Newsletter 2/2015 · Abonnement List-serv • Abonnierung List-serv: [email protected] La...

Newsletter 2/2015

Newsletter 2/2015

Société suisse d‘études africaines Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Afrikastudien

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Newsletter 2/2015

Impressum:Rédaction • Redaktion: Mohomodou Houssouba, Veit Arlt

Mise en page • Layout: Veit Arlt

Relecture • Korrekturlesen: Veit Arlt, Mohomodou Houssouba, Chrystel Jeanbourquin,

Caro van Leeuwen, Pascal Schmid, Natalie Tarr

Site web • Webseite: www.sagw.ch/africa

Abonnement List-serv • Abonnierung List-serv: [email protected]

La newsletter de la SSEA est publiée avec le concours de l’Académie suisse des

sciences humaines et sociales. Les articles et informations publiés, tout comme les

opinions qui y sont exprimées, sont sous l’entière responsabilité de leurs auteurs, et ne

sauraient être considérés comme refl étant l’opinion de la SSEA.

Der Publikationsbeitrag der Schweizerischen Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissen-

schaften sei dankend erwähnt. Die Verantwortung für die Inhalte der veröffentlichten

Beiträge und Informationen liegt bei deren Autoren. Die darin enthaltenen Standpunkte

decken sich nicht immer mit jenen der SGAS.

Société suisse d’études africaines

Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Afrikastudien

SSEA – SGAS ISSN 1019–9276

Cover: Islam in Africa was at the centre of interest of our conference organized jointly with the Swiss

Society Middle East and Islamic Cultures (Bern, 23-24 April 2015). This Quran was presented by

Sultan Ibrahim Njoya of the kingdom of Bamum to Basel Missionary Martin Göring before 1910. The

long-term dialogue between Sultan Njoya and the Mission is a fascinating part of the Basel Mission's

rich history. The latter celebrated its bicentenary jubilee this year. The Quran was displayed in the

exhibtion Mission Possible at the Basel Museum of Cultures this year and is part of the Basel Mission

Collection held by the Museum (image: Basel Museum of Cultures 2015).


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Newsletter 2/2015

ÉDITORIAL • EDITORIAL

COMMUNICATIONS • MITTEILUNGEN

Procès-verbal de la 41ème assemblée générale de la SSEA

Rapport annuel de la SSEA

Varia • Miscellaneous

Nouvelle maîtrise en études africaines à l'Université de Genève

Nouvelle maîtrise ès lettres avec spécialisation à l’Université de Lausanne

L’association d’études africaines de l’Université de Lausanne

Declaration of the 1st Diaspora Conference on African Migration to Europe

ÉVÉNEMENTS • VERANSTALTUNGEN • EVENTS

ANNONCES • ANKÜNDIGUNGEN • ANNOUNCEMENTS

Swiss Researching Africa Days 2016

Conference: Commons in a “Glocal World”

RAPPORTS • BERICHTE • REPORTS

2nd Basel Summer School in African Studies

Anthropology Talks with James Ferguson

SGAS-SAGUF conference “Researching African Environments”

Africa Days 2015 – 2nd Ethio-Czech conference on Africa

1st School of Languages Conference at the University of Ghana, Legon

Rencontre avec l'écrivain In Koli Jean Bofane

TABLE DES MATIÈRES • INHALTSVERZEICHNIS • TABLE OF CONTENTS

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JEUNES CHERCHEURS • NACHWUCHS • YOUNG SCHOLARS

S. Simon & Y. van den Berg: The Anthropocene in the Classroom

PUBLICATIONS • PUBLIKATIONEN

A. Mayor et al: African Memory in Danger – Mémoire africaine en péril

L. Köchlin & T. Förster: The Politics of Governance

V. Arlt, P. Schmid & S. Bishop: Explorations in African History

D. Péclard: Les incertitudes de la nation en Angola

RENCONTRES • BEGEGNUNGEN • ENCOUNTERS

Göran Hydén, University of Florida

EXHIBITIONS • AUSSTELLUNGEN

Comics aus und über Afrika in den Basler Afrika Bibliographien

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Newsletter 2/2015

ÉDITORIAL • EDITORIAL

ANNE MAYOR, CO-PRESIDENTE

L’Afrique suscite un intérêt croissant en Suisse : il suffi t de constater le volume en

constante augmentation de notre Newsletter, sans parler de son contenu, de plus en

plus riche et diversifi é. Nul doute, ce dernier est devenu au fi l du temps un support

d’information incontournable pour les africanistes de tout le pays ; nous espérons que

vous y ferez maintes découvertes et serez incités à participer aux activités annoncées.

Cet intérêt croissant pour l’Afrique en Suisse est probablement lié à plusieurs éléments

tant externes qu’internes, autrement dit à des conjonctures tant globales que locales.

A une échelle globale, la première décennie du 21ème siècle a été clairement marquée

par un changement de paradigme concernant l’Afrique, qui est passé d’un « continent

sans espoir » à une Afrique qui se dresse (« Africa rising »), nouvelle frontière du capi-

talisme et pôle de croissance prometteur, avec une classe moyenne en devenir avide

de biens de consommation. Une conférence organisée à l’Université de Genève en

septembre 2016 interrogera d’ailleurs ce changement de paradigme de façon critique.

A une échelle plus locale, celle de la Suisse romande, l’intérêt bienvenu du rectorat

de l’Université de Genève pour une formation en études africaines ancrée au Global

Studies Institute permet enfi n de répondre aux recommandations du comité de notre

société au Conseil suisse de la science il y a vingt ans déjà (Moser, Sottas 1996), à

savoir la mise en place d’un « Curriculum d’études africaines », consistant en deux

réseaux multidisciplinaires coordonnés, l’un pour la Suisse alémanique et l’autre pour

la Suisse romande. Depuis lors, un centre et un master d’études africaines ont été

créés en 2002-2003 à l’Université de Bâle et sont pour beaucoup dans la dynamique

actuelle de la recherche et de l’enseignement sur l’Afrique en Suisse. A Genève, un

second pôle Afrique est né, des partenariats privilégiés avec cinq pays africains sont

en cours de signature, et un master d’études africaines de 120 ECTS verra le jour

dès la rentrée 2016. Ceci ne pourra que renforcer encore cette dynamique et devrait

conduire à former une nouvelle génération armée de compétences sur ce continent

en plein essor dans plusieurs disciplines, sur plusieurs thématiques et dans plusieurs

langues. Pour preuve d’un trop long manque en Suisse romande, l’Université de Lau-

sanne lance également, en parallèle, une maîtrise ès lettres avec spécialisation de 30

ECTS intitulée « textes et terrains africains », tandis qu’une association d’étudiants

UniLEA (Université de Lausanne Etudes Africaines) vient d’être créée par et pour de

jeunes chercheurs intéressés par l’Afrique et ses diasporas (voir les diverses présenta-

tions dans ce numéro).

Outre ces informations réjouissantes dans le domaine des enseignements universi-

taires (voir aussi le compte-rendu de la 2e Basel Summer School in African Studies),

plusieurs conférences à venir organisées ou co-organisées par notre société méritent

votre attention, notamment : « Commons in a ‘Glocal’ World : Global Connections and

Local Responses » (Berne, mai 2016), « Gouvernance, croissance et développement

dans l’Afrique du 21ème siècle » (Genève, septembre 2016), « SRAD 2016 » - les 4èmes

journées suisses d’études africaines (Berne, octobre 2016), et « Museumskooperatio-

nen zwischen Europa und Afrika – Chancen und Modalitäten », en coopération avec la

Société suisse d’ethnologie (Zürich, décembre 2016). Nous espérons vous y retrouver

nombreux !

Enfi n, la co-présidence vient de mettre le point fi nal à une prise de position importante

pour l’ASSH, rédigée en collaboration avec la Société suisse des américanistes et la

Société suisse Moyen Orient et civilisation islamique, portant sur la qualité de l’évalua-

tion et des performances dans les sciences humaines et sociales, et centrée sur la pro-

blématique des Area Studies. Vous trouverez le texte sur le site web de notre société.


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Newsletter 2/2015

COMMUNICATIONS DU COMITÉ • MITTEILUNGEN DES VORSTANDS • COMMUNICATIONS

Procès-verbal de la 41ème assemblée générale de la SSEA

BERNE, UNITOBLER, 23.10.2015

PRÉSENTS :

Veit Arlt, Simplice Ayangma-Bonoho, Jacques Aymeric, Sibylle Ganz-Koechlin, Tobias

Haller, Mohomodou Houssouba, Daniel Künzler, Bobby Luthra Sinha, Elísio Macamo,

Anne Mayor, Didier Péclard, Brice Prudat, Tibor Rechsteiner, Jacques Rial, Gabriele

Slezak, Anna Sommer, Erick Sourna Loumtouang, Natalie Tarr

EXCUSÉS :

Jasmina Bonato, Julia Büchele, Rudolf Fischer, Joël Hakizimana, Eric Huysecom,

Chrystel Jeanbourquin, Katrin Kusmierz, Thomas Laely, Christine Lequellec Cottier,

Max Liniger, Elísio Macamo, Fiona Siegenthaler

1. APPROBATION DU PV 2014

Le procès-verbal de l’assemblée générale 2014 est approuvé à l’unanimité.

2. RAPPORT ANNUEL DE LA PRÉSIDENCE

Voir le rapport d’Anne Mayor publié dans ce numéro de la Newsletter.

3. RAPPORT DU TRÉSORIER

Le trésorier sortant a présenté les comptes de la société qui refl ètent sa bonne situation

fi nancière. La SSEA a investi plus de 30 000 CHF pour organiser ou supporter des

activités de recherche. Il note par ailleurs la croissance soutenue des cotisations de

membres qui indique un élargissement de la base de la communauté des africanistes

autour de la société. Le compte de dépôt se maintient de façon stable, autour de

28 000 CHF.

Capital au 31 décembre 2014 : CHF 41 332.50

Recettes : CHF 23 824.15

Dépenses : CHF 39 297.75

Solde : CHF 4 549.80

Les réviseurs Beat Sottas et Piet van Eeuwijk ont vérifi é les comptes et en ont certifi é

la bonne tenue. Ils remercient le trésorier pour sa précision dans l’enregistrement des

recettes et dépenses. L’assemblée accorde la décharge au trésorier et au comité.

4. RENOUVELLEMENT DU COMITÉ

Natalie Tarr, doctorante au Centre d’études africaines de l’Université de Bâle, rejoint le

comité exécutif de la SSEA. Sa candidature a été présentée par la co-présidence et

approuvée par l’assemblée.

5. ADMISSION DE NOUVEAUX MEMBRES

La société compte 240 membres ordinaires (+17), 69 membres correspondants (+4), 9

membres du comité exécutif (+1), 10 membres d’honneur (dont un réviseur), 1 réviseur.

Les nouveaux membres sont largement répartis à travers le pays : Genève, Bâle, Neu-

châtel, Vaud, Zurich, Valais. D’autres viennent du continent : Afrique du Sud, Répu-

blique démocratique du Congo et Cameroun (3): Simplice Ayangma-Bonoho, Jacques

Aymeric, Maike Birzle, Nelson Vera Büchel, Mariam Dembélé, Nonhlanhla Dlamini-Stoll,

Achiba Gargule, Christine Le Quellec Cottier, Nicolas Mabillard, Alexis Malefakis, Flo-

riane Morin, Raphael Schwere, Erick Sourna Loumtouang, Mathias Tanner, Miriam

Truffat Giachet, Christophe Tumba Ngalamulume, Stephen Yeboah.

Un membre (Glenn Fischer) a confi rmé sa démission, un autre n’est plus joignable

(Paulo Bessa).


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Newsletter 2/2015

6. NOUVELLES DE L’ASSH

Annoncée à la dernière assemblée générale, la nouvelle politique de communication

de l’Académie suisse des sciences humaines et sociales se déploie sur deux axes

principaux : 1) la construction d’un portail internet pour mettre davantage en réseau les

sociétés (voir rapport annuel de la présidence) et 2) l’appui à l’organisation d’événe-

ments publics, cette fois-ci autour des thématiques «Prospérité et bien-être» et «Migra-

tion et mobilité».

7. VARIA

Lausanne : L’Université de Lausanne lance une maîtrise universitaire ès lettres avec le

programme de spécialisation « Études africaines : textes et terrains ». Plus d’informa-

tion en ligne : www. unil.ch/lettres

Bâle : La 7ème Conférence européenne sur les études africaines (ECAS 2017) est orga-

nisée par le Centre d’études africaines de l’Université de Bâle et la Société suisse

d’études africaines. Elle s’articule autour des phénomènes d’urbanisation, avec pour

thème général « Urban Africa – Urban Africans: New encounters of the urban and the

rural ». Plus d’information en ligne : www.ecas2017.ch

Genève : conférence « Dialogues culturels en contexte postcolonial », 9-10 décembre

2015.

Appel : les membres souhaitant proposer des événements sont invités à prendre

contact avec le comité de la société, en prenant en considération le fait que la planifi -

cation des activités fi nancées par l'Académie a lieu tous les deux ans.

Mohomodou Houssouba, 13.11.2015

Rapport annuel 2015 de la SSEA

ANNE MAYOR

CONFÉRENCES

L’année 2015 a été marquée par l’organisation de deux conférences, en collaboration

avec d’autres sociétés :

• « Islam in Africa : historical and contemporary processes of Islamization and

Re-islamization »

Berne, Unitobler : 23-25 avril 2015

Organisation : SSEA, en collaboration avec la SSMOCI (Société Suisse Moyen-

Orient et civilisation islamique).

Pour la SSEA : Daniel Künzler et Anne Mayor

• « Participatory and Integrative Approaches in Researching African Environments:

Opportunities, Challenges, Actualities in Natural and Social Sciences »

Berne, Unitobler : 23 octobre 2015

Organisation : SSEA, en collaboration avec la SAGUF (Société académique

suisse pour la recherche environnementale et l’écologie).

Pour la SSEA : Tobias Haller

La conférence « Africa and the Academy in the 21st Century », initialement prévue à

Bâle du 10 au 12 septembre 2015, a été reportée.

Par ailleurs, la société a décidé de soutenir fi nancièrement la conférence « Dialogues

culturels en contexte postcolonial », centrée sur les échanges et la circulation culturelle

à l’intérieur de l’espace linguistique portugais, intégrant l’Angola et le Mozambique,

après 40 ans d’indépendance. Ce colloque sera organisé à la Faculté des lettres de


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Newsletter 2/2015

l’Université de Genève les 10 et 11 décembre 2015 par Nazaré Torrão, membre de

notre société.

PUBLICATIONS

• Anne Mayor, Vincent Négri et Eric Huysecom (éds), 2015. African Memory in

Danger - Mémoire africaine en péril, Francfort : Africa Magna Verlag (Journal

of African Archaeology Monograph Series 11). ISBN : 978-3-937248-50-9. Cet

ouvrage paru en septembre 2015 fait suite à la conférence organisée par la SSEA

sur ce thème à Genève en septembre 2011.

• « Prise de position sur les Area Studies des SSEA, SSMOCI et SSA » : ce rapport

est une prise de position de trois sociétés concernées par la problématique de

l’évaluation de la qualité et de la performance en sciences humaines dans le

domaine particulier des Area Studies. Il fera l’objet d’une publication par l’Acadé-

mie suisse des sciences humaines et sociales (ASSH), conjointement avec des

autres prises de position émanant d'autres sociétés.

COLLABORATION INTERNATIONALE

Aucun fi nancement individuel n’a été demandé par les membres du comité cette année

à l’Académie, mais plusieurs d’entre eux ont assisté à la 6ème European Conference on

African Studies ECAS de l’Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies AEGIS, du

8 au 10 juillet à Paris. La prochaine édition de ce colloque, le plus important concernant

les études africaines en Europe, aura lieu à Bâle du 22 au 24 juin 2017.

COORDINATION

Le premier numéro de la Newsletter 1/2015 a paru au printemps et le second numéro

2/2015 paraîtra avant la fi n de l’année.

Au cours de l’année 2015, Anne Mayor et Veit Arlt ont pris part au groupe de travail

réuni par l’ASSH pour réfl échir à la construction d’un portail pour la section 4 de l’Aca-

démie, dans le but notamment d’accroître la visibilité des sociétés.

En février 2015, Didier Péclard a été nommé maître d’enseignement et de recherche

à l’Université de Genève pour mettre sur pied une maîtrise en études africaines, ancré

au Global Studies Institute GSI, qui doit démarrer à la rentrée 2016. Le pôle Afrique

et la maîtrise à venir feront le pendant pour la Suisse romande du centre et du master

d’études africaines de l’Université de Bâle. Deux orientations sont prévues : (A) Dyna-

miques historiques et interactions sociétés-environnement, et (B) Etats, sociétés et

développement dans l’Afrique contemporaine. Le fait que les coordinateurs de Bâle et

de Genève soient intégrés au comité de la SSEA facilite le dialogue et permettra des

synergies entre ces deux pôles de formation.

Parallèlement, à l’Université de Lausanne, une maîtrise ès lettres avec une spécia-

lisation en « Études africaines : textes et terrains » de 30 ECTS sera lancée dès le

semestre de printemps 2016. Par ailleurs, l’Association des études africaines de Lau-

sanne (UniLEA) a été lancée en octobre 2015, à l’initiative de quelques doctorants. Les

co-présidents ont participé à la conférence inaugurale en guise de soutien.

