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This paper examines the role of precolonial class inequality systems in the intergenerational transmission of education processes amongst ethnic groups in Africa. Using ethnographic and household survey data from six African countries and grouping ethnic groups by the historical class system that existed within them, I observe variations in intergenerational persistence between them with varying levels of significance in the different countries included. The findings suggest that understanding intergenerational mobility within African countries should take into account the different historical ethnic group characteristics, although the mobility process does not evolve uniformly across countries. Country-specific colonial administrative systems and the immediate post-independence education policies are critical factors that also need to be taken into account to understand the changes in education-based intergenerational persistence from the precolonial to the contemporary period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the Poro, a male secret society in rural Sierra Leone, and how it conditions access to security and justice. It critiques dichotomies between state and non-state and substantiates the networked quality of order-making as dispersed among a multitude of actors who intertwine disparate rationalities and registers of authority. The secret nature of the Poro, the ‘sons of the soil’, and the ‘stranger’ are explored as central figures. Poro membership is essential to the production of social and physical boundaries between insiders and outsiders of a community. By conditioning access to local positions of power and decision-making about how resources are to be distributed, the Poro also conditions access to security and justice. The networked quality of order-making becomes particularly noticeable when the police engages in Poro affairs, which accentuates the multitude of registers of authorities that are combined and assembled as the Poro and the police interact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Scholars who have been writing on the problems of classifying the oral song genres of Africa have tended to be inflexible. The oral song has been approached using functionalist and other anthropological theories. While these theories have shed some light on the nature of African oral song, this has been at the expense of exploring the actual song texts in their own right. This paper samples and explores some selected songs from the iSiXhosa cultural traditions by means of textual analysis. The paper intends to show that song genres cross-pollinate each other and that the recurrent themes in the songs contextualize and underpin the social and philosophical lives of the Xhosa people. Since the Xhosa people are differentiated in terms of age, class and gender, it follows that the themes of the songs reflect and mediate this reality. Songs can suggest new themes or can be interpreted in new ways which, when accepted in the Xhosa community, can then become dominant and recurrent ways of interpreting reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the history of the oldest theatre in Eritrea, Cinema or Teatro Asmara, and seeks to understand how the theatre has been seen and used by its multiple owners and users from 1918 to the present day. Eritrea has had a complex modern history, being ruled from Italy, Britain and Ethiopia before achieving independence in 1991, and each government has had an uneasy relationship with culture, seeking to varying degrees to control and manipulate what could be shown in the nation's de facto national theatre. By exploring the organizations that have run and put on performances in the building, and looking at some of the theatre they produced it is my contention that we can understand much about the cultural aspirations, anxieties and aesthetics of the artists living and working in Eritrea over the last hundred years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on ethnolinguistic heterogeneity has so far mostly focused on domestic measures, while little attention has been paid to ethnolinguistic relations between nations. In this paper, I propose a way of measuring ethnolinguistic affinity between nations. This index measures the degree of similarity two randomly drawn individuals from two different populations are expected to display. I show that this measure has several attractive theoretical characteristics, which make it particularly useful. Subsequently, I construct the measure for all countries in Africa and use it to show that civil conflict in Africa is likely to spill over between contiguous ethnolinguistically similar countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a socio-literary investigation of the East African Asian diasporic experience. To this end, it closely examines selected texts that offer insights into the complicated socio-cultural relationships at the interstices of the colonial histories of the Indian subcontinent, Africa and Europe. It also looks at how gendered participation is articulated from within the larger body of a collective history. Finally, the paper reviews steps taken by contemporary Asian-Africans to take stock of their shared past, as a part of larger political project for the recognition of a hitherto minoritised group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implications of ‘social difference’ for schooling in African contexts. It highlights theoretical and philosophical engagements with ‘difference’ that could help explore and search for viable educational options in Africa. The paper engages voices of university students interviewed in a longitudinal ethnographic research study on schooling done in Ghana. Issues and questions about knowledge production, identity development and representation in pluralistic schooling contexts are raised. Insights about local knowledges, individual agency and resistance as they relate to possibilities for rethinking schooling and education in Africa are also explored. The students' narratives reveal how dialogues about school and educators' practices about difference and diversity are [not] addressed with respect to the students' schooling. Lessons on the possibilities of inclusive schooling environments are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom presents the elder in African society as a wise, dignified and powerful figure, who keeps the culture alive and guides the young. This paper tries to demonstrate that this image of the elders in Africa is simplistic, using evidence from folklore and literature. Folklore, though a rarely used source for studies of this nature, is the most authentic expression of a people's reality and experience. Since it springs from the remote past, folklore bears the evidence of where the Africans have come from. Together with folklore, there are some literary works which are also used, since they spring from and appropriate key aspects of the folklore heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Care for AIDS orphans in southern Africa is frequently characterized as a “crisis”, where kin-based networks of care are thought to be on the edge of collapse. Yet these care networks, though strained by AIDS, are still the primary mechanisms for orphan care, in large part because of the essential role grandmothers play in responding to the needs of orphans. Ongoing demographic shifts as a result of HIV/AIDS and an increasingly feminized labor market continue to disrupt and alter networks of care for orphans and vulnerable children. This paper examines the emergence of a small but growing number of male caregivers who are responding to the needs of the