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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Globalization, boundaries, and livelihoods: perspectives on Africa |
Author: | Nyamnjoh, Francis B. |
Year: | 2003 |
Periodical: | Philosophia Africana: Analysis of Philosophy and Issues in Africa and the Black Diaspora |
Volume: | 6 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 1-18 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Africa |
Subjects: | resistance global economy livelihoods |
Abstract: | This paper takes a closer look at the paradox of globalization as a process of flows and closures, empowerment and enslavement, hope and disappointment. It argues that the neoliberal rhetoric and euphoria regarding globalization must be countered with the reality of exclusion for all but an elite few. Although the basic split is not between nation-States, but between the rich and the poor, across national borders, the fact remains that the investors, advertisers, and affluent consumers, whose interests global capitalism represents, are more concentrated in and comprise a more significant proportion of the populations of the developed world than is the case in Africa, where only an elite minority are involved and hardly any local consumer products are competitive globally. Yet, thanks to their ability to manoeuvre and manipulate, and thanks to the sociality and conviviality of their cultural communities, Africans have refused to internalize and surrender to their marginalization by States weakened by the profit motives of global capital. Thus, this paper also explores some of the creative strategies employed by Africans to appropriate, gate-crash, cushion, subvert, and resist the effects of their exclusion by the global structures of inequality. Ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |