bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Shared Lives: Exploring Practices of Amity Between Grandmothers and Grandchildren in Western Kenya
Authors: Geissler P. Wenzel , Prince Ruth J. 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThis essay explores the relationships between three Luo grandmothers and their grandchildren with particular attention to forms of address and of sharing as practices of amity. Classic Africanist kinship studies identified these as central to the relations between alternate generations. We argue that they are also crucial to our understanding of some aspects of the notion of ‘love’ (hera)that old and young Luo describe as constitutive both of grandmotherhood in particular and of sociality in general. We shall intertwine these concerns of the first generation of social anthropologists, in what were then imagined as pre-modern societies, with the concerns that contemporary, modern Luo grandmothers and grandchildren have with love. Love or amity, and their attendant everyday practices of sharing, retain their importance both for the grandmaternal bond and for broader Luo sociality. Rather than providing an unquestioned and unequivocal prescriptive framework, these practices of relatedness are situated within an imaginative field which is often explicitly dichotomised. Some practices stress individual selves and autonomous subjects, while others emphasise the sharedness of the self and the primacy of relations over subjects. Rather than adhering to one or the other of these poles of relatedness and personhood, modern Luo grandmothers and grandchildren create their everyday lives between them, drawing on divergent ideas and practices, while enjoying, where possible, the pleasures of'love’.
Gendered Ritual Dualism in a Patrilineal Society: Opposition and Complementarity in Kulere Fertility Cults
Authors: Frank Barbara 
Published: July 2008

AbstractAlthough a favourable position for women is usually anticipated where they occupy important economic roles in the context of matrilineal descent, such a position may well exist in a patrilineal society, especially if women organise as in West Africa. Here there exist well-organised women's cult associations which are well known from Liberia and Sierra Leone and occur also in western Cameroon and south-eastern Nigeria. The present article demonstrates the existence of a comparable women's association in middle-belt Nigeria among the Kulere. The article focuses mainly on the manner in which through the cooperation of certain men's and women's associations ‘gender symmetry’ was ritually expressed in the sphere of agriculture and fertility. The practical foundation of this symmetry in fertility cults was a relatively even division of labour between the sexes and a favourable position for women in marriage, since they could decide independently whether to stay with a husband or leave him. Cult associations were predominant in public life. Women were strictly excluded from men's associations which held political–ritual offices and channelled advantages in ritual consumption to men. Notwithstanding this exclusion, women had their own association in which they could regulate their own affairs as well as pass decisions for the whole community including the men. The women's organisation held major responsibilities for the protection and the fertility of the fields, both practically as well as ritually. In this responsibility the women's association cooperated with a men's association which otherwise intimidated women. This association of males protected the fields through the presence of supernatural guardians which was sometimes staged in masquerades. The corresponding duties and cooperation of both associations were enacted ritually through the use of common shrines and when the women contacted water spirits to increase the harvest under the protection of male masqueraders. The Kulere case shows a patrilineal society where women had a relatively independent position which was publicly acknowledged through gender dualism in the ritual organisation of agriculture in which their special capabilities with respect to fertility and sustainability were recognised.
Transacting Obasinjom: The Dissemination of a Cult Agency in the Cross River Area
Authors: Röschenthaler Ute 
Published: July 2008