extended family. While these men are still few in number, the strength of gendered ideologies of female care means that this group of men is socially, if not statistically significant. Men continue to be considered caregivers of last resort, but their care will close a small but growing gap that threatens to undermine kin-based networks of care in Lesotho and across the region. The adaptation of gender roles reinforces the strength and resilience of kinship networks even when working against deeply entrenched ideas about gendered division of domestic labor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following apartheid’s demise, the Afrikaans language was forced to part with the privileged position it once held under the National Party’s guardianship and has, subsequently, contracted in a number of its functions. Despite growing concerns about the language’s “endangered” status, Afrikaans has proven its vitality in multiple market-driven domains. In this paper, I trace the expansion of the Afrikaans culture industry after apartheid. I argue that this process was fomented, at least in part, by paranoia about Afrikaans’s “fading position.” Because Afrikaners still command a vast material and cultural capital, they have been the prime producers, sellers and buyers of Afrikaans language media and cultural commodities. Thus, together with the growth of the Afrikaans culture industry, an array of physical, digital and psychological spaces has opened up where white Afrikaans speakers can be a majority. I argue that the expansion of these spaces has laid the foundation for the formation of new Afrikaner subjectivities and enclaved identities, and contributed to the production and strengthening of separatist tendencies amongst certain Afrikaners. Instead of being an emancipatory force, facilitating Afrikaans speakers’ forceful integration into a new South Africa and “rainbow nation,” it has succeeded in reaffirming and naturalising the imagined boundaries of Afrikanerdom. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the closing months of 1995 the africa95 festival in Britain offered a diverse programme celebrating the cultures of Africa. It was a multi-faceted event, that included conferences, theatre, dance, films, literature and a number of art exhibitions at different venues in London and other centres, organised by a range of curators, and accompanied by catalogues with contributions by a variety of scholars. It is the intention of this paper to examine the complexity of the London exhibitions of africa95. It will focus on their constitution and display, and in what ways these correlated with the aims of the festival and the positions reflected in the catalogues. Although the review will look broadly and comparatively at a number of the art exhibitions, it takes as its primary focus Africa: The Art of a Continent at the Royal Academy. This, the premier venue of africa95, attempted an overview of the historical art of the African continent as a totality, with works dating from as early as 1,7 million years BP. The paper will explore some of the paradoxes generated by the exhibition and its catalogue, evident in the slippage between the stated aims of the related publications and the actuality of the display. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents summary statistics of immigration into the West Indies, under indenture or government sponsorship, during the period 1834-1918. The sources reveal a few discrepancies, but are sufficiently consistent to permit the construction of a series for each of the ethnic groups introduced. Most of the problems involved in constructing these series centre around the fact that a variety of sources have to be utilised. Immigration figures of East Indians, Portuguese, Chinese, Europeans and others into the several West Indian colonies have been prepared for each calendar year or season, but to conserve space are presented here in summary form. In the case of African immigration it is possible to give their country of origin. The only group of immigrants who were involved in return movements of any consequence are the East Indians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to study the various forms of education to be found amongst the Kisongo Maasai, a pastoral population in Tanzania, both in their own right and in terms of what their encounter with one another implies. The late and rather limited development of schooling in that remote area and educational policies, as well as the pastoral way of life of this population, combine to produce a low rate of schooling: around 33% of children enrolled in primary schools versus a national rate that was twice as high in the 1990s. Few of these pupils go on to secondary schooling. The paper attempts to show the impact of primary schooling on educational practices and, more generally, on the Maasai way of life. Although they coexist side by side to a large extent, formal schooling and ‘traditional’ education—offering conflicting forms of knowledge that are conveyed in widely different fashions—usually tend to be in competition with each other, especially when it comes to pastoral education. Whereas in school all pupils are given the same instruction in a single classroom, in their communities young Maasai receive distinct kinds of education from different persons and in different places, depending on gender and age. Education for girls, non-circumcised boys and warriors is therefore orientated towards domestic labour, pastoral activities and practices associated with warriorhood. After highlighting the dynamics of interaction amongst the various forms of education, the paper focuses on Maasai perceptions of school and on the various educational strategies such perceptions generate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

“Megamiddens” appear along the West Coast of South Africa c. 3000–2000 BP. Kalahari San ethnography was used initially to explain them as processing localities given the massive volumes of marine shell and low densities of other remains. However, recent research in Lamberts Bay using a resource intensification model seems to explain more of the observed archaeological variability. In this paper, the evidence of Elands Bay megamiddens is studied in this same light and similar conclusions are arrived to. Rising population levels between 3500 and 2500 BP are followed by a reformulation of the foraging ecology of both marine and terrestrial prey, with isotopic values from human skeletons and archaeological data showing high marine food consumption during the megamidden period when compared to other stages. Signs of black mussel overexploitation are apparent by 3000 BP, although shellfish harvesting is most intense c. 2600–2200 BP. Further sampling of Elands Bay megamiddens is needed to better understand shellfish foraging between 3000 and 2500 BP. Foragers hunted less large mobile game by 2600 BP and instead small territorial bovids were procured more heavily at this time with tortoise collection being intensified between 3000 and 2600 BP. Cave usage may have been very different to that before and after the megamidden millennium given the lack of visits to these sites in Elands Bay at this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay traces the origins of African Studies in the U.S. to ethnographic, sociological, and linguistic work carried out by African American scholars in Brazil among practitioners of the Candomblé religion. More specifically, the author analyzes the interrelated work of African American sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, anthropologist Melville Herskovits, and African American linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner.

