Theme group on globalisation, African Studies
Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands Theme group on globalisation, African Studies
Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Title: Globalization and Sociocultural Transformation in Africa
Personnel (as per 1.4.1999): Dr Jan Abbink (anthropologist, 0.5); Dr Anneke Breedveld (sociolinguist, 0.3); Professor Vernon February (literature scholar, 0.8); Henk Meilink MSc (economist, 1.0); Thera Rasing MA (anthropologist, 1.0); Professor Wim van Binsbergen (anthropologist and philosopher, 0.8); Dr Rijk van Dijk (anthropologist, 1.0); Professor Emile van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal (jurist, 0.8); Elly Rijnierse, MA (specialist in international relations, 1.0); Dr Mogobe Ramose (philosopher; external member employed by the Catholic University Brabant at Tilburg, The Netherlands); Julie Duran-Ndaya, MA (visiting fellow, ethnic studies)
Chair: Wim van Binsbergen
Subthemes: Ethnicity and conflict; Modernity, collective identities and cultural change; Proto-globalization; Religion, gender and the urban situation; Structural adjustment; Traditional authority
Countries: Botswana, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, South Africa, Togo, Zambia, Congo (ex-Zaire), Benin
Cooperation: Belgium: Africa Research Centre, Catholic University of Louvain; East Africa: OSSREA, Kampala, Uganda; The Netherlands: WOTRO programme on Globalization and the Construction of Communal Identities; ceres Research School
Duration: 1997 - 2001
Summary of research theme
The theme group has a research focus on globalization. Globalization is broadly defined as a process of intensifying contacts between cultures and social formations in the economic, political and cultural domains, forging new and pervasive links of interdependence between various localities. It is fuelled by the tendency towards reducing the costs of space and time and has transformative and dislocating effects on human collectivities, in sociocultural, ideological, and political-economic senses. At present, globalization is typically being produced under conditions of modern industrial technology, with its unprecedented mastery of space and time in transport, communication, information, and media, speaking their new language of decontextualized images and signs. The impact of globalization does not depend primarily on the actual distribution of such technologies to every corner of the globe (or, in our case, the African continent), but on the diffusion of globalizing phenomena in the domains of politics, economics and cultural exchange, making them frames of reference for more and more people. These phenomena redefine social and cultural ideals, challenging people's local identity and self-understanding. Hence, we will also study globalization in its historical manifestations that preceded modern, industrial developments. The clearly identifiable sociocultural transformations resulting from globalization at virtually all levels of society – now largely informed by the dynamics of world economic markets – will be our object of study. Economic aspects of globalization feature in our programme to the extent that they provide relevant frameworks for the analysis of sociocultural manifestations of globalization.
homepage | virtuality | commodification | globalisation and western central Zambia |
globalisation
and Francistown, Botswana | protoglobalisation
and diffusionisme
RESEARCH PROGRAMME
Introduction
Globalization has emerged as an inspiring concept in the study of today's world. Basic questions are evoked by the prevailing observations that the world is becoming a 'global village' and that local and transnational processes of communication connect, intermingle and influence one another. Questions arise as to the social and cultural implications of this. How do we explain things like initiation rites among middle-class women in a modern Zambian town, while such rites traditionally belong to a remote village setting? Why are Westernized ethnic elites from African countries involved in ethnic-nationalist violence in their home countries without ever intending to really 'go back home' themselves? What impact do imported violent videotapes suggesting conspicuous consumption and permissive sensuality have on the codes of propriety and gender relations on the Swahili coast? (Fuglesang 1994) How do Africans today impose patterns of (fragmented) meaning upon their urban space by drawing from repertoires increasingly derived from capitalism, global media culture, the state, and world religions? (Van Binsbergen 1993)
Contemporary scholarly discussions on the notion of globalization have thus raised interesting issues of identity and change. Until recently, discussions on globalization were dominated by economists and political scientists specialized in international relations. They mainly emphasized the trend towards integration and uniformization in the global village. The use of the term globalization emerged around 1980 in the field of economics, when the world economy rapidly evolved new forms of integration and interdependence. Although sociocultural dimensions of globalization can only be understood against an economic background of internationalizing enterprises, transnational flows of capital and products, and marginalization of large communities, there has recently been more specific attention for cultural aspects, especially from anthropologists, historians and scholars of art, media, and literary culture.
Within the overall field of globalization processes, we concentrate on the following three central research issues. These are reflected in the themes of the individual projects.