AbstractDuring the twentieth century, Obasinjom became one of the best known and most effective cult agencies in the Cross River area of Cameroon and Nigeria. This paper aims at reconstructing the history of Obasinjom and some of its variants. Unlike many other witch-hunting cults, Obasinjom usually did not disappear after accomplishing the immediate job for which it was acquired. The owners additionally desired to possess the institution because it created wealth, influence and prestige for them as well as their village as a whole. Obasinjom and other cult agencies (as well as women's and men's societies and dance associations) spread from village to village across ethnic or language boundaries. Along with their dissemination, something of their identities and agency diffused and was incorporated into their histories over time and space. As intellectual property they were owned by the buying village and at the same time remained the property of the selling village. Obasinjom, as well as more important institutions, created decentralised networks of owners who had no definite knowledge of all the other participants. The recently formed pan-Obasinjom association, however, has changed this situation and, at least among some owners, created a feeling of identity and a greater sense of unity.
Reflections on Witchcraft, Danger, and Modernity Among the Tuareg
Authors: Rasmussen Susan J. 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThis essay explores the varied ways so-called ‘witchcraft’ powers are implicated today in an African society, the Tuareg of the Republic of Niger. There is analysis of the interplay of these powers and dangers in case studies and vignettes, suggesting that recent assertions of ‘witch-like’ powers are grounded in moral discourse that addresses negotiated social relationships rather than linear temporal transformations from ‘tradition’ into ‘modernity’. A comparative analysis of these powers in diverse contexts reveals that witchcraft discourses are multiple and invite less a lineal temporal question of ‘tradition’ versus ‘modernity’, more a question of how moral discourses are reconfigured from cultural referents in intrinsically diverse repertoires.
Drinking, Rumour, and Ethnicity in Jimma, Ethiopia
Authors: Mains Daniel 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThis paper is an investigation of the relationship between identity, politics, and rumours in Jimma, Ethiopia. The introduction of ethnic federalism in Ethiopia after the fall of the Marxist Derg regime in 1991 has been the topic of a significant amount of academic discussion, but little attention has been given to the day-to-day experience of this change. Consequently, post-1991 Ethiopian politics have been viewed primarily in terms of ethnic power struggles. An analysis of rumours that are circulated through casual conversation enables a better understanding of popular reactions to ethnic federalism. In particular, rumours regarding the drinking habits of Oromo Muslims and the political behaviour of Protestants reveal that ethnicity is closely intertwined with religion and nationalism. This analysis also demonstrates how a particularly Ethiopian form of discourse functions as a means both of resisting and coping with loss of political power and economic decline. Finally, it explores how international news media coverage of Christian–Muslim conflict and anxieties about globalisation are interrelated with local power struggles. In this paper, rumours are treated as a discourse that provides a window into the worldview of the speaker in order to explore how individuals negotiate political change and construct difference at the everyday level.
Entrustment and its Changing Political Meanings in Fuladu, the Gambia (1880–1994)
Authors: Bellagamba Alice 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThe practice of entrustment is a form of voluntary allegiance for the sake of protection, one which historically lies at the core of host–stranger relationships along the River Gambia. Deeply woven into the social fabric of local communities, it was appropriated by various historical subjects during the twentieth century in order to construct networks of political confidence and mutual assistance at a local and national level. This article traces this dynamic process of re-elaboration. In so doing, it takes into account the history of a Mandinka commercial settlement in eastern Gambia from the late nineteenth century to post-Independence times, and questions the shifts that occurred in the political significance of entrustment with changing social and economic scenarios. Contextualised in the longue durée, the practice of karafoo shows its relevance as a cultural resource encouraging the creation of networks of trust and interdependence in social settings historically characterised by seasonal and more stable forms of migration.
Making Ethnic Elites: Ritual Poetics in a Cameroonian Lycée
Authors: Ignatowski Clare A. 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThis case study of youth cultural production in Cameroon examines how lycée students introduce idioms of tradition and the ancestral past into the lycée context by creating a club modelled on a dance society popular in the region. In pre-colonial rural Tupuriland, the gurna society was a key site for the moral–sexual socialisation of youth and a cultural–political arena where competition was staged between individuals and villages during death celebrations. Today, the gurna remains popular in Tupuri villages, though it has been recreated in urban contexts and modern institutions where members use its forms to mediate new social relations and modern realities. This paper explores the meanings, functions, and effects of the creation of the ‘Gurna Club’ by students in the Lycée de Doukoula, by examining students' Youth Day dance performances, vibrant song discourse, and nostalgia for earlier forms of indigenous socialisation (e.g. the gurna, youth initiation, and wrestling). By inserting the communal poetics of the gurna into the lycée, Tupuri youth seek to yoke multiple facets of their identity, making visible their desire to be gurna, even as they pursue their civic obligations as students. In creating the Gurna Club, students begin to participate in an increasing trend in Cameroon toward the use of idioms of parochialism (such as ethnically based elite associations) as strategies for garnering national power and recognition.
‘Decentralised There, Centralised Here’: Local Governance and Paradoxes of Household Autonomy and Control in North-East Ethiopia, 1991–2001
Authors: Adem Teferi Abate 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThis article discusses whether Ethiopia's recent reorganisation into broadly decentralised, ethnically based regions was also accompanied by significant changes in the images and administrative practices through which state powers have been locally understood and experienced by ordinary citizens. Different scholars and politicians have viewed the local effects of these changes differently. Government officials and some scholars report ‘radical reversals’ from decades of monarchial despotism and socialist dictatorship to enhanced local autonomy and self-governance, while others counter this by noting the ‘continuation’ of earlier administrative practices. I draw on ethnographic material from fieldwork in Aba Sälama, a local administrative unit in Amhara, to show that decentralisation has increased the significance of local government as a site for competing interpretations of household autonomy and local-governance. Party members and elected farmer officials used the newly enhanced constitutional powers and funds of the local government to strengthen their own personal standing vis-à-vis their superiors at the district capital and fellow farmers in the community. Farmers for their part seized the rhetoric to demand more autonomy from local government which they still viewed as an extension of central state control over their lives and resources. As a consequence, one observes in Aba Sälama both decentralised and centralised administrative practices as local officials seek to accommodate this tension when performing their governmental duties.
Legacies of Biafra: Marriage, ‘Home People’ and Reproduction Among the Igbo of Nigeria
Authors: Smith Daniel Jordan 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThis article examines the ways in which the legacies and collective memories of Biafra, the secessionist state established at the time of Nigeria's civil war from 1967 to1970, shape contemporary Igbo practices and experiences of marriage, rural–urban ties and reproduction. The importance of appropriate and permanent marriage and the perceived necessity of dependable affinal relations for contemporary Igbos are analysed in relation to recollections of marriage during the war. The intense identification of migrant Igbos with place of origin and the importance of ‘home’ and ‘home people’ are situated in the context of the legacy of Biafra. The importance of kinship relationships for access to patron–client networks is linked to the Igbo perception of marginalization in the wake of Biafra. Igbo ideas about the significance of reproduction and the vital importance of ‘having people’ are reinforced through collective memories of Biafra. Igbo people's conceptions of Nigerian politics, their understandings of the social and economic importance of kinship and community in contemporary Nigeria, and even their reproductive decisions can be better explained by taking into account the legacies of Biafra.
The Widow in Blue: Blood and the Morality of Remembering in Botswana's Time of Aids
Authors: Klaits Frederick 
Published: July 2008

