Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.2000366
James Yékú
ABSTRACT New Nollywood’s representation of the social life of Lagos is enacted through Ówàḿbẹ̀ as a cinematic strategy that underscores the contradictions inherent in the politics of pleasure and materialism. A performative display of wealth expressed through the social drama of partying, as well as wild and ostentatious social gatherings emerge to underline this politics of pleasure in the Bling Lagosians, Chief Daddy and The Wedding Party. While these films can be read as iterations of a Nigerian party culture that merely underpins the superficiality and pretensions of an elite class in the country, another interpretive approach is to encounter these films and their fixation on Ówàḿbẹ̀ as paradoxically bringing into existence the importance of kinship and family values, which are often antithetical to the exhibitionist showboating of Lagos party cultures. Demonstrating that ostentation with its associated aesthetics is often the backdrop against which the recovery and discovery of true family is realised, this article makes the argument that this re/discovery, rather than the simulacrum that is often entangled with Ówàḿbẹ̀, is a major means by which Nollywood contests the stereotypical trope of crises in Africa.
{"title":"In Praise of Ostentation: Social Class in Lagos and the Aesthetics of Nollywood's Ówàḿbẹ̀ Genres","authors":"James Yékú","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.2000366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.2000366","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT New Nollywood’s representation of the social life of Lagos is enacted through Ówàḿbẹ̀ as a cinematic strategy that underscores the contradictions inherent in the politics of pleasure and materialism. A performative display of wealth expressed through the social drama of partying, as well as wild and ostentatious social gatherings emerge to underline this politics of pleasure in the Bling Lagosians, Chief Daddy and The Wedding Party. While these films can be read as iterations of a Nigerian party culture that merely underpins the superficiality and pretensions of an elite class in the country, another interpretive approach is to encounter these films and their fixation on Ówàḿbẹ̀ as paradoxically bringing into existence the importance of kinship and family values, which are often antithetical to the exhibitionist showboating of Lagos party cultures. Demonstrating that ostentation with its associated aesthetics is often the backdrop against which the recovery and discovery of true family is realised, this article makes the argument that this re/discovery, rather than the simulacrum that is often entangled with Ówàḿbẹ̀, is a major means by which Nollywood contests the stereotypical trope of crises in Africa.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45538044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1989285
M. Suriano, Portia Sifelani
ABSTRACT While much of the extant scholarship on The Bantu World has addressed the English language content, this article shifts the focus to previously unexplored 1930s Zulu-language writings on African advancement and unity. It makes an intervention into the study of African explorations of the possibilities and limits of progress amidst the abiding challenges and paradoxes of colonial modernity, in a setting characterised by increasing segregation. The Zulu pages, the article claims, enhance our understanding of contributors’ involvement in shaping and expanding the very constituency the editor, RV Selope Thema, sought to create. In particular, Zulu-language letters to the editor, often written in response to editorials and articles, convey ideas neither fully anticipated by Thema, nor fully articulated in the more restrained English pages. Located in the rich body of work on African print cultures, the article first discusses the ideologies behind this multilingual weekly newspaper. It then foregrounds the key place of Zulu-language usage in The Bantu World, as well as the (male-dominated) networks, publics and communities of readers created through the vernacular, which flourished despite attempts to marginalise African languages. An examination of key 1930s controversies over the notions of advancement, entrepreneurship and unity shows that the Zulu pages partly destabilised prevalent elite ideas of progress as intertwined with white patronage.
{"title":"Unsettling the Ranks: 1930s Zulu-Language Writings on African Progress and Unity in The Bantu World","authors":"M. Suriano, Portia Sifelani","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1989285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1989285","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT While much of the extant scholarship on The Bantu World has addressed the English language content, this article shifts the focus to previously unexplored 1930s Zulu-language writings on African advancement and unity. It makes an intervention into the study of African explorations of the possibilities and limits of progress amidst the abiding challenges and paradoxes of colonial modernity, in a setting characterised by increasing segregation. The Zulu pages, the article claims, enhance our understanding of contributors’ involvement in shaping and expanding the very constituency the editor, RV Selope Thema, sought to create. In particular, Zulu-language letters to the editor, often written in response to editorials and articles, convey ideas neither fully anticipated by Thema, nor fully articulated in the more restrained English pages. Located in the rich body of work on African print cultures, the article first discusses the ideologies behind this multilingual weekly newspaper. It then foregrounds the key place of Zulu-language usage in The Bantu World, as well as the (male-dominated) networks, publics and communities of readers created through the vernacular, which flourished despite attempts to marginalise African languages. An examination of key 1930s controversies over the notions of advancement, entrepreneurship and unity shows that the Zulu pages partly destabilised prevalent elite ideas of progress as intertwined with white patronage.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47115362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.2015569
Nafeesah Allen
ABSTRACT This article argues that the landmark legal case of Gulamo (also spelled Goolam or Gulam) Nabi, a Mozambican resident of Indian-origin (Indo-Mozambican) caught smuggling shrimp into Swaziland, signalled a critical fracture in the façade of Mozambican socialism. Nabi was sentenced to death by firing squad for fish smuggling and price gouging. Like a ghost, Nabi’s legacy haunted my ethnographic fieldwork on Indo-Mozambican identity and belonging in the twentieth century. This article explores the depth and breadth of contemporary domestic narratives around perceived social and economic infractions by Indo-Mozambicans over the long durée. It argues that the post-colonial government used Nabi’s punishment as a show of force both domestically and internationally, particularly with capitalist South Africa and its territories. The case served as an ethnographic entry point to better engage the trials and errors in Mozambique’s process of nation building, national identity formation, and the creation of a multiracial, socialist state in Africa.
