Panels

Tourism is an increasingly important phenomenon in the world and also in Africa; at present it is the nr. 1 world industry and still growing. Though partaking in only 4% of world tourist arrivals, African countries are increasingly focusing on tourism as a new source of income. Already, throughout the continent the tourist business provides by far the best investment opportunity for foreign investment, and viewing the assets of Africa, a continued growth of this market is to be expected.

This relatively new phenomenon generates a growing body of literature, to which this panel wants to contribute. Those fleeting encounters between the rich first world and the visited poor in the third world has generated much ideological comment and has been the topic of heated debates. Throughout, evaluations have abounded in the treatment of topics as ‘ethnic tourism’, ‘third world tourism’, ‘alternative destinations’ and the like. Some feel that in this kind of tourism one witnesses a new kind of colonialism, where the hordes of tourists trample over delicate local, authentic and native destinations, ruining the cultures in question. Even when voiced less dramatically, people do experience cultural loss, communities threatened and irrevocably changed, even prostitution of local cultures. Anyway, the discourse on the relationship between ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’ generally has been couched in evaluative terms, trying to discern between positive and negative effects on local populations.

Recent studies show that this picture needs revision. Effects of tourism on local populations seem to be much less dramatic, and anyway more complex. They are shown to be intricately interwoven with processes of change which are already occurring in the various cultures, and are viewed quite differently by the people concerned. Theoretically, the notion of two cultures ‘gazing’ at each other in the tourist encounter has given way to a focus on the intermediate structure that is generated when ‘guests’ meet their ‘hosts’and vice versa, i.e. the ‘tourist bubble’, i.e. those infrastructural arrangements that permit the professional reception of guests – such as hotels, lodges, personnel, logistics – plus those arrangements making the travel of tourists possible: travel agencies in the sending as well as in the host countries, transport facilities, hotel chains and a massive internet information business. It is this bubble that interacts with the guest society, and so it is this bubble that stands central in the dynamics of the tourist encounter.

From this vantage point, the panels will explore the varieties of tourist – host interactions in Africa. The central notion of the colloquium will be that the impact of the tourist bubble (and consequently tourist presence – on local populations depends on various factors: obviously the demographics and ecoomics of the tourist presence are relevant, but also the history of tourism growth, the explicit and implicit reasons for the tourists for their visit (i.e. the types of destinations), their views on the host situation (and the subsequent exchange of images between hosts and guests), the types of travel organizations and finally, the cultural self confidence of the receiving communities. These variables will be explored in various cases, grouped according to the types of destinations.

During these two decades thereis a certain development of a new approach of intervention intervention in the problems of Africa : working wth and trough Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) that represent in a certain way whaty we commonly call Civil Society. While the latter is growing in terms of willingness and representativity on the grassroots, it is facing at the same time several challenges such as in the domain of relations betwwen the States and NGO, the system of recognition of the Civil Society in general and NGO particulary by States, the system of nominating NGO to a certain donation, collaboration between local NGO's internally and between local and international NGO's, International NGOS and local law and so on. It appears that countries are developping ways to face differently some of the latter querries and that some other neither develop nothing no do not see any challenge in this domain of the 21st century. My panel intends to clarifiy the current situation in African, to harmonize views yet developped and ways to develop civil Society in Africa to contribute to enhancing the initiative and creativity beyond current constraints.

The African American philosopher, theologian and public intellectual, Cornel West has argued that "Though Marxists have sometimes viewed oppressed people as political or economic agents, they have rarely viewed them as cultural agents. Yet without such a view there can be no adequate conception of the capacity of oppressed people – the capacity to change the world and sustain the change in an emancipatory manner. And without a conception of such capacity, it is impossible to envision, let alone create, a socialist society of freedom and democracy. It is, in part, the European Enlightenment legacy – the inability to believe in the capacities of oppressed people to create cultural products of value and oppositional groups of value – which stands between contemporary Marxism and oppressed people".

Cornel West's analysis here of the intellectual hubris of Marxism could equally be applied to the hubris of 'development' discourse. Development discourse tends to operate with a deficit account of the resources of ordinary Africans. And even when ordinary Africans are granted some form of agency, the religious realm of their cultural capital is generally ignored.

This panel proposal is an attempt to redress this lacunae in development discourse by providing space for both recognition and reflection on the role of religious resources in African development praxis. The crisis of HIV/AIDS in Africa, among other factors, has led to a renewed interest in religious resources and faith based organisations. This panel seeks to provide a platform for some of the work emerging from this recovery of the religious realm to be shared and interrogated.

