When I'm working while feeling a bit down and out, things like this REALLY piss me off: "The first is the structural poverty of the African continent. By structural poverty, we refer to the lack of structures, both concrete and ideological, that function to ensure social continuity."
The offending phrase is 'structural poverty'. 'Structural poverty' could mean economic poverty caused by structural factors, but the author uses it to mean the poverty of structures, in which case shouldn't he have used something like 'lack of structural capacity'????? Or why didn't he just use 'lack of structures'???? Save himself having to define it again in the next line? What benefit is there in using 'structural poverty'? In any case his definition is so broad that it covers everything - policy structures, administrative structures, transport and communications, legal structures, political structures, social structures, ideological structures. Plus what do you mean by 'ensuring social continuity'????? Geographically? Temporally? What is social continuity anyway? You might as well draw a smiley face in place of all that crap.
Sometimes the quality of articles in supposedly academic journals is horrendous. I need to smash my head against a wall. Admittedly I have to find a hard enough wall.
Today it seems as if the whole world has forgotten how to use their brain and mouths (and pens. and handphones) at the same time. *glares at LSB*
Also, typos! What are typos doing in a peer-reviewed journal?????? It's typos galore here! Wth!
Have finished reading the whole article, and am still disgusted. He starts off with talking about various strands of Pan-Africanism, gives us a whole list of difficulties with African integration, and his conclusion has no relation to what he's talked about earlier. It's a version of 'I argue X because of A, B, C, unfortunately, A, B, & C are irrelevant to my argument'.
Today had better not get any worse.
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