Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2022.2074486
A. Rusero
Undertaking ethnographic or phenomenological inquiry under a hovering cloud of dictatorship can often be a mammoth, some might even say life-risking, venture. In such circumstances, researchers are confronted with ethical dilemmas: the need to strike a balance between accessing credible first-hand information and playing it safe. It is against this background that this paper traces the challenges confronting researchers planning to conduct fieldwork in authoritarian regimes. Conducting research under a political culture of fear, polarization and censorship has proven to be something of a heinous task for my own research in my home country of Zimbabwe. Drawing from this experience, the paper discusses the risks, ethical dilemmas and apprehensions that underscore the challenge of carrying out fieldwork in authoritarian regimes. Specifically, the paper discusses how researchers, whose research might be perceived by governments as a threat to national security, can deal with risks, threats, and dangers regarding access to the gathering and retrieval of data.
{"title":"Worth the gamble? Access to information, risks and ethical dilemmas in undertaking research in authoritarian regimes: the case of Zimbabwe","authors":"A. Rusero","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2022.2074486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2022.2074486","url":null,"abstract":"Undertaking ethnographic or phenomenological inquiry under a hovering cloud of dictatorship can often be a mammoth, some might even say life-risking, venture. In such circumstances, researchers are confronted with ethical dilemmas: the need to strike a balance between accessing credible first-hand information and playing it safe. It is against this background that this paper traces the challenges confronting researchers planning to conduct fieldwork in authoritarian regimes. Conducting research under a political culture of fear, polarization and censorship has proven to be something of a heinous task for my own research in my home country of Zimbabwe. Drawing from this experience, the paper discusses the risks, ethical dilemmas and apprehensions that underscore the challenge of carrying out fieldwork in authoritarian regimes. Specifically, the paper discusses how researchers, whose research might be perceived by governments as a threat to national security, can deal with risks, threats, and dangers regarding access to the gathering and retrieval of data.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":"110 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81595585","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}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2022.2067069
Gift Mwonzora, Kirk Helliker
Throughout history, truce-making has been an important mechanism to temporarily halt fighting between antagonistic forces. In some instances, national truces are used to usher in longer-term national reconciliation. In this regard, there is an important analytical distinction between a truce and a reconciliation. What is sometimes articulated publicly as a formal reconciliation is often merely a truce, at least from the perspective of the hegemonic party. Drawing on the theoretical work of Nir Eisikovits, we develop this argument in relation to what we identify as the three official episodes of state-centric national reconciliation in Zimbabwe, all taking place under Mugabe’s rule. In doing so, we demonstrate how ZANU-PF recalibrated the reconciliations as truces to pursue its strategic power interests. In this context, and more briefly, we analyse the post-coup Mnangagwa government’s discourse and acts of reconciliation (existing outside an official reconciliation pact) as another episode of truce-making, designed to benchmark what is unacceptable oppositional politics.