{"title":"The Ghost of Gulamo Nabi: The 1983 Case that Fractured the Façade of Multiracial Unity in Mozambican Socialism","authors":"Nafeesah Allen","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.2015569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.2015569","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article argues that the landmark legal case of Gulamo (also spelled Goolam or Gulam) Nabi, a Mozambican resident of Indian-origin (Indo-Mozambican) caught smuggling shrimp into Swaziland, signalled a critical fracture in the façade of Mozambican socialism. Nabi was sentenced to death by firing squad for fish smuggling and price gouging. Like a ghost, Nabi’s legacy haunted my ethnographic fieldwork on Indo-Mozambican identity and belonging in the twentieth century. This article explores the depth and breadth of contemporary domestic narratives around perceived social and economic infractions by Indo-Mozambicans over the long durée. It argues that the post-colonial government used Nabi’s punishment as a show of force both domestically and internationally, particularly with capitalist South Africa and its territories. The case served as an ethnographic entry point to better engage the trials and errors in Mozambique’s process of nation building, national identity formation, and the creation of a multiracial, socialist state in Africa.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45530531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-22DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846733-0224
The Boer War of 1899–1902, also termed the Anglo-Boer War or South African War, was waged by Britain to establish its imperial supremacy in South Africa and by Boers/Afrikaners to defend their independent republican order and control of the destiny of the white settler states they had secured in the interior. Large, long, controversial and costly, the Boer War was a colonial conflict which finally completed the British imperial conquest of the Southern African region. As is to be expected of a war that has a widely recognized significance not only in the history of European imperialism in Southern Africa but in world history more generally, literature on the 1899–1902 conflict is, simply, enormous. Scholarship is available not merely in English and in Afrikaans, but also in Dutch, French, German, Russian, Spanish, and even in Japanese. As it happens, more recent decades have seen the publication of sizeable bibliographies covering a century of writings on the Boer War in German and in Dutch. Although it could obviously not be claimed that every aspect of the 1899–1902 period—military, political, economic, social, or cultural—has been treated, evenly or otherwise, by so vast a body of literature, the sheer quantity of work available has to influence the scope and selectivity of any Boer War bibliography of this kind. While this bibliographic article includes some seminal early pieces, it is weighted toward more recently works and, in particular, includes scholarship which contains detailed bibliographies covering aspects of warfare (battles, sieges) that are not a specific focus of the approach taken here. Secondly, other classifiable areas of historiography which fall beyond the limits of this article, such as war memory and commemoration, and postwar economic reconstruction and political state-making, are treated—in some instances, quite substantially—in single-author general overviews and in multi-author edited treatments. In other respects, this article goes beyond more conventional historical terrain in including the war’s literary and cultural influences.
