Changing stateness in Africa: Ghana, Ethiopia and Mozambique compared

该项目希望通过以下方式为关于非洲国家性质和实践的辩论做出贡献：首先，重点关注在选定的非洲国家改变国家地位的主观经验和预期，其次，关注对非洲精英有吸引力的国家地位的流行模式。我们假设，由于不平等的全球化进程的不平衡，国家必须履行的职能以及人们对国家应该做什么的期望正在发生变化。首先，我们感兴趣的是，在这种情况下，国家机构如何掌握创造力的适应和文化编码，当它们将外部的“国家”概念翻译成当地的概念时。其次，我们调查了这些适应和文化编码过程中的核心行为者(即话语企业家)如何想象和实践改变非洲的国家地位。第三，我们正在分析国家如何应对20世纪60年代(民族一体化)和90年代(重新民主化和全球化进程加快)的挑战，以及今天是如何叙述这一点的。最后，我们想要了解这些过程如何产生新形式的国家秩序和跨国纠葛。该项目旨在对喀麦隆(第一阶段和第二阶段)、埃塞俄比亚、加纳和莫桑比克(第二阶段和第三阶段)进行比较研究。该项目受空间转向的启发，从以行动者为中心的角度关注跨国纠葛；它是历史性的，并采用了转移文化研究的方法。

This project wants to contribute to the debate on the nature and practice of the state in Africa by focusing on, firstly, the subjective experience of and expectations towards changing stateness in selected African countries and, secondly, on the circulating models of stateness that are attractive to African elites. We assume that the functions states have to perform as well as expectations of people on what states should do are changing as a result of uneven processes of unequal globalization. Firstly, we are interested in how, under these circumstances, state institutions master the adaptation and cultural coding of creativity when they translate external concepts of 'state' into local ones. Secondly, we investigate how core actors in these processes of adaptation and cultural coding (i.e. discourse entrepreneurs) imagine and practice changing stateness in Africa. Thirdly, we are analysing how the state has mastered the challenges of the 1960s (national integration) and the 1990s (re-democratisation and accelerated process of globalization) and how this is narrated today. And finally we want to understand how these processes produce new forms of national order and transnational entanglements. The project is designed as a comparative study on Cameroon (phase I and II), Ethiopia, Ghana and Mozambique (phases II and III, resp.). The project is inspired by the spatial turn and focuses from an actor centred perspective on transnational entanglements; it is historicizing and employs the methodology of transferts culturel-studies.