people and cultures, and of the shaping and reshaping of places and spaces, and ideas of being and belonging in the process. The book elucidates the contingency of political membership, relationship between everyday practices and political membership, and how citizenship is the mechanism for claiming and denying rights to various political communities. 'Self' requires 'others' to construct itself, a reality that is subject to renegotiation as one continues to encounter others in a world characterised by myriad forms of interconnecting mobilities, both global and local. Citizenship is thus to be understood within a complex of power relationships that include ones formed by laws and economic regimes on a local scale and beyond. Citizenship in Africa, Japan and, indeed, everywhere is best explored productively as lying between the open-ended possibilities and tensions interconnecting the global and local.

Tracing recent bouts of globalised Mugabephobia to Robert Mugabe's refusal to be neoimperially penetrated, this book juxtaposes economic liberalisation with the mounting liberalisation of African orifices. Reading land repossession and economic structural adjustment programmes together with what they call neoimperial structural adjustment of African orifices, the authors argue that there has been liberalisation of African orifices in a context where Africans are ironically prevented from repossessing their material resources. Juxtaposing recent bouts of Mugabephobia with discourses on homophobia, the book asks why empire prefers liberalising African orifices rather than attending to African demands for restitution, restoration and reparations. Noting that empire opposes African sovereignty, autonomy, and centralisation of power while paradoxically promoting transnational corporations' centralisation of power over African economies, the book challenges contemporary discourses about shared sovereignty, distributed governance, heterarchy, heteronomy and onticology. Arguing that colonialists similarly denied Africans of their human essence, the tome problematises queer sexualities, homosexuality, ecosexuality, cybersexuality and humanoid robotic sexuality all of which complicate supposedly fundamental distinctions between human beings and animals and machines.Provocatively questioning queer sexuality and liberalised orifices that serve to divert African attention from the more serious unfinished business of repossessing material resources, the book insightfully compares Robert Gabriel Mugabe, Thomas Sankara and Julius Kambarage Nyerere who emphasised the imperatives of African autonomy, ownership, control and sovereignty over natural resources. Observing Africans' interest in repossessing ownership and control over their resources, the book wonders why so much, queer, international attention is focused on foisting queer sexuality while downplaying more burning issues of resource repossession, human dignity, equality and equity craved by Africans for whom life is not confined to sexuality. With insights for scholars in sociology, development studies, law, politics, African studies, anthropology, transformation, decolonisation and decoloniality, the book argues that liberal democracy is a façade in a world that is actually ruled through criminocracy.

This book provides readers with the knowledge necessary to fully understand how international law carved the history and life of Namibia. It observes that Namibia has benefited from and contributed to international law in a way that shaped that country's political and socio-economic development and to an extent that few other countries experienced.For many a year since Namibia achieved Independence on 21 March 1990 and established the Faculty of Law at the University of Namibia in 1992, students and lecturers have relied on materials from South Africa, despite the fact that Namibian law has since then grown apart from its South African heritage. It is high time for lecturers and students in Namibia to teach and learn with a textbook that analyses international law from the distinct standpoint of Namibia and that views the nation's legal interactions with other states through its own prism! And this textbook aims to do just that.Through its 19 chapters, this book informs readers about international law, its sources, international treaties, Namibian statehood, dispute resolution, the use of force, human rights, Namibia's economic relations with the outside world (including the Southern African Customs Union), and the law of the sea.Namibian courts have in their own way followed the rules of international law scrupulously, but - as this book shows - international law nonetheless remains the source of Namibian law that lawyers apply the least. Accordingly, this book underlines the significance, the practical utility, and the relevance of international law in the unique Namibian context.

