Download or read book The Politics of Everyday Crime in Africa written by Danielle C. Kushner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-12 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers distinct insights into the sources of state legitimacy in Africa by incorporating an analysis of non-state actors’ role in service delivery. The author examines how citizens’ reliance on non-governmental security actors such as street committees, neighborhood watches and community police forums, shape their attitudes toward the state and their political participation. Broadly, this project contributes to our understanding of citizens' everyday experiences of crime and violence at the local level, and why they matter, politically.

Download or read book Governing through Crime in South Africa written by Gail Super and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the historic transition to democracy in South Africa and its impact upon crime and punishment. It examines how the problem of crime has emerged as a major issue to be governed in post-apartheid South Africa. Having undergone a dramatic transition from authoritarianism to democracy, from a white minority to black majority government, South Africa provides rich material on the role that political authority, and challenges to it, play in the construction of crime and criminality. As such, the study is about the socio-cultural and political significance of crime and punishment in the context of a change of regime. The work uses the South African case study to examine a question of wider interest, namely the politics of punishment and race in neoliberalizing regimes. It provides interesting and illuminating empirical material to the broader debate on crime control in post-welfare/neoliberalizing/post transition polities.

Download or read book Hegemony Security Infrastructures and the Politics of Crime written by Gideon van Riet and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the politics of crime and the response to it in Potchefstroom, a small settler colonial city in South Africa. It draws on the city’s everyday practices and experiences to offer local bottom-up insights into security beyond the state. The book provides a comprehensive understanding of security beyond the state and how security workers and residents experience and perceive their own security practices, their daily interactions with other security providers which influences power dynamics between those who express fear through various platforms and those deemed potential criminals. It aids in re-conceptualising violence and security governance in South Africa with a view to analysing the processes of crime prevention and management, the changing nature of public and private spaces and how these spaces interact with state and local authorities. In a rigorous exploration of the ways to tackle the complex problem of crime, the book critiques an overreliance on security infrastructures such as social media, gated barriers, neighbourhood residents’ associations and private security companies. It also looks at how crime is treated as an individual as opposed to a societal problem. The book addresses the urgent need for collaboration across these fault lines to promote a more inclusive security in a broader fragmented social and political context. With a novel analytical approach based on the twin optics of infrastructure and post-structural hegemony, the book will be relevant to scholars and students of South African politics and critical security studies, as well as international audience interested in crime and private security.

Download or read book Violence and Non Violence in Africa written by Pal Ahluwalia and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-03-12 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique volume seeks both to historicize and to deconstruct the pervasive, almost ritualistic, association of Africa with forms of terrorism as well as extreme violence, the latter bordering on and including genocide. Africa is tendentiously associated with violence in the popular and academic imagination alike. Written by leading authorities in postcolonial studies and African history, as well as highly promising emergent scholars, this book highlights political, social and cultural processes in Africa which incite violence or which facilitate its negotiation or negation through non-violent social practice. The chapters cover diverse historical periods ranging from fourteenth century Ethiopia and early twentieth century Cameroon, to contemporary analyses set in Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast and South Africa. It makes a crucial contribution to a revitalized understanding of the social and historical coordinates of violence - or its absence - in African settings. Violence and Non-Violence in Africa will be of interest to students and scholars of African history and anthropology, colonialism and post-colonialism, political science and Africanist cultural studies.

Download or read book Everyday Corruption and the State written by Giorgio Blundo and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daily life in Africa is governed by the 'petty' corruption of public officials in services such as health, transport, or the judicial system. This remarkable study of everyday corruption in three African countries investigates the reasons for its extraordinary prevalence. The authors construct an illuminating analytical framework around the various forms of corruption, the corruptive strategies public officials resort to, and how these forms and strategies have become embedded in daily administrative practices. They investigate the roots of the system in the growing inability of weakened states in Africa to either reward their employees adequately or to deliver expected services. They conclude that corruption in Africa today is qualitatively different from other parts of the world in its pervasiveness, its legitimations, and its huge impact on the nature of the state.