• As a general background, the accelerating worldwide flows of capital, goods, services, information and people, which shape sociocultural transformations in Africa
• Local sociocultural responses to globalization. Projects will highlight several types of response: the adaptation and incorporation of local historic and cultural symbols, ideas and practices to acquire a globalizing format, and the appropriation of objects and signs from the global sphere in a discourse of 'counterhegemony' and conflict
• Globalization as a vehicle of culture, bringing to specific localities cultural material that is available worldwide, and opening up worldwide spaces for cultural material hitherto confined to local contexts.
Research theme
This section will sketch the thematic background and the domains of theory in which our research is located. Globalization is viewed here as an empirically observed process, not as an analytical concept. It is broadly defined as a transformative process of intensified contacts between human collectivities and communities in the economic, political and cultural domains, forging new and more pervasive interrelations and dependency between social and cultural units of varying scale. The transformative effects of these contacts are commonly only partially known to the members of a society or social group. One could say that globalization is based on a process of reduction of the costs of space and time, whereby the resulting social, cultural, ideological, political and economic exchanges are leading to new, externally induced forms of societal organization. This is a situation typically produced under conditions of modern industrial technology, with its unprecedented – and expanding – mastery of space and time in the fields of transport, communication, information, and media, with their new language of decontextualized images and signs. The impact of globalization is not solely dependent on the actual distribution of technological means in every corner of the globe (or, in our case, of the African continent) but also on the diffusion of globalized phenomena of politics, economics and culture as a frame of reference for more and more people. Social and cultural ideals become redefined, and people's local identity and self-understanding are challenged. (All this differentiates globalization from earlier forms of global contacts, which, of course, are not new).
At almost all levels of society, there are clearly identifiable sociocultural transformations that result from globalization. They are fuelled by the present-day dynamics of world economic markets and technology. However, we want to maintain a historical perspective to keep in view those globalizing processes which preceded modern-day industrial socioeconomic developments. This historical awareness is represented in the programme by the application of the term proto-globalization.
The economic aspects of globalization feature in our programme to the extent that they provide a relevant framework for analysing sociocultural manifestations of globalization. Such an analysis will focus on processes of differential appropriation of global phenomena via specific cultural mechanisms. To articulate the economic perspective, we note that worldwide flows of goods, information services, and people have dramatically accelerated as a result of new developments in the location and nature of production, and in transport and communication systems. However, the globalization of the international trading and financial systems has largely bypassed the African continent. In the context of these globalizing flows, Africa is increasingly marginalized in the world economy. This is reinforced by a number of factors: the redirection of aid to Eastern Europe after 1989; the liberalization of world trade since the GATT/Uruguay Rounds in December 1993 (which made Sub-Saharan Africa lose important trade preferences); the inadequacy of an export-led development strategy based on participation in international trade (as advocated by Structural Adjustment Programmes or SAPs) – the continent’s increased production volume simply cannot keep up with sharp price declines. Africa has also failed to meet the challenge of a new wave of regionalism emerging in other regions (EU, NAFTA, AFTA) and it is shackled by an accumulating external debt (which rose from 57% of GNP in 1986 to over 100% in 1993). Far from solving Africa’s problems, SAPs have in some areas helped to undermine the conditions for long-term ‘sustained development’ (Cornia & Helleiner 1994).
In short, what the economic dimension of globalization shows for Africa, is a paradox: the continent is becoming more a part of the wider world (under the regime of the Bretton Woods institutions and donor countries) while its role as a consumer and producer is dramatically marginalized. This is the central problem of African globalization from a macroeconomic viewpoint.
One of the phenomena that has accompanied SAPs in Africa is the flooding of African markets with imports of attractive consumer goods originating largely in Asia. This is closely related to the widely implemented trade liberalization that followed the ‘Uruguay Agreement’ (1993). It has not only resulted in the destruction of the (embryonic) status of local manufacturing (contributing, in the process, to greater unemployment), it also drew the younger generations in particular into a mindset of Western aspirations and styles of living. The social and economic implications of this ‘distorted’ consumer behaviour are still largely unknown and require further examination. In general there is agreement in scholarly discussions on globalization so far that Africa occupies a special place: the experience of globalization there means that what people consume is not so much the goods that globalization has made available as the images, the illusions, of globalization. It amounts to what A. Mbembe has aptly called ‘lêcher la vitrine’: mental window-shopping without having the money to buy. It is a tantalizing play of unaffordable and frustrating illusions, typically reinforced through the electronic media. At the same time, globalization means that the format in which people experience and restructure their life world undergoes profound changes in response to worldwide models of alternatives to their local traditions (Kopytoff 1986, Appadurai 1990, Nash 1993).
