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The powerful presence of the theatricalised post-colonial body, despite (and sometimes even because of) its derogations, suggests that foregrounding corporeality can be a highly positive, active strategy for staging resistance to imperialism

Paper long abstract

The powerful presence of the theatricalised post-colonial body, despite (and sometimes even because of) its derogations, suggests that foregrounding corporeality can be a highly positive, active strategy for staging resistance to imperialism. Traditional enactments such as ritual and carnival demonstrate that the performing body can help to regenerate and unify communities despite the disabilities, disintegrations, and specific disconnections of the individual bodies involved. Ritual renders the body open and mutable while often requiring or producing highly formalised actions, such as dance or professional movement, which display the ritual force as energy in action. Theatrical practice can translate the principles of ritual movement into a strongly physical interpretation of a role. What we intend to show in this study is that as a culturally coded activity, dance has a number of important functions in drama: not only does it concentrate the audience's gaze on the performing body/bodies, but it also draws attention to proxemic relations between characters, spectators, and features of the set. Splitting the focus from other sorts of proxemic and kinesic - and potentially, linguistic - codes, dance renegotiates dramatic action and dramatic activity, reinforcing the actor's corporeality, particularly when it is culturally laden. Wole Soyinka's plays, our raw material, abound in bodies and voices, in spectacle and movement and colour; in multiple settings, flashbacks and dramatic re-enactments

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This paper considers the representation of the Black female body as metaphor to inscribe deviance and difference within the socio-economic history of colonial Zimbabwe through a reading of Yvonne Vera's novel, Butterfly Burning (1998).

Paper long abstract

This paper considers the representation of the Black female body as metaphor to inscribe deviance and difference within colonial Zimbabwe's society in Yvonne Vera's novel, Butterfly Burning (1998). Set within a vibrant Black township in 1940s colonial Zimbabwe, this novel tells the story of a young Black woman's dream to become a nurse in a world where seperate states of development and employment exist between Blacks and Whites. Through a close reading of this novel, this paper intends to examine how the state's methods of control and containment of people, through restrictions on movement or housing policies, passes construct the Black female body as a "deviant body", anomalous and oppositional to the White colonial ruling class.

My paper intends to argue that Vera's characters, marked as 'deviant' and a minor by State laws, defy authority's controls on women by working as prostitutes and brothel owners, earning a living for themselves through 'deviant' means. Drawing on the socio-economic history of 1940s Bulawayo, my paper seeks to discusses how, through the act of writing, Vera locates seeks to inscribe Black women's bodies into colonial Zimbabwe's socio-economic history, a history in which Black women are often absent.

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The paper discusses forms of ‘modern’ bodily behavior in urban Ethiopia of the 1960s, which clashed with cultural norms and progressive social movements. It demonstrates in how far disputes about athletic male bodies and short female dress are lenses to understand social transformation.

Paper long abstract

From the late 1950s onwards, the Ethiopian urban centers experienced the emergence of 'modern' forms of bodily behavior, expressed though dress, shape and public display. They did not only clash with established cultural norms, but also came into conflict with progressive social movements, such as the Ethiopian student's movement. The paper discusses these tensions along two thematic lines.

The first focuses on ideas about acceptable bodies in relation to heavy athletics. Institutionalized 'modern' sports in post-war Ethiopia targeted at the formation of disciplined, effective and strong (male) bodies. However, these 'heavy athletic bodies' also instilled fear and generated rumors about criminal behavior and an immoral urban leisure culture. Furthermore, the mentally and spiritually healthy, strong 'gentlemen' - especially of the Ethiopian YMCA who voluntarily served the nation - might be seen as the counter-model to a politically informed vision of progress, which expressed itself through male student bodies wearing bell-bottoms and Afro hairstyles.

The second line of argument revolves around short female dresses, which emerged in Ethiopia the 1960s and provoked public disputes. Apart from general critical voices which linked the miniskirt - the icon of the 'modern' woman - to immoral behavior, it was especially the Ethiopian student's movement which increasingly used the short female dress as a trigger for controlling female behavior and, what is more, for questioning Imperial authority.

The conclusion links the two thematic lines by conceptual questions about how to use disputes about bodily acceptability as lenses for studying larger aspects of social transformation.

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The arrival of the oil in Equatorial Guinea has been accompanied by new forms of consumption and commodification. This paper approaches some youngster’s practices for which the body is the protagonist of economic exchanges and it is also an object of investment.

Paper long abstract

From the early 1990's Equatorial Guinea has experimented fast and intense social and economical transformations that have caused a massive urbanization process, followed of new ways of social interaction. The arrival of the first oil-boom incomes has sourced new consumption and wealth representation practices. Some of these practices are completely new, while others provide certain continuity to ancient dynamics established during the colonial period. This paper analyzes some ethnographic material on sexual practices among the youth in Malabo, the capital of the country. In these practices, bodies are turned into commodities and objects of investment. The terms and dynamics of the sexual exchange, as well as the cultural production around the issue, constitute a great arena where the tensions, anxieties and the violence of urban Guinean society become explicit.

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The presentation of the newborn is a ritual through which a baby acquires identity as an individual in the community. The birth process performed expresses and reinforces the links between the individual and society and condenses the idea of “social body”

Paper long abstract

The presentation of the newborn to the community is an initiation rite to life through which a baby acquires identity and is socially acknowledged as an individual. Because bubi society is made up of human beings and non-human beings, birth is ritualized twice, first to introduce the baby to the ancestors and, second, to the rest of the community, thus expressing the continuity that exists between ancestors and descendants, both immersed in the same life cycle.

Another of the ritual's purposes is to endow the baby with knowledge and socialization. This act is performed through symbolic instruction. All along the ritual there are projected the expectations that the newborn as a "social being" should fulfill throughout his/her life (the roles and the place that he/she should play and occupy in the family and in society). In addition to the transition to a "social being" that the baby undergoes, the ritual also performs an initiation to motherhood, as well as many of ritual practices related to woman's corporeal nature that giving birth involves which denotes the relevance of this process. In this sense, the symbolic association that appears all along the performance between the matriclan´s house and the mother's body is especially interesting to understand the kinship links and relationship among the community.

This paper will analyze the symbolic content of both the ritual process and the ritual stage on which a multitude of crucial aspects of Bubi society are expressed.

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The Claretian missions in Equatorial Guinea (1883-1968): religious and ethnological description of different aspects of the body and the traditional religion of the Bubi, and of their vision of their world and the conflict between this and the economic expectations of the colony.

Paper long abstract

This paper is the fruit of documentary investigation carried out in the archive of the Center of Claretian Spirituality in Vic (Barcelona). It begins with the historical context of the Spanish colony in Equatorial Guinea, in particular the Catholic (Claretian) missions in Fernando Pó (modern day Bioko) between 1883 and 1968, and the interaction between these colonies and the Bubi people. The paper then makes a religious and ethnological description of different aspects of the body and the traditional religion of the Bubi in terms of meanings that they ascribe to physical and spiritual bodies and of their vision of their world and the conflict between this and the economic expectations of the colony.

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Skin whitening can be understood as a strategic resource for coping with social tensions arising from colorism. Based on fieldwork carried out in Equatorial Guinea, this paper addresses the issue of skin bleaching in this African country and the clashing social values which this practice implies.

Paper long abstract

The body modification practice of skin whitening can be understood as a strategic resource for coping with social tensions arising from colorism, the ideology that gives privilege to light-skinned people of color over their dark skin counterparts (Hunter 2007). Since decades ago, skin whitening has been a very widespread practice in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly among women. The market provides a wide variety of cosmetics that are used for this purpose, very often with clearly detrimental consequences for the body. In this paper, which is centered in Equatoguinean society, I will present some data on the "maquillaje" (makeup), the popular denomination for the skin depigmentation practice in Equatorial Guinea. In this kind of practice both visions and values related to the dimension of gender as well as those that have to do with the notion of social presentation of the body and corporeal capital converge. If on the one hand the "maquillaje" is understood as one of the new body technologies that offers modernity, on the other, within the same Equatorialguinean society, there is also a little but growing tendency towards a critical view of such practices because of the damages they cause to the body as well as the racist connotations of colorism. This paper is based on data collected in various fieldwork trips carried out recently in Equatorial Guinea.

Bib.

Hunter, M. L. 2007. "The persistent problem of colorism: Skin tone, status, and inequality". Sociology Compass 1: 237-254.

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The study examines facial scarification and tattooing, still present among the Mbororo people from Cameroon. The settling process around big cities have brought its disappearance. Understanding the link between these disappearing body practices and ethnicity performances is the aim of my analysis.

