In this book, distinguished anthropologists, political scientists and social historians from Africa, Europe and America make a radical break with much conventional wisdom in postcolonial discourse to explore contemporary African identities in transition.

They look at the colonial legacy and how colonial identities are being reconstructed in the face of deepening social inequality across the continent. They ask how the postcolonial imagination as a highly specific, locally created and historical force reconfigures personal knowledge and how that reconfiguration shapes the moral and...