{"title":"Truce and reconciliation in Zimbabwe: from Mugabe to Mnangagwa","authors":"Gift Mwonzora, Kirk Helliker","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2022.2067069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2022.2067069","url":null,"abstract":"Throughout history, truce-making has been an important mechanism to temporarily halt fighting between antagonistic forces. In some instances, national truces are used to usher in longer-term national reconciliation. In this regard, there is an important analytical distinction between a truce and a reconciliation. What is sometimes articulated publicly as a formal reconciliation is often merely a truce, at least from the perspective of the hegemonic party. Drawing on the theoretical work of Nir Eisikovits, we develop this argument in relation to what we identify as the three official episodes of state-centric national reconciliation in Zimbabwe, all taking place under Mugabe’s rule. In doing so, we demonstrate how ZANU-PF recalibrated the reconciliations as truces to pursue its strategic power interests. In this context, and more briefly, we analyse the post-coup Mnangagwa government’s discourse and acts of reconciliation (existing outside an official reconciliation pact) as another episode of truce-making, designed to benchmark what is unacceptable oppositional politics.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"124 - 137"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77638840","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}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2022.2097932
Corinna Mullin
This article adopts a longue durée approach to examining resistance around the Tunisian university, tracing current material and epistemological struggles back to the colonial era. To do so, it fuses theoretical insights from the growing bodies of literature concerned with how colonial-capitalist power is manifested and contested within and on the margins of institutions of higher education, including Marxist, social movement theory, and decolonial traditions. The article considers four important conjunctures in the development of the Tunisian academy as an institution where the connections between knowledge generation and (neo)colonial-capitalist power have been articulated and contested. The article will conclude by arguing that the sediments of resistance remaining from all four transformative moments have dialectically contributed to building alternative knowledge projects within and beyond the university. Whereas dominant modes of knowledge production enable and normalise the destructive and grossly unequal patterns of extraction and accumulation associated with (neo)colonial-capitalism, alternative knowledge projects instead seek to transform Tunisians’ relations with one another, with the state and with the land in ways that promote the forging of the collective and meaningful liberation.
{"title":"The Tunisian university at the intersection of global-local conjunctures: knowledge, power and the struggle for liberation","authors":"Corinna Mullin","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2022.2097932","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2022.2097932","url":null,"abstract":"This article adopts a longue durée approach to examining resistance around the Tunisian university, tracing current material and epistemological struggles back to the colonial era. To do so, it fuses theoretical insights from the growing bodies of literature concerned with how colonial-capitalist power is manifested and contested within and on the margins of institutions of higher education, including Marxist, social movement theory, and decolonial traditions. The article considers four important conjunctures in the development of the Tunisian academy as an institution where the connections between knowledge generation and (neo)colonial-capitalist power have been articulated and contested. The article will conclude by arguing that the sediments of resistance remaining from all four transformative moments have dialectically contributed to building alternative knowledge projects within and beyond the university. Whereas dominant modes of knowledge production enable and normalise the destructive and grossly unequal patterns of extraction and accumulation associated with (neo)colonial-capitalism, alternative knowledge projects instead seek to transform Tunisians’ relations with one another, with the state and with the land in ways that promote the forging of the collective and meaningful liberation.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"8 1","pages":"153 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80861442","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}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2022.2074487
Nkululeko Sibanda
This paper examines and analyses the various instances where ‘performances’ of cultural violence by the state and Fifth Brigade were experienced during Gukurahundi in Matabeleland. This paper contends that cultural violence was used to stereotype Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) and Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) veterans, as well as Ndebele people. Cultural violence is used here to refer to the purposeful weakening and ultimate destruction of cultural values and practices of the Ndebele people. This paper argues that ZANU-PF created an anti-Ndebele thought collective through the use of emotive language, stylized news in media, and ‘expert opinions’ to block the creation of accurate contextual knowledge for the Shona nonlocals and ZANU-PF members. This paper further submits that this thought collective sits at the base of the disposition, segregation, dehumanization, near annihilation and framing of ZAPU, ex-ZIPRA veterans and the Ndebele people as ‘dissidents’ and ‘cockroaches’, infecting Ndebele language, identity and cultural practices. This paper, thus, argues that the deployment of cultural violence created a fertile ground for direct and structural violence that further undermined ZAPU, ZIPRA and Ndebele resistance against Gukurahundi. In conclusion, this paper proposes public multi-cultural remembrances and cultural cleansing ceremonies (nationally and communally) as possible solutions to diffusing the continuous perpetration of cultures of violence in Zimbabwe.
