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- Convenors:
-
Bettina Engels
(Freie Universität Berlin)
Alex Veit (University of Bremen)
Send message to Convenors
- Location:
- C6.02
- Start time:
- 29 June, 2013 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel seeks to discuss the dynamics of political contention in Africa, connecting collective societal actors with inter- or transnational actors and discourses. Paper propositions are welcome that focus on specific cases of African contentious politics as well as on theoretical questions.
Long Abstract:
Political spaces in Africa are strongly influenced by international organizations, transnational NGOs and corporations, as well as global norms and discourses. African collective societal actors, such as social movements, local NGOs or armed groups, thus almost necessarily have to deal with inter- or transnational organizations, be it as allies, partners, patrons, contenders, rule-makers, or targets of their action. African collective societal actors very often also refer to or oppose global discourses. Contentious politics, the convergence of collective action, contention, and (state) politics, in Africa therefore regularly shows strong transnational dimensions.
This panel is interested in the dynamics of political contention connecting African collective societal actors with inter- or transnational actors and discourses. We seek to discuss the specific difficulties, but also the strategies and the cunning of local, national, and transnational collective societal actors in Africa in dealing with and employing transnational forces and discourses. Of equal importance are the responses of both national as well as inter- / transnational actors to challenges provided by African collective societal actors. We invite both empirical as well as theoretical contributions. In this way, we hope to get a better understanding of internationalized political authority, resistance and conflict in Africa.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Julia Gallagher (SOAS, University of London)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores Zimbabwean conceptions of the international, and the ways in which these sustain and inform contestations between citizens and the state.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores Zimbabwean conceptions of the international, and the ways in which these sustain and inform contestations between citizens and the state. Such conceptions have been the subject of strident debate in recent years, with the government of President Mugabe setting forth a particular idea of Zimbabweanness rooted in autochthony and independence. Drawing on over 100 interviews with Zimbabweans, the paper outlines the ways in which Zimbabwean citizens view relations with their neighbours in Southern Africa, with China and with Britain in very different ways to those of their government, leading them to construct alternative understandings of the meaning of the state that confront the official view. The paper uses a theoretical framework that builds on communitarian understandings of the interrelatedness of states through processes of negation, projection and introjection, where negation is the establishment of self-understanding through a recognition of and by a different other; projection the denial of aggression and its identification with an alien other; and introjection the acceptance that parts of the other have entered and shaped the self.
Nana Akua Anyidoho (University of Ghana) Gordon Crawford (Coventry University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores a specific example of political contention between collective societal actors, transnational actors and the state in the context of local rights-based struggles against the adverse impact of gold mining by transnational corporations on local communities in Ghana.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores a specific example of political contention between collective societal actors, transnational actors and the state. In the context of violations of basic human rights by transnational gold mining corporations in rural areas of Ghana, it examines how a small community-based organisation, the Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM), approached the situation of huge power asymmetry between itself and transnational mining giants supported by the Ghanaian state. It investigates how WACAM not only mobilised local community resistance but also developed national and international linkages with like-minded organisations in order to challenge the mining corporations and to contest state policies. Findings highlight WACAM's success, with mining corporations no longer able to simply violate human rights with impunity and the government of Ghana no longer able to ignore criticisms of the adverse impact of mining, while it is also recognised that the extractive-led model of economic growth remains intact. In accounting for WACAM's remarkable achievements, explanations focus on how a small NGO has maximised the opportunities of alliance building with like-minded national and international organisations, as well as minimised the risks in doing so by staying locally grounded. Conclusions are two-fold. First, the solidarity relationships involved in such 'local to global' interconnections are significant in strengthening the capacity of local organisations to contest rights violations and challenge powerful actors. Second, the example of WACAM emphasises the importance of an overtly political approach to rights advocacy, one embedded in progressive left politics.
Katie Crone Barber (University of Sheffield)
Paper short abstract:
African nationalism was influenced by international ideas, including Pan-Africanism. Nkrumah used these influences in developing his own form of Pan-Africanism, altering it to fit an African context. This paper examines the international context for the development of Nkrumah’s distinctive Pan-Africanism.
Paper long abstract:
When Ghana gained independence in 1957, its leader, Kwame Nkrumah, quickly established it as a state guided by and supportive of Pan-Africanism. Nkrumah declared that Ghana was dedicated to the liberation and unification of all Africa. Presenting a new interpretation of Pan-Africanism, Nkrumah however created a significant break with the Pan-Africanism of diaspora leaders such as W.E.B. DuBois. Nkrumah emphasised a core African identity within both nationalism and Pan-Africanism, and sought to highlight these and reconstruct both meta-narratives around this African identity. Through his pronouncements on the 'African personality,' Nkrumah redirected discourses on Pan-Africanist nationalism away from their origins in the African diaspora and towards an Afro-centric interpretation.
This paper will examine the interaction between international and local understandings of Pan-Africanism and nationalism. Highlighting the contradictions and contentions between Nkrumah's interpretations of Pan-African nationalism and the ideas of the diaspora, this paper will analyse how meta-narratives and ideologies were established and restructured in the international discourses that took place throughout the first half of the twentieth century. This paper will challenge preconceptions about the development of Nkrumah's ideological position, and re-locate the origins and space in which these debates and discourses took place.
Sabine Hoehn (University of Glasgow)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the changing and often contentious relations between institutions of international justice and African civic actors by examining the relation between Kenyan NGOs and the International Criminal Court.
