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- Convenors:
-
Tabea Häberlein
(University of Bayreuth)
Jeannett Martin (University of Göttingen)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- NB005
- Start time:
- 30 June, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
Urban-rural relations have diverse meanings for people of different age and gender. The panel explores creation and dissolution of social belonging between the urban and the rural at different phases during the life course.
Long Abstract:
Ethnographic research in many African societies has shown that urban and rural lives are deeply interwoven. Nevertheless, in much of the academic discourse the continent's population is described as being either "urban" or "rural". In regarding people's biographies, it soon becomes clear that their lives are often rural and urban, with a focus on one or the other.
In some areas, children from villages are sent for several years to relatives in towns before coming back to get married. Rural youth migrate to urban areas for periods of time; some of the young migrants return home while others remain. Some elderly spending long parts of their life in towns or cities re-settle in their village of origin in their old age.
In this panel we are interested in why and how people combine rural and urban life during their lifetimes: children and youth, men and woman or elderly persons. At what points and in what life periods urban respectively rural relationships become important? How do people shape relationships between the urban and the rural and which meanings do they attach to them? When and why are they less important? In which periods of life, why and by whom are the respective relations seen as a resource or as a burden? Contributing to debates on rural-urban relationships in the face of contemporary changes we encourage theoretically founded and empirically based papers from different disciplines.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Tabea Häberlein (University of Bayreuth) Jeannett Martin (University of Göttingen)
Paper short abstract:
Urban-rural relations of African societies were often discussed in the context of (job) migration, ethnicity or politics of belonging. In this panel we highlight them with a temporal perspective: with the focus on life courses.
Paper long abstract:
Urban-rural relations of African societies were often discussed in the context of (job) migration, ethnicity or politics of belonging. In this panel we highlight them with a temporal perspective: with the focus on life courses.
We regard "the city" or the "Hinterland" as flexible and changing social and spacial unities, interconnected by flows of people, goods, objects and ideas. The literature describes "the urban" in Africa as spaces of cultural production, political activities, social mobility and rapid change. In contrast, rural areas or "the village" appear as hardly changing places characterized by agricultural actions. With the emphasis of the life course of people, who are still majoritarian born in rural areas, we want to scrutinize this dichotomy. Further, we want to contribute to the discussion of life courses in African societies stressing the role of urban-rural relations.
Cory Rodgers (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
Approaching “remoteness” as a way of being rather than a geographical property, I consider how urban elites’ childhood experiences, memories, and imaginations of rural herding livelihoods figure into the future of Turkana pastoralism amidst development and change on Kenya’s northwest frontier.
Paper long abstract:
Like much of Africa, Turkana is a place of great social contrasts, home to both pastoral homesteads living frugally on the arid plains as well as to educated elites chasing urban jobs and construction contracts. Town-and-country connectivity is usually depicted according to the economic relationships between rural herders and modern urbanites, but models differ based on whether the two are diverging as classes - usually entailing a "transition" from traditional pastoralism to capitalism - or hybridizing as inter-dependent sectors of broader, diversified livelihood units. Both perspectives suffer from over-emphasis on the economic dimensions of urban and rural livelihoods, rather than the experience of learning and practicing livelihood skills (Ingold 2000) or performing rural and urban "styles" (Ferguson 1999). Drawing from Edwin Ardener's (1987) phenomenological conception to the notion of remoteness, as well as more recent phenomenological approaches in ethnography (Desjarlais & Jason Throop 2011), I consider how growing up as a herder, visiting pastoralist kin, and reflecting on romanticized forms of tradition creates a sense of nostalgia for life in "the reserve", a term alluding to the deep rurals of Turkana County. Presently, most politicians are educated elites with childhood experiences and family connections to pastoralist life. Going forward, the policy positions that the political class adopt toward pastoralism will depend upon their sense of connection to, belonging in, and nostalgia for life in the remote "reserve".
Kerilyn Schewel (Duke University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how migration imaginaries are shaped at different points across a young person’s mobile life trajectory, with a particular emphasis on the influence of education.
Paper long abstract:
Linear narratives about migration journeys assume destination imaginaries are formed prior to the migration journey. In this paper, I take a more "step-wise" approach to migration and explore how migration imaginaries are shaped at different points across a young person's mobile life trajectory. Based on qualitative research in rural Ethiopia, I show how internal migration is not initially driven by the bright lights of a destination imaginary, but rather the promise of education. It is generally once young people live in urban centers that social imaginaries crystallize around the benefits of rural versus urban life, or national versus international lifestyles. Thus, I argue education influences migration imaginaries and trajectories in two important ways: 1) structurally, because secondary and higher education is often only found in urban centers, leading to what Crivello (2010) calls 'migration-for-education'; and 2) aspirationally, because modern education and the promises it offers shape young people's notions of the 'good life,' and expectations about where it might be achieved, leading to a phenomena we may call 'migration-because-of-education.' To illustrate my claims, I narrate the stories of four young adults who all grew up in the same rural village in the Ethiopian Rift Valley, and elucidate how education shaped their varied migration imaginations and trajectories over time. In each story, the pursuit of education was the first reason to leave home, and the expectations it created had far reaching consequences on young people's social imaginations, life choices, and migration trajectories thereafter.
Joyce Omwoha (Technical University of Kenya)
Paper short abstract:
This paper argues that participation in the public sphere plays an important role in reinforcing citizenship as a social identity through public political deliberation.
Paper long abstract:
The concept of being a Kenyan citizen has brought lots of debates in both the electronic and the print media in Kenya. Participation in talk radio shows is concerned with the study of the nature of talk radio as a genre in relation to issues of right of access to public information, checks and balances on power, human rights, and respect for minorities in the society, nationhood, citizenship, corruption and their ultimate involvement in governing of the country. Jambo Kenya's participation focuses on the emergence of ideas around democracy and citizenship. Participation and/or interaction does not necessarily lead to democracy, therefore, as a form of news and current affairs program, Jambo Kenya's notion of participation is carried out by analyzing its role in encouraging knowledge and the caller's perspectives on citizenship.