Paper short abstract:

In this position paper we explore particular examples from our respective ethnographic researches on how interrelations between mobility and the dynamics of institutionalized authority occur and are determined by certain ideas of what future social arrangements should look like.

Paper long abstract:

This paper argues that in understanding how certain forms of authority have an impact on social and spatial mobility, we need to explore how both – that is authority and mobility – relate to local, social and cultural ideas of future-making. In this position paper we explore particular examples from our respective ethnographic researches (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana) on how interrelations between mobility and the dynamics of institutionalized authority occur and are determined by certain ideas of what future social arrangements should look like. By focusing on how intermediary institutions (such as chieftaincy and religion) engage with mobility, the paper asks how various forms of mobility affect the formation, consolidation, or decline of these institutions and how, the other way round, such institutions restrict or foster mobility. While these institutions may differ in how they perceive of mobility as a means of avoiding or exerting authority, this paper is interested in conceptualising how mobility thus becomes ‘projectified’ in these ethnographic cases. How is the exercise of authority by these intermediary institutions engaging the formulation of specific modalities of (spatial and social) mobility in view of imagining their future social arrangements? What are the underlying dynamics that allow for a comparison with other situations in the African context? The paper is interested in making a contribution that will allow for a conceptual positioning that may enhance a further analytical reflection on how mobility, institutionalized authority and temporality relate to and mutually affect each other in a wide variety of African settings.

Paper short abstract:

In Niger girls' education, a cornerstone of development, is opposed by religious actors who stress its incompatibility with Muslim values. This paper explores how these actors buttress their moral positions by invoking the vulnerability of girls and constructing girls’ education as an “anti-future.”

Paper long abstract:

There has been an unprecedented push to widen girls’ access to secular education in Niger, the world’s least educated country. In narratives of “girls’ education” peddled by women’s rights activists and other actors, schooling is cast as an engine of social progress while girls are portrayed as entrepreneurial “subject in waiting,” who, if given opportunities, will overcome poverty, energize their communities, and propel their country forward. This model of social mobility is vigorously opposed by a diverse array of religious actors who stress its incompatibility with Muslim values. Not only does the model fail to grant stable livelihoods to young women, but it also puts their entire future at risk by exposing them to sexual violence, these religious actors argue. Muslim activists, preachers, and other members of civil society, who have challenged the rhetoric of female empowerment based on girls’ education, promote instead a vision of moral futures contingent on early marriage, motherhood, and conformity to Qur’anic teachings. Arguing that the failure of development and other social problems Niger is facing are ultimately moral in nature, they insist that conformity to pious norms of Muslim femininity and domesticity is what will make progress possible in Niger. Marriage—not school—is where girls must invest in the future. Through a focus on some debates unfolding around the “projectification” of mobility in Niger, this paper examines how some religious leaders buttress their moral positions by invoking specters of vulnerable girls and constructing the liberal project of girls’ education as an instance of “anti-future.”

Paper short abstract:

This study examines how Igbo Hometown Associations in Nigeria serve as examples of local groups with ties to transnational migration dynamics and their diasporic networks, and how these ties allow them to act as alternative spaces of governance and providers of public goods, despite state weakness.

Paper long abstract:

Non-state actors have been gaining recognition for their ability to provide public goods in areas where formal state structures in post-colonial Africa have fallen short. However, what sustains the agency exercised by these actors has not been fully examined in existing literature. This paper contributes to this gap by examining how migration and migrants' linkages and their places of origin transform social groups into alternative spaces for governance and the distribution of development. It specifically explores how Igbo Hometown Associations (HTAs) serve as examples of social groups that operate locally but have ties to transnational migration dynamics and their diasporic networks, and how these ties allow them to act as non-state governance actors that self-organize to provide public goods to compensate for the shortcomings of formal state structures in eastern Nigeria. It will draw on conceptual framings of belonging and social identity, to explore how Igbo migrants' notions of belonging and the various forms of exclusion they experience as migrants, within and outside Igboland, influence their participation in hometown affairs through HTAs. It will ask how these participations enable HTAs to act as alternative sites of governance and distributive development, and how the emergence of HTAs as alternative spaces for governance allows them to negotiate statehood in tandem with formalized structures of the state. In engaging with this line of inquiry, the study, aims to highlight how the everyday operation of Igbo HTAs transforms the Nigerian state in ways that allow us to better theorize statehood in Africa.

