Pub Date : 2023-03-13DOI: 10.1080/00083968.2023.2179172
J. Hart
snowball sampling is unlikely to be representative (10). The study addresses the issue of the ENS based on the perceptions of former conscripts who have fled Eritrea to Kenya, South Africa and four European countries, to “examine the extent to which some of the goals of the ENS are achieved or are in the process of being achieved” (3). Chapter 2 presents the theories and concepts of national service and experiences across Africa. Chapter 3 provides an insight into the structure of the Eritrean Defence Forces. Although it was difficult to reach participants for the study, interviewing those originating from rural areas of Eritrea and those living in Sudan and Ethiopia would have enriched the book. The respondents interviewed were lucky to have made it to a safe destination and to be able to support their families remaining in Eritrea. Many have perished crossing the Mediterranean Sea or the Sahara Desert, and many others became victims of abuse, torture and rape at the hands of traffickers. Kibreab takes the reader through the general theories and philosophical concepts of two schools of thought: those who see national service as “The highest good and fountain of virtue, war solidarity, and social capital” and those who see it as the “antithesis of a free society” (22, 23). Many ideas and theories are repeated in different parts of the book, and there is also repetition of the various references quoted and the respondents’ narratives. This could have been abridged without losing the primary purpose. Additionally, the author misses the point that the birth of Eritrea was not ordinary: it went through two devastating civil wars during its liberation. Despite these shortcomings, The Eritrean National Service is important reading. It offers 324 references – including other sources by Kibreab, who has written extensively on the subject – that researchers can use to study the issue further. It also gives an essential insight into the ENS from its inception to its drastic consequences, and why participants risk their lives to escape its servitude. Perhaps a more appropriate title would have been The Eritrean National Service: For the “Common Good” or for the “Good” of Eritrea’s Dictator?
{"title":"African Motors: Technology, Gender, and the History of Development","authors":"J. Hart","doi":"10.1080/00083968.2023.2179172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2023.2179172","url":null,"abstract":"snowball sampling is unlikely to be representative (10). The study addresses the issue of the ENS based on the perceptions of former conscripts who have fled Eritrea to Kenya, South Africa and four European countries, to “examine the extent to which some of the goals of the ENS are achieved or are in the process of being achieved” (3). Chapter 2 presents the theories and concepts of national service and experiences across Africa. Chapter 3 provides an insight into the structure of the Eritrean Defence Forces. Although it was difficult to reach participants for the study, interviewing those originating from rural areas of Eritrea and those living in Sudan and Ethiopia would have enriched the book. The respondents interviewed were lucky to have made it to a safe destination and to be able to support their families remaining in Eritrea. Many have perished crossing the Mediterranean Sea or the Sahara Desert, and many others became victims of abuse, torture and rape at the hands of traffickers. Kibreab takes the reader through the general theories and philosophical concepts of two schools of thought: those who see national service as “The highest good and fountain of virtue, war solidarity, and social capital” and those who see it as the “antithesis of a free society” (22, 23). Many ideas and theories are repeated in different parts of the book, and there is also repetition of the various references quoted and the respondents’ narratives. This could have been abridged without losing the primary purpose. Additionally, the author misses the point that the birth of Eritrea was not ordinary: it went through two devastating civil wars during its liberation. Despite these shortcomings, The Eritrean National Service is important reading. It offers 324 references – including other sources by Kibreab, who has written extensively on the subject – that researchers can use to study the issue further. It also gives an essential insight into the ENS from its inception to its drastic consequences, and why participants risk their lives to escape its servitude. Perhaps a more appropriate title would have been The Eritrean National Service: For the “Common Good” or for the “Good” of Eritrea’s Dictator?","PeriodicalId":9481,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines","volume":"32 1","pages":"507 - 509"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88420768","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 : 2023-03-13DOI: 10.1080/00083968.2023.2179170
Mohamed Kheir Omer
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Pub Date : 2023-02-08DOI: 10.1080/00083968.2023.2168859
S. Williams
Clearly, they are trembling on the cusp of a shift in religious allegiance. It is difficult to believe that much time will elapse before such folk join what Devir calls the normative synagogue. Devir is fully aware of the wider ramifications of these processes, as his excellent earlier work New Children of Israel amply demonstrates. In the earlier book he rightly suggested that the adoption of Judaism by millions of people in the Global South was surely the greatest possible challenge for the Jewish people and for the State of Israel, and here he confirms what is undoubtedly the case: that these developments are more than likely to “radically alter the religious demographics of the African continent” (209).
