THEME
STATEMENT
SUB-THEMES
PROPOSAL
FORMS
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African Studies Association,
2004
Canadian Association of
African Studies/
Association canadienne des
études africaines, 2004
Program Co-Chairs
Dennis D. Cordell
Southern Methodist University
(dcordell@smu.edu)
and
Philip Zachernuk
Dalhousie University
(pzachern@dal.ca)
| In an age of globalization
and transnationalism, broad economic, political, and social forces are
pushing societies towards homogenization on the model of the West and North.
In the West and North itself, globalization is widely seen as unwelcome
Americanization. Some observers contend that these global processes have
marginalized nation-states. Others have noted how local societies,
social groups, and even individuals throughout the world have tenaciously
resisted these pressures. The phrase “the local and the global” has appeared
in recent years as a trope for these contested interpretations of global
trends in the programs of disciplinary conferences in the humanities and
social sciences, and at area studies meetings. The terms globalization
and transnationalism have been so often used and so frequently reinterpreted
as to border on cliché. The occasion of a joint annual meeting of
the African Studies Association (ASA) and the Canadian Association of African
Studies/Association canadienne des études africaines (CAAS/ACEA)
in New Orleans provides an appropriate context and venue to take analysis
of these contested processes one step further by looking at three of the
major arenas of contestation: identity, language, and memory. Hence the
Annual Meeting invites papers and panels that deal with these issues in
Africa and the diaspora today and in the past.
In recent years, cultural studies in Africa have privileged the study of memory and identity—and by implication, language—in efforts to understand the renewal of civil society, and the horrendous outbreaks of inter-ethnic, civil, and military violence on the continent. Efforts at healing the hostility between ethnic and racial groups, such as theTruth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and the local and regional truth commissions in Burundi, have also stimulated much thought about the creation, re-creation, and maintenance of national communities. Political studies—which traditionally eschewed examination of these topics as the stuff of humanities or “soft” social science—have of late also begun to acknowledge the importance of identity politics and popular memory in analyses of contemporary African politics, and more notably, in studies of democracy, revolution, and genocide. It is abundantly clear, for example, that understanding identity politics in Côte d’Ivoire is essential to comprehending the conflict between Ivoirians of coastal origin and those whose forefathers and foremothers came from Burkina Faso, Mali, and other regions of the West African interior in the twentieth centutry. And well before that, Mobutu’s use of the language of « authenticité, » which was invoked by politicians elsewhere on the continent, served to legitimize his government as a nationalist rather than a neo-colonial regime. Historical studies in Africa have for a long time directed attention to the roles of language (and shared culture) in the development of community and difference—whether it be the sense of a “Mande world” among speakers of the Mande languages, or the consolidation of new “worlds” with the spread of languages such as Swahili, Hausa, Arabic, Mossi, and Lingala among peoples and groups across significant stretches of the continent. More recently, Africanist historians have taken a page from the French scholar Nora to explore the significance of “lieux de mémoire,” or “places of memory,” to understand how contemporary understandings of sites of purported historical significance for groups and societies (and countries) affect interpretations of the past, as well as how they sometimes act as touchstones for the revival of past identities or the coalescence of new ones. Obviously identities change through time. A new awareness of the popular use of history has also made it apparent that ordinary people order and identify with historical experiences and events in ways quite different from the ways that professional historians interpret their significance. Because such popular understandings often provide the basis for belief and action, they actually do influence events in the real world in real time. Biography and autobiography also bring together language, history, and memory at the level of the individual. |
Issues of language,
memory, and identity are classic topics in African literary studies, art,
and performance studies. Once viewed as signifiers of closed ethnic entities,
postmodern and postcolonial perspectives have led to fundamental reconceptualizations
in all three fields. While African literature, art, and performance all
indeed have played and continue to play central roles in fixing language,
memory, and identity, they also are crucibles for new, multiple métis,
and transnational communities of reference.
