Conflict and security in Africa
本书收录了13篇论文，探讨冷战后至后9/11时代非洲冲突的结构、历史和社会条件，超越文化本质主义和经济还原论，对贪婪与怨恨理论、民主和平论等提出新视角。
Several books have attempted to provide a breakthrough analysis on conflicts in a post-Cold War globalized world. Rita Abrahamsen's edited collection has other ambitions. With contributions dating back as far as 1996, it offers a selection of ideas focused on the shift from the Cold War to a post-9/11 African security framework, and including the political-economic perspectives of several valuable contributors who have shaped debates over the years. This volume of thirteen chapters provides, in Abrahamsen's own words, a tour d'horizon on the African ‘war and (in)security’ landscape (p. 10). It aims to examine structural, historical, and social conditions, and their relationship to African conflict. It goes beyond both cultural essentialism and economic reductionism, as represented by the greed and grievance theory, democratic peace theory, or the oil curse. The first section assembles five authors whose chapters connect local conflicts to a globalized economy, with voices offering new perspectives on the greed and grievance debate. William Reno (Chapter 2) presents the impact of the international structural adjustments in Sierra Leone, and how reforms failed to undermine political clientelism, instead tying them to the global economic sphere. In parallel, Patrick Johnston's contribution (Chapter 3) studies the relationship between timber trafficking during the Liberian conflicts of the 1990s and politicians' illegitimate rule, bringing further disengagement of the state and securitization through private companies. Michael Watts (Chapter 4) provides a case study of the insurgency in oil-rich Nigeria, highlighting the importance of shadow interests and politics below the surface of economic grievance. Cyril Obi (Chapter 5) pursues the discussion on Nigeria, revisiting the oil curse, bringing forward empirical limitations, and suggesting that more needs to be done to understand the historical construction of grievance. Susan Willett (Chapter 6) analyses data sources to provide an overview of the relationship between corruption and arms procurement, presenting it as a problem of global governance, and providing some policy recommendations.