The death of political possibility? Reading State and society in Nigeria 40 years on

ABSTRACT In this 2019 reboot of his collection of essays from the 1970s, Gavin Williams traces the lingering the impact of colonialism and international capital on Nigeria’s political economy, the shaky development of an indigenous industrial class and the changing role of the state in national development. However, reading the book, it is not clear what such an analysis is for. Is it intended as a diagnosis? An indictment? Williams leftist commitments are clear, but amid the painstaking analysis one can ask: what is the point of studying politics? In this review article the author unpicks Williams’ at times contradictory answers to this question and argues that the book demonstrates the relevance of mid twentieth-century Nigerian politics to readers today. She poses the question of how we can navigate the possibility and risks of newly volatile twenty-first-century politics, unchained as it is from the liberal orthodoxy of the past 40 years.