Suchergebnisse

Am Beispiel von Feldstudien im Haussagebiet Nordnigerias und Nigers analysiert der Autor den unterschiedlichen Einfluss und die unterschiedliche Wirkungsmacht des Islam und des Islamismus. Eingeleitet durch eine geschichtliche Rückbetrachtung des Islams im Haussagebiet bis weit in die vorkoloniale Zeit arbeitet er kulturelle Differenzierungen und deren jeweilige sozio-politische Implikationen heraus. Er diskutiert die Frage von Islam und Islamismus auch im Hinblick auf die Frage der afrikanischen Identität bzw. die "De-Afrikanisierung" afrikanischer Gesellschaften. Einen Betrachtungsaspekt bildet zudem die Reaktion der Haussagesellschaften Nordnigerias und Nigers auf den islamistischen Terrorismus im Kontext des 11. September 2001 in den USA. (DÜI-Kör)

Multinationals experienced significant legitimacy challenges in less-developed countries between 1945 and 1970. Corporate responses to these challenges cover three distinct periods. Unsuccessful postwar attempts focusing on colonial welfare concerns were followed by pragmatic endeavors intended to repair corporate reputations by Africanizing senior management. By the 1960s, this had become a common approach to legitimization. The challenges of Africanizing ethnocentric multinationals led to organizational changes: internationally diversified multinationals were better able to decentralize subsidiary management, while the late 1960s saw regionally focused multinationals absorbed by more diversified multinationals. Organizational survival was directly linked to legitimacy advantages derived from Africanization.

Africa's postindependence leaders are under enormous pressure. They must assume such new functions as the conduct of foreign relations and military defense and must expand developmental activities greatly, all at a time of falling world commodity prices, population explosion, and increasing indifference to foreign aid on the part of the wealthier countries. Local African expectations are rising, even though such requisites for satisfying these aspirations as capital, skills, and initiative remain in short supply. Nationwide linkages and a national identity must be built in the face of quickening ethnic anxieties and inward-lookingness. The functional benefits offered by a continued non-African presence must be secured without causing deep-seated popular frustrations; such frustrations could clearly jeopardize the regime's legitimacy should they become too extreme. The need for schools, hospitals, and welfare activities are juxtaposed against such pressing requirements as the development of power facilities, irrigation schemes, road networks, and industries. The choices are difficult and the demands heavy. No wonder Aristide Zolberg remarks that the "governments with the lowest load capability have assumed the heaviest burdens."If these restrictions of international environment and resources did not impose sufficient constraints upon governments as they attempt to cope with developmental needs, their flexibility of movement is further constricted by the pulls of ideology. African countries, fresh from an encounter with powerful, privileged European states, carry over a wide range of liberal commitments into the postindependence period. They are naturally determined to continue the struggle against any remaining manifestations of colonialism on the continent—white settler oligarchies, neocolonialist military and economic arrangements, or politically-inspired alignments with powers outside of Africa. Their leaders proclaim both nationalist and pan-Africanist objectives and call simultaneously for a leveling egalitarianism and rapid economic growth. The extent to which they can reconcile these somewhat overlapping, and even conflicting, goals with the compelling claims implicit in nation-building remains a crucial question with broad implications for regime stability.