Paper long abstract

Among the Mbororo people in Cameroon, body practices such as facial tattoos and scarifications are well-known, although nowadays they are considered atavistic practices of unknown origin by the population, even for those who have them. The ethnographic analysis I've carried out identifies a certain relationship between this categorization and the label "Mbororo" as non-advanced/primitive people. So, in the paper I discuss if facial tattoos and scarifications are a materialized stigma for those Mbororo who, in fact, live in vulnerable living conditions, because of socio-political discrimination, which is also related to transhumance -their pastoral way of life (representative of the Fulani transnational ethnic group to which the Mbororo belong).

However, it is interesting to point out that a discourse about Mbororo ethnic identity, in terms of citizenship and "indigenous" distinctiveness, is increasing around urban areas and among some Mbororo NGOs and other associations. My research tries to assess whether a gap between the "image" and the "practice" of the corporal expression of being Mbororo actually exists, taking into account body management as a means of reconstructing the parameters from which Mbororo ethnicity is being built and redefined in different terms.

Thus, the paper is the result of an ethnographic approach to the practice of facial incision among the Mbororo from Cameroon in order to deepen understanding of how the body is structured around discourses of identity and how ethnicity is performed, as well as the construction of political subjectivity in the context of African Postcoloniality.

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In post-conflict societies, new social tensions potentially emerge due to the continuing effects of past social and bodily experiences. Which experiences translate effectively into political subjectivities, and which don’t? How does this influence the possibilities of sociality?

Paper long abstract

After both Foucault and Bourdieu, it is generally agreed upon that structural changes translate into changes in social experiences. The anthropology of the body has shown that it can also translate into changes of bodily experiences. Structures thus not only shape the possibilities of sociality, but they also influence which bodily experiences are socially and politically effective in a particular environment.

The paper asks how sociality and the bodily relate. This question is pertinent in a post-conflict environment where new forms of sociality are sought and where new social tensions possibly emerge precisely because of past experiences of violence.

The paper focuses on apartheid-era victims in today's South Africa. Although the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission prominently put victims' stories into the public, the state subsequently showed little interest to follow through on a societal recognition of those who are still affected by decades of day-to-day subjection to political violence.

This partial acknowledgement subsequently led to legal actions undertaken by victims' lobby groups and has since increased tension between a new economic and political elite and the victims. How has this chasm between victims and 'society' come about, in a society where everyone has had experienced the structural effects of apartheid? The paper takes bodily memory of harm at the centre of its analysis. Based on long-term empirical research, it shows how we have to take the bodily dimension of subjectivities into account in order to understand the basis and the limits to social chance after conflict.

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This paper discusses how both the suspicion of a human ‘creator’ of cholera outbreaks, and the victim-blaming of cholera-affected persons, which are mediated through the physical signs of cholera, express the fragile socio-political order in a rural area in South-Eastern DRC.

Paper long abstract

This paper discusses how the perception of the bodily symptoms of cholera is linked to the social and political reality of people living in a border area in South Eastern DRC. The paper draws on 12 in-depth interviews that were conducted with persons who had personally experienced cholera. A dominant narrative was the extremely rapid bodily wasting and weakness caused by cholera, which in the last decade used to cause many deaths in the area. The rapid physical collapse and the visible signs of dehydration, which develop within only few hours after the onset of cholera, gave rise to rumours of sorcery involving powerful and wealthy individuals, including government officials, who allegedly 'pretend that death is caused by cholera but in the real sense it is witchcraft they use to reinforce their wealth'. In the context of a fragile state, fears of aggressions from both outsiders and insiders of the local society accompany the occurrence of cholera outbreaks. But despite these rumours of deliberate attacks, the affected persons themselves, showing the signs of cholera, are facing social exclusion. Increasingly, cholera is perceived as a disease of poverty. The poor living conditions, frequent migration, and disrupted social structures are believed to be a reason for cholera. I will discuss how both the suspicion of the 'creator' of cholera outbreaks, and the victim-blaming of the cholera-affected, which are mediated through the physical signs of cholera, express the fragile socio-political order.

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In this paper I try to show how the appropriation of senegalese youth of ICTs is concomitant with an appropriation of the body that emphasizes its erotic dimensions, bringing sexuality into the public debate, as a questionment of the ideological rethoric of tradition in Senegal.

