Showing papers on "African studies published in 2016"

Gender and location in African politics scholarship: The other white man's burden?

Abstract: While the percentage of women publishing in African Affairs and The Journal of Modern African Studies from 1993 until 2013 has increased, the percentage of articles by Africa-based authors has declined. We present evidence suggesting that this decline is not being driven by lower submission rates from Africa but rather by low and declining acceptance rates. We also find that Africa-based scholars, but not women, are systematically cited less than others. We then analyse article titles and find preliminary evidence suggesting that Africa-based authors are more likely to write on a small number of countries and less likely to generalize. Authors based outside Africa seem more likely to generalize to the continent and are more likely to write on economics or conflict. These patterns have implications for the diversity of the discipline and the state of our knowledge about Africa. ACADEMIC PUBLISHING IS, and historically has been, rife with structural inequalities. Recent examinations of these inequalities have focused most on the position of women and have shown, for example, that women are on average cited less frequently than men. We examine two decades of research in African politics and analyse how the positions of women and Africa-based scholars have changed over time. In doing so, this article answers two main questions. First, who is publishing in top African politics journals? Second, who is being cited? In answering both questions, we pay special attention to the role of gender and place in influencing one’s ability both to publish and to be cited. Our decision to examine the influence of gender and place stems from concerns about both representation in knowledge production and the quality of research on African politics. The former concern is one of equality, *Ryan Briggs (ryancbriggs@vt.edu) is an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech. Ryan would like to thank Maya Berinzon, Jennifer Brass, Carl LeVan, and Laura Seay for helpful comments; Joseph Daniel and Tyler Oishi for research assistance; Ryan Powers for sharing code; and Christopher Clapham for data and reflections. Scott Weathers is a member of the class of 2015 at American University. 1. Daniel Maliniak, Ryan Powers, and Barbara F. Walter, ‘The gender citation gap in international relations’, International Organization 67, 4 (2013), pp. 889–922. African Affairs, 1–24 doi: 10.1093/afraf/adw009 © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved 1 African Affairs Advance Access published May 14, 2016

Introduction: towards a framework for the study of Christian–Muslim encounters in Africa

Abstract: A special issue of Africa on the comparative study of Islam and Christianity in Africa, with response papers by the late John Peel, Birgit Meyer, Brian Larkin, and Ebenezer Obadare, and articles by Marloes Janson and Benjamin Soares.

The African Renaissance and the Transformation of the Higher Education Curriculum in South Africa.

Abstract: The curriculum is a critical element in the transformation of higher education, and as a result, I argue for the inclusion of what I refer to as an African epistemic in higher education curricula in South Africa. In so doing, attention is directed at the decolonisation of the curriculum in higher education in South Africa, which aims to give indigenous African knowledge systems their rightful place as equally valid ways of knowing among the array of knowledge systems in the world. In developing my argument, I maintain that a critical questioning of the knowledge included in higher education curricula in South Africa should be taken up in what I call transformative education discourses that examine the sources of the knowledge that inform what is imposed on or prescribed for curricula in higher education in South Africa, and how these higher educational curricula are implicated in the universalisation of Western and European experiences.

Making Medicines in Africa: The Political Economy of Industrializing for Local Health

Abstract: The importance of the pharmaceutical industry in Sub-Saharan Africa, its claim to policy priority, is rooted in the vast unmet health needs of the sub-continent. The book is a collective endeavour, by a group of contributors with a strong African and more broadly Southern presence, to find ways to link technological development, investment and industrial growth in pharmaceuticals to improving access to essential good quality medicines, as part of moving towards universal access to competent health care in Africa. We aim to shift the emphasis in international debate and initiatives towards sustained Africa-based and African-led initiatives to tackle this huge challenge. Without the technological, industrial, intellectual, organisational and research-related capabilities associated with competent pharmaceutical production, and without policies that pull the industrial sectors towards serving local health needs, the African sub-continent cannot generate the resources to tackle its populations’ needs and demands.

Queer Studies / African Studies: An (Im)possible Transaction?