The religious realm, we argue, far from being an opiate or merely the control of the spiritual realm in the absence of socio-political control, is integral to any holistic and contextual understanding of survival and social transformation in Africa.

Addressing the question of how psychoanalytic theories might speak about "race," Hortense Spillers gives the term "African Oedipus" to a model of cultural self-formation which recognizes the status of the "father" as a social function rather than a biological genitor ("'All the Things You Could Be by Now if Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother': Psychoanalysis and Race"). For Spillers, the term "African Oedipus" mediates a sociosymbolic order characterized by shifting specular relations rather than by the fixed hierarchical positions and meanings attributed to the father, the mother and the child within the traditional Freudian model. The term "African Oedipus" is also linked by Spillers with historical experiences and memories of slavery and racism.

This panel invites papers exploring the psychoanalytic dynamics of cultural self-production in Africa and the diaspora. The panel seeks to focus on what may be construed as "private" and "familial" rather than on the broader social effects of mass traumas linked to events like war or forced migrations. In doing so, the panel does not seek to exclude considerations of the effects of social and political events on (either prominent or relatively anonymous) families and persons.

Possible topics might include but are not limited to:

Applications of the work of Frantz Fanon, Marie-Cecile and Edmond Ortigues, Ibrahim Sow and/or Hortense Spillers to specific African cultural texts

Cultural expressions of such paradigms as the "collective phallus" and the "unbeatable ancestor" (the Ortigues/Spillers)

The dynamics of fraternal rivalry

The urban gang as a manifestation of "African" Oedipal confraternity

The effects of "African" Oedipality for women and/or gendered relationships

The psychosocial roles of personal appearance and/or of apparitions in African cultural settings.

A large number of ‘micro-regions’ are emerging all over the world. Increasingly micro-regions are becoming cross-border rather than contained within a nation-state, as illustrated by the Euro-regions in Europe, the ‘Tex-Mex’ cross-border region in North America, the growth triangles in Southeast Asia. This is also the case of micro-regions in Africa. This panel takes note of the fact that cross-border regions are considerably less studied than sub-national ones. This panel focuses on the making and unmaking of cross-border regions in Africa, i.e. what are here labelled as “Afro-regions”, such as the Maputo Development Corridor, the Walwis Bay SDI, Ugandan border zones in Great Lakes region, Ethiopia-Eritrea trade corridor, Parrot’s Beak in West Africa. It builds on the conclusion of a recent edited collection with the same title. An important assumption for the papers at the panel is that micro-regions are not givens but constructed. As pointed out by one leading observer, Iver Neumann, “regions are preceded by region-builders”. This means that (just like states) regions are always in the making: constructed and reconstructed through social practice, political economy and, in discourse, by a variety of states, corporations and non-state actors. As a result, there are often a large number of sometimes overlapping and sometimes competing micro-regional actors, strategies, regulatory frameworks and scales. Using a comparative framework, this panel focuses particularly on the region-builders, i.e. those actors who build and make micro-regions and their associated region-building strategies. Key research questions are: for whom, for what purpose and with what consequences the micro-regions are being made and unmade? In essence, who benefits from the Afro-regions and in what ways, and conversely, who does not. There is also a special emphasis on how people on the ground and local communities create their own region-building strategies and how they respond to the region-building strategies of others, primarily the state and corporations.

The Zimbabwe 'crisis ' that unfolded from about 1996/1997 continues unabated. It divides and even haunts not only Zimbabweans but many in Africa and beyond. The country qualifies to be seen as a theatre where issues of rights, politics, economy, Diaspora, culture, language, health, religion, international relations (such as the rising influence of China in Africa, the inefficacious Zimbabwe Democracy Act of the USA) history and identity are not only contested, but are under transformation. While for some this crisis is an example of all that is bad about Africa, for other it offers opportunities at both intellectual as well as practical development levels. Once again Zimbabwe is a 'terrain of contradictory development ': it challenges prevailing development paradigms and is a case around which both local and global development processes can be exemplified. Panellists will be multidisciplinary and will be asked to draw from and extend ongoing but disparate intellectual and practical initiatives that arise from the Zimbabwe crisis in diverse subjects including topics such as culture and HIV/AIDS Diaspora and entrepreneurship, religion and gender.

we 'd like to offer presentation of different aspects of the problems that Africans face in the Russian Federation. Problems of african refugees, students, citizens of Russia as well as members of their families. With special regard to nowday situation and problems of interactions between the russians and the africans on different levels, especially racial aspect.

