- Despite decades of scholarship and constant demands from Africans themselves, a tendency to view the continent as one political, economic, social, and cultural space persists. The history of ideas, operating on a broader conceptual level, does not escape this homogenising tendency. Ideas of the typical ‘African worker’ or ‘woman’ were colonially constructed and continue to affect the way governments, aid agencies, and individuals think about and interact with the continent. Showing the diversity of labour histories and intellectual histories of thinking about labour in Africa can show the importance of local initiative, vernacularisation of norms, and the de-centring of European […]
- After Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, Stephen Moore — one of Trump’s closest economic advisors — remarked that the United Kingdom faced a choice between embracing American ‘free enterprise’ or committing itself to a ‘European economic model of more socialism’.Moore is not the first to suggest that state intervention in economic affairs is typically European. While Moore characterised the ‘European model’ in negative terms, many left-of-centre commentators have lauded the continent’s supposed commitment to guaranteeing certain social rights, through strong welfare systems and laws which uphold decent working conditions.Yet the very notion that there is a distinct European model of social […]
