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Democracy in Translation - Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar Culture (Paperback)
Loot Price: R791
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Democracy in Translation - Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar Culture (Paperback)
Series: The Wilder House Series in Politics, History and Culture
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Frederic C. Schaffer challenges the assumption often made by
American scholars that democracy has been achieved in foreign
countries when criteria such as free elections are met. Elections,
he argues, often have cultural underpinnings that are invisible to
outsiders. To examine grassroots understandings of democratic
institutions and political concepts, Schaffer conducted fieldwork
in Senegal, a mostly Islamic and agrarian country with a long
history of electoral politics. Schaffer discovered that ideas of
"demokaraasi" held by Wolof-speakers often reflect concerns about
collective security. Many Senegalese see voting as less a matter of
choosing leaders than of reinforcing community ties that may be
called upon in times of crisis.By looking carefully at language,
Schaffer demonstrates that institutional arrangements do not
necessarily carry the same meaning in different cultural contexts.
Democracy in Translation asks how social scientists should
investigate the functioning of democratic institutions in cultures
dissimilar from their own, and raises larger issues about the
nature of democracy, the universality of democratic ideals, and the
practice of cross-cultural research.
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