Debating ideas
Debating Ideas is a new section that aims to reflect the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments book series, publishing writing from within the African continent and beyond. It will offer debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and reviews and responses flowing from the African Arguments books. Edited and managed by the International African Institute. Host: SOAS University of London. Sponsored by the World Peace Foundation. Go to the Debating ideas web page >>

Database of African Publishers
This freely accessible resource was developed by the International African Institute (IAI) in association with the African Books Collective. Access the ddatabase >>

Local intellectuals strand - call for papers

The aim of this strand of the journal is to introduce and analyse texts – whether oral, manuscript or print – produced by authors outside the literary or academic mainstream.

Read more and view the call for papers >>

Call for papers: Africa Bibliography Introductory Essays Title
Articles of 5,000-8,000 words on topics relating to research, libraries, archives and publishing in and on Africa, and in African studies, are invited.
Find out more here or contact Managing Editor Stephanie Kitchen for further details, sk111(at)soas.ac.uk.

International African Library series - call for proposals
The Institute and series editors welcome new proposals for this series.
Please see further details on The International African Library page.

Crossing Religious Boundaries: Islam, Christianity and ‘Yoruba Religion' in Lagos, Nigeria
Marloes Janson

Religious pluralism, as encountered in multi-faith settings such as Nigeria's biggest city Lagos, challenges much of what we have long taken for granted about religion, including the ready-made binaries of Christianity versus Islam, religion versus secularism, religious monism versus polytheism, and tradition versus modernity. In this book, Marloes Janson offers a rich ethnography of religions, religious pluralism and practice in Lagos, analysing how so-called 'religious shoppers' cross religious boundaries, and the coexistence of different religious traditions where practitioners engage with these simultaneously. Prompted to develop a broader conception of religion that shifts from a narrow analysis of religious traditions as mutually exclusive, Janson instead offers a perspective that focuses on the complex dynamics of their actual entanglements. Including real-life examples to illustrate religion in Lagos through religious practice and lived experiences, this study takes account of the ambivalence, inconsistency and unpredictability of lived religion, proposing assemblage as an analytical frame for exploring the conceptual and methodological possibilities that may open as a result.

Published for the IAI by Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 9781108838917, 242 pp, June 2021

Privileged Precariat: White Workers and South Africa's Long Transition to Majority Rule
Danelle van Zyl-Hermann

White workers occupied a unique social position in apartheid-era South Africa. Shielded from black labour competition in exchange for support for the white minority regime, their race-based status effectively concealed their class-based vulnerability. Centred on this entanglement of race and class, Privileged Precariat examines how South Africa's white workers experienced the dismantling of the racial state and the establishment of black majority rule. Starting from the 1970s, it shows how apartheid reforms constituted the withdrawal of state support for working-class whiteness, sending workers in search of new ways to safeguard their interests in a rapidly changing world. Danelle van Zyl-Hermann tracks the shifting strategies of the blue-collar Mineworkers' Union, culminating in its reinvention, by the 2010s, as the Solidarity Movement, a social movement appealing to cultural nationalism. Integrating unique historical and ethnographic evidence with global debates, Privileged Precariat offers a chronological and interpretative rethinking of South Africa's recent past and contributes new insights from the Global South to debates on race and class in the era of neoliberalism.

Published for the IAI by Cambridge University Press

ISBN 9781108831802, 338pp, March 2021