In recent times, West Africa has (once again) gained international attention as a region hit by various crises.
Islamic extremism; transnational drug economies; the smuggling of people, cars, arms, et cetera; as well as
transnational interventions have come to most visibly represent particular contemporary globalization processes
in West Africa. Paired with already widespread cleavages due to socioeconomic hardship affecting
vast percentages of the West African population, these dynamics point to the (violent) reordering of space,
described as de- and re-territorialization, and are based on different — often conflicting — ways of (re-)imagining
space in Africa. Moreover, the implications of these dynamics appear to reach far beyond the confines
of West Africa — as most dramatically evidenced in debates on the current European “refugee crisis” and
the fear of terrorist attacks in Europe. Hence, Western powers have come to consider the perceived destabilization
of the region and in particular the seeming proliferation of “weak” or “failed states” as a threat to
the territorial organization of the international state system and, as such, have intervened in various ways in
order to counter the trend.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:77723 |
| Date | 31 January 2022 |
| Creators | Döring, Katharina P. W., Herpolsheimer, Jens |
| Contributors | Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 1199 Processes of Spatialisation under the Global Condition |
| Publisher | Leipziger Universitätsverlag |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English, German |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/submittedVersion, doc-type:workingPaper, info:eu-repo/semantics/workingPaper, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa2-775129, qucosa:77512 |
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