Zambia stands out in Africa as one of the continent's most peaceful countries. In its early years as an independent state, Zambia became a regional bulwark against imperialism and colonial domination and South African apartheid. Today, it stands out as an important example of Africa's recent democratization, experiencing both incredible success as well as some notable setbacks. The country is also one of the most urbanized in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result of this urban influx, Zambia's diverse ethno-linguistic groups interact regularly. Moreover, many contemporary Zambian households, especially those in cities, are also exposed to the media, technology, and influences of western urbanized cultures, from Internet cafes to hip hop music. The interesting ways that tradition and modernity conflict and combine in contemporary Zambia are prime considerations in this book. This book explores Zambia's culture, with an eye toward its historical experiences and its particular endowments. It focuses on how traditional and modern interact, and sometimes collide, in the country through topics such as religion, gender roles and family, cuisine, the arts, literature, and more. The major groups are examined to give the reader an idea about how many Zambians live.

On 24 October 1964, the Republic of Zambia was formed, replacing the territory which had formerly been known as Northern Rhodesia. Fifty years on, Andrew Sardanis provides a sympathetic but critical insider's account of Zambia, from independence to the present. He paints a stark picture of Northern Rhodesia at decolonisation and the problems of the incoming government, presented with an immense uphill task of rebuilding the infrastructure of government and administration - civil service, law, local government and economic development. As a friend and colleague of many of the most prominent names in post-independence Zambia - from the presidencies of founding leader Kenneth Kaunda to the incumbent Michael Sata - Sardanis uses his unique eyewitness experience to provide an inside view of a country in transition.

Privatization and social change in the Copperbelt region of Zambia

When we donate our unwanted clothes to charity, we rarely think about what will happen to them: who will sort and sell them, and finally, who will revive and wear them. In this fascinating look at the multibillion dollar secondhand clothing business, Karen Tranberg Hansen takes us around the world from the West, where clothing is donated, through the salvage houses in North America and Europe, where it is sorted and compressed, to Africa, in this case, Zambia. There it enters the dynamic world of Salaula, a Bemba term that means "to rummage through a pile." Essential for the African economy, the secondhand clothing business is wildly popular, to the point of threatening the indigenous textile industry. But, Hansen shows, wearing secondhand clothes is about much more than imitating Western styles. It is about taking a garment and altering it to something entirely local, something that adheres to current cultural norms of etiquette. By unraveling how these garments becomes entangled in the economic, political, and cultural processes of contemporary Zambia, Hansen also raises provocative questions about environmentalism, charity, recycling, and thrift.

At the nexus of political science, development studies, and public policy, Developing States, Shaping Citizenship analyzes an overlooked driver of political behavior: citizens’ past experience with the government through service provision. Using evidence from Zambia, this book demonstrates that the quality of citizens’ interactions with the government through service provision sends them important signals about what they can hope to gain from political action. These interactions influence not only formal political behaviors like voting, but also collective behavior, political engagement, and subversive behaviors like tax evasion. Lack of capacity for service delivery not only undermines economic growth and human development, but also citizens’ confidence in the responsiveness of the political system. Absent this confidence, citizens are much less likely to participate in democratic processes, express their preferences, or comply with state revenue collection. Economic development and political development in low-capacity states, Hern argues, are concurrent processes. Erin Accampo Hern draws on original data from an original large-N survey, interviews, Afrobarometer data, and archival materials collected over 12 months in Zambia. The theory underlying this book’s framework is that of policy feedback, which argues that policies, once in place, influence the subsequent political participation of the affected population. This theory has predominantly been applied to advanced industrial democracies, and this book is the first explicit effort to adapt the theory to the developing country context.

In contrast to the rich tradition of academic analysis and understanding of the pre-colonial and colonial history of Zambia, the country’s post-colonial trajectory has been all but ignored by historians. The assumptions of developmentalism, the cultural hegemony of the United National Independence Party’s orthodoxy and its conflation with national interests, and a narrow focus on Zambia’s diplomatic role in Southern African affairs, have all contributed to a dearth of studies centring on the diverse lived experiences of Zambians. Inspired by an international conference held in Lusaka in August 2005, and presenting a broad range of essays on different aspects of Zambia’s post-colonial experience, this collection seeks to lay the foundations for a future process of sustained scholarly enquiry into the country’s most recent past.

In 1964 Kenneth Kaunda and his United National Independence Party (UNIP) government established the nation of Zambia in the former British colony of Northern Rhodesia. In parallel with many other newly independent countries in Africa this process of decolonisation created a wave of optimism regarding humanity's capacity to overcome oppression and poverty. Yet, as this study shows, in Zambia as in many other countries, the legacy of colonialism created obstacles that proved difficult to overcome. Within a short space of time democratisation and development was replaced by economic stagnation, political authoritarianism, corruption and ethnic and political conflict. To better understand this process, Dr Larmer explores UNIP's political ideology and the strategies it employed to retain a grip on government. He shows that despite the party's claim that it adhered to an authentically African model of consensual and communitarian decision-making, it was never a truly nationally representative body. Whereas in long-established Western societies unevenness in support was accepted as a legitimate basis for party political difference, in Zambia this was regarded as a threat to the fragile bindings of the young nation state, and as such had to be denied and repressed. This led to the declaration of a one-party state, presented as the logical expression of UNIP supremacy but it was in fact a reflection of its weakening grip on power. Through case studies of opposition political and social movements rooted in these differences, the book demonstrates that UNIP's control of the new nation-state was partial, uneven and consistently prone to challenge. Alongside this, the study also re-examines Zambia's role in the regional liberation struggles, providing valuable new evidence of the country's complex relations with Apartheid-era South Africa and the relationship between internal and external opposition, shaped by the context of regional liberation movements and the Cold War. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews, Dr Larmer offers a ground-breaking analysis of post-colonial political history which helps explain the challenges facing contemporary African polities.