In more sociological terms, the concept of globalization reflects a spatial metaphor but it also has a temporal dimension (Harvey 1989). There is a compressing of time and of time costs in relation to spatial displacement. It is this interplay between temporal and spatial dimensions that allows us to pinpoint why globalization has taken on a substantially new form in the last few decades – in intensity, depth, speed of the flows of goods and information, unabating migrations of people, and the 'simultaneity' of relations and events. All this is largely due to modern air transport, electronic media, satellite tv, e-mail and fax communication, and the resulting acceleration of products and images globally. This leads to a world where globalizing tendencies are coming to outweigh, or at least seriously challenge, localizing tendencies (Basch et al. 1994; Kearney 1995: 548). This implies that local traditions are more and more confronted with global ones, which challenge forms of authority, political power, development trajectories, cultural expressions and even the production and distribution of local commodities. The process thus also has an inherent conflictual aspect.
Thus, if we hold that globalization today expresses a real, qualitative change that uniquely characterizes the contemporary condition, this is because of the hegemonic nature of advanced technology, which has brought about unprecedented levels of mastery of space and time. When messages travel fast, when physical displacement is hardly necessary for effective communication, when such displacement can nevertheless be accomplished within days from anywhere on the globe to anywhere else, and when the technology of manufacturing and distribution has reached such levels that the same material environment with the exact same objects can be created and fitted out anywhere on the globe – then we have reduced the costs that time and space impose on the social process, to virtually zero. This is globalization in its true sense (Van Binsbergen 1996a).
Past social science theories on global connections and interdependencies have been developed within three main paradigms: world systems theory (Wallerstein), neo-Marxist dependency theory, and historical-structural theory (Braudel). While these approaches have revealed much of the dynamics, the structural tendencies and the political-economic factors operative in world history, they have not addressed the new forms of globalizing contacts that result from modern technology and increased material flows of consumer goods, commodified images, and cultural products. Neither have they devoted enough attention to cultural factors active in this process of globalization or to the ambiguous effects of such cultural processes of appropriation and representation. Recent thinking tends to move towards a processual theory of the experiential forms of globalization: cultural interpretations of locality, dispersal and movement, and community construction in the face of transnationality and marginalization (Anderson 1992, Hannerz 1992, Clifford 1992, 1994). Empirical studies in this field show that the experience of globalization in societies may lead to new imbalances, new forms of violence, onslaughts on local identity formation and social cohesion. Such ambiguities may again be only partially known to members of the society and may thus lead to very different responses which are included in some of project. Individual projects are set out in a document entitled: African Studies Centre, Research Programme 1997-2001, which is available from the secretariat of the African Studies Centre, Leiden: http://www.fsw.leidenuniv.nl/www/w3_asc/welcome.htm
The aim of the research programme introduced here is to study the above factors and to compare various trajectories in this interaction between global processes of change and the crystallization of communal identities. In addition to economic aspects, there will be an emphasis on the cultural aspects of globalization and on understanding regional specifics in a worldwide perspective. Special attention will be devoted to phenomena such as religion, identity formation, cultural symbolism and the development of lifestyles, relating them to the underlying political-economic dynamic. The various projects will move within the existing theoretical debates and try to advance them by contributing new empirical and comparative research.
The methodological approaches of the members are reflexive and critical. Methods are characterized by combinations of field research methods, though with different emphases for each project. Among these will be participant observation (e.g. of festivals, rites, media events and other collective gatherings), linguistic elicitation, collection of oral traditions (stories, songs, texts), key-informant interviewing, and case studies of households and firms. Policy reports, documents from ministries and other institutions, and in some cases archival material and statistical and economic data will be used as primary sources. Some researchers will administer questionnaires. Studies of secondary sources will also be made, including old historical texts. This means that while anthropological methods are used to collect qualitative and local-level data, they will be wedded to more sociological methods and to the gathering of information generated in supralocal contexts, i.e., written and visual sources.
Research results will be exchanged within the theme group and within the networks in which the researchers participate. Data will be compared to assess its relevance to each other's work, in order to enhance future comparisons and the development of theory on the mechanisms of globalization.
