Anglický jazyk

The African Origins of Democracy

Vydavateľstvo: Springer-Verlag GmbH
Rok vydania: 2026
Formát: Hardback
Rozmer: 216 x 153 mm
Jazyk: Anglický jazyk
ISBN: 9783032106254

Na objednávku

128.69 €

bežná cena: 142.99 €

O knihe

The African Origins of Democracy challenges the myth that democracy was born in ancient Greece. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, and political science, Bernd Reiter shows that egalitarian African societies practiced self-rule tens of thousands of years earlier—and that these traditions spread outward through migration and exchange. At the heart of the book is Botswana, where the dikgotla—village assemblies—still embody living democracy today. Bold and provocative, this book rewrites democracy’s story, centering Africa as its birthplace and urging us to imagine futures beyond elite-driven representative systems.

Bernd Reiter is a political scientist and a professor of Luso-Latin American Studies for the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at Texas Tech University, USA. He served as a Fulbright Distinguished Chair of Public Policy and as a Fulbright Specialist in Brazil, as well as a Erasmus Mundus Visiting Professor at the Barcelona Institute for International Studies. In 2020-21, he was a research associate at the Afro Latin American Research Institute at Harvard University. From 2018 to 2020, he was the director of the Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean, at the University of South Florida. He is the editor of the Routledge Decolonizing the Classics Special Book Series and a section editor-in-chief for the journal Social Sciences. His recent publications include Decolonizing the Social Sciences and Humanities (2022) and Status: Honor and White Privilege in Brazil and Beyond (2025). His work focuses on democracy, race, and decolonization.