L. Ivanova presented her paper on the first AEGIS conference (for her human rights activities check web-site www.africa.smolny.nw.ru ) and author of the book "Africans in Moscow".

A. Tounkara in the president of the only african diaspora organisation "African Union".

L.Ivanova and A. Tounkara both participated in ASWAD conference (African Diaspora conference) in Rio-de-Janeiro, november, 2005.

What treatment can African 'refugees ' expect from European Governments? This panel seeks to bring together studies which examine official immigration policies and the judicial process which assesses refugees applications for asylum in the EC. Papers are invited which look at any of the following issues: (1) the operation of national immigration systems and its impact on refugees; (2) an assessment of whether political reforms to the immigration system have eroded the right of Africans to obtain asylum; (3) issues surrounding the legal representation of refugee claims in immigration courts; (4) the work of key institutions -- e.g. the 'home office ', courts, police and voluntary sector as this impacts on refugee rights; (5) Community responses towards refugees (supportive or hostile); (6) Refugee responses to the changing political climate in Europe (e.g. changing migration strategies, attempts to seek asylum or attempts to live as an illegal 'alien ').

It is rather curious that a great majority of the work done on Africa in recent times comes from scholars outside the continent. Perhaps this explains why scholarship about Africa has been turned to a subject of sentimental out pouring, often about trading blames for the station of the black person in the world. Blame trading between the so-called internalists and externalists has been heated but lightless. Granted there is so much to be angry, frustrated and even heartbroken about, considering the situation in Africa, giving up on African Studies will not be a prudent option. If the purpose of scholarship is to make meaning out of human existence and to further enhance the quality of human life, then the method of scholarship should be those that are objectively granted in the selection of the subject matter and rationally warrantable in presentation. If African Studies, as currently carried out by its practitioners has not made meaning out of the existence of African people and has not furthered their quality of life, then, there has to be a new direction and focus for African Studies. This panel is in search of that new academic agenda for African Studies, recognizing the pragmatic-realist need to focus on existential problems and perhaps, return African Studies back to Africa.

This panel offers the opportunity to provide African alternatives to the constraints presented by the current approach to the academic pursuit of African Studies

Both comparative political science and international relations engage with the question of the African post-colonial state and state system. Now familiar questions include: is it ‘hard’ or ‘soft’? failing or collapsed? how are African states integrated into the international state system? how are processes of globalization and informalization impacting on state autonomy, durability, and capability?

While much theorising has drawn on the very dramatic examples of state collapse and implosion, alternative trajectories are also visible in state behaviour. This panel proposes to examine the multiple trajectories of state-hood in Africa, with a view towards incorporating ideas about ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ states, and the varied trajectories of state-building projects into preliminary model-building and theorising about the African state in the international system.

In recent years both states and donors seem to agree that policing is a key area for human security and an important part of governance programming aimed at sustainable development and poverty eradication. Research on the structure of African policing in general, particularly outside of South Africa, has been minimal. Reform programmes for the state police have rarely been thoroughly evaluated in terms of outcomes, such as crime reduction, successful prosecutions and citizen perception of security. Moreover they fail to address the fundamental issues that resources available to post-conflict states are insufficient to provide crime protection and crime investigation for the whole nation. Thus some analysts have begun examining alternative non-state community-based policing agencies and vigilantes that offer protection at different levels of legality, effectiveness, availability and services. Some have a long history, others have emerged recently as a result of gaps in state provision. Yet these too have not been widely evaluated and their services are only know sketchily.

The panel will bring together researchers whose work has too often been separated, namely those focused on state policing and those who have explored alternative security structures. In a holistic approach to internal security, questions need to be answered about what are the contemporary roles and responsibilities of government and non-state actors in policing. What is the nature and extent of informal in comparison to formal policing? Can alternative non-state policing agencies do what current police programmes are struggling to do, namely, extend the creation of law and order and protection? Are the relationships between policing agencies collaborative or conflictual? What are the tensions arising from legal pluralism and sovereign bodies beyond the state? Is the assumption sustainable that the state can and must reassert its monopoly of legitimate force? The answers to these questions are ones that governments, donors, investors and above all citizens of post-conflict states want to know.

The panel would welcome contributions from a broad range of participants, including researchers and practitioners in policing and security studies, governance, and country specialists that can bring case studies of police reform and non-state policing structures; and those in development studies that evaluate donor security sector reform programmes.