Abstract: The colonialist and Cold War consolidation of area studies and African studies in the United States has been well documented, although alternative origin stories of the rise of African studies circulate (Martin 2011). Area studies emerged to “manage and negotiate the tensions that arose after the Second World War and during decolonization worldwide” (Grewal and Kaplan 2001: 668). Despite ques­ tions that persist about the scholarly significance of African studies, the field has experienced resurgence in the last fifteen years because of sociopolitical anxi­ eties about terrorism in Africa and around the world, the new avatar of Cold War geopolitics (Melber 2005: 371). African studies’ renewed prominence comes at a time when scholars are also grappling with the present­ day effects of neolib­ eral structural adjustment policies that weakened national economies throughout Africa, continuing a pattern of impoverishment that began with European colo­ nialism. These conditions fuel theories of “Afro­ pessimism” that lament political corruption, violent conflict, pervasive indigence, and worsening health outcomes experienced by Africans. By emphasizing social problems in African countries, the Afro­ pessimist perspective regards the continent as unredeemable, perpetuat­ ing a colonialist, racist tradition of imagining the area: “Africa” as a continent in crisis that lags far behind “progressive,” industrialized nations in the global north (Mudimbe 1988). Queer African subjects, if we can invoke this category as a way to meld area and sexuality, may strike some observers as suffering the injustices outlined by Afro­ pessimism. Images and stories of queer African “victimage,” including stories of antiqueer rape in South Africa and the murders of LGBTI activists in

Introduction: Queer Methods

Abstract: Queer studies is experiencing a methodological renaissance. In both the humanities and the social sciences, scholars have begun to identify research protocols and practices that have been largely overshadowed by dramatic advances in queer theory. The 2010 volume Queer Methods and Methodologies: Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Science Research, edited by Kath Browne and Catherine J. Nash, indexed this shift toward methods by reframing the endlessly rehearsed question "what is queer theory?" as the nascent "how is queer theory done?" Three years later, the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania hosted a two-day Queer Method conference. Organizers asked "what it means to understand queer work as having a method, or to imagine method itself as queer" (QueerMethod 2016). A 2016 University of Massachusetts Amherst conference similarly refocused queer studies-as well as black and postcolonial studies-through the lens of methods, and next year, the University of California Press will release a new collection on queer methods in sociology. With this special issue, WSQaffirms and enriches these conversations by presenting pioneering feminist work on queer methods in sociology, performance studies, African American studies, lesbian cultural studies, critical psychology, African studies, statistics, transgender and queer studies, media and digital studies, history, and English, as well as poetry and fiction.An Alternate HistoryWhat if a high-profile academic conference in 1990 had ushered in an enterprise called "queer methods" rather than "queer theory"?1 Our ques- tion-speculative and provocative in its rewriting of a watershed moment in queer intellectual history-is also surprisingly plausible. The methods that scholars used to establish gay and lesbian studies in the decades prior to queer theory were often quite queer themselves, particularly when guided by social constructionist approaches to the study of homosexuality. This was certainly true in sociology, as Steven Seidman (1994), Arlene Stein and Ken Plummer (1994), and others have noted.2 Why then has queer theory not staked a more pervasive, methods-oriented claim? Insofar as queer theory has relied on a humanities-centered displacement of the disciplinary innovations that were unfolding in the social sciences as "LGBT/queer studies" (see Lovaas, Elia, and Yep 2006), a focus on methods would not only have exposed that displacement but also forced a confrontation with disciplinarity that might have threatened queer theory's constitutional claims to inter/antidisciplinarity. The current turn "back" to methods may be perceived as an attempt to leverage disciplinarity against those longstanding claims by queer theory. Working explicitly through the question of queer methods, the following contributions thoughtfully negotiate such disciplinary impasses.From another angle, the political context that inspired early queer theory might also have translated into an inaugural focus on queer methods. Like much of gay and lesbian studies scholarship, academic queer theory was largely inspired by activist social movements of the day. In Time Binds, Elizabeth Freeman suggests that ACT UP exemplified the pragmatic ability of queer activists of the 1980s and 1990s to join "deconstructive reading practices and grassroots activism together, laying the groundwork for . . . queer theory" (2010, xv).3 Freeman thus links queer theoretical work in the academy to the questions of how that queer activism so ingeniously answered. To take her example, ACT UP was grounded in goal-oriented tactics and techniques including direct actions (e.g., teach-ins, kiss-ins, and die-ins), building coalitions across race and gender (e.g., affinity groups), highly stylized graphic designs, medical interventions (e.g., needle exchange, inclusive clinical trials, lay expertise4), video/media innovation, acts of disclosing, self-nominating, public shaming, outing, and marching. …

