Contemporary African Politics and Society: Ethnographic Interventions (AFS322 POL463 NT222 AS334)

Spring 2025 | Princeton University

Melusi Nkomo

This course familiarizes students with current ethnography on postcolonial African politics and society. Firstly, we must comprehend that Africa’s “place in the world” is a vital component in defining the experiences and trajectories of global events, both historical and contemporary, rather than a marginal or afterthought. The course aims to cultivate students’ critical thinking, reading, and writing abilities in relation to African politics and society. This objective will be accomplished by highlighting the diversity, complexity, and heterogeneity of African thinking, practices, and experiences, as well as the variety of local and global factors that exert influence on them or are impacted by them. By the end of the course, students will possess the critical thinking skills and analytical tools necessary to identify and refute reductionist and prejudiced narratives about Africa in addition to being able to construct their own well-informed and well-considered narratives and representations. We will also explore the notion that the current state of Africa serves as a forerunner to processes that arise in other parts of the world. Consequently, the continent is a fertile origin of theory, analysis, and practice related to contemporary global events. This course is available to all students who are interested in gaining knowledge about different facets of African political and social life, particularly in the postcolonial era.

General

Course Overview

Readings

Week 1: INTRODUCTION TO “AFRICA IN THE WORLD”

Course introduction and organization

Readings:

[\o] Wanaina, Binyavanga. 2005. “How to Write About Africa.” Granta 92.

[\a] Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. 2008. “African ‘Authenticity’ and the Biafran Experience.” Transition 99: 42–53.

Week 2: READING, WRITING, THINKING ON AND WITH AFRICA (‘Invention of Africa’)

How does Africa write and position itself in Contemporary World History?

‘Theory from the South’

Readings:

[\a] Achille Mbembe. “African Modes of Self-Writing.” Public Culture 14 (2002): 239–73.

[\c] Kwame Appiah. In My Father’s House (“The Invention of Africa,” pp. 3–27).

[\c] Valentin-Yves Mudimbe. The Invention of Africa (“Discourse of Power and Knowledge,” pp. 1–23).

Additional (Optional) Readings:

[\c] Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff. Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa (“Theory from the South,” pp. 1–49).

[\c] Paul Tiyambe Zeleza. “Of Ghettos and Academic Pimps.” pp. 391–395.

Week 3: POLITICS, IDENTITY, ETHNICITY, AND CITIZENSHIP

How do ethnic identities, citizenship discourse, and practices come to be?

What are their political uses and misuses?

Readings:

[\c] Mamdani, Mahmood. Define and Rule. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (Chapter 2: “Nativism: The Practice,” pp. 43–85; and online version)

[\a] Mafeje, Archie. “The Ideology of ‘Tribalism’.” Journal of Modern African Studies 9, no. 2 (1971).

[\o] Carola Lentz. “‘Tribalism’ and Ethnicity in Africa: A Review of Four Decades of Anglophone Research.” Cahiers des sciences humaines 31, no. 2 (1995).

Additional (Optional) Readings:

[\c] Donald Donham. Violence in a Time of Liberation: Murder and Ethnicity at a South African Gold Mine, 1994 (“Introduction,” pp. 1–10; Chapter 7: “Motives for Murder,” pp. 151–169; “Conclusion,” pp. 186–188).

Week 4: STATE, POWER, AND POLITICS IN POST-INDEPENDENCE AFRICA

Critically reading Africa’s relations and position in the world

Readings:

[\o] Frederick Cooper. Africa Since 1940, The Past of the Present (“Introduction,” pp. 1–26; “The Recurrent Crises of the Gatekeeper State,” pp. 234–290).

[\a] James Ferguson. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (“Global Shadows, Africa and the World,” pp. 1–23; “Of Mimicry and Membership, Africans and the ‘New World Society,’” pp. 155–175).

[\a] Jean-François Bayart. “Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion.” African Affairs 99 (April 2000).

Additional (Optional) Reading:

[\o] Robert H. Jackson. Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Week 5: TUTORIAL

Debating and discussion: “Africa’s Position in the World”

Students’ presentations (Group 1)

Topic outlines and discussion

Week 6: TUTORIAL

Debating and discussion: “Africa’s Position in the World”

Students’ presentations (Group 2)

Topic outlines and discussion

Week 7: THE NEGOTIATED STATE, POWER, AND AUTHORITY IN POST-COLONIAL AFRICA

How is state power and authority experienced on an everyday basis?

Readings:

[\a] Tobias Hagmann and Didier Péclard. “Negotiating Statehood, Dynamics of Power, and Domination in Africa.” pp. 1–23.

[\c] Daniel E. Agbiboa. They Eat Our Sweat: Transport Labor, Corruption, and Everyday Survival in Urban Nigeria (“Introduction: Rethinking Corruption,” pp. 1–46).

Additional (Optional) Reading:

[\a] Thomas Bierschenk and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan. States at Work: Dynamics of African Bureaucracies (“Introduction: Studying the Dynamics of African Bureaucracies,” pp. 3–33).

Week 8: EVERYDAY ENCOUNTERS WITH THE STATE AND POLITICS

How is political power encountered and negotiated?

Readings:

[\a] AbdouMaliq Simone. “Urban Circulation and the Everyday Politics of African Urban Youth: The Case of Douala, Cameroon.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29 (2005): 516–532.

[\a] Wale Adebanwi. Everyday State and Democracy in Africa, Ethnographic Encounters (“Introduction,” pp. 1–46).

Additional (Optional) Reading:

[\o] David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo. Burying SM: The Politics of Knowledge and the Sociology of Power in Africa (“Introduction,” pp. 1–10; “One Body, Two Funerals,” pp. 11–20).

Week 9: ETHNOGRAPHIES OF EXTRACTION AND POLITICS IN AFRICA

What does a prevalent and important economic activity such as mining (or other forms of natural resource extraction) mean for everyday African political experiences?

Readings:

[\c] James H. Smith. The Eyes of the World: Mining the Digital Age in the Eastern DR Congo (“Themes of Movement, Visualization, and (Dis)embodiment in Congolese Digital,” pp. 32–68).

[\a] Melusi Nkomo and Lotti Nkomo. “Politics from the Pits: Artisanal Gold Mining, Politics and the Limits of Hegemonic State Domination in Zimbabwe.” Journal of Southern African Studies 49, no. 1 (2023): 137–153.

Additional (Optional) Reading:

[\a] Pierre-Philippe Fraiture. “Digging Holes, Excavating the Present, Mining the Future: Extractivism, Time, and Memory in Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s and Sammy Baloji’s Works.” Modern & Contemporary France. DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2023.2244906.