Afrasian Transformations explores a dynamic nexus of transregional interactions that is reshaping political relations, economic flows and increasingly mobile lifeworlds on the one hand, and academic practices in African and Asian Studies as well as transregional research on the other.

"Global Migration beyond Limits carefully considers but ultimately rejects the idea that migration is driven by the choices of individual migrants, and instead starts from the idea that institutions shape all forms, forces, and functions of migration. Of these institutions, however, land is central, whether in internal migration, international migration, or global migration. Historically or currently, the evidence also clearly shows that migration and migrants transform both the sites where migrants are resident and the places from which migrants travelled. The change is more transformational than previous accounts have established, sometimes involving turning around dead cities and towns into vibrant local economies and reconstructing food networks for entire regions and nations. This book also raises serious analytical questions about three bodies of literature: mainstream economic accounts of migration, environment, and inequality; mainstream sustainability science and alternatives to it (e.g. ecological economics); and conservative and nativist claims about population problems and alternatives to them centred only on the freedom that a borderless world could create. Obeng-Odoom argues that much of the crisis of migration and sustainability can be understood as a reflection of global long-term inequalities and cumulative stratification, reflected at different scales in the global system, though the form of migration is conditioned by more than economic forces. The so-called migration crisis, therefore, seems quite routine and familiar. It is an outward expression of the political-economic system in which socially created value is privately appropriated as rents by a privileged few who use institutions such land and property rights, race, ethnicity, class, and gender to keep others in their place in the global economic and stratification ladder"--

Over the last two decades the expanding role of Southern countries as development partners has led to tectonic shifts in global development ideas, practices, norms and actors. Researchers are faced with new questions around identity, power and positionality in global development. Researching South-South Development Cooperation examines this rapidly growing and complex phenomenon, asking to what extent existing assumptions, conceptual frameworks and definitions of 'development' need to be reframed in the context of researching this new landscape. This interdisciplinary book draws on voices from across the Global South and North to explore the epistemological and related methodological challenges and opportunities associated with researching South-South development cooperation, asking what these trends mean for the politics of knowledge production. Chapters are interspersed with shorter vignettes, which aim to share examples from first-hand participation in and observation of South-South development cooperation initiatives. This book will be of interest to anyone conducting research on development in the Global South, whether they are a practitioner or policy maker, or a student or researcher in politics, international development, area studies, or international relations.

On what terms and concepts can we ground the comparative study of Anglophone literatures and cultures around the world today? What, if anything, unites the novels of Witi Ihimaera, the speculative fiction of Nnedi Okorafor, the life-writings by Stuart Hall, and the emerging Anglophone Arab literature by writers like Omar Robert Hamilton? This volume explores the globality of Anglophone fiction both as a conceptual framing and as a literary imaginary. It highlights the diversity of lives and worlds represented in Anglophone writing, as well as the diverse imaginations of transnational connections articulated in it. Featuring a variety of internationally renowned scholars, this book thinks through Anglophone literature not as a problematic legacy of colonial rule or as exoticizing commodity in a global literary marketplace but examines it as an inherently transcultural literary medium. Contributors provide new insights into how it facilitates the articulation of divergent experiences of modernity and the critique of hierarchies and inequalities within, among, and beyond post-colonial societies.

The entwined histories of Blacks and Indians defy easy explanation. From Ghanaian protests over Gandhi statues to American Vice President Kamala Harris's story, this relationship--notwithstanding moments of common struggle--seethes with conflicts that reveal how race reverberates throughout the modern world. Shobana Shankar's groundbreaking intellectual history tackles the controversial question of how Africans and Indians make and unmake their differences. Drawing on archival and oral sources from seven countries, she traces how economic tensions surrounding the Indian diaspora in East and Southern Africa collided with widening Indian networks in West Africa and the Black Atlantic, forcing a racial reckoning over the course of the twentieth century. While decolonization brought Africans and Indians together to challenge Euro-American white supremacy, discord over caste, religion, sex and skin color simmered beneath the rhetoric of Afro-Asian solidarity. This book examines the cultural movements, including Pan-Africanism and popular devotionalism, through which Africans and Indians made race consciousness, alongside economic cooperation, a moral priority. Yet rising wealth and nationalist amnesia now threaten this postcolonial ethos. Calls to dismantle statues, from Dakar to Delhi, are not mere symbolism. They express new solidarities which seek to salvage dissenting histories and to preserve the possibility of alternative futures

