Is violence inevitable in Africa? : theories of conflict and approaches to conflict prevention /

This effective reader is the first volume of a series produced by the African-European Group for Interdisciplinary Studies. The editors and contributors are European political and social scientists and practitioners of some repute. The volume is uniformly well written and sensibly understandable. Complex ideas are combined with cogent arguments that are effectively related to pragmatic case studies. After an introduction pointing toward a pragmatic view of power's relationship to violence in Africa, the volume divides into two parts. The first has five chapters devoted to conceptual discussions of conflict prevention: violence and the complexity of ethnicity; the concept of "new wars"; grievance-based causations (scarcity and natural resources); and empirical reflections of intergovernmental institutions. Part 2 focuses on the managing and implementation of conflict resolution. Four chapters investigate power sharing and majoritarian mechanisms, decentralization's impact, and pragmatism in implementation. The authors explore conceptual as well as pragmatic approaches to violence in Africa and do so with efficiency and weight, and without being time-sensitive. This is essential material for understanding problem solving in most all African countries, overtly violent or not. Useful bibliographies. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above interested in Africa. R. M. Fulton Northwest Missouri State University