Research Africa: March 5, 2018
Events
Roundtable Discussion: Third World Quarterly & the Colonialism Debate ‘Clickbait with Footnotes’: Decolonizing the Academy and the Commodification of Scholarship
Duke University March 7, 2018/ 5:00-6:30 pm
Location: Ahmadieh Family Conference Room, West Duke 101
This roundtable will discuss the perverse incentives of ‘impact’ in academia: the ethics of authorship, board membership and publication along with the practice of free speech in our contemporary political climate. We will draw from the example of a recent publication by the journal Third World Quarterly of a ‘Viewpoint’ in September 2017 arguing for the merits of colonialism. This piece follows in the footsteps of several Western intellectuals who have tried to reopen debates over the balance sheet of colonialism’s impact. In the context of Trumpism, global xenophobia, and vocal white supremacy in the US, this deeply controversial essay led to considerable outcry such that nearly half of the Editorial Board of the journal resigned in protest.
This debate about the so-called benefits of colonization comes at a time when universities in Africa and around the world are calling for the decolonization of curriculum in their institutions. Moreover, the resonance between a paper arguing for colonialism and questions about journal mismanagement and lack of peer-review is ironic given the challenges that scholars in developing countries face in getting published in high-ranking, Western-based journals.
This panel will take up the issues of why an argument in support of colonialism could be profitable at this time and what the commodification of scholarship means for decolonizing the academy. The panel includes journalists, scholars, social media activists, and representatives from the Third World Quarterly Editorial Board.
Read the story in this link:
‘Clickbait with Footnotes’: Decolonizing the Academy and the Commodification of Scholarship, Mar. 7
News and Issues
Books That Some Big-Names Think You Should Read
By: Mara Leighton, March 2, 2018
There’s a reason the most successful people in our society are often the most voracious — or dogged — readers. Think about how many new ideas you’re exposed to in the pages of a book, compared to days in a year of your life alone. Frequent readers are constantly engaged with new ways of thinking, alternate perspectives, and a habitual effort for self-improvement. In fact, when Warren Buffett was asked about the key to success, he pointed to a stack of books, saying “Read 500 pages like this everyday. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.” The Insider Picks team for Business Insider has a list of recommended books that through their affiliate partnerships, give them a share of the revenue from your purchase. Read the story in this link to see the book recommendations:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/03/15-books-world-famous-ceos-think-everyone-should-read-in-their-lifetime/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
A Black American Poet in Cairo in the 50s and 60s: Was the Anti-Colonial Period an Exception for Arab-Black solidarity?
By: Edna Bonhomme, February 27, 2018
Egypt has historically been a source of inspiration for activists and poets of the African diaspora, providing many of them with an arena to turn their dreams into reality. At the same time, especially given its active role in the trans-Saharan slave trade during the Mamluk and Ottoman period, the country has had a strained relationship with Black people from the African continent. These historical contradictions and tensions have been marked by national origin, labor and social status, and have culminated in disparate positions for Black people in Egypt. Working-class Black Sudanese women in Cairo recently described harrowing accounts of harassment and sexual assault since their arrival to the country. The extent to which anti-Black discrimination and colorism have been enacted in Egypt (and the Middle East more broadly) fluctuates with the given political moment, gender, and class of Black migrants.
Read the story in this link:
Why Some African Americans Are Moving to Africa
By: Azad Essa, January 18, 2018
They have come from the big cities of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. Thousands of them. And many refuse to return. A new wave of African Americans is escaping the incessant racism and prejudice in the United States. From Senegal and Ghana to The Gambia, communities are emerging in defiance of conventional wisdom that Africa is a continent everyone is trying to leave.
Read the story in this link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/african-americans-moving-africa-180116092736345.html
South Africa Votes to Seize Land from White Farmers Without Compensation
By: Samuel Osborne, March 1, 2018
South Africa‘s parliament has passed a motion to seize land from white farmers without paying them compensation. Passed by an overwhelming majority (241 to 83 votes), the proposal to amend Section 25 of the constitution would allow expropriation of land without any financial recompense. It was put forward by the radical left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, whose leader Julius Malema told the country’s parliament: “We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land.”
Read the story in this link:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/south-africa-white-farms-land-seizure-anc-race-relations-a8234461.html
Francophonie en « guerre culturelle : la liberté de choisir
par Souleymane Bachir Diagne/ le 01 mars 2018
Face à l’ébullition de la scène intellectuelle francophone ces dernières semaines, notamment après les prises de position d’Alain Mabanckou, Abdourahman Waberi et Achille Mbembe, le philosophe sénégalais Souleymane Bachir Diagne plaide au nom d’une francophonie qui permet de choisir, et de faire communauté.
Tribune. La francophonie est dans une grande agitation. Motif ? Les déclarations, à la veille de la Conférence internationale pour la langue française et le pluralisme dans le monde, d’Alain Mabanckou, d’Abdourahman Waberi et d’Achille Mbembe, qui ont mis en garde le président Emmanuel Macron contre le concept de « francophonie », qui serait à l’origine un « appareil idéologique » à part entière de l’impérialisme français.
