Edward Said is perhaps best known as the author of the landmark study Orientalism, a book which changed the face of critical theory and shaped the emerging field of post-colonial studies, and for his controversial journalism on the Palestinian political situation.

Looking at the context and the impact of Said's scholarship and journalism, this book examines Said's key ideas, including:

• the significance of 'worldliness', 'amateurism', 'secular criticism', 'affiliation' and 'contrapuntal reading'
• the place of text and critic in 'the world'
• knowledge, power and the construction of the 'Other'
• links between culture and imperialism
• exile, identity and the plight of Palestine
• a new chapter looking at Said's later work and style

This popular guide has been fully updated and revised in a new edition, suitable for readers approaching Said's work for the first time as well as those already familiar with the work of this important theorist. The result is the ideal guide to one of the twentieth century's most engaging critical thinkers.

At the heart of this book is the argument that the fact that so many post-structuralist French intellectuals have a strong ?colonial? connection, usually with Algeria, cannot be a coincidence. The ?biographical? fact that so many French intellectuals were born in or otherwise connected with French Algeria has often been noted, but it has never been theorised. Ahluwalia makes a convincing case that post-structuralism in fact has colonial and postcolonial roots. This is an important argument, and one that ?connects? two theoretical currents that continue to be of great interest, post-structuralism and postcolonialism.

The re-reading of what is now familiar material against the background of de-colonial struggles demonstrates the extent to which it is this new condition that prompted theory to question long-held assumptions inscribed in the European colonial enterprise. The wide-ranging discussion, ranging across authors as different as Foucault, Derrida, Fanon, Althusser, Cixous, Bourdieu and Lyotard, enables the reader to make connections that have remained unnoticed or been neglected. It also brings back into view a history of struggles, both political and theoretical, that has shaped the landscape of critique in the social sciences and humanities.

This clear and lucid discussion of important and often difficult thinkers will be widely read and widely debated by students and academics alike.

This title was first published in 2003. Aimed at examining contemporary debates and issues which are at the cutting edge of the social sciences, Pal Ahluwalia and Abebe Zegeye have put together a book on subjects of critical importance to the African condition. A combination of empirical and theoretical materials, this text introduces new perspectives.

Author Biography:
Pal Ahluwalia is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Adelaide. He has written extensively on African Politics and post-colonial theory. His most recent publication, with Bill Ashcroft, is Edward Said: The Paradox of Identity, also published by Routledge.

This ground-breaking book makes sense of the complexities and dynamics of post-colonial African politics, illustrating how post-colonial theory has marginalised a huge part of its constituency, namely Africa.
Politics and Post-colonial Theory traces how African identity has been constituted and reconstituted by examining movements such as
* negritude
* the rise of nationalism
* decolonisation
and questions how helpful post-colonial analysis can be in understanding the complexities which define institutions such as
* the nation-state
* civil society
* human rights
* citizenship
Politics and Post-colonial Theory bravely breaks down disciplinary boundaries. Its radical vision will be essential reading for all those engaged in Politics, post-colonial studies and African studies.

This title was first published in 2003. Aimed at examining contemporary debates and issues which are at the cutting edge of the social sciences, Pal Ahluwalia and Abebe Zegeye have put together a book on subjects of critical importance to the African condition. A combination of empirical and theoretical materials, this text introduces new perspectives.

Reconciliation is one of the most significant contemporary challenges in the world today. In this innovative new volume, educational academics and practitioners across a range of cultural and political contexts examine the links between reconciliation and critical pedagogy, putting forward the notion that reconciliation projects should be regarded as public pedagogical interventions, with much to offer to wider theories of learning. While ideas about reconciliation are proliferating, few scholarly accounts have focused on its pedagogies. This book seeks to develop a generative theory that properly maps reconciliation processes and works out the pedagogical dimensions of new modes of narrating and listening, and effecting social change. The contributors build conceptual bridges between the scholarship of reconciliation studies and existing education and pedagogical literature, bringing together the concepts of reconciliation and pedagogy into a dialogical encounter and evaluating how each might be of mutual benefit to the other, theoretically and practically. This study covers a broad range of territory including ethnographic accounts of reconciliation efforts, practical implications of reconciliation matters for curricula and pedagogy in schools and universities and theoretical and philosophical considerations of reconciliation/pedagogy. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of peace and reconciliation studies, educational studies and international relations.

This unique volume seeks both to historicize and to deconstruct the pervasive, almost ritualistic, association of Africa with forms of terrorism as well as extreme violence, the latter bordering on and including genocide.

Africa is tendentiously associated with violence in the popular and academic imagination alike. Written by leading authorities in postcolonial studies and African history, as well as highly promising emergent scholars, this book highlights political, social and cultural processes in Africa which incite violence or which facilitate its negotiation or negation through non-violent social practice. The chapters cover diverse historical periods ranging from fourteenth century Ethiopia and early twentieth century Cameroon, to contemporary analyses set in Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast and South Africa. It makes a crucial contribution to a revitalized understanding of the social and historical coordinates of violence - or its absence - in African settings.

Violence and Non-Violence in Africa will be of interest to students and scholars of African history and anthropology, colonialism and post-colonialism, political science and Africanist cultural studies.

