Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies

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

The Making of the African Road offers an account of the long-distance road in Africa. Being a latecomer to automobility and far from saturated mass mobility, the African road continues to be open for diverging interpretations and creative appropriations. The road regime on the continent is thus still under construction, and it is made in more than one sense: physically, socially, politically, morally and cosmologically. The contributions to this volume provide first-hand anthropological insights into the infrastructural, economic, historical as well as experiential dimensions of the emerging orders of the African road.

Contributors are: Kurt Beck, Amiel Bize, Michael Bürge, Luca Ciabarri, Gabriel Klaeger, Mark Lamont, Tilman Musch, Michael Stasik, Rami Wadelnour.

As South Africa has entered the third decade after the end of apartheid, this book aims at taking stock of the post-apartheid dynamics in the, so far, often less-comprehensively analysed, but crucial fields of APRM-relevant politics, social development, land and regional relations. In the first part of the book an analysis of some structuring domestic features of post-apartheid South Africa is provided, with a focus on political processes and debates around gender, HIV/AIDS and religion. The second part of the volume focuses on the land question and part three is looking at South Africa’s role in the Southern African region.

Contributors are: Nancy Andrew, Nicholas Dietrich, Ulf Engel, Harvey M. Feinberg, Anna-Maria Gentili, Preben Kaarsholm, Mandisa Mbali, David Moore, Arrigo Pallotti, Roberta Pellizzoli, Chris Saunders, Timothy Scarnecchia, Cherryl Walker, Lorenzo Zambernardi, and Mario Zamponi.

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


Contributors include: Deborah Fahy Bryceson, Rosalind Eyben, Amanda Hammar, Kjell Havnevik, Mats Hårsmar, Terje Oestigaard and Rune Skarstein

This book uses empirical research to bring together a broad range of protest contexts in twelve chapters. From the formation of Maroon societies in the early colonial period, to female mobilisation in authoritarian contexts, via urban youth culture, women or mineworkers in trade unionism, as well as pro- and anti- gay rights activists, the protagonists here all insist upon their rights to protest in a variety of ways. Sometimes popular protest is expressed through religion, often (and sometimes violently) by young people, exasperated by their long wait for social achievement. Electoral wars and the formation of militias reveal a geography of violence in urban areas, which, in some sectarian excesses, can be displaced to rural areas, as described in the study on Boko Haram.

Cet ouvrage regroupe un éventail comprenant douze contextes de contestation. De la formation de communautés marronnes au début de la colonisation, aux mobilisations féminines en contexte autoritaire, en passant par les cultures urbaines, les cultures syndicales des femmes et des travailleurs dans les mines, les contestations pro ou contre la liberté des homosexuels, tous font prévaloir leur pouvoir de contestation de manière plurielle. La voie religieuse est un domaine où s’exerce parfois de manière violente, les protestations de populations souvent jeunes, en attente de mobilité sociale. Les guerres électorales et la constitution de milices dessinent une géographie de la violence en milieu urbain, violence qui trouve à se déplacer en milieu rural dans certaines dérives sectaires comme en témoigne l’étude sur Boko Haram.


Contributors are:
Rémy Bazenguissa-Ganga, Raphaël Botiveau, Christophe Broqua, Michel Cahen,Thomas Fouquet, Adam Hizagi, Alcinda Honwana, Alexander Keese, Marie-Nathalie LeBlanc, Dominique Malaquais, Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle, Ophélie Rillon, Johanna Siméant, Benjamin Soares, Kadya Tall.

Africa in Scotland, Scotland in Africa provides scholarly, interdisciplinary analysis of the historical and contemporary relationships, links and networks between Scotland, Africa and the African diaspora. The book interrogates these links from a variety of perspectives – historical, political, economic, religious, diplomatic, and cultural – and assesses the mutual implications for past, present and future relationships. The socio-historical connection between Scotland and Africa is illuminated by the many who have shaped the history of African nationalism, education, health, and art in respective contexts of Africa, Britain, the Caribbean and the USA. The book contributes to the empirical, theoretical and methodological development of European African Studies, and thus fills a significant gap in information, interpretation and analysis of the specific historical and contemporary relationships between Scotland, Africa and the African diaspora.

