We thus need to conceptualize Africa's modernization as embodying a constantly evolving dynamic of apparently disconnected, though in reality overlapping, registers. Understanding 'disorder' Such an analytical framework makes it clear why Africa's present modernity encourages the creative use of the 'traditional'. To speak of the 'traditional' in this way, however, is not to imply that this approach is culturalist. Although careful attention is given to the political significance of culture, I do not in any way maintain that politics in Africa is to be explained solely in cultural terms. My argument is that cultural dynamics, which are most often subsumed under the label of 'tradition', need also to be examined from their 'modern' instrumental perspective.
Cultural factors are no more and no less significant in Africa than they are elsewhere.
What is important to analysis is the way in which they are utilized politically in a modern setting. The paradigm developed in Africa Works shows that what is distinct in Africa is the creative manner in which this overlap of 'modernity' and 'tradition' combines to create a form of political accountability which is rooted in the instrumentalization of disorder. By providing a coherent framework for what might otherwise appear merely as chaos or anarchy, we establish the foundations for an analysis of politics in Africa which is open to meaningful comparison. To take but one example, an African academic with an American PhD in engineering will not find it inconsistent to defer to the demands of witchcraft in his village. Though it is fair to say that, since our notion of the modern is very largely determined by the experience of the West, it is difficult at this stage to know precisely in which ways Asian modernity will eventually differ from that of the West.