This book breaks new ground by bringing together multidisciplinary approaches to examine contemporary Indian Ocean worlds. It reconfigures the Indian Ocean as a space for conceptual and theoretical relationality based on social science and humanities scholarship, thus moving away from an area-based and geographical approach to Indian Ocean studies. Contributors from a variety of disciplines focus on keywords such as relationality, space/place, quotidian practices, and new networks of memory and maps to offer original insights to reimagine the Indian Ocean. While the volume as a whole considers older histories, mobilities, and relationships between places in Indian Ocean worlds, it is centrally concerned with new connectivities and layered mappings forged in the lived experiences of individuals and communities today. The chapters are steeped in ethnographic, multi-modal, and other humanities methodologies that examine different sources besides historical archives and textual materials, including everyday life, cities, museums, performances, the built environment, media, personal narratives, food, medical practices, or scientific explorations. An important contribution to several fields, this book will be of interest to academics of Indian Ocean studies, Afro-Asian linkages, inter-Asian exchanges, Afro-Arab crossroads, Asian studies, African studies, Anthropology, History, Geography, and International Relations.

How can biography and reflexivity become integral processes of an inquiry? How do we apply these processes to our research and to our accounts of ourselves? Presenting studies by migration scholars who are migrants themselves, Migrant Scholars Researching Migration illustrates the creative and affective function of embedding one's research in subjectivity, reflexivity, and personal biography. The book shows that linking personal experiences and biographies with research practices and agendas can be instrumental to the development of knowledges and new methodologies. The authors demonstrate, for instance, how their migration backgrounds have affected what kind of research they ‘should’ conduct. They also describe how their research findings have changed their understanding of their personal positionings as migrants and scholars. This book debunks the dogma of separating the researcher from their investigation by placing the researchers' experiences and multi-layered reflections at the center of their scholarly work. It sheds light on the importance of reflexivity and subjectivity as processes and assets in research rather than obstacles. Migrant Scholars Researching Migration will appeal to researchers and students interested in methodology, biographical research, theories of knowledge, and scholars of migration and diaspora studies. Chapters: Chapter 14 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Branding Authoritarian Nations offers a novel approach to the study of nation branding as a strategy for political legitimation in authoritarian regimes using the example of military-ruled Thailand. The book argues that nation branding is a political act that is integral to state legitimation processes, particularly in the context of authoritarian regimes. It applies its alternative reading of nation branding to eight different sectors: tourism, economy, foreign direct investment, foreign policy, education, culture, public relations, and the private sector. The author explains that nation branding produces specific kinds of applied national myths, referred to as ‘strategic national myths.’ She shows that nation branding is an inherently inward-looking strategy aimed at shaping the social attitudes and behaviours of the nation’s citizens in line with the government’s domestic agenda and legitimation needs. Providing the first comprehensive analysis of nation branding in Thailand and the first book-length account of the country’s political developments since the 2014–2019 military rule, the book is primarily aimed at academics in the disciplines of politics, international relations, communication, and area studies as well as business, cultural, and intercultural studies.

The Argobba are an ethnic and religious minority in southeastern Wallo and northeastern Sawa. Despite living in harsh environments and menace from more dominant ethnic groups, they have for centuries maintained their agricultural activity, trader and weaver identity, and religious unity.At present they are undergoing rapid cultural change, and are caught up in a tension between encapsulation and the struggle for the survival of Argobba cultural tradition and political position in what once was a strategic location. This book presents a perceptive historical and cultural analysis of change and continuity, looks at how the Argobba define and redefine their agricultural and commercial ways of living as a response to threats from Oromo migration, Amhara settler penetration and Adal aggression, and examines the past and present condition of Argobba social and economic transformation in north-central Ethiopia.