AbstractPopular talk and silence about AIDS in Botswana have been shaped by survivors' efforts to manage the ways in which they remember relationships arising from procreation. The emotional force of death induces the immediately bereaved and wider communities of survivors to recollect who has shared blood with whom through sexual intercourse. Such acts of remembering may have decisive repercussions on relations of kinship, marriage and mutual support. For Batswana, ‘remembering’ is a form of acting as well as feeling, possessing a capacity to shape moral conduct for the long term. In the context of death, local debates about what and how to remember reflect contested endeavours to make relations based on blood persist beyond a person's passing. Focusing on a particular set of local perspectives on the morality of remembering, the article shows that members of an Apostolic church in Gaborone encourage one another to remember in a manner reflecting distinctive methods of maintaining relations of kinship and care.
Sex, Death and the Fate of the Nation: Reflections on the Politicization of Sexuality in Post-Apartheid South
Authors: Posel Deborah 
Published: July 2008

AbstractUnexpectedly, sexuality has become one of the principal sites of contestation in post-apartheid South Africa. This paper demonstrates and accounts for the politicization of sex and sexuality in South Africa since 1994. The first part examines the discursive constitution of sexuality and the ways in which this has been informed by wider dimensions of the post-apartheid social order. Drawing on this discussion, the second part proposes a reading of the notorious HIV/AIDS controversy, which drew President Mbeki directly into the political fray. The paper argues that the controversy, although immediately concerned with the science and treatment of HIV/AIDS, is also a struggle over the discursive constitution of sexuality, in a form which dramatizes the ways in which recently contentious struggles over the manner of sexuality are enmeshed in the politics of ‘nation-building’, and the inflections of race, class and generation within it.
Going Home? Belonging and Burial in the Era of AIDS
Authors: Whyte Susan Reynolds 
Published: July 2008

AbstractIn Eastern Uganda, a married woman should be buried at her husband's home, raising questions such as: which husband? were they really married? These questions become urgent when a woman dies at the home of her parents or brothers, a situation that has become increasingly common as women ill with AIDS seek care from their families of orientation. In Bunyole, the ways in which a woman ‘belongs’ to two different homes are brought out as discussions proceed about where she should be buried. This article uses accounts of cases where there was uncertainty about the burial site to show how people justify the choice of a ‘final home’. ‘Arguments of cultural rules’ are used to underwrite demands about bridewealth, while ‘arguments of affection’ are put forward in sympathy for women who needed care or were loved by children. The location of the grave provides a vantage point for looking at how home and marriage take on significance for women in distress. The explanations provide a window on the ways families reason about rights, obligation, virtue and compassion. They show the enduring importance of a woman's natal family; in the era of AIDS, mortally ill women are usually cared for by parents and siblings even though their corpses may be carried to a husband's home for burial.
Whose Unkulunkulu?
Authors: Weir Jennifer 
Published: July 2008

