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The Politics of Distinction - African Elites from Colonialism to Liberation in a Namibian Frontier Town (Hardcover)
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The Politics of Distinction - African Elites from Colonialism to Liberation in a Namibian Frontier Town (Hardcover)
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Scholarly definitions of elites as those who wield political power
and control distribution of resources in their locales consistently
leave out their capacity to shape morality, civic ethics and the
legitimacy of power relations beyond material domination. In this
insightful ethnography of Rundu, a frontier town in Namibia, Mattia
Fumanti highlights the fundamental contribution elites make to the
public space through their much-praised concept of civility and
their promotion of nation-building at the local level. In centring
his argument on the moral agency of elites over three generations
and their attempts to achieve distinction in public life, this book
counters an often found and over-generalized view of postcolonial
African states as weak, ruling through authoritarian, greedy and
corrupt practices. By looking at the intricate ways in which the
biographies of a middle-range town and its inhabitants are
interwoven, this study draws very different conclusions from the
grand narratives of pathologies, chaos and crisis that characterize
much of the accepted discourse of African urbanization derived from
the study of large cities. Focusing on how generational relations
between elites have both shaped, and are shaped by, the transitions
from apartheid and civil war to independence and postindependence,
the book illuminates public debates on the power of education, the
aspirations of youth, the role of the state and citizen, delivery
of good governance and the place of ethnic and settler minorities
in post-apartheid southern Africa. This book is a vibrant antidote
to Afro-pessimism and views that emphasize the spectacle of
disaster, kleptomania and corruption of the weak state. By
examining the rhetoric of public morality Fumanti challenges this
but is, nevertheless, also critical of the ruling elite. This is a
sophisticated and nuanced analysis of how small-town elites emerge
and how they see the world, a group of people who are potentially
vital players in the evolving shape of African cultures and
moralities, who have not received the scholarly attention they
deserve. Robert Gordon, University of Vermont and University of the
Free State The Politics of Distinction tackles a perennial
anthropological subject with immense brio. Using the most
contemporary of social theories and ethnographic methods, Mattia
Fumanti addresses the enduring but elusive nexus of
inter-generational consciousness and of the ambivalences between
generations. That the two generations in this Namibian border town
see themselves as the architects and inheritors of liberation
imbues their provincial relations with echoes of grand history.
Anyone interested in African elite formation, post-colonial
governance, and the dividends and distinctions of education, or
simply looking for a finely crafted contemporary ethnography, will
find Fumanti's a compelling narrative. Richard Fardon, Professor of
West African Anthropology at SOAS
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