Thought Provokers
Define and Rule – Mamdani
Mahmood Mamdani has written a number of essential reading books, including When Victims Become Killers, as well as Citizen and Subject and Neither Settler Nor Native (reviews on those to come in future posts). Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity (2012) is the W. E. B. Du Bois lectures, presented in three chapters (Nativism: […]
Tags: #Colonialism #Define and rule #Ethnicity #Mamdani #Race
Murdering Patrice Lumumba
Having recently read and posted about the letters, writing and speeches of Patrice Lumumba, I was looking forward the book by Gerard and Kuklick (2015), published by Harvard, titled “Death in the Congo: Murdering Patrice Lumumba”. While it was well researched and interesting, it was a different book than what I was expecting, and I […]
Charity in Islamic Societies
Amy Singer’s book on Charity in Islamic Societies (2008) covers a wide range of topics related to charitable giving (zakat, sadaqah) and charitable institutions (awqaf), providing canonical and historical examples of them. In particular, I was interested in the parts on endowments / foundations / trusts (singular waqf, plural awqaf). Singer describes them as “specific endowed properties, the revenues of […]
Tags: #Amy Singer #Awqaf #Charity #Islam #Waqf
Lumumba: May Our People Triumph
LeoPard books has collected the speeches, writings, letters and telegrams of the former Prime Minister of DR Congo, Patrice Lumumba in “May Our People Triumph” (2016). It also collects a set of articles written about him after his murder. The book has some editorial errors and formatting issues, but nonetheless is a useful collection to […]
Tags: #anti-colonialists #Dignity #DR Congo #DRC #Patrice Lumumba
The Green Book – Gaddafi
The former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi explained his political philosophy in The Green Book. The Green Book is a short work (the English translation is 92 pages) presented in short chapters on a wide range of topics, organized into three parts. The first part is a critique of Western forms of democracy and a proposal […]
Tags: #Democracy #Gaddafi #Green Book #Just Share #Socialist Society
Sankara, An African Revolutionary
If you have heard of Thomas Sankara but don’t know much about him and his life, Ernest Harsch’s “Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary” (2014) is a useful introduction. However, the book is quite brief (152 pages in a small sized book) – it is part of the Short Histories of Africa series. For a more […]
Tags: #Casino capitalism #Neocolonial society #Relationship of equals #Revolution #Sankara
An African Renaissance: Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Ngugi wa Thiong’o is one of the most important voices on language and decolonization. His works include Decolonizing the Mind (1986) and Theory and Politics of Knowing (2012). This post shares some notes on his 2009 Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance (copy appears available here). “colonialists did not literally cut off the heads […]
Tags: #decolonization #decolonize #Language #Ngugi wa Thiongo #postcolonial
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book on the Obama years (We Were Eight Years in Power, 2017) attracted the scorn of Cornell West. Coates’ earlier book, Between the World and Me (2015), is a bestseller. In the form of a letter to his son, the book tells his journey of his own experiences and reflections of being Black […]
A Dying Colonialism – Fanon (1959)
Fanon is well known for his Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and Wretched of the Earth (1961). Another of his works, A Dying Colonialism (1957), seems less spoken about (originally titled L’An Cinq, de la Revolution Algerienne). The first chapter reminded me of Said’s Orientalism, which was written much later (1978). Going back to Orientalism, […]
Tags: #Colonialism #decolonization #Dying Colonialism #Europeanization #Frantz Fanon
Nkrumah – The Struggle Continues
This is the third of Kwame Nkrumah’s publications I have shared notes on. The first was the Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare (1968) and the second was Class Struggle in Africa (1970). This post shares some notes from The Struggle Continues (1973), a collection of short publications that were written between 1949 to 1968. A reprinted […]
Tags: #Capitalism #Kwame Nkrumah #Neocolonialism #Positive Action #Socialism
About me
Logan Cochrane
Associate Professor at HBKU in the College of Public Policy. He is an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and an Adjunct Professor at Hawassa University (Institute for Policy and Development Research). Over the last fifteen years, he has worked in Afghanistan, Benin, Burundi, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Logan acts as a consultant for governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations, seeking to create bridges between research and practice.
Featured Posts
Tags
Africa Agriculture Anthropology Books Capitalism Civil society Climate change Colonialism Colonization Conflict Culture decolonization Democracy Development Development Studies Economics Education Ethics Ethiopia Ethnography Fellowship Food Security Gender Globalization Governance History Human Rights Inequality Interdisciplinary International development Islam Justice Land Leadership Middle East Migration Participation Philosophy Policy Politics Post-doc Poverty Power Qatar Racism Resilience Revolution Rural Development South Africa SustainabilitySubscribe to receive new blog posts via email