Publications: Student

In their recent volume, Understanding Global Migration, James F . Hollifield and Neil Foley observe that the concept of a “migration state” is an ideal type, reflecting a range of ways in which states grapple with migration. In its original formulation, it referred to the liberal democratic state with policies oriented towards markets and rights.

How should one read political and historical literature on modern authoritarianism, neopatrimonialism, and state formation in Africa from a Ugandan vantage point? This is the central theoretical question that Rebecca Tapscott asks in this new study on the postcolonial state in Uganda. In eight chapters, Tapscott navigates the ‘micro-dynamics of governance in Uganda’, in which she identifies a variety of modern authoritarianism thought to be peculiar to Museveni's Uganda: ‘institutionalized arbitrariness’.

Introduction to this Issue

The idea and relevance of Compulsory Land Acquisition are central to the claims of many modern states world over. But how should we think of this practice in a post-colonial neoliberal context? This is the question at the heart of the theoretical criticisms and debates regarding Uganda’s Compulsory Land Acquisition Programme. In this debate, the government claims, and affirms, that a law on Compulsory Land Acquisition is needed because the government requires ‘land for development’.

Why does mass violence persist in Africa? Focusing on Uganda’s Rwenzori region where thousands have perished in a century of recurrent fighting between one ethnic group and another and between successive governments and the Bakonzo society, Yahya Sseremba examines how remedies advanced to address violence end up reproducing the institutional logic that drives violence. If the problem started in the early twentieth century when the ethnic groups that were not allocated tribal homelands (Bakonzo and Bamba) questioned the British creation of the

In this issue, we emulate the model we initiated in The MISR Review, no. 3. The bulk of the issue is a set of three lectures on a single theme; each lecture is followed by a set of comments, one or two. The lectures were organized around a single theme, Palestine as a Question, given by Raef Zreik from Tel Aviv University. The three lectures were titled: 1. Formation; 2. Justice; and 3. Decolonisation. We saw the lecture series as a way of introducing a debate on two critical questions: Israel/Palestine, and decolonisation.

In one of his traditions, the Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon him, highlighted the power of words when he said, “Indeed, there is magic in eloquence.” Shahab Ahmed exhibits this magic when he charmingly advances a radically new way of understanding Islam in his 2016 book, What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Ahmed sets out to establish Islam as “a historical and human phenomenon . . . in its plentitude and complexity” and hence to “conceptualize unity [in Islam] not in diversity but in the face of outright contradiction.”

This issue appears more than a year after its scheduled publication. We have no alibis to offer, just an admission and a request that this be taken as an illustration of the continuing steep learn- ing curve at MISR.

This issue marks a step in that long journey. The bulk of the issue draws on chapters from doctoral thesis successfully defended over the past year. Haydee Bangerezako’ essay, Indirect Writing and the Construction of Burundi’s History, analyzes history writing in the era of colonial indirect rule. Because it borrowed its categories and conceptions from the colonial project, Bangerezako dubs this genre of writing ‘indirect history.’ The essay focuses on the narratives produced by African chiefs reinterpreting the past within the colonial epistemological framework.

Recent scholarship on Africa recognizes the relevance of looking at the connection between Africa and the Indian Ocean realm. Focusing on one of the well-known diaspora in this region, the Yemenis, this study examines the interaction/interface between Yemeni diaspora property management (inheritance) and the colonial social order in Djibouti.