Anthropology has followed a similar itinerary—from ethnographic studies of individual, supposedly pristine societies (the “my people” syndrome) to investigations of how groups create, maintain, and re-create themselves in larger social, political, and economic contexts. Such studies followed people from rural areas to cities, and labor migrants from their homelands to the places where they worked—nearby, in other colonies or countries, or on other continents. Anthropology has undergone dramatic transformation to become, more than almost any other, a field focused on understanding social change. As such, anthropologists have looked at the evolution of older languages in new urban contexts, as well as the reshaping of European colonial languages to reflect African identities and concerns in Africa and in communities of the African diaspora. They have also examined the contradictory roles of memory in the diaspora—sometimes creating unity that did not exist in the homeland, or alternatively, reinforcing divisions from home, thereby fragmenting the community abroad. Other fields have important contributions to make in understanding the ways that language, memory, and identity have shaped African societies. In geography, it is clear, for example, that while textbooks decry the artificiality of African borders, some of these imposed frontiers have created spaces for the evolution of distinct political communities; some of the arbitrary creations of the colonial era are realities in the twenty-first century. Development studies and environmental studies are probing beyond resources and cultural practice to incorporate how societies and individuals situate themselves vis-à-vis their neighbors and the physical world in which they live. In the “language of development,” who is included and who is excluded from the community has a profound effect on the kind of development that actually comes to pass. In a very concrete way, too, language choices, language preferences, and language struggles influence education and the shapes of local, regional, and national civil society. A generation ago, pairing development and theatre would have seemed an oxymoronic enterprise at best; in some development circles today, it represents a committed attempt to understand how people and communities may assert ownership over development. Religious studies and philosophy, as well as the natural sciences and ecology also bring promising perspectives to the study of identity, language, and memory in Africa and the diaspora. To be sure, not all panels and papers need focus on issues of identity, language, and memory in Africa. Papers and panels that explore these topics in comparative perspective, drawing on experiences from the African diaspora, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America are also encouraged. Beyond these topics, the program committee will, of course, be most pleased to accommodate contributions on the time-honored variety of fundamental topics that have come to constitute the field of African Studies. |
A. Urban Spaces in Africa: Past Memories and Present Communities
B. The Power of Expression: Political Transitions, Civil Conflict, and Democracy
C. Philosophy and Religious Studies
D. Changing Places: Environmental Patterns in Africa
E. Expressions of Power: Economic Development
F. The African Diaspora: Contemporary Memories and New Identities
G. Historical Narratives, Memory, and Identity in Africa and the Diaspora
H. Colonialism, Imperialism, and Resistance: Expressions of Power
I. Expressions of Power: Agriculture and Rural Development
J. Expressions of Power: International Relations
K. Visual and Performance Culture in Africa and the Diaspora
L. Expressions of Power: Health Issues
M. Gender and The Power of Expression
N. Information Technologies and Development: New Communities
O. Identities and Memory: African Languages and Literatures
P. Education, Community, and Language
Q. Languages of Movement: Grassroots Activism and Popular Mobilization
R. Archaeology, Language, Memory, and the Creation of Identity
A. Urban
Spaces in Africa: Past Memories and Present Communities
Toyin Falola, University
of Texas (toyin.falola@mail.utexas.edu)
The African continent contains many of the fastest growing cities in the world. These cities are also some of the most dynamic social and cultural environments. As centers of education, commerce, and government, they serve as chief entrepôts for goods, peoples, and philosophies flowing into and out of individual countries. African urban spaces are reservoirs of past events and ideologies but they are also cauldrons of diverse social communities in the present. New modes of economic, social, and cultural expression develop at a rapid rate. Residents of African cities serve as gatekeepers, synthesizing past memories and present experiences to create new memories in a rapidly changing future. Globalization is an important element of urban change. However, we need to reconceptualize our definition of globalization and move beyond its perception as a hegemonic force imposed by the Western world upon those unable to defend themselves. Global economic, social, and political forces are not pushing Africans toward a homogenous Westernized model. Indeed, urbanites adopt outside trends at a much faster rate than those in the rural areas, but they also adapt those influences to local needs and conditions. We must acknowledge the ability and creativity of people to undermine and intertwine global forces at the local level, to create new systems of coping within increasingly crowded urban spaces.