PLANIFICATION 2016

De nombreux événements sont à nouveau prévus en 2016 :

• Conférence « Commons in a “Glocal World” »

Berne, Unitobler : 10-13 mai 2016

Organisation : SSEA, en collaboration avec l’Institut d’anthropologie sociale et le

Centre pour le développement et l’environnement CDE, 3rd European Meeting of

the International Association for the Study of the Commons IASC (pour la SSEA :

Tobias Haller)


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Newsletter 2/2015

Changement d'adresse

La nouvelle adresse de la SSEA est la suivante :

Société suisse d’études africaines

c/o Institut für Sozialanthropologie

Lerchenweg 36

Postfach 999

CH-3000 Bern 9

Publication de thèses

La série « Études africaines suisses » chez Lit-Verlag est dorénavant ouverte aux thèses

doctorales inscrites dans une université suisse et ayant reçu la mention « très bien » ou

« insigni cum laude » soit, au minimum, la note de 5.5.

Les directeurs de thèse mettent à disposition du comité le rapport des membres du

jury ou des experts, accompagné d'une déclaration écrite stipulant que l'ensemble

des modifi cations a été effectué et que le manuscrit est complet et prêt à être publié.

Il est à noter que la SSEA n'offre aucun soutien fi nancier ni service pour la publication

de thèse. En effet, la mise sur pied d'un comité de lecture, exigée pour toute évaluation

d'un manuscrit, n'est pas prévue, ni réalisable pour l'instant.

Assemblée annuelle 2016

La prochaine assemblée aura lieu le 4 novembre à Berne (voir l'Appel pour les journées

suisses d'études africaines 2016 dans ce numéro).

• Conférence « Gouvernance, croissance et développement dans l’Afrique du

21ème siècle »

Genève, Global Studies Institute : septembre 2016

Organisation : Didier Péclard, Anne Mayor

• Journées suisses d’études africaines – Swiss Researching Africa Days (SRAD 2016)

Berne, Unitobler : 4-5 novembre 2016

Organisation : Tobias Haller, Veit Arlt, Didier Péclard

• Conférence « Museumskooperationen zwischen Europa und Afrika – Chancen

und Modalitäten »

Zurich, Musée d’ethnographie de l’Université: 1-3 décembre 2016

Organisation : SSEA et SSE (pour la SSEA : Thomas Laely)

Par ailleurs, notre participation à la série « La Suisse existe, la Suisse n’existe pas –

Migration et mobilité » est encore en cours de discussion, et le report de la conférence

« Africa and the Academy in the 21st Century » est aussi prévu pour 2016.

Genève, le 19 novembre 2015


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Newsletter 2/2015

Change of address

The new address of the SSAS is as follows:

Swiss Society for African Studies


Lerchenweg 36

Postfach 999

CH-3000 Bern 9

Publication of doctoral dissertations

The series “Schweizerische Afrikastudien / Études africaines suisses” (Lit publishers) is

now open for doctoral theses from Swiss universities that have earned the grade 5.5

(insigni cum laude) or in French “mention très bien”.

The supervisors of the thesis must submit the assessments of the examiners to the

board of the society, and provide a written declaration that all stipulated amendments

have been effected, that the text has been fully edited and that it is ready for publica-

tion.

Since the Society at this stage cannot introduce a special publication board and peer

review process it neither offers fi nancial support for the publication nor engages in edi-

torial tasks. Both are the sole responsibility of the author and supervisors.

General assembly 2016

The General Assembly will take place on 4 November 2016 in Berne (see the call for

papers for the Swiss Researching Africa Days 2016 in this newsletter).

Neue Adresse

Die neue Adresse der SGAS lautet wie folgt:

Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Afrikastudien


Lerchenweg 36

Postfach 999

CH-3000 Bern 9

Publikation von Dissertationen

Die Serie „Schweizerische Afrikastudien“ beim Lit-Verlag ist ab sofort für die Publikation

von Dissertationen schweizerischer Universitäten geöffnet. Diese müssen die Mindest-

note 5.5 (insigni cum laude oder „mention très bien“) erreicht haben.

Die Betreuer der Arbeit stellen dem Vorstand die Gutachten zur Arbeit zur Verfügung

und bestätigen schriftlich, dass alle Auflagen zur Überarbeitung erfüllt wurden, das

Manuskript vollständig redigiert wurde und zur Publikation bereit ist.

Finanzierung und Realisierung der Publikation liegen in der alleinigen Verantwortung

der Autoren und Betreuer. Zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt kann und will der Vorstand keine

Publikationskommission und Prüfverfahren einführen. Die SGAS kann folglich weder

einen finanziellen Beitrag leisten, noch Redaktionsarbeiten übernehmen.

Mitgliederversammlung 2016

Die nächste Mitgliederversammlung findet am 4. November 2016 in Bern statt (siehe die

Ankündigung der Schweizerischen Tage der Afrikaforschung 2016 in diesem Newsletter).


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Newsletter 2/2015

Maîtrise en études africaines à l’Université de Genève

DIDIER PÉCLARD

Dès la rentrée universitaire 2016-2017, l’Université de Genève offrira une maîtrise inter-

disciplinaire en études africaines, renouant ainsi avec une longue tradition d’échanges

entre la ville internationale et l’Afrique, et complétant l’offre déjà existante en Suisse

(Université de Bâle depuis 2002/3) et en Europe. Cette nouvelle formation s’inscrit dans

une stratégie plus large d’intensifi cation des liens entre l’Université de Genève et le

continent africain, qui se traduit notamment par des partenariats stratégiques avec des

universités au Sénégal, en Côte d’Ivoire, au Cameroun, en Afrique du Sud et en Ethio-

pie. La nouvelle maîtrise sera basée au Global Studies Institute (www.unige.ch/gsi).

Cet institut, créé en 2013, offre non seulement un Bachelor en relations internationales,

mais également d’autres maîtrises universitaires, sur l’Union Européenne, la Russie et

l’Europe médiane, le Moyen-Orient, ainsi que sur des thématiques transversales telles

que la santé publique et, à partir de septembre 2016 également, sécurité globale et

résolution des confl its.

La maîtrise en études africaines, qui s’étalera sur quatre semestres pour 120 crédits,

proposera deux fi lières de spécialisation. L’une, basée sur l’anthropologie, l’archéo-

logie, les sciences de l’environnement et le droit, se concentrera sur les relations

homme-environnement dans une perspective de longue durée. L’autre, ancrée dans la

science politique, la sociologie, la géographie, l’économie et l’histoire, mettra l’accent

sur les relations État-sociétés dans l’Afrique contemporaine. Un tronc commun inter-

disciplinaire servira de base et des formations ponctuelles (par exemple sous forme

de summer schools) viendront compléter cette offre, notamment en médecine et en

santé publique.

L’intérêt des études africaines consiste à former des personnes capables de com-

prendre les défi s de ce continent dont on sait, en raison des prévisions en termes de

croissance économique et démographique, qu’il jouera un rôle majeur dans le monde

au cours de ce siècle. L’ancrage au GSI permettra également de replacer les études

africaines dans des problématiques plus larges et globales, grâce aux possibilités

d’échanges et aux synergies qui se créeront avec les autres formations similaires.

Un accent tout particulier sera mis sur la connaissance et la pratique du « terrain »,

et les étudiants auront la possibilité de se rendre sur le continent, soit pour y réaliser

les recherches conduisant à la rédaction de leur travail de maîtrise, pour un stage, ou

encore dans le cadre d’échanges existant avec les universités partenaires.

Consultez le site du GSI où de plus amples informations seront disponibles dès

décembre 2015 (www.unige.ch/gsi/fr/masters/). Les inscriptions seront ouvertes de

décembre 2015 à février 2016.

Pour plus d’informations concernant l’Afrique à l’Université de Genève, voir le dossier

consacré par la revue Campus dans son numéro de septembre 2015:

www.unige.ch/communication/Campus/campus122.html.

Didier Péclard est maître d’enseignement et de recherches, responsable de la maî-

trise en études africaines, Global Studies Institute, Université de Genève (didier.pe-

[email protected]).

AUTRES COMMUNICATIONS • WEITERE MITTEILUNGEN • FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS


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Newsletter 2/2015

« Etudes africaines: textes et terrains » — une nouvelle maî-trise ès lettres avec spécialisation à l’Université de Lausanne

CHRISTINE LE QUELLEC COTTIER

L’Université de Lausanne offre dès février 2016 un nouveau programme de maîtrise ès

lettres avec spécialisation en études africaines (30 ECTS). Le programme a pour ambi-

tion de faire connaître et comprendre des textes littéraires et des productions esthé-

tiques associés aux cultures africaines subsahariennes. Cette démarche tiendra compte

du cadre contextuel de production et de réception des œuvres. Le programme offre

aussi la possibilité de mieux saisir les enjeux politiques et historiques, dans un monde où

les interactions disciplinaires sont une constante. L’occasion donnée de lier recherche

universitaire et expérience professionnelle, grâce à des stages, est sans doute aussi un

atout à faire valoir. L’étudiant ayant suivi avec succès le programme sera apte à :

• justifi er son positionnement critique et son point de vue, en lien avec son do-

maine d’études ;

• exploiter l’hétérogénéité des supports proposés dans un contexte interdiscipli-

naire, en vue de les transmettre avec clarté et méthodologie à un public spécia-

lisé ou non spécialisé ;

• analyser et mettre en perspective des productions culturelles liées à l’Afrique ;

• expliquer les relations des Studies (Postcolonial, Gender, Cultural, …) avec le

temps et l’espace colonial, en croisant perspective diachronique et synchronique ;

• se repérer dans les débats impliquant la notion de francophonie (institutionnelle,

linguistique et littéraire) et s'interroger sur les catégories « littérature africaine » et

« Afrique » en tant que discours construits, à l’heure des nouveaux Empires et de

la globalisation;

• débattre de notions théoriques liées à des productions esthétiques ainsi qu’à

notre monde social et culturel contemporain.

CONTENU

« Études africaines : textes et terrains » est le premier programme de niveau maî-

trise universitaire offert en Suisse romande dans un champ de recherche directement

lié au continent africain et ses diasporas. Créé à partir du domaine de la littérature

francophone africaine, mais accueillant d’autres langues et disciplines, il s’intéresse à

des questions transversales qui touchent autant les représentations littéraires, histo-

riques, culturelles ou encore médiatiques. Le programme associe plusieurs universités

en Suisse et à l’étranger, ce qui permettra aux étudiants de décentrer leurs habitudes

réfl exives tout en enrichissant leur démarche critique.

PUBLIC CIBLE

Ce programme de spécialisation s’adresse aux étudiants immatriculés à l’UNIL, ayant

obtenu un baccalauréat universitaire ès lettres en français moderne, en français mé-

diéval ou en français langue étrangère. Les candidats ayant obtenu un baccalauréat

universitaire ès lettres lié à d’autres branches (de préférence en langues et littératures)

peuvent déposer leur dossier de candidature, qui sera examiné. Le programme peut

être recommandé à tout étudiant qui souhaite rédiger un mémoire de maîtrise universi-

taire en littérature francophone africaine.

ENSEIGNEMENT

La spécialisation consiste en deux modules. Le premier (Littérature et histoire, 12 cré-

dits ECTS) contient un cours et un séminaire consacrés à la littérature francophone

africaine, associés à un cours/séminaire abordant le champ de l’histoire africaine et

des études postcoloniales (offert par SSP/UNIL ou GSI/UNIGE). Le deuxième (Ensei-

gnements, stages et journée d’étude, 18 crédits ECTS) propose des enseignements et

stages optionnels. Il est partenaire d’universités en Suisse (Bâle et Genève) et à l’étran-

ger (Paris III et Paris IV, Dakar, Abidjan, Montréal, …). Les stages (maisons d’édition, as-

sociations, bibliothèques, festivals, etc…) sont réalisés en Suisse romande ou à Berne.

Si le séjour en Afrique est choisi par l’étudiant, les 15 crédits optionnels sont validés


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en une fois. La seconde partie du module (3 ECTS) consiste en la préparation d’une

journée d’études (organisation, lectures, documentation) et la journée elle-même.

RESPONSABLE DU PROGRAMME

Christine Le Quellec Cottier, [email protected].

RENSEIGNEMENTS

www.uni.ch/lettres > Master et spécialisation > Maîtrise universitaire avec spécialisation

L’association d’études africaines de l’Université de Lausanne

JUSTINE HIRSCHY, GUIVE KHAN MOHAMMAD, URSULA MEYER ET CLAIRE NICOLAS

Depuis septembre 2015, le paysage associatif de l’Université de Lausanne compte une

nouvelle association : l’UniLEA (Université de Lausanne Etudes Africaines). Cette asso-

ciation a été créée par et pour des jeunes chercheurs dont les recherches portent sur

l’Afrique ou les diasporas africaines dans le monde. Elle regroupe à ce jour une tren-

taine de doctorants et post-doctorants rattachés aux instituts des sciences sociales

(ISS), de géographie et durabilité (IGD), des sciences du sport (ISSUL) et d’études

politiques, historiques et internationales (IEPHI) de l’Université de Lausanne.

A la base du projet, la rencontre de trois doctorants de l’Unil en octobre 2014, d’abord

à Paris, à l’occasion des rencontres des Jeunes Chercheurs en Etudes Africaines

(JCEA), puis à Berne, lors des Journées suisses d’études africaines de la SSEA. En

effet, lors de ces deux colloques, Justine Hirschy (ISS), Guive Khan Mohammad (ISS)

et Ursula Meyer (IGD) se retrouvent et ont, pour la première fois, l’occasion de décou-

vrir les recherches menées sur des terrains africains par d’autres doctorants de leur

alma mater. Ils prennent ainsi la mesure d’une distance disciplinaire que ne comble

pas naturellement la proximité géographique. Réanimant le projet avorté d’un groupe

lausannois d’études africaines lancé par Guive Khan Mohammad une année plus tôt,

ils décident alors de développer ensemble un réseau visant à favoriser les échanges et

l’entraide entre jeunes chercheurs tout en promouvant la visibilité des recherches sur

l’Afrique à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur de l’Université de Lausanne. Dès le mois suivant, ils

sont déjà une demi-douzaine à se réunir autour de la présentation du projet de thèse

d’un doctorant.

Le comité de l’association d’études africaines de l’Université de Lausanne UniLEA : Guive Khan Mo-

hammad, Justine Hirschy, Claire Nicolas et Ursula Meyer (image : Dan Lopes, Rhythm & Pics, 2015).


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Mois après mois, séance après séance, le groupe prend de l’ampleur. Fort de ce suc-

cès, ses créateurs décident de procéder à sa formalisation. Lancé en début juin, ce

chantier s’achève le 14 septembre 2015 avec la première Assemblée générale. A cette

occasion, l’association se munit d’un nom et de statuts, qu’elle dépose auprès du

Secrétariat général de l’Unil. De ce fait, l’UniLEA devient, le 12 octobre 2015, une

association offi cielle de l’Université. A sa tête, un comité élu pour une année et com-

posé des trois membres fondateurs, rejoints par Claire Nicolas, doctorante à l’ISSUL.

S’appuyant sur le soutien des différents instituts dont proviennent ses membres,

l’UniLEA a pu diversifi er ses activités pour le semestre d’automne 2015. S’est ainsi

ajoutée aux rendez-vous mensuels, l’organisation de conférences publiques avec des

intervenants externes. Pour sa session inaugurale, le 19 octobre 2015, l’UniLEA a eu

l’honneur et le plaisir de recevoir le Prof. Jean-Pierre Warnier, anthropologe et ethno-

logue. Ainsi, dans la matinée, un workshop interne a été organisé, au cours duquel

l’invité a commenté différents textes soumis au préalable par certains membres de

l’association. Puis, dans la soirée, Jean-Pierre Warnier a animé une conférence intitu-

lée « ‘Penser avec ses doigts’: les cultures matérielles et motrices comme médium de

subjectivation ». Cette séance a accueilli une soixantaine de participants : étudiants,

doctorants, post-doctorants et professeurs issus de toutes les facultés de l’Unil, mais

également des universités de Genève et de Bâle, et de l’Institut des Hautes Etudes

Internationales et du Développement (IHEID).

Pour l’avenir, l’UniLEA souhaite poursuivre sur cette lancée : les séances dévolues aux

présentations des doctorants sont complètes jusqu’en juin 2016 et les discussions

vont bon train sur les prochains intervenants à inviter.

Justine Hirschy est assistante diplômée et doctorante à l’Institut des sciences so-

ciales (ISS) de l’Université de Lausanne. Sa thèse porte sur l’action publique dans le

domaine de la « bonne gouvernance » au Burundi. Contact: [email protected].

Guive Khan Mohammad est assistant diplômé et doctorant en Sciences sociales

et politiques à L’Université de Lausanne. Supervisée par le Prof. Antoine Kernen, sa

thèse porte sur les conséquences socio-politiques de l’arrivée des motos chinoises au

Burkina Faso. Contact: [email protected].

Ursula Meyer est assistante diplomée et doctorante en Géographie humaine à l'Uni-

versité de Lausanne. Sa thèse porte sur le foncier urbain et la politique locale au Niger

et est dirigée par le Prof. René Véron. Contact: [email protected].

Claire Nicolas est assistante diplomée et doctorante en Histoire du Sport à l’Uni-

versité de Lausanne. Supervisée par le Prof. Nicolas Bancel, sa thèse porte sur les

pratiques sportives et scoutes pendant la décolonisation au Ghana et en Côte d’Ivoire.

Contact: [email protected].


