Showing papers by "Carola Lentz published in 2003"

"This is Ghanaian territory!": Land conflicts on a West African border

Abstract: Most African borders have remained permeable, not least because the colonial and postcolonial states have lacked the necessary resources to enforce them more rigidly, "top-down." In this article, I analyze the ways in which an African border has been dealt with "from below," partly ignored or subverted and partly appropriated. The border between Ghana and Burkina Faso, drawn up in 1898, was soon adopted by the borderlanders as a political resource, capable of shielding them from colonial tax and forced-labor requirements. Local networks of kinship and strategies of land use, on the other hand, usually ignored the border. Although the border cut through many earth-shrine areas, the indigenous institution on which land rights are traditionally based in the region, the shrine custodians continued to exercise their ritual control on both sides of the border. In recent conflicts over land, however, lineal boundaries separating sovereign national territories have been used to usurp traditional land rights. I discuss one such conflict, in which rights to use a fishpond are contested, to explore local perceptions of space and boundaries and how these change in relation to international borders, [international borders, concepts of space, earth shrines, land rights, authochthony, West Africa, Dagara, Sisala]

Afrikaner in Frankfurt: Migration, Netzwerke, Identitätspolitik: Ergebnisse einer Lehrforschung

Abstract: L'A. donne un apercu d'une serie de recherches realisees par des etudiant/e/s en ethnologie sur les strategies migratoires, les reseaux sociaux et la politique identitaire des migrants africains a Francfort. Les themes de recherche concernent notamment les conditions de reussite des mariages germano-africains, les objectifs des etudiants etrangers africains, les strategies economiques et culturelles des restaurants africains, les contacts sociaux des femmes keyniannes et les processus de formation communautaire parmi les refugies erythreens. L'A. donne d'abord un apercu sur les chiffres, les tendances et les contextes de l'immigration africaine a Francfort et dans le Land de Hesse. Il discute ensuite les experiences des etudiant/e/s, notamment du point de vue de l'acces au terrain, et presente ensuite plusieurs etudes de cas qui mettent en lumiere la diversite des biographies et perspectives des migrants. Ces exemples montrent que l'heterogeneite des situations ne permet pas l'emergence d'une conscience communautaire reelle. L'identite africaine n'est pas une realite vecue au quotidien. Elle n'est mobilisee qu'occasionnellement comme protection contre le racisme.