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- Convenor:
-
Emma Hunter
(University of Edinburgh)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- KH114
- Start time:
- 29 June, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel seeks to explore the notion of the 'good citizen'. In particular, we are interested in the negotiation of norms, duties and expectations of actual, existing citizens and how these have been developed from above and below in late colonial, post-colonial and contemporary Africa.
Long Abstract:
In recent years, the question of who is or is not a citizen has become a matter of pressing concern in many African states. Yet a focus on binaries of inclusion and exclusion has led to the neglect of larger questions of the political theory and practice of citizenship in Africa as well as a tendency to homogenise experience across the continent. At the same time, a growing body of historical research suggests that conceptions of citizenship have been formed from below as well as from above within specific political cultures, shaped over time by colonial and post-colonial states' expectations of what constitutes a 'good citizen'.
Through empirical studies stretching from the late colonial period through to the present, the panel seeks to explore how state elites, intellectuals and subaltern groups have debated and sustained norms of citizenship, and how these often unrecognized subjectivities shaped political opportunities and trajectories. We seek to explore specificities in citizenship entitlement, such as privileged belonging for those who contributed to liberation wars, the favouring of rural producers over urban residents, the expansion of citizenship to diasporic communities and the duties of 'good' citizens as elaborated in countries like Rwanda and Eritrea, versus the 'insurgent citizens' of South Africa. In this way, the panel offers a timely opportunity to critically compare case studies from across the continent and from the present as well as the past.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Participatory radio talk shows in contemporary Uganda are the sites of the elaboration of particular conceptions of "good citizenship" that are grounded in distinct although intertwined historicities and also coincide with the current regime's philosophy and agenda of control.
Paper long abstract:
In 2009, in the aftermath of deadly riots, the government of Uganda announced that all out-door radio talk shows, known as People's Parliaments, would be banned. This event informs us on conceptualisations of "good" citizenship in contemporary Uganda. By analysing the way repression against popular speech is justified by a regime whose legitimacy has, precisely, relied on its celebration, this paper explores the imaginary but very operational bifurcated conception of citizenship in force under Museveni, based on a separation between enlightened urbanites entitled to talk about "politics" and "backward peasants" confined to "development". However, these conceptions of compartmentalised and differentiated forms of citizenship were not unilaterally imposed by the regime. They were largely shared and this is particularly visible in radio shows that openly aim at reforming political behaviours. Indeed, by organising highly formalised debates, orators of Kampala's People's Parliaments aimed at producing a honourable form of citizenship, as opposed to the degenerate citizenship of uneducated "tribalised" bakopi (common men) and emotional women. They desperately wanted to demonstrate that they were "good citizens", but were not acknowledged as such by the regime. In a similar way, by creating highly bureaucratised "listeners' forums", the "concerned citizens" of the remote and vilified sub-county of Bufunjo aimed at demonstrating their modernity and the fact that they deserved the benefits of political patronage. The paper will show how these conceptions of good citizenship are entrenched in several intertwined historicities: Buganda royalism; international development; colonial education policies; and Museveni's philosophy of the Movement democracy.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores FRELIMO’s concepts about urban citizenship in socialist Mozambique. Such concepts animated heated moral arguments among urban citizens about who deserved to live in towns. Ordinary residents were prone to denounce their fellow city dwellers as unworthy socialist citizens
Paper long abstract:
Between 1974 and 1988, the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO, the ruling party of independent Mozambique) launched several campaigns to clean the cities of so-called 'anti-socials' and 'immoral elements of society', seen as enemies and an obstacle to the socialist revolution in Mozambique. Thousands of people were sent to internment camps in remote areas throughout the country during the first ten years of socialist experiment. This process of social engineering was also carried out by urban citizens who denounced, hunted down, and helped to expel their fellow city dwellers. This paper argues that less than its Marxist or socialist appeal, it was the moralist character of FRELIMO's project that compelled ordinary urban citizens to participate in the cleansing campaigns against their fellow compatriots. FRELIMO's project was launched in a fertile terrain where urban residents were already engaged in moral arguments over who was worthy living in a urban setting.Urban citizens did not engage actively in the clean up operations merely to fulfill FRELIMO's socialist goals. In the capital city of Maputo and the second city of Beira, ordinary citizens were able to seize niches of opportunity within the broader debate over moral citizenship to settle personal affairs, to get rid of embarrassing family members or competitors for local social capital, and to secure profitable access to housing and other scarce resources.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses the discourse around the role of citizens with a special focus on East African Asians in Tanzania and Uganda and the question of if they could become ‘good citizens’ and how they could or could not rid themselves of the long lasting stereotypes as paper citizens and economic exploiters.
Paper long abstract:
With the dissolution of colonial rule, the question of citizenship and the active role of citizens in building the nation popped up in all East African states. The paper will investigate the discourse surrounding citizenship, loyalty and the rights and obligations which came along with it focusing on the Asian minorities in Tanzania and Uganda and the question if and how they could become real citizens (in contrast to paper citizens as what they were often described in the local press). As they were often still seen as colonial exploiters who perceived the Africans as inferior to them the paper will cover the question of how long lasting stereotypes hindered integration for Asians as citizens, how those stereotypes and clichés were reinforced by certain behaviours of some members of the minority and how Asians were often presented as counterexample of the good citizen. Especially in Tanzania the Asians' identity as a mostly urban minority confirmed the perception of the Asian as a saboteur of socialism and exploiter of the ideal citizens (the rural Mwananchi).