This section calls for papers
that reveal memories of urban experiences throughout African history, but
also those that focus on the nature of present communities. How are urban
communities constructed in light of rural-urban migration, urban-urban
migration, and the international movement of peoples and ideas? How are
new languages constructed and utilized in identity transformation? Who
are the new marginalized groups in the urban environment and how do they
relate to previous and present communities of 'Others'? How are identities
transformed in the urban environment and how are they transformed into
new hybrid identities that reflect the past history of individuals and
communities, impact the present, and help determine new individual and
group histories?
B. The
Power of Expression: Political Transitions, Civil Conflict, and Democracy
Catherine Boone, University
of Texas at Austin (cboone@mail.la.utexas.edu)
This section invites proposals that explore any and all of the diverse and multiple forces that are shaping the nature of politics: the political arena; the state and state formation; constituencies; participation, representation and citizenship; state and non-state political institutions; regions and regionalism; war and peace; stability and instability; international-national-local linkages; and public policy in contemporary Africa. We especially invite contributions that help marry theoretical debates and innovations in the social science disciplines--including political science, history, geography, and anthropology--with long-standing substantive concerns in the study of African politics. Welcome too are paper and panel proposals from scholars in the humanities--including literature and the fine arts--that can help generate new insights into how individuals and groups understand, participate in, and are affected by political processes that are shaping and reshaping life on the continent.
The theme directs attention
to the idea that state-society relations are constructed subjectively through
social process, and by individuals who create and negotiate the meaning
of community, authority, territory, property, rights and entitlements,
and so on. Contributors to this section are likely to be interested
in how these processes shape and are shaped by material and institutional
relationships among actors and groups, and by the socially--and spatially--uneven
distributions of coercive capacity within national, regional, and international
contexts. Papers that deal with land politics, local and regional
politics, the political economy of democratization and authoritarianism,
the pressures of global actors and markets on African states and societies,
and HIV/AIDS or other public policy issues will be particularly welcome.
C. Philosophy
and Religious Studies
Elias Bongmba, Rice University
(bongmba@rice.edu)
We invite papers that address
identity, language, and memory in Africa and the African diaspora in philosophy,
religious/theological studies, and Africana philosophy. We particularly
encourage papers and panels that address philosophical and religious perspectives
on feminism in Africa and the diaspora. Papers in this arena should
explore and problematize feminist theory and methodology, feminist themes
and feminist discourse and practice. We also encourage papers that
compare feminist thought in the African context and the African diaspora.
We also invite papers and panels on religion in Africa and the African
diaspora. We are especially interested in papers that explore the
places of women, images of women in religious life and iconography, and
the contributions of women to contemporary religion and religious thought
in all the religious traditions of Africa, African America, and African-derived
religions in the Americas. A special roundtable will be dedicated
to Aimé Cesaire’s contribution to African and Afro-Caribbean thought.
We invite individual submissions that critically analyze ”Cesairean” themes
in négritude, consciousness, personality, personhood, language,
and memory.
D. Changing
Places: Environmental Patterns in Africa
Greg Maddox, Texas Southern
University (aashghmaddox@tsu.edu)
At first glance environment
and language seem an odd pairing. The study of environments and their
changes in geography and the natural sciences would seem to strive for
objectivity beyond the subjectivity and uncertainty of language.
Likewise, to emphasize the contingent and socially structured nature of
the production of knowledge about Africa’s environments and the people
who made them could too easily degenerate into studies critical of the
ability to “know” or express with certainty anything about Africa’s changing
landscapes. This section will emphasize papers and panels that transcend
this division. We encourage papers and panels that address the ways
human societies have lived in and understood their landscapes as well as
the ways that human action has altered those landscapes. We hope
a true dialogue can emerge between social and natural scientists based
on the necessity for natural scientists to understand the human and social
dimensions of their research and for social scientists and humanists to
situate their research within changing natural environments. Potential
topics could include the interaction between research in natural sciences
such as botany, zoology, ecology, and geology and local communities, debates
over the aims and methods of resource and landscape conservation, the politics
and language of environmental protection in a post-structural adjustment
political arena, and the effects of climate change on African landscapes.