Subthemes
A social science perspective on globalization reveals all sorts of intriguing ambiguities. In the realm of culture, uniformization seems to be closely intertwined with the emergence of new differences (Clifford 1988, 1992; Hannerz 1987, 1992). Elements of globalization – the new mass media but also, as we saw, modern fashion and consumption styles – play a crucial if paradoxical role in the crystallization of parochial identities (Faurschou 1987; Jameson 1991). Such identities seek to legitimize themselves as ‘traditions’ but are often so deeply marked by modern cultural elements that one might better call them ‘pseudo-traditional’. Striking examples of this can be found (besides in Southeastern and Eastern Europe) in the so-called Third World, where we also see an ongoing deterritorialization of identities, an emergence of diasporic movements connected to a permanent 'home base', and new styles of production of hybrid local identities which escape or subvert the project of the nation state (Appadurai 1995: 214).
The literature (e.g. Nash 1994) shows that these phenomena also carry a potential for conflict, though it is not always acted out. Both communalism and conflict are addressed in various projects. In some projects attention is also given to 'commodification': culturally specific views on commodities and their value mark the interaction between local societies and the world market. Local cultural elements can be commodified: 'traditional' dances are performed for money, ethnic distinction marks are bought and sold (Van Binsbergen 1992).
In a geographical sense the projects concentrate to a large extent on urban areas as places on the African continent where a crystallization of globalizing phenomena occurs. The interconnectedness and interdependency of localities – rural and urban, African and Western – are played out in cities in particular, in terms of identity formation, migration, religious and ethnic transformation, and the cultural presence of the media.
The domains in which globalization phenomena reveal themselves most clearly in rural and urban areas are the following: transnational economic patterns of investment, production and consumption of modern, foreign manufactured products; commoditization; world religions and their local articulations and appropriations; migration patterns; interethnic relations and conflicts; commodity flows; forms of locally constructed political discourse – also concerning traditional authority – that confront internationally constructed ones; and the articulation of 'communities' brought into unprecedented contacts by new technical means and economic opportunities. In addition, we will address the place and role of new forms of ideological discourse, while in a historical sense the formation of different formats of pre-modern globalization patterns will be studied under the term proto-globalization.
Subthemes addressed in the projects of the theme group are derived from this entire problematic. These subthemes are summarized under the following headings:
These subthemes are reflected in the current and planned projects of our research group. The group has a multidisciplinary composition and a choice of regions that will allow it to identify the various crucial aspects of globalization as identified in Section 1 above.
Theme group output
Theme group output and its academic and policy relevance
One criterion to be observed in carrying out this research programme will be the insights that the constituent projects can give into the practice and potentials of development interventions. The research must contribute to an understanding of the problems confronting such interventions, as well as the broader context in which development institutions are functioning. It is important to realize the ambivalence of globalization processes – which produce uniformity, but also a reinforcement of parochial identities and, in the African case, increasing marginalization. One must also be aware of the vicissitudes of commodification processes. Important questions are: How can an understanding of this context help to explain the very notion of development and the tenor of discourses on development? Can we arrive at more differentiated notions and practices of development by taking the ambiguities of globalization and commodification into account? And especially: How is development, which is itself a clear example of a globalizing tendency, affected and transformed by the reinforcement of parochial identities? This set of questions central to the theme group were introduced at an international conference sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Development Cooperation (the former DGIS) in March 1997.
Several theme group members are involved in the study of development and development projects. This makes the research produced by the theme group relevant to interested parties in Africa: local NGOs, research institutes and policymakers. Our African counterparts will be encouraged to participate in the theme group’s activities as researchers and authors.
The study of the various subthemes finds considerable resonance and support among development agencies, among them the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Development Cooperation (formerly DGIS). Prof. van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal’s activities concerning traditional leadership in Africa and the recent EIDOS/WOTRO conference on globalization, consumption and development (both realized with Foreign Affairs funding) have attempted to achieve an effective transfer of academic knowledge to development circles. V. February’s work on the Afrikaans language and contemporary South African culture plays a major role in informing Dutch policy towards the new South Africa.
The theme group will further develop these policy-oriented dimensions by seeking effective exchanges between policymakers and academic researchers in the Netherlands. A possible topic for expansion of policy contacts is sociocultural transformation, and especially the issue of identity, which directly informs the destructive ethnic and regional conflicts that characterize much of contemporary Africa. This is particularly prominent in the work of J. Abbink, R. van Dijk, and W. van Binsbergen. A more strictly economic dimension of policy-oriented research is found in the work by H. Meilink, who over the years has attained great expertise at the interface between policymaking and academic research, especially in macroeconomic issues of food policy in East Africa.
