Jason Stanley’s How Propaganda Works roots the danger of undermining propaganda in an ideology based account of politics, treating individuals’ beliefs and social belief systems as the primary target and mechanism of undermining propaganda. In this paper I suggest a theoretical alternative to the role ideology plays in Stanley’s theory and theories like it, which I call practice first. A practice first account instead treats public behavior as the primary target of propaganda, and analyzes undermining propaganda as altering the incentive (...) structure that sets the terms for public behavior. (shrink)

Why hasn't Africa been able to respond to the challenges of modernity and globalization?

What purpose does civility actually serve? In an age of increasing political polarization, Amy Olberding's recently published The Wrong of Rudeness defends politeness, with some unexpected help from ancient Chinese thought. This defense sits in tension with a broader social conversation that focuses on the interaction of civility with oppressive social structures.Through a critical engagement with Olberding's book, I argue here that taking oppression seriously requires us to reclaim and repurpose civility. This means that we must attend to the social-structural (...) function of what we often split into "civility, manners, and etiquette." Olberding wisely suggests that we follow Confucius' lead in replacing this list... (shrink)

Contemporary political philosophy often operates on a ‘two-tiered’ theoretical treatment of global politics, on which domestic political systems and the principles governing their internal...

Tosi and Warmke discuss cases where the speaker intends for the audience to take their expressions as evidence of good moral character. However, another possibility exists that similarly exploits the social communicative architecture. A contribution to public moral discourse may also attempt to strut by demonstrating evidence of bad moral character, by purposely failing to meet the evaluative standards of its audience—or, paradigmatically for my purposes, a particular section of its actual or notional audience. I call this kind of communication (...) vice signaling. On their face, virtue signaling and vice signaling may seem to be opposites, since the labels imply that they are signaling opposite things. But certain cases of vice signaling are in fact also cases of virtue signaling. These are the cases where someone flaunts the standards of an out-group in order to demonstrate solidarity, seriousness, or some other virtue to their in-group. In this paper I attempt to describe these cases and point out the moral risks and opportunities they present. (shrink)

In a forthright and uncompromising manner, Olúfémi Táíwò explores Africa’s hostility toward modernity and how that hostility has impeded economic development and social and political transformation. What has to change for Africa to be able to respond to the challenges of modernity and globalization? Táíwò insists that Africa can renew itself only by fully engaging with democracy and capitalism and by mining its untapped intellectual resources. While many may not agree with Táíwò’s positions, they will be unable (...) to ignore what he says. This is a bold exhortation for Africa to come into the 21st century. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Ifá Defined Ifá Divination The Process of Divination.

In this paper, I examine the generally accepted idea that law has definite limits to what it can be used to achieve. Toward this end, I discuss the limits of law as suggested by the Truth Commissions and the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC), and summarize the divergences between law and the TRC. I suggest reasons why law may not serve or may underserve the purpose of healing and reconciliation in our time and conclude that the TRC is at best (...) a reminder to us of the limits of law as a principle of social ordering. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Central Questions of Political Philosophy Making Sense of Human Nature Why One‐Party Rule? Why Socialism? Conclusion.

Adeshina Afolayan, Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, and Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba have edited a stellar collection of essays in Pathways to Alternative Epistemologies in Afr.

What would happen if, instead of taking an instrumentalist view of the ideas of modern African political thinkers, we consider those ideas as indeed they are, attempts by them to proffer answers to the central questions of political philosophy as those are apprehended in the African context? If we did, we would end upwith a robust, sophisticated discourse properly denominated ‘Modern African Political Philosophy’ in which we recognize, possibly celebrate and, ultimately, assess the quality of answers that African thinkers have (...) provided. The importance of recognizing a body of work under this genre cannot be overemphasized given the many debates, controversies, misrepresentations abroad in accounts of the relationship between Africa and modernity. It is almost as if there is only one way that African thinkers have related to modernity: in antagonism. I argue that one can give an account in political philosophy that shows that the received wisdom is profoundly mistaken. To do so requires that we rethink political philosophy in the modern African context. (shrink)

In recent years, the judicial systems of African countries have been increasingly ineffective, as demonstrated in cases as varied as the genocide in Rwanda and the land seizures in Zimbabwe. It is not only in cases involving individual rights and the state that the legal system is barely existent. The situation is just as bad, if not worse, in the administration of criminal justice. Whether it is the police, the prisons, or the courts, under both military and democratic governments, we (...) are confronted with evidence of the impotence of the judiciary. This article examines the relationship between the executive and judicial branches of government in Nigeria. It also makes recommendations to improve the responsiveness and effectiveness of African judiciaries in checking executive power. (shrink)

