African Politics Conference Group awards Best Book Award to two books including Professor Noah Nathan's book The Scarce State: Inequality and Political Power in the Hinterland
Co-winner David Mwambari received the award for Navigating Cultural Memory: Commemoration and Narrative in Postgenocide Rwanda
The Committee noted "In The Scarce State: Inequality and Political Power in the Hinterland, Noah L. Nathan challenges conventional wisdom about the power of African states by presenting a fresh and counterintuitive argument. The prevailing view in Africanist literature has long been that the state is weak, particularly in peripheral or hinterland regions. However, Nathan refines the concept of the periphery and argues that the seemingly limited interventions of the state can have a profound and far-reaching impact in areas where its presence is scarce."
Photo credit: Gretchen Ertl