Issues of globalization are central to many news items on Africa and on the diaspora of Africans (also in the Netherlands). Contributing to the media and other forms of information transfer and opinion formation are therefore a task of the theme group.
In addition to its theoretical aims and its positioning in global academic networks concerned with the central theme, the group will strengthen its academic relevance by organizing the following conferences and seminars:
1. ‘Globalization, consumption and development’, international conference organized in The Hague on behalf of EIDOS and the African Studies Centre, with assistance from the WOTRO programme ‘Globalization and the Construction of Communal Identities’ and EIDOS; convenors: W. van Binsbergen, R. Fardon and R. van Dijk (March 1997)
2. Rencontre Internationale d’Information et de Sensibilisation aux Idéaux Démocratiques à l’Intention des Chefs Traditionnels de la Région Ouest-Africaine (Bénin, Burkina Faso, Côte-d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigéria et Togo). Convenors: National Commission of Human Rights in Togo and E.A.B. van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal. Lomé, Togo. Currently this conference theme is being modified and transferred to another West African location.
3. ‘Ubuntu as a Globalizing Concept: the Dilemma’s of "Being Human" in South Africa Today’, international conference to be organized by V. February, M. Ramose and W. van Binsbergen. This is one of the theme group’s ‘Africa Conferences’ (June 1999, Pretoria, in close cooperation with the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa).
4. ‘Globalization and its discontents'.International conference, in collaboration with OSSREA, the convenors include African scholars and, on the part of the theme group, J. Abbink and R. van Dijk (medio 1999)
5. Commodification: Objects and Identities: The Social Life of Things Revisited, International Confernece, Amsterdam 1999: Theme group globalisation (ASC) with the WOTRO Programme ‘Globalisation and the construction of communal identities’, and the International Network on Globalisaiton; convenors: Professors Peter Geschiere and Wim van Binsbergen
6. Transformation processes and Islam in Africa (Leiden, 15 October, 1999): ASC theme group ‘Globalisation’ in collaboration with the Working Group on African Islam (one of this theme group’s initiatives, taken in 19998), and the Niternational Institute for the Study of Ismalm in the Modern World (ISIM); convenors: Wim van Binsbergen, Dr José van Santen and Dr Anneke Breedveld
7. ‘Globalization and Sociocultural Transformation in Africa: Retrospect and Prospect’, to be organized by the theme group as a whole (September 2000).
While the theme group was still in formation, two of its members organized a conference that reflected its central research themes: ‘Black Athena: African Contributions to Global Systems of Knowledge’, one-day conference, Leiden, convened by W. van Binsbergen & R. van Dijk, June 1996. Editing the conference proceedings will be one activity of the theme group.
Output and its 'added value'
The theme group will attempt to produce good case studies based on empirical research, thus contributing to the formation of theory on globalization (there is no one unified theory as yet). It will seek to describe and interpret some of the major processes of change on the African continent today in the light of available theoretical approaches. The insights gained in research are of theoretical relevance. The theme group’s composition is diverse in terms of academic discipline, career levels, regional specialization and resources, and this creates a focus for scholarly exchange that promises to realize an added value over and above the endeavours of the individual researchers involved.
A second major aim in our work is to focus on the development implications of consumerism, negative aspects of marginalization and commodification, and movements of contestation and (real and potential) conflict in community formation. We thus emphasize the application value of our studies, and members of the research group will be encouraged to submit any policy recommendations to relevant institutions and parties.
In addition, we will make common efforts at theoretical rethinking, and at comparing the relevance of aspects of globalization differentially studied in the various projects, with their individual emphases. This common effort will be a central factor at the conferences to be organized (hopefully both at the ASC Leiden and in Africa) as well as in joint publications planned in later years of the project. The theme group also plans a larger closing conference in its final year of existence (2000).
In terms of teaching, members of the theme group collaborate in supervising and commenting on the work of MA and PhD students. Three members hold a professorate and provide their own lecture courses. Others are involved in guest lectures and course participation at universities and elsewhere. Group members occasionally engage in advisory and consultancy work.