In the influential 1995 article “Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Disease,” Bruce Link and Jo Phelan described social and political factors as “fundamental causes” of death and disease. Whitney Pirtle has recently declared racial capitalism another such fundamental cause. Using the case of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, she has argued that racial capitalism's role in that situation meets each of the criteria Link and Phelan's article outlines: racial capitalism influenced multiple disease outcomes, affected disease outcomes through multiple (...) risk factors, involved access to flexible resources that can be used to minimize both risks and the consequences of disease, and was reproduced over time through the continual replacement of intervening mechanisms. We argue for Pirtle's conclusion using the extensive literature on racial capitalism and case studies concerning housing in the United States and Brazil and what Naomi Klein has termed “corona capitalism” in India. If races correspond to hierarchies of material security, as suggested by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, then these hierarchies and their causal effects are fundamental determinants of public health. (shrink)

The thesis of this study is that there is a plausible, adequate and coherent theory of law which lies embedded in the corpus of Marxist writings. This latent theory of law is a variant of natural law theory, called in the thesis, 'Legal Naturalism'. Marxist legal theory is formally similar to other theories within the natural law tradition. It differs from other theories because it posits a different locus for law from those affirmed by these other theories. Natural law, for (...) Marxism, refers to the "natural law of the mode of production". Legal naturalism is the view that the basic law of a given epoch or social formation is that law which is an essential aspect of the mode of production. Like other natural law theories, legal naturalism asserts that the positive law of any particular society is reflective of deeper structures. ;The legal naturalist interpretation of Marxism differs from existing interpretations in denying that the deeper structures which positive law reflects is solely, or even significantly, economic. They are legal, but naturally legal. Natural law provides a touchstone with which to identify, differentiate, explain and evaluate positive law. The implications of the distinction between natural law and positive law for the evolution and future of law examined and defended. (shrink)

Legal Naturalism advances a clear and convincing case that Marx's theory of law is a form of natural law jurisprudence.

Anton Wilhelm Rudolph Amo (1703–c. 1759 ce), philosopher and physician, was born at Axim, Ghana, and died at Fort Chama, Ghana. When he was four years old, the Dutch West Indies Company's preacher in Ghana sent him to Holland to be baptized and educated in the Bible for future service in Ghana. However, the Company headquarters, undesirous of any interference with its lucrative trade in slaves, turned little Amo over to the German Duke Anton Ulric‐Wolfenbuttel.

The essays in Fanon and the Decolonization of Philosophy all trace different aspects of the mutually supporting histories of philosophical thought and colonial politics in order to suggest ways that we might decolonize our thinking. From psychology to education, to economic and legal structures, the contributors interrogate the interrelation of colonization and philosophy in order to articulate a Fanon-inspired vision of social justice. This project is endorsed by his daughter, Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, in the book's preface.

In this short piece belonging to a book symposium on my book How Propaganda Works (Oxford University Press, 2015), I reply to the objections, comments and suggestions provided by the contributors: Bianca Cepollaro and Giuliano Torrengo, Olúfémi O. Táíwò, and Maria Cristina Amoretti. I show how some of the objections can be accommodated by the framework adopted in the book, but also how various comments and suggestions have contributed to the development, in future work, of several threads pertaining to (...) the general view put forward in How Propaganda Works. (shrink)

Shareholder activism has been largely neglected in the few available studies on corporate governance in sub Saharan Africa. Following the recent challenges posed by the Cadbury Nigeria Plc, this paper examines shareholder activism in an evolving corporate governance institutional context and identifies strategic opportunities associated with shareholders’ empowerment through changes in code of corporate governance and recent developments in information and communications technologies in Nigeria; especially in relation to corporate social responsibility in Nigeria. It is expected that the paper would (...) contribute to the scarce literature on corporate governance and accountability in Africa. (shrink)

The criticism of “traditional,” “toxic,” or “patriarchal” masculinity in both academic and popular venues recognizes that there is some sense in which the character traits and tendencies that are associated with masculinity are structurally connected to oppressive, gendered social practices and patriarchal social structures. One important theme of criticism centers on the gender distribution of emotional labor, generally speaking, but this criticism is also particularly meaningful in the context of heterosexual romantic relationships. I begin with the premise that there is (...) a gendered and asymmetrical distribution in how much emotional labor is performed, but I also consider that there might be meaningful and informative distinctions in what kind of emotional labor is characteristically performed by different genders. Specifically, I argue that the social norms around stoicism and restricted emotional expression are masculine-coded forms of emotional labor, and that they are potentially prosocial. Responding to structural and interpersonal asymmetries of emotional labor could well involve supplementing or better cultivating this aspect of male socialization rather than discarding it. (shrink)

