Introduction

Excess and Abjection in the Study of the African State

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20076442
AutoresEbenezer Obadare, Wale Adebanwi (0000-0001-9791-3436)
Ano2010
Páginas1-28
Data de publicação2010-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoCHAPTER
PeriódicoEncountering the Nigerian State (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraPalgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/9780230109636_1
OpenAlexW2340341582
ISBN9780230109636
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas11
Referências citadas37

In his excellent introduction to the volume Civil Society, Public Sphere and Citizenship Dialogues and Perceptions, which he coedited with Helmut Reifeld, Rajeev Bhargava underlined the need to query what analytical purchase the state and other fundamental political and sociological concepts may have (for a non-Western society) by posing the following critical questions: How did they evolve in European societies? Does our [i.e., Indian] society follow the same trajectory? How valuable are they outside the context in which they originated? In particular, what is their usefulness in India? Do they really help us to understand our life-world? Do they illuminate our social and political reality? Or, by forcing upon us a way of looking at ourselves that is fundamentally different from the manner in which we do or should view ourselves, do they instead obstruct a proper understanding of it? Do they have a normative significance and, if they do, what is it? (2005: 13)

Citizenship · Civil society · Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Media studies · Normative · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Computer Science · History · Law · Philosophy