Citizen-peasants: modernity, international relations and the problem of difference in Tanzania

Abstract: A running difficulty in African Studies (and beyond) is the need to reconcile modernity with difference, arising in attempts to account for the impact of colonialism as well as unequal international relations without lapsing into erasure of the manifold realities of African difference. Identifying the peasant vis-a-vis modernity as a salient instance of the problem, this thesis proffers a historical sociology of post-colonial Tanzania, where Julius Nyerere insisted that ‘If Marx were born in Tanzania he would have written the Arusha Declaration’. In saying so he was, in effect, pointing to the need, both programmatic and intellectual, to reconcile modernity and peasant-difference. Drawing upon international relations and the framework of uneven & combined development in particular, modernity is theorised as a process of fission whilst the peasant is cast as a protean subject thereof; the promised reconciliation can be achieved by rendering each as interactive. Building on this framework the main body of the thesis proceeds, encountering and engaging with the peasant-modernity problem along the way, to show the historical process by which a ‘citizen-peasant’ social form emerged as combined development; an intellectual manoeuvre, moreover, that serves to conclude the reconciliation of ‘Marx’ with ‘Arusha’. Chapters 1 and 2 establish the terrain and Chapter 3 supplies the methodological framework. Thereafter Chapter 4 sets out an account of the unevenness confronting Tanzania in the 1960s, linking that to its international relations in general and with China in particular to establish a pattern of interaction that Chapter 5 builds upon, revealing the Arusha Declaration as the starting point of a historical process from which the citizen-peasant arose, which is the key to the thesis as a whole. Chapter 6 completes the argument, pointing to the entrenchment of that form beyond its origins in the era of Nyerere’s ‘African Socialism’ taking the account up to the conclusion of the 20th century. Chapter 7 concludes, reflecting on the implications of the argument for the contemporary conjuncture.

Religious (de)politicisation in Uganda's 2016 elections

Abstract: Religion has influenced Ugandan politics ever since colonial times. While the interrelations of religion and politics have altered since the coming to power of president Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM), religion continues to influence Ugandan public culture and formal politics in important ways. Building on ethnographic fieldwork in Kampala and Acholi, as well as analysis of media reporting and discussions in social media, this article focuses on the role of religious leaders during Uganda’s 2016 parliamentary and presidential elections. We argue that the striking differences between Ugandan clerics’ teaching on politics relate in part to genuine differences in religious beliefs, but also to patronage, intimidation, and ethnicity, and to the strategic calculations religious leaders make about how best to affect change in a constricted political environment. In discussion with previous research on religion and politics in Africa, and utilising analytical concepts from the study of pub...

The green, the grey and the blue: a typology of cross-border trade in Africa

Abstract: What are the reasons for the extraordinary dynamism of many African border regions? Are there specificities to African borderlands? The article provides answers to these questions by analysing the historical development of African state borders’ social and economic relevance. It presents a typology of cross-border trade in Africa, differentiating trade across the ‘green’ border of bush paths and villages, the ‘grey’ border of roads, railways and border towns, and the ‘blue’ border of transport corridors to oceans and airports. The three groups of actors associated with these types of trade have competing visions of the ideal border regime, to which many dynamics in African cross-border politics can be traced back. The article contributes to African studies by analysing diverging political and economic developments in African countries through the lens of the border, and to border theory by distilling general features of borders and borderlands from African case studies.

