Introduction to a special issue in African Studies Review, together with Tatiana Carayannis, Michael Watts, and Annalisa Bolin.
This special issues traces new forms and practices of rural radicalism. Examining a range of case studies across the continent, contributors break apart what is radical about each—what defines an instance of contestation as truly radical instead of simply idealistic, and how groups come to pursue radical ends—as well as the nature of the rural, where these dynamics are changing in light of capitalist accumulation, digital revolutions, shifting political landscapes, and the rise of Editors’ Introduction 11 the “planetary” rural. The articles approach these questions through research grounded in rich empirical data in order to investigate lived experience along with theoretical frameworks for understanding contemporary rural radicalism. Collectively, these articles dialogue with Weiss’s original framework, revealing diverse expressions of radicalism and new modes for understanding the radicalism, and the nature of the rural, in protest and contestation in the contemporary Central African countryside.
Read the full special issue introduction