This paper examines the implications of promoting indigenous peoples' rights in Africa by examining the tension between collective group rights and women's individual rights. I outline how San women in the Omaheke Region of Namibia confront simultaneous and mutually-reinforcing racial, ethnic, class and gender inequalities, and illustrate how intersectional discrimination often puts their human rights priorities at odds with the international indigenous movement's goal of securing group rights. I suggest that addressing indigenous women's rights issues requires a better balance of individual and collective rights, which includes indigenous women's experiences and interests as central features of their communities' collective concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music is the main diet of the most popular radio programmes in Africa and yet there are hardly any studies that examine either the ways in which it is programmed on radio, or circumstances under which it is consumed by Africans. This paper critically discusses this nexus by closely examining how a leading Zimbabwean radio station organises its music output to coincide with the daily life of members of its Zimbabwean listening public. Radio Zimbabwe's music policy (including quotas), music programming options and playlists are discussed to illustrate that music can only be relevant if it is scheduled in terms of rhythm with daily life and according to agreed professional judgements, which are supported by policy stipulations and playlists. Firstly, I discuss some general background, theoretical issues on music radio. Secondly, I explore scheduling particularities of some music programmes in relation to Zimbabwean daily life routines. I base my evaluations of Radio Zimbabwe music programmes on fieldwork findings from my research conducted with national broadcasters and listeners in Zimbabwe from 2000 to 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on migrants examines what makes them ill. Inspired by Antonovsky's salutogenic approach, this study shifts the perspective and asks why migrants stay healthy. At the centre of interest are sub-Saharan Africans living in Switzerland who consider themselves and/or are considered by others as mastering problems affecting their health. The mixed Swiss-African research team explored meanings of health and resilience in 20 case studies in Zurich and Basel and five group discussions in Bern, Biel and Geneva. The data show that migrants with resilient trajectories have a dynamic and multi-dimensional understanding of health. Moreover, they have learnt to interpret difficulties as 'stress': a popular illness concept in Switzerland and Europe but less known in their home countries. The paper argues that resilience is closely related with the appropriation of 'stress' as an illness concept: it not only gives meaning and helps to explain diffuse symptoms of ill-health, it also offers an agenda for action and contributes to their feeling of social belonging in the host country. These findings have important implications for policy and practice in the rapidly changing field of migration and health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that, while the demise of apartheid has led to many situations in which South Africans now come into closer contact with one another, this increased 'contact' does not amount to greater racial integration. Contact occurs within a context of unequal power relations in which 'whiteness' continues to be privileged over 'blackness'. The result is that white people tend to benefit more from contact with the racial 'other' than black people, who often experience this contact as reinforcing their expectations of continued white dominance and privilege. While contact may undermine blatantly racist practices and overt racial conflict, racialized patterns of reasoning continue to exist, often unnoticed and unchallenged. These include the assumption that race is an incontrovertible fact of experience, the privileging of whiteness, the assumption that there exist different (biological) races which evince different forms of social behaviour and that these are essential properties of people rather than being historically or socially contingent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leni Riefenstahl, a legend recently deceased at more than 100 years of age, is perhaps best known for her association with Hitler in the form of her films Olympia and Triumph of the Will , and she has provoked controversy ever since. This paper will focus on the lesser-known African travel books which Riefenstahl published in Germany between 1972 and 1976. Therein she presents images of Nubian people taken in the Sudanese mountains which seem to echo her previous work in their portrayal of physical perfection. While her pictures of the Nubian people have so far been looked at as a homogeneous body of work, the following analysis will concentrate on the qualitative difference between Riefenstahl's first and subsequent Nuba photo-publications and her changing motivations. Riefenstahl's romantic quest to capture the innocence of Africa and her desire for renewal and salvation on the edges of civilization, which were at the centre of her first visit to the region, are to be seen in stark contrast to the driving force behind following visits, when she sought to push into an even more unknown and wilder Africa, whereby her camera attempted to produce images reminiscent of a sublime. I will argue that, in doing so, Riefenstahl regressed into producing Eurocentric and sensationalist depictions of ‘her Africans’. Likewise, her role as an agent for change is viewed critically against her self-perception as an anthropological conservationist; her pictures are analysed together with her own commentary. Her narrative accompanying the photos seems to diminish the power of her images and may affect her reputation as a great visual artist as it appears to suggest doubtful motives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For