My current work takes as its point of departure my 1996 book, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. My main interest is in the intersection between politics and culture, and the politicization of culture in the making of political identities. I pursued this recently in a book on 9/11 that focused on the relationship between American power and political Islam during the Cold War. My core interest, though, has been in colonial and post-colonial Africa, where I have tried to understand the reform/reproduction of colonially-crafted identities through the definition of citizenship in the post-independence period. I have done extended research in South Africa, Rwanda, and Uganda, and my current work is in Nigeria and Sudan. I have a secondary interest in the institutional reproduction of knowledge, particularly in what is called 'African Studies'. This is a more recent preoccupation, on which I have yet to publish anything beyond newspaper articles.

Representative Publications:

2004. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror, Pantheon, New York.

2001. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.Y. David Phillip, Cape Town: Fountain, Kampala; and James Currey, London.

1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.Y. David Phillip, Cape Town: Fountain, Kampala; and James Currey, London.

1976. Politics and Class Formation in Uganda, Heinemann Educational Books, London, and Monthly Review Press, New York.

1973. From Citizen to Refugee, Francis Pinter Ltd. London.

1972. The Myth of Population Control: Family, Class and Caste in an Indian Village Monthly Review Press, New York.

2001. “Beyond Settler and Native as Political Identities: Overcoming the Political Legacy of Colonialism", Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 43, no. 4, October.

2000. “Indirect Rule and the Struggle for Democracy: A Response to Bridget O’Laughlin,” African Affairs, pp. 43-46.

1999. “Historicizing Power and Responses to Power: Indirect Rule and its Reform,” Social Research, vol.66, no 3, pp. 859-886.

1987. "Extreme but not Exceptional: Towards an Analysis of the Agrarian Question in Uganda," Journal of Peasant Studies, 14, 2, London.