ANTH326 Meeting 10 (Final)

ANTH326 Peoples and Cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa

Meeting 10, November 12, 2007

Wrap-Up

• Threads from weeks• Making links (Where can be found?)

Wrap-Up Threads

• Colonialism– Kinship

• Choice of words, impact of word choice• Gender

Groups

• Constructs, not binded• Tribalism– Ambiguity/stereotypes– Negative connotation in nationalist contexts

• Multiplicity of identities: language, rural/urban, traditional/modern

Worldviews

• Romanticism, Western imagination, noble savage

• Enlightenment, mechanization, industrial revolution

Conceptions

• Misconceptions, portrayals, anthropological perspectives (Keim, today, portraying colonialism)

Feedback on Course

• Received feedback• Giving feedback– Teaching experience– Learning experience

• Happy with recent developments

Breakthough?

• Two weeks ago• Discussed last week• Assignments• Journal entries• Private communication

Concordia

• Taught elsewhere (NB, MA, IN, Qc)• Impressed by Concordia students–Diversity of viewpoints– Thoughtfulness– Engaged learners

• Dual Jesuit/community background?

Critical Thinking

• Implications of statements• Putting in perspective• Using different angles• Not take anything for granted

This Course

• No exception to Concordia impression– Impressed by course participants

• Challenging course– Touchy topics– Passionate–Get deeper

Behaviour

• Some issues with disruptive behaviour– Not paying attention– Non-germane points– Cutting off– Taking individuals to task– Individual talking/whispering

• Firm on disruptive behaviour• Debates are fine when respectful

Debate Bubble

• Biological evolution vs. Creation• Quantum field vs. String theories• Right vs. Left• Canadiens vs. Senators• HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray

Themes from Readings

• Team reporter• Maximum four themes• Two minutes per theme• Will not open discussion

Rodney

• Guyana• UWI, SOAS• Activism• Idealized/simplified pre-colonial Africa• Impressed by Tanzania

Rodney Themes

Rodney Themes Team 1• Reply to colonization as positive or negative?– No fruits/benefits, in his perspective– Capitalists benefitting– Not establishing working class

• Puppet governments– Serve interests– Not representative

• Taking away history (beetles, Enlightenment)• Gender issues, woman’s rights, loss status• Past perspectives, how apply today?• Concept of tribe

Rodney Themes Team 2• Taking out outweighs bringing in• White Man’s Burden• Racial (link to Comaroffs)– One-sided terminology perpetuates

• Prevented from skilled labour (reserved)– No industry development

• Health, hospitals benefitting colonialists– Not training doctors

• Agriculture revolution, subsistence farming• One-sided on negative impact

Rodney Themes Team 3

• Negative aspects• Refute media’s positive twist• Labour and value• Pay geologists, but no Afircans• Post-Independence, doing better for health

Rodney Themes Team 4

• All the social services benefitting European• Capital brought into Africa going back• Created no skilled labour• Africans not create own country, history• Gender and power, men’s work as modern,

women’s work as traditional

Questions on Rodney

1. How is Rodney like Diop?2. How is Rodney unlike Diop?3. Similarities “colonial underdevelopment”

with “international development”4. Differences “colonial underdevelopment”

with “international development”

Rodney like Diop

• Critical stance against West• West got all wrong– History(get straight)– Helping

• (Diop/culture), Rodney’s materialism

Rodney unlike Diop

• Rodney’s strong, personal, deconstructed– Critique of West

• Rodney not acknowledging racial– Economy vs. cultural

• “Academic” posturing vs. activist

Similarities “colonial” /“international”

• Justifications for development (burden)• Benefactors– Exploitation resources

• Internal/external views• Imperialism vs. neo-imperialism• Globalization, diffusion, Western hegemony• Illusion of choice, forced to join system

Differences “colonial” /“international”

• Empires vs. global entities– Country vs. World Bank

• Ruling vs. country governance• Change country’s capital to loans• Religious/scientific vs. global/moral for control– Justification

• Industrialisation (now huge projects)– Infrastructure

• Different Players• Paternalistic vs. created needs

Use of Terms

• Worth repeating• Not banning terms– Using terms carefully– Define terms used (“tradition” two weeks ago)

• Authors using loaded terms for effect– Inappropriate in an assignment– Readership

• Terms less important than concepts

Broad Identities (Again)

• Problematize– “African”– “European”– “Black”– “White”– “Tribe”• Africanist Obsession?

• Multiplicity (ethnicity in states)

Comaroffs Themes

• Africa as woman• European male vs. woman and other• Phenotypes and culture in science– With racial constructs

• Africa as “missing link”• Good intentions (science as new Bible)• Rational/conscious/male vs.• Look at selves/conceptions, not look at Africa

Biological Constructs

• Social constructs on biology• “Race” vs. ethnicity• “Sex” vs. gender

Gender

• Sexuality• Sexualised Africa– Perceived “promiscuity”– Sexual metaphors– Perception of body

• Embodied gender

“Culture” and “Civilisation” (Again)

• Cultural anthropology– “Nurture”– Cultural diversity– Universal/inclusive

• Popular culture– “Cultivate”– “Cultured”– Restrictive

Group Definition

• Glossonyms, ethnonyms• Colonial constructs (perhaps unwittingly)• Identity claims by use/explanation ethnonym• Define through contact/conflict

“Traditional Africa”

Orality

• Verbal communication– Include sign languages, “body language”– Exclude writing (but may include IM)

• Chain of direct transmission• Immediacy/instantaneity/simultaneity• Exchange/dialogue/back-and-forth• Multi-layered/multi-channel

“Oral societies”

• “Pre-literate?”• Writing as defining feature?• Functional literacy?• Writing systems often exist– Coexistence oral/written

“Tradition?”

• Static?• Old?• Genuine?• Conservative?

Tradition and Modernity

• Tradition– Continuity (perceived or real)– Change (happening)

• Modernity– Discontinuity (with ancients)– Change (perceived or real)

Postmodernism (PoMo)

• Reaction to modernism• Implied historicity• Cross boundaries• Deconstruct identities• Multiplicity of identities/viewpoints• Flexibility/fluidity/informality/chaos• Recognise anything?

Africa in Global Economy

–Outside control?–World Bank and IMF–Fair-trade–Micro-lending–Asian interests

Notes

–Divide and rule, again–Determinism–Prototypical body (pattern recognition)– Journalistic settings– Journalistic responsibilities

–Technological evolutionism– Linearity– Feudalism to capitalism