By using mainly Hansards, newspapers and political speeches as source material, the paper will highlight different waves in the debate surrounding citizenship which were sparked by political events: the introduction of self-governing in 1961 (TZ) and 1962 (UG), the introduction of immigration laws in East Africa (1967-1969) and the Arusha Declaration (1967); the Tanzania Building Acquisition Act (1972) and the expulsion of the Ugandan Asians (1972).
Paper short abstract:
Since the beginning of the Malian crisis in 2012, little was said about Northerners who opposed the rebellion. This paper intends to historicize the opposition to the rebellion among the Songhay elite in Bamako and the promotion of a figure of a ‘good Northern citizen’, faithful to the Malian state.
Paper long abstract:
In 2012-2013, international media broadly covered the MNLA rebels' declaration of independence of Azawad, a territory spreading over Northern Mali. However, little was said about Northerners who opposed the rebellion. In Bamako, an important protest movement led by Northerners asked the successive governments to free their regions from the domination of secessionist rebels and jihadist groups. This paper analyzes the pro-Mali stance adopted by the leaders of this movement.
Although some Tuareg groups had a conflictual relationship with the Malian State, many Northerners used the administration as a lever of social ascension and political integration. Since colonial times, a Northern elite, predominantly Songhay, settled in Bamako to work in government. During the 2012-2013 crisis, the Songhay elite had to actively dissociate itself from the rebellion in order to escape the idea, widely spread in Bamako, that Northerners were potential enemies of the State. In addition to stigmatizing rebels as 'stateless', the Songhay elite promoted an original concept of 'good citizenship'. They endorsed a figure of the 'good citizen' that legitimized their strategies of political ascension: a citizen who dedicates his life to the general interest of the nation while working in the public service; both loyal to the Malian State and knowledgeable about the North; able to implement policies to help resolve the crisis; who understands the administration and the development world; and who therefore is an ideal candidate to represent his people.
Paper short abstract:
A return in the past suggests how the issue of citizenship was never once acquired. My proposal is to follow, from the municipal management site during the interwar period, the vicissitudes of the status of French citizen in these enclaves of colonial Senegal.
Paper long abstract:
Citizenship is today the central point of a republican governance's critique. A return in the past suggests how much it was never once acquired. In the Four Communes of Senegal, the Originaires acquired this status, as early as 1848, while retaining the peculiarity of their personal status, in particular the existence of Muslim courtsThis status was not only the defense of a particular way of life or a legal discussion for a community that was not culturally French. It induced the participation, the invention of a space where to exercise powers, skills and rights that the colonial administration worked to curb. How to assume a municipal power and respond to the concerns of the inhabitants in the core of the sending general inspection's missions? How to extend the 1915-1916 Blaise Diagne laws, to the vast majority of populations conquered and incorporated as subjects to the Code de l'Indigenat in the frame of the French imperial state? This period is fundamental to understand the meaning of struggles for citizenship. Proving that french citizens outside of France assumed their municipal duties better than the inhabitants of the communes on the banks of the Seine, was to open an opportunity for questioning and closing the Empire and for restoring the Republic of Equals. Even the Popular Front of Leon Blum, well known for its social advances, maintained the statu quo on the municipal question and the debate on citizenship outre-mer.
Paper short abstract:
The paper unpacks the characteristics of the ‘good' Angolan citizen during three periods of the country’s history, while arguing that Angola’s case differs from other forms of 'good' citizenship in Africa that sponsor privileged belonging to those who embody the positive qualities of the nation.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores changing notions of 'good' citizenship in Angola during three distinct periods, the colonial, post-colonial and contemporary age. These periods represent a time in the history of the country when particular yet changing forms and practices of 'good' citizenship were required to achieve social mobility. If late colonialism is defined by the liberation war, which romanticised the idea of the freedom fighter but subjected him entirely to the whims of the party, the post-colonial period is heavily marked by a civil-war that attempted to define the Angolan nation, consequently producing two different notions of the 'good' citizen. Throughout these periods political identity and party allegiance remained the required elements for enjoying quality citizenship rights, encouraging people to follow party ideologies and adopt specific public behaviours which could allow access to clientele networks or promotions within party hierarchies. However, it is in the contemporary period, fruit of the organisation of political power, that a more crystallised notion of the 'good' citizen emerges, one Angolans commonly refer to as 'grovelers'. The good Angolan citizen of today is the groveler that publicly defends the political regime that feeds his social status, essentially arguing for a symbiotic relationship characterised by patron-client relations. The paper attempts to unpack all these notions by following the proposed chronological order while showing that Angola may differ from other cases in Africa where privileged citizenship is attributed to those who are seen as representatives of the positive qualities of the nation.
