Beyond the State in Rural Uganda (International African Library) - Hardcover

Jones, Ben

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0748635181 ISBN 13: 9780748635184

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2008

Synopsis

In this innovative study, Ben Jones argues that scholars too often assume that the state is the most important force behind change in local political communities in Africa. Studies look to the state, and to the impact of government reforms, as ways of understanding processes of development and change. Using the example of Uganda, regarded as one of Africa's few "success stories", Jones chronicles the insignificance of the state and the marginal impact of Western development agencies. Extensive ethnographic fieldwork in a Ugandan village reveals that it is churches, the village court, and organizations based on family and kinships obligations that represent the most significant sites of innovation and social transformation.Groundbreaking and critical in turn, Beyond the State offers a new anthropological perspective on how to think about processes of social and political change in poorer parts of the world. It should appeal to anyone interested in African development.

About this title

About the Author:

Ben Jones is Lecturer in Social Policy at the London School of Economics.

Review:

Beyond The State In Rural Uganda is a well-drawn, historically informed, and, for the mostpart, analytically convincing case study of rural Teso in northeastern Uganda in the earlyyears of the twenty-first century.

(Ron Kassimir Journal of Religion in Africa 1900-01-00)

About this edition

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0748635181
• ISBN 13: 9780748635184
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224