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Patrick F. A. Wurster <p.wurster@gmail.com> University of Osnabrueck (Germany) My major interest in researching Politics in Africa is to answer (both empirically and theoretically) the questions: "How are states in Africa working"? and "What can be learned by comparing these findings with other regions of the world?". My point of departure is to consider therefore the State in Africa as a political development "sui generis", and neither being "only" a colonial creation, nor a perversion of an ideal type. Politics and policies as empirical and observable operations of a political system are of major interest to me since this 1) goes beyond or to the opposite of classical political theories and 2) enables to build on, last (but not least), on recent sociological theory, and esp. Systems theories. |
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| Address: | Faehrstrasse 65 21107 Hamburg, Germany |
| Primary Phone: | +49 40 21 977 923 |
| Web Page: | http://www.home.uos.de/pawurste |
| List Affiliations: | Former List Editor for H-Africa List Editor for H-West-Africa |
| Interests: | African American History / Studies Anthropology Communication Educational Technology Ethnic History / Studies Intellectual History Political History / Studies Urban History / Studies |
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Bio: VITA - Born, raised, and educated in francophone Africa. Studied Economics, History and Political Science at the universities of Bangui (Bangui, Central African Republic), Osnabrueck (Osnabrueck, Germany), and La Sapienza (Rome, Italy). - Graduated 1999 (M.A.) at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Osnabrueck with a MA-thesis on the evolution of the modern state in pre-colonial and german colonial times in Togo, supervised by Josef Schmid (Eberhard-Karl-University Tuebingen) and Klaus J. Bade (IMIS, University of Osnabrueck). - At present I complete a doctoral dissertation (PhD) on the evolution, education, migration, and functions of the elite in Togo entitled "South-North-South Educational Migrations and Social Inclusion: Elites, Networks, and the State in the Case of Togo (West Africa)", supervised by Ralf Kleinfeld (Comparative Politics), Michael Bommes (Migration Research, Sociology), and Hans J. Wenzel (Development Studies, Social Geography). EMPLOYMENT - 1999-2001 Member of the Graduate School on "Migration in Modern Europe" at the IMIS-Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies at the University of Osnabrueck. - Serving since 2000 as Editor of the H-Net (Humanities-Net) internet forum H-Africa on Africa's history, culture, and African studies at Michigan State University. - 2002-2003 employed in the project PolitikON at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuernberg (Political Sociology, political behaviour and opinions). - Guest Lecturer in 2004 at the University of Catania (Italy), teaching a course in Comparative Politics on "Comparative Transformations in East-South-Perspective". - Lecturer (since 2001) in both in the section on "Comparative Politics" and in the section on "Government and Public Policy" at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Osnabrueck. RESEARCH INTERESTS - Comparative Politics, esp. state evolution, development and failure, statehood in Africa, state as organisation, elites; - Governance and second order cybernetics, Transformation studies and democratisations; - Political Theory; - Methodology of qualitative empirical research, esp. network analysis, biographical research. |
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