E. Expressions
of Power: Economic Development
Elliot Fratkin, Smith College
(efratkin@smith.edu)
Proponents of globalization hail the integration of the world community into a single and unified economic system. Opponents have pointed to the large differences in economic and political power between ‘North’ and ‘South.’ Recently, African countries led a walkout from the WTO talks in Cancun. Perhaps no other sphere so boldly reveals the contradictions in the expressions of power than that of economic development. On one hand, economic development expresses the unequal and often exploitative relationship between the rich and poor nations, and the unequal benefits of that development between rich and poor within each nation. But economic development is also viewed as a positive process, embracing hopes of alleviating poverty, liberating the human spirit through economic growth, and participating as equals in the world marketplace.
This section provides a forum
for examining the effects of economic development on African life from
a variety of perspectives. Papers and panels are invited that analyze development
strategies and policy options affecting both rural and urban communities,
agricultural, pastoral, and industrial production, and local, regional,
and international trade. Studies on the effects of economic policies on
poor, rural, and disempowered communities are encouraged, as well as panels
that discuss the role of national governments and international agencies
including bilateral, multilateral, and non-governmental organization programs
on economic growth and development. Case studies of specific countries
and/or comparative studies, including comparison with other world regions,
are also encouraged. Presenters should use the opportunity of the ASA annual
meeting to reach a broader audience than their specific sub-discipline
affords. PowerPoint and other graphics are encouraged.
F. The
African Diaspora: Contemporary Memories and New Identities
Paul Lovejoy, York University
(plovejoy@yorku.ca)
The panels in this section will address issues of identity and memory in the construction and transformation of African diaspora cultures, not only in the Americas but also in Africa and the wider Islamic world. Proposals on topics relating to historical and contemporary themes of diaspora studies are particularly welcome, although all topics relating to issues of Africans in diaspora will be considered.
The section will explore
the issue of memory and identity in diaspora in three contexts: (1) The
contemporary memories of diaspora as they relate to slavery, alienation,
and resistance and as they have been recorded in various ways, including
narratives, legal proceedings, religious expressions, music, dance, and
observation. The new identities formed in diaspora were tied to the homeland
by memory and myth, but also sometimes by direct communication and return.
The focus recognizes the ongoing linkages across the Atlantic and between
the African homeland and other parts of the diaspora; (2) The memories
and identities arising from the repatriation to Africa from the diaspora
of those Africans and their offspring who returned as Christian missionaries,
Muslim pilgrims, colonial officials, settlers, and adventurers. The focus
is on the ongoing links between Africa and the places of African settlement
overseas and across the Sahara both during the era of slavery and in the
post-emancipation colonial era; and (3) The historical and cultural expansion
of the African diaspora into the modern, post-colonial period, exploring
the linkages between Africa and the rest of the world through the lens
of those seeking reparations for past wrongs. The focus is on the legacy
of slavery and the continuing confrontation with racism in the contemporary
world of international migration and resettlement that result from a variety
of crises and motivations.
G. Historical
Narratives, Memory, and Identity in Africa and the Diaspora
Andreas Eckert, University
of Hamburg (andreas.eckert@uni-hamburg.de)
Questions of memory and its
relation to national and other identities have moved to the center of a
variety of intellectual agendas in the past two decades. Africanist scholars
from a wide range of disciplines and with diverse area specialities have
begun to examine such aspects of social memory such as slavery and the
slave trade, or the ways violence has shaped history and the memory of
the past in various parts of Africa. Papers and panels on these and related
issues are most welcome. A by now familiar topic in African studies is
the fundamental connection between memory, nation-building and historiography.
While in the 1960s and early 1970s political elites invented and propagated
legitimizing traditions, historians made efforts to objectify the nation
as a unitary entity with a linear descent. More recently numerous observers
argue that in postcolonial Africa, memory as public practice is increasingly
in crisis. According to them postcolonial Africa is a place where history
cannot be recovered, produced and forgotten; the state no longer has either
the power or the means to produce an authoritative historical master narrative.
Parallel to that, local histories written and published by non-academic
(often diasporic) historians have gained considerable importance. These
histories construct and reconstruct local identities faced by rapid social
change. Papers and panels are also welcome on the relations between memory
and history and their import for aesthetic, ethical and political issues.