Paper short abstract:

This paper uses interviews and survey data to explore how diaspora chiefs affect migration and social mobility in Nigeria. It shows how they broker relations between ethnic groups; but also how they shape avenues for upward social mobility, and may even foreshadow a transforming Nigerian state.

Paper long abstract:

Traditional authority is booming in Nigeria. Every village, community, and city has their chiefs, Emirs, Obas and other traditional rulers; and throughout the country, these leaders are involved in an increasingly wide range of facets of the Nigerian governance. Yet given their lack of constitutional codification, their position is both tenuous and dynamic, constantly under threat while also able to adjust - and be (re-)invented - to suit local needs and circumstances.

This paper focuses on what I have elsewhere called diaspora chiefs: traditional rulers of migrant - or other 'non-native' - communities in Nigeria. These include Igbo Ezes in Kano or Lagos, or the Hausa chiefs in Ibadan and Enugu, some of whom have long histories in their places of residence. But they also include a more recently crowned Chinese traditional titleholder in Kano, the Eze Igbo in Germany, and the Oba of the Yoruba living in the United States.

The invented tradition of recognising prominent individuals from migrant communities as diaspora chiefs is one of Nigeria's emergent institutional innovations that help manage its ethnic, religious, and regional divisions in a context of longstanding mobility. This paper uses extensive interviews and public perception surveys from different parts of the country to explore the way in which diaspora chiefs facilitate, or hinder, geographical and social mobility in Nigeria. It shows how diaspora chiefs broker relations between 'native' and 'non-native' groups; but also how they shape avenues for upward social mobility, and may even foreshadow a transformation of the Nigerian state.

Paper short abstract:

Institutions have a history of emplacing people. Did the rapid disappearance of chieftaincy and initiation in the south of KiSukuma-speaking Tanzania precipitate the emigration of young herders to greener pastures, and vice versa: did their mobility undermine the institutions?

Paper long abstract:

Sukuma migrations, hundreds of miles across Tanzania towards the southeast in Morogoro’s Kilombero valley and towards the southwest in Katavi, have been defined nationally as an ecological and social disaster because of pressure on land and community. Based on historical material, long-term ethnography in Mwanza region as well as academic exchange since 2012 in Morogoro region, this paper explores the territorially bounding impact of two institutions, chieftaincy and initiation. Sukuma agro-pastoralists refer to (mobile) clans instead of territory as basis of identity, contrary to the communities they migrate to. To attract and ‘emplace’ these herders highly preoccupied with their autonomy, chiefs have said to wield rainmaking. In parallel, ihane initiation is place-based, reviving the community’s knowledge of plants and environment, while permitting to exchange across a large medicinal network. Has the early disappearance of the two institutions in the south of the Sukuma-speaking region precipitated the emigration of young herders to greener pastures, and vice versa: did their mobility help to undermine the institutions? As an aside, I argue that a study of institutions acquires validity by combining a situational analysis with reflection on its cultural assumptions and often missing 'life-sensing'.

Paper short abstract:

Tracing the history of dagga (cannabis) smuggling across the Lesotho-South Africa border, this paper recounts a moral panic around drugs and smuggling that challenged Basotho individuals, the chieftaincy in Lesotho, and both colonial governments to rethink borders in a changing colonial world.

