'This is a powerful exposition of the ways in which conventional categories of political analysis, liberal and local, have both influenced events in South Africa in the 1990s and misunderstood them. Theorists have perpetuated continuities that have in fact been broken and argued for discontinuities that are less striking than they seem. It will be essential reading for students of ... Read moreSouth Africa itself and those who suppose that the extension of 'democracy' in the 1990s is an unequivocal advance.' - Geoffrey Hawthorn, University of Cambridge 'Dr Butler's book is a closely argued study of the nature of political enquiry, focusing on the modes of analysis employed by western scholars and their South African counterparts in their exploration of South Africa's past and present. It will provoke keen debate and provide a source of valuable insight into the nature of liberal democracy and the incentives and constraints that attend the construction of social and political theory.' - Professor J. E. Spence, Associate Fellow, Royal Institute of International Affairs '...an important work on South African scholarship of wide interest to scholars and policy makers...required reading for the South African specialist. The fact that it organizes a vast literature on South Africa is also likely to prove very useful in graduate teaching.' - Henrik Sommer, Nationalism & Ethnic Politics Show Less