The world in creolisation

Africa ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 546-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulf Hannerz

Opening ParagraphFrom the time when I first became entangled with the Third World, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I have been fascinated by those contemporary ways of life and thought which keep growing out of the interplay between imported and indigenous cultures. They are the cultures on display in market places, shanty towns, beer halls, night clubs, missionary book stores, railway waiting rooms, boarding schools, newspapers and television stations. Nigeria, the country I have been most closely in touch with in an on-and-off way for some time, because of its large size, perhaps, offers particular scope for such cultural development, with several very large cities and hundreds if not thousands of small and middle-size towns. It has a lively if rather erratic press, a popular music scene dominated at different times by such genres as highlife, juju and Afro-beat, about as many universities as breweries (approximately one to every state in the federal republic), dozens of authors published at home and abroad, schoolhouses in just about every village, and an enormous fleet of interurban taxicabs which with great speed can convey you practically from anywhere to anywhere, at some risk to your life.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Kalter

AbstractIn the second half of the twentieth century, the transnational ‘Third World’ concept defined how people all over the globe perceived the world. This article explains the concept’s extraordinary traction by looking at the interplay of local uses and global contexts through which it emerged. Focusing on the particularly relevant setting of France, it examines the term’s invention in the context of the Cold War, development thinking, and decolonization. It then analyses the reviewPartisans(founded in 1961), which galvanized a new radical left in France and provided a platform for a communication about, but also with, the Third World. Finally, it shows how the association Cedetim (founded in 1967) addressed migrant workers in France as ‘the Third World at home’. In tracing the Third World’s local–global dynamics, this article suggests a praxis-oriented approach that goes beyond famous thinkers and texts and incorporates ‘lesser’ intellectuals and non-textual aspects into a global conceptual history in action.



Africa ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Brown

Opening ParagraphIt is perhaps surprising that the recent resurgence of interest in the application of Marxist theory to the study of the historically non-capitalist societies of the Third World should have focused, at least in part, upon the stateless societies of Africa. To some extent, this interest in some of the least differentiated and least class-stratified of societies can be related to the fundamental problematic of Marxist sociology: the characterization of the stage of advanced communism, which remains so obscure in Marx's own theoretical work. An understanding of the dynamics of ‘primitive’ communism might be seen, therefore, as an essential precursor to this underlying concern. Certainly, the often highly tendentious views of Marxist writers on such issues as the definition of the state and the extent of exploitation in the primitive communist mode can be related to this need. However, the rise of Marxist anthropology has not only been presented as a problem of general evolutionary theory. Other influences have been offered to account for the new concern, the most widely cited being the supposed crisis of functionalism, and the resulting necessity for a complete reorientation of the whole discipline of anthropology. Stateless societies, having long occupied a central place in the field of anthropological enquiry, and yet outwardly presenting such simplicity of form, offer a particular challenge to the radical, and in several recent works have been interpreted in what is claimed to be a novel and distinctive way.



1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-262
Author(s):  
Ernest Feder

Hunger and malnutrition are today associated with the capitalist system. The evidence points to a further deterioration of the food situation in the Third World in the foreseeable future, as a result of massive capital and technology transfers from the rich capitalist countries to the underdeveloped agricultures operated by transnational concerns or private investors, with the active support of development assistance agencies such as the World Bank. Contrary to the superficial predictions of the World Bank, for example, poverty is bound to increase and the purchasing power of the masses must decline. Particular attention must be paid to the supply of staple foods and the proletariat. This is threatened by a variety of factors, attributable to the operation of the capitalist system. Among them are the senseless waste of Third World resources caused by the foreign investors' insatiable thirst for the quick repatriation of super-profits and the increasing orientation of Third World agricultures toward high-value or export crops (which are usually the same), an orientation which is imposed upon them by the industrial countries' agricultural development strategies. Even self-sufficiency programs for more staple foods, such as the ill-reputed Green Revolution, predictably cannot be of long duration.



Author(s):  
K. Srinivasa Rao ◽  
H. K. Lakshmana Rao ◽  
Ramesh Chaluvarayaswamy

Education is the essential tool for turning out a regular annual stream of students who constitute the manpower for the development and growth of a country. This chapter deals with the needs of a country which is considered as the leader of the third world. The education system has to be nurtured to produce the managers who have the essential skillset to take the country in its forward march to become the number one country in the world.



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