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- Convenors:
-
David O'Kane
(Nelson Mandela University)
Dmitry Bondarenko
Send message to Convenors
- Formats:
- Panels Network affiliated
- Sessions:
- Thursday 23 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
What will the logics of the twenty-first century mean for a continent that remains the most marginalised and exploited in the world? We invite papers on any topic and any region of Africa that deal with the relationships between Africa and the rapidly changing twenty-first century world.
Long Abstract:
The multi-polar twenty-first century is clearly driven by its own emerging logics, geopolitical, economic and environmental, and this has particular implications for Africa. The continent still struggles for economic development and remains politically weak: yet the social and political turbulence observable across the African space is a sign of a continent in movement and change, one that is both affected by the emerging logics of our time, and adding its share to those logics. What will this mean for Africa?
To help address this question, we are looking for papers that deal explicitly with African relationships, plural, with a world that is changing rapidly. These may be intra-African relations, or relationships with external powers old or new. We also welcome work engaging with the world environmental crisis, in any of the forms which that crisis takes. That crisis will shape all our futures: how will it shape Africa's? How will Africa's new relationships, within, between and beyond the continent shape its present and its multiple futures? What effects might renegotiations of old relationships have on Africa's present and future conditions? We welcome papers dealing with any region or research topic. In particular, we are eager to receive work from African researchers working in the continent today. The task of Africanist research today must be to move, decisively, beyond Europe, both in terms of research personnel, research questions and even - possibly - research paradigms.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 23 July, 2020, -Grasian Mkodzongi (Tropical Africa-Land and Natural Resources Research Institute)
Paper short abstract:
The theorisation of Africa, the writing of its history and its diverse cultures has been largely influenced by its encounter with colonialism.What we know about Africa's past and present is largely a reflection of European encounters and stereotypes about Africa
Paper long abstract:
It was Mahmood Mamdani (2017) who argued that to develop theory one needs a reference point, the theorisation of Africa, the writing of its history and its diverse cultures has been largely influenced by its encounter with colonialism. It is not surprising then that what we know about Africa's past and present is largely a reflection of European encounters and stereotypes about Africa. To borrow from Chinua Achebe (2009:21) Africa 'like an ancient tree by the much used farm road, bears on its bark countless scars of the machete'. In our case, this machete is epitomised by countless marks left on Africa by its contact with Europe. There is now a growing body of literature which seeks to deal with the Eurocentrism inherent in the theorization of Africa, and our understanding of its history, its peoples and cultures. This scholarship seeks to among other things advance a 'decolonial' project whose aim is to challenge dominant narratives about Africa's past and the developmental challenges which confront its peoples. Following on Mamdani (1996), this scholarship (Wa Thiongo 1986 and 2013, Ndlovu Gatsheni 2013) presents a counter-hegemonic project which can potentially serve as a 'reference' point for the advancement of an epistemological project grounded in Africa's history and culture. The paper builds on an editorial written by the author introducing a forthcoming edited book on Africa, History and Culture to be published in early 2020.
Nadezhda Khokholkova
Paper short abstract:
Tanzania is one of those countries that, during the period from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, experienced two European colonial regimes. This paper is devoted to the results of field research conducted by the author and her colleagues in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam and Bagamoyo) in 2019.
Paper long abstract:
The historical memory of colonialism continues to have an impact on the modern life of many African states, above all, the identity of their citizens. In this sense, the United Republic of Tanzania is no exception. Tanzania is one of those countries that, during the period from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, experienced two European colonial regimes.
This paper is devoted to the first results of field research conducted by the author and her colleagues in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam and Bagamoyo) in 2019. The field research was supported by the Russian Scientific Foundation (project №18-18-00454 "Historical Memory as the Evolutional Factor of Socio-Political Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa and Mesoamerica"). The primary purpose of the expedition was to examine the historical memory of the colonial past - the periods associated with the activities of German and British colonial administrations. The author collected a significant amount of research materials, conducted 13 structured interviews both in English and Swahili in order to find out whether perceptions of Tanzanians are consistent with historical information contained in school textbooks and provided by libraries and museums. While exploring representations of colonial history, the author focuses on the problem of the difference between German and British colonizers.
Dmitry Bondarenko
Paper short abstract:
The case of Ugandan Old Believers tells tons about contemporary African religiosity and globalization in postcolonial societies. It is a manifestation of spiritual anti-globalism as a reaction on globalization, a sign of a spiritual turn that is taking place in Africa nowadays.