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Newsletter 2/2015

Declaration of the 1st Diaspora Conference on African Mi-gration to Europe

Converged in Bern at the fi rst Diaspora Conference on African Migration to Europe on

12 September 2015 with over 100 delegates from the African Diaspora, civil society

organizations, representatives of African and Swiss Governments, international organi-

zations and Development Agencies, to refl ect over the impact of European migration

policies on African migration, the African Diaspora agreed to:

State in clear and in unequivocal terms that migration is inherent of big opportunities

but also manifests some challenges that can be transformed into success stories when

managed constructively and devoid of hypocrisy;

Reaffi rm their conviction that there is a positive synergy between migration and socio-

economic development for migrants in countries of transit and origin, as well as in host

countries and hereby restate our full commitment towards ensuring the development

of migrants’ capacity towards a successful integration and sustainable development;

Reaffi rm our resolve and commitment to shared obligations and responsibilities as

stipulated in international instruments and conventions relating to human rights, refu-

gee protection, migration and development as well as the special protection accorded

to People of African Descent by the UN General Assembly in its Resolution 68/237

of 23 December 2013 by which it proclaimed the International Decade for People of

African Descent, commencing on 1 January 2015 and ending on 31 December 2024;

Call on all UN member states to work towards the inauguration of the International

Decade for People of African Descent in their respective states as recommended by

the said UN Resolution and immediately put in place all necessary instruments towards

the full implementation of the activities recommended by the UN;

Welcome the initiation and establishment of different instruments for dialogue and mi-

gration partnership with developing countries by Swiss government, especially countries

in Africa: Nigeria, Tunisia, Guinea… aimed at enhancing development in African countries;

Welcome the mobilization of military power to protect refugees on the high sea but

cautions that such should not be transformed into a wild goose chase of smugglers

and a pretext to guard the European borders and thus prevent refugees and migrants

from entering Europe;

Condemn the continual use of the terminology “economic migrants” in Europe to de-

scribe African refugees whereas the word “refugee” is regularly used for other migrants.

Such description is in itself discriminatory and unacceptable;

Condemn the policy of abolition of asylum requests in foreign missions and embassies

which exposes the refugees and migrants more to the risk of plying the dangerous

routes to seek refuge and;

Call on all European governments to quickly reintroduce the possibility of seeking

asylum at foreign missions and embassies as well as soften the visa requirements to

promote regular migration;

Condemn in strongest terms the plan of the EU to establish marathon refugee camps

in West Africa or elsewhere on African soil for African refugees whereas refugees com-

ing from other parts of the world will continue to troop into Europe. This is not only

discriminatory and undemocratic, but a serious violation of fundamental human rights

of African refugees and migrants in their liberty of movement and choice of refuge.

It equally tends to block Africans' and Africa's access to European technology and

know- how, thereby plunging Africa further into underdevelopment and reducing it to a

mere terrain to be exploited for natural resources. Europe should take its responsibility


15

Newsletter 2/2015

for asylum seekers and not seek to shift the burden to African countries;

View with much suspicion and disdain the planned EU–AU November Summit in Val-

etta, Malta where the purported African refugee camp in Africa will be formally adopted,

albeit without much contribution from African countries given that the invitations and

process leading to the summit are marred with discrimination and the politics of divide

and rule;

Regret that the proposed sum of about 1.8 billion Euros promised by the EU to Afri-

can countries on “migration partnership” are almost entirely tied to return agreements

instead of investing such money into human development and development of Africa to

make Africa more attractive for Africans and thus encouraging South–South migration

and intra–African labor mobility;

Maintain that no migration policy tied entirely to return assistance agreements can

succeed in the long term;

Regret that while refugees and migrants continue to die on their dangerous journeys,

Europe is busy talking, discussing, trading words and shifting responsibilities and

agreeing not to agree to accommodate just 700 000 refugees and migrants, a situa-

tion which they term refugee crisis;

Regret that migration and immigrants have been scandalously instrumentalised in the

political spectrum thereby exploiting the weak situation of migrants in order to make

cheap gains and call on politicians and the mass media to accord more respect and

dignity to migrants in the socio–political discourse;

Regret that whereas there are international and UN agencies that regulate and pro-

mote free circulation of capital (IMF), mobility of goods and services (WTO), there is still

no such agency to regulate and promote human mobility of migrants among member

states within the framework of Migration and Development and hereby call for the

establishment of such an agency immediately;

Appeal to the international community to open its boarders to refugees from every

part of the world;

Recall that over 80% of the African migration is intra–African. While Ethiopia hosts over

700 000 refugees from neighboring countries, Kenya takes over 500 000 refugees,

Sudan over 200 000 refugees, Cameroon takes up to 1 million refugees including the

Internal Displaced Persons IDP. Lebanon, with a little over 4 million inhabitants, is ac-

commodating more than 1 million Syrian refugees and Turkey with a big heart is home

to over 2 million Syrian refugees. It is noteworthy to mention here that none of these

countries is known to sell and supply arms to the war and confl ict zones but are none-

theless willing and ready to take on a huge responsibility for refugees;

Demand for more investments on capacity building of the diaspora community to

enhance and foster economic integration which is a strong instrument for develop-

ment of countries of origin and a catalyst against xenophobia, racism and other related

intolerance in host countries;

Call on all United Nations member states to regularize the legal status of undocument-

ed migrants residing in their countries, accord citizenship to stateless persons, having

been established that no human being is illegal on this planet earth;

Call on the Diaspora community to tap inwards, strategize and engage constructively

in migration and development even while appreciating the impact of diaspora remit-

tances on the African economies, show more solidarity to refugees, identify with them

and guide them to a successful integration towards a more dignifi ed migration policy;


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Newsletter 2/2015

Invite the leaders of African countries to fi ght unrelentingly and tirelessly against pov-

erty and promote good governance, solidify and equip education, healthcare and agro

institutions and facilities, invest in human and youth development as a prerequisite in

ensuring peace and security in Africa in line with Sustainable Millennium Goals SDG

post 2015 and in collaboration with the African diaspora;

Encourage the African Union AU, the Regional Economic Communities RECs and

other African institutions to strengthen their efforts towards the implementation of intra–

African migration and labor mobility, thereby making Africa more attractive.

Done today in Berne, 15 September 2015

Dozie Celeste Ugochukwu is the president of the African Diaspora Council of Swit-

zerland. Contact: [email protected].

Nabil Ait-Mokhtar is the vice–president of the African Diaspora Council of Switzer-

land. Contact: [email protected].

1ST DIASPORA CONFERENCE ON

AFRICAN MIGRATION IN EUROPE

«THE MEDITERRANEAN DRAMA AND THE IMPACT ON EUROPEAN MIGRATION POLICIES»

PANEL***DISCUSSION***REFLECTION***RECOMMENDATIONS

With H.E. Amb. Jean-Marie Ehouzou of AU, Sylvain Astier of SEM (FOM*ODM*BFM), Prof. Etienne Piguet of Uni-NE, Dr. André Loembe of ODAE, Salvatore Pittà of Watch the Med, Lamya Hennache & Mathias Ekah of ADCS

DATE : Saturday 12 September 2015 TIME: 13h 30 – 18h00

VENUE : Universal Postal Union UPU, (Weltpost), Weltpostr 4, 3015 Bern

www.africancouncil.ch

REGISTRATION: [email protected], +41 79 476 74 83, +41 76 276 58 22

Conference announcement. (African Diaspora Council of Switzerland, 2015).


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Newsletter 2/2015

Announcement: Swiss Researching Africa Days 2016

BERNE, 04.–05.11.2016

The 4th edition of the Swiss Researching Africa Days will take place on Friday and Satur-

day November 4-5, 2016 at the Institute for Social Anthropology, University of Bern. The

Researching Africa Days are held bi-annually alternating with the international thematic

conferences of the Swiss Society for African Studies and are open to all disciplines repre-

senting African Studies. The objective of the meeting is to promote the exchange among

the community of researchers working on Africa in Switzerland. Its goals are to

• present current research projects of MA- and doctoral students, post-docs and

senior scholars;

• enhance the circulation of relevant information between these actors and the re-

spective institutions;

• offer a platform for synergies and collaboration;

• enhance the visibility of African Studies in Switzerland, the universities and re-

search institutions;

• promote the institutionalisation of African Studies.

CALL FOR PANELS

The organizers invite proposals for panels of 90 minutes’ duration. Panel proposals

should include a call for papers for the panel proposed (1/2 page), name, address and

institutional affi liation of the convenor(s). A list of possible participants may be added.

However, panels should be open to submissions of suitable papers. We encourage pan-

els organized by and composed of researchers from different Swiss universities, research

groups and stages of the academic career. Panel proposals should be submitted before

the end of February 2016 to Tobias Haller ([email protected]). The organizers of the

Swiss Researching Africa Days will inform by the end of March 2016 which panels are

accepted and then launch the call for papers.

ÉVÉNEMENTS • VERANSTALTUNGEN • EVENTS

CALL FOR POSTERS

One of our aims is to present on-going or recently fi nished PhD research on a topic

related to Africa at Swiss universities. The organizers invite researchers to submit a scien-

tifi c poster (size A0, vertical orientation) on their PhD research for the Swiss Researching

Africa Days. There will be time slots for the presentation of the posters during the confer-

ence. The posters will also be compiled as an electronic reader to be published on the

website of the Swiss Society for African Studies. Please submit proposals for posters

(pdf) to Veit Arlt ([email protected]). The deadline for submission is June 5, 2016. The

organizing committee will decide on the acceptance of submitted poster proposals and

confi rm by June 30, 2016.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE SSAS/SGAS/SSEA:

The general assembly of the society will be held on Friday evening 4 November 2016.

ORGANISATION:

For the Board of the SSAS/SGAS/SSEA: Didier Péclard, Tobias Haller and Veit Arlt

For the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern: Tobias Haller


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Newsletter 2/2015

Announcement: Commons in a “Glocal” WorldGlobal Connections and Local Responses

BERNE, 10.–13.05.2016

Research on the commons deals either with the development of institutions for the

management of the commons, or with issues related to global change. While the lat-

ter mainly focusses on drivers and effects of global expansion of capitalist modes of

production, consumption, and societal reproduction, research on institutions for the

management of the commons deals with collective action and the effects and reac-

tions within local action arenas. However, the entangled institutional processes through

which global and local arenas – referred to as “glocal” – interlock are not yet addressed

in a systematic way.

Europe has been a major driver of “glocal” processes. Therefore, the 4th Regional Eu-

ropean Meeting of the IASC is devoted to global connections and local responses. It

provides a space to advance our understanding of ongoing “glocal” processes and

to analyse historically how commons in Europe have evolved and adapted to “glocal”

changes. By integrating political ecology with approaches of New Institutionalism and

Critical Theory in Anthropology, Human Geography, Political Science and History, we

propose to investigate the impact of external changes on the perception and evalua-

tion of resources by actors related to the commons. This raises the question of local

bargaining power, ideologies and discourses, and of the selection and crafting of insti-

tutional designs, which in turn affect the access to common-pool resources, as well as

the distribution of benefi ts related to the management of these resources.

Switzerland is a hub for headquarters of transnational companies involved in mining, production,

and trading of commodities, which affect the commons directly and indirectly. (Image: Mopani Cop-

per Mines, Zambia (c) Meinrad Schade).


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Newsletter 2/2015

CONFERENCE THEME

This conference therefore aims to look at the interfaces between local and global pro-

cesses in order to bring together research arenas that have often been kept quite

separate until now. We therefore call for contributions focussing on:

• how global players such as multinational companies and organizations affect

local governance of the commons worldwide

• the role of international law and global trade in shaping the interface between

global actors and institutional processes of local commons governance

• the impacts of external economic and political changes on the perception and

evaluation of resources and areas by actors related to the commons

• local resistance and the development of political strategies countering the trans-

formation of collective into private or state-based property rights as a conse-

quence of economic and political changes

• the local crafting of institutional designs in global and local arenas, and how these

affect access to and distribution of natural resources and related benefi ts among

local to global actors using the commons

• how the encounter of global and local processes affect bargaining power, ideolo-

gies and discourses of global and local actors in governing sustainability trade-

offs.

We especially welcome contributions that aim to address the above mentioned themes

through novel forms of integrating theoretical approaches. In addition, the focus of the

conference will be on a dialogue among representatives of different academic disci-

plines (e.g. geography, social anthropology, history, development studies, economics,

political science, and law) and between academics and non-academic actors (e.g.

practitioners, business representatives, policy makers, or NGOs).

PROPOSED PANEL TOPICS AND SCOPES

We are looking for papers or poster proposals, which refer to the following topics. In

addition, we also consider other thematic issues related to the overall topic but not

mentioned below:

A) Features and effects of global (e.g. European) investments on commons in the world:

• Relevant features and effects of triple crisis (fi nancial, environmental and eco-

nomic) on the contexts and functioning of commons

• Actors, drivers and processes related to investments in land, water, biodiversity

conservation, as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation, and the im-

pact of these investments on internal and/or external dynamics of the commons

• Extractive industries, commodity trade, and their effects on the commons: Policy

coherence of co-existing corporate social responsibility and soft and hard laws at

national and international levels

• Commons, food security and the sustainability of food systems

• Trade regimes and policies and their effects on the governance and socioecologi-

cal outcomes of the commons

• Local responses (resistance, adaptation, transformation) at the interface of na-

tional and global European-based actors

B) Collective action, the commons, and sustainability: What is the role of bottom-up

participatory resource governance (‘constitutionality’) in Switzerland and in other Euro-

pean political systems in common-resource governance:

• “Nature Parks”, protected areas, UNESCO world heritage and biosphere re-

serves in Switzerland, Europe, and beyond, including a historical perspective on

the colonial past of protected areas


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Newsletter 2/2015

• Linking the management of the commons in forests, pastures, water, and wildlife

with the state – in Switzerland, Europe, and beyond

• Institutional change and management of the commons of larger European cul-

tural landscapes (alpine and others) in the context of economic, public policy and

climate change

• Environmentality vs. constitutionality – exploring the underpinnings of European

commons

• Management of “new” resources (e.g. scenery, biodiversity, heritage, products

with Designations of Origin) through common-pool resource institutions and its

limitation

• Governing sustainability trade-offs in “glocal” processes

C) Prospects of the commons – Responses to triple crisis (fi nancial, environmental,

and socio-economic):

• Beyond (capitalist) markets and the state – the politics of commons in the search

for new forms of societal organization

• The “tragedy of private property”: are common property regimes a way out?

• Social movements, emancipation and the commons - tensions, confl icts or com-

plementarities?

• Democracy, deliberation and the multi-layered governance of commons and its

limitations

• Human rights in relation to the commons

• Implications of the global post-2015 sustainable development institutions for

governing the commons in local resource regimes

• The future of the commons in the context of international law, human rights, trade

and investment policies

We especially welcome contributions that aim to address the above mentioned themes

through novel forms of integrating theoretical approaches. In addition, the focus of the

conference will be on a dialogue among representatives of different academic disci-

plines (e.g. geography, social anthropology, history, development studies, economics,

political science, and law) and between academics and non-academic actors (e.g.

practitioners, business representatives, policy makers, or NGOs).

ORGANIZERS:

Institute of Social Anthropology, Centre for Development and Environment and Depart-

ment of Integrative Geography, in collaboration with the Institute of History and the

World Trade Institute, University of Bern.

INFO:

The call for papers will be published on 15 December 2015 via the conference website:

http://conferences.iasc-commons.org/index.php/iasc/IASC_Europe_Bern2016


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Newsletter 2/2015

2nd Basel Summer School in African Studies: Basic and ap-plied research, conceptual and practical problems, refl exiv-ity, translation (Basel, 29.08.-05.09.2015)

JAMES MERRON

The second Basel Summer School in African Studies was attended by 7 doctoral stu-

dents from the Centre for African Studies Basel and 12 external participants mostly

from Africa. It started with an introductory session on Saturday including the presenta-

tion of posters, followed by work in groups over the Sunday (coupled with social activi-

ties), so that when the program started in earnest on Monday morning the group had

bonded and had already developed a great discussion culture resulting in an animated

exchange from the onset. Each day (Monday to Friday) would start with a keynote

address by a senior scholar (Ulf Engel, Jeremy Gould, Daniel Künzler, Elísio Macamo,

Brigit Obrist), which would refl ect the overarching theme:

• Research design: Conceptual problems vs. practical problems

• Policy design: How solutions work in the real world

• Analytical design: Formulating problems

• Practical design: Formulating solutions

• Evaluation design: Checking the relevance of research

In the afternoon the respective themes would be discussed further in workshops or-

ganized by the groups of students. The last day was devoted to Advanced Study

Skills. Originally these were supposed to introduce into negotiating and carrying out

consultancy mandates but had to be changed to poster design.

The Basel Summer School stimulated a new perspective on African Studies through

addressing the prevalent demand that knowledge produced on Africa should be practi-

cally based, solution-oriented, and relevant for development. Scholarship is committed

to ways of knowing, however research on Africa is granted by institutions committed

to the idea that proper research ought to be policy relevant. There is no doubt that

research in general ought to be relevant to ‘what is going on in the world’ by address-

ing the problems affl icting countries and peoples. However, an enduring problem in

knowledge production about Africa has been the question concerning the purposes

which should be served by such knowledge. It has generally been agreed that knowl-

edge produced on Africa has been shaped, on the one hand, by the unequal nature

of relations between Africa and the West and, on the other hand, by critical reactions

that have created room for African voices to question the legitimacy of this knowledge.

Within this historiography there is the general assumption that ‘Africa is a problem to

be solved’, a feature of the Enlightenment view which assumes that one can uncover

and produce knowledge about the world, part of which can improve human wellbeing.

