Afrikastudien (Macamo)Head of Research Unit Prof. Dr.Elisio MacamoOverviewMembersPublicationsProjects & CollaborationsProjects & Collaborations OverviewMembersPublicationsProjects & Collaborations Projects & Collaborations 29 foundShow per page10 10 20 50 Reversing the Gaze: Towards Post-Comparative Area Studies Research Project | 6 Project MembersThis project proposes the approach of a "conceptual laboratory" to test the analytic purchase of mid-level concepts that seek to explain the crises of political identity and liberal democracy, through practices of reciprocal comparison. The overarching research question for the conceptual laboratory is the following: how can mid-level concepts developed in the Global South be made useful for knowledge production in general? The key critical theoretical assumption underlying the methodological level is the idea that we need to reverse the gaze, i.e. deploy conceptualisations developed in the South in the North. On a substantive level, we ask how useful the mid-level concepts "re-tribalisation", "political society" and "the cunning state" are in describing, analysing and interpreting these crisis phenomena in liberal democracies of Europe (in comparison to already existing conceptual vocabularies developed in a European context), more specifically in the Alpine region (Switzerland, Austria and Italy)? On a theoretical level, we ask how freeing such concepts from the constraints of context can contribute to particular relational approaches to area studies (and disciplinary comparison). Finally, on a methodological level, we seek to draw lessons from the conceptual laboratory in operationalizing an epistemological practice of reciprocal comparison. We propose three empirical case studies which meet two main goals. On the one hand, they seek to offer innovative and conceptually out-of-the-box perspectives on and across the cases themselves, differing from those derived and developed exclusively within and against a European background. Moreover, they draw respectively from an old concept ("retribalisation", Africa), a fashionable but contested concept ("political society", Asia) and an emerging concept that still needs to establish itself in the area studies domain ("the cunning state", Asia). Second, we approach the concepts as descriptions of the set of particulars making up crisis phenomena in specific settings. The question we ask is whether the particulars brought into view can help us shed more light on similar phenomena in Europe, thereby shifting the case for conceptual regionalism in favour of greater attention to the possibilities of comparison. These different histories of the concepts provide us with a diversity of mid-range concepts whose application in other empirical contexts beyond their area studies domain can be tested. Crucial to the research approach is the distinction between the object of research and the scope of inquiry. The former refers to the "Southern" background of the deployed concepts and the three case studies in the Alpine region within which empirical research takes place. The latter refers to the concrete phenomenon we describe, analyse and interpret in a given setting. Our project proposal is thus a response to recent critical reflections on Area Studies, comparative disciplinary work, as well as critiques from the South. In building on these literatures while attending to knowledge production in practice, its scholarly outcomes include potentially new perspectives on comparison; a critical engagement with "universal" concepts and the politics of conceptual travel; and practical visions on how to imbue the pursuit of knowledge with a concern for ethical and political issues raised by these critiques. International Digital Exchange between Africa and Switzerland (IDEAS) Research Project | 4 Project MembersDas vorliegende Pilotprojekt vermittelt Master-Studierenden der Sozialwissenschaften in der Schweiz, Mali und Guinea das praktische, methodologische und theoretische Handwerkszeug zum kollektiven wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten über kontinentale Grenzen hinweg. Schlüsselaktivitäten sind zwei parallel veranstaltete Seminare zu sozialwissenschaftlicher Theorie und Methodologie sowie gemeinsame Workshops an den jeweiligen Universitäten. Eine zentrale Innovation des Projekts ist die Entwicklung einer Online-Lernplattform. Sie wird kontinuierlich an die Bedarfe der verschiedenen universitären Kontexte angepasst und kann für zukünftige Lehr- und Forschungskooperationen genutzt werden. Ziel ist es, die Internationalisierung und Digitalisierung der Sozialwissenschaften in der Schweiz innovativ voranzutreiben, gerade in Bereichen mit bislang ungenutztem Zukunftspotenzial. Aesthetics from the Margins. Photography in Africa and the Poetics of Un/Making the World Research Project | 3 Project MembersAesthetics from the margins embarks on an historical inquiry into the place of photography in cultural ways of world-making in Africa. The project proceeds on the assumption that while "the world" is economically, politically and socially produced it nevertheless needs to be perceived, sensed, comprehended and made sense of. The world is, in other words, more than a mere reality, fact or given, but the result of continuous making and remaking. The ability to imagine the world and one's own place within it - individually and collectively - rests upon diverse repertoires of images, signs and symbols, idioms and narratives, media and social practices. It hence goes without saying that there has been a long-standing interest in world-making across various disciplines - among them history, philosophy, anthropology, religious, literary and cultural studies - to understand how precisely people make world(s), and how experiencing the world is linked to ideation, knowledge production, subjectivity and consciousness. But, as has recently been noted, in the so-called "age of globalisation" and "media society", and in the context of a growing preoccupation with the world's complexity and opacity, and presently its political, economic and ecological fragility, the question of world-making is of particular importance to both the humanities and social sciences, and society at large. Proposing a study of African colonial and postcolonial photography as a contribution to this recent debate on globalization, the media and world-making cannot forebear, perhaps, to speak from a position of double marginality: "Africa" is often considered to be the historical and contemporary "recipient" of globalization, as opposed to its initiators, and even those who do insist on the continent's historically accrued place and role in the making of the world emphasise, as we shall see, economic and political issues rather than "esoteric" questions of aesthetics and visuality. Yet, it is precisely the assumed marginality of Africa and photography that clears a space for a critical reassessment of how we ground our thinking about history, the world, and the global. Africa-related research in Switzerland Research Project | 1 Project MembersThe aim of this survey was twofold: First it was meant to offer the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) an overview of research activities and cooperations by Swiss institutions in given African countries; second it was meant to offer the Centre for African Studies Basel (ZASB), and the Swiss Society for African Studies (SSAS) and other interested parties an overview of Swiss research in, on and with Africa. The inventory was not meant to serve as a basis for scientific research in the first place. Still, the processability and combination of the data allow for some general insights into questions bearing on Swiss engagement in research on, in and with Africa as well as into the role of research cooperation for research in Africa and by African institutions more generally. 