Paper long abstract

Senegalese youth has a negative status and is accused of being prone to a scandalous sexualized behaviour. This negative status surpasses simple contextual meanings. This status is consequence of a long-standing historical questioning of social values in Senegal. At the heart of this negative status of youth is the «body», in more than one dimension, through its sexuality, through patterns of consumption, through its mediatisation. What I will consider in this paper is the appropriation by senegalese youth of their bodies, and especially of its erotic dimensions. I will try to explore how this appropriation is also materialized through and with ITCs, which represent for this youth a new «technicity of relationality» and a mirror where their self-reflection can be scrutinized and fashioned (façonné). The irruption of youth sexuality in the public sphere has brought concerns to a society on which open talk on sexuality is a taboo. Society insistantly denounces its malaise with many of the practices of the body claimed by youth as their modern identity, without seemingly being able to counter them, neither materially nor ideologically, stressing a visible social tension between generations. These practices are clearly antagonistic to a rethoric of a legitimate «tradition» (coosan), embedded in religious islamic ethos, and presented by my interlocutors as : a) an expectation on the regulation of behaviours; b) a substitute for problematic parenting; c) a pilar against individualization; d) the fixation of values against western influence ; but also for some, especially to youth, as e) a constraint.

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This paper aims to explore how street boys and young men are constructing and reconstructing their masculinities in Maputo, Mozambique. It focuses on the relationship between the body and masculinity performances.

Paper long abstract

This paper is about issues of body and performance among a group of young men who make the market of Xipamanine in Maputo a place of sustenance and/or their home. The material presented here constitutes fragments of ethnographic research that aims to understand the relationship between the body and identity. What are the strategies used to acquire power and esteem among the peer group and the broader social context?

In the performance of masculinity, the body takes a lead position. One sees the body not only as a biological unit, not only as a place inscribed by culture, but also as a place of construction and negotiation of identities. How are young people using their bodies in the performance of their masculinities? The constructions of masculinities in urban African contexts, an issue that only recently has emerged as a topic of social research, is crucial in understanding the present social tensions and transformations in contemporary Africa.

In Maputo, as in many other places, young people seem to be marked by the increasing difficulties of effecting the transition to adult roles and status. Faced with their social and economic marginalization on the one hand, and new consumer goods and desires triggered largely by the media on the other, the boys seek self-fulfillment in their fantasies, with their bodies as the primary available resource. Power is concentrated on the body as they create alternative modes of expression, as we will see with tattoos and dancing. These performances underline how the bodies of young people can be considered resources for their identity negotiations.

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In the context of the knowledge economy and globalization, the number of students, travelling to other countries to have access to a quality higher education, is growing.In our research, we analyse the everyday life of students from sub-Saharan Africa, who are studying in Italy.

Paper long abstract

In the context of the knowledge economy and globalization, the demand for higher education is growing and consequently the number of students, in this case, from sub-Saharan Africa, travelling to other countries to have access to a quality higher education.

In our research we focused on those who are studying in Italy, based on a sample of thirty in-depth interviews with students enrolled at the University of Turin and Trento.

These two universities were chosen because the academic year 2010/11 they have presented a proportion of foreign students enrolled that was exceeds the national average which stood around 3.6% and 5.2% and 7.4% respectively in Turin and Trento.

We have tried to understand how students build their self presentation and the difference between "us and them", and especially how these two dimensions have changed as a result of everyday interaction.

What emerges from the data is that their self-representation has changed, and in the everyday life more than 60% of respondents have experienced a situation of discrimination and the place where most students say they have experienced incidents of discrimination, it is the bus.

Our hypothesis to interpret the findings is that according to which that more the self representation is constructed through ascribed characteristic or easily recognizable, the greater the probability of perceiving situations of discrimination and consequently the existence of a potential conflict.

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How does a group of aging capeverdean males from Praia deal with transformations in the presentation of the gendered bodies in their country and their own bodily experiences of aging ?

Paper long abstract

Ruptures in the presentation of the gendered bodies and in the development of the practices they entail, can be situated and described during the last two decades of democratic regime in Cape Verde. These changes will be presented through a short history of the diversification of styles, traced both through observations as well as through popular music. Transformations in body presentation are central to the transformations of gender relations and interactions.

Criteria, norms, associated values and the importance of the body have changed, but so have the bodies (and their capacities and forms) of our interlocutors, men from Praia in their late 4O's, the author has been interacting with for the last two decades.

Those two processes confront them with the clear difficulty of performing the ideal masculine self they were socialised to perform; their subjectivity is transformed. The tensions experienced by those men are both related to social and personal transformations.

This observation calls in a sane perspectivist approach in the articulation between body and society. Nevertheless, analysing the different reactions of men facing these challenges allows in fact to delineate contemporary processes of social differentiation and transformation of subjectivities where place of origin, spatial location in the city, youthism and gender are central.