Consequently research done in Africa is about solving a problem – a problem that is

The Basel Summer School had a balanced mix of participants

from Switzerland and Africa. (Image: James Merron 2015).


22

Newsletter 2/2015

often formulated prior to the research project having been carried out. The nature of

the problem is therefore known. Of course, research cannot be accomplished without

a clear understanding of a problem in the world that needs to be addressed. The

challenge however is in recognizing the distinction between conceptual problems and

practical problems. Blurring these distinctions has led in practice to placing demands

on research which cannot be met, often where the research was conceived to address

conceptual problems. Emerging from these discussions were distinctions in the levels

of research that are theoretically, conceptually and methodologically relevant to a criti-

cal refl ection on the challenge of “area studies” in formulating its object of knowledge

and its contribution to general scholarship.

Generally put, practical problems refer to the challenge of fi nding a solution to a known

problem that needs to be addressed, whereas conceptual problems refer to what we

need to know in order to understand a problem. Correlates to this are found in the

distinction between basic and applied research in that the former calls for understand-

ing whereas the latter calls for solutions. Policy recommendations can easily fl ow from

research that addresses practical problems, although it is less clear how they can be

derived from conceptual problems. Where basic research fi nds its relevance to policy

makers is through its application to debates in society, which is an issue of transla-

tion, i.e. rendering something intelligible for other people. The signifi cance of basic

research is therefore in identifying the general in the particular and then translating

from emergent properties of research done in particular areas. This step is in no way

unproblematic and not everyone speaks the same disciplinary language. Knowledge

has to be framed in a way that is understandable to all participating disciplines at one

level, and to the public on another.

Prof. Elísio Macamo, director of the Basel Summer School in African Studies, fi ghting

the assumption that ‘Africa is a problem to be solved’ and directing the participants'

attention to the importance of formulating a problem. (Image: James Merron 2015).

Rendering the world intelligible is done by applying theoretical and conceptual tools.

How do we make sense out of the world by applying the theoretical and conceptual

tools available to us? In terms of translation this is problematic in so far as the dominant


23

Newsletter 2/2015

ways of knowing the world emerged in specifi c historical, sociological, and cultural

contexts. Thus there is no basis to assume that concepts developed in South-West

Germany will, for instance, apply to Sierra Leone, or that the cause for confl ict in the

Central African Republic are the same as in Eritrea or the Balkans. Dealing with this

requires an ‘epistemologically radical social science’ that calls for understanding the

nature of one’s knowledge and the conclusions one draws from that, which may or

may not be policy relevant. Refl exivity is an epistemic space where we come to think

about our thinking. It is a space that accepts not knowing as a fundamental aspect of

humanity. In this sense, knowledge production is about knowing ourselves and know-

ing how we come to know something, an enterprise that focuses on subjectivity as

deeply implicated in producing knowledge.

In this sense there is the call to build bridges across academies to account for the

complexities in our world and the scientifi c worldview that make that world up. Also, it

is about bringing in non-scientifi c stakeholders. This means looking at the knowledge

of ordinary people and those who are dealing practically with the problems that we

address, doing this both to enlarge our understanding and to fi nd out what ‘reality’ is

going on out there in the ‘real world’. What kinds of knowledges do we need? Which

kinds of knowledges can we access? This kind of joint knowledge production has

methodological implications. There are organizations that propose their ‘logical mod-

els’ for this (i.e. The Kellogg foundation), many of these focus on changing people’s

behaviors. However this is not a logical model about what people think about health.

Research should not be dominated by a paradigm. There are thought communities out

there. Socially constructed knowledge comes out of social interaction. To refl ect on that

is the central idea of co-production.

James Merron is a PhD-student at the Centre for African Studies Basel. He earned his

MA from Rhodes University, Grahamstown. Contact: [email protected].

The Summer School was held at the premises of the Centre for African Studies

Basel, which offered a quaint and relaxed setting. (Image: James Merron, 2015).


24

Newsletter 2/2015

Give a Man a Fish. Anthropology Talks with James Fergu-son (Bern, 15.-17.09.2015)

JULIA BÜCHELE AND DENIZ SEEBACHER

The title of James Ferguson’s latest book draws from what he calls “perhaps the

world’s most widely circulated development cliché”: “Give a man a fi sh, and you feed

him for a day. Teach a man to fi sh, and you feed him for a lifetime”. However, against

a widespread assumption that the majority of the world’s (adult) population makes a

living through paid labor, Ferguson argues that full or nearly full employment has never

been the case and remains a capitalist utopia at best. This is true not only for Southern

Africa - from where he draws the empirical basis of his work - but for capitalist countries

in general. To give a man a fi shing-lesson then, will produce an unemployed fi sherman

rather than a person who is able to earn a living. Politicians and policy makers have

come to realize that providing wage labor will not solve the problem of poverty and

fi erce inequality. Thus, they recently turn to other means of inclusion and distribution,

which leads to entirely new perceptions of social categories of who should be entitled

to social welfare. This is what Ferguson terms the “New Politics of Distribution” which

fi rst and foremost decouples work from income but also lays the foundation for new

possibilities of claim making and a sense of entitlement to (national) wealth.

Conceptually, Ferguson calls for a pre-Marxist analogy. In his discussion on “Proletarian

Politics Today” held as an opening public lecture to the newly launched Anthropology

Talks at the University of Bern he argues for the understanding of the proletariat not as

the working class but rather as the class of people without possession, similar to the

political category in ancient Rome. Ferguson argues that this understanding is more

adequate to the context of contemporary South Africa where millions cannot even dare

to hope for employment and need to fi nd alternative ways to make a livelihood – a class

of people who would constitute the Lumpenproletariat in Marxist terms.

The man in the title of the book is meant

quite literally as it is the “young, abled-

bodied men” who are believed to participate

in wage labor in order to provide for them-

selves and their families. Ferguson argues

that the benefi ciaries of social welfare were

long thought to be only those who could

not participate in wage labor: the mothers

and children, the elderly and sick, or the

unemployed. However, with masses of un-

employed (young) men who form a social

underclass or “surplus labor force” and for

whom all hopes to be included in the ever

less labor demanding economy, new ways

of inclusion into national welfare systems are

being discussed and experimented with.

“Give a Man a Fish” thus suggests to look at inequality within the nation-state, but

mostly ignores the larger context of historically grown global inequalities, which allow

certain states to have stronger middle classes while other countries (or tax free zones

within countries) serve as hubs for cheap labor in the global market system. This places

the argument of the book fi rmly within a methodological nationalism and fails to address

issues of interstate redistribution and national belonging as one of the main causes of

discrimination.

Ferguson celebrates the idea of Basic Income Grants (BIG), but certain issues are left

utterly unclear. One issue is the purpose of such grants: “what a BIG should be able

to provide” he said during the afternoon workshop in Bern on September 16, “is a

question which needs to be addressed empirically”. While the book sets out to discuss


25

Newsletter 2/2015

the “possibilities and dangers” of BIG, its implications can at this point only be specula-

tive. The idea to “hand money to the poor” does not at all touch on the question of

how work is or should be distributed. How would work (productive and reproductive,

administrative and distributive) be organized within a system of unconditional mon-

etary distribution? While it is high time to point out how men have been excluded from

welfare grants up to now, it is crucial to be reminded that mostly women have been

conducting unpaid (reproductive and care) work. What implications do BIG have on a

gender-related division of labor?

Moreover, the attempt to provide a policy relevant book as well as a “diagnosis” of

current distributive policies leads to some major shortcomings in terms of its scientifi c

basis. One is the conceptual and theoretical framework as well as the methodologi-

cal approach, which for the most part remains vague and thus seems to be rather a

popular political argument. Ferguson draws from his earlier work, but gives hardly any

evidence for the fi ndings he presents in his book. The data and literature the book

draws on seem anecdotal and historical accounts remain unsystematic.

The book can be seen as a trendy example for how social scientists are concerned

with current social and political issues. From a scientifi c perspective however, Ferguson

seems to have written his book less as a scientifi c contribution but rather in an attempt

to spur a (political) discussion. Despite such good intentions, this does not exempt

scholars to bind to some fundamental standards of conceptual clarity and methodo-

logical transparency. If these standards are not provided we need to read this book as

an opinion piece - a well documented opinion piece – which might steer interesting

questions for academic and policy developers alike.

Some of these issues were addressed during the fi rst Anthropology Talks held in Bern

from 15 to 17 September 2015, which provide an annual platform for discussing the

latest work of important scholars in the fi eld of Social and Cultural Anthropology. In the

fi rst talk, James Ferguson was invited to discuss his latest book and its implications

outside Africa. As Switzerland will bring the “unconditional basic income” to the election

poles next year, the “possibilities and dangers” of “basic income grants” implemented

in South Africa, Namibia or Brazil serve as timely templates to discuss such policies

for Switzerland and other European countries to try and see what the North can learn

from the South.

FERGUSON, JAMES. GIVE A MAN A FISH. REFLECTIONS ON THE NEW POLITICS

OF DISTRIBUTION. DURHAM 2015 (DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS).

Deniz Seebacher is DOC-team fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and PhD

student at the Social & Cultural Anthropology Department at the University of Vienna.

She is working on business-society relationships, and currently conducting her PhD

research in Turkey. She is co-founder of MINDset, an NGO dedicated to promote inter-

cultural understanding. Contact: [email protected].

Julia Büchele is PhD student at the Centre for African Studies Basel. She studied

Social Anthropology and Sociology in Vienna, Basel and Lucerne and is writing her PhD

on expatriates (accompanying spouses) in Kampala, Uganda. Currently she is a visiting

scholar at the African American and African Studies Department at Harvard University.

Contact: [email protected].


26

Newsletter 2/2015

Report: Streams of Groundwater and Streams of Con-sciousness: Bridging Natural and Social Sciences.SGAS Conference “Researching African Environments” in Cooperation with SAGUF (Berne, 23.10.2015)

TIBOR RECHSTEINER

The SGAS thematic conference “Participatory and Integrative Approaches in Re-

searching African Environments – Opportunities, Challenges, Actualities in Natural and

Social Sciences” was organized in cooperation with SAGUF, the Swiss Academic So-

ciety for Environmental Research and Ecology. It provided a platform for exchanging

ideas, in which participants from both strands showed much receptiveness to the

views of the other.

The introduction by Tobias Haller (SGAS) and Claudia Zingerli (SAGUF) was followed

by a very compelling speech by Daniel Brockington, a human geographer, who recent-

ly moved from Manchester to leading his own department at the University of Sheffi eld.

Brockington scrutinized statistics and fi gures and demonstrated how absurd they

sometimes are, particularly against the background of the Sustainable Development

Goals that pose new challenges when it comes to data use. To give an example: In

a survey on paddy (wet rice) farmers conducted by the University of Wageningen in

Tanzania, only 109 out of a total of 490 paddy farmers stated that they were irrigating

their fi elds, even though paddy growth per defi nition includes fl ooding the fi eld with

water and keeping it immersed during large stages of the growing process. The survey

showed even more absurd results when farmers were asked about growing irrigated

rice paddies: only 19 agreed.

Brockington showed why the use of GDP makes little sense in many African coun-

tries, given the presence of a large informal economy. In government surveys measur-

ing economic productivity, people often indicate lower consumption rates, hoping to

receive fi nancial support. Here he referred to Morten Jerven's book Poor Numbers

(2013). Instead he pleaded for using the concept of emotional wellbeing. Improve-

ments can be made in the exploration between assets and consumption by the use of

mobile phone, social media and new panel data.

Cyrus Samini from the Climatology Department of the University of Bayreuth followed

a similar direction and presented on the opportunities and, above all, limitations of

Remote Sensing data for ecological studies. He compared the information that differ-

ent standard Geographic Information System (GIS) products offer of large areas that

sometimes are completely contradictory. For instance when calculating rainfall trends,

two different geodata sets offer diametric results. In the African context, models are

often insuffi ciently calibrated to locally collected data and hence not validated. Never-

theless such geodata is widely used for instance by Germany’s GIZ and USAID. Samini

described a “rush for new data” – in order to get published there is an urge to use the

latest geodata, even if it does not necessarily provide useful information. In response he

called for a participatory cross-checking of geodata on the ground. This participation in

data-collection was a wish shared by participants accross the disciplines.

Brice Prudat, from the University of Basel, then held a presentation about land use

change in Namibia, where land reform is seen as a solution to the overuse of pastures

and their misallocation. He tried to examine whether the narrative of “the land is full” is

an indicator of actual land scarcity or if particular interests drive it. Often land scarcity

and land right reforms are simplifi ed into a one-problem-asking-for-one-solution, with

low consideration of the needs and means of a village’s population, for which social

analysis of local narratives is necessary.

The last presentation of the morning session was held by Christian Andres developing

a holistic approach at the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture in Frick FiBL and at


27

Newsletter 2/2015

ETH Zürich to reduce the spread and impact of cocoa swollen shoot virus in Ghana.

Even though many cocoa trees have been cut down, the spread of the virus could not be

stopped so far. The aim of the project was to increase awareness amongst farmers about

how to reduce the virus. A successful method to halt the spread of the virus was to plant

citrus tree barriers, which resulted in complete reduction of the virus within 10 years. The

speaker highlighted in great detail the different variables in cocoa growth that need to be

considered when promoting such methods: For example it is important to consider that

differences in production systems that can range from agroforestry to monoculture. The

research showed that in large connected areas of plantations the virus had spread much

more easily compared to regions where cocoa growing areas are more scattered. This

proves that the spread of the virus could actually be stopped geographically separating

growth systems. However this comes at the price of losing plantation area. Nevertheless,

promising methods to stop the spread of the virus have been found.

Delwendé Kiba from ETH Zürich took the culinarily satisfi ed listeners from Ghana’s

cocoa region further to West Africas’ yam belt in Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso. Yam

is an important food crop and source of income for many smallholding farmer families.

According to Kiba, often less than 20% of possible yields are achieved, whereby the

pressure on land increases as more area is used. Unlike his colleague Andres from

FiBL, Kiba promoted the use of fertilizer in order to reduce soil erosion. The method

was tested on four different sites and used multi- and transdisciplinary approaches:

agronomists, soil scientists, sociologists and economists were involved. Remarkably,

ten master students visited the farmers and spend two weeks each on every site in or-

der to learn more about the farmers’ perspectives in an informal and unobstructive way.

A little premiere was the short skype lecture streamed directly from the University of

Nottingham, UK, featuring Mike Clifford and his colleague Charlotte Ray. Keeping the

time limit of the speech was then cared for by using equally innovative techniques

of holding a little piece of paper in front of the camera saying “2 minutes left”. Even

though improved stoves have been promoted since the 1940s, uptake rates were often

disappointing due to rather technocratic approaches of promoting the technology. The

scholars from Nottingham therefore tried to go to back to the basics and tested the

stoves themselves at the university with students. Rather wittingly, Clifford told about

how in one example a stove was not appreciated in India because of its yellow colour.

In another instance, Kenyan women suddenly stopped cooking when Clifford observed

that the stoves worked “magically.”

After attention had moved back from Nottingham to Bern, Gabriele Slezak from the

University of Vienna took the fl oor and related her experiences in a transdisciplinary

research project on fi sh as a negotiated sustainable food and water resource in Burkina

Faso. Aiming to reduce water scarcity in the 1950s, approximately 1400 reservoirs

were constructed throughout the country. These have become biotopes for fi sh but

are under threat to dry up or fi ll up with sediments. This has lead to the insight that it

is necessary to systematically analyse fi sh stock in specifi c and aquatic biospheres in

general. Gabriele Slezak strongly emphasised the importance of time in order to enable

fruitful discussions and new trains of thought. Even though this might sound simplistic,

it is all too often forgotten and it is probably good to be reminded of it from time to time.

The last lecture took a rather unexpected turn when Shuichi Oyama made people listen

up again. The Africanist from Kyoto University stopped over in Bern on his way from

Japan to Ethiopia. He promoted making use of a combination of plastic waste and ma-

nure spread around fi elds by Haussa farmers in Niger in order to reduce soil erosion and

increase fertility. He suggested an amount of 20 kg/m2, which he had proven to be rather

effective in his study. He defi nitely did break Western paradigms and took up a practice of

the Haussa farmers, whom he had regularly visited for years. The questions of what hap-

pened to Fula herder’s cattle swallowing the waste on the fi elds or whether the soil would

not be poisoned remained unanswered and hanging somewhere in the atmosphere of

the room a bit short of oxygen after a long afternoon of interesting presentations.


28

Newsletter 2/2015

In the panel discussion, it was agreed that humility is needed when exchanging with

people from different disciplines. This was certainly the case during the conference, in

which all participants were rather open to the knowledge of scientists from other disci-

plines. Equally important is enough time both for understanding complex relationships

in the fi eld and trying to understand each other’s disciplines. It was remarked that if as

a natural scientists one mixes social and natural sciences, it can be “quite hard to fi nd a

job” and that how one frames information is key in order to achieve credibility. To prick

a needle into the bubble of academic discourse, I would like to quote one conference

attendee, a former Georgian NGO-worker, who said that while she had worked in the

fi eld in Georgia, they “were never invited to think too much” and were kept out of the

planning processes of the international NGO.

The areas of overlap between natural, namely environmental, and the social sciences

continuously gains importance, not limited to, but in particular in the context of unstable

national states, fi nancial insecurity and more or less direct dependence on ecosystems

and the two essential resources soil and water for livelihoods. Environmental issues can

no longer be tackled without considering the social circumstances in which they occur

in the Age of Anthropocene, when humanity has become an environmental force. Ques-

tions of scale, whether temporal or spatial, should never be neglected in order to achieve

accuracy. A core idea that emanated from the discussions was a change in perspective

in data collection by furthering the dialogue across disciplinary borders and systemati-

cally integrating the emic view of the societies and people in the fi eld in the process.