7th European Conference on African Studies: Urban Africa - Urban Africans. New encounters of the rural and the urban Research Project | 6 Project MembersAt 3.5% Africa has the highest urbanization rate in the whole world. The potential effects of these staggering growth rates are relevant for all Africans, both in the urban as well as in the rural areas. By 2040 the continent's cities are expected to have to accommodate 79 Million additional inhabitants. Between 2040 and 2050 the figure will rise to a staggering 84 Million. The latest UN-Habitat report forecasts that by 2025 Africa's urban population will outstrip that of Europe and Latin America together. No wonder that a growing number of researchers, institutions and governments are paying more and more attention to urbanization in Africa. This growing interest focuses on whether rapid urbanization will overwhelm African governments and societies or whether it reflects the increasing importance of the middle classes, a factor which is held by many to account for Africa's positive economic performance of late. African urbanization trends raise several issues that are of interest to scholars. These range from politics (what does the growing importance of city dwellers mean to the character of politics?), through economics (will urbanization undermine or foster efforts at overcoming inequalities?), all the way to social (e.g. are African social relations changing in any significant way as a result of these trends? How do Africans live their cities?) and cultural issues (e.g. will urban life styles dominate the rural? How will the rural and the urban relate to each other in the future?). The key issue, however, is how urbanization processes in Africa transform conventional objects of African Studies and how do scholars of Africa gear up to face such changes? This is the question which the Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel (CASB) in Switzerland wishes to invite scholars of Africa to engage with in a more conscious and systematic manner. While the urban will be prominent, the proposed conference theme will also look into the entanglements of the rural with the urban, especially with a view to addressing an implicit assumption underlying the study of Africa and which concerns the supposed rural 'nature' of the continent as well as the constitutive nature of the tension between tradition and modernity. While over the past few decades a self-critical attitude within many disciplines has led to a weakening of these assumptions, the urban continues arguably to be seen as the exception or, at any rate, as analytically less consequential than the rural. ECAS 2017 "Urban Africa - Urban Africans" will, therefore, be an occasion for rethinking African Studies, but also for exploring and deepening research avenues that many researchers working on urban and rural issues have taken up over recent years. There is a critical mass to be harnessed in the effort to push the frontiers of critical European knowledge production on Africa. Over 1300 participants attended this convention organised by the Centre for African Studies Basel and the Swiss Society for African Studies on behalf of the Research Network of African Studies Centres in Europe AEGIS . They presented 1020 papers in 204 thematic panels and engaged in 10 round table discussions, 18 book launches, 13 film screenings and 13 meetings and were inspired by 4 keynote lectures. Exchange Agreement with the University of Namibia Research Project | 3 Project MembersThe primary objective of this Agreement is the development of cooperative efforts between the University of Basel and the University of Namibia, which will enhance the academic interchange between the two parties. Recognizing the importance of mutual collaboration and the contributions to society made by institutions of higher education, the parties desire to promote exchange between the faculty and students of the two institutions as well as the exchange of academic and research information. 'The place to be'. Urban culture, politics and media in Lusaka (Zambia) in the 1970ies Research Project | 6 Project MembersThis project originates from the unusual Basel-based archive of a Southern African journalist, Ruth Weiss which lends itself as a starting point to revisit Lusaka's history of the 1970s as a political, cultural, media and intellectual metropole for the whole of Southern Africa. The project aims at Repatriating from Basel to a national Zambian institution parts of the digital archive of Ruth Weiss in order to stimulate research in Zambia itself; conducting two workshops (Lusaka & Basel) with historians, media specialists and anthropologists on the proposed topic of urban culture, politics and media in Lusaka in the 1970s; critically revisiting previous academic work on Lusaka as a city and asking new questions about the networks and spatiality of elites, ordinary people and the large ex-pat/refugee and liberation movement populations in that metropole at a particular historical moment of crucial relevance to the whole of southern Africa. The Lusaka National Museum and the Department of History of the University of Zambia are both involved in public history and research projects concerning the themes, period and archives under review. The project allows the Swiss and Zambian partners to establish a new network of sustainable research projects. A South African social garden: people, plants and multispecies histories in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden Research Project | 1 Project MembersGardens and gardening are widely regarded as apolitical. Accordingly, garden historians have hardly written about politics, and social historians have rarely taken gardens and gardening into consideration. This is also the case with the 1913 established Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in South Africa. The existing literature treats politics primarily as context, but not as something that it was inherently part of. The dissertation argues that contrary to this perception, Kirstenbosch evolved embedded in political, social and economic processes. The perception as apolitical emerged partly as a result of its various political functions. Kirstenbosch and the subsequently established network of regional gardens functioned as sites in which nature and nation were defined in terms of each other. A striking continuity existed thereby of the institution's involvement in the production of ideas about nation, citizenship and belonging that stretches from the