At the heart of this book is the argument that the fact that so many post-structuralist French intellectuals have a strong ?colonial? connection, usually with Algeria, cannot be a coincidence. The ?biographical? fact that so many French intellectuals were born in or otherwise connected with French Algeria has often been noted, but it has never been theorised. Ahluwalia makes a convincing case that post-structuralism in fact has colonial and postcolonial roots. This is an important argument, and one that ?connects? two theoretical currents that continue to be of great interest, post-structuralism and postcolonialism.

The re-reading of what is now familiar material against the background of de-colonial struggles demonstrates the extent to which it is this new condition that prompted theory to question long-held assumptions inscribed in the European colonial enterprise. The wide-ranging discussion, ranging across authors as different as Foucault, Derrida, Fanon, Althusser, Cixous, Bourdieu and Lyotard, enables the reader to make connections that have remained unnoticed or been neglected. It also brings back into view a history of struggles, both political and theoretical, that has shaped the landscape of critique in the social sciences and humanities.

This clear and lucid discussion of important and often difficult thinkers will be widely read and widely debated by students and academics alike.

Reconciliation is one of the most significant contemporary challenges in the world today. In this innovative new volume, educational academics and practitioners across a range of cultural and political contexts examine the links between reconciliation and critical pedagogy, putting forward the notion that reconciliation projects should be regarded as public pedagogical interventions, with much to offer to wider theories of learning. While ideas about reconciliation are proliferating, few scholarly accounts have focused on its pedagogies. This book seeks to develop a generative theory that properly maps reconciliation processes and works out the pedagogical dimensions of new modes of narrating and listening, and effecting social change. The contributors build conceptual bridges between the scholarship of reconciliation studies and existing education and pedagogical literature, bringing together the concepts of reconciliation and pedagogy into a dialogical encounter and evaluating how each might be of mutual benefit to the other, theoretically and practically. This study covers a broad range of territory including ethnographic accounts of reconciliation efforts, practical implications of reconciliation matters for curricula and pedagogy in schools and universities and theoretical and philosophical considerations of reconciliation/pedagogy. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of peace and reconciliation studies, educational studies and international relations.

This unique volume seeks both to historicize and to deconstruct the pervasive, almost ritualistic, association of Africa with forms of terrorism as well as extreme violence, the latter bordering on and including genocide. Africa is tendentiously associated with violence in the popular and academic imagination alike. Written by leading authorities in postcolonial studies and African history, as well as highly promising emergent scholars, this book highlights political, social and cultural processes in Africa which incite violence or which facilitate its negotiation or negation through non-violent social practice. The chapters cover diverse historical periods ranging from fourteenth century Ethiopia and early twentieth century Cameroon, to contemporary analyses set in Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast and South Africa. It makes a crucial contribution to a revitalized understanding of the social and historical coordinates of violence - or its absence - in African settings. Violence and Non-Violence in Africa will be of interest to students and scholars of African history and anthropology, colonialism and post-colonialism, political science and Africanist cultural studies.

The essays collected here, prepared by a think tank of the Elijah Interfaith Academy, explore the challenges associated with sharing wisdom-learning, teachings, messages for good living-between members of different faith traditions. In a globalized age, when food, music, and dress are shared freely, how should religions go about sharing their wisdom? The essays, representing six faith traditions (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist), explore what wisdom means in each of these traditions, why it should be shared-internally and externally-and how it should be shared. A primary concern is the form of appropriate sharing, so that the wisdom of the specific tradition maintains its integrity in the process of sharing. Authors reflect on specific wisdoms their tradition has or should share, as well as what it has to receive from other faiths. Special emphasis is placed on the themes of love and forgiveness and how these illustrate the principles of common sharing. Love and humility emerge as strong motivators for sharing wisdom and for doing so in a way that respects the tradition from which the wisdom comes as well as the recipient. This book offers a theory that can enrich ongoing encounters between members of faith traditions by suggesting a tradition-based practice of sharing the wisdom of traditions, while preserving the integrity of the teaching and respecting the identity of the one with whom wisdom is shared.

The study of Africa arouses many passions and prejudices which are the subject of this book. This book seeks to examine the hegemonic role that African studies has played in the invention of Africanism. Politics within Kenya remains entrapped by Western constructions of institutions and the practice of politics. The post-colonial period is linked inextricably to the colonial period. Kenya's political, economic, social and cultural framework has been and continues to be dominated by the colonial legacy. The discussion of Africanism earlier suggests that the decolonisation process did not achieve liberation fully, except in the narrowest of political terms. Rather, the West continued its dominance by more subtle means which has permeated the very imagination of the colonised. It is this continuing colonisation of the imagination which dominates the political scene. The ever increasing hegemonic role of donor agencies and donor countries, under the guise of structural adjustment programmes, ensures that countries such as Kenya become hostage to the latest manifestation of Africanism.

Edward Said is perhaps best known as the author of the landmark study Orientalism, a book which changed the face of critical theory and shaped the emerging field of post-colonial studies, and for his controversial journalism on the Palestinian political situation.

Looking at the context and the impact of Said's scholarship and journalism, this book examines Said's key ideas, including:

• the significance of 'worldliness', 'amateurism', 'secular criticism', 'affiliation' and 'contrapuntal reading'
• the place of text and critic in 'the world'
• knowledge, power and the construction of the 'Other'
• links between culture and imperialism
• exile, identity and the plight of Palestine
• a new chapter looking at Said's later work and style

This popular guide has been fully updated and revised in a new edition, suitable for readers approaching Said's work for the first time as well as those already familiar with the work of this important theorist. The result is the ideal guide to one of the twentieth century's most engaging critical thinkers.