11:30 - 13:00
Oral session
Room: Muirhead - Room 113
Stream: New Perspectives on African Regions and Regionalisms
Chair/s:
Oluwabamidele Kogbe
The Region of Fears and Wants? Remaking Our ECOWAS
Oluwabamidele Kogbe
University of Dundee, Dundee

West Africa hitherto points to a region begging for the answer to its pervasive security question. Is there an alternative way of interpreting human security complexities of West Africa – a region where the old and the new threats to human ‘safety’ and ‘means’ are increasingly becoming complex in their transience and reconfigurations – whether arising from the micro political economic dynamics of the ECOWAS member states or within their corridors,- or meso regional space - for instance, the Mano River Union, or the macro regional scale that maps out ECOWAS as a whole - or from the buy-in of the global order/ disorder in their ‘multiplexities’. This paper draws from the existing literatures on regionalism/ regionalisation and regional governance to locate civil society actors’ normative role in the region. Embracing the emerging multiplex world order that offers a pluralist epistemology and makes a case for regional popular security – a new concept that traditionalists will probably find antithetical to the mainstream security realm. The understanding of regional popular security does not follow the traditional security position. It is a concept that offers an alternative way of looking at human security and development at the regional level by rethinking the role of civil society actors not necessarily as counterhegemonic but as active participants in regional governance of ECOWAS of people.


Reference:
Tu-A34 Regions and Regionalisms-P-004
Presenter/s:
Oluwabamidele Kogbe
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Muirhead - Room 113
Chair/s:
Oluwabamidele Kogbe
Date:
Tuesday, 11 September
Time:
12:15 - 12:30
Session times:
11:30 - 13:00