colonial to the apartheid and post-apartheid era. Following recent developments in critical plant studies, floriography studies and multispecies ethnography, the main question of the dissertation is how Kirstenbosch evolved as a social space. Throughout the dissertation I argue for an understanding of Kirstenbosch as an inherently social space. As a social space, it is shaped by social relationships among and between humans and non-humans, especially plants. Understanding it as a social space allows to critically engage the work of power in it. This understanding can serve as the basis for re-imagining Kirstenbosch as a medium in which multiple epistemologies and ontologies can take root that enable the development of more just and sustainable relationships among and between humans and non-humans. The dissertation is based on extensive archival research, oral history interviews and participant observations. The dissertation was initially supervised by the late Prof. Dr. Patrick Harries. The main supervisor is currently Prof. Dr. Ciraj Rassool (University of the Western Cape) and the second supervisor is Prof. Dr. Julia Tischler (University of Basel). The dissertation was initially supervised by the late Prof. Dr. Patrick Harries. The main supervisor is currently Prof. Dr. Ciraj Rassool (University of the Western Cape) and the second supervisor is Prof. Dr. Julia Tischler (University of Basel). University-productive sector collaboration in Mozambique: evidence from universities and companies Research Project | 1 Project MembersThe emergence of the so-called knowledge-based economy worldwide from 1980s onwards has redefined universities as important tools for economic growth and development. Universities are expected to produce economically useful knowledge. In this sense, university-productive sector collaboration is considered to be essential in ensuring that universities produce relevant knowledge for growth. In developed and emerging economies, research seems to demonstrate strong university-productive sector collaboration. This has fostered the assumption that economic development in developing countries requires strong investment in higher education, particularly in areas of knowledge that are thought to be more relevant, namely the hard sciences as opposed to soft sciences. In Africa, despite current recognition of the socio-economic relevance of universities, there is no systematic and reliable evidence to support this assumption. The government of Mozambique has made this assumption its own and has favored policies emphasizing the socio-economic relevance of universities. However, it seems that the idea that universities are economically relevant is simply taken for granted. This research seeks to critically question these assumptions, by examining data collected on the issue and by producing more comprehensive data on university-productive sector collaboration in Mozambique.The aim is to reflect on the stage of university-productive sector collaboration in Mozambique, particularly to compare the stage of university-productive sector collaboration between hard sciences and soft sciences departments. TEMPEA Temporality of permanence - material and socio-spatial practices in African urbanism Research Project | 3 Project MembersThe constructed materiality of African urbanism can be seen in buildings and the urban layout, especially when they aspire to permanence by building in stone. These built environments have mostly been analysed through the rather static lens of individual periods and social forces, resulting in uniformly interpreted organic growth (for pre-colonial periods), or as in stages of progress towards the fulfilment of a grand master plan (predominantly in the colonial and post-colonial era). The project explores the social temporality of African urbanism against the context of its material complements from the perspectives of a range of social and human sciences, in order to obtain a dynamic picture from before to after the colonial era. Providing analyses relevant to the ever more pressing issues of urban ethnic/social coexistence and the implications of urban development, it incorporates aspects of sociology (living in neighbourhoods in densely populated environments), history (representations and accounts of past experience) and social anthropology (the meanings of space). It centres on spatial materiality of African cities, as it is demonstrated in their layout and in the organisation of buildings, looking at how these urban patterns are produced, used and continually altered, and how a 'building heritage' emerges from these. Its aim is to derive how this influences the social life of inhabitants and visitors, and how it in turn induces on-going processes of change in material representations. The first phase of the project is undertaken at the Centre of African Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland. The 2nd phase at Uppsala University, Sweden, will focus on the implications for the Swahili coast and African archaeology. 123 123 OverviewMembersPublicationsProjects & Collaborations
Projects & Collaborations 29 foundShow per page10 10 20 50 Reversing the Gaze: Towards Post-Comparative Area Studies Research Project | 6 Project MembersThis project proposes the approach of a "conceptual laboratory" to test the analytic purchase of mid-level concepts that seek to explain the crises of political identity and liberal democracy, through practices of reciprocal comparison. The overarching research question for the conceptual laboratory is the following: how can mid-level concepts developed in the Global South be made useful for knowledge production in general? The key critical theoretical assumption underlying the methodological level is the idea that we need to reverse the gaze, i.e. deploy conceptualisations developed in the South in the North. On a substantive level, we ask how useful the mid-level concepts "re-tribalisation", "political society" and "the cunning state" are in describing, analysing and interpreting these crisis phenomena in liberal democracies of Europe (in comparison to already existing conceptual vocabularies developed in a European context), more specifically in the Alpine region (Switzerland, Austria and Italy)? On a theoretical level, we ask how freeing such concepts from the constraints of context can contribute to particular relational approaches to area studies (and disciplinary comparison). Finally, on a methodological level, we seek to draw lessons from the conceptual laboratory in operationalizing an epistemological practice of reciprocal comparison. We propose three empirical case studies which meet two main goals. On the one hand, they seek to offer innovative and conceptually out-of-the-box perspectives on and across the cases themselves, differing from those derived and developed exclusively within and against a European background. Moreover, they draw respectively from an old concept ("retribalisation", Africa), a fashionable but contested concept ("political society", Asia) and an emerging concept that still needs to establish itself in the area studies domain ("the cunning state", Asia). Second, we approach the concepts as descriptions