{"title":"Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria","authors":"S. Williams","doi":"10.1080/00083968.2023.2168859","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2023.2168859","url":null,"abstract":"Clearly, they are trembling on the cusp of a shift in religious allegiance. It is difficult to believe that much time will elapse before such folk join what Devir calls the normative synagogue. Devir is fully aware of the wider ramifications of these processes, as his excellent earlier work New Children of Israel amply demonstrates. In the earlier book he rightly suggested that the adoption of Judaism by millions of people in the Global South was surely the greatest possible challenge for the Jewish people and for the State of Israel, and here he confirms what is undoubtedly the case: that these developments are more than likely to “radically alter the religious demographics of the African continent” (209).","PeriodicalId":9481,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines","volume":"92 1","pages":"501 - 503"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88684274","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 : 2023-02-02DOI: 10.1080/00083968.2023.2165629
Mlondolozi Zondi
{"title":"Performance and the Afterlives of Injustice: Dance and Live Art in Contemporary South Africa and Beyond","authors":"Mlondolozi Zondi","doi":"10.1080/00083968.2023.2165629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2023.2165629","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9481,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines","volume":"50 1","pages":"496 - 498"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91525514","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 : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1080/00083968.2023.2165610
Guy Bud
someone to tow us out of some unholy mud. Here, Biruk looks at the logistics of doing fieldwork in a place like Malawi, including the vehicles necessary to undertake research, return visits, visits to check data, and the frustration of an informant changing answers mid-stream. In a neat play on the term “imposter syndrome,” experienced by many (but not exclusively) women academics, Biruk describes how people would assume the identity of a potential informant in order to extract some notional benefit from the survey process. Chapter 5 is surprisingly poignant, as it points to the afterlives of collected data, when that data is necessary for the construction of evidence-based policy (168). In this chapter, Biruk shows how some data comes to be understood as empirical fact, while other data is too wild and messy to make it in the “clean” world of policy formulation. She also examines how even empirical data that survey teams have struggled to collect can be trumped by the aggregated (and sometimes erroneous) knowledge of local experts. The conclusion circles back to the profound ambivalence that researchers like Biruk experience in relation to their work, as well as all the disappointment felt by researchers who see their recommendations, based on field data, rejected or not acted upon swiftly enough. The book is very readable. Biruk explains her concepts well, and alternates between what she experienced in the field, with vignettes based on field experience; first-person accounts from office and field-based researchers; and a discussion of survey participants. This style of writing helps to break up some of the denser theoretical text, including references to the conceptualization of the field as contingent, colonially formed, and a more complex space than many who “do” fieldwork like to imagine. It also interrogates the politics of knowledge production, which elevate “knowledge” produced by funded researchers in the North above that produced by Malawian-based researchers, whose low levels of remuneration mean that a daily subsistence allowance (a per diem) often exceeds a monthly salary. Over the last two years, since the advent of Covid and large Covid-focused research projects, the issues she highlights have only become more stark.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-23DOI: 10.1080/00083968.2023.2165624
M. Howard
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Pub Date : 2023-01-23DOI: 10.1080/00083968.2023.2165633
N. Erlank
who could not attract free labour” (139–140). Copper increased Northern Rhodesia’s importance to London. After the war, it “became even more vital to Britain’s economic survival” (126), providing crucial dollar earnings for the sterling group, with demand remaining buoyant due to the emergent Cold War. This increased wealth led to increased political autonomy for the settler-colonial administrations in both Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), which Tembo argues was a key factor contributing to the emergence of the ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (129). The last chapter details the demobilisation of the NRR and what the author terms the “great disappointment” of war service among African veterans (142). This is a powerful and moving chapter which demonstrates that racist colonial policies resulted in the awful treatment of African troops who had fought for Britain during WWII. Tembo shows how African veterans with war injuries were treated terribly by a colonial government that saw them as “cheap and expendable” (157). Injured NRR veterans were given very meagre pensions, and no provision whatsoever was made for those with mental health problems (157). Furthermore, “unlike Africans, discharged European soldiers with at least twelve months’ service were entitled to receive free treatment... for one year” (158). “Tracts of land” were set aside “to draw (or draw back) existing European residents to farming,” along with subsidised loans, whereas African veterans received very little in the way of post-war resettlement (152–156). Gratuities given to “Africans were as much as three times less than those of Europeans” (174). African NRR veterans also struggled to make use of the skills they had acquired during wartime as “there were few secondary industries with openings for the skilled tradesmen who came back from the war,” and the “territory-wide implementation of the colour-bar policy” restricted the opportunities on offer for African veterans (160). Despite their wartime sacrifices, many ended up destitute. Lastly, Tembo argues that while “many early Africanist historians stressed the important role of African ex-servicemen in postwar nationalist politics,” his research concords with recent work by other scholars that shows “ex-servicemen as a group were no more significant” than other occupational groups within the African nationalist movements (162). In conclusion, this is an outstanding work, rigorously researched and thoroughly engaged with manifold literatures. Tembo’s arguments throughout the book are nuanced and well considered. Occasionally one has the privilege to read a history that will almost certainly never be bettered: this is such an instance.
