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Haunted Structures: Agents and Violent Conflicts in Post-colonial African State Formation

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Discerning the Powers in Post-Colonial Africa and Asia

Abstract

A viable sociology of the powers should be able to account for the structural workings of evilness in post-colonial state formation: neo-colonialism. As a result, this chapter aims to theoretically stipulate and empirically substantiate how do the colonially hailed structural properties of the African state are historically connected with such post-colonial evils as violent conflicts, humanitarian crises and underdevelopment. Departing from such global–historical–structural approach, it further ponders why and how the post-colonial African agents ended up perpetuating the evil of neo-colonialism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, for example, United Nations Security Council Resolution numbers (year): 1537 (2004), 1552 (2004), 1579 (2004), 1592 (2005), 1610 (2005), 1647 (2005), 1654 (2006), 1688 (2006), 1732 (2006), 1742 (2007), 1777 (2007), 1793 (2007), 1797 (2008), 1819 (2008) 1829 (2008), 1843 (2008), 1885 (2009), 1886 (2009), 1903 (2010), 1906 (2009), 1925 (2010), 1940 (2010) and 1971 (2011).

  2. 2.

    Thompson (1968: 213 & 219) made the agency–structure co-determining relationship clear; that is, the notion that the working class ‘made itself as much as made’, in a causal parity of ‘agency and conditioning’ (Anderson 1980: 31).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies, University of Bath, Bath, UK

    Pak Nung Wong

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  1. Pak Nung Wong
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Wong, P.N. (2016). Haunted Structures: Agents and Violent Conflicts in Post-colonial African State Formation. In: Discerning the Powers in Post-Colonial Africa and Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-511-2_2

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