Democracy in Translation: Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar Culture (The Wilder House Series in Politics, History and Culture)
Frederic Charles Schaffer
Frederic C. Schaffer challenges the assumption often made by American scholars that democracy has been achieved in foreign countries when criteria such as free elections are met. Elections, he argues, often have cultural underpinnings that are invisible to outsiders. To examine grassroots understandings of democratic institutions and political concepts, Schaffer conducted fieldwork in Senegal, a mostly Islamic and agrarian country with a long history of electoral politics. Schaffer discovered that ideas of "demokaraasi" held by Wolof-speakers often reflect concerns about collective security. Many Senegalese see voting as less a matter of choosing leaders than of reinforcing community ties that may be called upon in times of crisis.
By looking carefully at language, Schaffer demonstrates that institutional arrangements do not necessarily carry the same meaning in different cultural contexts. Democracy in Translation asks how social scientists should investigate the functioning of democratic institutions in cultures dissimilar from their own, and raises larger issues about the nature of democracy, the universality of democratic ideals, and the practice of cross-cultural research.
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About Frederic Charles Schaffer
Reviews for Democracy in Translation: Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar Culture (The Wilder House Series in Politics, History and Culture)
Jeffrey W. Rubin
American Journal of Sociology
Schaffer's small jewel of a book... contains a detailed description of his methodology for linguistic analysis of oral interviews, of political texts in documentary form and in the media, and of interviews with educated multilingual Senegalese. Intended for a relatively expert audience, the book is accessible to advanced undergraduates as well.
Margaret E. Scranton
Perspectives on Political Science
This well-crafted and deeply researched study is one of the two or three most important studies of democratization in Africa yet to appear in the 1990's.
John Clark
International Journal of African Historical Studies
A probing and highly original study.... A significant contribution to the literature on transitions to democracy.
Foreign Affairs
Schaffer's intensive interviews and linguistic analysis demonstrate that good fieldwork, coupled with careful analysis, still has much to contribute to the field of comparative politics.... If the author is correct and local interpretations of broad ideal and discourses of democracy are central to understanding and explaining the outcomes of political liberalization in Senegal, then this book is among the best written on this topic.... It should be required reading for anyone interested in the prospects for political change not just in Senegal but in Africa as a whole.
William Reno
Comparative Political Studies
This book is intended, in short, to enrich both the study of Senegal and democratic practices and the practice of cross-cultural inquiry more generally. Schaffer concludes his study with an excellent bibliography.
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