Tibor Rechsteiner earned his BSc in International Land and Water Management at

the University of Wageningen, NL and is now enrolled in the Master programme in Afri-

can Studies at the University of Basel. Contact: [email protected].

Report: Africa Days 2015 – 2nd Ethio-Czech Conference on Africa (Pilsen, 15.-16.10.2015)

MONIKA BAUMANOVA AND JAN ZÁHOŘÍK

The conference represents an important stepping-stone in the cooperation of the

Czech Centre for African Studies based at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen,

where the conference was organized, and the Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. It

was also a continuation of a series of previous meetings and an exhibition (20th century

Revisited: Relations between former Czechoslovakia and Ethiopia) that had been on

show from October 1st to November 30th at the Ethnographic Museum of Addis Aba-

ba University, Ethiopia. Africa Days 2015 (2nd Ethio-Czech Conference on Africa) was

the fourth event of its kind organized or co-organized by the Centre of African Studies

in Pilsen since 2013. Last year, the 1st Central European African Studies Conference

was hosted in Pilsen, and later that year, the 1st Ethio-Czech Conference on Africa

was co-organized by Jimma University (Ethiopia) and the University of West Bohemia

iin Pilsen (Czech Republic).

The Africa Days have developed into an important networking opportunity for research-

ers from Africa and/or working on Africanist issues, predominantly connected to East

Africa. This year it was attended by historians, sociologists, political scientists, anthro-

pologists and archaeologists from several institutions including Kisii University, Kenya,

Addis Ababa University and Jimma University, Ethiopia, and a number of European

universities.

The meeting was opened with a keynote lecture given by Ahmed Hassen Omer, head of

the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at the Addis Ababa University on Research at the Insti-

tute of Ethiopian Studies: Experiences of six decades, 1963-2015. The presenter gave

an overview of how the Institute has evolved into its present day form of an outward


29

Newsletter 2/2015

oriented centre that attracts international attention and conducts research relevant for

the future development of the Ethiopian society.

The fi rst panel incorporated three papers that considered socio-economic factors, gen-

der issues and geopolitics as the driving forces of social change in Africa, drawing on

examples from across the continent. While Judit Bagi (University of Pecs) adopted a

practical approach to gender mainstreaming strategies in Rwanda, Alemayehu Kumsa

(Charles University, Prague) explained how we could understand socio-economic fac-

tors as a driving force for the Boko Haram war against the Nigerian State. The presenta-

tion of Maurice Amutabi (Kisii University) offered a broad perspective that encompassed

globalization trends in West and East Africa and discussed Geopolitics and resource

exploitation in Africa.

The following panel targeted developments in Ethiopia. Jean-Nicolas Bach (Sciences

Po Bordeaux) refl ected on the 2015 Ethiopian election and the Ethiopian right wing,

presenting a fresh perspective on the underlying political issues now predetermining the

future of the country. Alexander Meckelburg (University of Hamburg) opened a theme

that has enjoyed a renewed attention in the recent decade, speaking on slavery and

the slave trade in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. He highlighted the fragmented nature

of research to date and the need for telling more integrative histories of slavery in this

part of Africa.

The last panel of the fi rst day of the conference brought together the underlying causali-

ties between political and social developments as they are refl ected in the practical as-

pects of state-building and power struggle in East Africa. Hohetemisrak Samuel (Addis

Ababa University) chose case studies from Kenya and Zimbabwe in his paper on power

sharing as a resolution to post-election violence. Aleksi Ylönen (University Institute of

Lisbon) refl ected on the domino effect that went hand in hand with separatism following

international recognition in the Horn of Africa. Finally, Dejene Gemechu (Jimma Univer-

sity) opened up the popular topic of gift-giving in social sciences, examining how it is

played out in the fi eld of indigenous diplomacy in Borana-Arbore in Ethiopia.

The second day of the conference was launched by a panel that discussed some of the

most pressing issues in political and social management of education, health and foreign

affairs in East and South Africa in the context of a rapidly globalizing world. Anakalo

Shitandi (Kisii University) linked research to teaching in his scrutiny of the dilemma of

young universities in Kenya. Jiří Preis (University of West Bohemia), who brought forward

examples of Uganda and Botswana, presented an overview of HIV/AIDS in Subsaharan

Audience of the introductory panel to the Africa Days 2015 (image: Monika Baumanova, 2015).


30

Newsletter 2/2015

Africa in the second decade of the 21st century. Alfred Kramer then looked at South

Africa in his paper on South-South cooperation in the post-apartheid foreign policy.

The last panel of the conference incorporated multi-disciplinary perspectives on a range

of issues relevant to present-day developments in Africa, including archaeological in-

terpretations of pre-colonial architectural heritage, historical examinations of Victorian

perspectives on Africa, as well as the long tradition and relevance of Ethiopian studies.

Monika Baumanova (Centre for African Studies Basel) and Ladislav Šmejda (University

of West Bohemia) contributed a paper on Stone mortuary architecture in Swahili towns,

highlighting the relevance of material artefacts, among which stone architecture can be

counted, for construction of identities and making claims of social power. Hanna Ru-

binkowska (University of Warsaw) presented her study on Stefan Strelcyn and the Haile

Sellasie I Prize as an example of the Emperor’s policy towards Ethiopian Studies. The

conference closed with the historical study of Professor Ivo Budil (University of West

Bohemia) on William Winwood Reade and the Victorian vision of Africa.

One of the main goals of this kind of conference is strengthening research networks

and creating new ones. Addis Ababa University and Jimma University in Ethiopia are

crucial partners for the Centre of African Studies in Pilsen. In Jimma, a joint Centre

of African Studies was opened this year (by Jimma University and the University of

West Bohemia). However, new partner institutions, such as Kisii University in Kenya

or the University of Ibadan in Nigeria represent prospective future partner institutions

for research, student and staff exchange as well as joint meetings, conferences, and

programs.

Monika Baumanova is a member of the Czech African Studies network and is cur-

rently a Marie Curie Global Individual Fellow at the Centre for African Studies Basel

and the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Uppsala.

Monika did her undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University College Lon-

don, UK, where she specialised in African Archaeology and undertook fi eldwork in

East Africa. In 2012, she earned her PhD in Archaeology from the University of West

Bohemia, Czech Republic. From 2011 to 2014 she co-managed an international re-

search project there, during which she focused on Swahili towns. Contact: monika.

[email protected].

Jan Záhořík is the President of and assistant professor at the Centre of African Stud-

ies, University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic. He earned his PhD in African

Studies at the Charles University in Prague having trained in Cultural Anthropology at

the University of West Bohemia. His research focuses on socio-political development

of contemporary Ethiopia, the modern history of Ethiopia, and confl icts in Sub-Saharan

Africa. Contact: [email protected].


31

Newsletter 2/2015

Report: 1st School of Languages Conference, SOLCON 1, at the University of Ghana, Legon (Accra, 27.-29.10.2015)

NATALIE TARR

In Switzerland, no tertiary institution has systematically offered courses in African lan-

guages and linguistics since Thomas Bearth's retirement from the University of Zurich

in 2004. Courses on African literatures have been offered at Basel and Lausanne uni-

versities. The new MA specialization "Études africaines: textes et terrains" offered within

the faculty of arts at the University of Lausanne from February 2016, will at least partially

fi ll the gap. Nevertheless, academia in Switzerland continues to sadly neglect research

on African languages. As a young Swiss scholar in African Studies with a particular

interest in anthropology and language, I was thus drawn to this fi rst conference of the

School of Languages of the University of Ghana and the Central University College,

Accra, which was held at the beautiful Legon university campus.

Scholars from all over Africa as well as Europe and the United States could visit 27

different panels dedicated to linguistics, literary studies, sociolinguistics, and gender

or communication studies. The theme of the conference was “Multilingualism in the

African Context: Resource or Challenge?” – a topic of ongoing relevance also to Swiss

scholarship. Less than two weeks prior to this conference, a workshop discussing

the challenges of multilingualism in the Swiss administration had taken place at the

University of Basel. This workshop, too, could easily have been sub-titled "resource or

challenge". In Legon, the overarching topic was a resumption of the debate on insti-

tutionalizing an adequate language of education for Ghana. In Switzerland the closely

related discussion on which second language to learn fi rst is currently provoking heated

debates across linguistic borders.

MULTILINGUALISM AS RESOURCE

The opening ceremony consisted of the usual ritualized greetings, in which the organ-

izers welcomed participants warmly and which was accompanied by two shows. The

fi rst performance of Lwanga Songsore and Nana Aba Eduam, students of the Depart-

ment of Performing Arts at the University of Ghana, featured a stylized verbal debate

and was accompanied by a female drummer. In the second skit, poet Nana Asaase

relied on his voice and wit to entertain and stimulate the audience. With their thought

provoking performances the artists set the tone for Tope Omoniyi's (Roehampton Uni-

versity, UK) captivating keynote address on “Multilingual Resourcing: Enhancing the

Macro and Micro Dimensions of Africa's Multilingualism”. Omoniyi had been invited to

Legon as visiting scholar and is also Carnegie Diaspora Professor.

The conference participants. (Image: School of Languages, Universtiy of Ghana, Legon 2015).


32

Newsletter 2/2015

The audience was witness to Omoniyi's rich experience as a sociolinguist. In response

to the question contained in the conference theme, he advocated that multilingualism

be seen and treated as a resource, the challenge being what is done with this resource.

He reminded his audience of the long-term effects the so-called scramble for Africa

continues to have on language planning, policy and particularly on speakers' language

use throughout the continent. New research has produced convincing data, showing

how the arbitrary carving up of the African continent by the European powers in 1884,

has had more devastating effects in terms of ongoing or repeated confl icts and civil

wars on groups divided among different national states than on groups not distributed

over different countries.

Language planning, on the other hand, can (and should) start in the family. Omoniyi

illustrated his point with excerpts from an interview. Here, a mother explained how she

successfully managed to raise her children with three languages, combining persever-

ance with stamina in allowing her children a total immersion experience, adding French

when it became relevant for the children's schooling. This seemed almost to good to be

true and reminded me of my own research and my hard-won insight that statements ut-

tered by people need always be taken with a grain of salt. Omoniyi went on to mention

that the notion of family language planning (FLP) has now entered academic discourse,

citing publications relevant to his own research, and how we need to reengage with

mother tongues – academically, politically and personally.

This was a point taken up again in the podium discussion “Language of Education

in Ghana: Is the Mother Tongue Still Relevant?” held on the evening of the second

day. Here, experts from academia, including Tope Omoniyi and Felix Ameka (Leiden

University, Netherlands), engaged in a lively discussion with a representative from the

Ministry of Education, members of civil society and teachers. Next to Omoniyi's views,

Felix Ameka's opinion as an academic was particularly welcome since he has published

extensively on the use of African languages at home and in education. He himself would

not use the term “mother tongue”, Ameka told me, holding researchers making use of

the term responsible for putting words in the mouth of their interlocutors. Unfortunately

time always seemed too short to engage in in-depth discussions during the tightly or-

ganized conference. The concept of mother tongue has been dismantled by research-

ers in anthropology and linguistics at least since the early 2000s, leaving space for new

and more pertinent ideas, so a continued debate with Ameka could have been quite

revealing. During the colloquium on mother tongue education, Ameka also poignantly

observed that the form of a language spoken at home and the form of this language

taught in school are not the same. Reality in Ghana is, he went on, the institutionaliza-

tion of a serial monolingual policy. Overall, the panelists agreed that more collaboration

was needed between policy makers, civil society and experts on language – particularly

when designing language policies.

ENGLISH AS AN AFRICAN LANGUAGE

Another point that was brought up repeatedly in presentations and especially during

discussions throughout the conference, was the notion of English as an African lan-

guage. Omoniyi had remarked in his keynote address that the many languages present

on the African continent are a sub-regional identity marker and as such can give the

recurrent idea of pan-Africanism a new momentum/impetus through the notion of one

multilingual continent. English, in his view, is an African language – a topic, which elic-

ited highly emotional discussions among the conference participants.

The three parallel panels concluding the fi rst morning session dealt with “Language

Policy,” “Morpho-Syntax” and “Sociolinguistics,” respectively. These panels hosting

four presentations each triggered lively debates and comments.

One presenter, while not necessarily designating English as an African language, nev-

ertheless found that colonialism had furnished Africans with linguae francae. These

should now be used throughout the continent, not only to connect to an international

community, but also to help Africans overcome linguistic challenges at home, said


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Newsletter 2/2015

Alfred B. Cudjoe (University of Ghana) in his presentation on “Adoption of European

Languages by Africans: Dealing with Challenges Involved”. In this panel on language

policy, researchers from Ghana's University of Education in Winneba, from the Nor-

wegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim and from Aston

University, Birmingham in the UK, joined their colleague from the University of Ghana

in varied discussions on fi nding an adequate language of education for Ghana. One

noteworthy remark was made during discussion time: "People tell me how good my

English is, but nobody tells me I speak good Akan" – a comment getting to the heart of

attitudes involved in the which-language-for-which-domain debate.

After a short lunch break spent eating and discussing, four panels were held, one of

which continued with presentations on language policy. Another panel, entitled “Prag-

matics/Discourse Analysis,” was host to a refreshingly professional talk on transport lit-

erature in Nigeria by Hassan Alhaji Ya'u (University of Kano, Nigeria). The study's author

described how religious messages on transport vehicles allowed drivers to construct

religious identity, seek divine protection and success. This presentation was followed

by a linguistic study, “The Pragmatics of tiri, "Head", metaphorical expressions in Akan”

by Kofi Agyekum (University of Ghana). The title might elicit the conclusion that this is a

rather dry topic, but the brilliant and entertaining presenter had his audience captivated

and laughing repeatedly, also people not close to linguistic analysis.

CODE SWITCHING

On the second day, presentations started with four parallel panels, one of which was

dedicated to code-switching. Here the contributions covered a wide range of topics

– and an equally wide range of scholarship. The passionate presentation by Omolara

Iyabode Daniel (National Open University, Nigeria and University of Ghana) on “Nige-

rians' Utilisation of Code-mixing as a Communicative Device” elicited varied opinions

on the use of language as a tool for identity construction. In his contribution to the

discussion, Tope Omoniyi, who has published on code-switching and who was in the

audience, asked participants to re-think linguistic defi nitions, methodology and theory

in the translanguaging vs. code-switching debate. One theory need not fi t all, he stated,

pleading for a renewed engagement with the concept of code-switching.

The third and last day of this well organized conference began with a plenary session

and a talk by Samuel Gyasi Obeng (Indiana University, USA) on “Grammatical Prag-

matics: On the Contributions Made by Akan to Ghanaian English Political and Social

Interaction with Particular Reference to 'Dumsor'”, an acutely relevant topic since Gha-

naian president Mahama had been nicknamed Dumsor. Dumsor stands for “light off”

(dum) – “light on” (sor) in Akan, a term coined in reaction to the continuing energy crisis

with its constant power cuts. Obeng has sighted social media for references to dumsor

and has come up with an impressive and amusing corpus of data. Serious academic

research in linguistics can be much fun!

As at any conference there are many intriguing, relevant, interesting presentations nec-

essarily left unattended because one obviously cannot attend two or three panels at the

same time. A pity, really, but the energy such events stimulate and the insights gained,

connections made and the people one meets are reason enough to attend such inter-

national gatherings time and again. The lack of conferences pertaining specifi cally to

research on African languages in Switzerland makes such academic get-togethers all

the more pertinent for us.

Natalie Tarr is currently conducting research for a PhD thesis at the Center for African

Studies, University of Basel, on the role of the court-interpreter in Burkina Faso. She

will also teach a course related to African languages during the spring semester at the

University of Basel. Contact: [email protected].


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Newsletter 2/2015

Rencontre avec In Koli Jean Bofane – « écrivain belge aux ori-gines et à la rationalité congolaises » (Bâle, 28.-29.04.2015)

FRANZISKA BLASER

Ce printemps, lors de son passage au salon du livre à Genève, l’écrivain In Koli Jean

Bofane a été invité au Literaturhaus Basel pour une soirée de lecture dédiée à son

premier roman, « Mathématiques congolaises » (Actes Sud, 2008), animée par Regula

Renschler. Le lendemain, lors d’un atelier de travail et de traduction organisé par les

Etudes françaises et les Etudes africaines de l’Université de Bâle, Jean Bofane a retra-

cé son parcours d’écrivain avant l’intervention de sa traductrice Katja Meintel sur les

défi s que pose la traduction de « Congo Inc. » (Actes Sud, 2014). Ces manifestations

ont eu lieu dans le cadre du séminaire « Voix contemporaines de la littérature africaine

», proposé au semestre de printemps 2015 par Isabelle Chariatte, chargée de cours

de littérature francophone à l’Université de Bâle. Le compte rendu qui suit est le fruit

du travail des étudiants.

Jean Bofane est un véritable citoyen des deux mondes : né en 1954 au Congo (RDC)

à Mbandaka, là où l’équateur croise le fl euve Congo, il revendique la prise de parole

pour analyser son pays natal. L'autre monde - l'Europe et surtout la Belgique - consti-

tue un refuge lors des troubles politiques au Congo. La famille Bofane fuit le pays une

première fois dans les années 60 pour la Belgique. Après ses études de publicitaire en

Europe, Jean Bofane retourne dans les années 80 au Congo. Suite aux graves pillages

perpétrés par l'armée congolaise dans les années 90, il quitte à nouveau son pays pour

la Belgique, où il réside actuellement.

