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210 books match the query 'African Studies' and 4 start with o

cover of Occupied Refuge: Humanitarian Colonization and the Camp in Kenya

Occupied Refuge

Humanitarian Colonization and the Camp in Kenya

Hanno Brankamp

Duke University Press, 2026

In a world shaped by war, climate disaster, and displacement, refugee camps are imagined as indispensable safe havens for millions of people fleeing crises. In Occupied Refuge, Hanno Brankamp challenges the presumed innocence of refugee humanitarianism as a system of civilian protection that can manage global inequalities and forced migration by peaceful means. He shows that although humanitarian missions aim to protect displaced populations in the global South, they often function as militarized occupations that treat camp inhabitants as new colonized subjects. Through ethnographic research in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, Brankamp demonstrates how aid operations rely on a combination of infrastructural expansion, militarized policing, ethno-racial subjugation, indirect rule, and economic extraction. By co-managing these camps with international aid agencies, the Kenyan state becomes not only a willing accomplice in planetary humanitarian containment but seeks to pacify its own peripheral territories, securitize unwanted migrants, and impose national rule. Illuminating how refugee camps serve as key sites where carceral protectionism, postcolonial nation-building, and global mobility control intersect, Brankamp calls for abolitionist futures beyond the violent structures of encampment, borders, and citizenship.
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cover of Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice against Big Oil and the State

Ogoni Women's Activism

The Transnational Struggle for Justice against Big Oil and the State

Domale Dube

University of Illinois Press, 2025

In 1995, Nigeria’s dictatorial government executed nine Ogoni leaders fighting for civil rights and against Shell Oil’s depredations of Ogoni land. Domale Dube draws on interviews and participant observation to tell the long-ignored story of how women carved out a role in the Ogoni pursuit of justice.

Dube’s account examines and documents the issues that drew women into the movement, from concerns for themselves and their communities to grander visions for the Ogoni. As she shows, these issues not only influenced organizing in Nigeria but also the diaspora in general and the United States in particular. Ogoni women relied upon nonviolent protest to realize their aims. Dube looks at their campaigns and how their actions reflected their concerns, values, interests, and priorities. The result is a rare account of Black women and transnational organizing for women’s, climate, and environmental justice that merges a history of their involvement with an in-depth analysis of the racial, gender, and ethnic dimensions of the Ogoni Struggle.

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cover of On Black Sisters Street: A Novel

On Black Sisters Street

A Novel

Chika Unigwe

Ohio University Press, 2012

On Black Sisters Street tells the haunting story of four very different women who have left their African homeland for the riches of Europe—and who are thrown together by bad luck and big dreams into a sisterhood that will change their lives. Each night, Sisi, Ama, Efe, and Joyce stand in the windows of Antwerp’s red-light district, promising to make men’s desires come true—if only for half an hour. They offer their bodies to strangers but their hearts to no one, each focused on earning enough to get herself free, to send money home, or to save up for her own future. Drawn together by Sisi’s murder, the women must choose between their secrets and their safety. This first paperback edition of On Black Sisters Street celebrates the U.S. publication debut of Chika Unigwe, a brilliant new writer and a standout voice among contemporary African authors.
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cover of Otium: An Anthropology of Work, Freedom, and Common Ground in the Global Economy

Otium

An Anthropology of Work, Freedom, and Common Ground in the Global Economy

Gregor Dobler

Lever Press, 2026

By constantly seeking higher yields of capital, today’s global economy changes how people around the world relate to time and productivity. Labor demands within the bounds of wage work accelerate, while people outside of wage work often remain marginalized and with too much unproductive time on their hands. In this ethnography of global labor, Gregor Dobler accompanies different groups of people in their attempts to find time autonomy and meaning in their everyday lives. He shows how moments of otium—moments when we feel free from the external constraints of work and capitalist definitions of productivity—can become productive in new ways. Otium leads individuals to new ideas and dreams, and becomes a source for critique and political renewal. Chapters focus on peasant work and unemployment in Northern Namibia; the pitfalls of free time on a Breton island shaped by early retirement; the gendered effects of combining care work and wage work in Swiss middle-class families; and the elasticity of the academic labor of writing and research in the US. Weaving together these ethnographies of work, leisure, and care, Otium presents a political anthropology of the possibilities for human freedom under capitalism, and advances post-work debates from a global perspective.

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