Read the story in this link:
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/mag/535698/culture/francophonie-en-etat-de-guerre-culturelle-la-liberte-de-choisir/
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
Democracy, Human Rights and Governance in The Gambia: Essays on Social Adjustment
[الديمقراطية وحقوق الإنسان والحكم في غامبيا: قراءات في التغير الاجتماعي]
Author: Aboubacar Abdullah Senghore
The first chapter explores the origin of the philosophy of law and society in relation to contemporary international human rights law. Democracy as a governance system is discussed in the following chapter which conceptualizes governance: good governance and democracy. Drawing on this, the second chapter contains the argument that democracy is an open-source concept that should mold to social and indigenous political cultures. The author contextualizes the Gambian democracy by identifying democratic practices in state institutions based on universal democratic norms. From there, Chapters 3 and 4 examine the Gambian judiciary and legislature. Chapter 3 discusses the judiciary as the watchdog of the constitution, using every-day law cases to demonstrate judicial independence in the Gambia. Chapter 4, on the other hand, examines the oversight functions of the legislature by evaluating the roles of PAC/PEC and the Ombudsman as instruments of democratic accountability in the Gambia.
Publisher: CENMEDRA, The Gambia, 2018
Human Rights in Africa
[حقوق الإنسان في أفريقيا]
Author: Bonny Ibhawoh
Bonny Ibhawoh examines the discourse of human rights in Africa. He challenges some of the dominant narratives that focus on ruthless violators and benevolent activists. Crafting the longue duree history of human rights in Africa, he argues that these rights were neither invented during the Enlightenment period nor adopted under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the postwar period. In his analysis, he draws from an African rights tradition that was central in the anti-slavery and anti-colonial struggles. He sees these struggles as human rights histories, and Ibhawoh challenges the idea that these were merely humanitarian acts. He argues that Africans on the continent and abroad during the abolition and emancipation of slavery along with the colonization and decolonization processes framed and linked their activism to human rights. Given the gravity of the discourse of human rights, Ibhawoh’s book is written in a scholarly, clear, and concise way to appeal to general audiences so as not to confine the issue to scholarly circles. This book furthers the conversations and debates on human rights, and above all affirms the dignity of all human beings.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2018
Going to University: The Influence of Higher Education on the Lives of
Young South Africans
[الالتحاق بالجامعات: تأثير التعليم العالي على حياة الشباب الجنوب الأفريقي]
Authors: Jennifer Case, Delia Marshall, Sioux McKenna
Around the world, more and more young people are attending university. Enrollment in South African universities has doubled as many families have seen higher education as a route to a better future for their children. But alongside the overwhelming demand for higher education, questions about its purposes have intensified. Deliberations about the curriculum, culture and cost of public higher education abound from student activists, academics, parents, and policy-makers. Research has shown that South African graduates generally have favorable employment prospects, but little is known about the specific ways in which young people actually make use of their university experiences to craft their life trajectories. Even less is known about what happens to those who drop out. This accessible book brings together the rich life stories of 73 young people, six years after they began their university studies. It traces how going to university influences not only their employment options but also nurtures the agency needed to chart their own way and to engage critically with the world around them. The book offers deep insights into the ways in which public higher education is both a private and public good. This text provides significant conclusions pertinent to anyone who works in – and cares about – universities.
Publisher: African Minds Publishers, South Africa, 2018
The Making of the African Road
[تشييد الطرق في افريقيا]
Author: (Editors) Kurt Beck, Gabriel Klaeger, Frankfurt and Michael Stasik
The Making of the African Road offers an account of the long-distance road in Africa. Being a latecomer to automobility and far from saturated mass mobility, the African road continues to be open for diverging interpretations and creative appropriations. The road regime on the continent is thus still under construction, and it is made in more than one sense: physically, socially, politically, morally and cosmologically. The contributions to this volume provide first-hand anthropological insights into the infrastructural, economic, and historical dimensions of the emerging orders of the African road.
Publisher: Brill Publications, 2017
Kenya’s War of Independence : Mau Mau and its Legacy of Resistance to Colonialism and Imperialism, 1948-1990
[حرب الاستقلال في كينيا: حركة الماو ماو وتراثها في مقاومة الاستعمار والإمبريالية من 1948 الى 1990]
Author: Shiraz Durrani
Kenya’s War of Independence restores Kenya’s stolen history to its rightful place: stripped of colonial interpretations. In this expanded and revised version of his 1986 booklet, Kimaathi, Mau Mau’s First Prime Minister of Kenya, Durrani covers Mau Mau’s resistance to colonialism and neo-colonialism by reflecting on its ideology, organization, and achievements. He views Mau Mau in the larger context of Kenya’s war of independence and looks at the influence of organized, radical trade unions as the engine of resistance, which link the economic and political demands of the working class. Additional chapters document the post-independence resistance by the underground December Twelve Movement-Mwakenya.
Publisher: Vita Books, Kenya, 2018
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Research Africa welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in next week’s edition.