Of special interest are proposals which investigate phenomena whose traumatic
nature blocks understanding and disrupts memory while producing belated
effects that have an impact on attempts to represent or otherwise address
the past.
H. Colonialism,
Imperialism, and Resistance: Expressions of Power
Philip Zachernuk, Dalhousie
University (pzachern@dal.ca)
Africa in modern times has endured momentous contests of power. Identity, language and memory have often been at the center of these struggles. Resistance is about fighting over images of the past as well as visions of the future. Memories of glorious pasts, and later memories of earlier resistance, are the pith of nationalist political traditions. Subaltern critiques of these nationalist myths, calling on alternate accounts of the past, have shaped resistance to post-colonial regimes. Resisters have also had to assess the power of local languages, linguae francae, or the colonizers’ tongue as the medium for expressing these memories. They have also moved between conservative, radical, universalist and nativist modes of speech. Identities were often fashioned in peculiar circumstances, caught between assertions of tradition and processes of reinvention. All these stories connect across and beyond the continent, as Africans reached out to the diaspora and elsewhere to form new identities as a means of countering forces that would subordinate them.
Colonizers also had to express, even fabricate, their power through language and identity. Colonial rulers needed to find effective symbols of their presence, and often contest variant interpretations of them. They thus imagined glorious pasts of their own, and imposed patterns of history onto African social orders. Imperial power was also expressed in such diverse modes as urban planning, photographic representation, appropriation and control of languages, and medical programs.
This section especially welcomes
stories and analyses -- built around the concepts of identity, language
and memory -- of how these plays of colonial power were made, and how they
were met by Africans. It also welcomes other contributions, from
any field, that inform our appreciation of the cultural, social and political
history of imperialism and African resistance.
I. Expressions
of Power: Agriculture and Rural Development
Peter D. Little, University
of Kentucky (pditt1@pop.uky.edu)
Despite their predominant
roles in African economies and societies, agriculture and the rural sector
continue to receive fewer resources than other economic sectors and areas.
Indeed, agricultural policies on the continent reflect powerful national
and international interests that favor urban populations and large farm-based
enterprises. Nonetheless, African agrarian systems are exceptionally
dynamic and responsive to new market niches and constraints that have transformed
smallholder agriculture in some areas, although not always for the benefit
of the majority. In line with this year’s theme, the section welcomes
contributions that explore such themes as: the dynamics of smallholder
agriculture and tenure systems; the politics of agricultural policy making;
food security; the dynamics of rural poverty; the role of non-farm activities
in rural development; new ‘forms’ of African agriculture; and innovative
approaches for revitalizing African agriculture. Papers that incorporate
interdisciplinary methods and approaches are encouraged, as are contributions
that utilize case study and time-series data.
J. Expressions
of Power: International Relations
Daniel Volman, African Security
Research Project (dvolman@igc.org)
The emergence of new patterns
of international relations since the end of the Cold War—and even more
since the events of 11 September 2001—have substantially changed not only
the impact of global political and economic processes on Africa, but also
the significance and influence of African political, economic, and cultural
processes for international affairs. Proposals are welcomed on any
aspect of Africa’s international relations, ranging from examinations of
Africa’s place in the world to papers that explore developments throughout
the continent, within subregions, and in the relationships between particular
countries (both in Africa and globally). Of particular interest are
proposals that deal with the role that identity, language, and memory play
in the initiation, pattern, and outcome of conflicts within African states.
K. Visual
and Performance Culture in Africa and the Diaspora
Marie Nathalie LeBlanc,
Concordia University (marienat@sympatico.ca)
Processes of cultural globalization and localization have been described in terms of a tug of war between forces encouraging cultural homogenization and local resistance. These two seemingly contradictory trends can be seen as expressions of power dynamics, invoking a wide range of identities, languages and moments of memory. In the case of visual and performance culture both trends are present and often intertwined on the African continent and its diaspora. Mobile subjects, wandering commodities, traveling media and ideologies raise issues of métissage and hybridity, question notions of authenticity and identity, and suggest the domestication of heterogeneous cultural expressions.
