New publications

'Van Walraven set out to write a fundamentally social history, centering the voices and experiences of individual people. (...) It is satisfying to imagine him reporting back to the aging Sawabists he interviewed for his research, reassuring them that their stories will not be forgotten.' Louise Mueller wrote an excellent book review of Le Désir de calme, the French translation - by Rahmane Idrissa - of Klaas van Walraven's The yearning for relief: a history of the Sawaba Movement in Niger. 

This book is based on Tanja Hendriks' Master's thesis ‘Home is always home’. (Former) Street Youth in Blantyre, Malawi, and the Fluidity of Constructing Home, winner of the 2016 African Thesis Award. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Blantyre, the author argues for a conceptualization of ‘home’ as a fluid field of tensions (re)created in the everyday. As such, home leaves space for people’s life roots and routes.

This book by ASCL Honorary fellows Martin Doornbos and Wim van Binsbergen illuminates key aspects of how, historically, the dynamics of power and identity interact in the African context, generating the kind of political structures and collective actions that have often appeared characteristic for the continent. It examines some salient dimensions of the broader frameworks of hegemony and power imposed upon African societies in the context of larger geopolitical and historical processes.

In November 2014 the ASCL published a thematic map about Africa’s ‘no-go areas’. It was a contribution to a debate among Dutch universities about preventing their students and staff from going to Africa. It was the era of Ebola and of growing anxiety about the risks of being kidnapped. This new thematic map shows what has changed in Africa between late 2014 and early 2017. Clearly, the no-go areas in Africa have increased. 

To coincide with the international NVAS Conference Education for Life in Africa, 19-20 May in The Hague, the ASCL has published a thematic map together with ICLON (Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching) about education in Africa, its recent dynamics and the current situation. The map gives an overview of primary, secondary and tertiary enrolment rates in 1990 and 2012, broken down by gender.

Het Nederlandse buitenlandse beleid heeft de laatste jaren ingezet op ‘economische diplomatie’. Daarmee lijkt een stap gezet te zijn in de richting van diplomatie waarbij het Nederlandse economische belang meer centraal staat. Maar welke belangen zijn dat dan? Een preciezere framing van het beleid is gewenst, schrijven Ton Dietz (ASCL) en Rob van Tulder (Partnerships Resource Centre, Erasmus Universiteit), van economische diplomatie waarbij het er niet toe doet welke handelsstromen op gang worden gebracht, naar duurzame diplomatie, ofwel ‘diplomatie van duurzame ontwikkeling’, waarbij veel meer wordt nagedacht over de kwaliteit, de doelstelling en de lange termijn invulling van deze relaties.