Africanist Network : Events

This is an update on our recent activities and projects; announcements and information.

Activities & Projects

Africanists Network - inter conference workshop
Fieldwork in Africa today: New Options & challenges
Max- Planck-Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, main seminar room
30 & 31 March 2012, 14 :00 to 17:00, 10:00 to 16:00

Download call for contributions (PDF) or see the EASA calendar page.

We are already working on the topic for the next EASA-meeting in Nanterre, Paris in 2012. Proposal so far (Dmitri): Anthropology, History & Memory in Sub-Saharan Africa.

EASA offers now an extended directory of members, see
http://www.easaonline.org/directory/

Please order the volume that was emanating from our workshop in Ljubljana for your library: ISBN: 978-1-4438-1853-7

Announcements

Biannual Conference, German Anthropological Association (DGV)
Vienna, 14 - 17 September 2011
Details: http://www.dgv-net.de/tl_files/dokumente/Call_for_Papers.pdf

Workshop: Regional interest group Africa:
10. Mediators and Brokers in Africa
Gregor Dobler and Tilo Grätz (Regionalgruppe Afrika)
15th september 2011

The workshop focuses on a particular category of actors which are conceptualised as social and cultural mediators, as agents of mediation between different social, cultural or religious actors, regimes or realms of meaning. In Africanist anthropology, these mediators have been also often termed brokers, middlemen, speaker, negotiator or simply agents. Initially predominantly used in political (i.e. M. Gluckman) an economic anthropology, e.g. with regard to trading relations (A. Cohen), this category of actors has been meanwhile entered anthropological studies on much broader domains of public life, popular culture and media.

With regard e.g. to the anthropological study of new arenas constituted by development projects, the concept of development brokers, mediating between donor organisations and local communities, has proven to be very relevant (T. Bierschenk, D. Mosse), as well as the notion of ethnic brokers in plural settings (C. Lentz, W. Van Binsbergen, K. Schilder, D. Welsh) or conflict areas; communal brokers as political agents for aspirating politicians i.e. in election campaigns (D. Koter), or the idea of cultural brokers as it was applied to actors such as artists (B. Omojola), journalists or filmmakers (O. Thalén). Finally, social mediators and counsellors in private (conjugal) conflicts or community disputes constitute an important new professional field in various African countries. Without neglecting significant semantic differences between the mentioned terms, we are trying to look at their common conceptual basis, and discuss the usefulness and limits of such model categories. We will examine whether these concepts are always appropriate to deal with variable domains and conditions of individual agency, whether we may also address instances of non-human agency (including mediating technologies) and the ways in which local actors appropriate these notions. We are expecting paper proposals that either discuss these concepts from a theoretical point of view, or explore them in the light of rich empirical case studies. We are especially inviting contributions that will apply the concepts of mediators/mediation, brokerage/ brokers etc. to new areas of study (arts, technology, and education) and various other contemporary social and cultural processes.

Focussing primarily on theoretical concepts also relevant to other (regional) fields within anthropology, we very much hope to draw the attention of colleagues from various sub-fields and regional specialisations.

Gregor Dobler email: gregor.dobler(AT)unibas.ch
Dr. Tilo Grätz email: tilograetz(AT)yahoo.de

EASA Africanist network, Report 2008-2010

The last workshop at the EASA meeting in Ljubljana was a success, it was well attended, most papers perfectly addressed the topic of the workshop, and we had vivid discussions. We organised the workshop in various sessions, probably one session too much, but generally, the sessions were well placed in the overall framework of the conference. We then proceeded to select some pertinent papers we could meanwhile publish in a small book: Mobility, Transnationalism and Contemporary African Societies is a fine collection of essays - all very rich of ethnographic detail as well as theoretical points on mobility, migration and transnational process.

EASA 2010

We decided to organise a workshop on Public celebrations & popular culture in Africa: representations, performances and local appropriations. The topic of the workshop was an attempt both to refer to recent events in Africa, above all the “African year”, 60 years after the granting of formal independence to many states in Africa, with many public events and commemorations on the respective National Days, and to revive an older topic of Africanist anthropology. The attendance of the workshop was fine and the papers fascinating; we successfully improvised by presenting Karel’s perfectly prepared paper +ppt) despite his absence.

Preparation for EASA 2012

We are now collecting proposals for the next EASA network meeting workshop. First of all, we would like to propose to divide the workshop into two parts/sessions: A thematic session and a session for younger participants, free to choose any topic. This reflects the fact that some younger colleagues may wish to present papers in our circle even though they may not relate to 100% to a particular topic, but need to get such as space e.g. in order to receive some travel grants. Here, we could avoid that the thematic workshop will be filled with papers that do not correspond to the CfP.

Proposals for topics are welcome; we will post them across our mailing list. Please bear in mind that those who propose a thematic session should at least act as one of the convenors, and write the CfP. (First proposal: Media in & about Africa)

Further inter-conference activities, network projects

There was no urgent need to organise a workshop outside the EASA conferences, as most of us often meet at one of the central European Africanist meetings. Especially the ECAS 2011 in Uppsala, or the national meetings such as VIVA Africa, ASA, VAD, or the anthropological conferences etc. Still, there is the idea to organise a more intensive inter - conference meeting, in the form of a summer school. Now, the EASA board may offer some financial help, and launched a call for workshops (deadline 30/01/2011). We will develop a proposal based on the idea that such a workshop primarily addresses younger scholars.

Miscellaneous

We put some reports & news of our network on the EASA website. We opted not to create an own website, as there is already the established EASA website. So far, we do not have, however, a direct access to it, but the EASA board promised to create a CMS in future.

Tilo Grätz