Postgraduate Course: Citizens and Subjects: concepts of citizenship in modern African intellectual history (PGHC11426)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Contemporary Africa is often said to be suffering from a failure of citizenship. For some, this is the legacy of a colonial era which produced a continent of subjects rather than citizens (Mamdani, 1996), for others a sign of Africa's failure fully to internalize Western modes of conceptualizing the proper relationship between citizens and states. But the top-down approach and emphasis on external forces evident in both these strands of thinking ignores the ways in which Africans have long thought deeply about the meaning and practice of citizenship or, more broadly, political subjecthood. |
| Course description |
This course suggests that an intellectual history of citizenship in Africa has much to teach us about the varied patterns of thinking about citizenship, sovereignty and accountability in Africa's past with important lessons for our contemporary world. It explore these questions through a series of classes, chronologically organized:-
Week 1: 'Citizen and Subject': Citizenship in contemporary Africa
Week 2: Questions of method: African intellectual history between the global and the local
Week 3: Citizenship in Western political thought
Week 4: Political subjecthood in pre-colonial Africa
Week 5: Imperial citizenship
Week 6: 'Good citizenship' and the colonial state
Week 7: Chiefship and political subjecthood in colonial Africa
Week 8: 'Citizenship between empire and nation': the case of French West Africa
Week 9: Citizenship and sovereignty in the era of decolonization
Week 10: Citizenship and the post-colonial state: the case of Tanzania
Week 11: Conclusions
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate in assessed essay, book review and seminar participation a detailed and critical command of the existing body of knowledge concerning the intellectual history of citizenship in Africa
- Demonstrate in seminar participation and coursework an ability to analyse and reflect critically upon the emerging body of scholarship concerning citizenship in Africa, and in particular an ability to critically engage with the different disciplinary approaches taken by political scientists on the one hand and historians on the other
- Demonstrate in coursework and seminar participation, an ability to understand and apply the methodologies considered in the course, specifically the specific methodologies of African and global intellectual history
- Demonstrate the ability to develop and sustain original scholarly arguments in oral and written form in seminar discussions, book review and essay by independently formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence considered in the course
- Demonstrate in seminar participation and coursework, originality and independence of mind and initiative; intellectual integrity and maturity; an ability to evaluate the work of others, including peers; and a considerable degree of autonomy
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Reading List
Batten, T.R., Thoughts on African citizenship, London: Oxford University Press, 1955
Cooper, Frederick, Citizenship between Empire and Nation: remaking France and French Africa, 1945-1960, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014
Bell, Duncan, The idea of Greater Britain: empire and the future of world order, 1860-1900, Princeton NJ:, Princeton University Press, 2007
Banerjee, Sukanya, Becoming imperial citizens: Indians in the late-Victorian Empire, Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2010
Brennan, James, Taifa: making nation and race in urban Tanzania, Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2012
Gopal Jayal, Niraja, Citizenship and its discontents: an Indian History, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2013
Gorman, Daniel, Imperial citizenship: empire and the question of belonging, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006
Hobbes, Thomas, On the Citizen, edited by Richard Tuck, translated by Michael Silverthorne, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998
Hunter, Emma, Political thought and the public sphere in Tanzania: Freedom, democracy and citizenship in the era of decolonization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015
Hunter, Emma, 'Dutiful subjects, patriotic citizens and the concept of 'good citizenship' in twentieth century Tanzania', The Historical Journal (2013)
Isin, Engin F. and Nyers, Peter, eds., Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014
Leonardi, Cherry, Dealing with Government in south Sudan: histories of chiefship, community and state, Oxford: James Currey, 2013
Lonsdale, John, 'Soil, work, civilisation and citizenship in Kenya', Journal of Eastern African Studies, 2:2 (2008), 305-314
Mamdani, Mahmood, Citizen and Subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism, London: James Currey, 1996
Moyn, Samuel and Sartori, Andrew, Global intellectual history, New York: Columbia University Press, 2013
Pufendorf, Samuel, On the duty of man and citizen according to natural law, ed. James Tully, translated by Michael Silverthorne, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991
White, Luise, Unpopular sovereignty: Rhodesian independence and African decolonization, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015 |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Citizens,Subjects,Citizenship,Modern Africa,Intellectual History |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Emma Hunter
Tel: (0131 6)50 4034
Email: |
Course secretary | Mrs Lindsay Scott
Tel: (0131 6)50 9948
Email: |
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