AbstractUNkulunkulu was a term taken up by certain missionaries in Natal as synonymous with the Christian God. Though the idea of uNkulunkulu is now well entrenched in African as well as missionary Christian theology, historically the concept of uNkulunkulu, as the High God of all, is inaccurate. This paper will argue that there was actually a multiplicity of oNkulunkulu (plural of uNkulunkulu) in the early nineteenth century – including females. UNkulunkulu was simply a generic name for particular significant Zulu ancestors – family, chiefly or ‘national’. The development of the concept of uNkulunkulu, as the High God of all, obscures important aspects of the relationship that formerly obtained between chiefs and their departed ancestors. The attainment of Zulu political ascendancy, which has so often been viewed in purely secular terms, had a critical religious dimension.
Immunizing Strategies: Hip-Hop and Critique in Tanzania
Authors: Stroeken Koen 
Published: July 2008

AbstractTanzania has in the last decade seen a vibrant form of hip-hop emerge that is gaining wide public exposure thanks to its political tenor. First, this article illustrates how rap lyrics reflect Tanzanian political history and in part determine it. Bongo Flava, as the local hip-hop genre is called, has gained credibility by reinterpreting Nyerere's normative legacy and by expanding freedom of expression in the country, while unhampered by factors that normally mitigate the social impact of popular culture. Second, the article explores the global relevance of their social critique. Bongo Flava attempts to outwit the sophisticated indifference and neoliberalism of postcolonial rulers and ruled. Partly inspired by African American popular culture, many songs expose the postcolonial strategy of survival, which is to immunize oneself against the threat of commodification by fully embracing it, the contamination yielding extra power. The lyrics, in their irony and pessimism, exhibit the same immunizing tendency. However, this tendency is curbed by two principles that safeguard streetwise status: the rapper's willingness to ‘duel’ and the Kiswahili credo of activatingbongo, ‘the brains’.
The Need for Speed: Contrasting Timeframes in the Social Life of Kenyan Miraa
Authors: Carrier Neil 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThis article contrasts two very different timeframes in the ‘social life’ of the plant stimulant miraa – known elsewhere as khat – in Kenya and beyond. One timeframe is connected with the old miraa trees growing in the Nyambene Hills District of central Kenya: these are known as mbaine, and are greatly respected for their age and link to the past. The miraa from these trees is put to much ceremonial use by the Meru inhabitants of the Nyambenes. The other timeframe is the very different one of the harvested stems. These stems are highly perishable and so must reach the consumer quickly, leading to urgency in their trade and transportation: the ‘need for speed’. The globalization of the miraa trade has intensified this urgency further: the stems are now desired as far away as North America. Miraa trees have not escaped this ‘commercial’ timeframe, and some farmers experiment with chemical sprays to speed up the production rate. The article concludes by arguing that such attempts to speed up the timeframes of the trees are met with resistance, and have not diluted the cultural significance of ancient mbaine trees and their ancestral links.
Sung and Unsung: Musical Reflections on Tanzanian Postsocialisms
Authors: Askew Kelly M. 
Published: July 2008

ABSTRACTOn 14 October 1999, Julius Kambarage Nyerere, the first president of the United Republic of Tanzania, died in a London hospital. In Tanzania, musical bands throughout the country reacted to the news by composing scores of lamentation songs(nyimbo za maombolezo)that mourned his passing and assessed his contributions to the country he helped to create. While elsewhere in the world Nyerere is affiliated with the ‘African socialist’ platform termedUjamaathat he theorized in his political writings and instituted during his tenure as president, these lamentation songs are notably silent on the topic of socialism. This silence indicates the ambiguity with which Tanzanians today relate to their socialist past. As a necessary prelude to analysis of thenyimbo za maombolezo,this article explores the practices, policies and values promoted in Tanzanian socialisms (mainland and Zanzibar) and in the postsocialist present. Competing rhetorics are revealed in these musical constructions of the ‘Father of the Nation’ and, by extension, the Tanzanian nation itself.
Diagnosing the Crisis in the Republic of Congo
Authors: Eaton David 
Published: July 2008

AbstractIn 1991 in the Republic of Congo, a sovereign national conference in Brazzaville inaugurated a peaceful transition from socialist one‐party government to multi‐party democracy. The pluralization of public voices in the newly liberalized country – in religious movements, political parties and independent presses – expressed new conditions of understanding about the nation and its affairs. At the same time, local networks and categories of perception inflected geopolitical pressures from foreign powers into quasi‐ethnic divisions in competition for power through government representation. Subsequent conflict over contested elections sparked devastating civil war in 1997 and resulted in the return to power of the former socialist leadership.Given the uncertainties – indeed, the crises of institutions and of knowledge – during these times, how did Congolese diagnose the troubles through which the country passed? This article examines how national and socialist ideals and practices were evoked and reinterpreted to this end in public discourse through idioms of family, affliction, spiritual power and the living body. These modes of speech and action give evidence of longer‐term continuities in the region's political imaginations, as these incorporated changes brought by ongoing involvement in larger modern worlds.