Africa and International Relations in the 21st Century

S. Cornelissen · F. Cheru · T. Shaw

Jan 2016 · Springer

About this ebook

This book examines key emergent trends related to aspects of power, sovereignty, conflict, peace, development, and changing social dynamics in the African context. It challenges conventional IR precepts of authority, politics and society, which have proven to be so inadequate in explaining African processes. Rather, this edited collection analyses the significance of many of the uncharted dimensions of Africa's international relations, such as the respatialisation of African societies through migration, and the impacts this process has had on state power; the various ways in which both formal and informal authority and economies are practised; and the dynamics and impacts of new transnational social movements on African politics. Finally, attention is paid to Africa's place in a shifting global order, and the implications for African international relations of the emergence of new world powers and/or alliances. This edition includes a new preface by the editors, which brings the findings of the book up-to-date, and analyses the changes that are likely to impact upon global governance and human development in policy and practice in Africa and the wider world post-2015.

About the author

Rita Abrahamsen, Associate Professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies and in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Canada Ulf Engel, Professor at the Centre for African Studies and Director of Global and European Studies Institute, University of Leipzig, Germany Loren B. Landau, Professor Director of the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) (formerly Forced Migration Studies Programme, FMSP) at Wits University, Johannesburg, South Africa Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gathseni, Senior Researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Cyril I. Obi, Programme Coordinator at the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI), Uppsala, Sweden Gorm Rye Olsen, Head of the Department of Society and Globalisation, Roskilde University, Denmark Jane L. Parpart, Visiting Professor and Graduate Coordinator at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, University of West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago Karen Smith, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa Lisa Thompson, Director of the African Centre for Citizenship and Democracy at the School of Government, University of the Western Cape, South Africa Thomas Kwasi Tieku, Director of African Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada Darshan Vigneswaran, Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Ethnic and Religious Diversity, Göttingen, Germany Louise Wiuff Moe, Ph.D. candidate at the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Queensland, Australia.