In this seminar, Christine Cheng explores how states and extra-legal groups work together and analyzes how our definitions of what is legal affect our view of the state and governance.

African Studies Centre

Book Launch: Extralegal Groups in Post-Conflict Liberia

Ramon Sarró and Marina P. Temudo deliver paper at 'Cultural Production in Africa's Extractive Communities' workshop. This is the fourth of five papers delivered at this workshop on 16 May 2019. ‘Cultural Production in Africa’s Extractive Communities’ is the sixth research seminar of the ERC project ‘Comparing the Copperbelt’ based at the University of Oxford. It focuses on the intersection between mining and cultural production in Central, Western and Southern Africa. Mining was one of the most important engines of transformation in Africa’s recent social and economic history. Industrial-scale mining – of gold, copper, tin, coal, oil, and diamonds – generated new towns and hurled people together from myriad cultural, linguistic and regional backgrounds. Thus, mining regions have also proved to be important venues of new forms of cultural production. Examples include DRCongo’s popular painting, Zambia’s psychedelic rock revolution in the 1970s, or Sotho migrant workers’ lifela song-poem genre. While certain forms of popular art have been the object of detailed study, e.g. in J.C. Mitchell’s 1956 ethnography of the Kalela dance, many of these studies have tended to be narrow in geographical focus. This seminar will attempt a more global view and will look at a variety of cultural forms across a variety of regions and time periods. It will integrate analysis of cultural production into regional histories that have more commonly been characterised in structural and material terms, exploring the ways in which processes of cultural, political and economic change found expression in everyday life. Questions to be addressed include: in what ways did new forms of popular art integrate various cultural influences to address social issues specific to the mining context? How does the 21st century mining context, defined by plurality and competing global companies, impact cultural production? How do cultural forms produced in such contexts relate to and compare with those produced in other areas of the country? What can popular art tell us about the lived experiences of the societies that produced it?

The Elders know Nothing: the Inversion of Tradition in the New Mining Context

David Pratten delivers paper at 'Cultural Production in Africa's Extractive Communities' workshop. This is the third of five papers delivered at this workshop on 16 May 2019. ‘Cultural Production in Africa’s Extractive Communities’ is the sixth research seminar of the ERC project ‘Comparing the Copperbelt’ based at the University of Oxford. It focuses on the intersection between mining and cultural production in Central, Western and Southern Africa. Mining was one of the most important engines of transformation in Africa’s recent social and economic history. Industrial-scale mining – of gold, copper, tin, coal, oil, and diamonds – generated new towns and hurled people together from myriad cultural, linguistic and regional backgrounds. Thus, mining regions have also proved to be important venues of new forms of cultural production. Examples include DRCongo’s popular painting, Zambia’s psychedelic rock revolution in the 1970s, or Sotho migrant workers’ lifela song-poem genre. While certain forms of popular art have been the object of detailed study, e.g. in J.C. Mitchell’s 1956 ethnography of the Kalela dance, many of these studies have tended to be narrow in geographical focus. This seminar will attempt a more global view and will look at a variety of cultural forms across a variety of regions and time periods. It will integrate analysis of cultural production into regional histories that have more commonly been characterised in structural and material terms, exploring the ways in which processes of cultural, political and economic change found expression in everyday life. Questions to be addressed include: in what ways did new forms of popular art integrate various cultural influences to address social issues specific to the mining context? How does the 21st century mining context, defined by plurality and competing global companies, impact cultural production? How do cultural forms produced in such contexts relate to and compare with those produced in other areas of the country? What can popular art tell us about the lived experiences of the societies that produced it?