{"title":"Boer War","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780199846733-0224","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199846733-0224","url":null,"abstract":"The Boer War of 1899–1902, also termed the Anglo-Boer War or South African War, was waged by Britain to establish its imperial supremacy in South Africa and by Boers/Afrikaners to defend their independent republican order and control of the destiny of the white settler states they had secured in the interior. Large, long, controversial and costly, the Boer War was a colonial conflict which finally completed the British imperial conquest of the Southern African region. As is to be expected of a war that has a widely recognized significance not only in the history of European imperialism in Southern Africa but in world history more generally, literature on the 1899–1902 conflict is, simply, enormous. Scholarship is available not merely in English and in Afrikaans, but also in Dutch, French, German, Russian, Spanish, and even in Japanese. As it happens, more recent decades have seen the publication of sizeable bibliographies covering a century of writings on the Boer War in German and in Dutch. Although it could obviously not be claimed that every aspect of the 1899–1902 period—military, political, economic, social, or cultural—has been treated, evenly or otherwise, by so vast a body of literature, the sheer quantity of work available has to influence the scope and selectivity of any Boer War bibliography of this kind. While this bibliographic article includes some seminal early pieces, it is weighted toward more recently works and, in particular, includes scholarship which contains detailed bibliographies covering aspects of warfare (battles, sieges) that are not a specific focus of the approach taken here. Secondly, other classifiable areas of historiography which fall beyond the limits of this article, such as war memory and commemoration, and postwar economic reconstruction and political state-making, are treated—in some instances, quite substantially—in single-author general overviews and in multi-author edited treatments. In other respects, this article goes beyond more conventional historical terrain in including the war’s literary and cultural influences.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44288148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-04DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1953373
K. Anteneh, Gubaye Assaye Alamineh, M. S. Ali, Abebe Dires Denberu
ABSTRACT As part of customary homicidal practice, blood feuds have persisted for generations in various countries. Due to the different motives for this kind of discord, and due to its divergence and multifaceted consequences, it is very difficult to determine universally accepted causes of blood feuds. Even though it has been a common social practice that has persisted for generations in Ethiopia, the blood feud phenomenon has, to date, received little scholarly attention. Given its complex nature and idiosyncrasies and the paucity of research in the Ethiopian context, this article aims to explore the causes of the blood feud in Ethiopia’s Amhara regional state. The findings from our ethnographic study reveal that economic, political and socio-cultural causes may lead to blood feuds.
{"title":"The Causes of Blood Feud in Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia","authors":"K. Anteneh, Gubaye Assaye Alamineh, M. S. Ali, Abebe Dires Denberu","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1953373","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1953373","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As part of customary homicidal practice, blood feuds have persisted for generations in various countries. Due to the different motives for this kind of discord, and due to its divergence and multifaceted consequences, it is very difficult to determine universally accepted causes of blood feuds. Even though it has been a common social practice that has persisted for generations in Ethiopia, the blood feud phenomenon has, to date, received little scholarly attention. Given its complex nature and idiosyncrasies and the paucity of research in the Ethiopian context, this article aims to explore the causes of the blood feud in Ethiopia’s Amhara regional state. The findings from our ethnographic study reveal that economic, political and socio-cultural causes may lead to blood feuds.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00020184.2021.1953373","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43610476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-12DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1942786
T. Widlok, Joachim Knab, Christa van der Wulp
ABSTRACT The notion that Africans lack a sense of future was extensively debated following John Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy (1969) and has since entered the scholarly and popular discourse as a fixed topos which we label #African time (‘Europeans have watches, Africans have time’). The most recent references to the topos are found in future vision reports of many African states and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that assert and demand a sense of future for Africa and from members of African societies. While the notion of a homogenised past-oriented ‘African time’ has been largely abandoned in academia, #African time appears to be an accepted and enactable popular discourse among policy makers, state planners and NGO workers. This article provides examples of this phenomenon and it extends James Scott’s (1998) idea, that state authorities tend to make its citizens ‘legible’ in order to govern them, to explain the tenaciousness of the #African time topos. While Scott’s examples are almost exclusively about shaping space for legibility, we show that there is a similar process taking place with regards to time, and that citizens, communities and societies are expected to formulate visions for the future if they want their interests to be ‘read’ by the state, by NGOs, donor agencies and other powerful agents they interact with. In this process of making the future visions of citizens legible, the topos of #African time plays a major role.
