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- Convenors:
-
Ibrahim Abraham
(Australian National University)
Tuulikki Pietilä (University of Helsinki)
Send message to Convenors
- Location:
- B1 0.03
- Sessions:
- Friday 19 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
Entrepreneurship is often viewed as a solution to poverty in Africa. These panels focus on small entrepreneurs' aspirations, organizational and business practices, and personal moralities of success. How do African entrepreneurs negotiate the past when imagining the future?
Long Abstract:
Across Africa, government and civil society has embraced the idea of entrepreneurship as an avenue for upward mobility, and a potential solution to unemployment and poverty. Sometimes entrepreneurs are believed to spearhead the development of a new middle class, solidifying democracy and prosperity. At other times, they are considered selfish operators, as in South Africa where the conspicuous consumerism and unethical practices of "Black Diamonds" and "tenderpreneurs" has attracted much criticism. In these two panels we want to focus on smaller entrepreneurs, engaged in a variety of creative and expressive practices, who have attracted much less attention. We want to discuss small entrepreneurs' aspirations, quotidian organizational and business practices, and personal moralities of success. In imagining the future in changing economic situations, how do African entrepreneurs negotiate the past? Is it a resource to be critically reimagined, the prologue of an ongoing narrative, or a hurdle to overcome? The first panel focuses on South African entrepreneurs; Johannesburg-based fashion entrepreneurs' approach to historical or "African" styles; tech-savvy creative entrepreneurialism as a continuation of the radical liberation struggle of the past; and charismatic religious entrepreneurs seeking ruptures with past spiritual practices and cautiously embracing global forms of blackness. From different angles, these papers show how the past is a resource for imagining the future. Participants are invited to submit additional papers to a second panel on the theme of African entrepreneurs fashioning the future and negotiating the past, focusing on South Africa or other African countries.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 19 July, 2019, -Tuulikki Pietilä (University of Helsinki)
Paper short abstract:
The paper discusses some of the ways fashion designers in Johannesburg draw from the past styles to create contemporary garments. It studies these practices as a form of constructing social memory as well as counter-memory to the hegemonic reading of the apartheid era.
Paper long abstract:
South African clothing styles and fashion market appear rather Western-influenced in comparison to those in Congo and much of West Africa, for instance. Yet references to local and localized traditions have probably emerged throughout time. At the turn of the 2000s, there was an Afro-centric trend in the South African fashion field that coincided with and celebrated the transition from apartheid to democracy. Fashion labels such as Stoned Cherrie and Sun Goddess made bold and obvious references to African or ethnic styles and emblems, which some of the current Black South African designers consider to have been relevant at the time but stereotypical representations of Africanness today.
Many current fashion designers in Johannesburg seek subtle ways of incorporating past or ethnic styles in their designs - sometimes these are so subtle that discerning them requires careful inspection and historical knowledge. In addition, current designers include a rather wide pool of historical styles in the repertoire they draw from to make new designs. These include fabrics, patterns and garments that were originally imported from Europe and widely used among Black South Africans in the past. The paper views the use of past styles as a form of constructing social memory as well as counter-memory (Foucault 1977) to the hegemonic reading of the apartheid era. Simultaneously, some of the designers use historical emblems to project "traditions" to the future. Thus, in different ways, in shaping garments, the designers process temporalities to imagine their world in a broader context.
bjørn sjødin (University of Helsinki)
Paper short abstract:
When struggling for success, South African entrepreneurs operate within intersecting temporalities. Based on material collected in a tech incubator in Johannesburg, this paper investigates how events of the past and visions of the future impact the day to day lives of entrepreneurs.
Paper long abstract:
International and South African policy makers, NGOs and corporations see entrepreneurship as crucial to counter the lingering poverty and skewed economic structures inherited from the apartheid era. Therefore, much effort has been put into growing the South African entrepreneurial eco system.
As startup incubators attempt to cultivate entrepreneurship, they play an important role for South African startups. Entrepreneurship training programs try to compensate for the social capital, material goods and generational knowledge beneficial for entrepreneurs that black South Africans were unable to accumulate during the apartheid era.
My paper investigates the motivations of young black entrepreneurs running their own businesses. Knowledge of historical suppression, personal experiences of racism and governmental integration efforts shape their entrepreneurial journeys and how they make business decisions. Concepts like white privilege are used by entrepreneurs to show how they interpret events taking place in the startup ecosystem.
Entrepreneurship is marked with uncertainty, and entrepreneurs experiment with several potential futures (Mattingly 2014). Visions of becoming the next Elon Musk, securing family members financially, or moving from a township to a gated community are some of the prospective destinies. A failing business could mean ruined relationships and indebtedness, a vision fraught with anxiety. The potential futures lay directions for decisions made in the here and now. Through the Deleuzian concept of becoming (1991) I explore how entrepreneurs draw on historical events and personal experiences when envisioning the future, and how they understand their present-day experiences through these intersecting temporalities.
Ibrahim Abraham (Australian National University)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic research on South African Christianity, this paper explores how part-time "side hustle" evangelical ministries achieve relevance by negotiating the present and past, notably African cultural tradition, (re)emerging global black culture, and contemporary politics.
Paper long abstract:
Since colonization, South African Christianity has worked through a vast array of contradictory local and global cultural influences. Since the 1990s, South Africa has seen an increase in evangelical, often Pentecostal, churches and ministries. The key site of evangelical growth has been the middle class; both the ambitious and emerging black middle class, and the established but sometimes anxious white middle class. In both cases, evangelicalism offers opportunities for creating new networks and new identities in globalizing cultures.
Drawing on ethnographic research in Cape Town, this paper explores part-time "side hustle" evangelical ministries focused at the emerging middle class. Presented in South African business and self-help discourse as passionate entrepreneurial projects, "side hustles" are constructed as self-technologies for personal growth as much as money-making opportunities. Accordingly, side hustle ministries emerge out of the professional interests or leisure pursuits of individuals who consider their individual success to create opportunities and obligations for pastoral or evangelistic outreach.
In seeking contemporary relevance, side hustle ministries are at the forefront of South African Christianity's engagement with local and global culture. The tension between Western-influenced evangelical Christianity and local traditional culture and religious practices is well established, and this paper will focus on how side hustle ministries engage with a (re)emerging culture of global blackness, articulating African identities grounded in music, sport, and other forms popular culture, rather than ethnic specificity. In keeping with political trends in South Africa, a new openness to progressive and populist politics is also evident in these ministries.