E-Commerce, Networking and Political Economy of Despair: Rethinking the Centre/Periphery of Nation States as 'Sliding Signifiers'

Open Access

Abstract

This paper employed postcolonial insights from Jeremy Weate and critical discourse analysis to argue that ecommerce is a complex metanarrative that has the potential to emancipate mankind; however, it is susceptible to discourses of joblessness, discrimination and lawlessness. These discourses impacted negatively on the political economies of developing countries and justified state interventionism in these countries. But state interventionism has shown its limitations in the development of African countries. Therefore, the state may be appropriated by the nation to realize development in these countries, until the time when the nation can realize development on its own. At any rate, as literature of the continent show, the state and the nation have now become shifting narratives at the service of digital capital