of the set of particulars making up crisis phenomena in specific settings. The question we ask is whether the particulars brought into view can help us shed more light on similar phenomena in Europe, thereby shifting the case for conceptual regionalism in favour of greater attention to the possibilities of comparison. These different histories of the concepts provide us with a diversity of mid-range concepts whose application in other empirical contexts beyond their area studies domain can be tested. Crucial to the research approach is the distinction between the object of research and the scope of inquiry. The former refers to the "Southern" background of the deployed concepts and the three case studies in the Alpine region within which empirical research takes place. The latter refers to the concrete phenomenon we describe, analyse and interpret in a given setting. Our project proposal is thus a response to recent critical reflections on Area Studies, comparative disciplinary work, as well as critiques from the South. In building on these literatures while attending to knowledge production in practice, its scholarly outcomes include potentially new perspectives on comparison; a critical engagement with "universal" concepts and the politics of conceptual travel; and practical visions on how to imbue the pursuit of knowledge with a concern for ethical and political issues raised by these critiques. International Digital Exchange between Africa and Switzerland (IDEAS) Research Project | 4 Project MembersDas vorliegende Pilotprojekt vermittelt Master-Studierenden der Sozialwissenschaften in der Schweiz, Mali und Guinea das praktische, methodologische und theoretische Handwerkszeug zum kollektiven wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten über kontinentale Grenzen hinweg. Schlüsselaktivitäten sind zwei parallel veranstaltete Seminare zu sozialwissenschaftlicher Theorie und Methodologie sowie gemeinsame Workshops an den jeweiligen Universitäten. Eine zentrale Innovation des Projekts ist die Entwicklung einer Online-Lernplattform. Sie wird kontinuierlich an die Bedarfe der verschiedenen universitären Kontexte angepasst und kann für zukünftige Lehr- und Forschungskooperationen genutzt werden. Ziel ist es, die Internationalisierung und Digitalisierung der Sozialwissenschaften in der Schweiz innovativ voranzutreiben, gerade in Bereichen mit bislang ungenutztem Zukunftspotenzial. Aesthetics from the Margins. Photography in Africa and the Poetics of Un/Making the World Research Project | 3 Project MembersAesthetics from the margins embarks on an historical inquiry into the place of photography in cultural ways of world-making in Africa. The project proceeds on the assumption that while "the world" is economically, politically and socially produced it nevertheless needs to be perceived, sensed, comprehended and made sense of. The world is, in other words, more than a mere reality, fact or given, but the result of continuous making and remaking. The ability to imagine the world and one's own place within it - individually and collectively - rests upon diverse repertoires of images, signs and symbols, idioms and narratives, media and social practices. It hence goes without saying that there has been a long-standing interest in world-making across various disciplines - among them history, philosophy, anthropology, religious, literary and cultural studies - to understand how precisely people make world(s), and how experiencing the world is linked to ideation, knowledge production, subjectivity and consciousness. But, as has recently been noted, in the so-called "age of globalisation" and "media society", and in the context of a growing preoccupation with the world's complexity and opacity, and presently its political, economic and ecological fragility, the question of world-making is of particular importance to both the humanities and social sciences, and society at large. Proposing a study of African colonial and postcolonial photography as a contribution to this recent debate on globalization, the media and world-making cannot forebear, perhaps, to speak from a position of double marginality: "Africa" is often considered to be the historical and contemporary "recipient" of globalization, as opposed to its initiators, and even those who do insist on the continent's historically accrued place and role in the making of the world emphasise, as we shall see, economic and political issues rather than "esoteric" questions of aesthetics and visuality. Yet, it is precisely the assumed marginality of Africa and photography that clears a space for a critical reassessment of how we ground our thinking about history, the world, and the global. Africa-related research in Switzerland Research Project | 1 Project MembersThe aim of this survey was twofold: First it was meant to offer the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) an overview of research activities and cooperations by Swiss institutions in given African countries; second it was meant to offer the Centre for African Studies Basel (ZASB), and the Swiss Society for African Studies (SSAS) and other interested parties an overview of Swiss research in, on and with Africa. The inventory was not meant to serve as a basis for scientific research in the first place. Still, the processability and combination of the data allow for some general insights into questions bearing on Swiss engagement in research on, in and with Africa as well as into the role of research cooperation for research in Africa and by African institutions more generally. 7th European Conference on African Studies: Urban Africa - Urban Africans. New encounters of the rural and the urban Research Project | 6 Project MembersAt 3.5% Africa has the highest urbanization rate in the whole world. The potential effects of these staggering growth rates are relevant for all Africans, both in the urban as well as in the rural areas. By 2040 the continent's cities are expected to have to accommodate 79 Million additional inhabitants. Between 2040 and 2050 the figure will rise to a staggering 84 Million. The latest UN-Habitat report forecasts that by 2025 Africa's urban population will outstrip that of Europe and Latin America together. No wonder that a growing number of researchers, institutions and governments are paying more and more attention to urbanization in Africa. This growing interest focuses on whether rapid urbanization will overwhelm African governments and societies or whether it reflects the increasing importance of the middle classes, a factor which is held by many to account for Africa's positive economic performance of late. African urbanization trends raise several issues that are of interest to scholars. These range from politics (what does the growing importance of city dwellers mean to the character of politics?), through economics (will urbanization undermine or foster efforts at overcoming inequalities?), all the way to social (e.g. are African social relations changing in any significant way as a result of these trends? How do Africans live their cities?) and cultural issues (e.g. will urban life styles dominate the rural? How will the rural and the urban relate to each