Paper long abstract:
The effect of international criminal justice on Africa has been mostly debated in respect to the African state, its sovereignty and accountability. However, international criminal cases also impact on the room for manoeuvre and agency of civic actors in Africa. The paper examines the interaction of Kenyan non state actors and the International Criminal Court investigating the country's 2007 post-election violence. It chronicles their changing relations from the tactical involvement of the ICC to pressure the Kenyan government to investigate the violence, to the considerable hopes Kenyans placed on the ICC proceedings and to the often difficult relations between Kenyan NGOs and the office of the Prosecutor at the ICC, including the considerable disappointment that the trial will only start after the March 2013 elections in Kenya. The paper shows that African civic actors often maintain changing relations to global actors; at times they might team up with international actors to effect domestic change but they can also be frustrated by global institutions slowing down or outright hindering their emancipatory politics.
Julie Castro (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland HES-SO)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on an ethnography, I will analyze the trajectory of a NGO of sex workers in Mali. I will examine the national political and social context and the transnational dynamics and highlight the contradictions and tensions created by the interplay of stigma and extraversion.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation deals with Danayaso ("house of trust" in bamana), the only NGO of sex workers in Mali. With a membership based on self-identification of the members as "prostitutes", Danayaso advocates for the improvement of their living conditions and the recognition of their rights since its creation in the mid 1990s. Performing activities in sexual health, legal and social support, capacity building and income generation, the organization is dependent upon funding from western donors since it was founded. I will replace the trajectory of Danayaso within the national context marked by the democratization process since 1991, the mushrooming of "civil society" organizations that followed, and the growing internationalization of social movements in Mali and Africa in general in the 1990s. I will particularly focus on the dynamics of extraversion (i.e. dependency as political action - Bayart) in order to underline crucial trends that shape the Malian political and social space: the division of labor between state and donors for the government of social margins; the space provided by extraversion and particularly by the intensification of transnational advocacy for the empowerment of stigmatized and subordinate groups; the highly differentiated involvement of NGOs in national, continental, and global arenas. I will finally highlight the contradictions and tensions created by the interplay of stigma and extraversion in a context where "human rights" as well as "prostitution" are predominantly considered as imported issues from the "West". This paper draws on a doctoral research and is based on a one-year fieldwork ethnography.
Beniamina Lico (Bologna University)
Paper short abstract:
The Parity Law adopted in Senegal can be regarded as the achievement of different political projects carried out by a number of local and international political actors. Its origins and outcomes show the emergence of specific political practices between women's associations and political parties.
Paper long abstract:
In 2010, the Senegalese Parliament adopted a new law requiring all political parties to introduce gender parity in electoral lists for all elected institutions. The Law has received a large consensus among the international community and has been celebrated as a proof of the democratic values of the country. Nevertheless, several local organizations committed to gender advocacy and people in everyday discourses have proposed a quite opposite interpretation, in which the Law is considered the last attempt of the former President Wade to restore the hegemony of its party, the PDS, increasing the control of political parties on "civil society" movements. The late defeat of the PDS shows that this project failed, at least partially, but it do not explain how and why, nor whether the implementation of the Law is leading to a "passive revolution", that is to say to a greater dependence of women's associations on political parties. Focusing on both the discourses on gender equality and the actual political practices related to political participation, this analysis will show that the two most widely accepted interpretations of the Parity Law are unable to account for the complex emergence of the Law as well as for its effects upon specific political practices. It seems more proper to analyze the law as the achievement of different projects in which development discourses, and particularly widespread ideas about gender equality, have been involved as resources and shaped by local and international actors, thus creating a complex set of outcomes.
Julia Grauvogel (German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA))
Paper short abstract:
This paper introduces a framework to assess how external pressure affects the (discursive) opportunity structures which domestic opposition movements in Sub-Saharan Africa face and analyzes under which configurations of conditions they are enabled or constrained by international sanctions.
Paper long abstract:
International sanctions affect the environment in which domestic opposition movements act and argue. Theoretical explanations have been advanced for the occurrence of a rally around the flag effect and the contrary, an internal opposition effect. Moreover, empirical insights remain inconclusive, showing that opposition movements can be harmed by or benefit from sanctions in multiple ways. In order to address this puzzle, one needs to go beyond analyzing the socio-economic impact of sanctions and take their signaling dimension seriously. This paper suggests a theoretical framework for studying the impact of international sanctions on domestic opposition movements. In doing so, it integrates findings from the research on social movements and international sanctions, which have not yet systematically been related to each other.
Sanctions affect both the political and the discursive opportunity structure that opposition movements encounter. In addition to influencing factors prominently discussed in the research on social movements such as the state capacity for repression, the openness of political institutions as well as the availability of resources, signals sent by sanctions also have an effect on how opposition movements frame their claims. This paper conducts a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) of 49 sanction episodes in Sub-Saharan Africa to examine the interplay between these conditions. I find that not only the extent of political openness, but also the linkage between the sender of sanctions and its target, the goals of sanctions as well as the regimes' legitimation strategies, which in turn influence the movements' claims making, play a role.
Alex Veit (University of Bremen)
Paper short abstract:
The paper summarises some aspects of contentious politics about UN military interventions in Africa and elsewhere.
Paper long abstract:
By comparing different forms, actors, dynamics and repertoires, the paper investigates contention about UN humanitarian military intervention in Africa and elsewhere. Case studies are located in DR Congo, Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.