{"title":"Cultural politics and cultural violence during Gukurahundi in Matabeleland","authors":"Nkululeko Sibanda","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2022.2074487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2022.2074487","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines and analyses the various instances where ‘performances’ of cultural violence by the state and Fifth Brigade were experienced during Gukurahundi in Matabeleland. This paper contends that cultural violence was used to stereotype Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) and Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) veterans, as well as Ndebele people. Cultural violence is used here to refer to the purposeful weakening and ultimate destruction of cultural values and practices of the Ndebele people. This paper argues that ZANU-PF created an anti-Ndebele thought collective through the use of emotive language, stylized news in media, and ‘expert opinions’ to block the creation of accurate contextual knowledge for the Shona nonlocals and ZANU-PF members. This paper further submits that this thought collective sits at the base of the disposition, segregation, dehumanization, near annihilation and framing of ZAPU, ex-ZIPRA veterans and the Ndebele people as ‘dissidents’ and ‘cockroaches’, infecting Ndebele language, identity and cultural practices. This paper, thus, argues that the deployment of cultural violence created a fertile ground for direct and structural violence that further undermined ZAPU, ZIPRA and Ndebele resistance against Gukurahundi. In conclusion, this paper proposes public multi-cultural remembrances and cultural cleansing ceremonies (nationally and communally) as possible solutions to diffusing the continuous perpetration of cultures of violence in Zimbabwe.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":"138 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83419362","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}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2022.2097933
Isaac Joslin
This paper outlines the problematic relationship between the enduring colonial legacy that persists, both in theories of the postcolonial and geo-political post-colonial state practices. Considering the ambivalent relationship between discourses of postmodern and postcolonial theorists, Yambo Ouologuem's seminal work, Le devoir de violence (1968), serves as a literal roadmap of the complicit power dynamics involved in postcolonial political and discursive practices. The implications of Ouloguem's tactical textual composition underscore a relationship of mutual culpability in a metaphorical chess game in which both sides ultimately compromise for the game to continue. Read in the context of contemporary post-colonial and post-modernist discourses on African literary productions, Ouologuem's Le devoir de violence embodies an aesthetic of ambiguity that not only reveals the extreme violence of colonial encounters, but also the subversive complicity of a sustained violence fundamental to discourses of a post-colonized condition vacillating between liberation and subservience.
本文概述了在后殖民理论和地缘政治后殖民国家实践中持续存在的持久殖民遗产之间的问题关系。考虑到后现代和后殖民理论家的话语之间的矛盾关系，扬博·奥洛古姆的开创性作品《暴力的信仰》(1968)作为一幅涉及后殖民政治和话语实践的共谋权力动态的字面路线图。Ouloguem的战术文本构成的含义强调了一种隐喻性的国际象棋游戏中的相互罪责关系，双方最终妥协以使游戏继续下去。在当代后殖民主义和后现代主义关于非洲文学作品的话语背景下阅读，Ouologuem的Le devoir de violence体现了一种模棱两可的美学，它不仅揭示了殖民遭遇的极端暴力，而且还揭示了一种持续暴力的颠覆性共谋，这种暴力是后殖民状态下在解放和屈从之间摇摆不定的话语的基础。
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Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2022.2097931
M. A. Ateng, A. Musah
This paper discusses the ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework from the perspective of the critical and emancipatory peacebuilding approach. The paper argues that the ECOWAS conflict prevention framework is largely guided by the principles of the liberal peacebuilding model which ignores the ‘local’ in peacebuilding. The framework represents a complete departure of the sub-regional body, from an emphasis on conflict resolution to transformative conflict prevention with the overarching objective of ensuring human security instead of state security. When subjecting the framework, however, to the philosophies of the critical and emancipatory peacebuilding approach and the social justice frame, one notices that, in its current form, the framework is inadequate to ensure sustainable peace and security within the sub-region. Its over-reliance on the state as the unit of focus together with its adoption of liberal conceptualization of human security, focus on direct violence, top-down approach, low engagement of local communities to ensure local ownership, and the way these have been implemented make it an apparent elite-based policy. For the framework to have an impact in the sub-region, it must be restructured to make it an empowering policy that engages local actors, communities, resources, and knowledge in the transformative conflict prevention agenda of the sub-region. The framework also needs to be anchored on local ownership and agency and must be made to act as an emancipatory and transformative tool aimed at empowering the people of the sub-region as peacemakers, peacebuilders, and transformative leaders.
