This paper investigates the reconfiguration of spatial ordering underneath the facade of state institutions. In the context of an 'open economy' regime, this reconfiguration is not about a straightforward deterioration of the state, but rather a transformation of political topographies. Such transformations, however, play out differently in different regions. In Africa, one needs to keep in mind the specific trajectory of modern state formation: states have been a colonial import imposed by force, and empirical statehood has remained limited. What is weakened and transformed is thus very different from the ideal-type Weberian „Anstaltsstaat“. To analyse current rescaling processes and how the „re-articulation of public/private, global/local distinctions and relations“ (Abrahamsen and Williams 2009: 12) work, one needs to take off the glasses of state centrism and be aware of the „multiple modernities“ (Eisenstadt 2002) in which broader processes of spatial reordering play out.
weniger
This paper investigates the reconfiguration of spatial ordering underneath the facade of state institutions. In the context of an 'open economy' regime, this reconfiguration is not about a
...
mehr