Politics of origin in Africa

Autochthony, citizenship and conflict In this revealing new book, Boas and Dunn explore the phenomenon of autochthony in contemporary African politics. Autochthony discourses enable the speaker to establish a direct claim to territory by the assertion of being an original inhabitant, a native, literally a son of the soil. In contemporary Africa, questions concerning origin are currently among the most crucial and contested issues in political life, as they directly relate to the politics of place, belonging, identity and contested citizenship. Thus, land claims and autochthony disputes are the hallmarks of political crises in many places on the African continent.

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1 Introduction: conflict, land scarcity and tales of origin
2 Autochthony, melancholy and uncertainty in contemporary African politics
3 Liberia: civil war and the ‘Mandingo question’
4 Kenya: majimboism, indigenous land claims and electoral violence
5 Democratic Republic of Congo: ‘dead certainty’ in North
6 Cte d’Ivoire: production and the politics of belonging
7 Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Morten Bsis senior researcher at Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies in Oslo. His recent publications include Global Institutions and Development: Framing the world? (with Desmond McNeill, 2004), New and Critical Security and Regionalism: Beyond the nation state (with James J. Hentz, 2003), African Guerrillas: Raging against the machine (with Kevin Dunn, 2007) and, most recently, International Development, Volumes IIV (with Benedicte Bull, 2010).

Kevin C. Dunnis an associate professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY, USA. His publications include Imagining the Congo: The international relations of identity (2003), Africas Challenge to International Relations Theory (with Timothy M. Shaw, 2001), Identity and Global Politics: Theoretical and empirical elaborations (with Patricia Goff, 2004) and African Guerrillas: Raging against the machine (with Morten Bs, 2007).