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Pub Date : 2022-04-04DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2022.2054839
Guive Khan-Mohammad
This paper deals with the arrival of Chinese-made goods as one of the main vectors of African societies’ entrance into mass consumption logics. However, it proposes going beyond the dominant monocausal approach, which only relates the consumption of these goods to their low price. To do so, this paper emphasizes a careful observation of consumer practices to unveil the complex process of ‘domestication’ that African consumers carry out on these goods daily (Sahlins, M. D. 1993. “Goodbye to Tristes Tropes: Ethnography in the Context of Modern World History.” The Journal of Modern History 65 (1): 1–25; Warnier, J.-P. 1994. Le paradoxe de la marchandise authentique: Imaginaire et consommation de masse. Paris: L’Harmattan). To this end, we focus our attention on the case of Chinese motorcycles in Burkina Faso. Historically the most imported Chinese good in Burkina Faso, motorcycles are at the centre of a multitude of practices and social representations. After placing the arrival of these bikes in the historicity of the cyclo-distinction, this paper presents the many ways in which Chinese motorcycles – though less expensive – are socially and symbolically valued by Burkinabe consumers. Initially considered symbols of a new ‘modernity’, the aesthetic and technical characteristics of Chinese motorcycles gradually became a standard shared by all imported models. The multiplication of importers and models accompanied a growing complexity of symbolic values and distinction logics, in which the growing role of the ‘new figures of success’ (Banégas, R., and J.-P. Warnier. 2001. “Nouvelles figures de la réussite et du pouvoir.” Politique Africaine 82 (2): 5–23) was expressed. In the context of mounting uncertainty surrounding the new distinctive codes and an acceleration of the symbolic obsolescence of motorcycles, ‘novelty’ became the new reference value and frequently replacing possessions a key element of social value, and therefore a central rule of distinction. Thus, a focus on the process of ‘cultural appropriation’ of Chinese goods allows us to distance ourselves from a financially captive interpretation of African consumption to unveil the social determinants of Africa’s entry into mass consumption logics.
本文探讨了中国制造商品作为非洲社会进入大众消费逻辑的主要载体之一的到来。然而，它建议超越占主导地位的单因果方法，这种方法只将这些商品的消费与它们的低价联系起来。为此，本文强调了对消费者行为的仔细观察，以揭示非洲消费者每天对这些商品进行的复杂“驯化”过程(Sahlins, m.d. 1993)。“告别Tristes比喻:现代世界史背景下的人种学”现代历史学报，65 (1):1 - 25;Warnier, j。1994. 货真价实的悖论:想象与大众的融合。巴黎:L 'Harmattan)。为此，我们关注中国摩托车在布基纳法索的事件。作为布基纳法索历史上进口最多的中国商品，摩托车是众多实践和社会代表的中心。在将这些摩托车的到来置于历史上的循环区别之后，本文介绍了中国摩托车的许多方面-尽管不那么昂贵-被布基纳法索消费者所重视的社会和象征意义。最初被认为是一种新的“现代性”的象征，中国摩托车的美学和技术特征逐渐成为所有进口车型共享的标准。进口商和模型的增加伴随着符号价值和区分逻辑的日益复杂，其中“新成功人物”的作用越来越大(bansamgas, R.和j . p .)。Warnier》2001。" Nouvelles figures de la rassussite et du pouvoir. "Politique Africaine 82(2): 5-23)表示。在新的独特规范和摩托车加速过时的不确定性的背景下，“新颖性”成为新的参考价值，并经常取代社会价值的关键要素，因此成为区分的中心规则。因此，对中国商品的“文化挪用”过程的关注使我们能够远离对非洲消费的财务俘虏解释，从而揭示非洲进入大众消费逻辑的社会决定因素。
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Pub Date : 2022-03-03DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2022.2039732
Eglė Česnulytė
{"title":"The moral economy of sex work in Mombasa, Kenya","authors":"Eglė Česnulytė","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2022.2039732","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2022.2039732","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74232229","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}
Pub Date : 2022-03-03DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2022.2039731
Biruk Terrefe