Dynamics of cross-cultural
production can be seen in the African consumption of Baliwood productions,
Kung Fu films, Brazilian telenovelas and American Evangelist television
programs, the production of African Reggae and Rap, the appropriation of
traditional African music by world beat style labels, and the popular creation
of African and diaspora film festivals in major North American and European
cities. New technologies and their appropriation also play a role in the
consumption and commodification of African cultural expressions, such as
the vibrant video industry of Ghana and Nigeria, or the recent “discovery”
of African photographers in Mali. While the globalization of cultural
expression brings about new processes of identification and memory in Africa
and its diaspora, one may speculate about the novelty of these dynamics.
Are there differences between the commodification of Malian photography
in the 1990s and that of African sculptures in the 1920s? Does the
reception of visual productions from the USA or Brazil in Africa differ
from the popularity of Cuban music in the 1950s and 1960s? Such questions
raise the issue of the contemporary dynamics of power that are embedded
in visual and performance culture, carrying both local and global meanings.
Contemporary African visual
and performance culture plays a significant role in grassroots political
movements. It has also been the stage for the negotiation of local
conflicts, as in the case of masquerades in Nigeria or Cameroon.
While marginalized groups such as women and youth have appropriated these
modalities of cultural expressions to carve themselves a space in global
and local dynamics, they have also been used by states and other forms
of local authority to build cohesion or to create division, as with music
in Tanzania.
This section probes recent
processes of cultural globalization and localization as they pertain to
visual and performance culture. Papers and panels may address, amongst
other topics, modalities of cultural production and consumption, the role
of Africans in the appropriation of global cultural styles and genres,
and\or the role of these cultural expressions in terms of local and global
dynamics of power. Papers and panels are invited to question what
is “new” and what is “old” in these recent processes of cultural globalization,
as well as to interrogate boundaries of authenticity, identity and memory.
L. Expressions
of Power: Health Issues
Meredeth Turshen, Rutgers
University (turshen@rci.rutgers.edu)
International institutions, reflecting broad economic, political, and social forces, are pushing African societies into Western and Northern models of capitalism and democracy. In many parts of the continent, local societies, social groups, and individuals are resisting the pressures of these broad forces and confronting the institutions that impose the new models. In this conjuncture, Africans and Africanists are posing difficult questions. Does globalization bring peaceful development or does it foment new kinds of war in Africa, with all the known impacts of conflict on health and well being?
Panelists and individual
scholars are invited to submit work that addresses health issues in the
context of relations between Africa and the North and the international
institutions that represent the North. What are the new expressions of
Northern and Western power in the health sector? Suggested problems to
be explored include the relation between the dramatic decline in life expectancy
and new models of health care privatization (such as franchising), new
models of health care financing (such as commercial insurance), and new
ways of denying health care (for example by excluding migrant workers and
non-citizens). Some of the most powerful instances of resistance have come
from people affected by AIDS who are confronting the international pharmaceutical
industry over the global rationing of treatment. Finally, what have militarization
and the spread of AIDS done to health care priorities in African countries:
are the needs of people with AIDS and with war injuries squeezing budgets
for broad public health and environmental services? Participants are requested
to disaggregate their data by sex and/or gender and pay special attention
to women’s health whenever possible. This section invites papers and panels
focusing on health issues in Africa, whether they are focused on the specific
topic of expressions of power in the health sector or broadly conceived.
Papers and panels that focus on local experiences are particularly welcome.
M. Gender
and the Power of Expression
Priscilla Stone, Washington
University (pstone@artsci.wustl.edu)
Gendered approaches to the study of identity, language, and memory are particularly compelling in this age of globalization. As gendered roles and expectations stress and strain under often bitter contestations between local understandings and global pressures, African women and men are increasingly caught in the middle. While this space may allow for innovation, it may also be experienced in painful ways. African women’s economic autonomy within the household, for instance, may show important continuities with past expectations, but may have taken on added urgency in impoverished times---both hardened and more fluid in complex ways.
