This is an excellent collection, well-edited and, without exception, well-written. The premises and themes of the collection are simple but radical: that African civil society and civil subjects are not replicas of Western models, but embody their own histories and social conditions; and that the African sub-altern speaks, but in a variety of interesting, novel, and entertaining ways. Humour and innovation, informality and creativity become key motifs in this book.
Having said that, the book then becomes a ‘sampler’ of different forms of civil expression and civic agency. What is privileged is expression and agency from below, but comedy, satire and music stand out as examples. To this extent, the collection follows well-worn tracks, e.g. Fela Kuti in Nigeria, Malian music (which of all African musics is probably the most embedded in the ‘world music’ scene), and the cartoons of Zapiro in South Africa.
But music requires a production base – recording studios and the like – and political cartoons requires newspapers, whether printed or web. Those ‘below’ need access to technology. Although talk-back radio is discussed (in Mali), it is this aspect of civil agency which is under-written in this collection: the technological mastery and access to technology by the under-privileged. Even the brief account of the North African ‘Arab Spring’ fails to delve deeply into social media or citizen reporting on smartphones. But, in the access to technology, the smartphone has proved the great leveller and democratiser, as both access to late-capitalism (in the form of money transfers) and expression and protest (in viral messaging and images) become possible.
The fault of the collection is simultaneously its richness. Its examples of civic action are all rich, but they are also for the most part set-pieces which can be studied as set-pieces. The fluidity of late-modernity, or a form of African post-modernity, is not fully captured here.
‘Difficult’ set-pieces like Somali piracy are not within this collection, but hustlers and certain local reinventions of capitalism thankfully are. The boundaries between civic action and outlaw behaviour and outlaw organisation are things to be more problematised, hopefully in a successor collection.
The theoretical shadows of the Comaroffs and James Scott infuse this book, and speak most tellingly of an historical and socio-cultural context for all analysis of Africa. Insofar as Scott has always spoken about rebellion and resistance, including the dangers of resistance, the most moving chapter in the book belongs to Susan Thomson's account of peasant resistance in a post-genocide Rwanda, all too often reduced to a binary of Hutu and Tutsi. Thomson speaks of the many other complexities of life and conditions that cannot be escaped – but are still resisted.
What is moving also, although not designed to be so, is the Foreword by the late Patrick Chabal. It may well be one of Patrick's last works. He warns us that resistance may be nefarious as well as beneficial. This is a sobering thought to be carried into the explorations that make up a technologically limited but otherwise exhilarating book.