{"title":"Cooking Data: Culture and Politics in an African Research World","authors":"N. Erlank","doi":"10.1080/00083968.2023.2165633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2023.2165633","url":null,"abstract":"who could not attract free labour” (139–140). Copper increased Northern Rhodesia’s importance to London. After the war, it “became even more vital to Britain’s economic survival” (126), providing crucial dollar earnings for the sterling group, with demand remaining buoyant due to the emergent Cold War. This increased wealth led to increased political autonomy for the settler-colonial administrations in both Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), which Tembo argues was a key factor contributing to the emergence of the ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (129). The last chapter details the demobilisation of the NRR and what the author terms the “great disappointment” of war service among African veterans (142). This is a powerful and moving chapter which demonstrates that racist colonial policies resulted in the awful treatment of African troops who had fought for Britain during WWII. Tembo shows how African veterans with war injuries were treated terribly by a colonial government that saw them as “cheap and expendable” (157). Injured NRR veterans were given very meagre pensions, and no provision whatsoever was made for those with mental health problems (157). Furthermore, “unlike Africans, discharged European soldiers with at least twelve months’ service were entitled to receive free treatment... for one year” (158). “Tracts of land” were set aside “to draw (or draw back) existing European residents to farming,” along with subsidised loans, whereas African veterans received very little in the way of post-war resettlement (152–156). Gratuities given to “Africans were as much as three times less than those of Europeans” (174). African NRR veterans also struggled to make use of the skills they had acquired during wartime as “there were few secondary industries with openings for the skilled tradesmen who came back from the war,” and the “territory-wide implementation of the colour-bar policy” restricted the opportunities on offer for African veterans (160). Despite their wartime sacrifices, many ended up destitute. Lastly, Tembo argues that while “many early Africanist historians stressed the important role of African ex-servicemen in postwar nationalist politics,” his research concords with recent work by other scholars that shows “ex-servicemen as a group were no more significant” than other occupational groups within the African nationalist movements (162). In conclusion, this is an outstanding work, rigorously researched and thoroughly engaged with manifold literatures. Tembo’s arguments throughout the book are nuanced and well considered. Occasionally one has the privilege to read a history that will almost certainly never be bettered: this is such an instance.","PeriodicalId":9481,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines","volume":"15 1","pages":"492 - 494"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73591698","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 : 2023-01-06DOI: 10.1080/00083968.2022.2147971
R. Ragetlie, I. Luginaah
ABSTRACT Further place-based empirical research on food insecurity and masculinities is necessary, particularly in West Africa, where notions of agrarian masculinity remain entrenched and rigid gender norms dictate the division of labour and household organization. Responding to the calls for more empirical research at this nexus in rural Africa, we draw on focus group and interview data collected in the Atacora region of Benin. We find that men’s identities as household breadwinners are being undermined by worsening food insecurity, which is contributing to growing inequality in the gendered division of labour. The result is a fraught renegotiation of gender roles within the household, wherein men attempt to reassert their masculinity and dominance in the gender hierarchy through violence. By engaging in a nuanced place-based analysis, our study explains how food insecurity in subsistence farming contexts intersects with masculinities to reproduce inequality and violence against women within the household.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-03DOI: 10.1080/00083968.2022.2133363
M. Plaut
{"title":"Prisoners of the Past: South African Democracy and the Legacy of Minority Rule","authors":"M. Plaut","doi":"10.1080/00083968.2022.2133363","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2022.2133363","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9481,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines","volume":"30 1","pages":"489 - 490"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83398482","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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