This book explores a collective understanding of the perception and treatment of borders in Africa. The notion of boundary is universal as boundaries are also an important part of human social organization. Through the ages, boundaries have remained the 'container' by which national space is delineated and 'contained'. For as long as there has been human society based on territoriality and space, there have been boundaries. With their dual character of exclusivism and inclusivism, states have proven to adopt a more structural approach to the respect of the former in consciousness of the esteem of international law governing sovereignty and territorial integrity. However, frontier peoples and their realities have often opted for the latter situation, imposing a more functionalist perception of these imaginary lines and prompting a border opinion shift to a more blurring form of representation and meaning in most African communities.This collective multidisciplinary effort of understanding how tangible and intangible borders have influenced Africa's attitude and existence for ages is worthy in its own rights. The difference between what borders are and what they are not to a people is the mere product of their own estimations and practices, a disposition that leads the contributors to this book to study borders beyond states or nations and how borders are crossed or transferred from one point to the other for the convenience of their histories and being.

In this book, Chris Mabeza takes the reader through a breath taking journey of the vicissitudes of village life in Zimbabwe from the colonial days to the present. This, at a time when telling African stories is enjoying a Risorgimento. Thus, in essence Mabeza "throws his fingers in the wind" and catches the zeitgeist of African storytelling. The stories leave the reader spellbound. Dispatches from the village has its finger on the pulse of the people. This gorgeous collection of short stories is a product of immersive thick descriptions of rural life as it intersects with urban life. The author grapples with the effects of what has generally been observed as the "brutish and nasty new normal". The rural landscape has not been spared the vagaries of this new normal. However, when overwhelmed by the tsunami of negative news that permeate our media, pick-up Dispatches from the village to soothe yourself.

Sierra Leone experienced 11 years' civil war after the incursion of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) from adjacent Liberia. The war of Sierra Leone is one of the most researched in Africa. However, the foci of studies are mostly on the RUF. Other armed groups are not sufficiently studied. This book focuses on the governmental side of the Kamajor and the Civil Defence Force (CDF). Kamajors were community-based vigilantes mobilised by paramount chiefs in various Mende communities. During the course of the war, the government organised Kamajors into a pro-governmental militia, the CDF. This book examines how human networks worked in the course of the formation of Kamajor and of the CDF. Even though the roles of human networks have been discussed in the realm of African politics, they have been left hypothetical. Few studies demonstrate the whole picture on how neopatrimonialism, patron-client relations or informal networks function within an organisation.This book describes the course of Kamajor/CDF along with functions of the human networks. In the networks, the threads of human relations are interwoven by subsuming the local, the international and the global dimensions of the armed conflict. Some connect to governmental figures. Others have transnational networks in adjacent Liberia. In the changing situations of the war, some of the relations are maintained, while some relations are disintegrated. Those who emerge as prominent figures in the Kamajor/CDF use their own human networks to obtain resources for the Kamajor/CDF, which in turn, afford themselves higher positions in the force.

As the world today faces messy problems, what in some circles has been called global weirding, the term resilience has taken centre stage. This is crunch time -as we grapple with the negative effects of both climate change and urbanisation. Some commentators have compared the huge problems we face today to Oom Schalk's proverbial leopard waiting for us in the withaak's shade. Do we endlessly count Oom Schalk's proverbial leopard's spots? This is the question posed by a stellar cast of academics, researchers, and experts whose contributions in this text is a rallying cry for action to build resilience to the challenging impact of urbanisation and climate change. To that end, this volume gives hope about the potential for human agency. Our challenge however, is to re-examine our values, to change our conservation conversation and return to a more wise and holistic understanding of ourselves and our place in the Universe. Perhaps, then only can the obituaries on our demise stay locked in the drawer.