While Africa's marginal position within the world economic order is an often stressed fact, understandings of this position are usually framed in general terms, stressing the restrictive trade regimes of developed countries, the lack of foreign direct investment in Africa or the poor (Bretton Woods imposed) economic policies of African governments hampering market (institutional) development. The emergence of new commodity and financial markets across Africa today, seems to counter this image of economic marginality and impossibility. Simultaneously, such emerging markets provide an opportunity to develop novel understandings of economic developments on the continent beyond the aforementioned received wisdoms. This panel seeks to explore emerging markets in contemporary Africa, by zooming in on the actual behaviour of African and non-African entrepreneurs operating in these markets. By thus underscoring the importance of the 'African initiative ' for our understanding of economic transformations, we seek to develop a (comparative) perspective on African entrepreneurship from below. We therefore invite papers on entrepreneurs in Africa from within different social situations.

In the context of insurgencies, civil war, and state breakdown, Apartheid and the Aids pandemic, Africans increasingly face economic hardship, death, and despair. But however depressing the situation, experiences of loss may yield a longing for restoration and attempts to regain dignity and respect. In this panel we like to examine how nostalgia, memory and heritage contribute to this process of restoration.

Loss is a widely shared experience in the African postcolony, originating in alienation as a result of rapid social change, the destruction of civil war, or more commonly, the failed expectations of modernity. Loss entails nostalgia, a longing for restoration of what is irreversibly lost. While nostalgia at first glance seems to offer solace and little more, it has been shown to contribute to self-reflection and the making of futures. Along similar lines it may be expected that heritage offers the possibility of renewal and re-engagement. Through a variety of means – art, music, masquerading, museums, monuments, literature, architecture, etc. – a reworking of past traumatic experiences can or may be brought about. Such a process is particularly needed in post-conflict societies and a variety of processes is currently under way. Opinions differ about the success of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, but it may yet serve as an example for the production of peace and reconciliation elsewhere.

There is growing interest in the way memory is embodied in bodily gestures, ritual and the senses. However, while the body may be a site for the burial of memories, this panel will consider those technologies of memory that produce reflection and offer the possibility of restoration and re-engagement with the future.

In this panel, we will consider new modes of sociality among Muslims in contemporary Africa. If one considers the dramatic transformations in “Islamic” education across the continent, Muslims’ recent active participation in public spheres, and Muslims’ increased use of new media technologies, it is clear that Muslim communities in Africa are undergoing important changes. Indeed, many African Muslims, both men and women, but particularly the young, seem to be redefining what it means to be Muslim in Africa today. Such changes suggest that some of the conventional ways of apprehending Islam and Muslim communities in Africa seem not only imperfect, but possibly also obsolete. The dichotomy and presumed conflict said to exist between “Sufis” and “Reformists” in Africa is increasingly called into question by a younger generation of Africans whose way of being Muslim bridges such categories. Indeed, many African Muslims seem to practice what Dale Eickelman has called a “generic” Islam of assumed universals. However, new modes of organizing time (leisure, work, and education) and multifaceted interactions with other Muslims and non-Muslims are also helping to change modes of sociality among African Muslims in ways that are not well understood. In this three-part panel, we will explore new and changing modes of sociality among African Muslims and seek papers in the following three main areas:

1. The production and use of texts, the media, and the public sphere in an increasingly globalized world

2. Youth, generational differences, and contested values (e.g., Western modernity, secularism, and pluralism)

3. New ways of being Muslim (e.g., “generic” Islam, post-Islamism, islam mondain, etc.)

Reconfiguring the religion-HIV/AIDS connection: challenges and opportunities Religion is playing important roles in dealing with HIV/AIDS in Africa, yet systematic research is scarce on the relationships between religion and this contemporary pandemic. This panel explores the ways religious organisations respond to the challenges of HIV/AIDS as well as to the opportunities that have emerged from the individual and societal consequences of the pandemic. The objective of the panel is to understand how and why various forms of religion and religiosity reactively produce coping strategies, moral regimes of identity-formation, modes for the expression of concerns, anxieties, hopes and grief, at the same time as these reconfigure HIV/AIDS pro-actively as offering opportunities of a different nature. Religious organisations may supplement rituals and fellowship with activities funded through trans-national networks and international aid to prevent further spread of HIV, care for infected people, provide ART, and mitigate impact in the lives of affected people. These multi-stranded relationships between religion and HIV/AIDS may significantly alter the functioning and social positioning of religious groups, leaders and communities in everyday situations. The panel invites papers to explore the following four fields of this reconfiguration:The historicity of religion and disease: How different is the relationship between religion and HIV/AIDS from earlier responses to particular diseases? Leprosy is an example, showing how Christianity as well as Islam impacted on the inclusion/exclusion of sufferers, the notion of suffering itself, morality and treatment. How can religious responses to HIV/AIDS be explored in view of historical links between religion and disease?Political economy: The pandemic emerged across Africa during the years of SAP, its related reduction of state-based social services and constant, if not intensifying, poverty levels. These factors have created space for religious groups to provide services and added to the NGO-ization of religion in which international linkages are increasingly relevant. How can the pandemic be viewed as a context providing new opportunities for religious groups?Social organization, local customs, and rights: The disease is used to reinforce religious stances on family and marriage practices including widow inheritance. Religious groups also serve as implementers of national laws such as those that ascribe property rights to individual wives and children rather than lineage kin. What are the implications of changes in the civic functioning of religion and how do they affect the social fabric of everyday life involving social security, kinship and authority? Counselling: Practices of counselling connect religion to HIV/AIDS as a practice of identity-making. Counselling by clerics or co-religionists offers religion access to the individual's intimate social, emotional and moral situation. It produces linkages between the public and the private and it can create new public domains (testimonies, radio-programmes, brochures) and new forms of 'civilizing projects ' as people are made to understand what to disclose and how to speak and act. What kinds of theological and moral interpretations of AIDS, sexuality, the body, and social responsibility are being produced, and how do these compete for truth-claims about such matters in the social domain?

African public administrations are generally-well known for their weak efficiency and low capacities. A number of studies have pinpointed those administrations as the main cause of underdevelopment in such countries. During the last 20 years they have been targeted to implement successive reforms and transformation schemes sponsored by multilateral organizations as well as bilateral development assistance organisations. A large range of management techniques belonging to different political orientations have been used with unclear results.

It is time to assess the impact of such reforms on public administrations and their actual practices and to identify the types of new and innovative ways of managing public goods, of improving service delivery and public accountability – if any – which have been arisen out of this long period of intensive and changing reform policies.

People are invited to pay a special interest to legal and institutional reforms, to new forms of public management including privatization, ppp, local government and decentralisation, outsourcing…, to new types of administrative practices at national, regional or local levels and to discuss the actual impact of such new techniques on actual administration practices and relations to the general public (citizens). Studies dealing with specific sectors will be much appreciated.

Papers in English, French and Portuguese are most welcomed.

Convenors: Thomas Bierschenk, Carola Lentz, Mahaman Tidjani Alou

If the institutionalization of power, the local anchoring of central government and the self-limitation of the ruling classes through the codification of law constitute the central characteristics of the modern, Western-type state, then state-formation in Africa is still underway. At the same time, after development discourse was dominated for many years by a “less state”-paradigm, awareness is now growing that sustainable development is not possible without a “sustainable”, i.e. more functional, state. However, there is a striking absence of empirically grounded studies of the day-to-day functioning of African bureaucracies and public services and the professional practices of African civil servants, their relations with the public, etc. There is in fact very little empirical knowledge of the banal, habitual, routinized functioning of what might be called the “real” state. The panel will assemble studies which analyse the “real” workings of states and public services, at both the central and local levels, from an institutional, actor or historical perspective, or their combination. Comparative studies within Africa as well with non-African situations are particularly welcome.

The panel raises several issues that deal with linkages between education, development and social change. The discourse on causal links between education and development, long supplanted by other less authoritative explanations, still remains potent in most Eastern and Southern African societies. Hence, there is a need to demystify (or otherwise seriously scrutinise) the capacity of schools to mould the new generation. Eva Poluha´s contribution to the panel, for instance, stresses that family and peers are strong bearers of traditions of continuity where the school appears to have little chance of counteracting. This is a further development of a theme treated in her last book: Power and continuity: Ethiopia through the eyes of its school children, Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, 2004. Along the same line but at a higher level of generalisation is Negash´s contribution on the societal implications of an educational system that uses a medium of instruction that is barely understood by teachers and even less by students. Educational systems premised on outdated discourse and carried out in Western languages, and to boot, heavily underfinanced are bound to face serious crisis. The question is whether the term crisis captures the situation of educational systems such that of Ethiopia. The paper (for the panel) would further elaborate the theme of the collapse of an education system taking Ethiopia as a case study as broached in his recent study: Education in Ethiopia, Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, 2006.