Youth, insecurity and intimacy in the popular arts of the Niger Delta

Enid Guene delivers paper at 'Cultural Production in Africa's Extractive Communities' workshop. This is the second of five papers delivered at this workshop on 16 May 2019. ‘Cultural Production in Africa’s Extractive Communities’ is the sixth research seminar of the ERC project ‘Comparing the Copperbelt’ based at the University of Oxford. It focuses on the intersection between mining and cultural production in Central, Western and Southern Africa. Mining was one of the most important engines of transformation in Africa’s recent social and economic history. Industrial-scale mining – of gold, copper, tin, coal, oil, and diamonds – generated new towns and hurled people together from myriad cultural, linguistic and regional backgrounds. Thus, mining regions have also proved to be important venues of new forms of cultural production. Examples include DRCongo’s popular painting, Zambia’s psychedelic rock revolution in the 1970s, or Sotho migrant workers’ lifela song-poem genre. While certain forms of popular art have been the object of detailed study, e.g. in J.C. Mitchell’s 1956 ethnography of the Kalela dance, many of these studies have tended to be narrow in geographical focus. This seminar will attempt a more global view and will look at a variety of cultural forms across a variety of regions and time periods. It will integrate analysis of cultural production into regional histories that have more commonly been characterised in structural and material terms, exploring the ways in which processes of cultural, political and economic change found expression in everyday life. Questions to be addressed include: in what ways did new forms of popular art integrate various cultural influences to address social issues specific to the mining context? How does the 21st century mining context, defined by plurality and competing global companies, impact cultural production? How do cultural forms produced in such contexts relate to and compare with those produced in other areas of the country? What can popular art tell us about the lived experiences of the societies that produced it?

Artistic Movements: Music, Popular Painting and Cultural Exchanges on the central African Copperbelt

Sarah Van Beurden delivers paper at 'Cultural Production in Africa's Extractive Communities' workshop. This is the first of five papers delivered at this workshop on 16 May 2019. ‘Cultural Production in Africa’s Extractive Communities’ is the sixth research seminar of the ERC project ‘Comparing the Copperbelt’ based at the University of Oxford. It focuses on the intersection between mining and cultural production in Central, Western and Southern Africa. Mining was one of the most important engines of transformation in Africa’s recent social and economic history. Industrial-scale mining – of gold, copper, tin, coal, oil, and diamonds – generated new towns and hurled people together from myriad cultural, linguistic and regional backgrounds. Thus, mining regions have also proved to be important venues of new forms of cultural production. Examples include DRCongo’s popular painting, Zambia’s psychedelic rock revolution in the 1970s, or Sotho migrant workers’ lifela song-poem genre. While certain forms of popular art have been the object of detailed study, e.g. in J.C. Mitchell’s 1956 ethnography of the Kalela dance, many of these studies have tended to be narrow in geographical focus. This seminar will attempt a more global view and will look at a variety of cultural forms across a variety of regions and time periods. It will integrate analysis of cultural production into regional histories that have more commonly been characterised in structural and material terms, exploring the ways in which processes of cultural, political and economic change found expression in everyday life. Questions to be addressed include: in what ways did new forms of popular art integrate various cultural influences to address social issues specific to the mining context? How does the 21st century mining context, defined by plurality and competing global companies, impact cultural production? How do cultural forms produced in such contexts relate to and compare with those produced in other areas of the country? What can popular art tell us about the lived experiences of the societies that produced it?

Mobutist Modernism: Art Education, State Sponsorship and the Visual Arts in Zaire

Portia Roelofs and Gavin Williams discuss in this podcast Gavin's influential book, State and Society in Nigeria.

Book Launch: State and Society in Nigeria

Carli Coetzee discusses her book and surrounding themes in this talk. Ideas of femininity and issues about Ruth First regarding her time in prison are central to this interesting discussion.

Ruth First's Red Suitcase: In and Out of the Strongroom of Memory Book launch of Written Under the Skin: Blood and Intergenerational Memory in South Africa