Lors de l’atelier avec les étudiants, Jean Bofane relate, avec un grand talent de conteur,

ses premiers contacts avec la littérature. Afi n de chasser, la nuit, la peur pendant les

troubles au Congo, son père lui lit les contes des Mille et une nuits. Tout comme Shé-

hérazade qui essaie d’échapper à la mort, l'enfant Bofane échappe à ses angoisses à

travers la lecture de ces contes. Dans la bibliothèque de ses parents, il découvre plus

tard les œuvres d'Emile Zola, qu’il prend pour un écrivain congolais, car aussi bien Zola

que Nana sont des noms congolais !

Le moment déclencheur qui pousse Jean Bofane à prendre la plume est le génocide au

Rwanda en 1994. Selon lui, les Africains doivent enfi n dénoncer le mal du continent. Il

suit en cela la coutume de son peuple dont la première juridiction est la parole donnée

à tout le monde. L'écriture sert d'arme contre les traumatismes. Face au mouvement

djihadiste Boko Haram au Nigéria, dont le nom signifi e « le livre interdit », Jean Bofane

rétorque à ce groupe méprisant la plume : « J'écris ».

Dans l’atelier de traduction animé par Katja Meintel, les participants sont invités à trouver

le bon mot pour la traduction en cours de « Congo Inc. ». L'allocution « Vieux », signe de

respect au Congo, constitue une pierre d'achoppement, car le terme allemand « Alter »

implique un manque de respect. Un autre exemple illustre le travail astucieux de l'auteur

sur la langue : les enfants vendant de l'eau dans les rues de Kinshasa crient « eau pure

», mais prononcent « eau pire ». Comment traduire ce jeu de mots en allemand ? Enfi n,

grâce à la présence de l'écrivain, celui-ci approuve la proposition de Meintel de traduire

« une grande part de » par « ein Löwenanteil », à forte connotation africaine.

Cet atelier a été un véritable trésor pour tous les participants, mais surtout pour les

étudiants en littérature française. En effet, les moments sont rares où le lecteur croise

l'auteur ainsi que sa complice, la traductrice. Lors de cette rencontre, les lecteurs ont

perçu ce qui se passe derrière les coulisses et les verbes « écrire » et « traduire » sont

désormais chargés d'un surplus de sens.

Franziska Blaser est étudiante BA de français à l’Université de Bâle. Contact : fran-

[email protected].


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Newsletter 2/2015

Compte rendu : Mathématiques congolaises (Jean Bofane)

ISABELLE CHARIATTE

« Mathématiques congolaises » scrute les mécanismes du pouvoir en RDC en les

situant dans le microcosme trépidant de la ville de Kinshasa. In Koli Jean Bofane en

dépeint les univers les plus divers, comme la Limete, quartier huppé de la capitale

avec ses villas décorées de toiles de peintres congolais contemporains (Chéri Samba,

Moseka Yogo Ambake), comme la vie nocturne des bars où l’on danse au rythme de

la rumba congolaise, ou l’ambiance feutrée et raffi née de l’Hôtel Intercontinental où

déambulent les politiciens les plus corrompus. Aux antipodes de ce monde luxueux

et peuplé d’intérêts se dessine la hutte misérable du féticheur, tout comme le quartier

populaire de la Gombe avec ses ligablos (petits étalages de commerce, forum politique

et cabinet de psychanalyse !) ou « Le Maquis », hangar où résident, séparés par des

parois de carton, ceux qui subissent l’emprise du « python à deux têtes », métaphore

récurrente de la Faim. Sur ce tableau riche et contrasté de la capitale de la RDC, le des-

tin du génie Célio Matemona, alias « Célio Mathématik », se mêle avec celui de Gon-

zague Tshilombo, directeur général du « bureau Information et Plans » dépendant de

la présidence de la République. Indirectement, il se mêle aussi avec celui de Makanda

Rachidi du parti de l’opposition.

Orphelin de guerre, Célio garde comme seul souvenir de son père un manuel de

mathématiques. Plus qu’un souvenir, ce manuel devient sa raison de vivre, car Célio

intègre et transpose les algorithmes à la vie pour en expliquer le fonctionnement. Grâce

à sa vision du monde, Célio est recruté par Tshilombo au « bureau Information et Plans

» où son travail consiste à manipuler des informations afi n d’agir sur les événements.

Passionné par ces mécanismes, il transpose le fonctionnement d’algorithmes à la vie

Jean Bofane. (Image: PEN Vlaanderen 2013).


36

Newsletter 2/2015

politique et participe ainsi activement au dysfonctionnement du pays : manipulation de

l’opinion publique en faveur du président, mise en scène d’une opération de déstabili-

sation du pays par la France qui sert à rehausser au niveau international l’image ternie

par le manque de démocratie et qui permet d’obtenir des millions de dollars des Amé-

ricains, enfi n simulation d’un coup d’Etat fabriquée avec son et images et passée en

direct à la télévision dans le but d’anéantir l’opposition, non pour des motifs politiques,

mais de rancune personnelle !

Avec une plume trempée dans l’ironie et l’humour, In Koli Jean Bofane retrace une cri-

tique directe du dysfonctionnement politique de la RDC, sans manquer d’y incorporer

une multitude de micro-épisodes de la vie quotidienne qui dépeignent les espoirs, les

pensées, les sentiments et les frustrations de tout un chacun. Ancien enfant-soldat,

l’adjudant Bamba, au regard implacable et terrifi ant, en a assez de tuer et il consulte

le sorcier Mbuta Luidi dans le but d’obtenir un poste tranquille près de sa famille, loin

de Kinshasa, affaire qui prendra toutefois un tour inattendu. Odia Tshilombo, épouse

avide de richesses, compense les frustrations de sa vie de couple en se lançant dans le

commerce à Oman avec l’arabe Zouher que le jaloux Tshilombo trouve trop charmant.

Autour de son ligablo, Vieux Isemanga ne perd pas une occasion pour rappeler les

rapports de force entre Noirs et Blancs au moment du colonialisme. Makanda Rachidi,

celui qui se croit être un fauve, apparaît ridicule ne sachant gérer sa sexualité avec une

jeune étudiante. Les conversations avec le père Lolos font comprendre à Célio la res-

ponsabilité de chacun dans la construction de la société et, en particulier, de sa propre

responsabilité dans son travail au « bureau Information et Plans ». Après avoir compris

les intérêts sournois de Tshilombo, dont le sombre passé est lié à des meurtres de psy-

chopathe, Célio prend la décision de suivre la voix de sa conscience, quitte à renoncer

au bel emploi qui lui payait appartement de luxe et chauffeur.

Avec « Mathématiques congolaises », le lecteur européen, habitué aux seules images

de misère et de violence en RDC, est profondément sensibilisé à une réalité bien plus

complexe que celle projetée par les médias. Il en hume la fraîcheur, il comprend mieux

les mécanismes intéressés et corrompus de sa politique, mais il perçoit aussi les joies

et les déceptions de la vie de chacun – qu’il soit Kinois ou non, il suit des réfl exions

nouvelles sur le monde, portées enfi n par l’espoir d’un changement auquel tout un

chacun peut participer et se doit de le faire.

Mathématiques congolaises (prix Jean-Muno

2008, prix de la SCAM 2009, grand prix littéraire

d’Afrique noire de l’ADELF 2009) a été publié

par Actes Sud en 2008. Le roman a été tra-

duit entre autres en allemand par Katja Meintel

(Sinusbögen überm Kongo. Horlemann 2013).

Isabelle Chariatte est chargée de cours en

littérature francophone à l'Université de Bâle.

Contact : [email protected].


37

Newsletter 2/2015

Discussion avec Jean Bofane à propos de « Mathématiques congolaises »

PHILIPP HÄNGGI, TIMON JAHN

« Il faut que les Africains prennent la parole », affi rme Bofane à plusieurs reprises lors de

la discussion. Son engagement politique en tant qu’écrivain congolais se nourrit de la

volonté de donner une image authentique du fonctionnement des sociétés africaines.

Bofane affi rme, par exemple, qu’il y a en effet des manifestations étranges en Afrique

que l’on ne peut pas s’expliquer et qu’il y a beaucoup de manipulations par les sor-

ciers, notamment dans le monde politique. Selon Bofane, la tâche principale de tout

lecteur de « Mathématiques congolaises » consiste à réussir à identifi er les rapports de

forces au sein de la société congolaise afi n de les empêcher, car « la paix et le bonheur

sont fragiles ; c’est pourquoi il faut éveiller la vigilance et veiller à ce qui est important. »

Jean Bofane nie toute victimisation africaine et met l’accent sur l’authenticité de son

œuvre. Cela est illustré par la position qu’occupent les femmes dans la société congo-

laise : le revenu du père ne suffi t souvent pas à nourrir la famille. La mère fait fructifi er

cet argent en faisant de petits commerces. C’est donc grâce aux femmes que les

familles arrivent à s’en sortir, car le revenu du père ne sert que de capital initial. Dans

« Mathématiques congolaises », Bofane illustre ce rôle central des femmes à travers les

personnages de Mère Bokeke Iyofa et de Mme Odia Tshilombo.

L’authenticité de l’œuvre bofanienne est également la raison pour laquelle l’auteur ne

recule pas devant la description détaillée de la violence. Au contraire, son œuvre est

caractérisée par une ambiance de violence, car celle-ci « fait partie de la vie de la

majorité des Congolais ». A ce sujet, Bofane souligne pourtant que cette violence «

est générée par des infl uences extérieures », ce qui est dû au fait que l’Afrique détient

des matières premières et stimule ainsi l’intérêt économique des nations extérieures ;

contrairement à l’opinion répandue en Europe, la violence en RDC n’est donc pas

d’abord le résultat de confl its ethniques.

Dans ce contexte politique, Bofane plaide pour l’abandon de tout antagonisme et la

déconstruction des dichotomies. Selon lui, on ne peut pas opposer de façon nette

le modèle démocratique européen à la société congolaise, ou la « modernité » à la «

tradition ». L’appropriation du modèle occidental par le Congo ne servirait à rien si «

l’originalité africaine » n’était pas préservée. Bofane stipule qu’il faudrait plutôt renou-

veler les traditions afi n d’éviter le cynisme de la nouvelle génération. Selon lui, il est

primordial que les enfants soient informés ; c’est la raison pour laquelle il a choisi, pour

son premier texte littéraire, la forme du livre pour enfant pour retracer une parabole

du pouvoir de Mobutu ( « Pourquoi le lion n’est plus le roi des animaux ». Gallimard

Jeunesse 1996).

Cet entretien a été réalisé lors de la présentation de Jean Bofane au Literaturhaus Basel

le 28 avril 2015.

Philipp Hänggi et Timon Jahn sont des étudiants de français au niveau Bachelor à

l’Université de Bâle. Contact : [email protected], [email protected].


38

Newsletter 2/2015

Congo Inc.: Le testament de Bismarck (Jean Bofane)

NATALIE TARR

Wie in Mathématiques Congolaises, erzählen auch in Congo Inc multiple Stimmen die

Schicksale Einzelner als Teil eines undurchdringlichen Netzes an weltweiten Verbindun-

gen, Verstrickungen, Abhängigkeiten. Bofane hat spät zum Schreiben gefunden und wid-

mete sich mit ganzer Seele der Entwicklung einer eigenen Sprache, mit welcher er Unaus-

sprechliches darzustellen vermag, ohne ins Voyeuristische zu verfallen. Vor allem Frauen

sind dabei von Gewalt betroffen. In Congo Inc. werden jedoch keine Frauen vorgestellt, die

nur als Opfer der Umstände ihr Leben fristen, so wie dies im globalen Norden die Medien

oft tun. Bofane zeigt uns Frauen, die unsägliches Leid erfahren haben, sich trotz allem eine

Zukunft vorstellen, sie sich erkämpfen und aufbauen. Wie Adeïto, die Sexsklavin eines

abgehalfterten Rebellen, oder Shasha, das Strassenmädchen in Kinshasa....

Isookanga ist es leid im Dorf zu leben, auf seinen Onkel hören zu müssen, während

draussen die Welt und all ihre Möglichkeiten auf ihn wartet. Er möchte in die Stadt zie-

hen und sich durch Arbeit in diese grössere Welt einfügen – er möchte ein „Globalisa-

tor“ werden, wie er sich ausdrückt. Dank einer von China gesponserten Funkantenne,

die in Nähe seines Dorfes installiert wird, und eines geklauten Laptops erkundet Isoo-

kanga schon mal virtuell diese grosse, weite Welt. Schliesslich bricht er nach Kinshasa

auf, in die vibrierende Grossstadt mit ihren scheinbar unendlichen Möglichkeiten. Dort

freundet er sich mit einer Gruppe Strassenkinder an.

Shasha wurde durch Gewalt und Krieg dazu gezwungen ein Strassenkind zu werden.

Ihre Eltern wurden in einem der zahllosen Konfl ikte regelrecht abgeschlachtet. Scho-

nungslos schildert Bofane, wie das 12-jährige Mädchen mit seinen Geschwistern dem

Grauen den Rücken kehrt und in die grosse Stadt geht, zu Fuss und nur mit dem, was

sie gerade am Leib trugen. Ein Bruder stirbt unterwegs.


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Newsletter 2/2015

Wir folgen auch Zhang Xias Schicksal bis nach China, nach Hause zu seiner Frau und

Sohn. Sie näht dort Plastikkaurimuscheln auf kleine Lederquadrate auf, um sich und ihr

Kind zu ernähren – Gadgets, die Touristen in Burkina Faso und Senegal erstehen. Ihr

Mann Zhang Xia wird schlussendlich zum Spielball undurchschaubarer öko-politischer

Beziehungen zwischen China und Kongo und unter einem Vorwand zurück nach China

abgeschoben und verhaftet.

Congo Inc.: Le testament de Bismarck (Grand prix du Roman Métis 2014) wird voraus-

sichtlich 2016 in der deutschen Übersetzung von Katja Meintel erscheinen. Das fran-

zösische Original erschien 2014 bei Actes Sud. Dies ist die leicht gekürzte Version einer

Rezension, die beim online Literatur-, Kunst- und Kulturforum Afri-Eurotext erschienen

ist ( http://www.afrieurotext.at/?page_id=2321).

Natalie Tarr ist Doktorandin am Zentrum für Afrikastudien der Universität Basel mit

einem Schwerpunkt in Ethnologie und Sprache. Kontakt: [email protected].

Als Isookanga seinerseits in Kinshasa ankommt, ist Shasha dort bereits seit ein paar

Jahren installiert und schlägt sich als Kinderprostituierte durchs Leben. Ihr Stammfreier

ist der Verantwortliche des UN Büros in Kinshasa, der seine Vorliebe für pubertierende

Kinder an ihr ausleben kann. Shasha drückt ihre Abscheu dem UN Mann gegenüber

aus, indem sie ihm vergiftetes Essen zubereitet, was ihm unerklärliche, unüberwindbare

Bauchschmerzen beschert. Sie schliesst Freundschaft mit Isookanga und dank seiner

kleinen Statur, die er von seiner Ekonda Mutter geerbt hat, wird Isookanga von den

Strassenkindern akzeptiert. Mit dem jungen Chinesen Zhang Xia steigt Isookanga bald

in das Geschäft als Strassenverkäufer von gekühltem Wasser ein und hat so den ersten

Schritt in Richtung seines Ziels, der Globalisierung getan.

Mit Ironie und auch zartem Zynismus portraitiert Bofane den selbsternannten Prediger

einer Pfi ngstkirche, der auf seine Garderobe achtet (Hugo Boss! J.M. Weston!) und

gerne im neuesten Geländewagen vorfährt. Mit bodenloser Skrupellosigkeit beutet der

Prediger seine Gemeinde aus, doch Bofane zeichnet dessen Erfi ndungsreichtum mit

solch eloquenter Ironie, dass LeserInnen geneigt sind, ein leises Gefühl der Bewunde-

rung für die Machenschaften des Predigers zu empfi nden. Der Mann ist sich selber treu

bis hin zur Einführung eines göttlich geführten Bankkontos, auf welches seine Schäf-

chen ihr letztes, hart erworbenes Geld einzahlen. Schonungslos auch hier Bofanes

bissiger Humor, kann doch ein Ausbeuter nur optimal funktionieren, wenn er die fi ndet,

die sich auch ausbeuten lassen.

Bofane greift in Congo Inc. Themen auf, die hochaktuell sind. Evangelikale Bewegun-

gen überschwemmen seit einiger Zeit den afrikanischen Kontinent und wachsen ra-

sant. Eine Ironie der Geschichte, war es doch die christliche Religion, die dem kolonia-

len Projekt in mehrfacher Weise zudiente und heute dem zunehmend säkularen Europa

abhanden zu kommen scheint. Jetzt migriert das Christentum in neuer, inbrünstiger

Form von Afrika nach Europa zurück.


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Newsletter 2/2015

JEUNES CHERCHEURS • NACHWUCHS • YOUNG SCHOLARS

The Anthropocene in the Classroom

YANNICK VAN DEN BERG AND SANDRO SIMON

After phenomenology started to question a scientifi c approach that searched for ob-

jectivity by detaching itself from the matter of study, natural scientists agreed upon

human’s increasing involvement in what is called nature. Today, humanity’s infl uence on

a global scale must be seen as a determining key process in the Earth System. As a

consequence, so it is argued, we entered the geological epoch of the ‘Anthropocene’.