External positioning
Within the African Studies Centre, the group will maintain links with the four other theme groups when their research is closely relevant to its programme (such as politics and conflict, resource competition, changing patterns of rural labour, partial de-agrarianization, and world economic trends that marginalize Africa). Those groups may put less emphasis on sociocultural aspects or operate within different theoretical orientations. Since academic meetings of the group are open, we anticipate that members of other groups will occasionally take part in discussions.
Nationally
In just a few years' time, globalization has established itself on the Dutch social science scene as a major focus for innovative research. The national funding agency NWO, through its branch WOTRO, has established an interdisciplinary programme called Globalization and the Construction of Communal Identities; in addition to its international network, it maintains a national network of more than thirty researchers. Globalization is now also a concern in Dutch research schools such as CERES, CNWS and the Amsterdam School of Social Science. The Department of Cultural Anthropology/Sociology of Development of the Free University of Amsterdam concentrates its departmental research programme on globalization, development and local identities. Our theme group is intimately linked to these developments. Three of its members are also part of the WOTRO programme; two are funded by it, while the senior full-time member is co-director of the programme as well as a senior researcher within the CERES, CNWS and Free University context. Through the WOTRO project, our theme group also cooperates with the Department of Philosophical Anthropology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, one of whose central research themes is the impact of information technology on identity. Recently, the establishment of the national Working Group on African Islam, one of the theme group’s initiatives, has stimulated co-operation with ISIM, Leiden.
Our group is not merely a response to these outside stimuli, but it intends to make a distinctive contribution to the ongoing debate by developing the following aspects:
• It concentrates on the African continent (whereas most other Dutch collective projects on globalization make intercontinental comparisons). It focuses on relations affected by globalization within the continent, and on 'Africa in Europe' (the religious and cultural diasporas).
• It concentrates on sociocultural transformation, in such areas as religion, psychoemotional experience, and identity, as mediated by specific historical forms of African language, traditional leadership, culture, and spirituality.
• It tries to situate these sociocultural transformations within today’s advanced electronic technology (media, computers, mass production of consumer goods) and intercontinental economic patterns of distribution and domination (the economic and technological dimension is underdeveloped in many other Dutch social science projects on globalization).
• It studies globalization not only of Africa, but also in Africa, with African colleagues, research institutions and policymakers.
Internationally
Globalization is a prominent object of international academic research today, and members of our theme group contribute to the growing scholarship on this topic with leading globalization research groups in Chicago (Prof. A. Appadurai), Stockholm (Prof. U. Hannerz), New York (Prof. A. Mazrui, Institute for Global Cultural Studies, SUNY), Manchester (International Center for Cultural Research, Prof. R. Werbner), Louvain, Belgium (Africa Research Centre, Prof. Devisch) and with the international network established by the WOTRO programme. Efforts will be made to formalize and extend these contacts and cooperative links. The theme group is also involved in the international globalization studies networks AEGIS Africa-Europe Group of Interdisciplinary Studies) and EIDOS: European Interuniversity Development Opportunities Study Group, a network of development-orientated researchers in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany. In 1995 the Dutch Ministry of Development Cooperation funded EIDOS for five international conferences. The theme group is represented in the steering committees of these two organisations. In addition, all members bring with them their individual links with research institutes in Africa, which have not all been mentioned but include institutions in Botswana, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, South Africa, Togo, and Zambia (in alphabetical order). An explicit aim of the theme group is to establish links with researchers involved in the study of globalization on the African continent (e.g. in the framework of CODESRIA) and to invite some of them to the African Studies Centre as visiting scholars and conference participants.
External funding
In its current projects, the research group relies to a considerable extent on external funding. The research projects of Dr van Dijk, Dr Breedveld, Ms Rasing and Ms Rijnierse are financed entirely through grants from WOTRO, including the WOTRO programme 'Globalization and the Construction of Communal Identities'.
The group also receives and anticipates receiving external financial support for the various seminar and conference activities listed above. For the major conferences planned, grants have been requested from the Netherlands Foreign Ministry, EIDOS and WOTRO. For specific projects external funding will be arranged in a joint venture with collaborating institutions.
7. Bibliography
A. Selected bibliography of research group members (as per 1997; to be updated)
Abbink, J.
1994 Refractions of revolution in Ethiopian 'Surmic' societies: an analysis of cultural response. In: H.G. Marcus, ed., New Trends in Ethiopian Studies, pp. 734-755. Lawrenceville (NJ): Red Sea Press.