In this talk, Dr Pedi Obani explores the impact of flooding in Benin City and the different ways in which people combat this hardship. Dr Obani also analyzes how these strategies could be improved for the betterment of the community as a whole. Most fast growing cities across Africa are experiencing the negative impacts of the convergence of urbanisation and climate change. Climate change itself exposes individuals, communities, common goods and infrastructure to flooding, heat, and other extreme weather events in a way that compromises the delivery of basic services and human wellbeing. Very often, the negative impacts are exacerbated by intervening factors such as poverty and the failure of relevant institutions to support effective adaptation and mitigation. This research explores individual adaptation strategies to flooding and assesses their impacts and sustainability in the context of a low income urban setting in Benin City, Nigeria. It further examines the interplay between urban planning laws and processes, and local adaptation strategies. In practice, when faced with extreme weather events such as flooding, the affected individuals (including households) and communities adapt using the resources available in their environment and networks. Nonetheless, tensions between actor rationality and the optimal collective outcomes are likely to affect the quality of adaptation with community-wide consequences because individuals often appear to prefer strategies that maximize the personal rather than the collective benefits. This research identifies four heuristic types of relationships that are observable from individual adaptation strategies for flooding in low income urban settings, namely: isolation, competition, alliance, and cooperation. Furthermore, the paper makes recommendations for improving the coherence between personal adaptation strategies on the one hand, and the maximisation of the collective utility on the other hand as a means of achieving transformation towards sustainability.

Individual Adaptation Strategies to Flooding in a Low-Income Urban Setting in Nigeria

ASC seminar with Marco Di Nunzio Marco Di Nunzio speaks about his new book, The Act of Living. The book explores the relation between development and marginality in Ethiopia, one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. Replete with richly depicted characters and multi-layered narratives on history, everyday life and visions of the future, Di Nunzio's ethnography of hustling and street life is an investigation of what is to live, hope and act in the face of the failing promises of development and change. Di Nunzio follows the life trajectories of two men, 'Haile' and 'Ibrahim,' as they grow up in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, enter street life to get by, and turn to the city's expanding economies of work and entrepreneurship to search for a better life. Apparently favourable circumstances of development have not helped them achieve social improvement. As their condition of marginality endures, the two men embark in restless attempts to transform living into a site for hope and possibility. By narrating Haile and Ibrahim's lives, The Act of Living explores how and why development continues to fail the poor, how marginality is understood and acted upon in a time of promise, and why poor people's claims for open-endedness can lead to better and more just alternative futures. Tying together anthropology, African studies, political science, and urban studies, Di Nunzio takes readers on a bold exploration of the meaning of existence, hope, marginality, and street life.

The Act of Living: Street Life, Marginality and Development in Urban Ethiopia (Book Launch)

Joao Lourenco's reform agenda in post Dos Santos Angola: Ambiguities and asymmetries

ASC and Oxford Africa Society special lecture with Dr Max Price, former Vice Chancellor of UCT. Dr Max Price gives a topical lecture in Oxford about his experience as Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town during the national student protests which took place between 2015 and 2017, speaking about the meanings, issues and dilemmas of 'decolonisation' in the UCT context.

Decolonisation Dilemmas: Challenges for University Leadership

Prof Karin Barber delivers keynote lecture for 'Cultural Production in Africa's Extractive Communities' workshop 'Cultural Production in Africa's Extractive Communities' is the sixth research seminar of the ERC project 'Comparing the Copperbelt' based at the University of Oxford. It focuses on the intersection between mining and cultural production in Central, Western and Southern Africa. Mining was one of the most important engines of transformation in Africa's recent social and economic history. Industrial-scale mining - of gold, copper, tin, coal, oil, and diamonds - generated new towns and hurled people together from myriad cultural, linguistic and regional backgrounds. Thus, mining regions have also proved to be important venues of new forms of cultural production. Examples include DRCongo's popular painting, Zambia's psychedelic rock revolution in the 1970s, or Sotho migrant workers' lifela song-poem genre. While certain forms of popular art have been the object of detailed study, e.g. in J.C. Mitchell’s 1956 ethnography of the Kalela dance, many of these studies have tended to be narrow in geographical focus. This seminar will attempt a more global view and will look at a variety of cultural forms across a variety of regions and time periods. It will integrate analysis of cultural production into regional histories that have more commonly been characterised in structural and material terms, exploring the ways in which processes of cultural, political and economic change found expression in everyday life. Questions to be addressed include: in what ways did new forms of popular art integrate various cultural influences to address social issues specific to the mining context? How does the 21st century mining context, defined by plurality and competing global companies, impact cultural production? How do cultural forms produced in such contexts relate to and compare with those produced in other areas of the country? What can popular art tell us about the lived experiences of the societies that produced it?

