This volume brings together the most up to date analyses of civil society in Africa from the best scholars and researchers working on the subject. Being the first of its kind, it casts a panoramic look at the African continent, drawing out persisting, if often under-communicated, variations in regional discourses. In a majority of notionally ‘global’ studies, Africa has received marginal attention, a marginality often highlighted by the usual token chapter. Filling a critical hiatus, theHandbook of Civil Society in Africa takes Africa, African developments, and African perspectives very seriously and worthy of academic interrogation in their own right. It offers a critical, clear-sighted perspective on civil society in Africa, and positions African discourses within the framework of important regional and global debates. It promises to be an invaluable reference work for researchers and practitioners working in the fields of civil society, nonprofit studies, development studies, volunteerism, civic service, and African studies. Endorsements: "This volume signposts a critical turning point in the renewed engagement with the theory and practice of civil society in Africa. Moving from traditional concerns with disquisitions on the appropriateness and possibility of the existence and vibrancy of the idea of civil society on the continent, the volume approaches the forms, contents, and features of the actually existing civil society in Africa from thematic, regional, and national angles. It demonstrates clearly the extent to which core intellectual work on civil society in Africa has largely moved from concerns with cultural reductionism to a nuanced examination of the complexities of (formal, non-formal, organizational, non-organizational, traditional, newer, usual, unusual) engagements, detailing the extent to which, over time, civil society as a concept has been indigenized, appropriated and adapted in the terrains of politics, society, economy, culture and new technologies on the continent. In all this, the book accomplishes the near-impossible. Without sacrificing the vigour, rigor and freshness of the often unpredictable fruits of up-to-date research into regional and national differences that crop up in the documentation of Africa's multiple realities and discourses, the volume weaves together a rich tapestry of the historical, theoretical and practical dimensions of an expanding civil society sector, and accompanying growth in popular discourse, advocacy, and academic literature, in such a diverse continent as Africa, into a meaningful whole of insightful themes. Written and edited by a very distinguished cross-continental and multi-disciplinary collection of researchers, research students, practitioners and activists, the volume provides cutting-edge evidence and makes a definitive case for a new lease of life for civil society research in Africa." -Adigun Agbaje, Professor of Political Science, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. "Throughout Africa, forms of civic engagement and political participation have seen dynamic change in recent decades, yet conceptions of civil society have rarely accounted for this evolution. This volume is an essential source of new thinking about political association and collective action in Africa. The authors offer a wealth of analysis on changing organizations and social movements, new forms of interaction and communication, emerging strategies and issues, diverse social foundations, and the theoretical implications of a shifting associational landscape. The contributors provide an invaluable addition to the comparative literature on political change, democratic development, and social movements in Africa." Peter Lewis, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced international Studies

This text examines the potential value of the concept of civil society for enhancing the current understanding of state-society relations in Africa. The authors review the meanings of civil society in political philosophy, as well as alternative approaches to employing the concept in African settings. Considering both the patterns of emerging civil society in Africa and issues relating to its further development, they give particular emphasis to the cases of Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire.

This book examines the efforts of one particular civil society organization, the human rights ministry of a Catholic parish located in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, to determine the extent to which it was able to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law. It concludes from an analysis of the social, economic and political environment of Kibera as well as church structures, that parishioners demonstrated an observable improvement in their democratic values and behavior at a localized level, but they did not increase their involvement in advocacy and lobbying efforts. Parishioners were inhibited from holding government officials to account for their abuse of power primarily due to fears of retaliation; other factors such as apathy, ethnic divisions, limited resources and restrictive church protocols further curtailed their actions. The findings of this book are important for scholars and students active in the fields of political science, African Christianity, development studies, international law and human rights. This book is also an important resource for practitioners who are addressing the social, legal, political challenges facing the urban poor in Africa.

This book tests many of the assumptions, hypotheses, and conclusions connected with the presumed role of civil society organizations in the democratization of African countries. Taking a comparative approach, it looks at countries that have successfully democratized, those that are stuck between progress and regression, those that have regressed into dictatorship, and those that are currently in transitional flux and evaluates what role, if any, civil society has played in each instance. The countries discussed—South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt and Tunisia—represent a diverse set of social and political circumstances and different levels of democratic achievement, providing a rich set of case studies. Each sample state also offers an internal comparison, as each has historically experienced different stages of democratization. Along the course of each case study, the book also considers the effect that other traditionally studied factors, such as culture, colonization, economic development and foreign aid, may have had on individual attempts at democratization. The first extensive work on civil society and democratization in Africa, the book adds new insights to the applicability of democratization theory in a non-Western context, both filling a gap in and adding to the existing universal scholarship. This book will be useful for scholars of political science, economics, sociology and African studies, as well as human rights activists and policy makers in the relevant geographical areas.