Paper long abstract:
The paper deals with a very recent phenomenon - the Orthodox Christian Old Believers in Uganda. Its analysis can help understand contemporary religiosity in Africa in the context of postcoloniality and globalization. We concentrate on the Ugandan Old-Believers' motivation for converting to this religion vs. knowledge of its doctrine. We show that their knowledge of the Old-Believer doctrine is poor. What brings most of these people to Old Believers is the search of the true faith associated with the original and hence correct way of performing Christian rites. For them, the true religion is not the true teaching, but rather the true complex of rituals. In this we see intricate interplay of the features typical for authentic African cultures and acquired by them in the course of interaction with the wider world. Our study of Old Believers in Uganda shows how both resistance and adaptation to globalist trends manifest themselves in the spiritual (religious) context in contemporary Africa, and how postcolonial religiosity can acquire clearly marked anti-globalist directionality while people attempt both to resist and adapt to globalization. This is a kind of spiritual anti-globalism. We consider the Ugandan Old Believers' search for an "original", "uncorrupted" faith as an essentially conservative response to the globalization processes in the postcolonial society, as one of many manifestations of a spiritual turn that is taking place in Africa nowadays.
Danse de Bondt (Utrecht University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the changing role that traditional alcohol has in dispute settlements in rural Uganda. While traditional practices are understood as remnants from the past, I argue that these practices are a product of contemporary relationships and flows of information within and beyond Uganda.
Paper long abstract:
This paper ethnographically explores the way in which meanings and practices of traditional alcohol shape local legislative practices in Kisoro District, south-western Uganda. Historical and ethnographic literature on alcohol in Africa has clearly shown the importance of alcohol in regulating social, economic and political life. This traditional heritage is still visible in today's settings, as home brewed beers take up a central role in settling disputes within clan communities, rituals as well as celebrating and maintaining (new) relationships among other things.
However, the place of alcohol within clan structures has come under scrutiny, especially by younger generations who increasingly question the role of alcohol in disputes settlements in their localities. Alcohol thus becomes a contested issue through which narratives of tradition and modernity play out. I argue that local contemplations of these concepts shape and affect interactions at the village level. While clan structures are often seen as remnant of tradition, in this paper I show how local contemplations of terms like tradition, modernity and development shape the clan organisation of the Bakiga people in Kisoro District. By looking into the relationship between traditional alcohol, clan practices and bureaucracy, I show how clan structures mirror certain features and criteria that a modern institution is imagined to need in contemporary Uganda.
Cecilia Pennacini (University of Turin)
Paper short abstract:
How digital technologies are adapted and somehow reinvented in the African context? Different examples from Uganda will be analyzed to understand the economic, social and cultural impacts of new media on the rapidly changing context of the city of Kampala.
Paper long abstract:
In the last twenty years Africa adopted with enthusiasm the digital revolution. From a starting point where communication infrastructures of different types were very rare, today we observe an explosion of cell phones, computers, video, satellite TV channels, social network platforms, etc. These new media radically transformed social, economic, cultural and political life in the continent. The paper will investigate specific uses of technologies born in the West but re-invented and implemented in original forms in African contexts. I will present some examples from Uganda - mobile money circulation, innovative platforms for urban transport, low cost film production - showing how affordable digital technologies have been adapted to local needs in the Kampala area. These cases underline the creativity used to foster economic development but also to invent new forms of social life and cultural representations in an urban context rapidly changing.
Maria Isabel Lemos (ISCTE-IUL)
Paper short abstract:
The work contemplates the recent policies and projects developed by cape-verdian institutions concerning the category of Intangible Cultural Heritage and observes, through qualitative data collection, the frictions between the international and national processes in a post-colonial african context.
Paper long abstract:
This case study is focused in the implementation, since 2016, of the international biding text "Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage" (UNESCO, 2003) by the cape-verdian government and policies developed in this sector.
Since the publication of UNESCO's text, countries have been developing inventories in large scale, aiming at the inscription of elements in international and national listings. This text has had great impact on the methodologies concerning the safeguarding of intangible heritage but also on the concept of Heritage itself. The criticism surrounding the Convention's content varies from its universalizing notion of culture and high level of bureaucratization to the alteration between social and economical value of cultural expressions.
Whilst in the african continent the majority of heritage representations have been natural/landscape sites, it is worth observing how these new methodologies and concepts of approaching cultural expressions as intangible heritage are affecting the cultural policies developed and the major difficulties and innovations presented by these countries in implementing the international measures. Besides, how are these policies affecting the practitioners of these cultural expressions? Inevitably, the work will also address the relationship between ICH and Tourism, in which the local economy is highly dependent.