other in the future?). The key issue, however, is how urbanization processes in Africa transform conventional objects of African Studies and how do scholars of Africa gear up to face such changes? This is the question which the Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel (CASB) in Switzerland wishes to invite scholars of Africa to engage with in a more conscious and systematic manner. While the urban will be prominent, the proposed conference theme will also look into the entanglements of the rural with the urban, especially with a view to addressing an implicit assumption underlying the study of Africa and which concerns the supposed rural 'nature' of the continent as well as the constitutive nature of the tension between tradition and modernity. While over the past few decades a self-critical attitude within many disciplines has led to a weakening of these assumptions, the urban continues arguably to be seen as the exception or, at any rate, as analytically less consequential than the rural. ECAS 2017 "Urban Africa - Urban Africans" will, therefore, be an occasion for rethinking African Studies, but also for exploring and deepening research avenues that many researchers working on urban and rural issues have taken up over recent years. There is a critical mass to be harnessed in the effort to push the frontiers of critical European knowledge production on Africa. Over 1300 participants attended this convention organised by the Centre for African Studies Basel and the Swiss Society for African Studies on behalf of the Research Network of African Studies Centres in Europe AEGIS . They presented 1020 papers in 204 thematic panels and engaged in 10 round table discussions, 18 book launches, 13 film screenings and 13 meetings and were inspired by 4 keynote lectures. Exchange Agreement with the University of Namibia Research Project | 3 Project MembersThe primary objective of this Agreement is the development of cooperative efforts between the University of Basel and the University of Namibia, which will enhance the academic interchange between the two parties. Recognizing the importance of mutual collaboration and the contributions to society made by institutions of higher education, the parties desire to promote exchange between the faculty and students of the two institutions as well as the exchange of academic and research information. 'The place to be'. Urban culture, politics and media in Lusaka (Zambia) in the 1970ies Research Project | 6 Project MembersThis project originates from the unusual Basel-based archive of a Southern African journalist, Ruth Weiss which lends itself as a starting point to revisit Lusaka's history of the 1970s as a political, cultural, media and intellectual metropole for the whole of Southern Africa. The project aims at Repatriating from Basel to a national Zambian institution parts of the digital archive of Ruth Weiss in order to stimulate research in Zambia itself; conducting two workshops (Lusaka & Basel) with historians, media specialists and anthropologists on the proposed topic of urban culture, politics and media in Lusaka in the 1970s; critically revisiting previous academic work on Lusaka as a city and asking new questions about the networks and spatiality of elites, ordinary people and the large ex-pat/refugee and liberation movement populations in that metropole at a particular historical moment of crucial relevance to the whole of southern Africa. The Lusaka National Museum and the Department of History of the University of Zambia are both involved in public history and research projects concerning the themes, period and archives under review. The project allows the Swiss and Zambian partners to establish a new network of sustainable research projects. A South African social garden: people, plants and multispecies histories in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden Research Project | 1 Project MembersGardens and gardening are widely regarded as apolitical. Accordingly, garden historians have hardly written about politics, and social historians have rarely taken gardens and gardening into consideration. This is also the case with the 1913 established Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in South Africa. The existing literature treats politics primarily as context, but not as something that it was inherently part of. The dissertation argues that contrary to this perception, Kirstenbosch evolved embedded in political, social and economic processes. The perception as apolitical emerged partly as a result of its various political functions. Kirstenbosch and the subsequently established network of regional gardens functioned as sites in which nature and nation were defined in terms of each other. A striking continuity existed thereby of the institution's involvement in the production of ideas about nation, citizenship and belonging that stretches from the colonial to the apartheid and post-apartheid era. Following recent developments in critical plant studies, floriography studies and multispecies ethnography, the main question of the dissertation is how Kirstenbosch evolved as a social space. Throughout the dissertation I argue for an understanding of Kirstenbosch as an inherently social space. As a social space, it is shaped by social relationships among and between humans and non-humans, especially plants. Understanding it as a social space allows to critically engage the work of power in it. This understanding can serve as the basis for re-imagining Kirstenbosch as a medium in which multiple epistemologies and ontologies can take root that enable the development of more just and sustainable relationships among and between humans and non-humans. The dissertation is based on extensive archival research, oral history interviews and participant observations. The dissertation was initially supervised by the late Prof. Dr. Patrick Harries. The main supervisor is currently Prof. Dr. Ciraj Rassool (University of the Western Cape) and the second supervisor is Prof. Dr. Julia Tischler (University of Basel). The dissertation was initially supervised by the late Prof. Dr. Patrick Harries. The main supervisor is currently Prof. Dr. Ciraj Rassool (University of the Western Cape) and the second supervisor is Prof. Dr. Julia Tischler (University of Basel). University-productive sector collaboration in Mozambique: evidence from universities and companies Research Project | 1 Project MembersThe emergence of the so-called knowledge-based economy worldwide from 1980s onwards has redefined universities as important tools for economic growth and development. Universities are expected to produce economically useful knowledge. In this sense, university-productive sector collaboration is considered to be essential in ensuring that universities produce relevant knowledge for growth. In developed and emerging economies, research seems to demonstrate strong university-productive sector collaboration. This has fostered the assumption that economic development in developing countries requires strong investment in higher education, particularly in areas of knowledge that are thought to be more relevant, namely the hard sciences as opposed to soft sciences. In