This work attempts to address some basic feasibility concerns in the global taxation policy proposal. In recent years, moral-political philosophizing has extensively advan-ced the idea of transnational justice through volumes of scholarly literature. In moving the discussions beyond an ideational level and projecting it onto a practical realm, mo-ral-political thinkers have proposed a global taxation policy, the proceeds of the imple-mentation of which are meant to cater for the global poor. This proposal is morally laudable, given that it would substantially (...) benefit the global needy. Nonetheless, the proposal raises some basic feasibility concerns, such as the moral and legal justifiability of the proposal; the nature of the object to be globally taxed and how it is to be globally taxed; the nature of the globalist institution to implement the proposal; the legitimacy challenge of the globalist institution, and the challenge of practical implementation of the proposal by the institution. If the proposal is to succeed, the critical issues ought to be constructively addressed. Given that institutionalism necessarily emerges in the fea-sibility concerns, an institutionalist approach is advanced in this work to constructively address them. (shrink)

This paper examines two claims about the ontology of globalisation. First, it interrogates the claim that the contemporary phenomenon of globalisation is underpinned by the theoretical construct of economic and information-epistemic determinism, which has been developmentally significant in the North. The paper contends that this claim is likely to propagate some values that ought not to undergird the end-state vision of the prospective global village if the PGV is to be essentially conjunctive rather than essentially disjunctive. Second, the paper contends (...) that if a cohesive and egalitarian PGV is truly the end-point of the philosophy of globalisation, then the African socio-cultural values of a relational understanding of the self and universal brotherhood ought to be globally recognised and emphasised by the North as fundamental to the realisation of the vision of the PGV. The paper seeks to illustrate that if properly applied to the globalising process, these cultural values are ontologically conjunctive in the sense that they have the potential to promote the building of a cohesive and egalitarian global village, since they tend to encourage acceptance and co-operation among the different peoples of the world. Keywords Africa, culture, determinism, globalisation, philosophy. (shrink)

Research participants may not adequately understand the research in which they agree to enroll. This could be due to a myriad of factors. Such a missing link in the informed consent process contravenes the requirement for an.

Our contention is that while what may be termed woke capitalism is the result of real changes in both the material structure of capitalism and its ideological superstructure, those are not changes pulling in the same direction. The main material development is the consolidation of the shift from a quasi-deterministic to a more pronouncedly probabilistic nexus of class and race. But it is unclear that this makes much difference to the material prospects of the vast majority of people of color (...) or indeed of people in general. Indeed, the racial permeability of the upper classes is accompanied by an increased and inverse racial permeability of the underclass. Diversification is so elite-driven that it is unlikely to proceed beyond the cosmetic, and for that reason it seems that diversification does not necessarily correspond to any major structural changes in the relations between groups of people, whether we consider them as arranged by class, race, or the intersection of the two. It follows that the politics of representation should not be regarded as a vehicle for the agenda of the materialist left. We propose instead a responsive universalist approach—responsive to racism and all other forms of marginalization and different from the homogenizing universalism of class-only politics. (shrink)

Recent publication How Propaganda Works uses flawed ideologies to explain how propaganda works. I introduce the system of miseducation as an alternative, adapted from Carter G. Woodson’s The Mis-Education of the Negro. Miseducation explains instances of propaganda considered in the book but also another kind altogether, which I term Trojan horse propaganda. I consider the possibility that flawed social structures can themselves exert propagandistic effects, independent of any particular pattern of doxastic uptake by the individuals in that society. If so, (...) this would suggest moving from analyses of how propaganda affects individuals’ beliefs and toward analyses of propaganda’s practical effects, and would count in favor of activist approaches that make strategic use of sites of epistemic power. (shrink)

Neocolonialism The term “neocolonialism” generally represents the actions and effects of certain remnant features and agents of the colonial era in a given society. Post-colonial studies have shown extensively that despite achieving independence, the influences of colonialism and its agents are still very much present in the lives of most former colonies. Practically, every aspect … Continue reading Neocolonialism →.

This piece takes a close look at the contributions of two very important thinkers whose works have, on the whole, framed the deployment of what I call the decolonizing trope in contemporary African philosophy: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Kwasi Wiredu. I argue that, in light of current discussions in African life and politics and current trends in African philosophical discourse dominated by this trope, it may be time to, at least, rethink, if not abandon, the trope. The viability of a (...) conceptual decolonization in philosophy may have been oversold; the trope may give a false impression of the complexity of the situation it is designed to help attenuate; and it may be having deleterious consequences on discourse and its progress even if they are unintended. (shrink)

