Africa in the Age of Obama

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Ralph Faulkingham ◽  
Mitzi Goheen

With the inclusion of the following commentaries, “Africa in the Age of Obama,” the African Studies Review breaks one of its cardinal rules of not accepting opinion pieces on current issues for publication. However, there is always an exception to any rule.These three articles, originally presented at the Plenary Session of the 51st Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, present ideas of sufficient significance and centrality to Africanist intellectual discourses at this historical juncture to warrant this exception. Both individually and as a collection, these informative and provocative articles decenter common shibboleths of twenty-first century Africanist scholarship and replace these with suggestions for new paths and new ways of seeing and constituting “Africa” in the world today.As ASR editors, we have been grappling with some of these issues over the past decade while putting together a “mission statement” for the journal, and we are pleased to see these subjects and perspectives presented so eloquently in this coUection.Two perspectives from these narratives are of special interest to the mission of the ASR. First, they encourage a view of “Africa” not as an isolate, but rather as a nexus of complex global relationships in which Africa and Africans, as well as African ideas, practice, and voice—whether as subjects or objects of analysis—are the primary focus. Second, they give voice to, and encourage contributions from, an increasing number of scholars whose primary work, scholarship, and identity are on the continent. Implicitly they call upon these scholars to publish in the ASR and other journals and use these as a two-way conduit, whereby scholarship from the continent may continue to become a significant and integral part of twenty-first century global Africanist discourses.

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 11-39
Author(s):  
Nancy J. Adler

<p align="right">Only by investing in the artistry of our humanity <br/>will we create a peaceful, prosperous planet</p> “These times are riven with anxiety and uncertainty” asserts John O’Donohue.<sup>1</sup> “In the hearts of people some natural ease has been broken. … Our trust in the future has lost its innocence. We know now that anything can happen. … The traditional structures of shelter are shaking, their foundations revealed to be no longer stone but sand. We are suddenly thrown back on ourselves. At first, it sounds completely naïve to suggest that now might be the time to invoke beauty. Yet this is exactly what … [we claim]. Why? Because there is nowhere else to turn and we are desperate; furthermore, it is because we have so disastrously neglected the Beautiful that we now find ourselves in such a terrible crisis.”<sup>2</sup> Twenty‑first century society yearns for a leadership of possibility, a leadership based more on hope, aspiration, innovation, and beauty than on the replication of historical patterns of constrained pragmatism. Luckily, such a leadership is possible today. For the first time in history, leaders can work backward from their aspirations and imagination rather than forward from the past.<sup>3</sup> “The gap between what people can imagine and what they can accomplish has never been smaller.”<sup>4</sup> Responding to the challenges and yearnings of the twenty‑first century demands anticipatory creativity. Designing options worthy of implementation calls for levels of inspiration, creativity, and a passionate commitment to beauty that, until recently, have been more the province of artists and artistic processes than the domain of most managers. The time is right for the artistic imagination of each of us to co‑create the leadership that the world most needs and deserves.


Author(s):  
Kate Crowley ◽  
Jenny Stewart ◽  
Adrian Kay ◽  
Brian W. Head

Policy studies are in a rut. Just as politics in both the global and domestic spheres have been taking more partisan forms, policy studies itself has become more inward looking, and less interested in politics and practice than in the past. The authors suggest that making public policy relevant again, requires an understanding, not just of policy development and selected policy-related themes, but a broader engagement with structure, process and system: as a way of depicting not just the formation of policy, but also its modes of action in the world. Doing this involves building on earlier iterations of policy thought and relating them, not only to the complexity of current policy problems, but also to the immense technological and political changes that have occurred in the twenty-first century.


2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-327
Author(s):  
Charles Forsdick

Those reflecting on what is ‘French’ about ‘French studies’ in the early twenty-first century must consider the transformations evident in the disciplinary field over the past century. This article gives an overview of these shifts, but focuses in particular on the increasingly pluralized and diversified objects of study now addressed in explorations of the French-speaking world, as well as on the radical changes in the ways in which those objects are now approached. Central to the analysis is an awareness of a wider Francosphere, which has served to locate France in relation to a wider network of countries and communities, and may be seen to have provincialized, as a result, in a transnational and postcolonial frame, the former colonial centre. The article concludes with a reflection on Mary Louise Pratt's designation of Modern Languages as ‘knowing languages and […] knowing the world through languages’ (2002), and – in the context of French studies in the twenty-first century – asks: which languages? which world? and what forms of knowing?


