Critical African Studies最新文献

{"title":"Waiting for Gadaa: a critical exploration through transnational Siinqee feminism","authors":"M. Kumsa","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2019.1697313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2019.1697313","url":null,"abstract":"In this autoethnography I critically engage the experiences and theories of waiting for liberation, dubbed waiting for gadaa, in the Oromo diaspora by using the Africanist analytic framework of transnational siinqee feminism. I organize my stories into two parts. In the first part, I introduce the work, starting from my personal experiences of waiting and connecting the dots of the personal and political and individual and collective stories. I tease out three salient epistemological principles of a transnational siinqee feminist conceptual framework for both the critical analysis of theories and experiences of waiting in the Oromo diaspora. In the second part, I explore waiting in theory and practice. I interweave the three siinqee principles, my research in the Oromo diaspora, and broader emergent theories of waiting to critically engage the complex textures of waiting for gadaa in the Oromo diaspora. I conclude by opening the principles of transnational siinqee feminism for a possible fit in broader emancipatory praxis.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"121 - 134"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90361880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘Wasting time’: migratory trajectories of adolescence among Eritrean refugee girls in Khartoum","authors":"K. Grabska","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2019.1697318","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2019.1697318","url":null,"abstract":"Eritrean adolescent girls’ migration to Khartoum exposes the interplay between aspiration and desire of becoming an adult linked to a specific geographical location, dreams of being else-where, impossibilities of returning, and realities of uncertainties and being-stuck inbetween. This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork among Eritrean adolescent refugee girls and young women in Khartoum (2014–2016), who see Sudan as a transit place to an imagined ‘better place’ elsewhere. Aspirations and desires of moving elsewhere shape the experiences of and the different transitions associated with one’s life course. The transition from adolescence to adulthood is of critical importance, where aspirations of being elsewhere and the impossibilities of achieving this goal shape the experiences of ‘becoming an adult’. These transitions are also gendered, both in space and across spaces. Using insights from feminist narrative research, I examine how Eritrean refugee girls and young women narrate and experience migration, waiting and transitions in a transitory context of Khartoum. Through hope for mobility and the experience of waiting while faced with protracted uncertainty, I analyse how waithood, personhood and transition to adulthood are experienced.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"2010 1","pages":"22 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86304751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Maisha ni kuvumiliya – patrimonialism, progress and the ambiguities of waiting in Goma, DR Congo","authors":"Silke Oldenburg","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2019.1697314","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2019.1697314","url":null,"abstract":"Maisha ni kuvumiliya – ‘Life is patience’ is a very popular catchphrase in Goma, the capital of Eastern Congo’s North Kivu province. Patience takes waiting as a starting point for progress and points to the uncertainties on the horizon. In a world of velocity and mobility, young people, who are so often forced to wait, feel frustrated about being ‘stuck’ or in ‘waithood’. Drawing on ethnographic examples gathered during longitudinal fieldwork carried out since 2008 in Goma, DR Congo, I will analyze various biographical trajectories that indicate that waiting, despite its immobilizing effects, should not be reduced to a passive experience; it can also be understood as productive space in which Goma’s youth engage in relational practices with the objects/subjects they are waiting for. The ambiguities of waiting become manifest in Goma’s political economy where gerontocratic and patrimonial politics dominate and impede progress. As context-specific practice, waiting is connected to larger discussions around youth, experiences of temporalities and political-economic factors.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"31 1","pages":"37 - 51"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81103069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Editorial introduction","authors":"Lizelle Bisschoff, H. Gray, Shari Daya","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2019.1708014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2019.1708014","url":null,"abstract":"This current issue of Critical African Studies consists of three individual submissions – on perceptions of homosexuality within colonial histories; on everyday conceptions of the Ethiopian state; and on labour in Kenya, followed by a short special section, entitled ‘Local Perspectives on African Tourism’, consisting of three articles, situated in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zanzibar, respectively. The issue starts with an article by Haley McEwen that argues for the relevance of examining histories of western population control in order to understand contemporary forms of intolerance towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) people across the continent. The article examines rumours and suspicions that homosexuality is a form of population control and relates these discourses to the increasing influence of the US pro-family movement in African sexual politics. The author situates these rumours within an account of continuing geopolitical power inequalities and a social imaginary of how the West continues to exert control through sexualized technologies of manipulation. In his article on ideas of the state in Northern Ethiopia, Daniel Mulugeta unpacks the language, including idioms and metaphors, that people use to talk about ‘mengist’, that is, the state or government. Through an ethnographic study of public and everyday discourses, he shows that conceptions of the state are shaped by cultural and particularly religious ideals. Mulugeta argues that citizens’ moral understandings of power and authority, goodness and legitimacy, help to explain the ways in which they make sense of both the provision and the corruption of the Ethiopian state in their everyday lives. Catherine Dolan and Claire Gorden’s article sets out a critical