The essays in this important new collection explore the diverse, unexpected, and controversial ways in which the idea of civil society has recently entered into populist politics and public debate throughout Africa. In a substantial introduction, anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff offer a critical theoretical analysis of the nature and deployment of the concept—and the current debates surrounding it. Building on this framework, the contributors investigate the "problem" of civil society across their regions of expertise, which cover the continent. Drawing creatively on one another's work, they examine the impact of colonial ideology, postcoloniality, and development practice on discourses of civility, the workings of everyday politics, the construction of new modes of selfhood, and the pursuit of moral community. Incisive and original, the book shows how struggles over civil society in Africa reveal much about larger historical forces in the post-Cold War era. It also makes a strong case for the contribution of historical anthropology to contemporary discourses on the rise of a "new world order."

This work critically reviews the conventional uses of the concept of civil society in promoting democratization in Africa and suggests omissions and modifications are needed for more accurate analyses.

This book is the outcome of a conference on common security and civil society in Africa. The contributions seek to go beyond the "war of images" to imagine a different and more secure future. They are concerned with five different themes: economic and social change; prevention of violent conflicts; the causes of conflict; political security, and the international politics of development partnership.

This book interrogates the extent to which regional civil society organisations have evolved as actors in West Africa. Examining civil society democratic participation in regional integration and involvement in regionalism of peacebuilding, it rethinks how we study civil society in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region. Beyond the functional typology of civil society actors as ‘partner’, ‘legitimiser’, ‘resistance/counter-hegemonic’ and ‘manipulator’, the book develops a new analytical framework to understand how organisations such as the West African Civil Society Forum (WACSOF) and West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) have evolved. Offering analytical perspectives of the actorship of specific regional civil society actors, the book draws attention to the tendencies in the previous studies of mistaking an action or misdeed that is empirically specific to particular civil society organisations within a region to the generality of the civic space of the region. Providing an alternative perspective aimed at invoking a new intellectual conversation about civil society regionalism this book advances a new analytical framework of action-based regional identity of civil society, regional presence of activities, regional capacities and societal impact. It will be of interest to academics and scholars of international relations, global governance, African politics and comparative regionalism.

Recently the topic of civil society has generated a wave of interest, and a wealth of new information. Until now no publication has attempted to organize and consolidate this knowledge. The International Encyclopedia of Civil Society fills this gap, establishing a common set of understandings and terminology, and an analytical starting point for future research. Global in scope and authoritative in content, the Encyclopedia offers succinct summaries of core concepts and theories; definitions of terms; biographical entries on important figures and organizational profiles. In addition, it serves as a reliable and up-to-date guide to additional sources of information. In sum, the Encyclopedia provides an overview of the contours of civil society, social capital, philanthropy and nonprofits across cultures and historical periods. For researchers in nonprofit and civil society studies, political science, economics, management and social enterprise, this is the most systematic appraisal of a rapidly growing field.

The second volume of the CIVICUS Global Survey of the State of Civil Societyoffers a wide-ranging analysis of key issues facing civil society worldwide with contributions from prominent researchers and civil society practitioners. Comprising 24 chapters, the book draws on the information collected by the CIVICUS Civil Society Index project in more than 45 countries to explore issues such as civil society "s accountability, its relations to the state and corporate sector and its role in governance and development. It also includes regional overviews of the state of civil society in different continents. By bringing together a diversity of perspectives and themes, this book offers one of the most comprehensive and engaging analyses of civil society worldwide. Other Contributors: Helmut Anheier, Stefanie Bailer, Monica Blagescu, Thilo Bodenstein, David Bonbright, L. David Brown, Jerzy Celichowski, Julius Court, Wolfgang D rner, Alan Fowler, Marc M. Howard, Mohini Kak, Mahi Khallaf, Natalia Kiryttopoulou, Petr Kopecky, Barry Knight, Carmen Malena, Jacob Mati, Cas Mudde, Kumi Naidoo, Paul Opoku-Mensah, Aruna Rao, Laurie Regelbrugge, Janine Schall-Emden, Andres Serbin, Catherine Shea, Carla Suarez, Rajesh Tandon, –zlem T r, and Jan van Deth.