2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
David F. Ford

ABSTRACTThis keynote paper was delivered at the Society for the Study of Anglicanism which gathered at the AAR Annual Meeting in Philadelphia in November 2005. On the basis of many years of observation and participation in the life of the Anglican Communion, I attempt to offer in this article a ‘Wisdom for Anglican Life’ — a wisdom which takes seriously the unity and koinonia of the Church as rooted in the cross of Jesus Christ and the love of God. Such wisdom is rooted in the faithful worship of the Church but also engages seriously with the struggles of the world. It counsels gentleness, kindness, forgiveness and above all patience in matters of dispute, and embraces the thoughtful but rigorous communal study of Scripture. This article ultimately suggests that a pressing task facing the Communion today is to learn afresh how to be Anglican Christians in the twenty-first century.


2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Dupont

Libraries, archives, and museums are places where we learn about ourselves, the world around us, and what came before us. They inspire us to make a better future by helping us remember and understand the past. As cultural heritage institutions, libraries, archives, and museums share common goals to acquire, preserve, and make accessible artifacts and evidences of the world’s social, intellectual, artistic, even spiritual achievements. Yet to what extent do common goals imply common means? What benefits might be realized by bringing professionals from these allied fields into closer communication? Asking these and related questions was the purpose of “Libraries, . . .


1965 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 618-621
Author(s):  
David Brokensha

In 1958, when the African Studies Association was founded, a small group of American scholars who were interested in Africa comprised the first annual general meeting. This year nearly 1,000 people attended the eighth annual meeting. Most of those attending were fellows and members of the Association, augmented by visitors from many parts of the world. These included Seretse Khama, Prime Minister of Bechuanaland, who gave the main address at the opening plenary session. Other visitors included Daryll Forde from London, S. N. Varma from the Department of African Studies at the University of Delhi, and Philippe Decraene, African correspondent for the Paris paper, Le Monde.


2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Claire Colebrook

There is something more catastrophic than the end of the world, especially when ‘world’ is understood as the horizon of meaning and expectation that has composed the West. If the Anthropocene is the geological period marking the point at which the earth as a living system has been altered by ‘anthropos,’ the Trumpocene marks the twenty-first-century recognition that the destruction of the planet has occurred by way of racial violence, slavery and annihilation. Rather than saving the world, recognizing the Trumpocene demands that we think about destroying the barbarism that has marked the earth.


Author(s):  
Marcel Fratzscher

After reaching a low point of economic dynamism and employment in 2005, a state of affairs in which it came to be regarded as the “sick man of Europe,” Germany achieved impressive, indeed apparently miraculous growth in employment. In the process German society cut unemployment in half and created almost 5 million new jobs. In this chapter’s discussion, the primary focus is on the different elements and causes that have gone into the employment miracle in Germany since the start of the twenty-first century. In addition, the chapter highlights the underlying weaknesses and problems in Germany’s labor market as the century’s second decade nears its close.


Author(s):  
Alex J. Bellamy

Until recently, East Asia was a boiling pot of massacre and blood-letting. Yet, almost unnoticed by the wider world, it has achieved relative peace over the past three decades.1 At the height of the Cold War, East Asia accounted for around 80 percent of the world’s mass atrocities. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, it accounted for less than 5 percent....


Author(s):  
Berthold Schoene

This chapter looks at how the contemporary British and Irish novel is becoming part of a new globalized world literature, which imagines the world as it manifests itself both within (‘glocally’) and outside nationalist demarcations. At its weakest, often against its own best intentions, this new cosmopolitan writing cannot but simply reinscribe the old imperial power relations. Or, it provides an essential component of the West’s ideological superstructure for globalization’s neoliberal business of rampant upward wealth accumulation. At its best, however, this newly emergent genre promotes a cosmopolitan ethics of justice, resistance. It also promotes dissent while working hard to expose and deconstruct the extant hegemonies and engaging in a radical imaginative recasting of global relations.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document