The engaging and wide-ranging discussions published here explore contemporary political realities in Africa through a ‘social movement’ lens.
Detailing the nuances of social movement politics in 12 West African countries during the 2010-2013 period, they present a chronicle of the socio-political struggles that have taken place in the region. In so doing, this volume answers key questions related to these movements. What logic drives them? What forms do they take? What has been their political impact? Can we speak of a resurgence of social movements? If so, are these a response to the crisis of ‘representative democracy’? Did they give rise to new forms of expression and democratic participation? What challenges do they bring?
Discontent vis-à-vis liberalism in its political and economic dimensions seems to be the trigger of the numerous popular uprisings and protests that occur in the region. In spite of their ambiguities and limitations, these struggles currently seek to remove a double disconnect: that between citizens and the ‘representatives’ and that between the economy and society, between what capital wants and what the people aspire to.
Ndongo Samba Sylla, the editor of this volume, is a Senegalese economist, programme and research manager at the West Africa Office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Author of The Fair Trade Scandal. Marketing poverty to benefit the Rich (translated from French by Pluto Press 2014), he is the editor of “Rethinking Development” (Rosa Luxemburg Foundation 2014). His recent research work deals with the history of the word ‘democracy’.
Kate McDonnell
Chandramohan’s poetry is an extraordinary combination of a strong individual voice, crying out against a deeply felt sense of personal abuse, and a sophisticated understanding of the long history and mythology of such abuse, in India but also in the
world at large. Mythological figures like Shambuka and Urmila illluminate, and are illuminated by, modern atrocities. The poems are by turns shocking, moving, and exhilarating.
– Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of the History of Religions; also in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, the Committee on Social Thought
Kate McDonnell
[Chandramohan S]’s poems reflect the socio-political struggles of the marginalized, the working class and the nomadic outcasts of the world who are victimized and then forgotten as nations clash and wage relentless war. His work has been profiled in New Asia Writing and Mascara Literary Review. Poet Chandramohan S defines a Dalit as “someone who is politically disenfranchised, culturally interiorised and economically impoverished,” but he also firmly believes that “being a Dalit poet endows one with a tremendous potential to turn one’s own experiences and unique perspectives on history into poetry. From Edex Live