There, the realms of humanity and nature can no longer be perceived as being sepa-

rated. The social sciences consequently adapted the concept and integrated it into

existing post-structural approaches, infl uencing the way recent anthropological theory

handles topics that address human partaking in the environment.

In the course 'Social Anthropology and the Anthropocene: Perspectives from Latin

America and Africa' at the University of Basel, we question and explore various ways

of rethinking the dualities of culture - nature, subject - object, technology - skill or

body - mind. For this, we employ theory, case studies, exploration and creative writ-

ing. While the theory derives to a substantial part from anthropologists that draw from

their fi eldwork in the Amazon and ranges from Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour and Tim

Ingold to Donna Haraway and Michael Jackson, the case studies aim to 'provincialize'

(Dipesh Chakrabarty, Eduardo Kohn) the Anthropocene. For instance, they describe

the wandering of rooibos in South Africa and the implications on belonging, attachment

and identity for the local farmers and users (Sarah Ives).

Besides the discussions which do not restrict the use of the blackboard or other things

found in the classroom, the explorative part of the course entails the fl ying of kites. This aims

at the sensuous experience of interplay of agency between kite, gravity, wind, mind and

body or the observation of how objects turn into things through our engagement with them.

Finally, participants write short texts and, after a round of feedback from their col-

leagues, publish them on a blog. The keywords and drawings collected and trans-

ferred to the blackboard during the preceding discussions thereby serve as points of

reference. The contributions to the blog produced throughout the course fi nally center

around questions such as: How, despite different ontologies and experiences, can we

Left: The strings of two kites hanging from

a bridge. While one of them is loosely wav-

ing in the wind, the other one is pulled down

tightly by the forces of gravity. Still, both are

hold by humans trying to set the kites into

motion by moving their bodies.

Right: The blackboard at the end of a class.

From these keywords and drawings, texts

are developed. (Both images: Sandro Simon

2015).


41

Newsletter 2/2015

feel and understand ourselves as one species in order to commonly take action against

climate change? How can we imagine a future when we are already shaping it to large

parts in the present – for instance through our carbon footprint and corresponding

algorithms – or how to conceptualize 'the environment' as it reveals its affordances only

in interdependency with our individual capabilities?

The texts and the preceding discussions in class mirror and profi t, fi rst, from the in-

puts of various guests and the participants with their diverse backgrounds in African

Studies, Geology, Social Anthropology, Performing Arts, Linguistics, Sociology or His-

tory, and, second, from a didactic approach based on fl at hierarchies, self-determined

learning and creative engagement with texts and phenomena. As a result, the course

unfolds as a rich and from time to time also mind-bending experience for all involved.

To visit the course-blog, go to www.anthroclassroom.net or follow us on twitter.com/

anthroclassroom.

Yannick van den Berg is just about to fi nish his Master in Social Anthropology and

Sociology. Contact: [email protected].

Sandro Simon recently completed his MA in African Studies. Contact: sandro.simon@

stud.unibas.ch.


42

Newsletter 2/2015

The African continent has been looted for many

centuries, the nature, form and motivation varying

with conquest, colonization, independence and

globalization. Over the last decades, however, the

destruction of archaeological sites and the illicit

trade in cultural goods have reached such propor-

tions that they seriously undermine African history

and go against human rights by compromising the

development of populations. The exportation and

repatriation of human remains also raise important

ethical questions.

In response to this alarming phenomenon, laws have been passed, conventions rati-

fi ed, ethical codes proclaimed and ethics commissions established. Local initiatives

to protect heritage have been created, and the return of cultural objects and human

remains organized. Yet the hoped-for positive benefi ts do not always materialize given

that the situation is more complex than expected.

Not without reason, Switzerland is often criticized, along with other European, North

American, Asian or Near East Countries, for acting as a hub of illicit trade of cultu-

ral goods. Antique dealers specializing in the “primitive arts”, auction houses, private

museums and collectors benefi t greatly from this situation. At the same time, Swit-

zerland is very involved in the fi elds of development and respect for human rights,

and acknowledged for the growing awareness and effi ciency of its custom, police and

justice institutions.

This book, following a conference of the Swiss Society for African Studies held in Gene-

va, includes contributions by archaeologists, sociologists, museum curators and heri-

tage managers, as well as legal experts and representatives of the police, and blends

points of view from Africa, Europe and Switzerland. Apart the voice of researchers res-

ponsible for the cultural heritage of African countries that denounce alarming situations,

ethical refl ections and update of legal aspects linked to heritage questions, several

projects of international cooperation are presented, all of them trying to fi nd innovative

ways of acting in this very diffi cult context, and giving hope for the future.

ANNE MAYOR, VINCENT NÉGRI & ERIC HUYSECOM (EDS.): AFRICAN MEMORY IN

DANGER - MÉMOIRE AFRICAINE EN PÉRIL. JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ARCHAEOL-

OGY MONOGRAPH SERIES 11. FRANKFURT A.M 2015 (AFRICA MAGNA VERLAG).

PUBLICATIONS • PUBLIKATIONEN

African Memory in Danger – Mémoire africaine en danger

The hardcover publication (EUR 49.80) may be ordered directly from the editors:

http://ua.unige.ch/memoireafricaine/publication

http://www.african-archaeology.de


43

Newsletter 2/2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS - TABLE DES MATIÈRES

• Friedrich Lü th : Preface / Pré face

INTRODUCTION

• Anne Mayor: African Memory in Danger: Which Solutions? / Mémoire africaine

en pé ril: quelles solutions?

PART 1: FROM EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS…

DES TÉ MOIGNAGES DE TERRAIN…

• Abdoulaye Camara: Butins et trophé es de guerre: le tré sor de Sé gou

• Musa Oluwaseyi Hambolu: Plundering of Archaeological Sites in Nigeria: Impli-

cations and Remedies

• Oumarou Amadou Idé : Pillage et gestion du patrimoine culturel au Niger

PART 2: …TO SOCIOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

…AUX RÉ FLEXIONS SOCIOLOGIQUES ET DEONTOLOGIQUES

• Cristiana Panella: Rhé torique du maté riel, corporé ité et iné galité sociale. Une

ré fl exion biopolitique sur les repré sentations du « phé nomè ne du pillage » au Mali

• Andrew B. Smith: Repatriation Begins at Home: Violence Against South Africa’s

Underclass, a Colonial Legacy that Needs Closure

• Eric Huysecom: Ethique et arché ologie africaine: quelques pistes de ré fl exion

• Eric Huysecom : La valorisation du patrimoine africain par les datations scien-

tifi ques

PART 3: LAW IN THE SERVICE OF CULTURAL HERITAGE PROTECTION

LE DROIT AU SERVICE DE LA PROTECTION DU PATRIMOINE

• Dawson Munjeri: Turning around Fortunes: Confronting Forces Plundering Afri-

ca’s Cultural Heritage

• Marc Weber: Legal Protection of Archaeological Objects

• Vincent Né gri: La conservation du patrimoine africain au pé ril du droit

• Thijs J. Maarleveld: African Waters, Treasure Trove for International Entrepreneurs

in the Antiquities Market

• Stephane Théfo: Le rô le d’INTERPOL dans la protection du patrimoine de l’Afrique

PART 4: COOPERATION PROJECTS, SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

PROJETS DE COOPÉ RATION, PISTES DE SOLUTIONS

• Pierre de Maret: Pillages et destructions — sauvetages et restitutions: leç ons du

passé et perspectives d’avenir en Afrique centrale

• Charles Bonnet: Mé moire africaine en pé ril: l’exemple de Kerma-Doukki Gel

(Soudan)

• Christoph Pelzer: Patrimoine culturel et développement local en Afrique: ten-

dances ré centes de la coopé ration culturelle exté rieure de la Commission

europé enne

• Anne Mayor, Daouda Keita et Boureima Tessougué : La banque culturelle de Dim-

bal au Mali: un exemple de gestion locale du patrimoine

• Lorenz Homberger: Coopé ration avec des musé es en Afrique: un mal ou un bien?


44

Newsletter 2/2015

Politics on Governance

How do government arrangements emerge? When

and how does individual agency turn into collective

agency? How do sensory experiences of violence,

instability, etc affect the confi guration of governance

arrangements? When, why, and how are governance

arrangements institutionalized?

This book seeks to contribute to a non-normative con-

ceptualization of the emergence and transformation of

government arrangements, and addresses the under-

theorization of actors and agency in conventional

governance theories. The editors and contributors

theorize the concept of governance more concretely

by analyzing the key actors and arrangements that defi ne states of governance across

different places and by examining its performance and development in particular set-

tings and time periods. Each contribution to the edited volume is based on a case-

study drawn from Africa, though the book argues that the core issues identifi ed remain

the same across the world, though in different empirical contexts. The contributions

also range across key disciplines, from anthropology to sociology to political science.

This ground-breaking volume addresses governance arrangements, discusses how

social actors form such arrangements, and concludes by synthesizing an actor-cen-

tered understanding of political articulation to a general theory of governance. Scholars

across disciplines such as political science, development studies, African studies, and

sociology will fi nd the book insightful.

LUCY KOECHLIN AND TILL FÖRSTER (EDS): THE POLITICS OF GOVERNANCE. AC-

TORS AND ARTICULATIONS IN AFRICA AND BEYOND. NEW YORK 2015 (ROUT-

LEDGE).


45

Newsletter 2/2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTION

• Lucy Koechlin: Introduction – The Conceptual Polysemy of Governance

PART I: SPACES AND STRUGGLES

• Michael G. Schatzberg: Transformation and Struggle: Space in Africa

• Nelson Kasfi r: Agency Across Changing Sites: The Path to Kenya's 2010 Con-

stitution

PART II: EVERYDAY PRACTICES

• Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan: Abandoning the Neo-Patrimonialist Paradigm: For

a Pluralist Approach to the Bureaucratic Mode of Governance in Africa

• Sarah Biecker and Klaus Schlichte: Between Governance and Domination: The

Everyday Life of Uganda's Police Forces

PART III: EMERGENCE AND TRANSFORMATION

• Alemmaya Mulugeta: The Social Agency of Informal Settlers: A Case-Study of

"Moonlight Houses" in Addis Ababa

• Steven Robins: Slow Activism and the Tactics of Legibility: A Case Study of the

2011 "Toilet Wars" and the Social Justice Coalition

PART IV: SUBJECTIVITIES AND ARTICULATIONS

• Rita Kesselring: Experiences of Violence and the Formation of the Political: Em-

bodied Memory and Victimhood in South Africa

• Aletta Norval: Imagining Otherwise: Dislocation, Subjectivity, and the Articulation

of Political Demands

PART V: CONCLUSIONS

• Till Förster: The Formation of Governance: The Politics of Governance and their

Theoretical Dimensions


46

Newsletter 2/2015

Honoring Patrick Harries

From 2001 to 2014 Professor Patrick Harries

shaped the fi eld of African History at the University of

Basel and played a crucial role in establishing the MA

programme in African Studies as well as the Centre

for African Studies Basel. This collection of essays

published by the Basler Afrika Bibliographien docu-

ments the growth of African history as a discipline

at the University of Basel since 2001. It thus pays

tribute to fourteen years of research and teaching

by Patrick Harries at the Department of History and

the Centre for African Studies Basel and honour his

scholarly work.

The contributions by former team members and students cover a broad range of topics

from mine labour to missionary endeavour and the production of knowledge, refl ecting

some of his core research interests. The contributions engage with Patrick Harries’

oeuvre with reference to the authors’ own scholarship or vice-versa. Some directly

address his publications while others take his teaching, correspondence, remarks or

intellectual life more broadly as a point of reference. They all pay tribute to a brilliant and

inspiring scholar, a great teacher and a kind person.

VEIT ARLT, STEPHANIE BISHOP AND PASCAL SCHMID (EDS): EXPLORATIONS IN

AFRICAN HISTORY: READING PATRICK HARRIES. BASEL2015 (BASLER AFRIKA

BIBLIOGRAPHIEN 2015.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• Veit Arlt, Stephanie Bishop, and Pascal Schmid: Preface

• Eric Morier-Genoud: The Making of a Transnational Historian: Patrick Harries in

Lausanne

• Pascal Schmid: From Swiss Imperialism to Postcolonial Switzerland

• Dag Henrichsen: Hildagonda Duckitt’s (and Patrick Harries’) Contribution to Na-

mibian History

• Rita Kesselring: Cultural Reproduction and Memory: Past, Present and Future

• Jürg Schneider: Photography and the Demise of Anthropology

• Gregor Dobler: Staying for Gold or Joining the Rebellion? South West African

Migrant Workers on the Rand During War and Genocide, 1904–1905

• Cassandra Mark-Thiesen: From Mining Pit to Missionary Bungalow: Trading

Spaces in the Writing of Patrick Harries

• Ulrike Sill: Of Wives, Slaves and Commerce, or: The Price of Things

• Paul Jenkins: Notes on the Basel Mission’s Production of Knowledge in the Kan-

nada Language in Nineteenth Century South India

• Tanja Hammel: Of Birds and (Wo)Men

• Patrick Grogan: German Natural History Collectors and the Appropriation of Hu-

man Skulls and Skeletons in Early Nineteenth Century Southern Africa: Towards

a Discursive Analysis of Collecting

• Melanie Eva Boehi: Who Cut Down Margaret Thatcher’s Tree?

• Franziska Rüedi: ‘Reluctant Bonds’: On the Role of Narrative in Post-Apartheid

South Africa

• Veit Arlt: South African Jazz: The Basel Connection

• Stephanie Bishop: The Game Plan for a Successful Career


47

Newsletter 2/2015

Les incertitudes de la nation en Angola

Comment analyser le nationalisme en situation

coloniale sans céder au déterminisme du grand

récit de la Nation ? Comment rendre compte de

ses fondements culturels sans en offrir une vision

linéaire et mécanique ? L’histoire du nationalisme

en Angola est une histoire de divisions. La guerre

d’indépendance (1961-1974) n’a en effet pas seu-

lement opposé la puissance coloniale aux natio-

nalistes angolais ; elle a également conduit à une

lutte fratricide entre deux, puis trois mouvements

rivaux. Cette lutte s’est ensuite prolongée, dès

l’indépendance du pays en 1975, en une guerre

civile sanglante qui allait durer jusqu’en 2002.

Afi n de comprendre les racines de ces divisions, ce livre se penche sur l’histoire sociale

et politique du planalto central de l’Angola, la région qui a vu naître l’Union nationale

pour l’indépendance totale de l’Angola (Unita). Il offre une analyse inédite du rôle social

et politique des missions et Églises chrétiennes qui, dans le contexte du colonialisme

portugais, ont représenté l’unique voie d’ascension sociale pour la très faible proportion

d’Angolais parvenus à sortir des marges politiques, sociales et économiques dans les-

quelles le système colonial les avait confi nés. Les imaginaires négociés au sein des mis-

sions chrétiennes ont ainsi joué un rôle central dans l’histoire de l’Unita et dans les dyna-

miques historiques des divisions du nationalisme angolais comme de la guerre civile.

En interrogeant les modalités de leur « passage au politique », ce livre met également

en évidence le caractère contingent et indéterminé des liens entre un imaginaire social

et son utilisation à des fi ns de mobilisation politique. Par-delà le cas angolais, cet ou-

vrage est une contribution majeure à l’étude des nationalismes et à la réfl exion sur les

rapports entre religion, guerre et formation de l’État.

Didier Péclard est maître d’enseignement et de recherche à l’Université de Genève.

Il a été chercheur à la Fondation suisse pour la paix (swisspeace), chargé de cours en

science politique à l’Université de Bâle, et chercheur invité au Département d’études

africaines et afro-américaines de l’Université du Michigan à Ann Arbor. Il est co-rédac-

teur en chef de la revue Politique africaine depuis 2013.

DIDIER PÉCLARD : LES INCERTITUDES DE LA NATION EN ANGOLA. AUX RACINES SOCIALES DE L’UNITA. COLLECTIONS LES AFRIQUES. PARIS 2015 (KARTHALA).


48

Newsletter 2/2015

RENCONTRES • BEGEGNUNGEN • ENCOUNTERS

Göran Hydén, University of Florida

CARLOS FERNANDES

Prof Göran Hydén, distinguished professor emeritus of Political Science at the Uni-

versity of Florida, has shaped the fi eld of Political Science in Africa in a major way. In

this interview he refl ects on his own intellectual trajectory in African Studies and the

connections between African Studies and other disciplines, as well as the relevance of

academic work in Africa.

Carlos Fernandes (CF): When and where did your academic career start?

Göran Hydén (GH): I started essentially when I was an undergraduate student at the

University of Lund in Sweden where I did all my studies. During summer I used to

practice as a journalist, doing political reporting, political editorial writing, and so on. So,

during that time, in 1960-1961, virtually all news were about Africa and African coun-

tries, and when it was on the editorial page, the older generation of writers had no clue

about Africa or the “Third World”. So they asked me, the youngest person in the offi ce,

to write about Africa, to comment on what was going on in Congo and elsewhere at

that time. That is how my interest in Africa started. And when I eventually got an op-

portunity to continue with graduate work in the old department of Political Sciences at

Lund, I decided that I would write my master thesis and maybe eventually my doctoral

dissertation on Africa. This was back in the 1960s and that is where I started.

Hydén enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) when preparing his

first fieldwork since African History was not taught in Sweden at the time. The profes-

sors at UCLA advised him to conduct research in Tanzania. His arrival there in 1964

initiated a life-long engagement with that country.

CF: How did your experience in Tanzania mark your scholarship in terms of the people

you met, the theories you engaged with, and discussions you had?

