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"A friend of mine asked me to accompany him to visit a young woman in her twenties named Kayitesi. At the time, in April 2007, Kayitesi lived in rural Kigali with two siblings. Kayitesi's parents and many of her relatives were killed during the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994. The genocide took place in the central and eastern African country of Rwanda when radical Hutu youth militias and Hutu political elites targeted and killed the Tutsi for about three months, between April and July. The Hutus and some foreigners who protected the Tutsi or opposed the genocidal violence were also killed"--
This book examines state efforts to shape the public memory of past atrocities in the service of nationalist politics. This political engagement with the 'duty to remember', and the question of historical memory and identity politics, began as an effort to confront denialism with regard to the Holocaust, but now extends well beyond that framework, and has become a contentious subject in many countries. In exploring the politics of memory laws, a topic that has been overlooked in the largely legal analyses surrounding this phenomenon, this volume traces the spread of memory laws from their origins in Western Europe to their adoption by countries around the world. The work illustrates how memory laws have become a widespread tool of governments with a nationalist, majoritarian outlook. Indeed, as this volume illustrates, in countries that move from pluralism to majoritarianism, memory laws serve as a warning – a precursor to increasingly repressive, nationalist inclinations.
Moving beyond a self-indulgent attitude about Africa’s historical victimhood, the book seeks to capture how African states individually and Africa’s collective institutions (the AU) are providing agency in Africa’s international relations. While African states have been trailblazers in such ideas as ‘The Responsibility to Protect’, as conceived in the African Union Constitutive Act (2001) which preceded the United Nations (UN) Secretary General’s report “In Larger Freedom” (2005) in which the UN adopted the concept, African agency in international relations has not always been captured proactively. This volume seeks to document Africa (and African states) in a state of proact...
This updated and revised second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Peacebuilding contains cutting-edge analyses of contemporary attempts to reach and sustain peace. The book covers the main actors and dynamics of peacebuilding, as well as the main challenges that it faces, with accessible chapters. The volume is comprehensive, covering everything from the main international institutions for peacebuilding to the links between peacebuilding and climate change, or peacebuilding and trauma. It is also firmly interdisciplinary, with a number of chapters devoted to showcasing how different disciplines interpret peacebuilding and how they contribute to it. Bringing together leading thinkers and p...
Since gaining independence from colonial rule, most African countries have been struggling to build democratic and peaceful states. While African multiparty politics may be viewed as a democratic system of governance, in reality it is plagued by ethnic and regional political grievances that undermine meaningful democracy. By examining post-conflict institutional reforms in several African countries, this book sheds light on the common causes of violent conflicts and how institutional design can affect the conditions for peace and democracy in Africa. Focussing on conceptual and practical questions of designing ethnically and regionally inclusive state institutions and the way institutions are perceived by the citizenry Post-Conflict Institutional Design addresses political autonomy and control over resources, issues which are often key sources of ethnic and regional grievances. Crucially, it examines the meanings of institutional reforms as well ethnic and regional representation.
A necessary volume of essays working to decolonize the digital humanities Often conceived of as an all-inclusive “big tent,” digital humanities has in fact been troubled by a lack of perspectives beyond Westernized and Anglophone contexts and assumptions. This latest collection in the Debates in the Digital Humanities series seeks to address this deficit in the field. Focused on thought and work that has been underappreciated for linguistic, cultural, or geopolitical reasons, contributors showcase alternative histories and perspectives that detail the rise of the digital humanities in the Global South and other “invisible” contexts and explore the implications of a globally diverse d...
Key to African studies is understanding the knowledge systems of the continent and her diaspora. The representation and understanding of Africa are dependent on the observer’s definition of knowledge. Afrocentric knowledge is comprised of a collection of political, religious, and indigenous belief systems. Religious Beliefs and Knowledge Systems in Africa begins with deconstructing the Western philosophy of knowledge before defining and exploring the epistemic disciplines of Africa. It transcends postcolonial critique, through an Afrocentric approach to knowledge divided into three key themes. The first of these is the African worldview, exploring knowledge through eldership, witchcraft, and divination. This is followed up by kingship ideology and epistemologies, exploring discussing how politics, religion, and belief shape African society. Finally, the world religion chapter examines Christianity, Islam, and Pentecostalism in their impact on African ways of knowing. This book calls to action new fields of study in universities, encouraging a greater understanding of African ways of knowing through more nuanced disciplines.
Autocratization in Contemporary Uganda analyses two interrelated outcomes: autocratisation, manifest in the deepening of personalist rule or Musevenism, and the regime resilience that has made Museveni one of Africa's current-longest surviving rulers. How has this feat been possible, and what has been the trajectory of Museveni's increasingly autocratic rule? Surveying that trajectory since 1986, the book takes as its primary focus the years since 2005; bringing to the fore the 'autocratic turn', placing it within a broader comparative lens, and enriching it with comparative references to cases outside of Uganda. While positing the notion of 'autocratic adaptability' as a defining hallmark of Museveni's rule, the book examines the factors and forces that have made that adaptability possible, analysing the dynamics around three keys themes: institutions, resources, and coalitions. Through empirical research, each chapter seeks to demonstrate how either one or two of these three variables have functioned in propelling autocratization and assuring regime resilience - producing theoretical and and comparative implications that reach beyond Uganda.
"Crises radically alter lives. The Covid-19 pandemic and its consequences on our daily lives have questioned traditional modes of practice (Castigloni & Gaj, 2020). This is true for many clinicians and practitioners but also for the academic context and the discipline of Psychology. While many of us are still recovering from the collective longings for a 'back to how things were before the pandemic,' we have also realized that circumstances keep changing in unpredictable ways"--