Paper short abstract:
Comparison of the ways in which the government's of Eritrea and Rwanda to promote good citizenship, and the importance of this for statehood and state sovereignty.
Paper long abstract:
Eritrea and Rwanda have both instigated policies which have an element of coercion or strong encouragement to their citizens, and these surround modes of production. Examples we cite are Eritrea's use of national service workers, taxation for the Eritrean diaspora, and memorials to the liberation struggle, as well as Rwanda's reference too citizens by nationality rather than ethnic group, the imihigo performance contracts, and the introduction (or reintroduction) of events, anniversaries or citizens obligations to reinforce the sense of duty of citizenship. Failure to 'perform' citizenship or statehood is a threat not just to the state's 'legitimacy' but also to its resource base, and its final ends - development and sovereignty. In both cases, state policies are structured around particular notions of being a good citizen - state imperatives of performance and extraction are designed to ensure that citizens participate and contribute to those norms, while ensuring that those who challenge them are removed from the body politic, unable to make claims on the state. In both cases, state policies are structured around particular notions of being a good citizen - state imperatives of performance and extraction are designed to ensure that citizens participate and contribute to those norms, while ensuring that those who challenge them are removed from the body politic, unable to make claims on the state.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I argue that peacebuilding initiatives have reconstructed conceptions in post-conflict Somalia. I examine how citizenship is performed through new discourses about rights, obligations, and claim-making driven largely by peace processes yet ultimately embodied and legitimized by ordinary people.
Paper long abstract:
While it is more commonly acknowledged that conflict, particularly civil wars, changes how individuals and groups relate to others and to state agents within a presumed political community, it is less known how peacebuilding initiatives affect citizenship norms and practices in the aftermath of conflict. In this paper, I stress the centrality of the citizen-building aspect of peacebuilding and suggest that peace processes—in particular—reconstruct notions of citizenship alongside attempts to rebuild political institutions. I am particularly interested in how post-conflict 'citizens' then perform citizenship through discourses and practices about rights, obligations, and claim-making. To anchor these broader discussions, I examine Somali national reconciliation conferences between 2000-2004. These processes led to specific outcomes such as federalism and gender and clan-based electoral quotas that arguably changed how individuals defined themselves as citizens in post-transitional, yet still politically volatile spaces. The potential relevance of this case study for discussions on citizenship in post-conflict African societies is great as I aim to conceptually connect contemporary debates on citizenship with growing literature on peacebuilding in Africa.
Paper short abstract:
This ethnographic paper explores how young South Africans experience and interpret new norms of citizenship in a country where former ideals of ‘insurgent citizenship’ are replaced by a model of ‘active citizenship’ that insists on the duties of good citizens rather than on their critical thinking.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the political paradox that characterizes South Africa since 1994: despite a romantic attachment to a political culture rooted in 'The struggle', practices of 'insurgent citizenship' inherited from anti-apartheid movements have been largely reinterpreted through a model of 'active citizenship' that insists on the duties of good citizens rather than on their critical thinking. This 'normalisation' of political life in the post-apartheid era is often criticized for growing a generation of young citizens marked by apathy and individualism. In contrast with the students movement that was already stirring at the time, the research focuses on less visible sites of civic engagement by following various youth projects led by NGOs across the city. Through in-depth interviews and participatory methods, it documents the fine grain of political subjectivities in the making. Neither post-political subjects nor revolutionary champions, the young people involved in this research highlight the unspectacular ordinariness of citizenship. They invite us to look beyond archetypes of 'good citizens', 'social entrepreneurs' or 'rebels' in order to reframe citizenship as a matter of sentiment mixing fun and violence, friendship and resentment, immediate engagement and structural racism.
Paper short abstract:
In Kenya forms of political mobilization against treatment of minorities or subaltern groups regarding citizenship has become common. The case of a group of slave’s descendants in Mombasa will illustrate the struggle for recognition and claim for full citizenship within the Kenyan nation.
Paper long abstract:
Frere Town in Mombasa is one of the historical settlements for freed slaves created by the Church Missionary Station in the 19th century in the fight against slave trade. Having their origins outside Kenya, newly freed slaves did not have a homogenous ethnic identity and language. The new culture of Christianity and Western education taught by the missionaries gave them a feeling of common belonging.
Loyal servant of the colonizers, the Freretownians formed a self-conscious urban elite, who saw themselves as playing a major role in the establishment of the Nation. However, the new constitution that kept the former colonial categorization based on ethnicity did not allow them to have a rightful place in the emerging Kenyan society.
In 2007, considering that they have been left behind, the descendants of the Freretownians engaged a process of recognition denouncing their own experiences as citizen with a double stigma of slave discordance and otherness.
The paper, based on several years of research on archival work and interviews with members of the Frere Town community, will particularly examine the dialectic between inclusion/exclusion and the practice of citizenship in Kenya.
Firstly, it aims at a better understanding of the role of this specific group in the process of independence and definition of the Kenyan citizenry. Secondly, it will look at how the case of the Freretownians should be seen in relation with others minorities' claims, such as the Nubians and Somalis, denouncing daily discriminations and non-recognition within the Kenyan society.