France and South Africa, for two generations the premier powers on the African continent, are at a crossroads. With the ending of apartheid and the Cold War, the divisive politics of the recent past are being replaced by a new dynamism of cooperation. Analysing the nature of this complex web of economic and political association is critical to a better understanding of the future direction of this most central of relationships in Africa. Bringing together a host of noted scholars and practitioners in African international relations from both France and South Africa, this book addresses the changing nature of this relationship and its implications for the future of the continent.

This handbook presents a comprehensive view of the current theory and research surrounding political elites, which is now a pivotal subject for academic study and public discourse. In 40 chapters by leading scholars, it displays the field's richness and diversity. The handbook is organized in six sections, each introduced by a co-editor, focusing on theories about political elites, methods for studying them, their main structural and behavioral patterns worldwide, the differentiation and integration of political elite sectors, elite attributes and resources, and the dilemmas of political elites in this century. Forty years since Robert Putnam's landmark Comparative Study of Political Elites, this handbook is an indispensable resource for scholars and students engaged in the study of this vibrant field.

This book is an unprecedented effort to compare representations and practices of social distinction worldwide and over the centuries. It is based on years of observation in many countries and on the consultation of more than 2 500 multi-disciplinary publications dealing directly or indirectly with this theme. In two previous theoretical volumes on the topic (The Sociology of Elite Distinction and Rethinking Social Distinction) welcomed as major breakthroughs, Jean-Pascal Daloz has established himself as the foremost scholar of symbolic social superiority from a comparative perspective. After having rigorously shown the limits of the main analytical frameworks available and outlined a much more inductive approach, his new empirical book continues this intellectual journey. Taking into consideration all sorts of cases and patterns of meaning, it offers an impressive synthesis demonstrating how diverse the expressions of high status can be. This comparative work is intended to be a crucial reference point and an important source of inspiration for researchers and students across many fields.

Understanding politics in nations other than your own is a perilous exercise. If you were to read two newspaper articles on the same topic but from different countries, you would likely find two very different interpretations of the same event. But how we think about what is written in our own country seems somehow less distorted, less wrong. So which side is right? And from what reference point can we begin to compare the two?
"Culture Troubles" is a systematic reevaluation of the role of culture in political analysis. Here, Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz contend that it is unwise to compare different societies without taking into account culture, which in their interpretation is not a system of values, but rather a system of inherited meanings and symbols. This cultural approach, they argue, can attribute meaning to political comparison, and they outline the shape of that approach, one that draws from an eclectic range of sources. Illustrating the sharpness and acuity of their methods, they proceed with a comparative study of the state and political representation in three very different nations--France, Nigeria, and Sweden--to untangle the many ways that culture informs our understanding of political events. As a result, "Culture Troubles" offers a rational starting point from which we may begin to understand foreign politics.

Chabal and Daloz's argument is one based on an analysis of culture understood as a system of meanings rather than as values. Hence, the authors offer a methodology that grounds political analysis in the interpretation of what 'makes sense' to the people concerned. Their approach, which resists the tyranny of particularisms but instead proposes a different 'scientific' method, draws upon a wide range of political, sociological and anthropological sources. The authors illustrate the analytical sharpness of this method with a comparative study of the state and political representation in three very different settings: France, Nigeria and Sweden.