Africa, despite current recognition of the socio-economic relevance of universities, there is no systematic and reliable evidence to support this assumption. The government of Mozambique has made this assumption its own and has favored policies emphasizing the socio-economic relevance of universities. However, it seems that the idea that universities are economically relevant is simply taken for granted. This research seeks to critically question these assumptions, by examining data collected on the issue and by producing more comprehensive data on university-productive sector collaboration in Mozambique.The aim is to reflect on the stage of university-productive sector collaboration in Mozambique, particularly to compare the stage of university-productive sector collaboration between hard sciences and soft sciences departments. TEMPEA Temporality of permanence - material and socio-spatial practices in African urbanism Research Project | 3 Project MembersThe constructed materiality of African urbanism can be seen in buildings and the urban layout, especially when they aspire to permanence by building in stone. These built environments have mostly been analysed through the rather static lens of individual periods and social forces, resulting in uniformly interpreted organic growth (for pre-colonial periods), or as in stages of progress towards the fulfilment of a grand master plan (predominantly in the colonial and post-colonial era). The project explores the social temporality of African urbanism against the context of its material complements from the perspectives of a range of social and human sciences, in order to obtain a dynamic picture from before to after the colonial era. Providing analyses relevant to the ever more pressing issues of urban ethnic/social coexistence and the implications of urban development, it incorporates aspects of sociology (living in neighbourhoods in densely populated environments), history (representations and accounts of past experience) and social anthropology (the meanings of space). It centres on spatial materiality of African cities, as it is demonstrated in their layout and in the organisation of buildings, looking at how these urban patterns are produced, used and continually altered, and how a 'building heritage' emerges from these. Its aim is to derive how this influences the social life of inhabitants and visitors, and how it in turn induces on-going processes of change in material representations. The first phase of the project is undertaken at the Centre of African Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland. The 2nd phase at Uppsala University, Sweden, will focus on the implications for the Swahili coast and African archaeology. 123 123
Reversing the Gaze: Towards Post-Comparative Area Studies Research Project | 6 Project MembersThis project proposes the approach of a "conceptual laboratory" to test the analytic purchase of mid-level concepts that seek to explain the crises of political identity and liberal democracy, through practices of reciprocal comparison. The overarching research question for the conceptual laboratory is the following: how can mid-level concepts developed in the Global South be made useful for knowledge production in general? The key critical theoretical assumption underlying the methodological level is the idea that we need to reverse the gaze, i.e. deploy conceptualisations developed in the South in the North. On a substantive level, we ask how useful the mid-level concepts "re-tribalisation", "political society" and "the cunning state" are in describing, analysing and interpreting these crisis phenomena in liberal democracies of Europe (in comparison to already existing conceptual vocabularies developed in a European context), more specifically in the Alpine region (Switzerland, Austria and Italy)? On a theoretical level, we ask how freeing such concepts from the constraints of context can contribute to particular relational approaches to area studies (and disciplinary comparison). Finally, on a methodological level, we seek to draw lessons from the conceptual laboratory in operationalizing an epistemological practice of reciprocal comparison. We propose three empirical case studies which meet two main goals. On the one hand, they seek to offer innovative and conceptually out-of-the-box perspectives on and across the cases themselves, differing from those derived and developed exclusively within and against a European background. Moreover, they draw respectively from an old concept ("retribalisation", Africa), a fashionable but contested concept ("political society", Asia) and an emerging concept that still needs to establish itself in the area studies domain ("the cunning state", Asia). Second, we approach the concepts as descriptions of the set of particulars making up crisis phenomena in specific settings. The question we ask is whether the particulars brought into view can help us shed more light on similar phenomena in Europe, thereby shifting the case for conceptual regionalism in favour of greater attention to the possibilities of comparison. These different histories of the concepts provide us with a diversity of mid-range concepts whose application in other empirical contexts beyond their area studies domain can be tested. Crucial to the research approach is the distinction between the object of research and the scope of inquiry. The former refers to the "Southern" background of the deployed concepts and the three case studies in the Alpine region within which empirical research takes place. The latter refers to the concrete phenomenon we describe, analyse and interpret in a given setting. Our project proposal is thus a response to recent critical reflections on Area Studies, comparative disciplinary work, as well as critiques from the South. In building on these literatures while attending to knowledge production in practice, its scholarly outcomes include potentially new perspectives on comparison; a critical engagement with "universal" concepts and the politics of conceptual travel; and practical visions on how to imbue the pursuit of knowledge with a concern for ethical and political issues raised by these critiques.
International Digital Exchange between Africa and Switzerland (IDEAS) Research Project | 4 Project MembersDas vorliegende Pilotprojekt vermittelt Master-Studierenden der Sozialwissenschaften in der Schweiz, Mali und Guinea das praktische, methodologische und theoretische Handwerkszeug zum kollektiven wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten über kontinentale Grenzen hinweg. Schlüsselaktivitäten sind zwei parallel veranstaltete Seminare zu sozialwissenschaftlicher Theorie und Methodologie sowie gemeinsame Workshops an den jeweiligen Universitäten. Eine zentrale Innovation des Projekts ist die Entwicklung einer Online-Lernplattform. Sie wird kontinuierlich an die Bedarfe der verschiedenen universitären Kontexte angepasst und kann für zukünftige Lehr- und Forschungskooperationen genutzt werden. Ziel ist es, die Internationalisierung und Digitalisierung der Sozialwissenschaften in der Schweiz innovativ voranzutreiben, gerade in Bereichen mit bislang ungenutztem Zukunftspotenzial.
