Cultural
Dynamics
Research
Proposal
Fact Sheet and
Proposal
1. Title:
From village
to canon: the qualified survival through formalisation of popular
culture in transcontinental perspective
2. Summary:
This proposal investigates the cultural dynamics of format change in the face of formalisation and consolidation of popular culture in the national space of Zambia and Malawi, as well as in the transnational space of African Dutch popular expression in the Netherlands and the global space of UNESCO. Aim is to conceptualise and theorise the ‘survival through formalisation’ problematic central to this proposal. …
3. Applicant:
- Prof.dr Wim M.J. van Binsbergen
African
Studies Centre (ASC), P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, the
Netherlands / Philosophical Faculty, Erasmus University
Rotterdam, P.O.Box 1738 3000 DR Rotterdam, the Netherlands
4. Institutional
organisation and co-operation:
- African Studies Centre (ASC),
- Department of Sociology, The University of Zambia, P.O.Box 32379, Lusaka, Zambia
-
Department of Comparative Literature, Leiden University, P.O. Box
9555, 2300 RB Leiden, the Netherlands
5. Project
duration:
- 4 years: as of February 2008.
6. Research
team:
-
Prof.dr Wim M.J. van Binsbergen
African
Studies Centre (ASC), P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The
Netherlands, Tel:00-31-71-5273372, Fax: 00-31-71-5273344, E-mail:
binsbergen@ascleiden.nl .
- Mrs Dr T.S.A. Rasing
Head of Department, Department of Gender Studies, The University of Zambia, P.O.Box 32379, Lusaka, Zambia, Tel. 260-1-291777, e-mail: trasing@zamnet.zm
- Mrs Dr. Daniela Merolla
Department
of African Languages and Literature, Leiden University, P.O. Box
9555, 2300 RB Leiden, the Netherlands, tel……, e-mail:
DMerolla@ascleiden.nl
7. Classification:
Of the five
perspectives (‘invalshoeken’) within the NWO-WOTRO
programme ‘Cultural Dynamics’, the proposed research
project concentrates on
whilst, inevitably, all other three perspectives (citizenship, innovation and intermediality) are implicitly involved.
8. Project
description
number of words: 1163
In the 1980s a
radical change could be seen in the production of expressive
culture among the Nkoya people, peasant farmers in Zambia (South
Central Africa). For nearly two centuries the Nkoya (a despised
regional minority) had prided themselves on dominating the domain
of festive and therapeutic music and dance. Throughout Western
Zambia, royals of various ethnic affiliations demonstrated their
status by orchestras in which Nkoya musicians would perform Nkoya
music. And in the Nkoya heartland, all transitions in personal
and group life, any crisis of a medical or social nature, would
be articulated by song and dance in which all villagers of all
ages and both genders would be unproblematically eligible and
competent, at dozens of occasions each year. However, a
combination of factors led to a dramatic mutation of this
village-based model. In the early 1980s, Nkoya urban migrants
founded the Kazanga Cultural Society. This association soon was
to revive, in the distant Nkoya heartland, the Kazanga annual
festival (until the late 19th century a loyal harvesting festival
forbidden in colonial times). At today’s Kazanga festival
the entire repertoire of Nkoya royal, therapeutic, ritual and
festive music and dance is staged as a series of items in a
tightly packed programme. The performers are local villagers and
urban groups, who observe uniformity of dress, movement and
spatial arrangement, and have rehearsed intensively under the
direction of the Kazanga executive. The audience would be
regional and national politicians, Nkoya royals, other regionally
prominent people, and the population at large. Formally, Nkoya
expressive culture had been redefined beyond recognition, yet in
the process had been revitalised at the same time. For
whereas expressive culture was already greatly declining locally
for reasons unrelated to the rise of the Kazanga society and
festival, at the annual festival came to life once more, was
recognised and cherished (rather than rejected because if its
novel format and formal rationality) by the Nkoya audience, and
has proved to be a means to capture the attention, and the
support, of regional and national politicians.
As a result of the new vitality engendered by Kazanga, new phases
of formalised format change of cultural production appear at the
horizon and are eagerly aspired by the Kazanga executive: the
creation of formal Kazanga festival grounds, of a museum and
conference centre there, and the attempt to have the festival
formally accepted by the UNESCO as an Intangible Masterpiece of
Humankind.
Two central questions arise at this point:
The importance of questions far transcends the local contexts of the Nkoya, Zambia, and Africa. For, in the course of the last century, the formal, bureaucratic organisation has become the standard (even: exclusive) form of the management, funding, recognition, study, education, and control, of culture, worldwide. This development (of which the emergence of cultural canons is a central feature) is among the most conspicuous aspects of national cultural policies, and of cultural globalisation, today. In this light, the rise of the Kazanga festival, the bid for UNESCO recognition, and even the present Research Programme on Cultural Dynamics in itself, entail
Yet, as the
Kazanga example shows, under certain conditions such risks may be
taken, if the gains are the preservation of the diversity of
specific, unique local forms, re-vitalisation, and transregional
circulation and enjoyment of local forms.
