Large-scale displacement - whether caused by war, state-related political or development projects, different forms of political violence, structural crisis, or even natural disasters - evokes many stereotyped assumptions about those forcibly displaced or emplaced. At the same time there is a problematic lack of attention paid to the diversity of actors, strategies and practices that reshape the world in the face (and chronic aftermath) of dramatic moments of violent dislocation. In this highly original volume, based on empirical case studies from across sub-Saharan Africa, the authors reveal the paradoxical effects, both intended and unexpected, that displacement produces, and that manifest themselves in displacement economies. An important contribution to a topic of growing scholarly and policy interest.

This Handbook provides the knowledge and tools needed to understand how displacement is lived, governed, and mediated as an unfolding and grounded process bound up in spatial inequities of power and injustice. The handbook ensures, first, that internal displacements and their everyday (re)occurrences are not overlooked; second, it questions ‘who counts’ by including ‘displaced’ people who are less obviously identifiable and a clearly circumscribed or categorised group; third, it stresses that while displacement suggests mobility, there are also periods and spaces of enforced stillness that are not adequately reflected in the displacement literature; and fourth, it re-evokes and explores the ‘place’ in displacement by critically interrogating peoples’ ‘right to place’ and the significance of placemaking, unmaking, and remaking in the contemporary world. The 50-plus chapters are organised across seven themes designed to further develope interdisciplinary study of the technologies, journeys, traces, governance, more-than-human, representation, and resisting of displacement. Each of these thematic sections begin with an intervention which spotlights actions to creatively and strategically intervene in displacement. The interventions explore myriad meanings and manifestations of displacement and its contestation from the perspective of displaced people, artists, writers, activists, scholar-activists, and scholars involved in practice-oriented research. The Handbook will be an essential companion for academics, students, and practitioners committed to forging solidarity, care, and home in an era of displacement.

African migrants have become increasingly demonised in public debate and political rhetoric. There is much speculation about the incentives and trajectories of Africans on the move, and often these speculations are implicitly or overtly geared towards discouraging and policing their movements. What is rarely understood or scrutinised however, are the intricate ways in which African migrants are marginalised and excluded from public discourse; not only in Europe but in migrant-receiving contexts across the globe. Invisibility in African Displacements offers a series of case studies that explore these dynamics. What tends to be either ignored or demonised in public debates on African migration are the deliberate strategies of avoidance or assimilation that migrants make use of to gain access to the destinations or opportunities they seek, or to remain below the radar of restrictive governance regimes. This books offers fine-grained analysis of the ways in which African migrants negotiate structural and strategic invisibilities, adding innovative approaches to our understanding of both migrant vulnerabilities and resilience.

Are Africa's world markets really contributing to development across the continent for individuals, nations and regions? This is the key question posed by Margaret Lee in this provocative book, in which she argues that all too often the voices of African traders are obscured amid a blizzard of statistical analysis. However, it is these very voices - from those operating on the ground as formal or informal traders - that must be listened to in order to form a true understanding of the impact trade regimes have on these individuals and their communities. Featuring a wealth of oral histories from across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, including Africans in China, Africa's World Trade offers a unique insight into how the complexity of international trade agreements can shape the everyday lives of ordinary Africans.

A focus on the everyday has produced this ethnography, which hopes to give a nuanced voice to an extended family of semi-sedentary nomads, living at the centre of a country and region known for its political turmoil, ecological insecurities, and socio-economic hardship. The everyday of the Chadian Walad Djifir is one in which sedentarity and mobility are approached as two entwined parts of a whole, and where economic and geographical boundaries do not necessarily form constrictions. The ferīkh (nomadic camp) is where all of the Walad Djifir’s networks meet, and often also begin— a physical place embodying various networks and connections, which span time and geographical space. This analytical and methodological approach gives insight in how regional trends can be understood in light of the Walad Djifir’s daily lives. Over time, the Walad Djifir have developed ways of coping and dealing with insecurities, interacting with infrastructural, technological, and socio-political developments in specific ways. In exploring how such insecurities and crises become anchored into the everyday, the ferīkh provides answers. It is precisely the mundane elements of daily life which anchor disruption.