1995a Disaster, relief and political change in southern Ethiopia: developments from within Suri society. In: J. Sorenson, ed., Disaster and Development in the Horn of Africa, pp. 151-170. Basingstoke - London: Macmillan.
1995b Transformations of violence in twentieth-century Ethiopia: cultural roots, political conjunctures. Focaal 25: 57-77.
1996 Violence, state and ethnicity in the Horn of Africa. In: J. Abbink et al., Societies of Fear, pp. 3-26. Utrecht: ISOR.
(forthc.) Représentations de la culture matérielle des Me'en: forme et fonction des artefacts. Bulletin de la Maison des Etudes Ethiopiennes 7.
Breedveld, A.
1996 Prototypes and ethnic categorization: on the terms Pullo and Fulbe in Maasina (Mali), paper presented at the Fulbe conference Pastoralism under Pressure, 13-15 June 1996, ASC, Leiden. (Forthcoming in Proceedings).
Breedveld, A., & M. de Bruijn
1996 L’image des Fulbe, analyse critique de la construction du concept de Pulaaku. Cahiers d’Études Africaines 36(4): 791-821.
February, V.A.
1982 Mind your colour. London - Boston: Kegan Paul International.
1987 The Afrikaners of South Africa. London - Boston: Kegan Paul International.
Meilink, H.A.
1990 Adjustment policies and sustainable development in Africa: some observations. In: Beyond Adjustment in Sub-Saharan Africa. Maastricht - The Hague: DGIS.
1995 Structurele aanpassing in Afrika. In: J. van Lin & R. van Eijk, eds., Samenleving in Afrika: Beeldvorming ter Discussie, UTP-Teksten 45, pp. 49-58. Heerlen: Universitair Centrum voor Theologie en Pastoraat, Missiologisch Instituut, Heerlen & Cadier en Keer: Afrikacentrum.
Rasing, T.
1995 Passing on the Rites of Passage: Girls’ Initiation Rites in the Context of an Urban Roman Catholic Community on the Zambian Copperbelt. Leiden - London: African Studies Centre - .
Van Binsbergen, W.M.J.
1993a African independent churches and the state in Botswana, in: M. Bax & A. de Koster, eds., Power and Prayer: Religion and Political Problems in Past and Present, pp. 25-56. Amsterdam: Free University Press.
1993b Making sense of urban space in Francistown, Botswana. In: P.J.M. Nas, ed., Urban Symbolism, pp. 184-228. Leiden: Brill.
1995a Popular culture in Africa: dynamics of African cultural and ethnic identity in a context of globalisation. In: J.D.M. van der Klei, ed., Popular Culture: Africa, Asia & Europe: Beyond Historical Legacy and Political Innocence, Proceedings Summer School 1994, pp. 7-40. Utrecht: CERES.
1995b Four-tablet divination as trans-regional medical technology in Southern Africa. Journal of Religion in Africa 25(2): 114-140.
1996a Transregional and historical connections of four-tablet divination in Southern Africa. Journal of Religion in Africa 26(1): 2-29.
1996b Virtuality as a key concept in the study of globalisation: aspects of the symbolic transformation of contemporary Africa. In: Global Culture and Local Identities: Workshop of the Department of Cultural Anthropology/Sociology of Development, Friday June 7, 1996, pp. 119-141. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit.
Van Dijk, R.
1992a Young Malawian Puritans. Young Born-Again Preachers in a Present- day African Urban Environment. Utrecht: ISOR (PhD dissertation).
1992b Young Puritan preachers in post-independence Malawi. Africa 62 (2): 159-181.
1993 Young born-again preachers in Malawi: the significance of an extraneous identity. In: P. Gifford, ed., New Dimensions in African Christianity. Ibadan: AACC - Sefer Books.
1995 Fundamentalism and its moral geography in Malawi: the representation of the diasporic and the diabolical. Critique of Anthropology 15(2): 171-191.
1996 Foucault, hekserij en puritanisme in Malawi: een expressionistische kritiek op Mary Douglas' grid/group analyse. Focaal 28: 47-63.
1997 From camp to encompassment: discourses of trans-subjectivity in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora. Journal of Religion in Africa 27(2): 135-159.
Van Dijk, R. & P. Pels
1996 Contested authorities and politics of perception: deconstructing the study of religion in Africa. In: R.P. Werbner, R.P. & T.O. Ranger, eds., Postcolonial Identities in Africa, pp. 245-270. London: Zed Books.
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