The Financialisation of Power: How financiers rule Africa

Abstract: The financial crash of 2008 led people all over the world to ask how far financiers are in control of our lives. To what extent does what they do with our money affect our everyday lives? This book asks whether the crisis, and subsequent use of public subsidies to help the international economy recover, was a unique event, or a symptom of a wider malaise where financiers have effectively usurped the power of governments and are running the political economy themselves. The Financialisation of Power in Africa argues that growth is not always a good thing. The development of more derivatives and faster financial exchanges are draining businesses of investment capital rather than serving to supply it; applying financial logic does not save nature or protect biodiversity and other species. This book outlines the concept of financialisation and how it has been used in various ways to explain the post-2008 crisis and global political economy. There is a particular focus on these issues in reference to Africa, which has a particular dependence on international money. It takes the perspective of the modern state, exploring how the political economy of development actually works in relation to African governance. This book is of interest to students of international development and political economy and is a key source for policy makers interested in African studies and economic development.

Publishing Africa in French: Literary Institutions and Decolonization 1945-1967

Abstract: It has become commonplace to note that the global French literary marketplace is dominated by Parisian publishing houses and metropolitan kudos. This study probes the aesthetic and political implications of that assertion by revisiting the history of African literature in post-war France. Extensive archival research is combined with literary analysis to investigate the destabilizing impact of decolonization on legitimate notions of language, authorship and literary value. Mapping connections between institutions such as Presence Africaine, Editions du Seuil, Gallimard and the Association des ecrivains de la mer et de l’outre-mer, the author argues that a contested and variegated African literary presence actively shaped the metropolitan publishing scene during this period of transition. In turn, the material aspects of book production and distribution are shown to be inextricably entangled with ongoing debates over the representation of Africa in words. Authors whose work is considered in detail include Abdoulaye Sadji, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Christine Garnier, Malick Fall, Chinua Achebe and Peter Abrahams. Publishing Africa in French uses an innovative interdisciplinary methodology to contribute fresh insights to current concerns in French studies, African studies, and postcolonial book history.

The Stolen Bible: From Tool of Imperialism to African Icon

Abstract: The Stolen Bible analyses Southern African receptions of the Bible from its arrival in imperial Dutch ships in the mid-1600s through to the post-apartheid period of South African democracy, reflecting on how a tool of imperialism becomes an African icon.

African scholars, African studies and knowledge production on Africa

Abstract: The editors invited this article, and the subsequent four response pieces, as a contribution to the debate on knowledge production in Africa and African studies, which was a critical issue in the late colonial and post-independence African universities, and which has continued to be a concern of leading African scholars in the decades since.

Writing African Christianity: Perspectives from the History of the Historiography of African Christianity

Abstract: In this overview of the historiography of Christianity in Africa a number of desiderata and considerations for future research are reviewed. The first issue considered relates to the practice of historiography. The second issue relates to African identity/-ies and its relationship to global cultural movements. The third desideratum is the pursuit of new disciplinary practices in the study of African Christianity, especially interdisciplinarity as scholarly ethos. Finally, a number of themes that should become foci in historiography of African Christianity are explored, among these are: concentration on local and regional narratives, the gendered character of Christianity in Africa, attention to the material conditions and needs of African religious communities and the various cultural innovations adopted to cope with these conditions, as well as the role of Christian communities in development in Africa and the wider encompassing question of ethics and morality.

Africa By Numbers: Reviewing the Database Approach to Studying African Economies

Abstract: We know less about growth and poverty based on numbers in African economies than we would like to think. Numbers are soft, and data availability is sparse, sporadic, and uneven. For researchers and data users, whether engaged in inferential or descriptive statistics, the message is that studying Africa by numbers can be misleading. This research note surveys the knowledge gap and provides guidance on how to and how not to study Africa by numbers. ON 5 NOVEMBER 2010, Ghana Statistical Services announced new and revised GDP estimates. As a result, the estimated size of the economy was adjusted upward by over 60 percent, suggesting that in previous GDP estimates economic activities worth about US$13 billion had been missed. While this change in GDP was exceptionally large, it did not turn out to be an isolated case. On 7 April 2014, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics declared new GDP estimates. GDP was revised upward to $510 billion, an 89 percent increase from the old estimate. These well-publicized statistical events have led to an increase in the attention being paid to the quality of macroeconomic statistics in low-income countries, especially in African countries. The concurrent large and seemingly abrupt changes in GDP have led to a reconsideration of the quality of the data needed to evaluate basic trends in growth and poverty. At the same time, according to the African Development Bank, such substantial *Morten Jerven (morten.jerven@nmbu.no) is Associate Professor in Global Change and International Relations at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. 1. Morten Jerven, ‘For richer, for poorer: GDP revisions and Africa’s statistical tragedy’, African Affairs 112, 446 (2013), pp. 138–47. 2. Morten Jerven, ‘What does Nigeria’s new GDP number actually mean?’, African Arguments, 7 April 2014, (12 January 2016). African Affairs, 115/459, 342–358 doi: 10.1093/afraf/adw006 © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved Advance Access Publication 31 March 2016

