Marginality and Crisis

Reviews / Votes

Marginality and Crisis: Globalization and Identity in Contemporary Africa is essential reading for those seriously interested in understanding the complex political, social, and economic dimensions of globalization in African societies and the imaginative response of these societies to this enigmatic post-war phenomenon. Adebayo, Adesina, and Olaniyi, three renowned African scholars, and their colleagues have given us a critical volume on the transformative impact of globalization in contemporary African states, effectively engaging intersections of the local and the global, tradition and modernity, state and society. With compelling case studies, especially from Nigeria, Africa's most complicated postcolony, this volume is an important and timely contribution to African studies. -- Olufemi Vaughan, Amherst College Marginality & Crisis, a companion volume to Globalizations & Transnational Migrations: Africa & Africans in the Contemporary Global System competently documents and analyzes the manipulation, marginalization, and fragmentation of the mass of the African people through the agency of a decadent, materialistic, and fanatically secular culture that contemporary transnational capitalism purveys across the globe. To the extent that the sociology of economic life in Africa is more about community welfare and less about rational economic individualism, political and policy elites across the globe would do well to heed the call of this must-read volume?that the way forward is a return to the ontology of globalization as a commitment to the construction of an authentic global village, where shared human values and social solidarity are given free rein. -- Adekunle Amuwo, University of KwaZulu Natal This is a detailed study of an important subject. Marginality and Crisis brings out some of the neglected dimensions of globalization on a continent that has always been at the receiving end of global vicissitudes. The chapters are rigorous and lucid, and they provide all the analysis one needs to know on a phenomenon that is bound to dominate discussions in Africa for some time to come. -- Abiodun Alao, King's College London Marginality & Crisis, a companion volume to Globalizations & Transnational Migrations: Africa & Africans in the Contemporary Global System competently documents and analyzes the manipulation, marginalization, and fragmentation of the mass of the African people through the agency of a decadent, materialistic, and fanatically secular culture that contemporary transnational capitalism purveys across the globe. To the extent that the sociology of economic life in Africa is more about community welfare and less about rational economic individualism, political and policy elites across the globe would do well to heed the call of this must-read volume-that the way forward is a return to the ontology of globalization as a commitment to the construction of an authentic global village, where shared human values and social solidarity are given free rein. -- Adekunle Amuwo, University of KwaZulu Natal