Rereading Marx, Weber, Gramsci and, more recently, Foucault, Béatrice Hibou tackles one of the core questions of political and social theory: state domination. Combining comparative analyses of everyday life and economics, she highlights the arrangements, understandings and practices that make domination conceivable, bearable, even acceptable or reassuring. To carry out this demonstration, Hibou examines authoritarian situations—especially comparing the paradigmatic European cases of fascism, Nazism and Soviet socialism and those of contemporary China or North and Sub-Saharan Africa.

This book brings and blends together a dozen scholarly articles published by the author since the 1970s. It sketches two different yet related stories: first, that of one of the most ancient and prestigious African civilizations, the antiquity and sophistication of which are becoming more and more prominent as field research unfolds their many facets. Second, the story of the researcher himself, who has had to alter and shift his approach to that civilization as he got to meet Grassfielders, colleagues, friends and scholars who changed his views about the Grassfields kingdoms and their people. This book bears witness to those many encounters. Historical and anthropological research is not only a question of relevant theories and methodologies. It is also a human endeavour made of networks and friendships.

Foucault saw the notion of parrhesia (truth-telling) as the most important factor for how governments could and should communicate with their people and vice versa. This important collection compiles and analyses Foucault's views on parrhesia to shed new light on his ideas on the importance of truth-telling in democracies.

How do people live in a country that has experienced rebellions and state-organised repressions for decades and that is still marked by routine forms of violence and impunity? What do combatants do when they are not mobilised for war? Drawing on over ten years of fieldwork conducted in Chad, Marielle Debos explains how living by the gun has become both an acceptable form of political expression and an everyday occupation. Contrary to the popular association of violence and chaos, she shows that these fighters continue to observe rules, frontiers and hierarchies, even as their allegiances shift between rebel and government forces, and as they drift between Chad, Libya, Sudan and the Central African Republic. Going further, she explores the role of the globalised politico-military entrepreneurs and highlights the long involvement of the French military in the country. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that ending the war is not enough. The issue is ending the 'inter-war' which is maintained and reproduced by state violence. Combining ethnographic observation with in-depth theoretical analysis, Living by the Gun in Chad is a crucial contribution to our understanding of the intersections of war and peace.

This collection of essays brings together historians and political scientists from Britain, France and the United States, who, from widely differing perspectives and traditions, have been involved in the process of rethinking African politics. They present here the outline of a new approach, grounded in universal political theory rather than on theories of Third World political development. This seeks to integrate the history of Africa (from pre- to post-colonial) with concepts of political theory as they have been applied historically to the analysis of Europe and America. The book addresses a wide audience: students of African history and politics, of Third World development and of political theory.

Rebel Courts presents an argument that it is possible for non-state armed groups in situations of armed conflict to legally establish and operate a system of courts to administer justice. Neither the concept of the rule of law nor the general principle of state sovereignty stands in the way of framing an understanding of the rule of law adapted to the reality of rebel governance in the area of justice. Legal standards applicable to non-state armed groups in situations of international or non-international armed conflict, including international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and international criminal law, recognise their authority to regularly constitute or establish non-state courts. The lawful operation of such courts is of course subject to requirements of due process, corresponding to an array of guarantees that must be respected in all cases. Rebel courts that are regularly constituted and operate in a manner consistent with due process guarantees demand a certain degree of recognition by international institutions, by states not involved in the conflict, to some extent by the territorial state, and even by other non-state armed groups. These normative claims are grounded in a series of detailed case studies of the administration of justice by non-state armed groups in a diverse range of conflict situations, including the FARC (Colombia), Islamic State (Syria and Iraq), Taliban (Afghanistan), Tamil Tigers (Sri Lanka), PKK (Turkey), PYD (Syria), and KRG (Iraq).

Bartky draws on the experience of daily life to unmask the many disguises by which intimations of inferiority are visited upon women. She critiques both the male bias of current theory and the debilitating dominion held by notions of "proper femininity" over women and their bodies in patriarchal culture.

Development as a Battlefield is an innovative exploration of the multidimensional meanings of – and interactions between – conflict and development. The two phenomena are all too often regarded as ostensibly antagonistic. This was exemplified again in the context of the Arab Spring that erupted in December 2010 and was eventually short-lived in several countries of the Middle-East and North-Africa (MENA) region. This volume – the 8th thematic issue of International Development Policy – is an invitation to reconsider and renew the way social scientists usually seek to make sense of socio-political and economic developments in the MENA region and beyond. Contributors include: Fariba Adelkhah, Yasmine Berriane, Irene Bono, Ayşe Buğra, Raphaëlle Chevrillon-Guibert, Anouck Gabriela Côrte réal-Pinto, Nadia Hachimi Alaoui, Béatrice Hibou, Adriana Kemp, Nora Lafi. Talia Margalit, Marie Vannetzel, Elena Vezzadini, and Merieme Yafout.

Building on Timothy Mitchell's seminal 1991 exploration of the "Limits of the State," this book brings together contributions on the state in the Arab world from the past and present in an edited volume. Altered States views the state less as a matter of people and institutions and more as sets of practices, regimes of truth, and capabilities of power, and the effects they have on those under their control. Through analysing case studies - including Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, UAE, Rojova, and the Islamic State - the concept of the state is applied and questioned. This book examines the roots of policies that led to the uprisings, focusing on how the "authoritarian bargain", which helped define Arab politics, broke down with the rise of neoliberalism. It also assesses how boundaries between state and society have been redrawn, as various dynamics have brought state forces into more open conflict with citizens and each other. The rapid pace of change in the Arab world has necessitated constant modification of themes and theoretical lens of analysis. This book will, therefore, be of interest to practitioners, graduate students and academics of the Arab world, statehood, and political science.