Book contents
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa
- African Studies Series
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Centring the Margins
- Part I From Frontiers to Boundaries
- Part II States and Taxes, Land and Mobility
- Part III Decolonization and Boundary Closure, c.1939–1969
- Part IV States, Social Contracts and Respacing from Below, c.1970–2010
- 11 Barnacle States and Boundary Lines
- 12 The Remaking of Ghana and Togo at Their Common Border
- 13 Boundaries, Communities and ‘Re-Membering’
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- African Studies Series
11 - Barnacle States and Boundary Lines
States, Trade and Urbanism in the Senegambia
from Part IV - States, Social Contracts and Respacing from Below, c.1970–2010
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2019
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa
- African Studies Series
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Centring the Margins
- Part I From Frontiers to Boundaries
- Part II States and Taxes, Land and Mobility
- Part III Decolonization and Boundary Closure, c.1939–1969
- Part IV States, Social Contracts and Respacing from Below, c.1970–2010
- 11 Barnacle States and Boundary Lines
- 12 The Remaking of Ghana and Togo at Their Common Border
- 13 Boundaries, Communities and ‘Re-Membering’
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- African Studies Series
Summary
As a recent comparative history of a very different topic nicely demonstrates, points of crisis tend to prompt a re-negotiation of the terms of engagement between the state and societal actors.1 Such was the case in the Senegambia in the decades after 1970 when the crisis was situated within an unhappy conjuncture between the great Sahelian drought of 1968–73 and the OPEC oil price hikes of 1973–4. Declining global prices for agricultural exports, including groundnuts, further compounded an already dire economic picture during the 1980s. The initial response of government was to attempt a rescaling of state institutions as well as a respacing of economic activity in a manner that was intended to draw the geographical margins deeper into state planning objectives. Given that the starting points in Senegal and the Gambia were so different, and given the disparities of size, it is not surprising that the responses varied.
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- Information
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West AfricaThe Centrality of the Margins, pp. 397 - 435Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019