Contributors are: Afe Adogame, Andrew Lawrence, Esther Breitenbach, John McCracken, Markku Hokkanen, Olutayo Charles Adesina, Marika Sherwood, Caroline Bressey, Janice McLean, Everlyn Nicodemus, Kristian Romare, Oluwakemi Adesina, Elijah Obinna, Damaris Seleina Parsitau, Kweku Michael Okyerefo, Musa Gaiya and Jordan Rengshwat, Vicky Khasandi-Telewa, Kenneth Ross, Magnus Echtler, and Geoff Palmer.

Travelling Models offers a theoretical concept for comparative research on conflict management in Africa in processes of globalization: how is change in one place related to developments in other places? Why are certain issues that are important in one place taken up in other places, while others are not? The authors examine how the travel of models enact changes, particularly in African conflict situations, most often in unexpected ways. They look at what happens when a model has been put into practice at a conflict site, and they pay attention to the forms of social (re-)ordering resulting from this process. The authors look, among others, at conflict managing models of power- and revenue sharing, mediation, freedom of expression, disaster management, community involvement and workshopping.

Contributors are: Andrea Behrends, Lydie Cabane, Veronika Fuest, Dejene Gemechu, Mutasim Bashir Ali Hadi, Remadji Hoinathy, Mario Krämer, Sung-Joon Park, Tinashe Pfigu, Richard Rottenburg, Sylvanus Spencer and Kees van der Waal.

The Introduction of this volume is being offered in Open Access

States at Work explores the mundane practices of state-making in Africa by focussing on the daily functioning of public services and the practices of civil servants. Adopting mainly an ethnographic approach as a basis for theorizing, the authors deal with topics including: bureaucratic cultures and practical norms, operational routines in offices, career patterns and modes of appointment; how bureaucrats themselves perceive and deliver goods and services and interact with service users; the accumulation of public administration reforms and how the different bureaucratic corps react to the ‘good governance’ discourse and new public management policies; the consequences of these reforms for the daily working of state bureaucracies and for the civil servants’ identities and modes of accountability; and the space that exists for bottom-up micro-reforms that build on local innovations or informal arrangements.

Corruption as an Empty Signifier critically explores the ways in which corruption in Africa has been equated with African politics and political order, and offers a novel approach to understanding corruption as a potentially emancipatory discourse of political transformation.
Conventionally, both academic literature as well as development policies depict corruption as the lynchpin of politics in Africa, locking African societies into political orders which subvert democratic change. Drawing on the findings of a case study of the construction industry in Tanzania, Lucy Koechlin conceptualises corruption as a signifier enabling, rather than preventing, social actors to articulate democratic claims. She provides compelling arguments for a more sophisticated understanding of and empirical attentiveness to emancipatory change in African political orders.

Trapped inside lorries or huddled aboard unseaworthy boats, irregular African migrants make for troubling headlines in western media, fueling fever pitch fears of an impending "African exodus" to Europe. Despite the increasing, albeit sensational, attention irregular migration attracts on both sides of the Mediterranean, little is known about what shapes and influences the lives of these Africans before, during, and after their “migratory projects.” By privileging migrants' narratives and drawing on evidence-based field research from different disciplinary backgrounds, the volume demystifies and dislodges many common assumptions about the human ecology of irregular African migration to Europe, arguably one of the most widely debated, yet least understood, phenomenon of our time.

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

Child fostering is an age-old and also modern phenomenon whose importance stretches much further than the boundaries of so-called ‘traditional’ African societies. As a mobile and creative kinship practice, child fostering is of growing importance in the global world as it goes along with other forms of mobility such as migration and transnationalism. The book aims to revitalize the study of fostering by situating the issue in more recent theoretical approaches to kinship. It also examines what functionalist and structuralist theory may still contribute to the understanding of child fostering. Historical and recent child fostering practices in several West African countries are discussed from the angles of Anthropology, History and Law.

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

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

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

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

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

This collection of articles aims to stimulate the exploration of African initiative and creativity and to go beyond immediate socio-economic and political circumstances by analyzing those initiatives that offer alternatives to the prevailing paradigms. It moves away from African ‘victimhood’ by stressing African ‘agency’ and by demonstrating that societies in Africa have always showed the ability to negotiate whatever constraining ecological, economic and political circumstances they faced. This is further detailed in the context of the literary contest between local and global; of issues of land rights and property; of livelihoods and poverty; of the popular culture; of demystifying African migrations; the changing parameters of territoriality; and the dynamics of the tourist encounter.