Ferguson, J: Global Shadows

James Ferguson is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University. He is the author of "Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt "and "The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho." He is a coeditor of "Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology," also published by Duke University Press, and of "Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science."

"Speaking rationally about Africa is not something that has ever come naturally. This book is a tour de force. James Ferguson shows that a radical critique of the most obtuse and cynical prejudices about Africa can be made without one repeating and perpetuating these prejudices under some other guise." Achille Mbembe, author of On the Postcolony "Global Shadows is one of the most thoughtful, provocative, intelligent books written about Africa in a very long time. Without romancing the postcolonial moment--or minimizing the very real problems faced by the people of a continent often said to be eclipsed by, overshadowed in, the new global order--it raises in the most profound possible way the question of what precisely Africa is in the twenty-first century: a place, a predicament, an imaginative object, a discursive trope, a 'place-in-the-world' whose economies and social orders, governance and geography, are undergoing bewilderingly complex transformations. A must-read by a distinguished scholar, Global Shadows will be widely cited for many years to come." John Comaroff, University of Chicago "... Global Shadows is a major gift to the discipline. It is a confident, thorough and thought-provoking book that raises important questions not only abou the idea of Africa but also about the future of anthropology."--JRAI, Sept 2007