However, irrespective of how an education system is described ( i.e. either in terms of crisis or collapse), its impact on individuals and groups can not be underestimated. Lars Berge´s contribution to the panel is a re-examination of the role of the Swedish and Norwegean religious missions in Kwa-Zulu, Natal at the turn of the 20th century. Missionary education brought about a social revolution where women as the great majority of converts were able to carve out a social space that was undoutedely different and arguably better. In her contribution to the panel, judith Narrowe examines how young gradates from teacher training colleges (the case study is based on Ethiopia) manage issues of modernity and tradition in their daily lives as teachers and citizens. Based on auto-ethnography, this preliminary study has a great potential of providing insights on the impact of education on the lives of single teachers and on interaction with their students. The framing of literacy programmes to promote democratic practices is the contribution of Åsa Wedin to the panel. Inspired by the teachings and philosophy of Paolo Fereire, Wedin explores how literacy practices (with examples from tanzania and Rwamda) can be framed to serve democracy and democratic traditions.

This panel will consider new research on the liberation of southern Africa. The following will participate:

Dr Sue Onslow (LSE): Zimbabwe: land and the Lancaster House Settlement

Dr Vladimir Shubin (Institute for African Studies, Moscow): Zimbabwe: the Soviet Dimension

Dr Henning Melber (Dag Hammersjold Foundation): Namibia's Decolonisation: Emancipation Lite?

Dr Ackson Kanduza (Swaziland): Zambia in the Liberation of southern Africa

Dr Chris Saunders (UCT): New research on the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa

convenor and discussant: Chris Saunders

This panel is dedicated to the analysis of form and function of political expression in different domains of popular culture such as music, film,
video, fashion, theatre and painting. Popular culture has always been a domain for political articulation, however since the politics of liberalization took off in most parts of Africa the importance of mediums of popular culture has increased tremendously.

Especially the contemporary youth makes creative use of the new channels available in order to voice their opinion and critisism of political but
also social issues.

The papers in this panel should aim to address - among others - the question to what extent popular culture has the potential to influence political discourse - and thus also political change - in a wider sense? We look for papers on any region in Africa which present detailed case studies on the basis of empirical research. Papers which take a comparative perspective - either in a geographical or a historical sense - are especially welcomed.

The panel deals with cultural production in East Africa ranging from popular arts (addressing local or regional audiences) to modern art (addressing the international modern art market) and contemporary media art. The spectrum of aesthetic forms thereby ranges from live genres and individual works of art to mass mediatized cultural merchandise. Today, local initiatives for the production and promotion of music, dance, literature, theatre, film, sculpture, paintings and the like reflect a vital cultural life in Eastern Africa. But since aesthetic articulation is in itself not a new phenomenon, we also see the co-requisite necessity for research on the history of these initiatives or genres which until now has been more or less neglected. Hence, we also would like to encourage presentations throwing a historical perspective on these initiatives.

In the present, however, the digital age, coming along with an increased affordability of technical equipment for mediatization and mass production, opens up new possibilities for the establishment of local and regional “culture industries” as well as it brings with it new possibilities for the individual artist. Digital media such as CD and VideoCD, for example allow for an accelerated circulation of aestheticized political discourses challenging both, the hegemony of state institutions which in the past controlled cultural policy, and that of globally operating culture industries. At the flip-side of these processes of mass mediatization is the current production of auratic pieces of art which seems to counter the loss of aura and immediacy associated with the remediation of former live genres by digital media, as well as the incorporation of new media in performative arts like dance and theatre.

We especially encourage presentations which take into consideration both aspects of cultural production that is aesthetics and pragmatics and the entanglement of aesthetic expression with the more “profane” technical and social worlds of cultural production and promotion. We would also like to focus on constraints and obstacles to promising initiatives. Digitization for example does not only open up new possibilities, but at the same time embodies serious constraints to these very possibilities; here questions of copyright arise and limitations to marketability caused by piracy. Constraints of some other nature might come from the state, which usually is not involved in this kind of entrepreneurial activity, and whose former monopoly of cultural politics is nowadays seriously challenged. Censorship and other bureaucratic disciplinary measures might limit the creativity of the aspiring cultural entrepreneurs as well as the simple lack of money.

