The Dynamics of Economic and Political Relations Between Africa and Foreign Powers: A Study in International Relations

by Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo

Overview

International relations at large and Africa's in particular are shaped by the actors' historical location, by what they offer economically and culturally, and by who they are socially. In international relations nations tend to deal with objective conditions as they are or as they are perceived. However, Lumumba-Kasongo demonstrates through case-studies of Liberia and Zaire/Congo that what the objective conditions are may not necessarily be what they ought to be in the national development process.

The international struggle for power between the West and the East and their supportive brutal and oppressive states in the South, especially in Africa, created the extremely weak conditions that redefined international relations as the tools of domination, rather than the tools of understanding and cooperation. As Lumumba-Kasongo clarifies, Africa did not gain economically or developmentally from this struggle. An important work for scholars and researchers of contemporary Africa and international relations in general.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275960865
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/30/1999
Pages:	146
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	1410L (what's this?)

About the Author

TUKUMBI LUMUMBA-KASONGO is Herbert J. Charles and Florence Charles Faegre Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of International Studies at Wells College, Senior Fellow at the Institute for African Development at Cornell University, Visiting Scholar in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University, and Director of CEPARRED. He has taught throughout Africa and the United States and has published extensively on international relations, social movements, and structural adjustment programs in Africa. He is author of The Rise of Multipartyism and Democracy in the Context of Global Change: The Case of Africa (Praeger 1998).

Table of Contents

Preface
The Dynamics of Political and Economic Relations
Liberian=American Economic Relations: Social and Political Implications in Liberia
Relations of Political Economy between Congo-Zaire and Belgium
A General Conclusion: What Perspectives after the Cold War?
Selected Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

A critical analysis of the relations between Africa and the dominant foreign powers in the global puzzle and the impact of those relations on the articulation of national policy. Lumumba- Kasongo (political science and international studies, Wells College and Cornell U.) uses a structuralist and historical framework in his examination of issues such as the relations between Liberia and the US and between Congo-Zaire and Belgium, the economic and political relations between Africa and the foreign powers within the context of global change, and new perspectives after the Cold War. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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