Suchergebnisse

In this article, the author uses the belligerence toward alternative sexualities in Nigeria as a point of departure for a critical appraisal of the terms of inclusion and exclusion in the country's body politic. This belligerence has thrown up a rare alliance of the state, religious leaders and the print media. Attributing this alliance to the postcolonial crisis over the functions of masculinisation and power, the author suggests that anti-gay resentment is a straw man for a ruling elite facing growing socio-economic pressure. This shunting-off of sexual 'others' from the terrain of public action has profound implications for the way modern Nigerian citizenship is understood.

This is the published version, also available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ad.v24i1.22122. ; Des temps coloniaux à nos jours, l'activité politique a toujours été accompagnée d'un certain niveau de violence au Nigeria. Les deux tentatives d'instauration de la démocratie civile durant la première et seconde républiques se sont soldées par un échec en raison de l'anarchie sociale. Une fois de plus, le pays est en plein à une convulsion sociale, en témoigne une avalanche d'attentats à la bombe et d'assassinats dans tout le pays. Le présent article soutient que la violence politique actuels au Nigeria est le résultat due processus de transition politique raté. `et en l'occurrence, l'interruption brutale due processus de transition qui était supposé introduire la Troisième République. Par ailleurs, l'article affirme que la violence, dans sa nature, est totalement différente de la violence politique que connaissait le Nigeria avant, constituant ainsi une génération nouvelle due phénomène. La conclusion qu'il est possible de tirer provisoirement est que la violence politique peur avoir un impact négatif sur le dernier programme de transition due Nigeria, entante donné surtout le penchant bien connu des militaires à use du prétexte d'instabilité pour perpétuer leur règne.

This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ad/article/view/22204. ; Despite its ubiquity in popular and academic discourses, consensus about the epistemological status of the idea of civil society remains elusive. In Africa, the literature is circumscribed by doubts about, first, its applicability; and second, the usefulness of civil society in explicating social processes on the continent. This has generated a conflictive, yet deeply illuminating, scholarship. The paper makes a modest contribution to the debate, first, by mapping the main contours of the existing intellectual divide, and second, critically complicating it by suggesting the emergence of an 'alternative genealogy' that seemingly renders the debate itself redundant. The 'alternative genealogy' seems to have emerged, partly out of the desire to respond to misgivings about the possibility of civil society in Africa, and partly to provide a description of civil society which, while not totally divorced from its original meaning(s), nevertheless strikes out in fresh directions, taking into cognisance the radical ways in which the notion of civil society is being used across non-Western societies in general. The paper concludes with an examination of the implications of this re-imagining of civil society for both theoretical analysis and practical engagement.