The Gun in Central Africa: A History of Technology and Politics

Abstract: Drawing on a range of theoretical concepts originating from outside the field of African studies, this book offers the first thorough history of firearms in Central Africa between the early nineteenth and the early twentieth century. The book approaches the trajectory of firearms in Central Africa from a culturally sensitive perspective that embraces both the practical applications of guns and the set of values and meanings that they have been taken to encompass. Intended as an exploration of the intersections between technology, society, politics and culture, it adopts a comparative perspective to chart, and account for, different user and potential user reactions to the same externally-introduced technology.

China-Africa Relations: Political and Economic Engagement and Media Strategies

Abstract: Introduction The relationship between China and Africa has grown exponentially in the last decade resulting in China being the continent's largest trading partner, displacing Europe and the United States. The status and evolving relationship is one of the most critical developments in international affairs. The growth of China as a world power and its engagement on the continent, which is manifested in various ways, including state level and private investments involving variegated actors, has not been without controversy. An estimated one million Chinese migrants resided in Africa by 2014. (1) Chinese President Xi Jinping declared at the 2015 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Johannesburg, South Africa, that the China-Africa relations had reached a stage of growth "unmatched in history." (2) The announcement came with a major aid package, a manifestation of China's skillful use of hard, soft, and smart power that included $60 billion in various loans, grants, and special funds, various assistance in industrialization, agricultural modernization, infrastructure, financial services, trade and investment facilitation, poverty reduction, and peace and security. It also included the training of 200,000 African technicians, 1,000 media professionals, 40,000 opportunities for Africans in China, 2,000 degree or diploma opportunities, and 30,000 government scholarships. China also promised to establish regional vocational education centers and several capacity-building colleges in Africa. On security cooperation, President Xi announced that China would provide $60 million in free assistance to the African Union (AU) to support the building and operation of the African Standby Force and an African Capacity for the Immediate Response to Crisis, adding: "China will continue to participate in UN peacekeeping missions in Africa and support African countries' capacity building in areas such as defense, counter-terrorism, riot prevention, customs and immigration control." (3) China, however, has been willing to work with any type of government whether it is democratically elected or authoritarian as in the case of Zimbabwe. It has also provided arms to dictatorships and refused to be engaged in the internal conflicts of the countries. Clearly the increase in security is mainly to safeguard China's economic interests and its citizens, particularly in countries where China has both peacekeepers and major commercial interests such as Sudan and South Sudan (oil) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (minerals). The State of Current China-African Relations China's largesse serves as an interesting introduction to this special issue of the African Studies Quarterly, as it provides a manifestation of the positive side of the China-Africa engagement. China is often portrayed in two extremes--either very positively, bringing development and a supposedly win-win transformative experience; or negatively as imperialistic, exploitative, and individuals to download articles for their own personal use. Published by the Center for African Studies, ruining the environment. These simplistic views, however, obscure a more analytical understanding of China's role and its implication for the continent. While there are some truths to both sides of the argument, as the articles in this special issue convey, the growing ChinaAfrica engagement raises the critical questions about how African countries are managing this relationship and whether it is translating into a positive and lasting benefit for Africa. China is coherent and strategic about its objectives, which have been spelled out in its policies including the Africa White paper of 2006 and enunciated in the subsequent tri-annual FOCAC meetings and at its sixth ministerial FOCAC conference in Johannesburg in 2015. It also published a Second Africa Policy Paper in 2015. China's engagements, which crystallize in its usage of hard power, soft power, and smart power, have provoked diverse views of its intentions. …

The humanism of reconstruction: African intellectuals, decolonial critical theory and the opposition to the ‘posts’ (postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism)

Abstract: This article traces the mixed fortunes of what intellectuals like Paul Tiyambe Zeleza refer to as the ‘posts’ (poststructuralism, postmodernism and postcolonialism) in African studies. It documents the historical processes and intellectual developments that, starting from the 1980s, laid the ground for an integration of deconstructive elements in the thought of African scholars. Despite the support garnered from scholars like Achille Mbembe, the ‘posts’ have encountered in African studies a high degree of opposition, if not outright hostility. Deconstructionism was perceived by many theorists to dangerously depart from the pressing ethico-political concerns and humanistic imperatives of the African intellectual agenda. Mbembe's concept of Afropolitanism is similarly being criticized for magnifying some of the theoretical prejudices and weaknesses of which the ‘posts’ (and particularly postcolonial studies) had already been accused. The article concludes by discussing some theoretical solutions put forward...

Countering threats, stabilising politics and selling hope: examining the Agaciro concept as a response to a critical juncture in Rwanda

Abstract: The political settlements literature [Khan, M. Political Settlements and the Governance of Growth-enhancing Institutions. School of Oriental and African Studies Working Paper, 2010. Accessed June 19, 2014. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/9968; North, D., J. Wallis, and B. Weingast. Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009] has assigned a privileged role to rents as instruments used by ruling elites to maintain political stability. Since then, there has been some attempt [Hickey, S. Thinking about the Politics of Inclusive Development: Towards a Relational Approach. Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre Working Paper No. 1, 2013; Hudson, D., and A. Leftwich. 2014. From Political Economy to Political Analysis. Development Leadership Programme Research Paper 25, Birmingham] to highlight how ideas may play a similarly important role in contributing to political stability. This article explores...

Towards a joint framework for the study of Christians and Muslims in Africa: response to J. D. Y. Peel

Abstract: The main point of John Peel's intriguing critical intervention is to warn against what he sees as an overemphasis on similarities between Christianity and Islam. Making these religions look all too similar, he argues, may come at the expense of paying due attention to the distinctiveness of each of these religious traditions and hence to their intrinsic differences. He suggests an analogy between the stance taken by ‘somewhat left-wing and anti-establishment discourse’ to equalize Islam and Christianity under the label of fundamentalism on the one hand, and a strand of Africanist work on West Africa that pleads for the close similarities between these two religions to be acknowledged on the other. For the latter, he takes the article ‘Pentecostalism, Islam and culture: new religious movements in West Africa’ by Brian Larkin and myself (2006) as paradigmatic. For my part, it is difficult to see how the use of the notion of fundamentalism in current debates and the position ventured by us converge. I would certainly refrain from using the notion of fundamentalism (even if invoked to balance Huntington's equally problematic notion of the clash of civilizations) as a category that serves to draw out similarities between certain radical movements in Christianity and Islam both past and present – a use I view as highly problematic. The fact that Peel converges the levels of general public debate about political Islam and research regarding Christianity and Islam in African studies makes it quite difficult for me to grasp what his main concern is. Is it a worry about a – in his view – problematic, broader trend of denying actual intrinsic differences between Christianity and Islam, a trend that spills over from critical opinion into current Africanist scholarship, or vice versa? Is it the problem that foregrounding certain formal – and to him ultimately superficial – similarities favours an ahistorical stance with regard to these traditions? Or is it a concern – albeit not explicitly articulated – that the insistence on similarities with regard to Christianity might draw a too positive picture of Islam, pre-empting it from the critique that he considers necessary?

A new laager for a “new” South Africa : Afrikaans film and the imagined boundaries of Afrikanerdom

Abstract: This book is based on Adriaan Steyn’s Master’s thesis 'A new laager for a new South Africa: Afrikaans film and the imagined boundaries of Afrikanerdom', winner of the African Studies Centre, Leiden’s 2017 Africa Thesis Award. This annual award for Master’s students encourages student research and writing on Africa and promotes the study of African cultures and societies. Because the Afrikaans language no longer receives preferential treatment from the state like it did under apartheid, many are concerned about the language’s possible demise. However, at the same time, the Afrikaans culture industry seems to be flourishing in all its facets. Nowhere is this better illustrated than with the burgeoning Afrikaans film industry. After entering a period of hibernation at apartheid’s end, the Afrikaans film industry was revived in 2007 and subsequently entered a period of rapid expansion. This study is an attempt to make sense of this industry’s seemingly surprising recent success and also to consider some of its consequences. It shows how Afrikaans filmmakers, by tailoring their films to white Afrikaansspeakers, continue to affirm the imagined boundaries of Afrikanerdom and allow their audience to imagine themselves as members of the same collectivity or laager.

Apartheid Vertigo : The Rise in Discrimination Against Africans in South Africa

Abstract: Contents: Preface Part I Introduction: From kaffir boy to makwerekwere Process sociology and African studies Method. Part II The New Insiders: Loathing the outsiders Becoming insider Africans still not allowed Surplus blackness. Part III The New Outsiders: The outsider's response Betwixt and between South Africa. Part IV The European Enclave: The idea of South Africa Inventing South Africa, the state Inventing South Africa the nation Conclusion Bibliography Index.

The School of Oriental and African Studies: Imperial Training and the Expansion of Learning

Abstract: The School of Oriental and African Studies, a college of the University of London, was established in 1916 principally to train the colonial administrators who ran the British Empire in the languages of Asia and Africa. It was founded, that is, with an explicitly imperial purpose. Yet the School would come to transcend this function to become a world centre of scholarship and learning, in many important ways challenging that imperial origin. Drawing on the School's own extensive administrative records, on interviews with current and past staff, and on the records of government departments, Ian Brown explores the work of the School over its first century. He considers the expansion in the School's configuration of studies from the initial focus on languages, its changing relationships with government, and the major contributions that have been made by the School to scholarly and public understandings of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Africa's passive revolution: crisis in Malawi

Abstract: Recent protest movements in sub-Saharan Africa have generally failed to effect progressive transformations. Efforts to achieve social change have been frustrated by governing elites that continue to utilise their vacillating and unequal relationships with the external environment to sustain power. Although the leading figures may change, the dominant African class can re-establish leadership through new alliances with domestic and international networks of capital. To understand such ‘change-without-change’, this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on Antonio Gramsci's development of ‘passive revolution’. The comparative character of Gramscian analysis enables his philosophy of praxis to be translated into very different historical and geographical settings. With this in mind we draw together recent engagements with passive revolution from Geography, Politics and African Studies. In particular we develop Jean-Francois Bayart's notion of extraversion, while considering it in relation to more recent philological engagements with Gramsci. Our empirical focus is the politics of transition in Malawi. In his second term in office, the autocratic and unpopular president, Bingu wa Mutharika, implemented economic policies that ran against neoliberal orthodoxy and suppressed protest during a period of crisis. Mutharika was replaced, following his death in 2012, by Joyce Banda, a previously marginalised vice-president, who nurtured a re-engagement with transnational capital. Working through the state, Banda led a transformation from on high and moved to impose new economically liberal policies, including a major currency devaluation, which reduced living standards for many. We draw our empirical material from Chancellor College, a major site of protest against Mutharika in 2011. Evidence from interviews with staff and students demonstrates how two episodes of revolution/restoration in Malawi, a country distant from the western historical experience, can be interpreted through Gramsci's socially differentiated understanding of politics.

Pioneers of the Field: South Africa's Women Anthropologists

Abstract: Focusing on the crucial contributions of women researchers, Andrew Bank demonstrates that the modern school of social anthropology in South Africa was uniquely female-dominated. The book traces the personal and intellectual histories of six remarkable women through the use of a rich cocktail of archival sources, including family photographs, private and professional correspondence, field-notes and field diaries, published and other public writings and even love letters. The book also sheds new light on the close connections between their personal lives, their academic work and their anti-segregationist and anti-apartheid politics. It will be welcomed by anthropologists, historians and students in African studies interested in the development of social anthropology in twentieth-century Africa, as well as by students and researchers in the field of gender studies.