{"title":"#African Time: Making the Future Legible","authors":"T. Widlok, Joachim Knab, Christa van der Wulp","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1942786","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1942786","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The notion that Africans lack a sense of future was extensively debated following John Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy (1969) and has since entered the scholarly and popular discourse as a fixed topos which we label #African time (‘Europeans have watches, Africans have time’). The most recent references to the topos are found in future vision reports of many African states and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that assert and demand a sense of future for Africa and from members of African societies. While the notion of a homogenised past-oriented ‘African time’ has been largely abandoned in academia, #African time appears to be an accepted and enactable popular discourse among policy makers, state planners and NGO workers. This article provides examples of this phenomenon and it extends James Scott’s (1998) idea, that state authorities tend to make its citizens ‘legible’ in order to govern them, to explain the tenaciousness of the #African time topos. While Scott’s examples are almost exclusively about shaping space for legibility, we show that there is a similar process taking place with regards to time, and that citizens, communities and societies are expected to formulate visions for the future if they want their interests to be ‘read’ by the state, by NGOs, donor agencies and other powerful agents they interact with. In this process of making the future visions of citizens legible, the topos of #African time plays a major role.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00020184.2021.1942786","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42545637","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-23DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846733-0222
The Horn of Africa and South Asia have shared a vibrant, multidimensional relationship since ancient times. A number of factors enabled this relationship, including: the Indian Ocean monsoons; the location of coastal northeast Africa on trade routes between India, Egypt, and the Mediterranean; and a complementarity of resources and economic needs and wants. The Indian Ocean World (IOW) has been described as the first global economy. Trade also played roles in the spread of plants, animals, and religious and other cultural beliefs and practices across the IOW. For these and other reasons, it is surprising that the IOW has only been a frame for research and an object of study in its own right for a few decades. The dual status of the Horn of Africa as a component of both the African and IOW makes it a contact zone par excellence. It also provides fertile opportunities to advance understanding of the historiography of oceans, islands, port towns, and hinterlands. Many important lessons learned from scholarly study of relations between the Horn of Africa and South Asia have wider applicability, such as the need for new ways of thinking to tackle biases apparent in area studies, and ubiquitous Eurocentrism. Recent investigations have begun to address the neglected history and agency of indigenous communities and endogenous historical processes, such as the importance of short trading journeys by multitudes of local entrepreneurs, and the diverse histories of Sidis—Indians of African descent. Sidi studies continues to shed new and valuable insights into many other matters, including slavery, diaspora, and identity. The Portuguese intensified ties between Ethiopia and India. Portuguese colonies in Goa, Daman, and Diu became bases for Portuguese relations with Ethiopia. Although the Portuguese interlude in Ethiopia was relatively short, its legacy included Indian influences on material culture, including religious painting and architecture. Small numbers of Europeans visited the interior of the Horn of Africa over the next two and a half centuries, but Indian traders mostly conducted their business from Red Sea and Indian Ocean ports. Following the opening of Anglo-Ethiopian relations in 1897, Indian merchants ventured into the interior. Indian craftsmen were also to leave their mark. Most Indians left Ethiopia during the Italian Occupation between 1935 to 1941. Postwar, Emperor Haile Selassie focused on reconstruction and reform, which included recruiting large numbers of Indian school teachers. A new generation of Indian entrepreneurs also arrived. Following partition, India–Africa relations initially focused on political solidarities. With the beginning of economic liberalization in India in 1991, economic relations were foregrounded, with India becoming a significant trade and investment partner.
{"title":"Horn of Africa and South Asia","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780199846733-0222","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199846733-0222","url":null,"abstract":"The Horn of Africa and South Asia have shared a vibrant, multidimensional relationship since ancient times. A number of factors enabled this relationship, including: the Indian Ocean monsoons; the location of coastal northeast Africa on trade routes between India, Egypt, and the Mediterranean; and a complementarity of resources and economic needs and wants. The Indian Ocean World (IOW) has been described as the first global economy. Trade also played roles in the spread of plants, animals, and religious and other cultural beliefs and practices across the IOW. For these and other reasons, it is surprising that the IOW has only been a frame for research and an object of study in its own right for a few decades. The dual status of the Horn of Africa as a component of both the African and IOW makes it a contact zone par excellence. It also provides fertile opportunities to advance understanding of the historiography of oceans, islands, port towns, and hinterlands. Many important lessons learned from scholarly study of relations between the Horn of Africa and South Asia have wider applicability, such as the need for new ways of thinking to tackle biases apparent in area studies, and ubiquitous Eurocentrism. Recent investigations have begun to address the neglected history and agency of indigenous communities and endogenous historical processes, such as the importance of short trading journeys by multitudes of local entrepreneurs, and the diverse histories of Sidis—Indians of African descent. Sidi studies continues to shed new and valuable insights into many other matters, including slavery, diaspora, and identity. The Portuguese intensified ties between Ethiopia and India. Portuguese colonies in Goa, Daman, and Diu became bases for Portuguese relations with Ethiopia. Although the Portuguese interlude in Ethiopia was relatively short, its legacy included Indian influences on material culture, including religious painting and architecture. Small numbers of Europeans visited the interior of the Horn of Africa over the next two and a half centuries, but Indian traders mostly conducted their business from Red Sea and Indian Ocean ports. Following the opening of Anglo-Ethiopian relations in 1897, Indian merchants ventured into the interior. Indian craftsmen were also to leave their mark. Most Indians left Ethiopia during the Italian Occupation between 1935 to 1941. Postwar, Emperor Haile Selassie focused on reconstruction and reform, which included recruiting large numbers of Indian school teachers. A new generation of Indian entrepreneurs also arrived. Following partition, India–Africa relations initially focused on political solidarities. With the beginning of economic liberalization in India in 1991, economic relations were foregrounded, with India becoming a significant trade and investment partner.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47635718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1942609
The African Studies editors are proud to announce that there were two recipients of the 2019 Vilakazi Prize. The first prize of R10 000 was awarded to Samuel F. Derbyshire (2019) for his article ‘Trade, Development and Destitution: A Material Culture History of Fishing on the Western Shore of Lake Turkana, Northern Kenya’. The second prize of R5 000 was awarded to Margot Luyckfasseel (2019) for her article ‘Still So Many Illusions to Cast Off: The Territorial Unification of the Ngbaka (Belgian Congo) in the 1920s’.
