The Editorial Working Group of Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) is pleased to announce the 2017 winner of the Ruth First prize. The prize is awarded for the best article published by an African author in the journal in a publication year. This year, the prize was awarded to Papa Faye for his article The Politics of Recognition, and the Manufacturing of Citizenship and Identity in Senegal’s Decentralised Charcoal Market.
The ROAPE Prize Committee commented on Faye’s article: ‘the fieldwork contribution was impressive, as was the broader engagement with literature on identity politics and recognition. The paper’s discussion of how national policies (however they were conceived) were shaped within the local political economy was sensitively done, and very interesting.’
The article shows how state politics of (re)allocation of rights and resources to social groups within a society (recognition) are constructive of distinct abilities to shape the fate of the political economy of natural resources (citizenship) and of specific images of self (identities). It was published in ROAPE Volume 44, Issue 151 in Spring 2017 and can be read for free by clicking here.
Papa Faye holds PhDs in Sociology from Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar and in Social Anthropology from University of Bern in Switzerland. His research focuses on decentralized forestry, agricultural land management, and agribusiness and human rights in Africa. He is research associate to many institutions including the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Initiative Prospective Agricole et Rurale (IPAR) and the Social Dimensions to Environmental Policy (SDEP) at the Geography Department of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Papa has been awarded in 2017 a research grant by the Open Society Foundations Fellowship Program in New York. He is currently co-founder and Executive Secretary of a new Action-Research center based in Dakar, known as Centre d’Action pour le Développement et la Recherche.
