ABSTRACT
The book’s conclusion argues that a starting point for analysis could be to observe how statehood is performed on a daily basis in Africa, starting with the provision of public goods. Issues such as infrastructure and service provision divide and connect citizens within the same state and highlight different expressions of statehood depending on who you are and what you have. Thus, people experience statehood differently in the same shared space, and understanding these experiences is important for deeper engagement with those living and performing the state. Rather than an economic model of public goods, this book offers a broader understanding of public goods as power relations that can capture the political aspects of such goods in determining “whose public.” The analytical value of the empirical data is to demonstrate how the same issue, e.g., access to water, can be a matter of intense negotiations, claims, and rights that show a pattern of dynamic relations across different goods, subjects, and time. This book has termed these patterns “statehood” but they are not limited to formal state structures. Statehood can rather be seen as patterns of social relations, practices, and political processes in expressing citizenship, belonging, and performing the state.