Communalism and its cognates continue to exercise a vise grip on the African intellectual imaginary. Whether the discussion is in ethics or social philosophy, in metaphysics or even, on occasion, epistemology, the play of communalism, a concept expounded in the next section, is so strong that it is difficult to escape its ubiquity. In spite of this, there is little serious analysis of the concept and its implications in the contemporary context. Yet, at no other time than now can a (...) long-suffering continent use some robust debates on its multiple inheritances regarding how to organize life and thought in order to deliver a better future for its population. Given the continual resort to communalism as, among others, the standard of ethical behavior, the blueprint for restoring Africans to wholeness and organizing our social life, as well as a template for political reorganization across the continent, one cannot overemphasize the importance of contributing some illumination to the discourse surrounding the idea. This essay seeks to offer a little illumination in this respect. Additionally, it offers a criticism of what all—proponents and antagonists alike—take to be a defensible version of communalism: moderate communalism. I shall be arguing that communalism, generally, has a problem with the individual. And the African variant of it, mostly subscribed to by the African scholars discussed below and defended by them as something either peculiar to or special in Africa, has an even harder time accommodating the individual. Yet, as history shows, until the modern age in which individualism is the principle of social ordering and mode of social living, a situation that privileges the individual, above all, various forms of communalism never really accorded the individual the recognition and forbearances that we now commonly associate with the idea. T he strongest variants of moderate communalism discuss ed here have a difficult time taking the individual seriously. I am not aware of anyone else ever having made such a case. These arguments are offer ed to show that Africa and Africans need to take individualism seriously and such have been the historical transformation that our diverse societies have undergone in the course of the last half a millennium that the types of communalism that are on offer do not appear to take this fact of radical change with the necessary urgency. (shrink)

A spate of legislations prohibiting cigarette smoking in enclosed public spaces, mainly on grounds of public health protection, recently swept across cities around the world. This is in tandem with a raft of increasingly restrictive national laws that emerged on the back of the ratification of the WHO Framework for Tobacco Control by more than one 168 countries in 2005. The central debate on the increasingly restrictive tobacco laws revolves on the extent to which public health interests justification should ground (...) political intervention in a private right as basic as tobacco smoking, which interestingly is often lumped in the food and beverage category. The pertinent legal and ethical questions therefore are the following: Is or should there be a general unrestricted right to tobacco smoking? If there were such a right, should public health or ethical considerations trump private right to smoke in enclosed public spaces? And if public health interests were so paramount, should they go farther and ground tobacco smoking proscription in all private and public spheres? Using ethical principles and rights-based arguments, the paper critically examines the legal and ethical ramifications of public health justification for tobacco smoking proscription in enclosed public spaces. (shrink)

It is axiomatic that tobacco smoking is hazardous to health. The statistics are well documented and often very grim. For example, the 2008 World Health Organization Report on the global tobacco epidemic presented the following statistics: a hundred million people died of tobacco-related diseases globally in the 20th century; there are approximately over five million tobacco-related deaths every year; and an estimated one billion could die of tobacco-related diseases in this 21st century.Significantly, no other risky, self-indulgent addictive behaviors such as (...) cocaine abuse directly endanger bystanders as much as cigarette smoking or tobacco use endangers nonsmokers through secondhand tobacco smoke or inhaled environmental tobacco smoke. Environmental tobacco smoke comprises sidestream smoke and mainstream smoke. About 85 percent of environmental tobacco smoke is sidestream smoke, while the remainder is mainstream smoke. (shrink)

This book provides a diverse contextualization of Popper’s critical rationalism concerning knowledge and his generalized attitude of criticism on appropriate social and political reforms in contemporary Africa. The book evaluates how best to address contemporary political problems, especially in politically very troubled parts of the world. To address these contemporary problems, especially as it relates to Africa, the authors found the political philosophy of Popper as suitable. The discussion of Popper’s political philosophy engages us directly with all the particularities of (...) socio-economic and political problems within contemporary Africa. In other words, it presents the truth of the present socio-political reality in Africa where the question of what kinds of political ideas and concepts can be offered as appropriate to a political environment, which so greatly faces facets of developmental issues. Although the issues and events that informed the writings of Popper’s The Poverty of Historicism as well as The Open Society and Its Enemies, were among others, the rise of fascism and communism in Europe, the inventiveness of this work is how happily scholars in non-liberal societies, such as in Africa, can pick up Popper’s insights and usefully work with them to offer appropriate social reforms for their society. This volume is a critical juxtaposition of Popper’s ideas in a bid to make good sense of social and intellectual conditions in Africa, particularly as it relates to the scale and speed of social change that is needed in most African nations that are often ridden by corruption. The book is suitable for studies in political philosophy, economic and development studies, African Studies and Indigenous Knowledge systems. (shrink)

Neocolonialism The term “neocolonialism” generally represents the actions and effects of certain remnant features and agents of the colonial era in a given society. Post-colonial studies have shown extensively that despite achieving independence, the influences of colonialism and its agents are still very much present in the lives of most former colonies. Practically, every aspect … Continue reading Neocolonialism →.