In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Robtel Neajai Pailey. Pailey is Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her book is Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia.
Roberto Sirvent: How can your book help BAR readers understand the current political and social climate?
Robtel Neajai Pailey: Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa is the first to evaluate domestic and diasporic constructions and practices of Liberian citizenship across space and time and their myriad implications for development. By ‘development’, I am not referring to free-market capitalism, the single-minded pursuit of economic growth or the privileging of Western whiteness and modernity; rather, I understand ‘development’ to be a process whereby people’s experiences of poverty, power, privilege and progress in the so-called Global North and South are constantly mediated to effect change…
