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Iron Cages - Paradigms, Ideologies and the Crisis of the Postcolonial State (Paperback)
Loot Price: R125
Discovery Miles 1 250
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Iron Cages - Paradigms, Ideologies and the Crisis of the Postcolonial State (Paperback)
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List price R160
Loot Price R125
Discovery Miles 1 250
You Save R35 (22%)
Expected to ship within 5 - 10 working days
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Iron Cages addresses the crisis of the African postcolonial state
by exploring the interaction between the 'iron cages' of expert
knowledge - of which social science paradigms are taken as
emblematic - and lived worlds as experienced by 'ordinary'
Africans. The book focuses on two paradigms in particular,
modernization theory and Marxism-Leninism, and argues that they
were designed not so much to chart the mutable and permeable
contours of local landscapes as to affirm the immutable,
purportedly scientific, reality tracks embedded in each paradigm. A
related investigative trajectory targets the interface between
social science paradigms and political ideologies, and argues that
the frontier between scientific observation and ideological
conviction often is honored more in the breach than in the
observance. Author Alison Jones concludes that, by relegating lived
worlds to shadowy and insubstantial landscapes of non-being, social
science paradigms are implicated in the inability of political
ideologies to make sufficient sense to African constituencies. A
negative consequence is that in a number of cases, 'national unity'
either disintegrates altogether or is coercively enforced by
incumbent regimes. However, two African leaders - Amilcar Cabral of
Guinea-Bissau and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania - broke free from
paradigmatic constraints by consciously seeking to bridge the gap
between expert knowledge and local worlds. In so doing, they
created a third space of humanist enunciation informed by - but not
exclusive to - the lived experience of African peoples. By
situating local specificities within global contexts, they flagged
a way forward for the continent and her many countries.
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