Retour sur les monarchies sacrées en AfriqueCe panel porte sur les monarchies sacrées. Concept général pour Frazer (il parle de divine kingship), le concept de monarchie sacrée a eu tendance à se réduire pour désigner la monarchie africaine par excellence au cours du 20e siècle par opposition implicite (et erronée) aux monarchies européennes et donc à contribuer au déni à l’Afrique de toute modernité. Evans Prichard, très influent dans les milieux anglophones, émet une critique virulente du concept de monarchie divine, à partir de l’exemple des Shilluk du Soudan. Il est moins écouté parmi les francophones où l’on utilise un concept plus large celui de ‘monarchies sacrés’ qui englobe ‘la monarchie divine’ mais ne se réduit pas à elle. En France, des auteurs néo-marxistes, tendance Althusser (Jean Bazin, Emmanuel Terray, Claude Meillassoux…) tentent une déconstruction de l’idée de monarchie sacrée mais avec un succès limité. Ce concept connaît une diffusion importante lorsque le structuralisme est en vogue (Luc De Heusch, Alfred Adler, Jean-Claude Müller, etc.). Les années 1990 sont celles d’un désenchantement brutal et d’une remise en cause. L’approche issue de l’étude a-historique des mythes et des symboles perd de sa magie, notamment auprès des historiens. La pertinence de la distinction entre monarchie religieuse et monarchie politique est fortement critiquée (Mickael Kenny). Ce que nous proposons de faire est de lier approche anthropologique et historique, de revenir sur le thème du sacré et de la monarchie mais sans se laisser emprisonner par la définition de Frazer résumée par Seligman. Il s’agit de s’interroger sur la facette religieuse de la monarchie. En nous appuyant sur l’héritage des historiens médiévistes et modernistes de l’Europe (Bloch, Kantorowicz, Apostolides…) nous désirons quitter un temps a-historique pour montrer les dynamiques et les évolutions parfois très rapides de ce type de système. L’inceste royal, par exemple, mérite une histoire au même titre que la guérison des écrouelles. Il existe une histoire de la sacralisation et de la désacralisation, comme toute idéologie elle est contestée, réappropriée et détournée par les personnes qui sont en contact avec elle. Elle connaît des innovations, des succès et des échecs. Elle est souvent menacée de folklorisation. Il s’agit de traditions réinventées en permanence et pas obligatoirement dans un temps long et ancestral. Certains régimes politiques africains nés de l’indépendance méritent également un questionnement sur leur sphère sacrée et religieuse (Joseph Tonda). Notre panel est ouvert sur toutes les périodes chronologiques, du très ancien au très contemporain, sur le temps long comme sur le temps plus court et sur l’ensemble du continent africain. Ce panel est ouvert aux chercheurs et enseignants chercheurs aguerris comme aux débutants. Le projet regroupe déjà des historiens et des anthropologues, chercheurs et enseignants chercheurs : Henri Médard (Paris I, Buganda), Marie Laure Derat (CNRS, Ethiopie médiéval), Marie Pierre Ballarin (IRD, Madagascar), Gilles Holders (CNRS, Afrique de l’Ouest), Jérome Wilgaux (Université de Nantes, histoire de la parenté), et des étudiants Robin Seignobos (Paris 1, Nubie) Lauriane Moine (Paris 1, Congo Brazzaville). Les contributions peuvent être en anglais comme en français.

This workshop will focus on the tension between gender and generation within the family in the diaspora and the homeland in the context of migration. Such tension is sometimes hidden but can easily generate escalating conflicts on both private and public levels of society.

Gender, generation and generational justice will be analyzed as they are negotiated by groups and individuals in different circumstances such as urban living conditions of children, youth and aged. The theme is wide, embracing papers about gender and generational support systems; legal systems, housing problems and solutions; privatisation and urban governance and urban poverty including different ways to cope with the situation at hand. We think these topics are issues of particular relevance in relation to migration.

One more specific orientation of this workshop will be family law from a gender and age perspective in both local and translocal settings. Legal aspects of the different forms of marriage and divorce which are appearing both in the homeland and in the diaspora will be analyzed and compared. Burning issues within this sensitive field are, just to mention a few, polygamy, repudiation, and custody of children in connection with migration outside Africa. Especially young women are caught by the moral, religious and legal demands of their families to follow the family law of their African homelands, while there exist alternatives of the civil codes in the European host countries, characterized by a more human rights-influenced and secular spirit which may attract the girls more. Tensions and conflicts within this field between husbands and wives and between young girls and brothers, parents and grandparents are frequent.

