Examines the increasing significance of the volunteer and volunteerism in African societies, and their societal impact within precarious economies in a period of massive unemployment and faltering trajectories of social mobility. Across Africa today, as development activities animate novel forms of governance, new social actors are emerging, among them the volunteer. Yet, where work and resources are limited, volunteer practices have repercussions that raise contentious ethical issues. What has been the real impact of volunteers economically, politically and in society? The interdisciplinary experts in this collection examine the practices of volunteers - both international and local - and ideologies of volunteerism. They show the significance of volunteerism to processes of social and economic transformation, and political projects of national development and citizenship, as well as to individual aspirations in African societies. These case studies - from South Africa, Lesotho, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Sierra Leone and Malawi - examine everyday experiences of volunteerism and trajectories of voluntary work, trace its broaderhistorical, political and economic implications, and situate African experiences of voluntary labour within global exchanges and networks of resources, ideas and political technologies. Offering insights into changing configurations of work, citizenship, development and social mobility, the authors offer new perspectives on the relations between labour, identity and social value in Africa. Ruth Prince is Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology at the University of Oslo; with her co-author Wenzel Geissler, she won the 2010 Amaury Talbot Prize for their book The Land is Dying: Contingency, Creativity and Conflict in Western Kenya. Hannah Brown is a lecturer in Anthropology at Durham University.

Examines the increasing significance of the volunteer and volunteerism in African societies, and their societal impact within precarious economies in a period of massive unemployment and faltering trajectories of social mobility. Across Africa today, as development activities animate novel forms of governance, new social actors are emerging, among them the volunteer. Yet, where work and resources are limited, volunteer practices have repercussions that raise contentious ethical issues. What has been the real impact of volunteers economically, politically and in society? The interdisciplinary experts in this collection examine the practices of volunteers - both international and local - and ideologies of volunteerism. They show the significance of volunteerism to processes of social and economic transformation, and political projects of national development and citizenship, as well as to individual aspirations in African societies. These case studies - from South Africa, Lesotho, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Sierra Leone and Malawi - examine everyday experiences of volunteerism and trajectories of voluntary work, trace its broaderhistorical, political and economic implications, and situate African experiences of voluntary labour within global exchanges and networks of resources, ideas and political technologies. Offering insights into changing configurations of work, citizenship, development and social mobility, the authors offer new perspectives on the relations between labour, identity and social value in Africa. Ruth Prince is Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology at the University of Oslo; with her co-author Wenzel Geissler, she won the 2010 Amaury Talbot Prize for their book The Land is Dying: Contingency, Creativity and Conflict in Western Kenya. Hannah Brown is a lecturer in Anthropology at Durham University.

Eighth Army Versus Rommel is a riveting account of the Desert War from 1940 through Montgomery's celebrated battle of Alamein in 1942. Comprehensively researched and rich in previously unpublished material, it examines the undertrained and underfunded pre-war British Army, contrasting its leadership with its opposite numbers in Germany, and demonstrates how and why Eighth Army had difficulties in its first 18 months of fighting the Afrika Korps. This volume also examines the battles from the perspective of the commanders, the decisions they made and how cultural influences effected tactics and decisions of the Eighth Army high command. Ultimately, British commanders were as much the product of their military culture and education as Rommel and his commanders were of theirs, but British military culture and education was, for much of this period, markedly less fit for purpose than the German. Saul David, Professor of Military History at the University of Buckingham and author of All the King's Men and 100 Days to Victory, describes it as: "A compelling and highly original study, firmly based on archival research, that explains for the first time the real reason the British and Commonwealth troops struggled to overcome their German and Italian opposition in the Desert War: not because of inadequate generals and equipment per se, but rather because of inherent weaknesses in British military culture.