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Cartography played a crucial role during the partitioning of Africa. Territorial boundaries were marked on maps by the colonial powers. However, in some cases, maps were not precise regarding the sites they referred to. Some colonial powers changed original maps by shifting their territorial limits, thus staking a claim to other powers' territories. In areas where territorial questions from maps had not been sufficiently addressed during the colonial period, the distorted maps became a primary source of border disputes in the post-colonial period. The paper is built on the premise that the cartographic foundation of the Malawi-Tanzania border is knotty. Consequently, Malawi and Tanzania inherited contradictory cartography, each state selecting maps that suits her interests to defend her sovereign limits. Indeed, this has stoked the dispute that has dawdled for decades since independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law as Refuge of Anarchy: Societies without Hegemony or State: by Hermann Amborn, translated by Adrian Nathan West, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2019, 280 pp., $19.95T/£14.99 (paper) Late in his exceedingly protracted life, Ernst Jünger introduced the term "anarch" to refine his notion of resistance amid political decay. Jünger's concept of the "anarch" filled in the space for theories of anarchism equivalent to that occupied by the word "monarch" in theories of monarchy and monarchism. [Extracted from the article]

An emerging discourse contends that China has become a willing collaborator for digital technology abuse through substantial investments in Africa’s digital infrastructure, thus leaving digital power at the discretion of unstable African governments. However, it is unclear whether Chinese companies are willing collaborators with autocratic regimes in advancing China’s model of digital authoritarianism in the African continent. Despite the need to better understand the changing dynamics of China’s role in aiding authoritarian regimes through digital technologies, research that responds to these concerns remains empirically understudied and under-conceptualised. The central question this paper addresses is: How does China’s model of digital authoritarianism affect autocratic politics and the trajectory of authoritarian regimes in Africa? The article’s primary objective is to investigate allegations that China is promoting its internet model, which includes censorship and restrictions, through digital investments in African countries. A related aim is to examine how African governments have abused their digital infrastructure to undermine their electoral processes and roll back democratic gains made since the early 1990s. In grappling with these concerns, part of this paper’s contribution is to explore critical practices and meanings of power that appear to have produced trajectories towards digital authoritarianism in Africa. The paper’s main departure point is the proposition that democratic rollbacks can be only partially understood by tracing China’s digital footprints on the continent. The article finds proliferating discourses that China is exporting an authoritarian digital authoritarianism model to Africa misleading. Instead, the evidence suggests that African autocracies are exploiting the adoption of China’s model of the internet to roll back democratic gains through surveillance and censorship of civil liberties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses some of the main findings of a Critical Discourse Analysis of two landmark documents in Irish adult education: Learning for Life: The White Paper on Adult Education (DES, 2000) and the Further Education and Training Strategy (SOLAS, 2014) (from here on referred to respectively as the White Paper and the FET Strategy). The diachronic approach taken by this inquiry permits an exploration of the ways in which language in policy documents has changed over time, particularly in terms of how policy addresses educational inequality. It is in this way that the notion of a discursive shift could be explored, setting this change in language in starker relief. Policy as discourse shapes the formation of this inquiry so the article briefly explicates the approach taken to a Critical Discourse Analysis. Considerations of methodological nationalism widened the focus to consider the influence of European Union (EU) policy discourses specifically in Irish policy formation and these discourses in the statecraft of the EU and nation states. It is from this perspective that the Irish story is also a European one, so the article analyses how the White Paper and the FET Strategy were framed by the EU policy discourses of 'lifelong learning' and 'skills' respectively. As part of this analysis, this article considers the significance of the redefinition of the notion of 'inclusion' to 'active inclusion' and the sharpening of 'evidence based' discourse in policy resourcing of adult education provision. Finally, the article briefly elaborates on the authors' experience of this research and the value of Critical Discourse Analysis as a normative force and a tool for advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how 'criticality' is negotiated in the global policy frameworks on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and re-conceptualised in Vietnamese ESD policymaking. Taking the context of Viet Nam, this paper reflects on what constitutes criticality in education in the light of cultural and historical contexts of the education systems. The comparative perspective helps explore whether (1) universal or decontextualised 'criticality' exists or (2) whether 'criticality' is culturally negotiated based on the premise that educational imaginaries of societal formation and transformation are historically and contextually embedded and contingent. In addition, this paper connects the ongoing debate on the critical potential of ESD within the field of environmental education (EE) research to comparative education research by highlighting both what a comparative perspective might offer to EE research and what recent developments in EE research might contribute to comparative education research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History is a political tool. It is a tool of power either to the exploited or to the exploiters based on the narration of it. Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart witnesses the pre-colonial, under-colonial and post-colonial phases of Igbo society, a territory that represents colonized Africa or to some extent, all the colonized societies. This paper aims at illustrating the tools and the means incorporated to strengthen the base of imperialist interests marginalizing the historical narratives of the local "other" people. Therefore, this study explores the tools, like religion, education and administration, and the means, like the church, missionary and administrative system which are used by the colonial rulers to prevail hegemony in the novel. To this end, Edward Said's Orientalist Discourse and French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser's article "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" in which he has discussed discourse of State Apparatuses like Ideological State Apparatus and Repressive State Apparatus which will constitute the cornerstone of this study. Thus, this paper will contribute and enrich the existing African, Caribbean and postcolonial literatures and come up with a new approach - Things Fall Apart: Tracing the Tools and Means of Constructing Colonial Historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper intends to conduct a spatial reading of civil resistance movements taking Jawaharlal Nehru University’s (JNU) #FeeMustFall in India as the case study. Amidst the penetration of neoliberal politics in public goods like health and education, the pay-per-user principle is not limited to the argument of efficiency of allocation of resources. It can be comprehended as the larger strategy of the ruling dispensation to deplatform dissent and homogenise state space on an ideological singularity catering to majoritarian and hegemonic nationalism. The paper shall focus on the spatial reading of civil resistance movements using Lefebvre’s characterisation of state space and Gramsci’s understanding of hegemony and nationalism in the context of JNU’s #FeeMustFall movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper has two main objectives. First, it aims to analyse the connections between education and poverty established by the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), a central policy tool for the articulation of the Post Washington Consensus. Second, it intends to study how the PRSPs have been consolidated and expanded through different international organisations. With these objectives, the paper includes four sections: the first and second sections present the ‘model of poverty’ and the ‘model of education’ defined in the PRSPs. The third analyses how different international actors have adopted the PRSPs as a guide to orient their strategies and policies in the field of education, development and poverty reduction. The fourth and final section critically explores the current global development agenda and identifies some of its main challenges in terms of conceptualisation and implementation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the wake of Barack Obama's 2009 ascension to the White House, stories questioning his citizenship slowly trickled into the mainstream. By 2011, 'Birtherism'-the belief that Obama is constitutionally disqualified from holding Presidential office-was a principle aspect of public discourse. Through an analysis of online comments in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, I analyze how dominant understandings of citizenship, race, class, and civil rights structure public navigation of 'Birther' claims. I find the presence of several 'narratives of belonging'-shared stories that people socially construct to account for who they are, how the world works, and where different people belong. These narratives reveal the sustained conflation of citizenship with an ideal or 'hegemonic' form of white racial identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, democracy has been facing increasing challenges. How has comparative regime research responded? Focusing on the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, this paper argues that the perception of serious threats to democracy in general and liberal norms in particular has given rise to a convergence around the liberal conception of democracy, reversing a previous turn towards recognising its conceptual contestability. In tracing V-Dem's discursive turn from the contestation to the decontestation of democracy, the paper reconstructs two mechanisms that concern the ways in which academic research relates to the outside world and that have jointly pushed V-Dem scholars towards embracing unequivocally liberal conceptions of regime type and regime change. As a response to the crisis of democracy, this gradual abandonment of a pluralist conceptualisation of democracy is understandable but also deeply problematic as it contributes to downplaying the inherent limitations of liberal democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper sets out to dissolve a contrast between traditional coop sectoral enclosure, on the one hand, and platform coop diversity, on the other hand, which often resonates with precariousness, marginalisation, fragmentation, whitewashing and corporatisation. To tackle traditional and platform coop discordance, the paper draws on the model of open cooperativism introduced by Vasilis Kostakis and Michel Bauwens, passed through the lens of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's discourse theory of hegemony, to weave a narrative that seeks to unite and broaden the scope of the cooperative sector. In doing so, the paper reviews CoopCycle as an illustrative case study of platform cooperativism. CoopCycle is a global federation of bike delivery coops that deploys the digital commons to install workplace democracy in the bike delivery sector. The paper aims at contributing to the understanding of platform cooperativism, all the while embedding the model of platform cooperativism into the counter-hegemony of open cooperativism aiming to challenge the current hegemony of neoliberalism. The main argument here is that the model of open cooperativism bears comparative advantages vis-à-vis closed proprietary socio-economic models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The belief that the husband owns the child, prevalent in Yoruba cultural system, is the issue of engagement in this research. The research traced the justification for this belief to patriarchy. The paper found that patriarchy, is only a masculine hegemony, socially entrenched and unchecked within the Yoruba social system. Consequently, building it on the philosophical framework of Hobbes and Locke, the paper argued that; considering the fact that each sex is biologically determined and the complementary contribution made by each towards procreation, it is consistent to conclude that the child belongs to both parents. Considering the assumption that each parent is a natural object, conditioned to respond to procreation eliciting natural promptings, it follows that the children belong to