ages, the Sahara has been portrayed as an ‘empty-quarter’ where only nomads on their spiteful camels dare to tread. Colonial ethnographic templates reinforced perceptions about the Sahara as a ‘natural’ boundary between the North and the rest of Africa, separating ‘White’ and ‘Black’ Africa and, by extension, ‘Arabs’ and ‘Berbers’ from ‘Africans’. Consequently, very few scholars have ventured into the Sahara despite the overwhelming historical evidence pointing to the interactions, interdependencies and shared histories of neighbouring African countries. By transcending the artificial ‘Saharan frontier’, it is easy to see that the Sahara has always been a hybrid space of cross-cultural interactions marked by continuous flows of peoples, ideas and goods. This paper discusses a methodological approach for writing Saharan history which seeks to transcend this artificial divide and is necessarily transnational. As a scholar of nineteenth and early twentieth century trans-Saharan history, I retrace the steps of trading families across several generations and markets. This research itinerary crisscrossed Saharan regions of Western Africa from Senegal, the Gambia and Mali, to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania and the Kingdom of Morocco, with stops in archival repositories in France. With specific reference to the art of writing African history, I discuss how my own path into the African past was shaped by ad hoc encounters with peoples, their memories and texts. But if the facts, perspectives and narratives that form the evidence I rely upon to reconstruct trans-Saharan history were collected on an accidental trajectory, the interpretation of this data followed a deliberate methodological approach. I explain how orality permeated the process of my historical investigation and I argue for a recognition of the centrality of orality in the creation and interpretation of all forms of historical evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the political aftershocks of September 11, powerful interests in the United States and Britain have proposed the development of national systems of biometric identification and registration. For much of the last century, South Africans have lived with such a biometric order, and in recent years the democratic state has begun to invest in a massive scheme of digital biometrics for the delivery of benefits and the elimination of fraud. This HANIS system has been preceded by a massive project of digital biometric grant delivery that affects millions of people throughout the country. These systems are changing the nature of the state, and the relationship between private individuals and the commercial domain. For the countries considering a move from the decentralised order of paper-based identification to the new world of digital biometrics, there is much to be learned from a close study of contemporary South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While students from many non-Western contexts continue to stream to Europe and North America to pursue theological doctoral degrees, new theological doctoral programs are springing up around the world. Many of these new programs appear to be adopting (more or less uncritically) one or another of the Western models of doctoral program design. However, this approach to doctoral program design raises serious questions pertaining to contextual appropriateness. The grounded theory study reported in this paper explored contextual concerns with respect to one non-Western context: Africa. In particular, the study addressed the question: How do key African stakeholders describe appropriate doctoral preparation for Africans in an African theological seminary?Data were collected through semistructured interviews with 33 stakeholder participants. The profile to emerge from the data was one of a program that was (a) contextually useful, (b) demonstrably achievable, and (c) internationally credible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the historical development of social work education in South Africa, paying particular attention to the transformation of social work education and training post-1994, and provides some detail about the efforts being made toward the development of a regional qualifications framework. It also describes the constitution of the Social Work Standards Generation Body (SGB), its functions, the processes followed by the SGB, and details the outcomes generated by the SGB. The potential costs and benefits of the development of minimum standards are discussed, with specific reference to the debates around the 'whole qualifications' and 'unit standards' approaches to generating standards. Although the registration of social work qualifications on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) is a statutory requirement of the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), and was imposed, it holds promise and signifies an achievement by the social work profession. Since the inception of social work education and training in South Africa in the 1920s these are the first nationally formulated standards that have been accepted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review has been presented of methods whereby attitudes can be studied in African communities in various stages of transition from tribal to `Western culture. The techniques of the directed interview, group discussion, TAT, incomplete sentences, and attitudes inventory were discussed. In the measurement of African attitudes the problems of rapport and of validity require particular attention. In addition to the usual validity problem whether verbalised attitudes are consistent with actual behaviour, there is the difficulty, in the case of African informants, of ensuring that the verbalised attitudes reflect their actual beliefs, ideas, and feelings. This is as much a matter of the correct choice of method and its skillful manipulation as of the establishment of proper rapport. Important ingredients of