Editorial: understanding how ‘Africa works’?
Editorial: understanding how ‘Africa works’?
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社论：了解“非洲如何运作”？
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发表时间：
2014
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Alexander Beresford
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作者：
Alexander Beresford
非洲研究界悲痛地获悉帕特里克·查巴尔教授去世的消息。帕特里克是关键非洲研究顾问委员会的成员，我们将深深怀念他。在本刊的第一期中，曾就他最近的著作《非洲：苦难与微笑的政治》（参见《批判非洲研究》，第1卷，第2期，2009年）进行了一场辩论。在这个悲伤的时刻，本刊重新关注帕特里克在其漫长而辉煌的职业生涯中辩论的一些核心问题，或许是合适的。Chabal与Jean-Pascal Daloz合著的书《非洲工作》（Chabal and Daloz 1999）引发了一场关于非洲社会和政治生活中心的主顾关系似乎具有地方性的争论。查巴尔和达洛兹提出了一个著名的观点，即迫切需要重新定义我们对非洲国家政治运作方式的理解，从表面上看，这似乎是一种功能失调和混乱的运作方式。他们恳求政治学家在“混乱”中找到秩序；理解“混乱的工具化”。他们声称，“非洲行得通”，但不是以一种西方政治学家容易识别的方式。仅仅因为非洲政治不利于现代化理论家所预测的那种经济和政治发展，这并不意味着非洲在某种程度上失去了现代性。Chabal和Daloz（1999, 144-147）断言，非洲的“现代性”不应该通过其政治制度模仿西方世界的程度来衡量，而应该根据自己的条件来理解。Chabal和Daloz认为，“非洲化”的政治现代性是建立在主顾关系中的互惠逻辑基础之上的。结合Hyden（1983）的“情感经济”概念，他们认为：
It is with great sadness that the African Studies community has learnt of the death of Professor Patrick Chabal. Patrick was a member of the Critical African Studies Advisory Board and he will be greatly missed. This journal previously housed a debate on his recent work Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling in one of our first issues (cf. Critical African Studies, Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2009), and it is perhaps fitting that at this sad time the journal returns to focus on some of the core issues that Patrick debated during his long and illustrious career. Chabal’s book that he co-authored with Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works (Chabal and Daloz 1999) contributed to an on-going debate about the seemingly endemic nature of patron–client ties at the centre of African social and political life. Chabal and Daloz famously declared the urgent need to reconceptualise how we understand what, on the surface, appears to be the dysfunctional and chaotic modus operandi of African state politics. They implored political scientists to find order in the ‘chaos’; to understand the ‘instrumentalisation of disorder’. ‘Africa works’, they claimed, but not in a way that was easily recognizable to Western political scientists. Just because African politics was not conducive to the kind of economic and political development predicted by modernization theorists, this did not mean Africa was in some way bereft of modernity. Chabal and Daloz (1999, 144–147) assert that Africa’s ‘modernity’ should not be measured by how well its political institutions mimic those of the Western world, and that it should instead be understood on its own terms. The ‘Africanised’ political modernity Chabal and Daloz identified was grounded in the logics of reciprocity within patron–client relationships. Engaging with Hyden’s (1983) concept of the ‘economy of affection’, they argued that: