Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies – serie

Contemporary Africa is undergoing a period of unprecedented urban expansion, which is throwing up new challenges in the provision of essential services and contentious questions about ownership of urban spaces. This volume explores the interconnections between these processes, whilst avoiding the tendency to forget that cities are also embedded in deeper historical processes that are integral to the framing of entitlements. Histories of migrancy and the creation of urban 'stranger' communities are fundamental in deciding who lives where and what this means, materially and socially. The gated communities that are springing up are often layered across older forms of urban segregation and/or segmentation. Urban water and food supply, the management of urban land claims, inequality and popular culture are closely examined.

Space has been reintroduced as an analytical category to the humanities and social sciences in the early 1990s. African Studies is one of the fields of knowledge production where the so-called spatial turn has proved to be extremely fruitful. The continent provides ample evidence for complex processes of deterritorialisation (migration, globalisation, sub-nationalisms) and reterritorialisation (new regionalisms, processes of bordering, etc.). These dialectical processes are driven by a variety of actors: political elites, multinational companies, warlords, donor governments, local traders, international NGOs, etc. As a result substantial parts of Africa witness the emergence of new regimes of territoriality: re-ordered states, transnational and sub-national entities, new localities and transborder formations.This volume brings together contributions from anthropology, history, geography and political science.

This book analyses the violence of recent African wars from the perspectives of African people who experienced and witnessed it. Central to it are the words of (male) Somali poets, Zulu singers, impoverished Kenyan youth, and white South African war veterans, as well as men and women trying to refashion their lives and relationships in post-war Mozambique and Rwanda. Purposefully interdisciplinary, this volume brings together scholarly approaches ranging from cultural and medical anthropology, social/cultural history, and cultural and performance studies.

Researching violence and conflict can be challenging for a variety of reasons, including security risks to researchers and informants, restricted or lack of access to informants and field sites, and poor reliability of official data. Traditional methodological approaches may need to be adapted, and new methods may be called for. In addition, such research carries ethical challenges about representation of informants and information and possible use of the research for harmful ends. This book, drawing on research conducted throughout Africa in conflict zones and other insecure environments, considers the everyday dilemmas researchers face. It provides essential contributions to ongoing challenging debates about the use of alternative and mixed methods in social science research.

With the end of the Cold War, the world seemed to move from a bipolar to a unipolar system, with the neoliberal West globally imposing its laws. However, it has been acknowledged that other actors, such as China, India and Brazil, have become increasingly influential, helping to lead to a new multipolarity at the global level. The question of what this emerging multipolarity means for Africa is important. Will Africa become crushed in a mounting struggle over raw materials and political hegemony between superpowers and fall victim to a new scramble for Africa? Or does this new historic conjuncture offer African countries and groups greater room for negotiation and manoeuvring, eventually leading to stronger democracy and enhanced growth? The chapters in this volume offer food for thought on how Africa’s engagements with the world are currently being reshaped and revalued, and, importantly—on whose terms?

Fifty years after the foundation of the OAU and the consolidation of most African states and institutions, the international panorama and Africa’s position in it have changed considerably. The world's geopolitical and economic configuration has evolved, with new actors appearing in a new period of globalization. In tone with ECAS 2013, this volume proposes that the experiences appearing in Africa question dominant paradigms in terms of political practice and academic reflection and thus offer a clear challenge to the academic community. The volume offers clues to answer questions such as: What is the impact of the current processes of globalization for African countries and African citizens? How should African Studies be engaged to gauge African dynamics, both at a local and global level? What interdisciplinary means and tools should be brought in to produce an epistemologically relevant view (or narrative) of the issues under analysis?

Africa in Scotland, Scotland in Africa provides scholarly, interdisciplinary analysis of the historical and contemporary relationships, links and networks between Scotland, Africa and the African diaspora. The book interrogates these links from a variety of perspectives – historical, political, economic, religious, diplomatic, and cultural – and assesses the mutual implications for past, present and future relationships. The socio-historical connection between Scotland and Africa is illuminated by the many who have shaped the history of African nationalism, education, health, and art in respective contexts of Africa, Britain, the Caribbean and the USA. The book contributes to the empirical, theoretical and methodological development of European African Studies, and thus fills a significant gap in information, interpretation and analysis of the specific historical and contemporary relationships between Scotland, Africa and the African diaspora.Contributors are: Afe Adogame, Andrew Lawrence, Esther Breitenbach, John McCracken, Markku Hokkanen, Olutayo Charles Adesina, Marika Sherwood, Caroline Bressey, Janice McLean, Everlyn Nicodemus, Kristian Romare, Oluwakemi Adesina, Elijah Obinna, Damaris Seleina Parsitau, Kweku Michael Okyerefo, Musa Gaiya and Jordan Rengshwat, Vicky Khasandi-Telewa, Kenneth Ross, Magnus Echtler, and Geoff Palmer.

This book uses empirical research to bring together a broad range of protest contexts in twelve chapters. From the formation of Maroon societies in the early colonial period, to female mobilisation in authoritarian contexts, via urban youth culture, women or mineworkers in trade unionism, as well as pro- and anti- gay rights activists, the protagonists here all insist upon their rights to protest in a variety of ways. Sometimes popular protest is expressed through religion, often (and sometimes violently) by young people, exasperated by their long wait for social achievement. Electoral wars and the formation of militias reveal a geography of violence in urban areas, which, in some sectarian excesses, can be displaced to rural areas, as described in the study on Boko Haram.Cet ouvrage regroupe un éventail comprenant douze contextes de contestation. De la formation de communautés marronnes au début de la colonisation, aux mobilisations féminines en contexte autoritaire, en passant par les cultures urbaines, les cultures syndicales des femmes et des travailleurs dans les mines, les contestations pro ou contre la liberté des homosexuels, tous font prévaloir leur pouvoir de contestation de manière plurielle. La voie religieuse est un domaine où s’exerce parfois de manière violente, les protestations de populations souvent jeunes, en attente de mobilité sociale. Les guerres électorales et la constitution de milices dessinent une géographie de la violence en milieu urbain, violence qui trouve à se déplacer en milieu rural dans certaines dérives sectaires comme en témoigne l’étude sur Boko Haram.Contributors are: Rémy Bazenguissa-Ganga, Raphaël Botiveau, Christophe Broqua, Michel Cahen,Thomas Fouquet, Adam Hizagi, Alcinda Honwana, Alexander Keese, Marie-Nathalie LeBlanc, Dominique Malaquais, Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle, Ophélie Rillon, Johanna Siméant, Benjamin Soares, Kadya Tall.

This book discusses and challenges concepts that are widely used in research and policy related to development issues in Africa. The main rationale for such an undertaking is that the concepts that are used to understand and define the world in general and Africa in particular are not merely describing social, economic and political processes and events; they are also largely framing these very same processes. Thus, the concepts by which we structure the world will implicitly or explicitly give premises for policies and practices; limiting or favouring certain types of actions and frameworks of interpretation and understanding in various contexts. It is therefore important to challenge commonly held conceptions about framing African development. Contributors include: Deborah Fahy Bryceson, Rosalind Eyben, Amanda Hammar, Kjell Havnevik, Mats Hårsmar, Terje Oestigaard and Rune Skarstein

The Making of the African Road offers an account of the long-distance road in Africa. Being a latecomer to automobility and far from saturated mass mobility, the African road continues to be open for diverging interpretations and creative appropriations. The road regime on the continent is thus still under construction, and it is made in more than one sense: physically, socially, politically, morally and cosmologically. The contributions to this volume provide first-hand anthropological insights into the infrastructural, economic, historical as well as experiential dimensions of the emerging orders of the African road. Contributors are: Kurt Beck, Amiel Bize, Michael Bürge, Luca Ciabarri, Gabriel Klaeger, Mark Lamont, Tilman Musch, Michael Stasik, Rami Wadelnour.

In Transfers of Belonging, Erdmute Alber traces the history of child fostering in northern Benin from the pre-colonial past to the present by pointing out the embeddedness of child foster practices and norms in a wider political process of change. Child fostering was, for a long time, not just one way of raising children, but seen as the appropriate way of doing so. This changed profoundly with the arrival of European ideas about birth parents being the ‘right’ parents, but also with the introduction of schooling and the differentiation of life chances. Besides providing deep historical and ethnographical insights, Transfers of Belonging offers a new theoretical frame for conceptualizing parenting.

The edited collection Spatial Practices: Territory, Border and Infrastructure in Africa presents research findings from the German Research Council’s Priority Programme 1448 “Adaptation and Change in Africa” (2011-2018). At the heart of the volume are important new spatial practices that have emerged after the end of the Cold War in the fields of conflict, climate change, migration and urban development, to name but a few, and their ordering effects with regard to social relations. These findings bear particular relevance for the co-production of territorialities and sovereignties, for borders and migrations, as well as infrastructures and orders. Contributors are: Sabine Baumgart, Andrea Behrends, Marc Boeckler, Martin Doevenspeck, Ulf Engel, Claudia Gebauer, Karsten Giese, Katharina Heitz Tokpa, Shahadat Hossain, Anna Hüncke, Gabriel Klaeger, Kelly Si Miao Liang, Andreas Mehler, Felix Müller, Detlef Müller-Mahn, Wolfgang Scholz, Sophie Schramm, Jannik Schritt, Michael Stasik, Florian Weisser, Julia Willers, and Franzisca Zanker.

Being a first of its kind, this volume comprises a multi-disciplinary exploration of Mozambique’s contemporary and historical dynamics, bringing together scholars from across the globe. Focusing on the country’s vibrant cultural, political, economic and social world – including the transition from the colonial to the postcolonial era – the book argues that Mozambique is a country still emergent, still unfolding, still on the move.Drawing on the disciplines of history, literature studies, anthropology, political science, economy and art history, the book serves not only as a generous introduction to Mozambique but also as a case study of a southern African country. Contributors are: Signe Arnfred, Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, José Luís Cabaço, Ana Bénard da Costa, Anna Maria Gentili, Ana Margarida Fonseca,Randi Kaarhus, Sheila Pereira Khan, Maria Paula Meneses, Lia Quartapelle, Amy Schwartzott, Leonor Simas-Almeida, Anne Sletsjøe, Sandra Sousa, Linda van de Kamp.

African-Asian interactions contribute to the emergence of a decentred, multi-polar world in which different actors need to redefine themselves and their relations to each other. Afrasian Transformations explores these changes to map out several arenas where these transformations have already produced startling results: development politics, South-South cooperation, cultural memory, mobile lifeworlds and transcultural connectivity. The contributions in this volume neither celebrate these shifting dynamics as felicitous proof of a new age of South-South solidarity, nor do they debunk them as yet another instance of burgeoning geopolitical hegemony. Instead, they seek to come to terms with the ambivalences, contradictions and potential benefits entailed in these transformations – that are also altering our understanding of (trans)area in an increasingly globalized world.Contributors include: Seifudein Adem, Nafeesah Allen, Jan Beek, Tom De Bruyn, Casper Hendrik Claassen, Astrid Erll, Hanna Getachew Amare, John Njenga Karugia, Guive Khan-Mohammad, Vinay Lal, Pavan Kumar Malreddy, Jamie Monson, Diderot Nguepjouo, Satwinder S. Rehal, Ute Röschenthaler, Alexandra Samokhvalova, Darryl C. Thomas, and Sophia Thubauville.

New Books Network: Modernization Dreams, Lusotropical PromisesWhat history and motivations make up the discourses we are taught to hold, and spread, as common sense? As a member of Brazil's upper middle class, Ana Beatriz Ribeiro grew up with the image that to be developed was to be as European as possible. However, as a researcher in Europe during her country's Workers' Party era, she kept reading that Africans should be repaid for developing Brazilian society – via Brazil's "bestowal" of development upon Africa as an "emerging power." In Modernization Dreams, Lusotropical Promises, the researcher investigates where these two worldviews might intersect, diverge and date back to, gauging relations between representatives and projects of the Brazilian and Mozambican states, said to be joined in cooperation more than others.

This edited volume offers new insights into the inner life of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and introduces scholars of African security dynamics to innovative epistemological, conceptual and methodological approaches. Based on intellectual openness and an interest in transdisciplinary perspectives, the volume challenges existing orthodoxies, poses new questions and opens a discussion on actual research practice. Drawing on Global Studies and critical International Studies perspectives, the authors follow inductive approaches and let the empirical data enrich their theoretical frameworks and conceptual tools. In this endeavor they focus on actors, practices and narratives involved in African Peace and Security and move beyond the often Western-centric premises of research carried out within rigid disciplinary boundaries. Contributors are Michael Aeby, Yvonne Akpasom, Katharina P.W. Döring, Ulf Engel, Fana Gebresenbet Erda, Linnéa Gelot, Amandine Gnanguênon, Toni Haastrup, Jens Herpolsheimer, Alin Hilowle, Jamie Pring, Lilian Seffer, Thomas Kwasi Tieku, Antonia Witt, Dawit Yohannes Wondemagegnehu

The essays in this collection are written to make readers (re)consider what is possible in Africa. The essays shake the tree of received wisdom and received categories, and hone in on the complexities of life under ecological and economic constraints. Yet, throughout this volume, people do not emerge as victims, but rather as inventors, engineers, scientists, planners, writers, artists, and activists, or as children, mothers, fathers, friends, or lovers – all as future-makers. It is precisely through agents such as these that Africa is futuring: rethinking, living, confronting, imagining, and relating in the light of its many emerging tomorrows.

This book explores important chapters of past and recent African history from a multidisciplinary perspective. It covers an extensive time range from the evolution of early humans to the complex cultural and genetic diversity of modern-day populations in Africa. Through a comprehensive list of chapters, the book focuses on different time-periods, geographic regions and cultural and biological aspects of human diversity across the continent. Each chapter summarises current knowledge with perspectives from a varied set of international researchers from diverse areas of expertise. The book provides a valuable resource for scholars interested in evolutionary history and human diversity in Africa.Contributors are Shaun Aron, Ananyo Choudhury, Bernard Clist, Cesar Fortes-Lima, Rosa Fregel, Jackson S. Kimambo, Faye Lander , Marlize Lombard, Fidelis T. Masao, Ezekia Mtetwa, Gilbert Pwiti, Michèle Ramsay, Thembi Russell, Carina Schlebusch, Dhriti Sengupta, Plan Shenjere-Nyabezi, Mário Vicente.

Paradise Lost. Race and Racism in Post-apartheid South Africa is about the continuing salience of race and persistence of racism in post-apartheid South Africa. The chapters in the volume illustrate the multiple ways in which race and racism are manifested and propose various strategies to confront racial inequality, racism and the power structure that underpins it, while exploring, how, through a renewed commitment to a non-racial society, apartheid racial categories can be put under erasure at exactly the time they are being reinforced.

Following a wave of oil discoveries in Africa, Oil-Age Africa offers new perspectives and critical reflections on the prevalent academic discourses on oil in Africa. This collection brings together researchers from the social sciences to challenge simplified readings of the complex realities of oil politics, economies and societies through theoretical critique and ‘on the ground’ ethnographic methods. Climate change highlights the need to understand the intricate ways societies are built on and for oil energy. Oil-Age Africa analyses the effects of oil production and the global energy structure, offering relevant insights and avenues for future research on oil.ContributorsHelmut Asche, Joseph N. Mangarella, Immo Eulenberger, Harouna Abdoutan, Monica Skaten, Yorbana Seign-Goura, Laura Smith, James Van Alstine, Geertrui Vannoppen, Mahamidou Aboubacar Attahirou, Salissou Oubandoma, Jannik Schritt.

Is violent conflict in Africa urbanizing? How do urban protests and civil war intersect? How do narratives, mechanisms and identities of contention move between urban and rural arenas? These questions constitute the basis of investigation and analysis of this unique cross-disciplinary volume. Applying diverging perspectives and methods from political science, anthropology and urban African studies, the book carefully constructs the relational and entangled nature of contemporary forms of contentious politics in Niger, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia.

Ce volume édité offre des nouvelles perspectives sur la vie intérieure de l'Architecture africaine de paix et de sécurité (APSA) et présente aux spécialistes dand la domaine paix et securité africaine des approches épistémologiques, conceptuelles et méthodologiques innovantes. Basé sur une ouverture intellectuelle et un intérêt pour les perspectives transdisciplinaires, le volume remet en question les courants dominants, nous invitant à réfléchir sur les pratiques de recherche elles-mêmes. S'appuyant sur les perspectives des études globales et des études critiques internationales, les auteurs suivent des approches inductives et laissent les données empiriques enrichir leurs cadres théoriques et leurs outils conceptuels. Dans cette entreprise, ils se concentrent sur les acteurs, les pratiques et les discours impliqués qui donne forme aux institutions regionales. Les analyses ici-présentes examine les hypothèses qui informent habituellement les études sur le régionalisme et la gouvernance en Afrique.

*The open access publication of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation*Winner of the Public Anthropologist Award 2024!Public Anthropologist Award 2024At a time when rights are increasingly placed on the humanitarian agenda, this book provides a unique ethnographic account of the dynamics of aid to disabled people in a Ugandan refugee camp. By unraveling the complexities of social, material and institutional interdependencies, the author invites us to rethink conventional notions of dependence and vulnerability. Exploring issues of personhood as they relate to the exchange of material goods and care, the book offers a thought-provoking perspective on the seemingly promising shift towards a rights-based approach. A compelling read for anyone seeking to reshape the humanitarian agenda.

Who were the actors involved in colonial and post-independence education in Africa? This book on the history of education in Africa gives a special attention to narratives of marginalized voices. With this original approach and cases from ten countries involving four colonial powers it constitutes a dynamic and rich contribution to the field.The authors have searched for narratives of education 'from below' through oral interviews, autobiographies, films and undiscovered archival sources. Throughout the book, educational settings are approached as social spaces where both contact and separtation between colonisers and colonised are constructed through social interaction, negotiations, and struggles. Contributors include Antónia Barreto, Lars Folke Berge, Clara Carvalho, Charlotte Courreye, Pierre-Éric Fageol, Frédéric Garan, Esther Ginestet, Pedro Goulart, Pierre Guidi, Lydia Hadj-Ahmed, Kalpana Hiralal, Mamaye Idriss, Mihary Jaofeno, Rehana Thembeka Odendaal, Roland Rakotovao, Maria da Luz Ramos, Ellen Vea Rosnes, Caterina Scalvedi, Eva Van de Velde, Pieter Verstraete.

This interdisciplinary volume provides a comprehensive and rich analysis of the century-long socio-ecological transformation of Lake Naivasha, Kenya. Major globalised processes of agricultural intensification, biodiversity conservation efforts, and natural-resource extraction have simultaneously manifested themselves in this one location.These processes have roots in the colonial period and have intensified in the past decades, after the establishment of the cut-flower industry and the geothermal-energy industry. The chapters in this volume exemplify the multiple, intertwined socio-environmental crises that consequently have played out in Naivasha in the past and the present, and that continue to shape its future.

Zimbabwe is a country whose longer past and shifting post-independence politics have both included violent histories, as well as often violent contestations over history itself. The Politics of the Past in Zimbabwe addresses the many ways in which pasts are variously experienced, remembered, claimed, denied or contested by differently positioned actors, and how this in turn shapes the politics of the present. It explores how such contestation is expressed: in literature, art, and the media; through exhumations and reburials; in state apology and political myth making; and in both traditional cultural heritage sites and the making of new national symbols.Contributors are Jocelyn Alexander, Elleke Boehmer, Shadreck Chirikure, Simbarashe Shadreck Chitima, Lena Englund, Shari Eppel, Petina Gappah, Amanda Hammar, Pedzisai Maedza, Owen Maseko, Mphathisi Ndlovu, Minna Johanna Niemi, Astrid Rasch, Timothy Scarnecchia, Thomas Thondhlana, Katja Uusihakala.