An essential collection of scholarly essays on the anthropology of Africa, offering a thorough introduction to the most important topics in this evolving and diverse field of study The study of the cultures of Africa has been central to the methodological and theoretical development of anthropology as a discipline since the late 19th-century. As the anthropology of Africa has emerged as a distinct field of study, anthropologists working in this tradition have strived to build a disciplinary conversation that recognizes the diversity and complexity of modern and ancient African cultures while acknowledging the effects of historical anthropology on the present and future of the field of study. A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa is a collection of insightful essays covering the key questions and subjects in the contemporary anthropology of Africa with a key focus on addressing the topics that define the contemporary discipline. Written and edited by a team of leading cultural anthropologists, it is an ideal introduction to the most important topics in the field, both those that have consistently been a part of the critical dialogue and those that have emerged as the central questions of the discipline’s future. Beginning with essays on the enduring topics in the study of African cultures, A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa provides a foundation in the contemporary critical approach to subjects of longstanding interest. With these subjects as a groundwork, later essays address decolonization, the postcolonial experience, and questions of modern identity and definition, providing representation of the diverse thinking and scholarship in the modern anthropology of Africa.

This book discusses and challenges concepts that are widely used in research and policy related to development issues in Africa. The main rationale for such an undertaking is that the concepts that are used to understand and define the world in general and Africa in particular are not merely describing social, economic and political processes and events; they are also largely framing these very same processes. Thus, the concepts by which we structure the world will implicitly or explicitly give premises for policies and practices; limiting or favouring certain types of actions and frameworks of interpretation and understanding in various contexts. It is therefore important to challenge commonly held conceptions about framing African development. Contributors include: Deborah Fahy Bryceson, Rosalind Eyben, Amanda Hammar, Kjell Havnevik, Mats Hårsmar, Terje Oestigaard and Rune Skarstein

The scale, depth and severity of the crises evolving since 2000 have been as dramatic as they have been unexpected.

Once marginalized in the world economy, Africa today is a major global supplier of crucial raw materials like oil, uranium and coltan. China's part in this story has loomed particularly large in recent years, and the American military footprint on the continent has also expanded. But a new scramble for resources, markets and territory is now taking place in Africa involving not just state, but non state-actors, including Islamic fundamentalist and other rebel groups. The second edition of Pádraig Carmody's popular book explores the dynamics of the new scramble for African resources, markets, and territory and the impact of current investment and competition on people, the environment, and political and economic development on the continent. Fully revised and updated throughout, its chapters explore old and new economic power interests in Africa; oil, minerals, timber, biofuels, land, food and fisheries; and the nature and impacts of Asian and South African investment in manufacturing and other sectors. The New Scramble for Africa will be essential reading for students of African studies, international relations and resource politics, as well as anyone interested in current affairs.

Multi-disciplinary examination of the role of ordinary African people as agents in the generation and distribution of well-being in modern Africa. What are the fundamental issues, processes, agency and dynamics that shape the political economy of life in modern Africa? In this book, the contributors - experts in anthropology, history, political science, economics, conflict and peace studies, philosophy and language - examine the opportunities and constraints placed on living, livelihoods and sustainable life on the continent. Reflecting on why and how the political economy of life approach is essential for understanding the social process in modern Africa, they engage with the intellectual oeuvre of the influential Africanist economic anthropologist Jane Guyer, who provides an Afterword. The contributors analyse the politicaleconomy of everyday life as it relates to money and currency; migrant labour forces and informal and formal economies; dispossession of land; debt and indebtedness; socio-economic marginality; and the entrenchment of colonial andapartheid pasts. Wale Adebanwi is the Rhodes Professor of Race Relations at the University of Oxford. He is author of Nation as Grand Narrative: The Nigerian Press and the Politics of Meaning (University of Rochester Press).