These changing identities and roles are seen in many aspects of African life, past and present, and we encourage papers across a wide range of fields. The nature of gender relations and sexual behavior may be experienced within the global context of the spread of HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, and migration, for instance, yet the fingerprints of “traditional” norms are everywhere. Politics, education, gendered access to languages of commerce and politics, as well as the contribution of women to art, literature and performance are all fertile fields for exploring both continuities and disjunctures. We also encourage papers that reflect the rich new literature on the place of women’s memories in local and national histories.
Not all panels and papers
about gender need focus on issues of identity, language and memory in Africa.
There is much that is exciting about gender in African studies and we encourage
a broad range of submissions.
N.
Information Technologies and Development: New Communities
Simon Akindes (akindess@uwp.edu)
and Joseph Caruso (caruso@columbia.edu)
In the past fifteen years, the adoption of neo-liberal policies in Africa has facilitated the introduction of new computer-based information and communication technologies (ICTs). These technologies are reshaping education, scientific research, media, politics, and commerce in fundamental ways and are affecting how Africans and their diaspora are relating to one another and to the wider world. New communities are being formed around unconventional concepts of locality and virtuality, with deep implications for the future. Shall we see positive changes in the practice and theory of development in Africa, or a tragic deepening of political, economic, and social crises? This section focuses on two main areas of research and development in ICTs.
First, through an examination of specific case studies in Africa and in its diaspora, the following questions may be addressed: How do Africans forge their own identities with tools and programs conceived outside of the continent? How do ICTs help establish new diasporic communities for new struggles? How do ICTs contribute to undoing or reinforcing the marginalization of Africa, especially in scientific and economic terms? Is foreign investment in the African ICT sector encouraging new economic and intellectual dependencies and obstructing the production and dissemination of indigenous knowledge/languages? What has been the impact of ICTs on political participation and democratization?
Second, a series of more
theoretical and abstract questions may also be explored: Are ICTs helping
Africa (re)gain the initiative in the discourse and practice of its own
development? What roles are they playing in the "modern" economic and cultural
development of African peoples on the continent and globally? Can Africa
"leapfrog" economic development stages and address the problems of extreme
poverty and uneven development through a heavy investment in the new technologies?
In light of recent experiences, do development theories still offer an
understanding of the African condition? Is the revolution in ICTs just
another strategy of Western economic and cultural imperialism or can Africans
and their diasporas transcend the limitations of the past and seize control
of the emancipatory potential that ICTs seem to offer?
O. Identities
and Memory: African Languages and Literatures
Aliko Songolo, University
of Wisconsin-Madison (asongolo@facstaff.wisc.edu)
The relationship between language, memory and identity has played a foundational role in literary studies. However, the question of identity is being posed with new urgency in the era of globalization and transnationalism as African societies experience unprecedented dislocation. The identity of African literature itself has undergone significant rethinking as writers, critics, artists, and theories migrate across borders far beyond their original loci while at the same time remaining connected to them. The singular rise of new writing in former colonial capitals as well as in African countries has stretched the parameters of African literature and blurred the boundaries between the colonial and the postcolonial, and between the continental and the diasporic. While they forge a space for resistance and transgressive expression, these writers and other artists create cosmopolitan works of art because they bear the traces of multiple national and transnational cultures in the wake of colonialism and in the midst of a global neocolonialism.
Central to these transformations is language. As writers from the continent and its diaspora infuse colonial languages with new vitality, there is renewed concern with the fate of expressive forms in African languages. The Asmara Declaration of January 2000 reissued an old challenge to African decision-makers and to producers of culture not only to defend and develop African languages anew, but also to foster dialogue among them through translation in order to address traditional and current social fissures, to bring about democracy, and to consolidate collective memory among African peoples.
It is through language—however
conceived—that memory can be interrogated. In the face of endemic calamities
such as war, genocide, disease, and poverty, polities have turned to public
forums such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa,
the National Reconciliation Commission in Ghana, or Gacaca in Rwanda in
efforts to understand and perhaps exorcise what has befallen their communities.
At the same time, artists from writers and painters to filmmakers and musicians
offer powerful images of this trauma as a way toward catharsis and toward
the constitution of “places of memory.”
P.
