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- Convenors:
-
Marieke van Winden (conference organiser)
(African Studies Centre Leiden)
Harry Wels (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Marja Spierenburg (Leiden University)
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- Stream:
- H: Knowledge and impact
Long Abstract
With a focus on: the enduring land question in parts of Africa, and the role of intellectuals. In some parts of Africa, the colonial heritage is particularly visible in an enduring land question, with a continued struggle about ownership and management of agricultural and mining land and property. Intellectuals who became ’action researchers’ in favour of land redistribution often had to cope with forms of violence, racism, and nationalism, that challenged their integrity. How did they cope with that?
Accepted papers
Session 1Paper long abstract
Revisiter le terrain anthropologique permet, d'une part, de s'interroger sur les difficultés qu'entraînent les outils méthodologiques et, d'autre part, d'accéder aux non-dits du chercheur ainsi que réfléchir sur la relation entre l'enquêteur et l'enquêté. Ce qui porte à se questionner sur le fond de l'écrit de l'enquêteur découlant des propos de l'enquêté qu'il traduit, autant que sur la finalité du savoir anthropologique. Au bout de la trajectoire, le travail de l'anthropologue parait être une expropriation de la connaissance (de l'enquêté) au profit d'une connaissance (du chercheur) à consigner scientifiquement. A ce jour, il y a lieu de se demander à qui est destiné et quelle est la finalité des connaissances anthropologiques des chercheurs africains en Afrique.
Paper long abstract
I grew up in a typical rural village in Ethiopia. During my childhood, among others, I became aware of two major problems the people from my rural area (Azena), its surroundings and the woreda people at large faced, namely the threat of drowning when crossing the local Ayo River and the lack of access to elementary and secondary schools within a reasonable distance. After moving to Addis Ababa, where I obtained my university education, I decided to help Azena and its surrounding residents to safely cross the Ayo River and obtain better access to education. I have been working with non governmental organizations (NGOs) and the community since 2006 to address these problems. I wrote project proposals and identified international NGOs which agreed to support the construction of a bridge and two high schools, two elementary schools and one preparatory school. I played a key role in mobilizing the community, serving as a liaison between the community and the NGOs and facilitating the smooth implementation of the projects. Currently, I am raising money for a high school under construction in remote low land area and expansion of Elementary School from grades 1-4 to K-8. Using self-reflective accounts /personal recollections and pictures as primary sources of data, this presentation examines the implementation process, community engagement strategies, impacts, challenges, and lessons learned from these community development projects.
Paper long abstract
During my PhD research on private wildlife conservation in the second half of the 1990's in Zimbabwe, The Land Question was almost all-consuming and dominating the news on a daily basis. My research focused on a consortium of white farmers who had pooled their resources, especially land, in order to create a private wildlife conservancy. This organisational structure was complemented in the context of Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), with a joint venture with the neighbouring communities, said to facilitate 'sharing the benefits' of this wildlife enterprise.
In the heating up and turmoil towards the political and economic crisis of 2000, many of 'my respondents', black and white, were or became suspicious of my research. The white farmers mocked me telling me that I was a Dutchman who no doubt had come to Zim to 'check on how they treated their blacks'. The neighbouring communities were suspicious if I was not 'spying' for the white farmers. I don't know if I deserve the honour of labelling myself as an 'action researcher', or someone with integrity, but for sure I thought I took a social justice-inspired position in these debates and in my publications. In this paper I basically try to find out if I 'deserve' that label of 'action researcher' or not by reflecting auto-ethnographically on this research trajectory.
Paper long abstract
The politics of activist knowledge in South African institutions of higher learning
Masixole Booi
Masixolebooi2@gmail.com
Abstract
The modern institutions of higher learning in Africa that were inherited from western imperial and colonial powers left most African scholars with a responsibility to re-centre Africa in the process of knowledge production and re-imagine African ways of thinking, knowing and being. For Africans, education and knowledge in general cannot be separated and understood in abstraction from their existential lived experiences. This clearly shows the close link between the ontological question and the epistemological question for Africans (See Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018). This is succinctly illustrated by Falola (2001: 17) arguing that, "scholarship in Africa has been condition to respond to a reality and epistemology created for it by outsiders, a confrontation with imperialism, the power of capitalism and the knowledge that others have constructed for Africa. The African intelligentsia does not write in a vacuum but in a world saturated with others statements, usually negative about its members and their continent" (2001, p. 17). However, coloniality of knowledge create a false dichotomy between an African activist and scholar/intellectual. This is one of the colonial heritage that emanate from the Cartesian dualism that draws distinction between mind and body. This also highlighted by Mabogo More arguing that, "the is an ongoing tendency in certain quarters of locking Africa thinkers and their production in the biographical moments and their political activism" (Mabogo, 2008, p. 46). In this paper I argue that, the false dichotomy perpetuated in South African universities that view knowledge and action as two separate things, an activist cannot be a scholar and a scholar cannot be an activist. This compromise an activist role that can be played by scholars/intellectuals in their own political and socio-economic context and how activist scholars/intellectuals who transcends this false dichotomy experience institutional violence and other alienating and exclusive cultures.
Key words: politics of activist knowledge, , coloniality of knowledge, institutional violence, activist scholars/intellectual, decolonial education.