Abstract

This introduction to our special issue addresses scholars’ failure, in recent times, to consider and analyse the forms of capitalism that have developed on the African continent. To redress the balance, it takes up the study of economic arrangements on the continent – property, infrastructure, debt, financialization, regulation – as well as exploring the history and politics of the scholarly field of African economics as an intellectual and institutional project. In the process it considers the advantages (and drawbacks) of seeing Africa as part of the ‘Global South’. Central to the special issue is the question of how to marry an analysis of intimate and smaller-scale economies centred on household, family and (often informal) labour regimes, on the one hand, with a recognition of large-scale processes such as the central banking systems imposed by states, the increasing prevalence of high-tech finance, the emergence of continent-wide regulation, and the influence of multilateral development agencies and the international publishing industry, on the other. How, we ask, can the importance of these institutions, so unlike in size and scale, be reckoned without assuming that the bigger and more powerful ones always prevail?

摘要

本期特刊的导读解决了学者们近来未能考虑和分析非洲大陆发展起来的资本主义形式的问题。为了解决这种平衡，它研究了非洲大陆的经济安排-财产，基础设施，债务，金融化，监管-并探索了非洲经济学作为一个智力和机构项目的学术领域的历史和政治。在此过程中，它考虑了将非洲视为“全球南方”一部分的利弊。这个问题的核心是一方面要如何对以家庭，家庭和（通常是非正式）劳动制度为中心的亲密和较小规模的经济进行分析，认识到诸如国家实行中央银行体系，高科技金融的盛行，大洲监管的出现以及多边发展机构和国际出版业的影响等大规模进程。其他。我们问，如何在不假设规模更大，实力更强的机构总是占主导地位的情况下，对这些机构的重要性进行评估，以区别于规模和规模？