and historical perspective on the entrepreneurial discourse that has infused debate on contemporary African capitalism. They do this by examining the ideological, discursive and material practices that have been used to shape the idea of the African ‘economic man’ over time. They locate the transformations of this labouring subject in Kenya within the changing political and economic strategies of governments and international development institutions filled with idioms of growth and development. The entrepreneurial and productive ‘economic man’ is linked to particular moral valuations of Kenya’s citizens that is deeply entwined with the idea of an African habitus that is an obstacle to economic growth. In contrast, the efficient and enterprising labourer has represented a set of ideas about the future of the nation. Thus, over time, concepts of enterprise and entrepreneurialism have been central not only to economic agendas of creating a productive cadre of economic men but also to strategies of nation building. The short special section on tourism in Africa explores some of the emerging, challenging and often problematic continental and international issues related to tourist activities and dif","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"263 - 265"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77991444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Emerging routes for framing Muslim roots in Zanzibar in the era of tourism1","authors":"Akbar Keshodkar","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2019.1670704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2019.1670704","url":null,"abstract":"As Zanzibaris cope with the marginalization of their cultural beliefs under the hegemonic power of western leisure tourism, finding themselves increasingly vulnerable to the new values and lifestyles promoted through tourism, the paper examines how they are striving to develop new routes to reconceptualize their Muslim roots and identities in Zanzibar. The paper traces how their association with Islam has shifted with the emergence of new contact zones, first in the aftermath of the 1964 Revolution, which sought to replace it with visions of African civilization and most recently under tourism, where practices associated with tourism and arrival of large number of Christian migrant laborers from mainland Tanzania has led to growing socio-economic and political displacement of the local community. The paper examines how, under growing conditions of ‘involuntary immobility’, Zanzibaris are reconfiguring their association to Islamic culture and practices as they search for new pathways of mobility to survive today. The paper argues that the different routes for projecting association with Islam reflect efforts of Zanzibaris to seek pathways of mobility under the hegemony of tourism, which contributes to the growing deterioration of living conditions and quality of life for majority of the population, and recodify notions of ustaarabu (civilization) with new meanings to formulate their roots and identities in Zanzibar.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"361 - 377"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86032546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Suspect sexualities: contextualizing rumours of homosexuality within colonial histories of population control","authors":"H. McEwen","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2019.1670701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2019.1670701","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the widespread notion that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’ in relation to a historical contextual factor that has been widely neglected within efforts to situate and make sense of this widespread notion: the legacy of western population control interventions in Africa and the anxieties, fears and suspicions that they have provoked. The article discusses the relevance of population control history within efforts to understand emerging forms of intolerance towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) people across the continent. Western population control interventions initiated after the official demise of colonial governments have provided a historical basis for suspicions and rumours about how the West continues to manipulate and control African communities despite the formal termination of colonial rule. While positivist western epistemic frameworks have largely constructed such suspicions as ‘irrational’ and as barriers to its development agendas, critical approaches have argued that they can provide critical insights into social imaginaries, particularly in relation to dynamics of power and inequality. In interrogating the suspicion that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’ from a critical perspective, analysis considers the rise of the international population movement and history of population control agendas in African countries in order to open up new ways of understanding the historical contextual factors that have engendered rumours that homosexualiy is a western imposition. Discussion specifically considers rumours and suspicions that homosexuality is a form of population control which have been iterated by African thought and political leaders. The article also relates these discourses to the increasing influence of the US pro-family movement in African sexual politics. Analysis draws on discursive data that was collected through online ethnography and fieldwork as well as a critical review of literature examining population control agendas and rumours in Africa. This article concludes that the history of the international population control movement is directly implicated within contemporary stigma and scapegoating of LGBTIQ+ people in Africa. The persistence of the suspicion that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’ can therefore be explained, in part, through its genealogy within longer standing awareness of western efforts to contain population growth across the continent.