Aesthetics from the Margins. Photography in Africa and the Poetics of Un/Making the World Research Project | 3 Project MembersAesthetics from the margins embarks on an historical inquiry into the place of photography in cultural ways of world-making in Africa. The project proceeds on the assumption that while "the world" is economically, politically and socially produced it nevertheless needs to be perceived, sensed, comprehended and made sense of. The world is, in other words, more than a mere reality, fact or given, but the result of continuous making and remaking. The ability to imagine the world and one's own place within it - individually and collectively - rests upon diverse repertoires of images, signs and symbols, idioms and narratives, media and social practices. It hence goes without saying that there has been a long-standing interest in world-making across various disciplines - among them history, philosophy, anthropology, religious, literary and cultural studies - to understand how precisely people make world(s), and how experiencing the world is linked to ideation, knowledge production, subjectivity and consciousness. But, as has recently been noted, in the so-called "age of globalisation" and "media society", and in the context of a growing preoccupation with the world's complexity and opacity, and presently its political, economic and ecological fragility, the question of world-making is of particular importance to both the humanities and social sciences, and society at large. Proposing a study of African colonial and postcolonial photography as a contribution to this recent debate on globalization, the media and world-making cannot forebear, perhaps, to speak from a position of double marginality: "Africa" is often considered to be the historical and contemporary "recipient" of globalization, as opposed to its initiators, and even those who do insist on the continent's historically accrued place and role in the making of the world emphasise, as we shall see, economic and political issues rather than "esoteric" questions of aesthetics and visuality. Yet, it is precisely the assumed marginality of Africa and photography that clears a space for a critical reassessment of how we ground our thinking about history, the world, and the global.
Africa-related research in Switzerland Research Project | 1 Project MembersThe aim of this survey was twofold: First it was meant to offer the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) an overview of research activities and cooperations by Swiss institutions in given African countries; second it was meant to offer the Centre for African Studies Basel (ZASB), and the Swiss Society for African Studies (SSAS) and other interested parties an overview of Swiss research in, on and with Africa. The inventory was not meant to serve as a basis for scientific research in the first place. Still, the processability and combination of the data allow for some general insights into questions bearing on Swiss engagement in research on, in and with Africa as well as into the role of research cooperation for research in Africa and by African institutions more generally.
7th European Conference on African Studies: Urban Africa - Urban Africans. New encounters of the rural and the urban Research Project | 6 Project MembersAt 3.5% Africa has the highest urbanization rate in the whole world. The potential effects of these staggering growth rates are relevant for all Africans, both in the urban as well as in the rural areas. By 2040 the continent's cities are expected to have to accommodate 79 Million additional inhabitants. Between 2040 and 2050 the figure will rise to a staggering 84 Million. The latest UN-Habitat report forecasts that by 2025 Africa's urban population will outstrip that of Europe and Latin America together. No wonder that a growing number of researchers, institutions and governments are paying more and more attention to urbanization in Africa. This growing interest focuses on whether rapid urbanization will overwhelm African governments and societies or whether it reflects the increasing importance of the middle classes, a factor which is held by many to account for Africa's positive economic performance of late. African urbanization trends raise several issues that are of interest to scholars. These range from politics (what does the growing importance of city dwellers mean to the character of politics?), through economics (will urbanization undermine or foster efforts at overcoming inequalities?), all the way to social (e.g. are African social relations changing in any significant way as a result of these trends? How do Africans live their cities?) and cultural issues (e.g. will urban life styles dominate the rural? How will the rural and the urban relate to each other in the future?). The key issue, however, is how urbanization processes in Africa transform conventional objects of African Studies and how do scholars of Africa gear up to face such changes? This is the question which the Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel (CASB) in Switzerland wishes to invite scholars of Africa to engage with in a more conscious and systematic manner. While the urban will be prominent, the proposed conference theme will also look into the entanglements of the rural with the urban, especially with a view to addressing an implicit assumption underlying the study of Africa and which concerns the supposed rural 'nature' of the continent as well as the constitutive nature of the tension between tradition and modernity. While over the past few decades a self-critical attitude within many disciplines has led to a weakening of these assumptions, the urban continues arguably to be seen as the exception or, at any rate, as analytically less consequential than the rural. ECAS 2017 "Urban Africa - Urban Africans" will, therefore, be an occasion for rethinking African Studies, but also for exploring and deepening research avenues that many researchers working on urban and rural issues have taken up over recent years. There is a critical mass to be harnessed in the effort to push the frontiers of critical European knowledge production on Africa. Over 1300 participants attended this convention organised by the Centre for African Studies Basel and the Swiss Society for African Studies on behalf of the Research Network of African Studies Centres in Europe AEGIS . They presented 1020 papers in 204 thematic panels and engaged in 10 round table discussions, 18 book launches, 13 film screenings and 13 meetings and were inspired by 4 keynote lectures.
Exchange Agreement with the University of Namibia Research Project | 3 Project MembersThe primary objective of this Agreement is the development of cooperative efforts between the University of Basel and the University of Namibia, which will enhance the academic interchange between the two parties. Recognizing the importance of mutual collaboration and the contributions to society made by institutions of higher education, the parties desire to promote exchange between the faculty and students of the two institutions as well as the exchange of academic and research information.
