Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper references digital archives and women's memory as historical knowledge sources to reflect on the everyday lives of Liberian women in the 80s. Using the television program "Today’s Woman," I question the framings of womanhood and how these reflect the Liberian society of the time.

Paper long abstract:

The digital archives of the Liberia Broadcasting System (LBS) have become crucial to the understanding and articulation of aspects of Liberia's history that have been ignored by traditional historians and historiography. Existing scholarship on the history of Liberia is mostly nationalistic and masculinized. Much of the everyday life of Liberian women remains unknown outside discourses on the civil wars that ravaged the country. What’s more, African history and historiography still grapple with the sidelining of women’s history, thus rendering them passive to the development of many African countries. With current debates on digital archives and memory as other(ed) ways of knowing, this paper calls up these unconventional sources of popular and historical knowledge to reflect on the everyday lives of Liberian women. Focusing on the television program Today’s Woman, hosted by Jestina Gray in the 1980s, I question the definitions and framings of “today’s woman” in the 1980s, analyzing the contents and topics discussed in the program to reflect the Liberian society of the time. I also draw parallels from memories and experiences shared during key informant interviews with select women to support or query the ideals and framing of issues as representative of what women of the 80s would, could, or should look like. These archives, covering the period from 1981 to 1990, constitute a site for multiple mediations crucial to the adoption of rarely considered approaches to, and understandings of the Liberian society.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper shows how historians can uncover ordinary colonial Nigerian women traders' experiences during the Second World War through government notices in local newspapers. Their exposure for "criminality" reveal that traders frequently opposed colonial economic encroachment and strangulation.

Paper long abstract:

Increasingly, newspapers have become a vital source for writing the political, social, cultural and intellectual history of African societies. They reveal the times they were printed in, act as purveyors of news or as contributors to political debates, and serve as repositories of “‘facts’, culture and knowledge” (Sawada 2011, 7). In addition, historical newspapers reveal individuals’ dynamics, interactions, and lives during a given period. Newspapers like the West African Pilot initiated by the United States-trained Nnamdi Azikiwe perform a crucial historical service in documenting the activities and voices of those considered on the margins of history, such as non-literate colonial young girls and women. While the contestations of these female historical actors appear sparsely in written records since few written accounts about them existed, these women appeared more visibly, notably, in statistics, as part of an account of a small group of literate men, or fleetingly in the archives when they clashed with the more powerful—the colonial state, native authorities, or church institutions.

Through an innovative use of newspaper contents, historians can bring colonial women’s elusive histories and perspectives to light. Government notices published in local newspapers help establish the circumstances and conditions of these lives. In particular, prosecution lists and radio broadcasts by the Inspector of Prices converted to text which appeared in the newspaper during the Second World War helps us tease out women traders’ conflicts with the colonial state over enforced economic strangulations. Thus, this presentation will exemplify how historians can view and understand ordinary women’s resistance and survival during the Second World War in colonial Nigeria through supposedly elite newspaper sources. The public exposure of women traders for their supposed criminality showcase women’s everyday opposition to the colonial state’s encroachment into their traditional economic spaces.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores Dakar's evolution and aims to tell overlooked stories of construction sites and construction workers. I discuss the blend of ethnographic methods I used, focusing on the use of photographs as a mediator and emphasizer of these stories.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I seek to explore Dakar's urban evolution, where the predominant gray color of construction sites conceals intricate everyday narratives. This study, based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork, aims to tell the often-overlooked stories of cement and construction workers woven into the city's fabric. I adopt a critical lens in pursuit of decolonizing ethnographic methods, by being aware of power dynamics arising from fieldwork and considering my positionality in listening, gathering, and shaping how these histories are compiled and shared. Photos elicit narratives, but they also create a shared space with interlocuters, broadened by the general use of smartphones. I use historical and recent photographs as mediators of stories, but also as mediators of the field. Tracing such narratives across time, this research delves into historical archives from the early 20th century to independence in 1960. The collection of photographs paints a vivid picture of construction sites, materials, and the individuals integral to the labor force; a contrast to written archives which often keep these “mundane” histories silenced. As these narratives unfold further today, I compare historical images with contemporary observations and pictures taken on an informal construction site in Parcelles Assainies, a district in the city's north. I discuss the use of photographs to bridge historical and contemporary histories as well as to balance my presence in the field. Combining archives, photos, and firsthand observation, I consider these methods as processual to explore narratives underlying the city, where sweat and effort echo through time.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Albert Lubaki, a Congolese artist active in the 1920s-1930s in the Belgian Congo, had his work exhibited in Europe for almost a century. However, his personal story was obscured by colonial patrons. This paper proposes strategies to reconstruct his biography using alternative sources and methods.

Paper long abstract:

Albert Lubaki (c. 1896 – after 1939) was a Congolese watercolor painter working under European patronage. Since 1929, his artworks were widely exhibited in European salons, galleries, and museums. His personal story, unlike the “exoticism” of his artworks, did not, however, interest audiences and the patrons. Consequently, the information about his life is scarce, and his biography up to this day is incomplete, mainly consisting of place names and anecdotes.