Nature. The paper therefore concludes that family laws in Yoruba societies ought to reflect equal ownership of children by both parents. Methodology used include textual analysis and argumentative investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, Indigenous scientific frameworks and methods have been damaged and derided by 'western' science, a strategy of the colonial project. Contemporary Australia is no exception, with the transmission of the suite of scientific values and practices formed over millennia in and for this place being actively prevented by legislation, government policies and colonial opprobrium. This paper shows how two crucial Indigenous science(s) frameworks, used alongside two Indigenous research methods, can transform hegemonic scientific research and fieldwork priorities and practices. This transformation occurs because of the focus of each framework. The first, centring country, requires decentring the human to bring forth the needs of the web of relationships that is country. The second framework, relational accountability, is about tending to a broad range of relationships, are often kin-based and including the other-than-human, with yindyamarra (or local equivalent). Relational accountability also offers an inbuilt ethic of care superior to institutional ethics protocols. By describing these frameworks and methods and discussing how and when to use them, this paper supports their greater understanding and more widespread use, particularly by Indigenous practitioners, so we may continue to (re)build what colonisation has damaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a translation lens, we explore templates for writing ethnography in organization studies and their evolution over time through the analysis of all ethnographic papers published in the premier journal Administrative Science Quarterly, 1956-2018. We found three templates of ethnographic writing. Few early ethnographic papers resemble travelogues, as they use theory to explain a unique case based on firsthand experiences of the author. Most studies read like detective stories, using extensive, quantified data from a case and systematically analyzing it to advance theory. This template has remained predominant over time. Finally, some ethnographic papers read like postmodern detective stories, in that they attempt to create knowledge from lived experience, while also hinting at the partiality of this knowledge. This template appeared around the turn of the century but is today rare. The overall low number of ethnographies and the lasting hegemony of the ethnography as detective story template reflect the strict disciplining of ethnography into the emulation of positivist research, constraining knowledge creation in organization studies. We conclude by offering researchers some strategies to recover the strengths of templates available in the past to broaden the boundaries of existing norms for writing ethnography today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each year the Music Theater and Dance Focus Group of the Association for Theater in Higher Education (ATHE) sponsors the Bruce Kirle Memorial Emerging Scholars panel at its annual conference, held this year in Chicago. The winning panellists present their work at the conference before revising their papers for publication in Studies in Musical Theatre. This year's panellists Elyse Singer, Arianne Johnson Quinn and Hyewon Kim present their articles on the following pages, introduced in this short essay by the ATHE conference's respondent, Stuart J. Hecht. In his essay, Hecht considers how American musicals initially featured escapist spectacle that often meant placing action in foreign settings, apart from everyday experience. Composers and lyricists responded by writing songs that incorporated strands of other nations and cultures but which did not alienate American playgoers' expected musical norms. Many leading composers and the New York audience were assimilated children of immigrants, so productions of such operettas offered reassuring nostalgia along with escapist plots. Rodgers and Hammerstein transformed this dynamic in their productions, assigning larger issues to exotic locales, preaching liberal values of social justice. They and their peers felt comfortable creating foreign settings, places they themselves might never have known, for the entertainment and enlightenment of New York playgoers. In the years following the Second World War American musicals found currency touring England and then beyond, signalling European acceptance of American culture and political might. By century's end the exportation of culture for prestige was increasingly replaced by American culture as commodity, alongside sales of goods. Yet American musicals have always embodied democracy, as such shows promote diversity and hope. Hence the global exportation of musicals promotes American values as much as American merchandise. The article goes on to introduce the articles of our three debut scholars, placing their essays within this larger historical and cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1970s and 1980s, white male authors portrayed male rapes with graphic details, and at the end of the twentieth century, certain writers of colour have been writing more oblique representations of the sexual assault of boys. Khaled Hosseini is one such writer who dealt with sexual violence on the male body in his novel The Kite Runner. The documentation of male rape cases is a recent phenomenon. The feminist criticisms have only indulged in scrutinising the interstices of female rape cases previously. This present article aims to decode the gendered rhetoric surrounding rape to stigmatise the axiom that men are 'unrapeable.' With the in-depth reading of the novel The Kite Runner, this paper wants to investigate why male rape cases have mostly remained unreported. Khaled Hosseini, through his novel, demonstrates the difficulties of child bystanders who grapple with their responsibility towards rape survivors and finally focus on their safety rather than assisting the victims. This present paper wishes to investigate how Khaled Hosseini deflects the rape trope as issues of power, race, and national identity rather than the bodily experience of rape. It would also like to testify to the dilemmas of bystanders and the community at large for their silence and inaction and how it leads to the collective responsibility of child survivors of sexual assault in the rape novels of the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Critical African Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the hegemonic pedagogical-cultures-based narratives that I experienced in my science teaching and learning