The earth compels: Forces of destruction and creation in the history of African popular culture

Unmasking Africana in British Art

ASC seminar by Tom Lavers A growing literature highlights the pursuit of 'double-digit growth' and industrialisation within the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Party's (EPRDF) 'developmental state' model. Yet economic transformation has never been the sole focus of the EPRDF's thinking. Rather, the distributional implications of development have been a central concern ever since the party came to power in 1991 and even beforehand during the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front's (TPLF) liberation struggle and administration of Tigray during the 1980s. This presentation is based on empirical research on land, agriculture, social protection and employment conducted over the past 10 years, involving analysis of key informant interviews with political elites and bureaucrats, official and internal party documentation, and village level case studies. The analysis shows that the EPRDF has long sought not only to stimulate a rapid process of economic transformation, but also to manage that process in the interests of social and political stability, drawing on a range of policy tools to do so, including: state land ownership, agricultural extension, employment creation and, more recently, social protection. Despite significant shifts in the EPRDF’s development strategy over time, there is actually considerable continuity in the principles underpinning this distributional strategy that reflects the complex interplay of political interests and ideology, namely: delivering tangible progress to a broad section of the population as a means of building support, while also mobilising along ethno-nationalist lines. Ironically, however, while this approach has secured many successes, it has also exposed important limitations, in highlighting two of the central drivers of recent political upheaval within the country: an interlinked crisis of severe land and employment shortages, and the limits to ethno-regional autonomy under the federal system. Tom Lavers is a Lecturer in Politics and Development at the University of Manchester's Global Development Institute. His research focuses on state-society relations and the politics of development. Recent work has been published in journals such as African Affairs, Development and Change and the Journal of Agrarian Change.

The politics of distribution in Ethiopia's 'developmental state'

ASC seminar by Roseanne Njiru In Kenya, marriage is a significant contributor to adult HIV infections. Global public health acknowledges the relationship between gender inequalities and HIV in marriage. However, behaviour change interventions to reduce the marital HIV ‘risk’ in Kenya have emphasized individual-level sexual behaviour change and, in recent times, accelerated biomedical solutions in the drive towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030. The social and structural realities that, for example, produce and facilitate extramarital sexual behaviour are often masked by the emphasis on individual responsibility that underpins the neoliberal market logic which serves to shift obligation of welfare from the state, and other global institutions, to its citizens. Thus, public health’s discourses and education on HIV (e.g. marital monogamy and fidelity, condom use) are under the rubric of this responsibilising ideology. In this presentation, I examine how the biopower of public health frames HIV risk in marriage, how they imagine and seek to shape gender and sexual relations in marriage, and the assumptions they make about local marital and gender relations in their programs and discourses. On the other hand, using data from rural and urban heterosexual couples, I explore how married individuals receive, interpret, and act (adopt or resist) on public health messages in light of their socio-cultural and material circumstances that also powerfully regulate behaviour, and then what forms of gender and social relations emerge to either reduce or exacerbate HIV transmission in marriage. This presentation highlights the relations in the two realms of power—public health, and socio-cultural and structural realities—and what this means for HIV in marriages in Kenya. Roseanne Njiru is a visiting fellow at the Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge. She teaches Sociology in the Department of Social Sciences and Development Studies at The Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Kenya. She has a PhD in Sociology, and a graduate certificate in Human Rights, both from the University of Connecticut, USA. Her MA in Sociology is from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Her doctoral research is on gendered HIV transmission in marriages in Kenya. Her research interests are in gender, health, human rights, internal displacement and peacebuilding.

Public health and gender: Assumptions, disjunctures in practice, and implications for HIV prevention within marriages in Kenya

The University of Oxford is one of the world's leading centres for the study of Africa. In every Faculty and Division across the University there are active research programmes focused on the continent. The African Studies Centre, within the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, acts as a focal point for graduate level work and faculty research on Africa. Alongside the vibrant doctoral programmes, the MSc in African Studies, inaugurated in 2006, is already recognised as Europe's most prestigious and successful training programme in its field.

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African Studies Centre

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