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- Convenors:
-
Hideyuki Okano
(Kindai University)
Gaku Moriguchi (Toyo University)
- Chair:
-
Makoto Nishi
(Hiroshima University)
- Location:
- 301 A
- Start time:
- 15 May, 2014 at
Time zone: Asia/Tokyo
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel reconsiders modern states and national politics in Africa by elucidating the local contexts and the aspects of people's daily lives. It focuses especially on people's experience and their life-history in younger nation-states of Africa, which have been at large since their independences.
Long Abstract:
This panel reconsiders modern states and national politics in Africa by elucidating the local contexts and the aspects of people's daily lives. It focuses especially on people's experience and their life-history in younger nation-states of Africa, which have been at large since their independence.
Since terms of 'politics' and 'modern nation-state' became one of the topics of socio-cultural anthropology, we have had considerable debates several times among prominent anthropologists. However, modern nation-states, especially in the context of Africa, have been always described as external actors to people's lives. A modern nation-state was imported and has been intervened from the outside of "their" world. That is a typical description in anthropological writings. Even in the particular discussion on the nation-state, the majority of anthropological works have considered people as an actor against the state, or under state's intrusions and influences into their lives. People, with which anthropological works have dealt, have been always subjugated by or resisted against the power of modern nation-states. Especially after Foucault, this tendency has been obvious. Thus, in anthropology, the theories of nation-states have been examined through indirect manners. In the process of modernization and the expansion of modern nation-states in Africa, some of local figures often made themselves engaged in national affairs by their own wills, under the terms of citizenship, democracy, civil wars and development. These figures have been overlooked in a description of previous researches. By examining them, this panel uncovers some aspects of politics and modern nation-states.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
At the core of a thick description of Ijaw people, the paper finds that intertwined factors which were present in the Niger Delta in the 1990s produced a situation in which systematic use of violence took over the non-violent side of social movements and enabled them to emerge under the label ‘MEND.’
Paper long abstract:
Recent African experiences following the transition to multiparty democracy have demonstrated somewhat enigmatic development of social movements, which have been conventionally believed to be inherently non-violent and democratic by their outcomes. Nevertheless, in a stark contrast to the expectations held by external observers, the bulk of social movements that flourished in and around the 1990s in sub-Saharan Africa dispersed into small fractions with many of them transforming into violent guerrillas, rebel groups, civil militias, vigilantes, masquerades and so forth.
Nowhere did this trend draw more international attention than in the oil-bearing region of the Niger Delta. The region witnessed a sudden upsurge in the number of militant groups promoting anti‐state and anti-oil firm ideologies following the end of military rule in 1999, with the most notorious of them all being the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND). It is in this context that this paper attempts to answer the following question; why do social movements in the Niger Delta follow violent trajectories instead of integrating into the mainstream politics of multiparty democracy?
At the core of a 'thick description' of Ijaws of western and central Niger Delta, the paper will find that the coexistence of intertwined factors which were present in the Niger Delta in the 1990s produced a situation in which systematic use of violence took over non-violent side of social movements and enabled them to emerge under the label 'MEND.'
Paper short abstract:
I examine witch doctors who came to be institutionalized under a pro-governmental force in Sierra Leone. At one point, they played critical roles in endowing magical power to fighters from local militias, however, they were institutionalized under a semi-bureaucratic system of the pro-governmental force.
Paper long abstract:
Anthropologists have argued on various aspects of contemporary warfare; several works have discussed witchcrafts and magical powers in contemporary civil wars (Ellis 1999, Behrend 2000), whereas other works have examined how armed groups were organized and the ways in which combatants behaved during civil wars (Keen 2005, Peters 2011). This paper follows suit the previous contributions by illuminating local aspects within a civil war. The civil war in Sierra Leone (1991-2002) broke out with the incursion of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Mende people in war-affected areas organized local militias called 'Kamajors' in order to defend their communities against the rebel. Some traditional leaders, who led Kamajors in their respective communities, used witch doctors to empower their own fighters with magical and spiritual powers. During the war, the ritual of endowing magical powers by the witch doctors became so prevalent that it began to be regarded as an essential practice for Mende people to become qualified fighters. When the local militias and their fighters were integrated under the umbrella of a pro-governmental force, the Civil Defense Force (CDF), the witch doctors were also organized as one of the departments within the CDF. This process demonstrate a case of "modernity of witchcraft" in an uncertain situation. However, as the act of institutionalization and the bureaucratic system itself were not fitting to the practices of witch doctors, witch doctors in the department eventually began to be seen as a source of concern for cadres and administrative officers of the CDF.
Paper short abstract:
The paper considers the function of the public sphere, which promotes peoples’ dialogues, by focusing on the case study of a participatory radio program in Benin. It seems the audience covertly holds a desire to rebel against the authority, hence calling in to accuse politicians of their injustices.
Paper long abstract:
The paper aims to expose a rebellious aspect of the radio listeners in the Republic of Benin. Recently, the number of mobile phone users in Africa has rapidly increased, which has greatly changed the way people communicate; One can now catch the broadcast on a mobile phone, enabling the programs to be more accessible than ever. After the democratic turn in 1990, the new government enforced the de-monopolization of radio frequencies. Several private stations have opened since then, with entertainment and participatory programs, which have enabled people to publicly talk. These have a tendency to broadcast programs, the so-called "talk radios" where they accommodate listeners' complaints of everyday life, much more often than the state-owned stations. Such programs appeal to the audience that since there is a freedom of speech one should express whatever they want to say, and that individual voices will contribute in empowering the development of democracy of Benin.
This examines the reality of the participating listeners and compares respective cases to elucidate the common characteristic of active audiences. It has been acknowledged that the communicative interaction, shaped and extended by the media, is a model of the public sphere. In fact, it is by using their personal mobile phones that people participate in such a public space. The audience who accuses government offices and politicians of their injustices tend to be associated with criticizing and rebelling against authority. The presentation reports on how the public sphere generated by the media instills democracy in Benin.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the notion of citizenship in an African city by describing the case of slums as a national marginal entity. Kampala kept several informal residential areas, then rumours of slum clearance reveal the vulnerability of residents, foreign migrants and domestic minorities.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the notion of "citizenship" in an African urban setting by describing the case of slums as a national marginal entity. Kampala, the capital of Uganda, has kept several slums and informal residential areas, called "suburbs" since it started its growth of population in1960's. Rumours of slum clearance, however, have revealed the vulnerability of residents who are mainly foreign migrants, and informal refugees from Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and domestic minorities, such as internal displaced people, Acholi, Karamojong, Iteso and other minor ethnic groups.
When we discussed on their residential rights and land ownership, their "citizenship" and national identity have had always to be treated as a contested notion due to entangled customs of Baganda and the national legal system. The Baganda local customs often exclude other ethnic groups from land rights though modern law presumes to secure them. Furthermore, recent urban re-development schemes, mostly financially funded by prominent politicians from the western Uganda, expel them out of their slums. To protest their rights against the government, demonstrations and riots were often shown by slum residents in late 2000s.
As a result of the control of urban space and the pacification of riots by the Museveni regime, it seems to have brought some layers of classes, based on ethnic groups, both of inside and outside of Uganda, although boundaries between insiders and outsiders are not obvious. I would like to clarify this "citizenship" in Kampala as a process of urban marginalisation.