Patterns of state-society incorporation and disengagement in Africa

This chapter looks at how social groups and formal institutional networks interconnect, and attempts to outline the main functional, human, situational and symbolic facets of the exchanges. It shows that the nature of African states is an outcome of the rhythm of relations between social entities and public institutions and officials. The human axis of state-society relations is molded by a notion of the state as a social entity which embodies a clearly delineated structure of human interactions. The contemporary African political experience defies the neat classificatory schemes devised to capture its multivariate texture. Economic detachment between state and society is clearly exhibited in processes of economic self-encapsulation. These activities manifest either a lack of incorporation in the state or withdrawal from contact with it in the economic sphere. Economic, political and cultural interconnections between states and social groups in contemporary Africa manifest varying rhythms and alternating foci of articulation and autonomy.