Les questions du genre, du mariage et de la famille sont au cœur des batailles culturelles et sociales les plus rudes de l'époque contemporaine qui débouchent dans beaucoup de pays africains sur des réformes légales et sociétales dictées par le modèle néolibéral des droits humains. La plupart de ces réformes, souvent conduites par l'Etat, provoquent des résistances dont les principales figures sont souvent religieuses. Quel est le mode opératoire de ces réformes ? Quels sont les rapports de force qui les structurent ? Comment sont-elles perçues et reçues par les sociétés africaines? Quels sont les termes des résistances religieuses ? Ces questions traduisent l'originalité de ce volume qui se penche sur les marges de docilité et d'indocilité des sociétés africaines aux réformes juridiques visant à promouvoir le modèle néolibéral de la sexualité, du mariage et de la famille. L'accent est mis sur la centralité de l'Etat et les rapports de force qu'il entretient avec les autres parties prenantes dans la déconstruction et reconstruction des liens sociaux de genre. Peu sont les études empiriques qui illustrent les rapports de force entre l'État et les forces religieuses dans la production normative relative au genre. Le présent ouvrage est le produit d'un colloque scientifique organisé à l'Institut de la Dignité et des Droits Humains du Centre de Recherche et d'Action pour la Paix (CERAP) à Abidjan, du 1er au 2 juin 2017, sur le thème suivant : « Etat, Religions et Genre en Afrique Occidentale et Centrale ». L'objectif principal du colloque était non seulement de valoriser les résultats d'un projet de recherche sur la réception de la récente modification du code de la famille en Côte d'Ivoire mais aussi d'élargir la discussion à des études de cas similaires dans d'autres pays de l'Afrique Occidentale et Centrale tels que le Sénégal, le Niger, Bénin, Le Cameroun et le Mali.

Living (In)Dependence: Critical Perspectives on Global Interdependence embraces a multidisciplinary approach to the interconnectedness of independence and dependence in every ramification of the words. These scholars and academics, from different disciplinary area, examine "independence" & "dependence", not simply as polar opposites in their Saussurian sense but as a binary embedded in the concept of "independence". Herein, scholars have had to challenge their perceived or preconceived notions about "Independence" and "dependence" from their respective disciplinary discursive perspectives. This book is a rare gift to the curious reader thirsty for knowledge and understanding of the underlying heightened and drummed rhetoric on exclusion; which rhetoric is aimed at legitimizing nationalist and isolationist positions and, with exclusionists clamoring for walls separating people who supposedly live in a global village.Living (In)Dependence: Critical Perspectives on Global Interdependence is a timely reminder, especially when the world is at cross purposes with generation old alliances falling apart like the Berlin Wall that less than 30 years ago fell to mark an end to sadness and separation that same engendered from 1949-1989. In short, this study explores the binary of life experience of independence and that of dependence-as constituent flipsides of a coin whose meaning can only be grasped by taking a closer look at each facet.

The Tears of the Earth, without pretence, practically holds court for environmental or eco-concerns with global ripples, staking a legitimate claim as a landmark tributary to the mainstream discourse and current debates on global warming and climate change, especially by portraying Africa, still trapped and anaesthetized in the web of post-colonial vassalage, compelled to mortgage her natural resources for savage exploitation with little or no regard to either environmental impact or sustainability. The poems are an expression of the author's noble indignation at society's governing elite for allowing collective natural resources "Mother Earth' to be callously butchered, so ingloriously ransacked, liberally poisoned and gagged "Beyond Recognition" for mere lucre or "Midas' touch" which procures and sustains the infernal binary of "Power and Pride" deified by our societies.

"In this wide-ranging collection of forty-three poems, John Ngong Kum Ngong undertakes a critical and acerbic diagnosis of the socio-political situation in postcolonial Africa through a deceptively simple, aesthetically complex, and ideologically intriguing style. The multi-facetted and interrelated motifs of 'shadows' and 'seasons', together with a plethora of literary devices such as paradox, suspense, metaphors, allusions, personification, irony, satire, humour, and contrast, are the weapons through which the poet drives home his message. The poems, in this collection, are not only politically 'correct' but are also artistically profound." - Zuhmboshi Eric Nsuh, PhDLecturer, Literary Critic, and Political Analyst

What do you do when you realize that one of your most fundamental ideas about yourself is actually false? How do you resituate yourself in a world that has been turned upside down? This book charts the early stage of the author's journey of gender transition, as well as her process of settling down in South Africa as a fledgling academic. The story is a deeply personal one, but also one that will resonate with other transgender people, migrants, academic hopefuls, and border-crossers of all kinds. As a story of coming to terms with an identity in flux, it illustrates the fundamental open-endedness of all human identities.