Another orientation is directed towards family dynamics and migration inside Africa, with an emphasis on gender, generation and work. According to earlier research a focus on women and migration in small urban settings shows interesting gender differences, to be complemented by generational aspects in the study of female work migration in Africa. Here we cannot avoid paying attention to ethnicity as a decisive factor for women’s careers, while ethnic considerations may be of less importance in the European diaspora. Migrant careers will differ according to ethnic group, gender, age and also, not to be forgotten, according to civil status (married/ divorced/ widow).

There remains a bunch of other topics related to the over all theme of this workshop to be dealt with.To explore the dynamcis of the family from a perspective of African migration inside and outside the Africa continent will open up for a deepened understanding of social processses which have earlier to a great extent been overlooked in the study of migration. So a focus on family, gender and generation will hopefully offer us new and stimulating food for thought.

Panel abstract:

This panel will provide insights about the role of social trust in processes of transition from war to peace. It brings together empirical studies from some of the most enduring regional conflicts in Africa. It also aims at a comparison of such analyses in order to foster a more comprehensive understanding of the precarious transition from war to peace.

Panel summary:

Many African societies that went through periods of war often experience a state of peace that is at times more violent than what was called war. Peace is often declared by some of the international stakeholders because they cannot afford to acknowledge that their interventions have failed to reduce significantly the level of violence. More often than not, however, the transition from war to peace is a long lingering between times of more and less violence in everyday life. The reasons are obvious: A wide variety of social actors compete in a market where security is a scarce commodity and where, in the absence of any monopoly of power, the state is not much more than one actor among many. Trust in the other depends on experience and expectations that are both rooted in the history of the conflict and on the current evaluation of the other actors. Trust thus is an essential societal resource. Without trusting the other, no social life will be maintained in periods of violent crisis and it will not re-emerge later. In order to reconstruct their livelihood, individual as well as social actors need predictability of their interactions with others. They need to know if and under what circumstances they may trust the other. Trust understood as the predictability of social interaction is a basic precondition of societal life – in particular after periods of crisis.

Social trust has several dimensions:

· First trust in the generalised other, for instance that you are not killed when meeting an unknown person on the road.

· Second trust in already existing relationships, for instance that a patron will offer you protection and other services if you are loyal to him.

· Third trust in rules and institutions, for instance that the civil servant in the local office will render you the service that you have a right to receive.

These three dimensions may be described as ideal types in the Weberian sense. However, they also open a window to the empirical analysis of societal trust in (post-) conflict societies. And they all show that trust is always linked to inter­actions. We thus assume that action-centred approaches analysing how trust transformed in and after periods of violent crisis will reveal more insight into the reconstruction of societies after war.

The international donor community has for some years now been a firm supporter of regionalisation as a magical solution that could contribute to peace and security, political dialogue and economic prosperity worldwide. The benefits of regional integration are widely acknowledged in a region like Europe, where it has reached its highest level, and many hoped that the model could be reproduced in other regions and bring about the very same benefits.

Observers relied on Africa’s pre-colonial history and on the resilience of the pan-African ideal to suggest that regionalisation was particularly fit to address economic and political issues on the continent. Regional initiatives, often with the help of Western funds, have invested all levels of African societies, from their national institutions to their grassroots. Regional intergovernmental organisations, with different but often overlapping mandates and national memberships, are the rule in Africa. They continue to be actively encouraged by major donors such as the European Union, which is about to conclude new Economic Partnership Agreements with African regional blocks.

Meanwhile, non-governmental organisations, women’s and community associations and professional unions have progressively entered the process initiated by their governments. Their hope is that this move can both increase their national political influence and international visibility and introduce some check-and-balance in a process they find has been essentially monopolised by state elites. Regionalisation in Africa seems to have moved away from a monolithic and state-centred type of evolution towards a more pluralistic and comprehensive one.

This evolution triggers two main questions. First, how is regionalisation implemented and experienced by Africans – governments, civil society organisations and simple citizens alike? Have Western models of regionalisation been strictly applied or flexibly adapted to African realities? This first cluster of questions in fact revolves around the much talked about ‘African ownership’ issue: Is regionalisation an African-owned concept, or has it remained one artificially imposed by the outside, with no real foundation in Africa? The second series of questions revolves around the effectiveness of regionalisation as a solution to security and development problems. How well does regionalisation – applied at all levels, from grassroots to governmental institutions – respond to African needs? How much of a magical solution is it?

The panel will welcome pap