Events & Issues
Mugabe: A Political Epitaph
By: Yash Tandon November 2017
If the following reads like an epitaph, this indeed is what it is. The end of Mugabe’s political life at the age of 93 is like an end to his life. Mugabe has been a lead story globally – even in Western media – for the entire past week. Why? The most superficial reason is that at the age of 93, he is the oldest ruler on earth. His 37-year rule spans two generations. People who were born when he came to power in 1980 are now in their late 40s (hence the formation of a group called Generation 40, better known as G40). Another reason for this news coverage is that he will be remembered as the leader of a guerrilla movement that finally ended the rule of the white man in what was then Rhodesia (named after the arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes). He is an emblematic, historical figure. He is a giant whose boot steps inaugurated a revolutionary era in the early years – boots that, sadly, became too heavy for him and too painful for the ordinary people for whose liberation he had fought.
Read more on the story in this link:
Empire and Ambivalence — Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Maya Jasanoff and Joseph Conrad
By: Bhakti Shringarpure
“Everything is repellant to me here. Men and things, but especially men”— Joseph Conrad, letter to his aunt from Congo in 1890. In August 2017, Harvard historian Maya Jasanoff wrote a travelogue about going up the Congo River with Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as an overly literal reference point. The article was riddled with racist stereotypes that are often part and parcel of travel writing, particularly when it comes to the Global South. Jasanoff exclaimed her horror at people eating smoked monkeys, likened the signals of boat crew members to the vessel’s captain to Black Power salutes and opined that Congo had probably been better off one hundred years ago. A century ago, the beastly regime of Belgium’s King Leopold was in the throes of looting the region and committing large-scale atrocities.
Read more on the story in this link:
Empire and Ambivalence — Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Maya Jasanoff and Joseph Conrad
The West Owes Zimbabwe a Future
By: Nick Dearden November 2017
For Zimbabwe, this is a great time. Robert Mugabe’s 37-year long rule has ended without adding to the bloodshed and suffering that he has already caused his country’s people. This moment is as much a victory for the people as it is for the army which moved against him.
Read more on the story in this link:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/west-owes-zimbabwe-future-171124103530829.html
Doing Anthropology in Troubled Times
By: Paul Stoller, Contributor
We live in troubled times. In America, we have a dangerously unstable and profoundly ignorant man as president bent on undermining free speech, expanding income inequality, and denigrating women and minorities as he gives a permissive wink to the divisively destructive forces of white supremacy. Beyond American shores, the spread of anti-immigrant populism has unleashed floodwaters of hate in Europe. In 21st century North Africa, slavery, of all things, has reemerged. It is essential to remember that it is the spread of religious intolerance that has led to incessant civil war, political instability, and the scourge of terrorism.
Read more on the story in this link: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/doing-anthropology-in-troubled-times_us_5a1c4300e4b0e580b35371c5?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003
Lake Chad: The World’s Most Complex Humanitarian Disaster
By: Ben Taub December 2, 2017
Chad was named for a mistake. In the nineteenth century, European explorers arrived at the marshy banks of a vast body of freshwater in Central Africa. Because locals referred to the area as chad, the Europeans called the wetland Lake Chad and drew it on maps. But chad simply meant “lake” in the local dialect. To the lake’s east, there was a swath of sparsely populated territory home to several African kingdoms and more than a hundred and fifty ethnic groups. It was mostly desert. In the early twentieth century, France conquered the area, calling it Chad and declaring it part of French Equatorial Africa.