Education, Community, and Language
Damtew Teferra, Boston College
(teferra@bc.edu)
It is a cliché that education is a sine qua non for social, economic, and cultural progress. As the world ushers in the knowledge era and as development models continue to shift, the need and significance of education, knowledge, and information have become ever more critical--underscoring the great need to understand the dynamic issues that affect the education of African people. Africa is the continent with the highest illiteracy rates. Moreover, it faces both immense and complex challenges and enjoys great potential. There is a great deal to be learned and accomplished in the region's education systems.
A region of much irony and contradiction, this continent of rampant illiteracy is also the language Mecca of the world. The continent’s rich linguistic diversity has been poorly explored, developed, and sanctioned. As the world moves increasingly closer together using limited media and languages, and as education is transmitted through ever fewer languages, the very future of most languages on the continent is in jeopardy. Even before the press of globalization, language issues—such as designating a national language and choosing a medium of instruction, among others—have been plagued by persistent controversy and there is little hope that this trend will change in the near future.
We entertain proposals, panels
and roundtable discussions addressing a wide array of issues surrounding
education and languages on the continent drawing preferably on local experience
while reflecting and integrating it within a regional and global context.
Q. Languages
of Movement: Grassroots Activism and Popular Mobilization
Michael West, Binghamton
University (mwest@mail.binghamton.edu)
This topic is centered on
social movements, their languages, discourses, symbolisms and actions.
Social movements, as here defined, are antisystemic in form and character
and have two defining qualities. First, they operate outside the
state and are independent of state actors. Second, social movements
are predicated on, and derive their legitimacy from, mass mobilization
and popular support. Broadly, the goal of social
movements is to bring about
systemic changes in some aspect of human endeavor--political, social, economic,
cultural, religious. The target of social movements may vary.
Some movements may be directed against the state: overturning state structures,
capturing state power, influencing state policy. Other social movements
may seek to effect changes at the societal level: religious reformation,
moral transformation, changes in the status of certain groups (e. g., women,
youth, the oppressed, the enslaved). Still other social movements
may seek to raise awareness of, or opposition to, certain issues, such
as AIDS, militarism, war, slavery, violence against women, and/or reparations.
The tactics of social movements, too, may vary, ranging from moral suasion
to civil disobedience, from demonstrations to petitioning, and from armed
self-defense to armed struggle. Papers and panels submitted on this
topic may be either historical or contemporary. Spatially, they may
focus on social movements that seek to mobilize, appeal to, or interact
with any number of audiences: local, national, regional, continental, transcontinental,
or any combination thereof.
R.
Archaeology, Language, Memory, and the Creation of Identity
Peter Schmidt, University
of Florida (pschmidt@africa.ufl.edu)
Archaeology as it is practiced today in Africa has arisen out of an intellectual history in which there has been a deep engagement in issues of language and memory (historical linguistics and oral traditions) and, more recently, in the creation of identity. These deeply embedded concerns have arisen out of a more humanistic archaeology interested in local histories as well as larger issues of development, human rights, and sustainability in Africa. Out of the latter set of issues has unfolded a new archaeology in Africa, one that draws on social theory while simultaneously addressing social and economic needs. In other words, we now have an activist archaeology that is more reflexively engaged in history-making, which is to say it embraces indigenous memories of the landscape while simultaneously valorizing local human rights to a cultural past, particularly through active engagement in heritage management and capacity building in archaeology. Archaeology has become a potent tool through which popular historical ideas in Africa and the diaspora can be reevaluated—ranging from myth debunking to revisions of long accepted interpretations. Memory of sacred space and the role of sacred space in the growth of political and social systems figure as key components of archaeological concerns over how symbolic space is used for political maneuvering and identity.
Manipulation of the symbolic
capital held in sacred and ritual space has been a key ingredient in political
legitimization, both recently and in the ancient past. In its search for
symbolic reservoirs and dominant symbolic axioms, African archaeology has
turned its gaze on craft specialization and ritual—among many domains—to
develop new understandings of symbolic patterning of the material world.
Modes of representation in archaeological language and the play of tropes
in archaeological interpretation are also of growing interest and touch
on the cultural implications of trope-laden interpretative language in
archaeology today. Proposals that address the above concerns are particularly
welcome, as are proposals from other perspectives in African archaeology.