Beyond the Gatekeeper State explores the dynamic changes occurring within and between African states, and the international system since the turn of the century. Frederick Cooper's model of 'gatekeeper states' - shaped as much by their international links as by their domestic practices - provides the basis for the contributors' thinking about international relations in Africa and the wider international system. The chapters explore the political implications of Africa's new relations with the old super-powers, former colonial powers, and the emerging powers from the South. These new relationships reflect and affect changing technology, infrastructure, and resource flows within and between African states. Drawing on both rich empirical cases and theoretical approaches, the book interrogates the implications of these changes on how we think about states and state systems. Exploring the impact of changing technology, finance, and resources on African politics, Beyond the Gatekeeper State will be of great interest to scholars of African Politics and International Relations (IR), as well as African Studies, IR, and the politics of the Global South more broadly. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Thematics.

Zimbabwe's recent history has been shaped by battles about who speaks for the nation, one fought out in struggles for control of political institutions, the media, and civil society. In her book Sara Rich Dorman examines the interactions of social groups - churches, NGOs, and political parties - from the liberation struggle, through the independence decades, as they engaged the state and ruling party. Her empirically rich account reveals how strategies of control and co-option were replicated and resisted, shaping expectations and behaviour. Dorman tracks how the relationship between Mugabe's ruling party and activists was determined by the liberation struggle, explaining how electoral machinery, the judiciary, and other institutions of state control ensured ZANU-PF hegemony, even as other forces in Zimbabwean society demanded accountability and representation.This is a story of ambiguity and complexity in which the state and civil society mimic and learn from each other. We learn how both structural and direct violence are deployed by the regime, but also how ad-hoc and unplanned many of their interventions really were.Even as the liberation war generation reluctantly exits the Zimbabwean political stage, their influence continues to shape interaction between citizens and the state.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. They are the things we step on without noticing and the largest organisms on Earth. They are symbols of inexplicable growth and excruciating misery. They are grouped with plants, but they behave more like animals. In their inscrutability, mushrooms are wondrous organisms. The mushroom is an ordinary object whose encounters with humans are usually limited to a couple of species prepackaged at the grocery store. This book offers mushrooms as much more than a pasta ingredient or trendy coffee alternative. It presents these objects as the firmament for life as we know it, enablers of mystical traditions, menders of minds lost to depression. But it acknowledges, too, that this firmament only exists because of death and rot. Rummaging through philosophical, literary, medical , ecological , and anthropological texts only serves to confirm what the average forager already knows: that mushrooms are to be regarded with a reverence deserving of only the most powerful entities: those who create and destroy, and thrive on both. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Drawing on a broad theoretical range from speculative realism to feminist psychoanalysis and anti-colonialism, this book represents a radical departure from traditional scholarship on maritime archaeology. Shipwreck Hauntography asserts that nautical archaeology bears the legacy of Early Modern theological imperialism, most evident through the savior-scholar model that resurrects-physically or virtually-ships from wrecks. Instead of construing shipwrecks as dead, awaiting resurrection from the seafloor, this book presents them as vibrant if not recalcitrant objects, having shaken off anthropogenesis through varying stages of ruination. Sara Rich illustrates this anarchic condition with 'hauntographs' of five Age of 'Discovery' shipwrecks, each of which elucidates the wonder of failure and finitude, alongside an intimate brush with the eerie, horrific, and uncanny.

Ten international visual and literary storytellers have come together in Belgium to share their perceptions of strangeness. This concept can be broadly interpreted to mean marginalization, whether personally, socially, or politically imposed. As such, each work challenges commonly accepted individual and artistic boundaries -- genres and grenzen -- contributing to the uniqueness of this diverse gathering. We invite you to turn these pages and welcome you to join us in this omnium gatherum.

This bedtime adventure story chronicles the nightly travels of a young dreamer, who experiences "such strange and wonderful things." The dreamer circles through space and time, enjoying the sights, sounds, and impossibilities of fantasy. Even after all the dreamer's enchanting journeys, the child's travels are only completed upon waking up, safe and sound, in the familiar surroundings of home. The book is structured so that each page can be read as an independent story, or they can all be read together. Anything but standard fare, the unusual illustration style adds to the surreal quality of the stories, sure to inspire colorful dreams in children and bedtime storytellers alike.

While terrestrial archaeology has engaged with contemporary philosophy, maritime archaeology has remained in comparative disciplinary – or subdisciplinary – isolation. However, the issues that humans face in the Anthropocene – from global warming to global pandemics – call for transdisciplinary cooperation, and for thinking together beyond the confines of the human-centered philosophical tradition. Growing areas such as the “blue humanities” and “oceanic thinking” draw directly on our maritime past, even as they ponder the future. Theoretically engaged maritime archaeologists could contribute significantly to these areas of thought, as this volume demonstrates. The essays collected here serve as jumping off point, which opens new ways for maritime archaeologists to engage with the most important problems of our time and to benefit from the new insights offered by object-oriented and flat ontologies. The book gathers the analytical thinking of archaeologists, philosophers, marine biologists, and media theorists, and pushes those observations deep into the maritime realm. The contributions then branch out, like tentacles or corals, reaching into the lessons of oil spills, cephalopod hideouts, shipwreck literature, ruined monuments, and beached plastics. The volume concludes with a series of critical responses to these papers, which pushes the dialogue into new areas of inquiry. Taken as a whole, the volume emphasizes that the study of the past is more relevant than ever because serious consideration of our watery world and all its inhabitants is increasingly necessary for our collective survival. This volume takes the first steps toward this reckoning and, as such, it promises to be an important new contribution to lecture and conference halls around the world where oceans and the Anthropocene are under study.