{"title":"The 2019 Vilakazi Prize Report","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1942609","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1942609","url":null,"abstract":"The African Studies editors are proud to announce that there were two recipients of the 2019 Vilakazi Prize. The first prize of R10 000 was awarded to Samuel F. Derbyshire (2019) for his article ‘Trade, Development and Destitution: A Material Culture History of Fishing on the Western Shore of Lake Turkana, Northern Kenya’. The second prize of R5 000 was awarded to Margot Luyckfasseel (2019) for her article ‘Still So Many Illusions to Cast Off: The Territorial Unification of the Ngbaka (Belgian Congo) in the 1920s’.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00020184.2021.1942609","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49566433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1910487
I. Yakubu, M. Spocter, R. Donaldson
ABSTRACT In Ghana, housing practices for the majority of urban residents lie outside the scope of formal housing markets and planning regulations. This has made urban upgrading a key component of physical development in cities in Ghana. In the face of accelerated urbanisation and the corresponding upsurge in informal housing practices, local authorities continue to grapple with the challenges of negotiating and implementing upgrading programmes without compromising pro-poor housing systems. As cities grow, mainly through the accretion of rural settlement nuclei, the quest to achieve orderly physical development has meant that new development ought to be planned alongside the upgrading and/or realignment of existing settlements. This complex spatial development trajectory makes forced residential mobility an integral component of post-independence urban development initiatives in many towns. Based on interviews with selected households and key stakeholders at city and neighbourhood levels, this study critically examines the incidence of development-induced residential mobility practices in the pro-poor housing systems of Tamale, Ghana. It makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the operation of dual urban management systems and how the navigation of such systems can be frustrating. The results show how and why sub-district local government actors collaborate with traditional chieftaincies to compel the relocation of poor families under the pretence of providing access roads. Paved roads have thus become deeply engrained in the housing politics of low-income communities, and form part of the narratives of the success or failure of chiefs or elected local government representatives. It is recommended that the scope of stakeholder engagement be broadened to promote inclusive urban development in Tamale.
{"title":"‘I Cannot Stand up to my Chief nor the State’: Reflections on Development-Induced Housing Mobility in Pro-Poor Housing Systems in Tamale, Ghana","authors":"I. Yakubu, M. Spocter, R. Donaldson","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1910487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1910487","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In Ghana, housing practices for the majority of urban residents lie outside the scope of formal housing markets and planning regulations. This has made urban upgrading a key component of physical development in cities in Ghana. In the face of accelerated urbanisation and the corresponding upsurge in informal housing practices, local authorities continue to grapple with the challenges of negotiating and implementing upgrading programmes without compromising pro-poor housing systems. As cities grow, mainly through the accretion of rural settlement nuclei, the quest to achieve orderly physical development has meant that new development ought to be planned alongside the upgrading and/or realignment of existing settlements. This complex spatial development trajectory makes forced residential mobility an integral component of post-independence urban development initiatives in many towns. Based on interviews with selected households and key stakeholders at city and neighbourhood levels, this study critically examines the incidence of development-induced residential mobility practices in the pro-poor housing systems of Tamale, Ghana. It makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the operation of dual urban management systems and how the navigation of such systems can be frustrating. The results show how and why sub-district local government actors collaborate with traditional chieftaincies to compel the relocation of poor families under the pretence of providing access roads. Paved roads have thus become deeply engrained in the housing politics of low-income communities, and form part of the narratives of the success or failure of chiefs or elected local government representatives. It is recommended that the scope of stakeholder engagement be broadened to promote inclusive urban development in Tamale.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00020184.2021.1910487","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43011006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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