This paper is going to explore different ways of approaching the collection of biographical information about people who lived in a not-too-distant past. Firstly, it will comment on the specificity of archival research and the lack of documents relating to Congolese individuals. Then, it will touch upon fieldwork as a means of attempting to fill the archival gaps by finding descendants of the artists. Lastly, it will examine how “researching around” can help us gain an understanding of what people in a similar position to the artist might have been doing, thereby constructing a sort of speculative social biography.

As a result, it is hoped to open a discussion into methods of historical anthropology and how a combination of archival research, fieldwork, and literature study could help us look through a new lens on a story that has remained largely unquestioned and unexplored.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Writing histories of the everyday requires methodological creativity. Using empirical examples on the lives of ordinary people, this paper discusses approaches inspired by historical cultural analysis in order to bring a variety of different sources into a critical dialog with one another.

Paper long abstract:

Writing histories of Africa that reveals the everyday lives of people beyond the public eye remains a challenge. It requires methodological flexibility and creativity to bring a variety of different sources into a critical dialog with each other. This paper provide an insight into methodological approaches inspired by the perspective of historical cultural analysis (Lindner/Wietschorke). Empirical examples from my own research on the colonial history of Africa are used to present readings and the interplay of different types of sources and materials. Looking at sources on unregistered “associations” and urban culture in Belgian Congo, we get an idea how ordinary men and women playfully usurped the posturing of the educated elite and formulated own subjectivities and claims. Furthermore, the combined analysis of notebooks and letters in personal archives, administrative documents, police records, novels and various media articles enables us to trace the lives of individuals and their attempts to overcome everyday hurdles and boundaries. The numerous documents on the recruitment, repatriation and forged papers of African seamen in the French Empire enable us to grasp the daily room for manoeuvre and the biographical trajectories of ordinary, yet mobile, workers. Police reports and court cases can reveal that bullets smuggled by seamen were not necessarily used for anti-colonial rebellion, but to earn a living for the family who remained ashore or to exhibit their social status.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

The paper emphasizes the significance of colonial students as a valid starting point in newer methodologies of West African history.

Paper long abstract:

During the previous century, a notable number of students from British West African colonies pursued education at British universities, referred to as colonial students. This decision was driven by the anticipation of decolonization, recognizing that hitherto local West African educational institutions lacked sufficient funding to produce an adequately educated workforce for colonies on the brink of gaining independence.

This paper urges Africanists to interrogate the obscure histories of colonial students as part of the methodology of West African histories. It emphasises the importance of crossing archival colour lines to utilise data from newspapers, letters, memos, police records, minutes of meetings, official government communiques, college records, among others into a comprehensive document that sheds considerable light on the interests, activities, and legacies of hitherto elusive colonial students who helped make independent West Africa.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents a methodology developed to explore midwives’ everyday practices of care in Sudan (1899-1970s), using materials ranging from oral history interviews and archival collections to family documents, songs, poems, short stories and novels, collected under conditions of an ongoing war.

Paper long abstract:

My paper addresses the panel’s challenging issue of finding methodologies apt for writing histories of the everyday by presenting the case of midwives' practices of care in Sudan from 1899 to the 1970s. Such practices have been rarely documented so far, which forms part of a more general neglect of the history of women’s everyday working practices, especially with professions that have long been considered to be marginal. In this sense, the history of midwifery is an extraordinary challenge, all the more so in a context where historiography is still limited and/or very focused on established, ostensibly ‘large’ aspects. The Sudanese historiography has indeed been focusing on political leaders or, in the medical field, on doctors, besides studying the country’s medical system as a whole. Given this low level of previous documentation, I will discuss how I have been collecting data, with special consideration of the conditions imposed by war in study areas, an aspect of vital importance in today’s Sudan. My method of mobilizing data resources includes interviews with the oldest living generation of midwives and nurses, in addition to doctors, unionists and others who have worked with them, as well as archival material from administrative and missionary collections in the UK and WHO archives in Geneva. But I also make use of newspapers, visual material from families, and social media posts focusing on Sudan. A further type of material is composed of songs, poems, short stories and novels that reflect on midwives’ historical experiences.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates the use of video as a source of contemporary African history with a focus on the 2020 End-SARS movement in Nigeria. The strength of video as a source lies in the fact that it allows individuals the freedom to tell their stories and for historians to study people from below.

Paper long abstract:

Historical documentation and archiving have remained critical issues in the study of postcolonial history of many African societies. Apart from surviving records in colonial archives, which have been largely damaged due to poor handling, it has been difficult to keep proper record of everyday life of common people who are historically important but often neglected in historical studies. The challenges associated with the known but limited sources (newspapers and televisions) of everyday history have opened new doors to new historical sources such as video. The use of video has been gaining popularity in the study of contemporary African history. Video-based historical research has been facilitated by the use of social media where individuals share daily life experiences such as suicide, marriage, crimes, and achievements, using technologically enabled tools such as TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. Video data analysis as a method of historical research enables historians to see events as they are and from the perspective of the ordinary person. The End-SARS as a social movement in Nigeria in 2020 was widely covered by the media and cannot be studied by historians without full exploration of video recordings of the event. The advantage of video over other known contemporary sources is that it is largely produced by individuals or unofficial groups, and the content is hardly subjected to state censorship. This paper interrogates the organization and execution of the 2020 End-Sars Protest Movement using video recordings.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Street naming has a rich dossier of the past. It however, constitutes one of the neglected aspects of sources and methodology in the reconstruction of history in Nigeria.

