Morality and Economic Growth in Rural West Africa

Morality and Economic Growth in Rural West Africa PDF Author: Paul Clough
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782382712
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
The land, labor, credit, and trading institutions of Marmara village, in Hausaland, northern Nigeria, are detailed in this study through fieldwork conducted in two national economic cycles - the petroleum-boom prosperity (in 1977-1979), and the macro-economic decline (in 1985, 1996 and 1998). The book unveils a new paradigm of economic change in the West African savannah, demonstrating how rural accumulation in a polygynous society actually limits the extent of inequality while at the same time promoting technical change. A uniquely African non-capitalist trajectory of accumulation subordinates the acquisition of capital to the expansion of polygynous families, clientage networks, and circles of trading friends. The whole trajectory is driven by an indigenous ethics of personal responsibility. This model disputes the validity of both Marxian theories of capitalist transformation in Africa and the New Institutional Economics.

Morality and Economic Growth in Rural West Africa

Morality and Economic Growth in Rural West Africa PDF Author: Paul Clough
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782382712
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 468

Get Book

Book Description
The land, labor, credit, and trading institutions of Marmara village, in Hausaland, northern Nigeria, are detailed in this study through fieldwork conducted in two national economic cycles - the petroleum-boom prosperity (in 1977-1979), and the macro-economic decline (in 1985, 1996 and 1998). The book unveils a new paradigm of economic change in the West African savannah, demonstrating how rural accumulation in a polygynous society actually limits the extent of inequality while at the same time promoting technical change. A uniquely African non-capitalist trajectory of accumulation subordinates the acquisition of capital to the expansion of polygynous families, clientage networks, and circles of trading friends. The whole trajectory is driven by an indigenous ethics of personal responsibility. This model disputes the validity of both Marxian theories of capitalist transformation in Africa and the New Institutional Economics.

Contemporary Perspectives on African Moral Economy

Contemporary Perspectives on African Moral Economy PDF Author: Isaria N. Kimambo
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9976604653
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The topic of African moral economy was first raised by Goran Hyden in 1980 as one of the main obstacles to economic transformation of the African peasantry. The suggestion caused serious academic debates between the proposer and other scholars on African societies, especially those using political economy as the framework of their analysis. But Hyden continued to defend his thesis until interest in the debate faded out. More recently Japanese scholars have taken up the topic as it appears to have new relevance in comparison with the fast transformations which have taken place in Southeast Asian rural communities. The focus of this book is to give a detailed comparison between African rural communities and those of Southeastern Asia. Attention is focused on the two main aspects of African peasantry life: the right to subsistence and the norm of reciprocity. A wide interdisciplinary approach is employed to demonstrate the dynamism displayed by these societies.

Morality, Crisis and Capitalism

Morality, Crisis and Capitalism PDF Author: Jean-Paul Baldacchino
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800736126
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
'May you live in interesting times’ was made famous by Sir Austen Chamberlain. The premise is that ‘interesting times’ are times of upheaval, conflict and insecurity - troubled times. With the growing numbers of displaced populations and the rise in the politics of fear and hate, we are facing challenges to our very ‘species-being’. Papers in the volume include ethnographic studies on the ‘refugee crisis’, the ‘financial crisis’ and the ‘rule of law crisis' in the Mediterranean as well as the crisis of violence and hunger in South America.

The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective

The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective PDF Author: Jacqueline Knörr
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785330705
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
For centuries, Africa’s Upper Guinea Coast region has been the site of regional and global interactions, with societies from different parts of the African continent and beyond engaging in economic trade, cultural exchange and various forms of conflict. This book provides a wide-ranging look at how such encounters have continued into the present day, identifying the disruptions and continuities in religion, language, economics and various other social phenomena. These accounts show a region that, while still grappling with the legacies of colonialism and the slave trade, is both shaped by and an important actor within ever-denser global networks, exhibiting consistent transformation and creative adaptation.

Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies

Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies PDF Author: Akram-Lodhi, A. H.
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1788972465
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 744

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Book Description
Exploring the emerging and vibrant field of critical agrarian studies, this comprehensive Handbook offers interdisciplinary insights from both leading scholars and activists to understand agrarian life, livelihoods, formations and processes of change. It highlights the development of the field, which is characterized by theoretical and methodological pluralism and innovation.

