Research Africa: October 1, 2017

Events & Issues
– Addressing “The Case for Colonialism” viewpoint essay
Leon Heward-Mills, Global Publishing Director (Journals) Taylor & Francis Group, 26th September, 2017
On 8th September 2017, a viewpoint essay, “The case for colonialism,” by Bruce Gilley was published in the journal Third World Quarterly (TWQ) on Taylor & Francis Online. This essay has, understandably, sparked enormous controversy both within and beyond academia, resulting in two petitions, media coverage and a social media debate.
Why was this article published?
There have been many accusations that this essay was not peer reviewed, or ‘failed’ multiple rounds of peer review linked to a special issue, and also independent of it. Using the checks in our systems, we can be absolutely clear on the path through peer review this essay took. It was double blind peer-reviewed by two referees (in line with the journal’s policy). The first review was returned with a minor revision recommendation, and the second reviewer made a reject recommendation. Due to the opposing review reports, the final decision to publish was made by the Editor-in-Chief, following the author making major revisions.
Read more on the story in this link:
http://www.tandfonline.com/pb-assets/TWQ-response-Sept-2017.pdf

– Fishing in Cameroon: Administrative corruption and Chinese expertise
Nfor Hanson Nchanji / September, 2017
Fishing in Cameroon is guided by detailed regulations from the country’s Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries & Animal Industry that were modified in 2013 to suit the present environment. The regulations do not only regulate maritime boundaries but also limits fishing zones.
Article 8 of the Maritime law of 2013 divides fishing into three categories: Offshore fishing, coastal fishing and great fishing. Article 7 of the same law fixes four types of commercial activities in Cameroon’s waters: Coastal navigation or boundary marking, national cabotage, international cabotage and long coarse fishing.
Read more on the story in this link:

Fishing in Cameroon: Administrative corruption and Chinese expertise

– How the NSA Built a Secret Surveillance Network for Ethiopia
By Nick Turse/ September 2017,
“A warm friendship connects the Ethiopian and American people,” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced earlier this year. “We remain committed to working with Ethiopia to foster liberty, democracy, economic growth, protection of human rights, and the rule of law.”
Indeed, the website for the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia is marked by press releases touting U.S. aid for farmers and support for public health infrastructure in that East African nation. “Ethiopia remains among the most effective development partners, particularly in the areas of health care, education, and food security,” says the State Department.
Read more on the story in this link:
https://theintercept.com/2017/09/13/nsa-ethiopia-surveillance-human-rights/?mc_cid=6220e608ec&mc_eid=fab0566d63

– The reggae singer taking on Uganda’s strongman president
‘We can change our destiny’
Julian Hattem / September, 2017
Bobi Wine spent more than a decade singing about social justice issues in his native Uganda. This year, the ‘Ghetto President’ was elected to parliament, and now he’s trying to change the system from the inside.
Bobi Wine has shaved off his dreadlocks. Now that he’s transitioned to politics, the reggae singer wears a suit regularly. He might be unrecognisable to a younger version of himself, but he insists his job is the same as it always was: “sensitising my people and opening their eyes.”
Read more on the story in this link:
http://www.huckmagazine.com/perspectives/reportage-2/reggae-singer-taking-ugandas-strongman-president/?curator=MusicREDEF&mc_cid=6220e608ec&mc_eid=fab0566d63

– Conference: African American Intellectual History Society’s Third Annual Conference
March 30-31, 2018, Brandeis University
Theme: Black Thought Matters
Activists, scholars, and artists have vociferously declared across multiple media and social platforms that Black Lives Matter, making everyday racial violence against Black subjects more publicly visible in recent years. Yet far from being accepted as a rational response to the expendability of Black life, this prodigious demonstration of critical Black Thought is often met with hostility, censorship, and death threats or denigrated within current popular and political arenas. This year’s AAIHS conference asserts that Black Thought Matters. What, for example, are the tasks and challenges for critical Black Thought in times of heightened racial violence? How have Black performers, scholars, public figures, and subaltern subjects historically confronted efforts to curtail and contain the scope of Black critical analysis? How might we historicize and theorize the relationship between Black Lives, Black Thought, and Black Action across time and space?
Potential topics for this year’s conference include, but are not limited to: race and political thought; women’s studies; queer studies; slavery and freedom; sexuality; resistance movements; performance and embodied practice; surveillance studies; Black internationalism; popular culture; and religion.
We will accept individual paper submissions, but will give preference to full panel proposals. Proposals should be submitted via email (aaihs10@gmail.com) as a Microsoft Word attachment no later than November 15, 2017.
The AAIHS is pleased to offer multiple competitive travel grants to defray the costs of conference attendance. Graduate students and contingent faculty in good-standing as members of the AAIHS are encouraged to apply. Graduate students whose papers are accepted are also invited to submit their paper for consideration for the AAIHS’s annual Du Bois-Wells Paper Prize competition. The winner and first runner-up will receive cash prizes. Further details regarding the travel grants and paper prize are available at aaihs.org.
Read more on the story in this link:
http://cairobserver.com/post/104880644219/a-hotel-in-mali-egypts-flirtation-with#.WbSV-JOGOCS

NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة

– Native Estates: Records of Mobility Across Colonial Boundaries
[أقاليم الأهالي: سجلات التنقل عبر الحدود في عهد الاستعمار]
Author: Ellen Namhila
In many instances, the colonial state has left a strong imprint on the postcolonial archive. In the National Archives of Namibia (NAN), for instance, it is difficult to locate pre-independence person-related records of the black majority, while the same type of records of their light-skinned compatriots are easily accessible. This lecture discusses a substantial corpus of about 11 000 so-called “Native Estates” files which previously were not accessible through the existing finding aids. What is the research potential of these formerly neglected and untouched records, in particular regarding the social history of contract labour in Namibia and of African migrants on a wider scale? Furthermore, a substantial amount of estate files of migrants from other African countries were discovered – a feature of Namibian history that has rarely been researched. The sometimes very detailed files reveal information on the migrants’ origin, their integration in Namibian society and expatriate networks in the country. They also reveal that not only Angolans and West Africans but also a substantial number of migrants from other Southern African colonies found employment opportunities in Namibia during the colonial era. The “Native Estate” records thus have an important research potential with regard to the entire Southern African region, which was heavily reliant on migrant labour both on the demand and on the supply sides.
Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2017

– Ousmane Sembene and the Politics of Culture (After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France)
[(المخرج لسنمائي عثمان سيمبين وتسييس الثقافة (فيما بعد الإمبراطورية: العالم الفرنكوفوني وما بعد فرنسا الاستعمارية]
Author (s): Lifongo J. Vetinde (Editor), Amadou T. Fofana (Editor),
Undoubtedly one of Africa’s most influential first generation of writers and filmmakers, Ousmane Sembene’s creative works of fiction as well as his films have been the subject of a considerable number of scholarly articles. The schemas of reading applied to Sembene’s oeuvre (novels, short stories and films) have, in the main, focused either on his militant posture against colonialism, his disenchantment with African leadership, or his infatuation with documenting the past in an attempt to present a balanced and nuanced view of African history. While these studies, unquestionably contribute to a better understanding of his works, they collectively ignore Sembene’s relentless preoccupation with culture in his entire career as a writer and filmmaker. The collection of essays in Sembene and the Politics of Culture sets out to fill that gap as the contributors at once foreground Sembene’s fixation on the centrality of culture in the articulation of the discourse of national consciousness and reevaluate his intellectual and artistic legacy within an overarching framework of African liberation.
Publisher: Lexington Books, 2016

– The Taming of Fate: Approaching Risk from a Social Action Perspective: Case Studies from Southern Mozambique
[ترويض النصيب: دراسة الأخطار المرتبطة بالمجتمع من منظور العمل الجماعي: جنوب موزمبيق، حالة دراسية]
Author: Elísio S. Macamo
This book is about how extreme situations appearing to have a destructive potential can actually be used to produce meaningful individual and social lives. It is about the “taming of fate.” This notion means and accounts for the ability of individuals and communities to rebuild their lives against all odds. The book is based on case-studies that draw from theoretical insights derived from the sociology of disasters. It addresses some limitations of the sociology of risk, chief among which is the rejection of the relevance of the notion of risk to the study of technologically non-advanced societies. The book argues that this rejection has deprived the study of the human condition of an important analytical asset. The book claims that risk is a property of social action which can best be understood through the analytical scrutiny of its role in the historical constitution of social relations.
Publisher: CODESRIA, Senegal, 2017

– Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France,
[مواطن من الخارج: أطفال المهاجرين من شمال أفريقيا في فرنسا]
Author (s): Jean Beaman
While portrayals of immigrants and their descendants in France and throughout Europe often center on burning cars and radical Islam, Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France paints a different picture. Through fieldwork and interviews in Paris and its banlieues, Jean Beaman examines middle-class and upwardly mobile children of Maghrébin, or North African immigrants. By showing how these individuals are denied cultural citizenship because of their North African origin, she puts to rest the notion of a French exceptionalism regarding cultural difference, race, and ethnicity and further centers race and ethnicity as crucial for understanding marginalization in French society.
Publisher: University of California Press, 2017
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