GH: My main intellectual mentors and professors at that time were essentially either

American or European. I met Professor James Smoot Coleman at UCLA but also in Af-

rica during my teaching in the 1970s. Professor Colin Leys was the chair of the Political

Science department at Makerere University where I taught for the fi rst time at university

level in 1965. These people were important, but most important was my fi eldwork in

Bukoba in Northwest Tanzania, on the shores of Lake Victoria. I did my fi eldwork in

fi ve villages, interviewing about 310 heads of household. My fi rst impression from that

particular part of Tanzania is still very much with me intellectually, but also socially, be-

cause when I went there in 1964, I also met my future wife. So Bukoba became much

more important than just a site of my fi eldwork. Since then I go to Bukoba every year.

CF: How do you think Political Science evolved during the period you were in Africa?

GH: Studying African politics in the 1960s was really an exciting thing because a lot

of attention was being paid to Africa. There was also a notion in the discipline that

somehow we had discovered ways to study societies outside of mainstream. Most of

the earlier work in Political Science had been done in Europe or America. So, in a way,

there was a certain sense of pioneering. We were actually out there in the fi eld doing

work – literally. Maybe this is pretentious to say, but that is how we felt at the time.

Rightly or wrongly, we were sort of discovering new areas for the world [laughs] for the

purpose of intellectual or academic analysis.

Professor Göran Hydén lives on and continuously moves between three continents: North America

(Florida), Africa (Tanzania) and Europe (Sweden). (Image: Maria Hald 2010).


49

Newsletter 2/2015


50

Newsletter 2/2015

CF: Was there a feeling of progress, that the discipline really evolved?

GH: Yes, there was a sense of the discipline taking a giant step forward, mainly through

the use of the structural-functional theory, which we were introduced to and encour-

aged to use. So, for that reason, yes, there was a sense of excitement.

CF: In the 1950s and 1960s there were also processes of integrating various disci-

plines from the social sciences to the humanities into the study of broader geographi-

cal and cultural regions such as Africa. What would be your definition of area studies?

GH: Area studies are meant to provide an understanding – not just formal knowledge,

but an understanding – which means you go deeper than you would do in terms of

simply providing knowledge that might be formalized in theory. In that sense, area

studies became a way of complementing what you might call cross-cultural or cross-

national studies that are typically based on numerical records or statistics. If you really

want to have an understanding – whether it is for academic or for policy purposes –

you really need to think about the context in which the study or comparison has been

carried out.

CF: So an area studies approach means more than just aggregating or adding disci-

plinary approaches to Africa?

GH: I think there might be an attempt to aggregate all knowledge in a new interdis-

ciplinary manner in the name of area studies, but I consider interdisciplinary studies

to be something slightly different than area studies. Area studies, to me, mean going

in-depth, interdisciplinary means going wide. Area studies are concerned with under-

standing: understanding culture, understating norms, understanding things that are

not typically covered in comparative studies, which typically work at a higher and more

abstract level.

CF: What does interdisciplinary work mean for you?

GH: I tend to work in an interdisciplinary way. I do not do it at all times, but I acknowl-

edge the importance of doing so. As a political scientist by training, I realize that many

of the issues we deal with have broader implications than can be captured by what

Political Science scholars are doing. In my work, I have often applied insights from

Anthropology, History and sometimes even from Environmental Studies.

CF: How have African studies contributed to other disciplines?

GH: Our insights whether they are theoretical or empirical tend to come from our own

experience in different cases. And I think there has been a tendency to assume that

theories have a historical origin in industrial societies; for instance, in the study of de-

mocracy there are certain concepts, certain models or theories that people take for

granted. So, when they apply them to the African situation, it becomes very often a

question of essentially applying [these theories] irrespective of what the conditions are.

So in my view, there is a mismatch between the model, on the one hand, and the

historical-social realities of Africa, on the other. When we talk about how African Stud-

ies can contribute to the discipline, we are talking about how we can fi ll in the lack of

knowledge about varieties or variations. How, for instance, does democracy take root

in African countries, or does not take root because of circumstances. So, these are

the issues that I think area studies scholars are concerned with. They are challenging

mainstream concepts in a way that I think is very healthy and also necessary.

CF: What are the most important research topics and themes in your field today?

GH: The issues about nation building and state formation continue to be relevant, I

think. There are countries that are still struggling to become a nation or to build a state

that is strong enough to control its territory. The examples of the Democratic Republic


51

Newsletter 2/2015

of Congo and Somalia show that there are issues that already existed in the 1960s and

are still relevant today. There is much more variation in Africa today in terms of where the

countries are than was the case fi fty years ago. Some countries are doing well and oth-

ers are not doing so well. So, talking about Africa today in a more general sense is more

diffi cult than it was immediately after independence, when almost every country faced

the same challenges. Now, there are countries that are doing well such as Botswana,

Ghana, and perhaps even Mozambique but face different kinds of challenges. So, when

we look at Africa today, the issues are many, and they vary from country to country.

Among those topics one should pay attention to nation-building, state formation and

also the issues of governance. How do you actually make sense of governments in a

way that is responsive to the conditions in Africa and not just the question imposing, if

I may use that word, the western liberal democratic model on Africa, as if that was the

only thing that counts.

CF: Why are issues related to state formation, nation building and governance still

important in African Studies today?

GH: There is probably a very complex answer to this question. You might say that de-

mocratization, the notion of bringing democracy to Africa (as well as to Asia and to cer-

tain parts of Europe like the Balkans) has essentially created a more competitive type of

politics that these societies have diffi culties handling. This is because they continue to

be essentially divided in terms of either religion, ethnicity or things like that. They are un-

comfortable with the democratic model as we know it in the liberal democratic sense.

That is why, I think, they foster confl icts over identity and, as a result of that, both nation

building and state formation become hot topics in the political life of these countries.

CF: During the 1980s you wrote a seminal book on peasants and underdevelopment in

Tanzania. What about the ‘uncaptured’ peasantry? Is it no longer important?

GH: I think the peasantry was probably over-dram-

atized in terms of its political infl uence. But, what I

said in the 1970s and 1980s was essentially that if

you build your state on the shoulders or backs of

the peasants, you are likely to fail in Africa because

you cannot really capture them. They will elude your

attempt. The question thus is, how does a state

capture or reach its citizens in ways that allow it to

generate revenue, enforce laws. Are there ways that

are not alienating the people or the citizens, but really

bringing them in.

CF: You observed previously that today we cannot speak about Africa in a general

sense, unlike in the period immediately after independence, when almost every country

had the same common metanarrative and faced the same challenges. Let me add a

concrete case: In Mozambique during the 1980s the Marxist Political Economy analysis

informed, hegemonically, most of the research programs at the university. What are the

dominant analytical and methodological approaches for African Studies today?

GH: I think there is much more diversity and openness today. There was a period after

independence, as you mentioned with respect to Mozambique, where there was an

attempt to impose a particular paradigm. Even the modernization paradigm was taken

for granted. It was taken as the only or dominant paradigm, as you experienced in Mo-

zambique in the 1970s and in the 1980s it was the neo-Marxist paradigm which was

essentially the only one that was used. Today you fi nd competition or rivalry between

different paradigms. But if you look at the mainstream research in Africa today, not just

in Political Science but even in neighboring disciplines such as History, Anthropology

and Economics, it has something to do with governance. Improving governance, has


52

Newsletter 2/2015

become the main focus. It might constitute or become the dominant concern, but not

the dominant paradigm, because there are different ways of looking at governance.

Nonetheless, it fosters interest in that particular issue. With regard to other issues, you

have what they call ‘inclusive growth’, ‘economic growth’. That is something that es-

sentially comes out of economics but is also shared by political scientists, sociologists

and anthropologists. So, those are topics that are partly set by the policy community,

but nonetheless are also part of prominent research across disciplines.

CF: Should research today contribute to social and political development? If yes, in

what ways?

GH: It should not necessarily just support policy, it should be critical of policy to the

extent that policy issues are not necessarily implemented fully or because the policy

itself is controversial. So you need to have a chance to be part of a dialogue about

issues that are not just academic but also important politically. And I think we have a

responsibility as academics to do that.

CF: How do we do that? I mean, how to merge critical research with a broader political

engagement of the society we live in?

GH: You can do it in many different ways. A lot of us do work as consultants and it’s

not necessarily always the best way of fi nding answers to shortcomings in policy, but

it’s one way of doing it. The other one, of course, is to write articles or policy briefs or

even books, to the extent that people read them. Also, generally to engage, as public

intellectuals, in writing opinion pieces or participating by giving lectures or in seminars.

So, an academic or an area studies person can do it in many different ways. And I per-

sonally do that, not so much in these days as I perhaps used to, but I still do it a little.

CF: What is your experience in dealing with the public in terms of international and non-

governmental organizations?

GH: You need to be realistic about what you can do as a consultant or as somebody

who writes a piece assuming that people read it and take it seriously. I think we have

to be realistic about the limitations of what we can accomplish. That’s one thing. At

the same time, I think it’s also a matter of trust and competence. Frankly speaking,

the more senior you are, the more of a reputation you have, the more likely that people

might take you seriously. So in that sense, in my case, I feel sometimes that people

know that I have a credible track record as an academic. I have not made a fool of

myself in politics. I have not fallen out in the sense of being a ‘persona non grata’. I feel

that I sometimes can take on an assignment and hope that I can make a difference, or

assume that I can make a difference, because of what I’ve done in the past. But, at the

same time, I’m realistic. I am not expecting them to take a hundred percent of what I

tell them. Even if it is just crumbs from the table, I think that I have achieved something.


53

Newsletter 2/2015

Carlos Fernandes (interview and transcription) was ESKAS postdoc fellow at the

Centre for African Studies Basel from 2014 to 2015. The sociologist earned his PhD

in African and Ethnic Studies from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. His doctoral

research examined the socio-political conditions of scientifi c knowledge production

in post-independence Mozambique during the "socialist transition" (1975-1990) dis-

cussing the case of the Centro de Estudos Africanos (CEA) of Eduardo Mondlane

University, Maputo. His current research project explores the connections between

social science research, intellectual biographies, colonial modernity, race, revolution

and revisionism in `post-socialist` Mozambique. Contact: [email protected].

This conversation is part of the interview series with eminent scholars in African

Studies visiting the Centre for African Studies Basel. The video of the interview will

be made available on the Centre’s website www.zasb.unibas.ch.


54

Newsletter 2/2015

EXHIBITIONS • AUSSTELLUNGEN

Comics aus und über Afrika in den Basler Afrika Bibliographien

NANA BADENBERG

„Kaboom!“ – Ebenso lautstark wie lautmalerisch setzt schon der Titel der Ausstellung

in den Basler Afrika Bibliographien den Auftakt. Und in der Tat ist die von Studierenden

der Universität Basel in Kooperation mit den Basler Afrika Bibliographien erarbeitete

Ausstellung ein starkes Stück. Sie präsentiert in einem regional auf das südliche Afrika

konzentrierten Querschnitt eine breite Palette an Zeichenstilen, aber auch politischen

bzw. kulturellen Statements, und sie eröffnet damit ein hierzulande unbekanntes Ter-

rain. Denn die afrikanische Comiclandschaft scheint so vielfältig wie der Kontinent

selbst. Es gibt kulturindustrielle Mainstreamcomics ebenso wie Underground-Comics,

solche, die sich dezidiert historischen Stoffen zuwenden (immer wieder und beson-

ders die Geschichte des südafrikanischen Freiheitskampfes), welche mit Bildungs- und

Aufklärungsanspruch (z.B. bei der Storyteller Group), mit politischer Propaganda oder

einfach nur mit einer gehörigen Portion Alltag.

In einen Nebenraum verbannt sind dagegen all jene stereotypen Darstellungen, die der

Stift europäischer Zeichner hervorgebracht hat, und die einen unvoreingenommenen

Blick von aussen verstellen: vom Werbemohren über Globi bis hin zu Tintin, dessen

Kongoreise in England und den USA heute nur mit einem Warnhinweis verkauft werden

darf. Sie werden an einem Drehständer im Weltformat vorgeführt und damit genau so

plakativ, wie sie es in ihrer schwarz-weissen Symbolik sind.

So einfach, wie es die räumliche Anordnung suggeriert, ist die Aufteilung allerdings

nicht. Der erste nigerianische Superheld „Powerman“ (später dann „Powerbolt“) wurde

1975 bei den englischen Zeichnern Brian Bolland und Dave Gibbson in Auftrag gege-

ben – und die mussten die Serie auf Wunsch ihrer afrikanischen Auftraggeber simpler

gestalten als vorgesehen; die christlich gewandete Anti-SWAPO-Propaganda gehorcht

nicht nur nationalen Interessen und Einfl üssen; und die Autorin der Aya-Comics, die

mit ästhetischer Eleganz den Alltag in Côte d’Ivoire schildern, lebt seit ihrer Jugend in

Frankreich.

Der europäische Blick auf Afrika wird plakativ thematisiert. Dazu haben die Be-

sucher Gelegenheit, sich in die Comics zu vertiefen. (Bild: Antonio Uribe 2015).


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Newsletter 2/2015

Der Boden wurde in die Gestaltung einbezogen. (Bild: Antonio Uribe 2015).

Der Südafrikaner Anton Kannemeyer wiederum – aufgewachsen zur Zeit der Apartheid

und 1992 Mitbegründer des Underground-Magazins „Bitterkomix“ – macht sich ganz

bewusst den Stil der ligne claire zu eigen: Mit seiner Pappa-Figur beerbt der Nachge-

borene Hergés Figurenwelt und mischt sie mit all ihren Klischees und Blackfaces gehö-

rig auf. Kannemeyer provoziert, nimmt Sex-Tabus und Rasse-Vorurteile der Afrikaaner

aufs Korn. Doch zeichnet hier kein Schwarzer zurück – die vielfach autobiografi sch

grundierte Innensicht des Afrikaaners ist im gesellschaftlichen Wandel der letzten Jahr-

zehnte immer auch eine Gradwanderung.

Kannemeyer, von dem auch einige provokante Originallithografi en zu sehen sind, war

übrigens zur Ausstellungseröffnung in Basel und berichtete auf einem Workshop aus-

führlich von seinem Weg zum und als Comiczeichner: von der repressiv-abgeschot-

Der Südafrikaner Anton Kannemeyer (alias Joe Dog) versteht seine Comics als Art

of Outrage und will mit visueller Kunst die konservative Gesellschaft konfrontieren,

schockieren und letztlich einen gesellschaftlichen Aufschrei erzeugen. (Bild: Alpha-

bet of Democracy. In: Bitterkomix, Nr. 15. Auckland Park 2010, S. 52).


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Newsletter 2/2015

teten Jugend (in „My Nelson Mandela“ schildert er, wie er von dieser Seite des eige-

nen Landes erst während seines Studiums im Ausland hörte) über erste provokative

Ausstellungen, für die er mit Protestbriefen konfrontiert wurde, ja, einmal sogar mit

einer Sprayattacke, bis hin zu den heute zum Teil grossformatigen Darstellungen, die

in Galerien durchaus erfolgreich sind. Wie schwierig es ist, die komplexe Semiotik von

Comics adäquat zu lesen, erläuterte am besagten Workshop der aus Malmö ange-

reiste Medienwissenschaftler Jakob F. Dittmar. Neben den verschiedenen historisch

informativen Beiträgen der Studierenden ein wichtiger Input, der aber auch zeigte, wie

individuell Lektüre gerade in diesem Medium vonstatten geht.

Lesen kann man die Comics auch in der Ausstellung. Denn einiges liegt aus, so dass

man über die notgedrungen und angesichts der thematischen wie regionalen Breite

des Themas natürlich schmerzlich begrenzte Auswahl des Ausgestellten hinaus wei-

terschmökern kann. Das übrigens auch über den Zeitraum der Ausstellung hinaus,

denn die Basler Afrika Bibliographien haben im Vorfeld einen erfreulichen Bestand an

afrikanischen Comics zusammengetragen, der nun zu Lektüre und weiterer Forschung

einlädt.

Nana Badenberg, einst Studium der Lateinamerikanistik, Kunstgeschichte und Ger-

manistik, ist als freie Lektorin in Basel tätig. Kontakt: [email protected].

Die ursprüngliche Fassung dieses Beitrags erscheint im Januar 2016 in der Basler

ProgrammZeitung, die regelmässig auch über Veranstaltungen zu afrikaspezifi schen

Themen berichtet (www.programmzeitung.ch).

INFO:

„Kaboom! Afrikanische Comics im Fokus“, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Kloster-

berg 23, 4051 Basel, 5.–19.12.2015, 5.–22.1.2016, Di–Fr, 16–19h, Sa, 14–17h,

www.baslerafrika.ch.

Begleitend zur Ausstellung erhältlich ist der Katalog „Afrikanische Comics im Fokus“,

Basel 2015 (Basler Afrika Bibliographien), 62 Seiten., brochiert, CHF 15.–.

Die Cartoonfi gur Xiconhoca wurde vom Departement für Information und Propaganda der FRE-

LIMO 1976 in der Zeitschrift Tempo vorgestellt. Sie repräsentierte alles, was der neue sozialis-

tische Staat ablehnte, unterstützte die äusseren Feinde des Landes, verkaufte Waren auf dem

Schwarzmarkt und war korrupt und faul. Ihr Gegenbild war der Homem Novo, der aufrechte und

fortschrittliche sozialistische Bürger. (Bild: FRELIMO (Hg.): Xiconhoca, o enemigo. Maputo 1979).

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