ISBN: 978-1-55587-244-1 $48.00 | ||
1991/371 pages/LC: 90-49549 |
These themes are carried forward in this book in essays on the independence movement, the postcolonial crises in Nigeria, and the tenacious struggle for democracy and development in African societies. The authors hold that these phenomena are connected challenges rather than sequential processes. Their rejection today of economistic and ethnocentric theories of political change and democracy is consistent with the alternatives they offered to the dominant intellectual paradigms of the 1960s and 1970s, as is the central place they assign to basic conceptions of liberty and justice.
"Sklar and Whitaker argue the need for complex, empirically grounded analysis as opposed to elegant but misleading theory."—Journal of Modern African Studies
"Their scholarship has... bridged the traditional, but spurious, gap between area specialists and comparative analysts."—African Studies Review
"When the history of political science on Africa is written, the book definitely will occupy a central place for its commitment to a grass-roots approach, for paying attention to culture, and for its rich empirical base."—Economic Development and Cultural Change