Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>How to make sense of political dynamics in Africa today? Which point of view should we adopt to grasp the diversity of what is happening on the ground and in the day-to-day reality of power relations and social practices? To what extent do structural determinants articulate with individual practices and political imaginaries? Looking for the Political in Africa seeks to answer these questions by considering all actors on an equal footing, with their own trajectories, margins of autonomy, and constraints. It takes an interest in the most traditional arenas of political expression and in less expected, more discreet, more ephemeral fields. Through the contributions of fourteen distinguished social scientists from a wide range of disciplines and geographical backgrounds, the book builds an innovative picture of political fields across the continent, underlining the historical depth of current dynamics. Without neglecting the question of the state, international institutions, or globalized capitalism, the authors consider the intimacy of actors, issues of gender and age, their online engagement, and the major dynamics of ethnicity, militarization, religion, migration, and finance, showing that the political cannot be reduced to politics. Each chapter draws on long-term empirical research to present a synthetic picture and offer conclusions that go beyond the continent’s limits and feed into broader intellectual projects. This collective work highlights both the transformations of African societies and the ways in which these societies are studied, in a context of methodological and epistemological tension over the articulation of their local specificities with their universal dimension.</jats:p>