Paper long abstract:

The Lesotho-South Africa border has long been a site for contestation. Without access to enough arable land to make subsistence or even cash cropping of most popular commodities viable, some Basotho turned to the cultivation of dagga (marijuana/cannabis). Needing only relatively small patches of land, dagga increasingly found its way to South Africa via smuggling by the 1920s. Coming to the attention of colonial authorities in both Lesotho and South Africa, there was a moral panic starting in the 1920s around Basotho dagga smuggling. This panic upended clear distinctions between chiefs and commoner, and between colonial officials in Lesotho and in South Africa. Thus, the criminalization of dagga and attempts to crack down on smuggling across the border suggest ways that ordinary Basotho were able to use borders and transportation to survive in the enclave of Lesotho. This became a larger issue in South Africa as the white state was at the forefront of international efforts to criminalize the trade in and consumption of dagga/cannabis. Efforts to control dagga, especially from Lesotho, show how South Africa was attempting to exert control and, potentially, even annex Lesotho (along with Bechuanaland Protectorate and Swaziland). The issue of dagga cultivation and smuggling suggests the complicated calculations that individuals and governmental officials had to make in the shifting colonial world from the 1920s to the 1950s. With medical cannabis now being grown in Lesotho, examining the colonial era policies and decisions can better situate contemporary debates around cultivation of and trade in dagga.

Paper short abstract:

We explore the dynamics of institutionalized traditional authorities in the Lubombo TFCA. As colonial and liberation forces previously mobilised traditional leaders and healers, today’s criminals also create alliances with local community structures and traditional authorities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the interrelations between mobility and the dynamics of institutionalized traditional authorities in the Lubombo Transfrontier Conservation area, on the borders of South Africa, eSwatini (Swaziland) and Mozambique. Patrick Harries (1983) has described the long durée evolution of this interstitial zone, which was once a trade route lying between powerful Swazi and Zulu kingdoms, and then in the colonial era a frontier between contesting Afrikaner, Anglophone and Portuguese settler colonialisms. Likewise, Stephen Ellis (1994) wrote about how the insurgencies and counterinsurgencies of the liberation war against apartheid -- fuelled by the traffic of ivory, AK47s and stolen cars -- flowed through this trans-frontier region. Our paper focuses on the intensification of these flows of contraband in the post-apartheid/post-civil war era. The establishment of the Lubombo Transfrontier Conservation area in 2002, and Spatial Development Initiative prior to that, have been frustrated largely as a result of perpetual instability associated with interstitial zones that make it attractive to criminals. Organised criminality thrives amidst inconsistencies and conflict in governance such as in traditional or customary vs constitutional governance, institutional incompetence and corruption. In particular, we focus on the role of traditional leaders (amakhosi) and traditional healers (izangoma) in the illicit transfrontier trade. For just as with both colonial and liberation forces, today’s criminals are also reliant on alliances with local community structures and traditional authorities. (Clive Poultney & Tim Gibbs)

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the (spatial) mobility trajectories of Chiefs and Chieftainesses in Southern Africa, specifically in Zambia. Focus lies on the intra-institutional networking between traditional authorities and the inter-institutional cooperation with a missionary organization.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the (spatial) mobility trajectories of Chiefs and Chieftainesses in Southern Africa, specifically in Zambia. The intermediary institution of chieftaincy in Zambia plays an important role in local governance and is strongly connected to a certain geographic territory. Nevertheless, Zambia's traditional authorities are becoming increasingly mobile, for example, to attend conferences or other official meetings. This intra-institutional networking to some extent involves actors or organizations from other institutions or institutional orders because traditional authorities rely on these primarily as (financial) enablers of their intra-institutional networking. In this paper, we discuss the networking between African traditional authorities in Zambia facilitated by a Christian missionary organization. In October 2022, Overland Missions hosted the King of Kings Celebration, the first gathering of this kind, to bring together Zambian traditional leaders from the Forum of African Traditional Authorities in Zambia (FATAZA) with traditional leaders from the Forum of African Traditional Authorities (FATA). The overall aim of the event was on the one side to discuss issues of land ownership and development in the chiefdoms and on the other side to celebrate divine supremacy. How does this gathering influence the negotiation of different institutional logics of the institutions of chieftaincy and Christian religion? Does the collaboration between traditional authorities and Overland Missions impact the spatial sphere of influence, here referred to as ‘institutional turf’ of chieftaincy institutions?