Corruption as an Empty Signifier: Politics and Political Order in Africa (Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies, 10)

Koechlin, Lucy

ISBN 10: 9004249990 / ISBN 13: 9789004249998

Published by Brill, 2013

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9789004249998

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Corruption as an Empty Signifier: Politics and Political Order in Africa (Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies, 10)
• Publisher: Brill
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9004249990
• ISBN 13: 9789004249998
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Corruption as an Empty Signifier critically explores the ways in which corruption in Africa has been equated with African politics and political order, and offers a novel approach to understanding corruption as a potentially emancipatory discourse of political transformation.
Conventionally, both academic literature as well as development policies depict corruption as the lynchpin of politics in Africa, locking African societies into political orders which subvert democratic change. Drawing on the findings of a case study of the construction industry in Tanzania, Lucy Koechlin conceptualises corruption as a signifier enabling, rather than preventing, social actors to articulate democratic claims. She provides compelling arguments for a more sophisticated understanding of and empirical attentiveness to emancipatory change in African political orders.

About the Author

Lucy Koechlin, Ph.D. (2010), University of Basel, is senior lecturer of Social Anthropology. Previously, she worked as international expert on governance. She has published and co-edited numerous contributions on corruption and accountability, including Non-state Actors as Standard Setters (CUP, 2009).