The conclusions to be presented are based on the qualitative data collection developed by the proponent, in the archipelago, for the on-going PhD ethnographic fieldwork and also on a six-month internship in Instituto do Património Cultural, the cape-verdian institution responsible for heritage safeguarding projects and policies.
Gonçalo Salvaterra (Center for Research in Anthropology (CRIA))
Paper short abstract:
This paper shows how a conservation NGO is using their understandings of local meanings of forests and spirits to strengthen formal conservation and how their discourses and practice rely on preconceived and superficial ideas influenced by meta-narratives produced by the Global North.
Paper long abstract:
In Guinea-Bissau conservation is expanding geographically, which after the officialization of the Boé and Dulombi conservation complex in 2017, the national territory classified under formal conservation reached 26%. This paper analyses the discourses and practices of an international NGO working in this area that has aimed at developing community-based conservation in the past years. One of the projects created with local people mapped the several so-called sacred forests in the area. In the NGO's understanding, these places have an important role in conservation, and forests' survival is due to the traditional beliefs in spirits that protect them from poaching, slash-and-burn and lumbering activities. Drawing from ethnographic data, this paper shows how the conservation NGO is using the sacred forests and the spirits that inhabit these places to strengthen nature conservation at the institutional and functional levels. Conservation discourses and practices in this case are based on preconceived and superficial ideas influenced by meta-narratives produced by the Global North. For the local population these spirits (genies) are much more complex, since they are not confined to these forests, and people establish different types of relations with them, not only based in fear. In times of unprecedented awareness with the ecological crisis it is more than ever necessary to address questions such as: what is the continuity between the logics of formal conservation from the twentieth century and the present ones? Who are the international organizations speaking for? Who benefits from the knowledge that has been (co)produced in these contested places?
Veronica Usacheva (Russian Academy of Science)
Paper short abstract:
The bonds between India and Africa have been forged over several centuries. Africa, like India, is a continent of rich and compelling diversity, they share colonial history, similar economic and demographic challenges. How they will influence on each other in the logic of the XXI century?
Paper long abstract:
India as an emerging superpower today openly lays claim to a sphere of interest in Africa, recognizing the age-old spiritual, cultural and civilizational ties and a huge Indian diaspora on the African continent.
Historically, India-Africa relations were built on opposition of colonialism and racial discrimination. Independent India under Nehru offered support to the people of Africa who were struggling against discrimination and apartheid. Recent India's relations with African countries are rising in the political, economic and multilateral spheres.
From one side, India's engagement with the continent is consultative and is, to a large extent, driven by the demands of the African countries and free of conditionalities. From another side, there are own strong business interests. Moreover, Indians as a society conflate prejudices and discriminations concerning skin, color, race and caste - despite denial from the state on various platforms.
Africans residing in India sometimes face assault, discrimination, negative stereotyping, and racism towards themselves. Most of such cases are easily transmitted through social media in Africa, and this may pose serious threats to Indian interests and indian diasporas settled there. These assaults generate a negative impact on India-Africa cooperation.
The paper will critically question the Indian policy and practice towards African countries, and mutual influence of India and Africa in a changing and complex relations marked by religious, racial and cultural diversity.
Bibiana Huggins (Lesotho College of Education)
Paper short abstract:
This research draws on my experience of working for nine months in a tertiary institution in Lesotho. It explores the implications involved in the recent entrepreneurialisation of academia and the 'impactful', short-term research conducted by non-Basotho researchers.
Paper long abstract:
The Kingdom of Lesotho has long tantalised anthropologists for its locals that continue to protect themselves from the sun through cone-shaped basotho hats, through traditional woollen Basotho blankets that adorn the shoulders of pony-mounting Basotho herders, and for followers of Ferguson's Anti-Politics Machine. In recent years however, Lesotho has become one of the many countries that attracts another kind of ethnographer- that which aspires to conduct 'relevant' and 'useful' research with quantifiable returns. Drawing on nine months of employment in a local tertiary institution, this paper explores the power dynamics between researchers and host populations such as the tertiary institution I worked at in Lesotho. It seeks to understand how these dynamics have been altered by the entrepreneurialisation of academia and what kinds of repercussions it produces. Lesotho is a large recipient of international aid and donor programs due to high rates of child malnutrition and HIV, and academic scholars likewise often readily find grants to conduct 'impactful' research in this nation. But what are the real on the ground impacts of academic research that is regulated, commercialised, and short-term? What kinds of new structural changes come about, or are anticipated to come about, in fieldsites under these conditions? In what ways can 'impactful', government or industry funded research still be a social good?