'The place to be'. Urban culture, politics and media in Lusaka (Zambia) in the 1970ies Research Project | 6 Project MembersThis project originates from the unusual Basel-based archive of a Southern African journalist, Ruth Weiss which lends itself as a starting point to revisit Lusaka's history of the 1970s as a political, cultural, media and intellectual metropole for the whole of Southern Africa. The project aims at Repatriating from Basel to a national Zambian institution parts of the digital archive of Ruth Weiss in order to stimulate research in Zambia itself; conducting two workshops (Lusaka & Basel) with historians, media specialists and anthropologists on the proposed topic of urban culture, politics and media in Lusaka in the 1970s; critically revisiting previous academic work on Lusaka as a city and asking new questions about the networks and spatiality of elites, ordinary people and the large ex-pat/refugee and liberation movement populations in that metropole at a particular historical moment of crucial relevance to the whole of southern Africa. The Lusaka National Museum and the Department of History of the University of Zambia are both involved in public history and research projects concerning the themes, period and archives under review. The project allows the Swiss and Zambian partners to establish a new network of sustainable research projects.
A South African social garden: people, plants and multispecies histories in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden Research Project | 1 Project MembersGardens and gardening are widely regarded as apolitical. Accordingly, garden historians have hardly written about politics, and social historians have rarely taken gardens and gardening into consideration. This is also the case with the 1913 established Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in South Africa. The existing literature treats politics primarily as context, but not as something that it was inherently part of. The dissertation argues that contrary to this perception, Kirstenbosch evolved embedded in political, social and economic processes. The perception as apolitical emerged partly as a result of its various political functions. Kirstenbosch and the subsequently established network of regional gardens functioned as sites in which nature and nation were defined in terms of each other. A striking continuity existed thereby of the institution's involvement in the production of ideas about nation, citizenship and belonging that stretches from the colonial to the apartheid and post-apartheid era. Following recent developments in critical plant studies, floriography studies and multispecies ethnography, the main question of the dissertation is how Kirstenbosch evolved as a social space. Throughout the dissertation I argue for an understanding of Kirstenbosch as an inherently social space. As a social space, it is shaped by social relationships among and between humans and non-humans, especially plants. Understanding it as a social space allows to critically engage the work of power in it. This understanding can serve as the basis for re-imagining Kirstenbosch as a medium in which multiple epistemologies and ontologies can take root that enable the development of more just and sustainable relationships among and between humans and non-humans. The dissertation is based on extensive archival research, oral history interviews and participant observations. The dissertation was initially supervised by the late Prof. Dr. Patrick Harries. The main supervisor is currently Prof. Dr. Ciraj Rassool (University of the Western Cape) and the second supervisor is Prof. Dr. Julia Tischler (University of Basel). The dissertation was initially supervised by the late Prof. Dr. Patrick Harries. The main supervisor is currently Prof. Dr. Ciraj Rassool (University of the Western Cape) and the second supervisor is Prof. Dr. Julia Tischler (University of Basel).
University-productive sector collaboration in Mozambique: evidence from universities and companies Research Project | 1 Project MembersThe emergence of the so-called knowledge-based economy worldwide from 1980s onwards has redefined universities as important tools for economic growth and development. Universities are expected to produce economically useful knowledge. In this sense, university-productive sector collaboration is considered to be essential in ensuring that universities produce relevant knowledge for growth. In developed and emerging economies, research seems to demonstrate strong university-productive sector collaboration. This has fostered the assumption that economic development in developing countries requires strong investment in higher education, particularly in areas of knowledge that are thought to be more relevant, namely the hard sciences as opposed to soft sciences. In Africa, despite current recognition of the socio-economic relevance of universities, there is no systematic and reliable evidence to support this assumption. The government of Mozambique has made this assumption its own and has favored policies emphasizing the socio-economic relevance of universities. However, it seems that the idea that universities are economically relevant is simply taken for granted. This research seeks to critically question these assumptions, by examining data collected on the issue and by producing more comprehensive data on university-productive sector collaboration in Mozambique.The aim is to reflect on the stage of university-productive sector collaboration in Mozambique, particularly to compare the stage of university-productive sector collaboration between hard sciences and soft sciences departments.
TEMPEA Temporality of permanence - material and socio-spatial practices in African urbanism Research Project | 3 Project MembersThe constructed materiality of African urbanism can be seen in buildings and the urban layout, especially when they aspire to permanence by building in stone. These built environments have mostly been analysed through the rather static lens of individual periods and social forces, resulting in uniformly interpreted organic growth (for pre-colonial periods), or as in stages of progress towards the fulfilment of a grand master plan (predominantly in the colonial and post-colonial era). The project explores the social temporality of African urbanism against the context of its material complements from the perspectives of a range of social and human sciences, in order to obtain a dynamic picture from before to after the colonial era. Providing analyses relevant to the ever more pressing issues of urban ethnic/social coexistence and the implications of urban development, it incorporates aspects of sociology (living in neighbourhoods in densely populated environments), history (representations and accounts of past experience) and social anthropology (the meanings of space). It centres on spatial materiality of African cities, as it is demonstrated in their layout and in the organisation of buildings, looking at how these urban patterns are produced, used and continually altered, and how a 'building heritage' emerges from these. Its aim is to derive how this influences the social life of inhabitants and visitors, and how it in turn induces on-going processes of change in material representations. The first phase of the project is undertaken at the Centre of African Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland. The 2nd phase at Uppsala University, Sweden, will focus on the implications for the Swahili coast and African archaeology.