The management of urban waste constitutes one of the major environmental challenges facing African cities in general and Cameroon in particular. Unprecedented population growth and changes in consumption patterns and lifestyles have led to increased waste generation. Municipal solid waste management efforts lag behind the rate of waste generation with attendant environmental and public health risks. The activities, the gender dynamics and politics at the pools of waste generation, particularly the households and markets largely influence the outcome of waste management strategies and policies. This book brings out the gender dimension of municipal solid waste generation and management in the City of Bamenda. It is hoped that the findings revealed and proposals made from the study will be employed by municipal authorities in Cameroon and beyond to enhance waste management efforts.

This book on decolonising education chastises, heartens and invites academics to seriously commence academic and intellectual manumission by challenging the current toxic episteme - the Western dominant Grand Narrative that embeds, espouses and superimposes itself on others. It exhorts African scholars in particular to unite and address the bequests of colonialism and its toxic episteme by confronting the internalised fabrications, hegemonic dominance, lies and myths that have caused many conflicts in world history. Such a toxic episteme founded on problematic experiments, theories and praxis has tended to license unsubstantiated views and stereotypes of others as intellectually impotent, moribund and of inferior humanity. The book invites academics and intellectuals to commit to a healthy dialogue among the world's competing traditions of knowing and knowledge production to produce a truly accommodating and inclusive grand narrative informed by a recognition of a common and shared humanity.

This innovative book is an open invitation to a rich and copious meal of imagination, senses and desires. It argues that cannibalism is practised by all and sundry. In love or in hate, fear or fascination, purposefulness or indifference, individuals, cultures and societies are actively cannibalising and being cannibalised. The underlying message of: 'Own up to your own cannibalism!' is convincingly argued and richly substantiated. The book brilliantly and controversially puts cannibalism at the heart of the self-assured biomedicine, globalising consumerism and voyeuristic social media. It unveils a vast number of prejudices, blind spots and shameful othering. It calls on the reader to consider a morality and an ethics that are carefully negotiated with required sensibility and sensitivity to the fact that no one and no people have the monopoly of cannibalisation and of creative improvisation in the game of cannibalism. The productive, transformative and (re)inventive understanding of cannibalism argued in the book should bring to the fore one of the most vital aspects of what it means to be human in a dynamic world of myriad interconnections and enchantments. To nourish and cherish such a productive form of cannibalism requires not only a compassionate generosity to let in and accommodate the stranger knocking at the door, but also, and more importantly, a deliberate effort to reach in, identify, contemplate, understand, embrace and become intimate with the stranger within us, individuals and societies alike.

Poverty has long been a developmental challenge in the Global South in general and in sub-Saharan Africa in particular. With a fifth, mainly from the rural areas of the world, living below the poverty datum line, the world has a huge challenge to reduce poverty, worse still to eradicate it from the face of the earth. A target was set through the 2000-2015 United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and subsequently through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to reduce poverty by at least half by the years 2015 and 2030 respectively. In pursuing this goal, livelihoods of poor people though meeting with serious challenges, especially in rural areas, play a major role. This book explores the role played by people-centred Public Works Programmes in the fight against poverty and the development of rural communities in Africa. Whereas a number of countries in Africa have been approaching the issue of poverty through several interventions including Public Works Schemes, it is sad to note that poverty still tops the rankings among numerous economic and social challenges facing the continent. One wonders whether the public works strategy is misguided, misconstrued or mismanaged considering that its main objective is to make the unemployed more employable through the provision of temporary employment and training opportunities. The book concludes that Public Works Programmes, if well managed and people-centred, are one of the best ways to alleviate and even eradicate poverty in rural Africa, as it allows governments to make partnership with people, and facilitates implementation while giving space for economic self-sustenance, growth and development.