Download or read book The Truth about Crime written by Jean Comaroff and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, renowned anthropologists Jean and John L. Comaroff make a startling but absolutely convincing claim about our modern era: it is not by our arts, our politics, or our science that we understand ourselves—it is by our crimes. Surveying an astonishing range of forms of crime and policing—from petty thefts to the multibillion-dollar scams of too-big-to-fail financial institutions to the collateral damage of war—they take readers into the disorder of the late modern world. Looking at recent transformations in the triangulation of capital, the state, and governance that have led to an era where crime and policing are ever more complicit, they offer a powerful meditation on the new forms of sovereignty, citizenship, class, race, law, and political economy of representation that have arisen. To do so, the Comaroffs draw on their vast knowledge of South Africa, especially, and its struggle to build a democracy founded on the rule of law out of the wreckage of long years of violence and oppression. There they explore everything from the fascination with the supernatural in policing to the extreme measures people take to prevent home invasion, drawing illuminating comparisons to the United States and United Kingdom. Going beyond South Africa, they offer a global criminal anthropology that attests to criminality as the constitutive fact of contemporary life, the vernacular by which politics are conducted, moral panics voiced, and populations ruled. The result is a disturbing but necessary portrait of the modern era, one that asks critical new questions about how we see ourselves, how we think about morality, and how we are going to proceed as a global society.

Download or read book Urban Violence in Africa written by Eghosa E. Osaghae and published by Ifra. This book was released on 1994 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The urban environment is a breeding ground for various forms of violence. As the hub of political, social and economic processes, the city is the meeting point for peoples from diverse cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds. It is often the venue of intense class and social struggles for scarce economic resources as well as political power. While the daily struggle for survival is usually nonconfrontational, when the economic-cum-political situation deteriorates, the city streets provide the venue for riots, demonstrations and even revolution. Because of the relative anonymity of city-life, it is also an attractive place for the more undesirable elements in society: thieves, rapists, murderers etc., who can commit crimes without fear of recognition. The urban context of violence is well established in the literature, and has been particularly emphasized by students of social change and revolution. Nevertheless, the study of urban violence qua urban violence has been rather sparse in Africa. The singular exception to this is South Africa, whose long history of structural violence dates back to the apartheid era. This phenomenon has been fairly well studied, although not specifically as urban violence. The pilot studies on three countries in this volume are part of a continent-wide comparative research project aimed at filling this huge gap in the literature. A research project on urban violence in Africa could not be more timely: All over Africa, criminal, political, religious and other social conflicts have been on the increase. The dwindling economic capacities and governance crises prevent governments from dealing effectively with these conflicts, which have often degenerated into situations of violence. These pilot studies and the larger project are expected to highlight these linkages and suggest the way forward. By their very nature, the studies are both exploratory and empirical. Problems are identified and suggestions are being made on how to overcome them. They therefore represent a necessary first step in coming to grips with issues raised by urban violence.

Download or read book National Accountability for International Crimes in Africa written by Emma Charlene Lubaale and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-02-07 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically examines the issues pertaining to the Rome Statute’s complementarity principle. The focus lies on the primacy of African states to prosecute alleged perpetrators of international crimes in their respective jurisdictions. The chapters explore states’ international and domestic obligations to hold perpetrators of international crimes to account before the national courts, and demonstrate the complexity of enforcing national accountability of alleged perpetrators of international crimes while also ensuring that post-conflict African states achieve national healing, reconciliation, and sustainable peace. The contributions reject impunity for international crimes whilst also considering these complexities. Emphasis further lies on the meaning of accountability in the context of the politics of selective international criminal justice for crimes committed before the establishment of the International Criminal Court.

Download or read book Criminology in Africa written by Tibamanya mwene Mushanga and published by Fountain Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published by the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, this revised edition remains a rare study of criminology in the African context, considered from a pan-African perspective. The paucity of information and analysis on crime in Africa, both at national and continental levels, and the ongoing concerns about crime and its negative impacts on law, human rights and development in the region, assure the work continual relevance. On a practical level if African countries are to ensure that crime is dealt with as efficiently as possible, and through prevention, so that resources can be directed to areas of greatest need, then laws and strategies at local and international levels will need to be based on the kinds of data and reflection that this collection of papers provides. Some topics covered include: traditional, colonial and present day administration of criminal justice; the problems associated with criminal justice in Madagascar; state violence in Uganda; a case study of corruption in Nigeria; criminal politics in Cameroon; drug trafficking and abuse; homicide in Sierra Leone; youth and crime; the relationship between migration, crime and delinquency; and violence as a weapon of the dispossessed. A final chapter considers the state of teaching and research in the field of criminology in Africa. The contributions are in both English and French. The editor is a criminologist and a diplomat. He has variously served as Professor of Sociology and Criminology at the universities of Makerere and Nairobi.

