West African Worlds
Paths Through Socio-Economic Change,
Livelihoods & Development

Edited by Reginald Cline-Cole & Elisabeth Robson
December 2005
Pearson
ISBN: 0130259497
296 pages, Illustrated
$72.50 Paper Original

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West African Worlds provides a critical assessment of social, economic and political change in Africa’s most populous and arguably most externally focused region. With an emphasis on globalization and modernization, case studies and commentary are integrated throughout to highlight the concerns and issues of the region.

Enriched by an impressive mix of West African voices, this text combines theory and application with policy and practice to address socio-economic change, the pursuit of livelihoods, and development within West Africa.

Contents

West Africa’s Political Economy in the 21st Century: Retrospect and Prospect
Portraying West Africa's Children: Moral Panics and Globalization
Fictional Worlds, Symbolism and Struggles of (Under-)Development? Kolawole Omotoso’s ‘The Combat’
Urban Bias, Redistribution, and State Collapse: The Lessons of Sierra Leone
Expanding the frontiers of West African Integration: Economic and Security Regionalism
Transformations in Regional Agriculture and Family Farming
The social relations of economic life and networks of civic engagement: ‘Social capital’ and targeted development in West Africa.
Changing Time, Changing Times: Work, Time and Space in Britain and West Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries
State-Building, National Integration, Gender and Economic Development in Emergent Regional Democracies
Development, planning, and agricultural knowledge on the Central Plateau of Burkina Faso
Conclusion: West African futures?

Features
• An issues-based approach highlighting possible paths through the study of society and nature, bridging the region’s linguistic and political divides
• Multi-level analyses of diversity and change from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including fictional writing
• Examples and case studies cover the full range of geographic scales, combining broader-scale political economy with individual, household and group livelihood concerns
• Highlights both the unity and diversity of regional contexts in the pursuit of livelihoods and for the practice of development
• Focuses on both evolutionary and transformational change

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