Intimate Remittances: Marriage, Migration, and MoneyGram in Senegal

Abstract: DINAH HANNAFORD is an assistant professor of international studies at Texas A&M University. Her research on transnational migration, gender, class, and international development has been featured in journals such as Global Networks and the African Studies Review, and she is currently completing a book manuscript on Senegalese transnational marriages. She received her PhD from the Department of Anthropology of Emory University. The impact of remittances to Senegal from overseas migrants is felt on a household, as well as a national, level, in ways that go beyond the merely economic. In this article, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Senegal and in the Senegalese diaspora to explore the layers of meaning that permeate gifts and money sent from abroad. While remittance practices in transnational marriages—or marriages between Senegalese migrant men and their nonmigrant wives in Senegal—engage Senegalese ideals about husbands as economic providers, they reveal a complicated balance between economic and noneconomic acts of care between spouses in nontransnational marriages. In the absence of other opportunities for spouses to perform gestures of care and affection, these exchanges take on an intensified importance, which often leads to tension, miscommunication, and emotional stress. In the past fifteen years, scholars of migration have taken a keen interest in migrant remittances. The money that migrants send home to their country of origin and its potential power for development and political change have been the focus of numerous studies by economists, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists. Feminist social scientists have subsequently pushed for a gendered reading of remittances, encouraging social scientists to think of these transactions not as disembodied numbers, but as socially contextualized relations between human beings. They encourage researchers to pay attention to who sends and receives migrant remittances and the stipulations surrounding their use as a key to understanding how these exchanges are embedded within social and familial structures (Pessar and Mahler 2003:817).

The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair, by

Abstract: popular culture, the book is written from the perspective of a social historian. The position held by this reviewer is that the author's utilization of the postmodernist critique of the modernist supposition in order to advance the thesis of the book could have been aptly achieved by the Afrocentric paradigm. Otherwise, the study is a major intellectual contribution to the investigation, analysis, and understanding of African popular culture. Indubitably, students and scholars in the discipline of Africana and African studies, as well as those with zealous interest in the study of African human sciences - orature, cultural history, performing arts, aesthetics, sociology, anthropology, and religion - will find this book very precious. - Kwame Botwe-Asamoah

Africanising the philosophy curriculum through teaching African culture modules: An African Renaissance act

Abstract: Often, when the concept "African culture" arises in philosophical discourses among Africans, debates tend to be characterised by a dichotomous line between those who insist on the existence of "one African culture" and those rejecting the existence of such, insisting rather on the plurality and heterogeneity of "African cultures". In this debate the interlocutors tend to speak past one another, thus missing the opportunity to appreciate the richness that could benefit both sides of the divide. Taking cognisance of the fact that central to the African Renaissance project is the revival of African culture, this article argues that pivotal to the teaching of African philosophy should be the teaching of modules on what constitutes African culture/s. This exercise, it is argued, will reveal that traditional African culture encouraged the practice of freedom of expression, giving space to divergent views as a healthy exercise for progress in traditional African societies. Teaching African culture will reveal that being "African" is not merely a geographical entity, but also about values that connect Africans across ethnicities, thus giving them a firm basis for speaking about what is "African" beyond what is "ethnic". This, by extension, would be an enabling factor to argue about what is "African" about philosophy.

Pluralicity and Relationality: New Directions in African Studies

Abstract: In this essay, we briefly discuss some of the dominant paradigms in the field of African studies, as well as some of the challenges the field is facing at the current juncture. We do this from the institutional perspective of African studies in Europe, and more specifically in Germany. In response to recurring questions about the future of area studies in the context of academic currents revolving around the global, we explore the concepts of pluralicity and relationality as analytical perspectives and their suitability for overcoming the limitations of conventional area-studies approaches. By coining the term pluralicity, we intend to go beyond descriptive statements of Africa’s plurality and view Africa and Africans through the lens of the complex ways in which their lifeworlds are constituted, connected, and interrelated on both the microand the macrolevel. Drawing on brief examples from our respective research in the fields of religious studies and Islamic studies, we indicate some of the ways these concepts can become useful tools to study and analyze contemporary African lifeworlds. Last but not least, we argue that the new directions in African studies need to contribute to correcting the imbalance between academic researchers in the Global North and the Global South.