Twenty-five years
after the creation of Kazanga, the cultural dynamics of format
change in the face of formalisation and consolidation of Nkoya
culture – in the national space of Zambia, and the global
space of UNESCO, will be the subject of a PhD project, to be
executed under joint supervision with the University of Zambia.
This will be a form of action research, whose aim is not just the
production of academic knowledge but also exploring, and
preparing, the path along which the desired UNESCO recognition of
Kazanga could be obtained – and the obstacles (especially at
the regional level) along that path.
Controlled
comparison is likely to throw in relief hidden aspects of
cultural dynamics. Therefore a second PhD project is proposed in
order to study the attempts, in neighbouring Malawi, to have the
famous nyau masquerade recognised as another UNESCO
Intangible Masterpiece of Humankind, and again, if possible, to
assess and help remove the obstacles in this process. Such
attempts have been made over the past decade, unsuccessfully. The
situation here is very different from the Nkoya situation in that
nyau is not confined to one ethnic group, has a great
antiquity, a long history of state and research involvement, and
a masculine gender dynamics.
However, the relevance of the present problematic is by no means limited to Africa, and moreover it has many theoretical aspects that are best studied in their own right as primary points of departure, not as afterthoughts in a primarily ethnographic case study. For this purpose a third PhD project is proposed. Since the 1990’s, we have witnessed several processes investing African expressive popular culture in the Netherlands. On the one hand, there are increasing cultural exchanges with ‘formalized’ artistic groups of music, dance and theatre from Africa invited to perform - or to organize artistic tours - in the Netherlands; on the other hand, there has been an explosive growth of local expressive popular forms (theatre, music, dance groups) created by African migrants and children of migrants living and working in the Netherlands. The PhD researcher will investigate whether and how these concomitant processes interact – and intensify each other – in the formation of new expressive forms and how far state cultural politics affects the present developments. Here inspiration will be derived not only from recent theoretical literature on migrant culture but also from the other two part projects: similar questions will be raised as to the ‘survival through formalisation’ problematic that is central to this proposal. Such a transnational approach will offer material for comparison as to changes and modifications – and their questioning – related to the negotiations researched and imposed by social changes and international agencies and taking place in two specific African cases (Zambia and Malawi) and in the African Dutch case.
Finally, a post-doc will study the theoretical and methodological challenges of the project as a whole; also the day-to-day co-ordination of the project will be entrusted to this researcher. Since the co-applicants have a considerable teaching load, part of the grant will be used to release them for this research project. (1197 words)
Literature
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dialogue and silence, in Barber K. and Farias P.F. de M. Eds. Discourse
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and revisions of power: Transformations of the Nyau dance in
Central Malawi’. In: Comaroff J. & J. (eds.) Modernity
and its malcontents The University of Chicago Press, pp.
34-58.
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and Nyau Societies In: Ranger, T. O. and J.Weller (eds.) Themes
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Department of Antiquities
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Websites, WebArt and Digital Imagination, In Ponzanesi and
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and money : fantasy spaces in popular Ghanaian cinema,
London, New York: Taylor and Francis.
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gender, Nationhood, and the Migratory Text, In M.Grsz-Ngale and
O.H.Kohole (Eds.), Gendered Encounters, challenging cultural
boundaries and social hierarchies in Africa, pp. 205-222. London
and New York: Routledge.
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P., and D.Merolla, 2005, (eds), Migrant Cartographies. New
Cultural and Literary Spaces in Post-colonial Europe,
Lexington, Lanham, Boulder, New York.
Rasing, T., 2001, The bush burned the
stones remain: Women’s initiation and globalization in
Zambia, Hamburg/Muenster: LIT Verlag
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brotherhood among the Mozambique Cewa’, South African
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and the cultural politics of identity in the Grassfields’,
in Peter Geschiere and Piet Konings, eds, Itineraires d
‘accumulation au Cameroun, Paris: Karthala.
Rowlands, Mike., 2005, Value and the
cultural transmission of things’, in : van Binsbergen,
W.M.J., & Peter Geschiere, 2005, eds., Commodification:
Things, Agency and Identities: The social life of Things
revisited, Berlin/Muenster: LIT, pp. 267-282
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ethnic identity in a context of globalization’, in: J.D.M.
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9. Project
output
For this project
the following outcome is envisaged: three PhD theses; two volumes
of conference papers in which the initial perspectives and the
findings of the project will be discussed by an international
academic forum; an authored book on cultural dynamics and
structural transformations of the Kazanga society; several other
academic articles; extensive ‘action’-type
consultations with regional groups in the domain of popular
culture in Zambia, Malawi and the Netherlands; UNESCO recognition
for the Zambian and Malawian cultural achievements; and at the
end a popular cultural manifestation (to be held in the
Netherlands but with participation also from Zambia and Malawi)
that will highlight the vitality of popular culture in the face
of formalisation.