No doubt. North-South relationship involving poor and rich countries is very convoluted; based and built on exploitative, unequal and unfair equilibria. It is purely jockey-horse-like connubium that serves one party as it disserves the other. This is why deconstructing and detoxifying this relationship is sine qua non. The author argues that the parties in this relationship must revisit it to make sure it equally benefits both for the benefit of the whole world. Importantly, the major question posed is: Why did the two global halves maintain and tolerate such toxic rapport while knowingly it is but colonial and unjust? The question is answered in this academic treatise which asks the parties to hark back; and thereby do justice to each other by viewing themselves as humans with shared needs and future whose lesson from the past may buttress them to be major thespians in realising world peace. This is because their parasitic relationship has fueled many conflicts revolving around the struggle for controlling resources in the South in order to sell to the North.

In spite of South Africa's progressive constitution, citizen's intolerance of non-citizens, refugees and economic migrants has escalated in recent years. What is more, xenophobic attacks are covered in the public discourse as mere episodes of crisis and often rather fuel rhetoric of national machismo than leading to an acknowledgement of the stories and experiences of people seeking refuge and being exposed to hostility on an everyday basis. This ethnography engages with the strategies employed by a group of refugee men from different African countries in surviving and stabilising their existence in the 'mother city' Cape Town in the face of precarity. It grapples with questions of how the men manage to bring about certainty in the face of unpredictability and extends its focus to the men's dreams and the modes by which these are sought to be achieved. It thereby highlights the ways in which objectifications as refugees and less-than-human are somewhat transcended by navigating spaces with care, purpose and imagination.

The book examines how men and women in Manenberg township, on Cape Town's inner periphery, manoeuvre to re-define themselves as gendered persons deserving of dignity, through the quotidian practices of ordentlikheid or respectability. Salo shows how reclamation of dignity is an intergenerational and gendered process that is messy and uneven, involves the expression of often-brutal physical and social exclusion of individuals through embodied and social violence. Theoretically, the narrative makes visible the careful, painstaking processes of place making and claiming dignity by men and women in a place represented as a wasteland in the dominant discourse of grand apartheid and in the contemporary neo-liberal turn in Cape Town.

This book discusses the seminal role played by Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, in the founding of American-style public relations - persuasive communication through manipulation of symbols - and his huge (and cynical) impact on the American economic and political scene. It provides a substantiated and convincing explanation for what is happening today in Donald Trump's America. In the form of a history of ideas, the book makes clear that the present Trumpian manipulation of democracy and what it means to be American has a long pre-history and continues to go through different phases, involving the cultivation and institutionalisation of strong bonds between business and politics. The book shows how this is intimately linked with a science, intellectualism and practice informed by a series of binary oppositions in human action and interaction (e.g. rationality and irrationality, reason and emotion, mind and body, brain and heart, insider and outsider, us and them) and how unpredictable human nature really is. It makes a convincing argument that being human depends on how successfully we are able to negotiate such apparently contradictory binaries with the intricacies and dynamism of human agency. It is rich and thought provoking and very timely, given the exclusionary politics of fear, anger, hate and nativism we see unfolding not only in the USA but all over the world.

La radicalisation est devenue un mot désignant notre monde en couleurs négatives. Ce livre cherche à comprendre ce que c'est que la radicalisation au Sahel et aux Pays-Bas ? Est-elle seulement négative? Quelle diversité de processus sociaux et politiques se trouve derrière ce concept? Les biographies de personnes nous dévoilent les messages cachés dans ce genre de dynamiques. Y a-t-il au fond un désir de changement social? Autant de questions soulevées, traitées, (partiellement) répondues, et autant d'autres que la lecture de ces recueils de textes aussi divers qu'intéressants, ne manqueront pas de susciter au lecteur contemporain.