Download or read book Capitalism and Economic Crime in Africa written by Jörg Wiegratz and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-21 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive analysis of economic crimes and market ‘irregularities’, including matters of trickery, parallel economy, illicit trade, economies of violence and criminalisation of the poor in neoliberal Africa. It investigates economic crime as a phenomenon of neoliberal reform and transformation, and it unpacks crime as a societal – and particularly as a political-economic – phenomenon under capitalism. The book brings together a collection of research articles, briefings and updated blog posts that were published over a period of nearly 40 years (1986–2023), in the acclaimed journal Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) and on its website roape.net. Featuring contributions from leading experts in the field, including a foreword by Yusuf K. Serunkuma and an afterword by Laureen Snider, this volume explores what these crimes have to do with, and can tell us about, state-business relations, regulation, capitalist transformation, and the corporation on the continent, shedding light on the co-production of the crimes by a range of actors from the realms of business, politics, state and international development, including major reform advocates such as international financial institutions (IFIs) and other donors. It responds to the imperative to advance the analysis of the link between capitalism and crime in Africa and to locate capitalism more centrally in the analysis of economic crimes, as more African countries move from being societies with capitalism to capitalist societies. Illustrating the relevance of African countries to debates in criminology, corporate crime, state crime, crimes of the powerful and illegality, this volume engages with and mobilises a variety of literatures to analyse economic crimes as phenomena of global and local capitalism and provides readers from academia, government, business, media, civil society and education a striking source of information and analysis.

Download or read book Rick Turner s Politics as the Art of the Impossible written by Michael Onyebuchi Eze and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2024-07-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisits the work of Rick Turner, a South African political theorist, and addresses contemporary debates Rick Turner was a South African academic and anti-apartheid activist who rebelled against the apartheid state at the height of its power. For this he was assassinated in 1978, at just 32 years of age, but his life and work are testimony to the power of philosophical thinking for humans everywhere. Turner chose to live freely in an unfree time and argued for a non-racial, socialist future in a context where this seemed unimaginable. This book takes seriously Rick Turner’s challenge that political theorising requires thinking in a utopian way. Turner’s seminal book The Eye of the Need: Towards a Participatory Democracy laid out some of his most potent ideas on a radically different political and economic system. His demand was that we work to escape the limiting ideas of the present, carefully design a just future based on shared human values, and act to make it a reality, both politically and in our daily lives. The contributors to this volume engage critically with Turner’s work on race relations, his relationship with Steve Biko, his views on religion, education and gender oppression, his participatory model of democracy, and his critique of enduring forms of poverty and economic inequality. They show how, in his life and work, Turner modeled how we can dare to be free and how hope can return, as the future always remains open to human construction. This book makes an important contribution to contemporary thinking and activism where the need for South Africans to define their understanding of their greater common good is of crucial importance.

Download or read book The Criminalization of the State in Africa written by Jean-Fran= Bayart (LPcois) and published by James Currey. This book was released on 1999 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text examines the growth of fraud and smuggling in African states, the plundering of natural resources, the privatization of state institutions, the development of an economy of plunder and the growth of private armies. It suggests that the state itself is becoming a vehicle for organized criminal activity.

Download or read book Witchcraft Violence and Democracy in South Africa written by Adam Ashforth and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2005-01-15 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Large numbers of people in Soweto & other parts of South Africa live in fear of witchcraft, presenting complex & unique problems for the government. Adam Ashforth explores the challenge of occult violence & the spiritual insecurity that it engenders to democratic rule in South Africa.

Download or read book Democracy in Ghana written by Jeffrey W. Paller and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-07 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed account of politics in Ghana's urban neighborhoods, providing a new way to understand African democracy and development.