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"19 1","pages":"266 - 284"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81768778","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Worker, businessman, entrepreneur?: Kenya's shifting labouring subject","authors":"C. Dolan, C. Gordon","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2019.1689829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2019.1689829","url":null,"abstract":"Entrepreneurship is increasingly promoted as a salve for the political problem of jobless growth and shrinking state coffers. But, its contemporary position at the frontiers of African capitalism is premised on nearly a century of attention on the African ‘economic man’, figured and reconfigured through efforts of governments and international development institutions. This paper traces a genealogy of this labouring subject in Kenya, describing the ideological, discursive and material practices undertaken to mould African workers into productive economic agents. Across colonial and post-colonial periods, and within different employment contexts, the purported African habitus has been construed as an obstacle to progress, one that can be surmounted through the acquisition of enterprising qualities and entrepreneurial dispositions. Steeped in an ideal of selfhood as individualistic, industrious and future-oriented, the productive economic man has come to represent a set of ideas about the future of the nation, and is deeply entwined with moral valuations of Kenya's citizenry and with idioms of development and economic growth. The paper details how the productive and enterprising subject is continually invoked as a response to shifting economic and political dynamics, and invested with a perennial capacity to reinvigorate the nation.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"16 3 1","pages":"301 - 321"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82762839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The limits of inclusivity and sustainability in transfrontier peace parks: case of Sengwe community in Great Limpopo transfrontier conservation area, Zimbabwe","authors":"S. Chiutsi, J. Saarinen","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2019.1670703","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2019.1670703","url":null,"abstract":"Transfrontier peace parks are seized with the challenge of creating a more inclusive and sustainable conservation agenda in the officially designated peaceparks in southern Africa. The quest for inclusivity and sustainability has witnessed sustained lobbying from the local communities calling for more meaningful involvement in the conservation and tourism industry value chain in the peaceparks. Against this background it is therefore imperative to understand the limits of inclusivity and sustainability in the peaceparks. This is important as this may help in gaining insights into improving stakeholder relations and to better manage expectations and perceptions of local communities affected by the establishment of the peaceparks. Understanding the limits of inclusivity and sustainability may help to develop beneficial stakeholder relations as positive relations have been understood to result in better biodiversity conservation and management strategies of the transboundary resources. This paper aims to share insights into the limits of inclusivity and sustainability of the GLTP focusing on the practical experiences of the local people in southeastern lowveld Zimbabwe. The study adopted a qualitative approach and leaned on the interpretivist research philosophy with major research participants drawn from the community members and key role players. A total of 180 community members drawn across the Sengwe community participated in the study. Research material was generated between October 2013 and April 2015. The results based on community interviews show that the stakeholder relations in the GLTFCA are currently strained and do not give the optimism and confidence to achieve meaningful inclusivity of the local communities and overall sustainability of the peacepark initiatives in southern lowveld Zimbabwe. The major challenges to inclusivity include poor governance, threats to livelihoods and negative stakeholder relations. Thus, there is a need to continuously review the governance processes, improve stakeholder relations and support community livelihood coping strategies in more tangible ways.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"47 1","pages":"348 - 360"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86011782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Everyday conceptions of the state in Ethiopia: corruption discourses, moral idioms and the ideals of mengist","authors":"Daniel Mulugeta","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2019.1689830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2019.1689830","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the ways in which ideas of state are constituted in North Ethiopia by focusing on corruption and development discourses found in local public domains as well as on religious metaphors and idioms which define the roles and obligations involved in governance. Specifically, I highlight the ways in which people draw on experiences of everyday life to formulate the normative basis of state authority and how this contributes to the production of an understanding that the state appears to be both above and separate from local politics and society. The study generates new insights into how local values, expressed through metaphors and idioms, serve to orient asymmetrical power relations between state and local people into a relationship (and mutual recognition) of responsibility and obligation. I argue that state formation can be fruitfully explored from a vantage point that explores specific configurations of divergent discursive practices, a process shaped by the ongoing contingencies of social relations, as well as the actions, expectations and hopes of the people involved in the process.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"285 - 300"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79297311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Understanding tourism consciousness through habitus: perspectives of ‘poor’ black South Africans","authors":"Regis Musavengane","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2019.1670702","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2019.1670702","url":null,"abstract":"This paper established the existence of tourism consciousness among poor Black South Africans. Guided by Bourdieu’s (1990) concept of habitus, meta-synthesis informed the qualitative approach used in the study where random face-to-face interviews were conducted with respondents in select South African ‘poor’ black communities/townships in Cape Town and Johannesburg. It is argued that although most Black South Africans are regarded as poor and seem to lack the means to engage in tourism, their consciousness regarding tourism is informed by five main factors: (i) structural exclusion, (ii) racialized spaces, (iii) the will to travel, (iv) tourism awareness, and (v) business ownership skills. Combined, these factors shape the consciousness of poor Black South Africans on tourism and inform their participation in the tourism system.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"12 1","pages":"322 - 347"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79974810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}