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Corruption as an Empty Signifier: Politics and Political Order in Africa: 10
Author(s): Lucy Koechlin (Author)
- Publisher: Brill
- Publication Date: 23 May 2013
- Edition: Illustrated
- Language: English
- Print length: 298 pages
- ISBN-10: 9004249990
- ISBN-13: 9789004249998
Book Description
Corruption as an Empty Signifier critically explores the ways in which corruption in Africa has been equated with African politics and political order, and offers a novel approach to understanding corruption as a potentially emancipatory discourse of political transformation.
Conventionally, both academic literature as well as development policies depict corruption as the lynchpin of politics in Africa, locking African societies into political orders which subvert democratic change. Drawing on the findings of a case study of the construction industry in Tanzania, Lucy Koechlin conceptualises corruption as a signifier enabling, rather than preventing, social actors to articulate democratic claims. She provides compelling arguments for a more sophisticated understanding of and empirical attentiveness to emancipatory change in African political orders.
Conventionally, both academic literature as well as development policies depict corruption as the lynchpin of politics in Africa, locking African societies into political orders which subvert democratic change. Drawing on the findings of a case study of the construction industry in Tanzania, Lucy Koechlin conceptualises corruption as a signifier enabling, rather than preventing, social actors to articulate democratic claims. She provides compelling arguments for a more sophisticated understanding of and empirical attentiveness to emancipatory change in African political orders.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Lucy Koechlin, Ph.D. (2010), University of Basel, is senior lecturer of Social Anthropology. Previously, she worked as international expert on governance. She has published and co-edited numerous contributions on corruption and accountability, including Non-state Actors as Standard Setters (CUP, 2009).