journey. Furthermore, in this paper, I also envisage different methods for deconstructing the overwhelming influence of hegemony in the science classroom. I focus on two research questions: (1) In what ways could I explore the deep-seated, hegemonic-science, pedagogical culture in my science teaching and learning? (2) How could I envisage the possible ways for deconstructing hegemony in science education? In this autoethnographic inquiry, I used the 'knowledge-constitutive interests' theory as a referent in data text generation and meaning-making. This theoretical lens helped unfold the deep-rooted, hegemony-like singular and absolute scientific knowledge consumption practice. While engaging in reflection-on-/in-/for-actions, I realized the need for curious, contextual and cultural selves and communication as a dance rather than a war for reforming and transforming these deep-seated, hegemonic, pedagogical cultures and identities. Moreover, I also attempt to practise the transdisciplinary STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) approach for connecting classroom science learning with learners' lives. I believe that it could support reforming/transforming my sit-and-get science teaching. Therefore, I also offer to be involved in a transdisciplinary pedagogy (like STEAM), research and academic writing for transformative curricular praxis and inclusive science learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the diverse multiethnic setting of colonial New Spain, women faced challenges in separating themselves from marriages they considered unendurable. The Catholic Church, which exercised hegemony over definitions of marriage in the colony, controlled access to permanent, formal separation or "ecclesiastical divorce", while secular courts offered shorter-term separations generally aimed at reunifying couples. Outside of these options, flight, concealment, and bigamy, or "self-divorce," offered the only recourse for women seeking to leave an untenable relationship. While it is well known that few women sought (and even fewer were granted) ecclesiastical divorce, it is clear that many women sought separation through formal and informal means. Using ecclesiastical petitions for divorce, this paper investigates the experience of deposit (depósito) for New Spain's separated women. Deposit was likely a primary goal of women's divorce petitions. Moreover, the hegemony of marriage was less complete in reality than in ideology; the number of single women in the colony is now known to be vast, and their networks substantial. Building on Bird's and Megged's insights on separation and singleness, this paper argues that studying deposit reveals a custom that offered women of all classes a substantial degree of respite and agency in separation, particularly in the early colony, when institutional options were less formalized. Sometimes, depósito permitted lengthy separations that blurred into permanency, while at other times it served as a crucial safety valve. Nonetheless, the practice was a contested terrain on which husbands also sought to exercise power and control. Deposit, therefore, was a highly ambivalent form of "separation" in Latin America. This was undoubtedly true both in the early-colonial period and thereafter, but as colonial society matured and institutional deposit became more possible and common, men's power was enhanced. Studying the practice before the late seventeenth century therefore reveals some of the ways that early colonial societal flux authorized female agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Austerity measures and neoliberal policies have deeply affected the UK cultural sector. In particular they have been central to cementing the idea that contemporary cultural institutions should henceforth be regarded as commercial operations. As the language of business and management (B&M language) increasingly frames how organisations of the cultural sector are described, this paper defines the main discursive practices motivating this performative repositioning. Drawing theoretically from the concept of performativity, and building empirically on in-depth interviews with senior staff across the UK museum sector, we argue that the incursion of B&M language has reshaped the 'reality' of the sector by materialising new relations. Signally, we advance a concept of performative hegemonic language to describe a range of manifestations of linguistic re-labelling in the world of the museum. Our paper illustrates what happens when an organisation starts to classify activities through B&M language, considering the implications of framing this etymology as transcendent to its cultural counterpart. Relabelling, we contend, re-orients meaning, and this translates into the ascent of what we call the 'neoliberal museum'. Overall, our paper unpacks the linguistic-material processes underpinning the ideological transformations affecting the cultural sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's ascendant position in International Relations has sparked a debate over the future of the US-led liberal international order. As China's military, economic, ideological, and institutional influence continues to expand, apprehensions about its challenges to the existing global order and the evolution of China's role in international governance have intensified. This research is qualitative and consults both primary and secondary recourses. From the neo-Gramscian school of thought perspective, this research explores the core relationship between China and the global order, delving deep into the historical context. Unlike traditional international relations theories, this research presents a historical and relational interpretation to present an alternative perspective on China's rise. Elucidating this dynamic historical progression, this paper posits that China's relationship with the world order has evolved significantly, moving from animosity and refutation in the post-independence period to compliance with Western ideals and institutions, integration into the international system and, more recently, to the pursuit of independent institution-building, global governance, and promotion of alternative world order. This paper concludes that while China has adopted a predominant role in shaping the rules of the international system, it is far from being a disruptive reformist. Thus, despite its global outreach, China does not seek to build a power centre that counters explicitly the Western liberal order but signals a gradual transition towards a multipolar order. Bibliography Entry Munir, Maheera and Faiza Abid. 2024. "China, Global Governance and Liberal International Order: A Neo-Gramscian Analysis." Margalla Papers 28 (1): 93-108.