In late 2014, disputes around land, displacement and compensation related to the roll-out of big infrastructure projects across Ethiopia mutated into much deeper conflicts about the authoritarian nature of the state, the political marginalization of particular ethnic groups and the legitimacy of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). As security forces continued to quell mounting protests, the federal government imposed a state of emergency. This article explores how the EPRDF navigated this period of political fragility and why infrastructures were used as strategic vehicles for the party’s discourse. Drawing on the Addis-Djibouti Railway as an analytical lens, this research explores how the party strategically deployed posters, images and speeches centred around infrastructure to directly respond to protestors' grievances. This choice to deliberately embed visuals and rhetoric descriptions of such megaprojects in its political messaging about Ethiopia’s aspired ‘unity in diversity’, ‘democracy’, and ‘good governance’ illustrates how infrastructures were effective carriers of the party’s narratives. Roads, railways, and dams rendered EPRDF’s abstract ideas of political reform and economic renaissance tangible. At this critical juncture, these tangible discourses not only expose how the party attempted to restructure state-society relations in Ethiopia, but also how centrally anchored infrastructure was in the EPRDF’s self-styled developmental state project.
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2022.2059901
C. Mertens, Stéphanie Perazzone, David Mwambari
The contributions of this special issue explore the concept of colonial durabilities in a bid to unearth both the concrete and invisible sites through which coloniality continues to circulate and materialise in the African Great Lakes Region (GLR). Colonial durabilities, we argue, are non-linear dynamic processes that suffuse the realities and structures of international and national politics, as well as the conduct of daily life. These become particularly evident in the knowledge economy of the GLR, in endeavours as broad as state building and everyday practices, within international development and peacebuilding interventions, and in academic theorising, methodologies and writing formats. We introduce the papers in this special issue that urge us to address an important question: Can we truly decolonise if we do not fully understand the coloniality of the present and its effects? We argue a careful investigation of the structural conditions that enable coloniality to actively form and re-form is essential to accurately understand real-world ramifications of asymmetrical power relations, a crucial aspect of the process of decolonisation. Lastly, we reflect on avenues for re-thinking the effects of colonial durabilities and to work towards generating anti-/de-colonial knowledges to perhaps achieve ‘epistemic freedom’.
{"title":"Fatal misconceptions: colonial durabilities, violence and epistemicide in Africa’s Great Lakes Region","authors":"C. Mertens, Stéphanie Perazzone, David Mwambari","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2022.2059901","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2022.2059901","url":null,"abstract":"The contributions of this special issue explore the concept of colonial durabilities in a bid to unearth both the concrete and invisible sites through which coloniality continues to circulate and materialise in the African Great Lakes Region (GLR). Colonial durabilities, we argue, are non-linear dynamic processes that suffuse the realities and structures of international and national politics, as well as the conduct of daily life. These become particularly evident in the knowledge economy of the GLR, in endeavours as broad as state building and everyday practices, within international development and peacebuilding interventions, and in academic theorising, methodologies and writing formats. We introduce the papers in this special issue that urge us to address an important question: Can we truly decolonise if we do not fully understand the coloniality of the present and its effects? We argue a careful investigation of the structural conditions that enable coloniality to actively form and re-form is essential to accurately understand real-world ramifications of asymmetrical power relations, a crucial aspect of the process of decolonisation. Lastly, we reflect on avenues for re-thinking the effects of colonial durabilities and to work towards generating anti-/de-colonial knowledges to perhaps achieve ‘epistemic freedom’.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"32 1","pages":"2 - 18"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76305281","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}
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