Download or read book Contemporary Issues in Criminology in Africa written by Elijah Tukwariba Yin and published by Nova Science Publishers. This book was released on 2021 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is a collection of both empirical and theoretical chapters on some significant and enduring issues in Africa. The various chapter submissions are compelling and do make substantive contributions to the literature on criminology in Africa. The first chapter contends that crimes motivated by superstitious beliefs occur in wide-ranging contexts, and are often driven by socio-economic and political factors. The most vulnerable members of African communities are the primary victims of these crimes. Given the clandestine nature of superstitious induced crimes, it is imperative and relevant for government agencies in African countries to strategically collaborate with media and civil society organisations to launch massive public campaigns against all forms of superstition-driven crimes. The second chapter highlights some ethical and administrative challenges that a researcher could encounter in his/her quest to study incarcerated offenders. The study concludes that, while it is crucial to conduct a prison-based study, the researcher would have to adapt to institutional constraints of the respondents, to undertake considerable impression management and negotiations with both staff and inmates, and factor in the heightened security concerns that may affect the quality of the study and the safety of the researcher. The third chapter examines crimes against the state and the extent to which such issues are being tackled in Ghana. It concludes that the initiatives by various regimes to prosecute and to punish administrative crimes have yielded nominal outcomes. The fourth chapter probes the prison condition in South Africa (SA). The author argues that the prison situation is no better than those in other African countries. However, its historical racist system sets it apart from other African countries. The chapter concludes that the post-apartheid regimes' prison ideals have yet to be realized. The fifth chapter explores roles played by education, civil society organisations, and state institutions in the democratization and strengthening of the Ghanaian Criminal Justice System. Since Ghana relaunched its democratization initiative in 1992, the country has sustained successful presidential and parliamentary elections. Marked improvements have been seen in terms of human rights observation, freedoms, political tolerance, and openness to the global socio-economic and political landscape, yet there is still more room for improvement. The final chapter examines the lived experiences of students who have suffered crime on the University of Cape Coast campus. The analyzed data showed that factors such as negligence on the part of students, poor security services, and poor lighting systems on campus were the major contributing factors of crime (or conducive conditions for criminal activities). The study recommends that proper security measures such as the provision of tools and logistics and increasing the number of security personnel should be considered. This book is relevant for academicians in criminology, criminal lawyers, civil society organizations, policy makers, and human rights advocates"--

Download or read book Political Identity and Social Change written by Jamie Frueh and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political Identity and Social Change builds upon the constructivist theory of political identity to explore the social changes that accompanied the end of apartheid in South Africa. To gain a better understanding of how structures of identity changed along with the rest of South Africa's institutions, Frueh analyzes three social and political conflicts: the Soweto uprisings of 1976, the reformist constitutional debates of 1983–1984, and post-apartheid crime. Analyzing these conflicts demonstrates how identity labels function as structures of social discourse, how social activity is organized through these structures, and how both the labels and their power have changed during the course of South Africa's transition. In this way, the book contributes not only to the study of South African society, but also provides lessons about the relationship between identity and social change.

Download or read book States of Violence written by Edna G. Bay and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "By focusing on the participation and consequences for ordinary people, this collection offers a fresh perspective on the eruption of violence in sub-Saharan Africa. None of the contributions takes the easy way out--either by claiming any special propensity of Africans to violence, or by calling attention to titillating aspects of the violence itself. Rather, they offer 'thick descriptions' of particular violent episodes to develop their contexts and the larger causes that made them happen. The case studies, drawn from field research in Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, search for the meaning of specific instances of collective violence to the individuals caught up in them."--Nelson Kasfir, Dartmouth College "This coherently assembled set of contributions illuminates crucial aspects of the disorder and insecurity afflicting much of contemporary Africa. The potent social force of a marginalized youth generation is explored in its different manifestations in a variety of settings by an excellent roster of scholars."--Crawford Young, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison "Unmatched in its ethnographic depth and attention to critical dimensions of African conflicts.... This volume cuts across the continent and across several intertwining themes to provide highly contextual analyses within a well-definedframework." --Catherine Besteman, Colby College, editor of Violence: A Reader