Paper long abstract:

Street naming has a rich dossier of the past. It, however, constitutes one of the neglected aspects of sources and methodology in the reconstruction of history in Nigeria. In the post-colonial era, Nigerian cities are still in the process of reframing their colonial history of street naming. This paper argues that contestation over street naming has followed the trajectory of historiographical patterns, namely; nationalist historiography, coloniality and decoloniality. Many urban areas and local authorities were eager to revisit their local histories on street naming. Some progress has been made over the last two decades in terms of decolonial awareness. In the final analysis, this paper submits that street naming as integral component of local histories and sources of historical reconstruction, continued to serve as a tool of control of over urban landscapes, symbols of power and site of contestations.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

How do we write about everyday life in situations of violence and repression? Is there a meaningful way of conceptualising these experiences as part of an 'everyday', or does everyday inevitably signify rhythms and routines that are mundane? And what methodological and ethical challenges arise?

Paper long abstract:

The release of political prisoners from the late 1980s and the unbanning of liberation movements in 1990 gave rise to widespread hope among South Africa’s black majority that political change was imminent. However, as the end of white minority rule was in sight, collective violence escalated. The violence of the transition era has largely been explored regarding its roots and causes; the social consequences of violence, and the ways in which people responded to, participated in, and resisted violence has received less attention.

This paper has two aims: first, it traces the making and unmaking of everyday life during this period of intense conflict and violence. It asks whether and how we can meaningfully write about everyday life in situations of violence, or whether "the everyday" inevitably focuses on the mundane and the ordinary. Secondly, it considers the ethical and methodological implications. The transition to democracy in South Africa has produced vast archival collections. Tens of thousands of pages chronicle life under siege during this period. Yet despite this vastness, this archive is riddled by silences and contradictions. The paper asks what alternative sources need to be considered when writing about this period, such as drawings, music, and poetry for example.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the socio-political trajectories of a cashew factory in southern Tanzania since the late 1970s. It proposes ethnographic engagement with personal archives and material remains in order to understand the past through present lived experiences and beyond dominant state narratives.

Paper long abstract:

In response to the methodological challenge of writing histories of the everyday, this paper proposes ethnographic engagement with personal archives and material remains. The latter stems from the need of going beyond textual or oral accounts towards an engagement with lived experiences in order to understand the past through its traces in the present and take into account “the physical and metaphysical worlds in which the subjects and objects of our inquiries thrive(d)” (Ochonu 2015: 289).

The relevance for this methodological approach arises through the case of multiple narratives surrounding a cashew factory in Lindi Region, southern Tanzania. It was built as part of a development scheme in the late 1970s largely financed by the World Bank. Over the past 45 years, the factory has undergone various changes in ownership and stands today as material testimony to complex socio-political intertwinements, encapsulating conflicting memories of prosperity and disappointment. In particular, the local shareholders who acquired the factory in 2004 shortly after the country’s adoption of privatization policies harbour feelings of resentment, claiming that they were “robbed” of their factory in 2018 when it was abruptly closed down by the government. Using privately assembled documentations, not unlike Barber’s (2006) ‘tin-trunk archives’, the representatives of the group of shareholders keep meticulous records of everything related to the factory and their efforts to reclaim it. Acting both as advocates and self-proclaimed ‘memory caretakers’, their personal archives offer a multitude of historical accounts that have so far been overshadowed by dominating state narratives.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper is located in the growing field of African post-socialism studies. By drawing on ethnographic research in Tanzania, it argues for a post-socialist lens to better understand the everyday lives in formerly African socialist countries.

Paper long abstract:

African post-socialism has long been a neglected topic, both in academia and the media. Instead, the discourse after the demise of socialist projects and eras on the African continent focused on neo-liberal transformations, democracy building, and the emergence of a civil society (Pitcher/Askew 2006). This erasure of African post-socialism is a result of the predominant frame of post-colonialism in African contexts and a discourse which is mainly dictated by scholars and development agents from the Global North.

Over the past years the field of African post-socialism is slowly growing and several accounts emerged which explore the continuities of African socialisms (Eaton 2006; Campbell 2010; Sumich 2021). Still, despite these important accounts African post-socialism remains a marginalized topic in African studies and is often treated as more of an afterthought.

Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic research in Tanzania, this paper argues that a post-socialist lens allows for a more comprehensive understanding of African everyday lives, the continuities of the past, and ideas of the future. By exploring the daily encounters between state agents and citizens in a public hospital and social welfare office, it shows how ideas stemming from the country's socialist past continue to shape the present state-citizen relationship. The analysis of people's expectations, ideas, and images of what 'the state' is and, more importantly, how it is supposed to care for its citizens against the backdrop of the country's past thereby offers important insights into Tanzania's unique history as one of the most famous examples of African socialism.