10. Curriculum
vitae principal applicant
Wim M.J. van Binsbergen is currently Professor of the Foundations of Intercultural Philosophy, Philosophical Faculty, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Senior Researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands. His research interests include: religion in Africa; intercultural philosophy; African and Ancient Mediterranean history; Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate; ethnicity, ancient and modern statehood; globalisation, commodification, virtuality and mediatisation; and the long-range, intercontinental diachronic study of myth, divination, board-games and other formal cultural systems. He has pursued these interests as research leader, university teacher and thesis supervisor; as author of several books and numerous scholarly articles; as editor of numerous edited volumes; and through extensive fieldwork in Tunisia, Zambia, Guinea Bissau, and Botswana, besides historical projects on South Central Africa, the Ancient Near East, the Bronze Age Mediterranean, and worldwide. He held professorial chairs at Manchester, Berlin, Amsterdam (VU), and Durban-Westville, and directed Africanist research at the Leiden ASC throughout the 1980s and 1990s. His authored books include: Religious Change in Zambia (1981); Tears of Rain: Ethnicity and History in western central Zambia (1992); Culturen bestaan niet (1999), and Intercultural Encounters: African and Anthropological Lessons towards a Philosophy of Interculturality (2003). He has been the Editor of Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy since 2002.
11. Relevant
publications of the applicants
Merolla,
Daniela, and Mena Lafkioui, in press, (eds.), L’oralité
entre continuité et renouvellement médiatique. Comparaisons
africaines, L’Harmattan, (accepted for publication).
Merolla, Daniela,
2005, De la parole aux vidéos. Oralité, écriture et oralité
médiatique dans la production culturelle amazigh (berbère), Afrika
Focus, Vol.18, No. 1-2, 2005: 33-57.
Merolla,
Daniela, [ year ] ‘Deceitful Origins and Dogget Roots: Dutch
Literary Space and Moroccan Immigration’, in: Forging New
European frontiers: Transnational Families and Their Global
Networks, D.Bryceson and U.Vuorela (Eds.), Berg, Oxford/New
York, pp.103-123.
Merolla,
Daniela, 2002, ‘Digital Imagination and the ‘Landscapes
of Group Identities’: Berber Diaspora and the Flourishing of
Theatre, Video's, and Amazigh-Net’, The Journal of North
African Studies, Winter, 2002: 122-131.
Ponzanesi,
P., and D.Merolla, 2005, (eds), Migrant Cartographies. New
Cultural and Literary Spaces in Post-colonial Europe,
Lexington, Lanham, Boulder, New York.
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/Avebury.
Rasing, T., 2001, The bush burned the
stones remain: Women’s initiation and globalization in
Zambia, Hamburg/Muenster: LIT Verlag
Rasing, T.S.A., 2004, ‘The persistence
of female initiation rites: Reflecivity and resilience of women
in Zambia’, in: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., van Dijk, R.,
eds., Situating globality: African agency in the appropriation
of global culture, Leiden: Brill, 277-309.
Rasing, T.S.A., 1999, ‘Globalization
and the making of consumers: Zambian kitchen parties’, in:
Richard Fardon, Wim van Binsbergen and Rijk van Dijk (eds.) Modernity
on a Shoestring: dimensions of globalization, consumption and
development in Africa and beyond. Leiden/London: EIDOS, pp.
227-247
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1992, Kazanga:
Etniciteit in Afrika tussen staat en traditie, inaugural
lecture, Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit; shortened French version:
‘Kazanga: Ethnicité en Afrique entre Etat et
tradition’, Afrika Focus, 1993, 1: 9-40; English
version with postscript: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1994, ‘The
Kazanga festival: Ethnicity as cultural mediation and
transformation in central western Zambia’, African
Studies, 53, 2, 1994, pp 92-125.
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1992, Tears of
Rain: Ethnicity and history in central western Zambia,
London/Boston: Kegan Paul International
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2001, ‘Les
chefs royaux nkoya et l’Association culturelle Kazanga dans
la Zambie du centre-ouest aujourd’hui: Résiliation, déclin
ou folklorisation de la fonction du chef traditionnel?’, in:
Perrot, C.-H., et al., eds., Le retour des rois, Paris:
Karthala. 489-512
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2003, Intercultural
encounters: African and anthropological towards a philosophy of
interculturality, Berlin/Boston/Muenster: LIT
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2003, 'Then give
him to the crocodiles': Violence, state formation, and cultural
discontinuity in west central Zambia, 1600-2000', in: van
Binsbergen, W.M.J., ed., The dynamics of power and the rule of
law, Berlin/Münster/London: LIT, Leiden, pp. 197-220; cf.
van Binsbergen 1993d.
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2003,
‘Cultural expressions of the Chewa nyau: An evaluation
report prepared for the Second Proclamation of Masterpieces of
the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity,
UNESCO-Headquarters, Paris, 21-25 July 2003’.
12.
Research budget
- 3 PhD projects (sandwich)
Eur 180,000
- 1 post-doc (0.75 fte for 4 years):
Eur 170,000
- travel, research, boarding and lodging costs 90,000
- seminars/
workshops: 3 x 12,000
36,000
Publication costs
40,000
Release from teaching duties of senior team members 35,000
Concluding manifestation
30,000
--------
Total:
581,000
Additional funding
will be sought from the African Studies Centre, Leiden
University; and the Trust Fund of the Erasmus University
Rotterdam