Read more on the story in this link:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/04/lake-chad-the-worlds-most-complex-humanitarian-disaster?mbid=nl_TNY%20Template%20-%20With%20Photo%20%2857%29&CNDID=30097472&spMailingID=12484616&spUserID=MTMzMTgzMDc2NDAwS0&spJobID=1300192817&spReportId=MTMwMDE5MjgxNwS2
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
DEATH of a DISCIPLINE? Reflections on the History, State, and Future of Social Anthropology in Zimbabwe
[موت تخصص معرفي: تأملات في تاريخ ووضع ومستقبل علم أنثروبولوجيا الاجتماعي في زمبابوي]
By: Munyaradzi Mawere and Artwell Nhemachena
This is a book on the state of social anthropology as an academic discipline in contemporary Zimbabwe. The authors are frustrated and disheartened by a problematic visibility and sluggish growth of the discipline in the country. The book makes an important claim that the future and vibrancy of anthropology in Zimbabwe lies in how well anthropologists in the country and in the diaspora are able to join efforts in articulating, debating, and enhancing its relevance and vitality. The book provides a critical overview and a nuanced analysis of the role and continued relevance of the discipline in interpreting the social unfolding of everyday life. It is a vital text for understanding and contextualizing histories and trends in the development of social anthropology in Zimbabwe. Further, the book examines how anthropologists in the country navigate the tumultuous waters and struggles that have engrossed the discipline since colonial times. The book has the capacity to generate added insights and influence in national, continental, and global debates in the field.
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2017
iVenceremos?: The Erotics of Black Self-making in Cuba
[إيفنسيريموس ؟: شهية صناعة الذات لدى السود في كوبا]
By: Jafari S. Allen
Promoting the revolutionary socialist project of equality and dignity for all, the slogan ¡Venceremos! (We shall overcome!) appears throughout Cuba: everywhere from newspapers to school murals to nightclubs. Yet the accomplishments of the Cuban state are belied by the marginalization of blacks, the prejudice against sexual minorities, and gender inequities. ¡Venceremos? is a groundbreaking ethnography on race, desire, and belonging among blacks in early twenty-first century Cuba as the nation opens its economy to global capital. Expanding on Audre Lorde’s vision of embodied desire, Jafari S. Allen shows how black Cubans engage in acts of “erotic self-making” by reinterpreting, transgressing, and potentially transforming racialized and sexualized interpretations of their identities. He illuminates intimate spaces of autonomy created by people whose multiple identities have rendered them unidentifiable to state functionaries and to most scholars. In noting everyday practices in Havana and Santiago de Cuba such as Santeria rituals, gay men’s parties, hip hop concerts, tourist-oriented sex trade, lesbian organizing, HIV education, and just hanging out, Allen highlights small but significant acts of struggle for autonomy and dignity.
Publisher: Duke University Press, 2017
Peace, Security and Post-conflict Reconstruction in the Great Lakes Region of Africa
[السلام والأمن وإعادة الإعمار بعد انتهاء النزاع في منطقة البحيرات الكبرى في أفريقيا]
By: Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo & Joseph Gahama
The Great Lakes region of Africa is characterized by protest politics, partial democratization, political illegitimacy and unstable economic growth. Many of the countries that are members of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) have experienced political violence and bloodshed at one time or another. These member countries include Burundi, Angola, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Zambia. While a few states have been advancing electoral democracy, environmental protection, and peaceful state building, the overall intensity of violence in the region has led to civil wars, invasion, genocide, dictatorship, political instability, and underdevelopment. Efforts to establish sustainable peace, meaningful socio-economic development, or participatory democracy have largely been unsuccessful. Using various methodologies and paradigms, this book interrogates the complexity of the causes of these conflicts and their impact and implications for socio-economic development of the region. The non-consensual actions related to these conflicts and imperatives of power struggles supported by the agents of ‘savage’ capitalism have paralyzed efforts toward progress. The book therefore recommends new policy frameworks within regionalist lenses and neo-realist politics to bring about sustainable peace in the region.
Publisher: CODESRIA, Dakar, 2017
Buhari: The Making of a President
[بوهاري :صناعة رئيس]
By: Jimi Adebisi Lawal
The first four months of the year 2015 will be remembered by many as some of the most apprehensive days in Nigerian history. The destiny of Nigeria was up in the air. In the center of this political theatre were two personalities with significantly different trajectories. On the one hand, incumbent president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had enjoyed an unprecedented, almost meteoric rise to the apex of political power. Yet on the other, there was the then General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Buhari: The Making of a President is a story of intrigue, suspense, betrayal, reconciliation, collaboration and strategic concessions. This account is one that only an insider could have told in such detail.
Publisher: Safari Books, Nigeria, 2017
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