successful rapport are the careful timing of investigations with reference to events of cultural or local political significance; the use of the vernacular; the avoidance of pencil and paper except in the case of well-educated groups; the correct contacts and the employment of carefully selected and trained field-workers, preferably graduates in the social sciences. Validity can be determined in a number of ways, depending on the nature of the investigation and the method employed. Checks on facts implicit in the formation of an attitude; group differences in attitudes related to the particular role and status in society of the members of each group; changes in attitudes consistently related to social circumstances, have all been found useful as validity indicators. In work situations, job attitudes can also be related to assessments of work performance by supervisors, though conflicting role expectations in multi-racial societies may render merit rating criteria suspect. The problem of structuring TAT pictures in such a manner that attitudes relating to specific areas of interest will be evoked was discussed in some detail. Research into the development and functioning of perceptual habits in African cultures is necessary, both as a basis for designing TAT series, and for the interpretation of responses. Details were given of a promising inventory, designed to measure attitudes towards Western customs, ethical and legal concepts, and administration of justice. The inventory presents conversations between Africans who discuss the correct mode of conduct in a variety of situations. Each topic is discussed by five speakers whose reasons for acting or not acting in a particular manner are ranked by the subjects. Statistical treatment yields the relative strength of eight different attitudes in individuals and communities. It was shown that the reliability of the scale is high, .92 for the rank order in which the attitudes were placed, and from .85 to .51 for the internal consistency of six of the eight attitudes. Validity data were also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the so-called `cultural defence' in South African criminal law. The expression `cultural defence' refers to the phenomenon where indigenous customs are taken into account in the processes of a criminal trial and may have an effect on the outcome. In South Africa they may play such a role in two respects: first during the process of inquiry to ascertain if the requirements for a particular crime have been met; and secondly when a suitable punishment for a convicted accused must be determined. By making use of case law, illuminated by some comparisons with the role of Aboriginal customs in criminal trials in Australia, it is shown that culture played a definite role in South African cases prior to 1994, albeit not strictly in the sense of a true cultural defence. The paper then examines whether the South African Constitution and, in particular, its human rights provisions, brought about a new approach to be taken in matters where custom has been an element in the motivation for an act which would normally be a crime. Making particular reference to the examples of the twala custom (a form of abduction, with or without the consent of the girl or her parents, as a preliminary to a customary marriage) and belief in tokoloshe spirits, it is shown that South African courts have sometimes, although often reluctantly, given attention to these customs, although sometimes showing little understanding of them. The major question which emerges today is whether the constitutional provisions demand a formalisation of the cultural defence or whether the existing principles used in the evaluation and punishment of crimes could continue to be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the views of Northwestern University professor Dwight Conquergood on performance ethnology. Conquergood defined performance as cultural interaction that formed the basis of ethnography. Conquergood felt ethnographic fieldwork allowed researchers to observe life-stories and write about them in an aesthetically pleasing way. Conquergood stated that performance ethnology allowed a chance to intervene in the world and to investigate power relationships and how symbols motivate social action. Skepticism has emerged in African nations despite the spread of forms of democracy and free market economies. Many Africans fled the continent during the political instability of the cold war. African scholars have benefited from Conquergood's teachings.

This article presents information on some methodological considerations concerning the study of aptitudes and the elaboration of psychological tests for African natives. The notion of aptitude as a hereditary disposition exercising a limiting effect on some defined behavior becomes even less valuable when it concerns people ho suffer from lack of education, as in the case of African populations. It is in such groups the necessity arises of predicting work performance by means of tests. It also becomes important to study learning procedures whereby work capacity can be developed, and to provide adequate information as to how any desired development can best be achieved. For a long time scientific psychology has concentrated research on the study of aptitudes. It is opined that by means of proper communication, a given capacity may frequently develop in a person who was previously devoid of it. A first approach to the study of the intellectual capacities of Africans is to observe and to make an inventory of the activities which are valued within original African culture. Accurate psychological knowledge of the behavior involved in these activities, of the techniques employed by them and of the materials they utilize would be valuable in order to locate and to overcome the difficulties which Africans experience in adjusting to the demands peculiar to an industrial civilization.

A preface for the August 2008 issue of the "African Studies" is presented.

Parents are the most proximal influence in children’s lives and parenting practices can moderate the relationship between risk-laden contexts and child outcomes. The present study is part of a broader project supporting Acholi parents in northern Uganda and adds to growing literature on the impact of fathers in children’s lives and fatherhood. Critical ethnography guided individual interviews with 19 fathers, three focus groups, informal conversations with community members and field observations to learn about Acholi fathering roles. Findings show that fathers have three primary ideal roles, to: provide for their children, educate their children, and provide a stable and peaceful home. These roles are all future oriented and occur within broader relational and social contexts including family relationships, recovery from war, and a changing but hierarchical society. The extent to which these roles are fully realised varied based on these contextual factors and individual differences. Findings provide directions for future research with fathers and support our research team’s inclusion of fathers in future parent education programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the activities of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Djibouti, and especially its capacity-building activities in the field of migration management. It ethnographically documents how these projects transform state sovereignty. It argues that this is done not only through the Djiboutian government's increased capacity to exclude undocumented migrants, but also through the renewed governance of the entry of national-citizens into the state territory. IOM's projects institutionalise a state of exception (Agamben) that produces both legitimate political authority and national citizenship in the receiving State. Such institutionalisation is finally embedded within an international mobility regime characterised by a 'sedentarist' narrative, targeting specifically African citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the world, people in urban rather than rural areas are more likely to support gender equality. To explain this global trend, this article engages with geographically diverse literature and comparative rural-urban ethnographic research from Zambia. It argues that people living in interconnected, heterogeneous, densely populated areas are more likely to see women performing socially valued, masculine roles. Such exposure incrementally erodes gender ideologies, catalyzing a positive feedback loop and increasing flexibility in gender divisions of labor. Women in densely populated areas also tend to have greater access to health clinics and police and so are more able to control their fertility and secure external support against gender-based violence. The urban is not inevitably disruptive, though. Experiences of the urban are shaped by international and national policies, macroeconomic conditions, and individual circumstances. Through this comparative ethnography, this article contributes to literature on the drivers of change and continuity in gender ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the overlapping modalities and practical purposes of anthropological ethnographic knowledge and political–military intelligence gathering – the commonalities as well as the boundaries between them – through an analysis of the career of the anthropologist Jack Sargent Harris (1912–2008), a secret operative for the United States’ Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War in Nigeria and South Africa. Calling upon archival and oral historical sources, the article relates Harris’s training in Boasian cultural anthropology and as a professional ethnographer of African societies and cultures to the ways he recruited informants, conducted surveillance, related to foreign Allied officials, utilized documentary evidence, and worked to establish authority and credibility in his wartime intelligence reporting. The article argues that political purpose is a central artefact of anthropological ethnography as it is in other ethnographic modalities even if the justifications for these endeavours remain distinct. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A preface for the August 2008 issue of the "African Identities" is presented.

This article draws on rich ethnographies and ethnographic fiction depicting mobile Africans and their relationships to the places and people they encounter to argue that mobility is more appropriately studied as an emotional, relational and social phenomenon as reflected in the complexities, contradictions and messiness of the everyday realities of encounters informed by physical and social mobility. The current dominant approach to studying and relating to mobile Africans is problematic. Nationals, citizens and locals in communities targeted by African mobility are instinctively expected to close ranks and fight off the influx of barbarians who do not quite belong and must be ‘exorcised’ so that ‘insiders’ do not lose out to this particular breed of ‘strangers’, ‘outsiders’ or ‘demons’, perceived to bode little but inconvenience and savagery. If and when allowed in, emphasis is on the needs, priorities and convenience of their reluctant hosts, who tend to go for the wealthy, the highly professionally skilled, the culturally bleached and Hottentot Venuses of the academy, even at the risk of accusations of capital flight and brain drain. The article demonstrates how to marry ethnography and fiction to study African mobility not only as a ‘collection of logical bones and flesh’ but also as ‘emotional beings’. It calls for conceptual flexibility and ethnographic empirical substantiation, and challenges social scientists to look beyond academic sources for ethnographies and accounts of how a deep, flexible and nuanced understanding of mobility and interconnections in Africa play out in different communities, states and regions of a world permanently on the move. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay details how the foodways of an African town form and are informed by local conceptions of affective state, as reliant on embeddedness in the social order. Emotion both modifies appetite and determines foods’ perceived capacities to proffer energy to a consumer, with sanguine persons and foods mutually constituting one another. This makes the body not only a product of nutrition but also a determinant of it. Ethnographic data detail ethnophysiological concepts of digestion and food categorization as based on somatic experience, making a strong case for local foodways as a system that is felt as much as it is thought and intimately integrated within the moral imagination. This is especially noteworthy in a location where poverty and veritable culinary simplicity can give an impression that foodways are dictated by material conditions alone. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author of this article argues for a blending of Pan-Africanism and African Pentecostalism so as to produce a new political theology. While lauding the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Pan-African Black scholars, thinkers, and theologians for their efforts and accomplishments, the author lays bare their Western enlightenment worldvicw which, he argues, crippled their ability to speak to and empower Africans at the grassroots of society. The solution to this problem is to re-contcxtualizc Pan-Africanism. The author argues that the perfect vehicle for this renewal is African Pentecostalism, which is already suited to the African worldview and has been appropriated by masses of Africans at the grassroots. As Pan-Africanism's political agenda and theology is redeveloped through the use of the African-Pentecostal language, images, idioms, and tools, then this political theology can be transformed in such a way so as to empower the African people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a bid to determine the relationship of ethnicity, maternal height and shoe size as predictors of cephalopelvic disproportion, we conducted a prospective comparative study of primigravidas at term with singleton pregnancies, who had undergone spontaneous labour. A total of 208 primigravidas were studied; 151 (62.9%) achieved vaginal delivery and 57 (37.1%) had emergency caesarean section for failure-to-progress. We found a statistically significant positive correlation between maternal height and vaginal delivery ( p == 0.04), but no correlation with maternal shoe size was found ( p == 0.24). This study also showed that Caucasian women were significantly more than twice as likely to achieve vaginal delivery compared with Africans ( p == 0.02). Maternal height of at least 162.5 cm, has a sensitivity of 74% and a specificity of 43% for predicting vaginal delivery. We concluded that the most predictive anthropometric measurement for vaginal delivery is maternal height. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Austronesians who settled in Madagascar in the first millennium of the Christian Era were probably different from the Austronesians who reached the East African coast earlier at different times, bringing bananas, taro and yam (Blench 2010). Largely based on linguistic data, this article proposes that four plants were brought by the first Austronesians in Madagascar: rice, the greater yam, coconut and Indian saffron. These plants helped the Austronesians to begin the process of colonising well-watered areas, cultivated both through wet and swidden agriculture. A little later, populations coming from the East African coast introduced other plants (sorghum, cowpea, Bambara pea, ananas...) that allowed them to occupy other ecosystems. At the end of the first millennium, different parts of the island were thus already inhabited, on the coasts and in the Highlands, and cultural blendings were already underway. The continuation of migrations from Southeast Asia, from the East African coast and from India in the second millennium AD brought increasing complexity in the cultural blendings and allowed the repeated introduction of many cultivated plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1990s, African AIDS programs followed a voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) approach to HIV testing. In the wake of large scale AIDS treatment programs, policymakers opted for routine provider-initiated testing (PITC) with less emphasis on counseling, which led to concerns about the ethical conduct of HIV testing. Inspired by Annemarie Mol, we ask if PITC can be framed as good care, rather than as medical domination that threatens to violate patients' rights. Based on fieldwork in Ugandan and Kenyan health facilities, we reveal that situations of choice vary: patients in hospital wards, are given time to decide whether they want a test, while in antenatal care testing women find it very hard to opt-out. We argue that the medical context inherent in PITC provides an attractive moral space for people to undergo HIV tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I discuss issues of memory and historicity in a contemporary African prophetic movement, the Tokoist church. I do so by focusing on the multiple processes of 'biographization' of the prophet's (Simao Toko) life from the different allegiances within the movement. I suggest that, despite recent critiques on the biographical method, the ethnography of those (unstable and heterogeneous) processes can be very helpful to understand the place of memory and historical consciousness in contemporary Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the efforts of a transnational indigenous peoples' civil society network to convince African states to the support the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Indigenous peoples' activism with regards the UNDRIP was successful despite the challenges. The author argues that success with UNDRIP was due to the effectiveness of the main African transnational indigenous peoples' network, though there were favourable conditions including a surge of idealism associated with African bloc politics at the United Nations, South Africa's democratisation and focus on human rights, a global awareness of the need for more effective human rights mechanisms for non-dominant peoples and an unwillingness by Africa to forsake the benefits and alliances of the international system. The emergence of an indigenous peoples' movement in Africa represents an evolution of civil society on the continent and the lobbying in favour of UNDRIP was a measure of its capacity. The reactions of African diplomats provide an opportunity to examine Africa's relationship with its own legal and cultural traditions, its openness to pluralist forms of governance and non-state institutions in post-colonial regimes, as well as Africa's relationship with the international human rights system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to postcolonial, feminist and subaltern critiques of anthropology, this article seeks to answer the question, 'For whom should research be conducted, and by whom should it be used?' by examining the lives and works of four female dance anthropologists. Franziska Boas, Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus used anthropology not only to inspire their choreography but also to promote social justice and racial equality. Their means - which included practice as research and experimental forms of ethnographic writing long before such unorthodox methodology gained popularity - anticipated the post-modern turn towards reflexivity. Nonetheless, these four women have been virtually ignored by the anthropological canon. An overview of the development of anthropology in the United Kingdom and the United States and an analysis of the critiques sustained by anthropology in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s reveal why Boas, Hurston, Dunham and Primus were marginalized and how their work functions as an example for post-modern, postcolonial dance anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews writings by anthropologists and scholars in adjacent fields that take an ethnographic approach to political security and its institutions to argue that this scholarship suggests two modes of critique beneficial to understanding security processes in Africa. One mode is contrastive and emphasizes vernacular conceptions of security, whereas the other is immanent and discursive (complementing “securitization” and the Copenhagen School). The argument is that when it comes to African security, there is a significant body of work in the former vein but less in the latter vein. As a result, the conception of African “otherness” is boosted at the detriment of a more nuanced understanding of formal African security actors. The essay ends with some methodological reflections on the ethnography of African security institutions, based on the author's research on small arms control in the Gambia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mozambique, initiation rites represent the most appropriate socio-cultural context for dealing with sexuality for a large part of the population. As the group most vulnerable to HIV exposure, HIV-prevention counselling could be ideally introduced to young women during initiation rites. This article demonstrates how interventions can take advantage of the positive aspects of this tradition. We discuss local notions of social 'contamination' versus biological 'contamination,' and we present a culturally sensitive communication strategy to bridge the divergent paradigms around AIDS-similar symptoms. Because of the emotional importance of the initiation rites, the suggested approach goes far beyond cognitive knowledge. After training, the godmothers in initiation rites became highly motivated to teach novice girls about HIV prevention and they trained other elderly women as well. Thus, the initiation rites turned into a process of empowerment for women in their own communities. A central agenda of the female initiation rites in Mozambique is to inculcate respect towards ancestors, elders, authorities and others; however, this respectful attitude between genders and between generations is disappearing due to factors like warfare and the cash economy. HIV-prevention counselling may be successfully introduced into initiation rites because of the unconscious, emotional impact of the process on the initiates' behaviour. Other studies have shown that cognitive knowledge is not enough to lead to behavioural changes. Without changing the traditional initiation rites for females, which in Mozambique includes no genital cutting, a complementary approach introduces HIV-prevention counselling during ritual counselling moments, thereby motivating godmothers and novice girls and young women to be more aware and take precautions to prevent HIV infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a wide range of primary sources, this article investigates the relationship of pirates with free and enslaved Africans as well as the impact of piracy on the slave trade. In 1719, the peak year of pirate depredations, as many as 30 per cent of the vessels that arrived on the west coast of Africa fell victim to pirate attacks. To pirates, slaves were worthless cargo, and they treated captured Africans accordingly. Contacts with free Africans were restricted to trading relationships, which sometimes led to violent excesses. Many black people were mistreated or killed by pirates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Romantic concept of “local color” refers to a site of painterly experimentation, the application of pigment in the chromatic construction of a picture. The term also identifies a detail authenticating an exotic subject considered typical of a particular region. This article zeroes in on the convergence of these two aspects of local color, interrogating the dialogue between subject and technique in the representation of North Africans. In their paintings from the late 1840s depicting “primitive” racial types from the Maghrib, Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) and Theodore Chasseriau (1819-1856) shifted to a color system that emphasized contrasts of distinct zones of color derived from an ethnological spectrum over smooth transitions and harmonies between hues. Unpacking the coordinates, including the trope of the mixed-blood, and the unstable classificatory schemas of physical anthropology suggests that these painters' unconventional colorism and formal daring indexed the pervasive anxiety that miscegenation would lead to racial chaos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A group of islands off the coast of East Africa, Zanzibar has been a semi-autonomous part of the United Republic of Tanzania since 1964. Despite a common language (Swahili), religion (Islam), and a high rate of intermarriage among the islands' multi-racial communities (including Africans and individuals of Arab, Persian, and Indian descent), Zanzibar politics has been marred by political conflicts that have culminated into political stand-offs, violence and lack of social and civic peace. At the core of these conflicts is the politicization of racial identity by leaders seeking the legitimacy to rule. Thus, unlike in Tanzania mainland, struggle for the control of the state in Zanzibar has been intense, deadly and zero-sum. Indeed, the distinctive character of the Zanzibar state itself makes it appealing for the political elites to politicize ethno-racial identities in order to claim legitimacy to rule. Two other things are at stake regarding the Zanzibar state: namely, the identity of the state (whether it is an Arab or African state) and sovereignty of the state (Zanzibar vs. Tanzania). This political instability threatens not only Zanzibar's relatively new democratic institutions, but also the Union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar and the prospects for democratic consolidation in Tanzania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]