State and Society in Nigeria

State and Society in Nigeria PDF Author: Williams, Gavin
Publisher: Malthouse Press
ISBN: 9785657582
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
The first edition of State and Society in Nigeria, published in 1980, was and remains a dominant influence in teaching, research, policy and practice of state-society relations in Nigeria for more than a generation. The volume of essays has remained one of the most cited in the field – testimony to its enduring content and perspective as well as the beauty, accessibility and clarity of its language. This new edition revisits, extends and reconsiders aspects of the first edition in light of developments in the literature since 1980 and offers new insights and interpretations on issues of political economy, politics, and sociology such as the country’s Civil War (1967-1970) the political economy of oil, debt, and democratization and the complexities and ethnic identities and rivalries and religious accommodation and conflict, and of the multiple ways in which they intersect with one another.

Agency and Causal Explanation in Economics

Agency and Causal Explanation in Economics PDF Author: Peter Róna
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303026114X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
This open access book provides an exploration of the consequences of the ontological differences between natural and social objects (sometimes described as objects of nature and objects of thought) in the workings of causal and agency relationships. One of its important and possibly original conclusions is that causal and agency relationships do not encompass all of the dependent relationships encountered in social life. The idea that social reality is contingent has been known (and largely undisputed) at least since Wittgenstein’s “On Certainty”, but social science, and most notably economics has continued to operate on the basis of causal and agency theories borrowed or adapted from the natural sciences. This volume contains essays that retain and justify the partial or qualified use of this approach and essays that totally reject any use of causal and agency theory built on determined facts (closed systems).The rejection is based on the possibly original claim that, whereas causation in the objects of the natural sciences reside in their properties, human action is a matter of intentionality. It engages with critical realist theory and re-examines the role of free will in theories of human action in general and economic theory in particular.

Theorizing Cohesive Development

Theorizing Cohesive Development PDF Author: Sunil Ray
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000072681
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This volume proposes an alternative development paradigm to the existing capitalist extant one, and studies how it is distinctly different from the older system. Rooted in the principles of solidarity between humans, as well as between humans and nature, this alternative paradigm replaces the methodological individualism of capitalism by ‘reciprocal altruism’, a new logic of capital, to give pace and direction to the development process. The essays in this volume highlight instances of various forms of solidarity that have emerged in the contemporary world—such as resistance movements of informal workers, the formation of an autonomous cooperative of self-employed waste pickers in India, called SWaCH, and Brazil and Cuba’s experiments with Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE)—to achieve long sustaining cohesive development. They also provide recommendations as to how the State can mold its development process to the benefit of marginalized communities, especially in India and Bangladesh. Featuring insights from leading experts in the field, Theorizing Cohesive Development will be an indispensable read for students and researchers of development studies, economics, political economy, political science and sociology, minority studies and Asian studies.

Reflecting on Reflexivity

Reflecting on Reflexivity PDF Author: T. M. S. (Terry) Evens
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782387536
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Humanness supposes innate and profound reflexivity. This volume approaches the concept of reflexivity on two different yet related analytical planes. Whether implicitly or explicitly, both planes of thought bear critically on reflexivity in relation to the nature of selfhood and the very idea of the autonomous individual, ethics, and humanness, science as such and social science, ontological dualism and fundamental ambiguity. On the one plane, a collection of original and innovative ethnographically based essays is offered, each of which is devoted to ways in which reflexivity plays a fundamental role in human social life and the study of it; on the other—anthropo-philosophical and developed in the volume’s Preface, Introduction, and Postscript—it is argued that reflexivity distinguishes—definitively, albeit relatively—the being and becoming of the human.

West African Agriculture and Climate Change

West African Agriculture and Climate Change PDF Author: Abdulai Jalloh
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896292045
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
The first of three books in IFPRI's climate change in Africa series, West African Agriculture and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Analysis examines the food security threats facing 11 of the countries that make up West Africa -- Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo -- and explores how climate change will increase the efforts needed to achieve sustainable food security throughout the region. West Africa's population is expected to grow at least through mid-century. The region will also see income growth. Both will put increased pressure on the natural resources needed to produce food, and climate change makes the challenges greater. West Africa is already experiencing rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and increasing extreme events. Without attention to adaptation, the poor will suffer. Through the use of hundreds of scenario maps, models, figures, and detailed analysis, the editors and contributors of West African Agriculture and Climate Change present plausible future scenarios that combine economic and biophysical characteristics to explore the possible consequences for agriculture, food security, and resources management to 2050. They also offer recommendations to national governments and regional economic agencies already dealing with the vulnerabilities of climate change and deviations in environment. Decisionmakers and researchers will find West African Agriculture and Climate Change a vital tool for shaping policy and studying the various and likely consequences of climate change.