'Progress' in Zimbabwe?

The Past and Present of a Concept and a Country

By: David Moore (Editor), Norma Kriger (Editor), Brian Raftopoulos (Editor)

Write A Review

eText | 13 September 2013 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

ePUB
176 Pages

eText

$75.89

or 4 interest-free payments of $18.97 with

or

Instant online reading in your Booktopia eTextbook Library *

Zimbabwe's severe crisis - and a possible way out of it with a transitional government, and the new era for which it prepares the ground - demands a coherent scholarly response. 'Progress' can be employed as an organising theme across many disciplinary approaches to Zimbabwe's societal devastation. At wider levels too, the concept of progress is fitting. It underpins 'modern', 'liberal' and 'radical' perspectives of development pervading the social sciences and humanities. Yet perceptions of 'progress' are subject increasingly to intensive critical inquiry. Their gruesome end is signified in the political projects of Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF. John Gray's Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia indicates this.

It is expected that participants will engage directly in debates about how the idea of 'progress' has informed their disciplines - from political science and history to labour and agrarian studies, and then relate these arguments to the Zimbabwean case in general and their research in particular.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies.