Alumni

BIGSAS Alumni Workshop

BIGSAS thrives on the active exchange of ideas. We therefore attach great importance to the close involvement of our Alumni. Since BIGSAS was founded in 2007, 200 doctoral students have successfully completed the programme. The careers of our Alumni are as diverse as their personal backgrounds and research interests. Many continue to devote themselves to university research as post-docs, assistant professors, and professors and have become integral members of their respective academic institutions. Others pursue their passion for scientific research in think tanks and private research centers.

And while some Alumni have remained in Bayreuth, others have chosen to pursue careers in their (African) home countries. Despite the geographical distance - our Alumni have always maintained their close connection to their alma mater and support BIGSAS in many ways. The know-how and professional experience of our Alumni are of great value to our current Junior Fellows. And in addition to lively exchanges with our current doctoral students and amongst each other - digitally and at regular meetings - they also assist in the organization of events, such as the BIGSAS Journalist Award, which has been awarded regularly since 2011.

Completed Project:

Power Relations of Development: The Case of Dam Construction in the Nubian Homeland, Sudan

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the same title.

"This book provides wide-ranging theoretical perspectives and rich ethnographic material to analyze the state-society-development nexus in Sudan. Overall, it provides a rare insight into the planning phases of the Kajbar Dam, in the home areas of the Mahas Nubian people. The book's chapters provide convincing analysis of how relationships evolved throughout decades of planning between Sudanese state actors and local people - and among the locals - as they positioned themselves for or against the dam. Certainly, an important contribution to the proud tradition of Sudanese anthropology." - Prof. Leif Manger, Bergen University, Norway

Completed Project:

Charity Drops. Water Provision and the Politics of the Zakat Chamber in Khartoum, Sudan

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2017 under the same title.

The study investigates how the current Islamist regime in Sudan influences the Zakat Chamber to control the Zakat collection and distribution. It argues that these reforms are founded on the extension of fiqh sources introducing modern interpretations of Zakat and based on the prioritization between the Zakat categories according to their definition of 'the public interest'. Thus, the Zakat Chamber funds service projects such as water services for the poor. The study is the first in-depth empirical research on the politics of the Zakat Chamber in Sudan. It gives a novel understanding of internal dynamics of the state and civil society in Sudan.

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Completed Project:

Gouvernance de la sécurité au Bénin : les chasseurs néo-traditionnels dans le système sécuritaire

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2019 under the same title.

S’intéressant aux associations de chasseurs néo-traditionnels devenus une composante importante de la délivrance de la sécurité publique au Bénin, cet ouvrage s’inscrit dans les débats sur le vigilantisme et sur la gouvernance de la sécurité et de maintien de l’ordre en Afrique contemporaine. Il décrit les « écarts » entre d’un côté les discours justificatifs ou laudateurs vantant la fonction sociale des Dambanga, et de l’autre côté les pratiques opportunistes d’accumulation des avantages multiples. L’ouvrage renonce à considérer les chasseurs néo-traditionnels comme des ennemis de l’Etat et s’oppose aux arguments qui présentent le vigilantisme comme résultant de l’effondrement ou de la crise de l’Etat en Afrique. Il perçoit le vigilantisme comme un instrument pour analyser le fonctionnement de l’Etat local et propose une approche méthodologique pour mieux appréhender ses relations avec l’Etat. Issifou Abou Moumouni est chercheur au Laboratoire de Recherches sur les Dynamiques Sociales et le Développement Local (LASDEL- Niamey, Niger / Parakou, Bénin).

Completed Project:

'I Go for the Vibe': Hip-hop and Spoken Word as Aesthetic Practices in Dar es Salaam

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2022 under the same title.

It is the aim of this thesis to empirically study how the poetic forms of Bongo Fleva and Spoken Word contribute to the construction of lifeworlds in the city of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. The study starts with the assumption that poetic forms of engaging with the world fundamentally and systematically differ from other more “explicit” forms of communication, due to their unique combination of form and content. Therefore, their study requires a different approach. The thesis thus focuses on the ambiguous relation of poetic works and their aesthetic experience and will examine how poetic language is experienced and rendered meaningful in everyday life. Applying a profoundly empirical perspective, the thesis tries to go beyond previous approaches deducing both experience and effect from the form of the poems themselves, thus methodologically neglecting the difficult interrelation of artwork, experience, and actual lifeworlds. With the focus on aesthetics, it also departs from the discursive approach in African poetry. In combining approaches from literary studies and cultural anthropology, by paying special attention to aesthetic form, and in pursuing a strictly empirical approach to the study of both aesthetic experience and its everyday uses, the thesis not only aims at transcending the ways in which verbal art in Africa is usually studied. It also intends to substantially contribute to general debates about the aesthetic experience, the effects of aesthetic language and of aesthetic forms more generally.

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Research Interests:

English Linguistics, African Linguistics, Translation Studies

Dissertation Project:

A Study of English-Hausa and Hausa-English Translations

This research work, a study of English-Hausa translations of legal documents, attempts to identify the techniques used by the translators to handle the complexities and uniqueness of the English legal language while translating it into Hausa. According to Bhatia (1993), legal discourse is considered notorious for its complexity, repetitiveness, and tortuous syntax. The intention is always to write clearly, precisely, unambiguously, and all-inclusively, with detailed specifications of the scope of legislative provisions. In legal translation, which is a unique and specialized area of translational activity (Cao, 2007), documents are characterized by brevity, economy, and neatness to prevent fraud, additions, omissions, or alterations in the text. Mistakes or mistranslations can lead to disastrous repercussions. Therefore, this research work intends to determine whether the features of the legal texts are retained in these translations even though translated language has contrary characteristics.

Several models comprise the analytical framework of this project to achieve its objectives. It includes Holme`s (2004) extended version of the Framework of Translation Studies, in which he pointed out that Translation Studies have two main objectives, which are: “to describe the phenomena of translating and translation(s) and “to establish general principles by means of which these phenomena can be explained and predicted.” The research also uses Vinay and Darbelnet’s Translation Procedure Model, as revised by Molina and Albir, and Nida’s (1964) Functional Equivalence Model. Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1995) Translation Procedure Model, as updated in Molina and Albir’s Translation Techniques Model, defined translation techniques as procedures to analyze and classify how translation equivalence works. The research examines how the Hausa legal register reflects the evolution of the legal system in Northern Nigeria. It analyses how it is overloaded with borrowed terms from Arabic and English. As the research describes and appreciates these translations, it opens a floor for the discussion of English-Hausa translation, gives hints for English-Hausa translation training, and helps the machine translation programmers enrich the coding in their Hausa translation database, particularly on the translations of legal terminologies.

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Further information (CV, publications, conference contributions)

Completed Project:

Gender in Media Discourse: The Discursive Construction of Gender in Nigerian Newspapers

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2019 under the same title.

The study investigates how language is used to construct, reconstruct and deconstruct gender in opinion articles in Nigerian newspapers. Drawing on tools and techniques of analysis from critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, systemic functional grammar and cognitive linguistics, the author analyses the many complex and subtle ways in which gender is conceptualized and represented in the newspapers. He shows how the use of some linguistic features and discursive practices contributes to the (re)construction of certain gender identities, roles and power relations between men and women in society. The book contributes to research on language and gender from a non-western perspective.

Completed Project:

The Political Economy of Money and Finance in Post-Colonial Ghana

My research explores how global finance, aided by domestic socio-political forces, sustain and create new forms of capital-labour exploitations and accumulation; from the rise of Fintech to the distributive effects of monetary policy. I draw from Stratification Economics’ conceptualization of inequality and International Political Economy debates on international financial subordination in the global south.

Research Interests:

Political Economy of Development in Africa

Geographical Area:

Ghana

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Further information (publications)

Completed Project:

Localized Adaptation to Climate Change: Pastoral Agency under Changing Environments in Dry Land Parts of Upper Awash Valley, Ethiopia

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the title "Managing Risk and Securing Livelihood. The Karrayu Pastoralists, their Environment and the Ethiopian State".

The hegemonic perspective on adaptation solely focuses on climate stimuli as the driving force behind people’s adaptation. Such a perspective underestimates the role played by historical trajectories of political and social forces of change in shaping current adaptation practices. In doing so, it also separates the environment from processes of social change. This work challenges this dominant view by arguing that adaptation practices pursued by pastoral communities need to be seen at the intersection of state-environment-pastoralists-interactions. In other words, the understanding of pastoralists’ risk management and livelihood practices requires a perspective that situates local actors into their broader socio-political and environmental contexts. By using a political ecology approach that emphasizes on the agency of pastoral actors, this work demonstrates how the Karrayyu pastoral groups of upper Awash valley develop and use various risk management and livelihood practices under the influence of both socio-political and ecological sources of change.

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Completed Project:

Angolan Kuduro: Carga, Aesthetic Duelling, and Pleasure Politics performed through Music and Dance

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2017 under the same title.

In this study I investigate kuduro, a form of Angolan electronic dance music with highly expressive dance moves called toques. The thesis is situated in the discipline of musicology. I draw on methods from ethnomusicology, dance studies and linguistics to produce primary data, which I triangulate with popular and scholarly discourses around kuduro. In line with established practice in popular music studies, I contextualise these findings with concepts from cultural, post-colonial, and performance studies. Following Kubik’s (1988) call to investigate African music from an intracultural perspective, I explore the term carga in kuduro. Carga is a polyseme meaning "weight; power; load; electricity; ammunition". Within kuduro carga is construed as an experience of presence and pleasure (Danielsen 2006) induced through competition on vocal, musical, kinetic and sartorial levels which in turn enhances the intensity of performance. I construct an etic perspective of carga as a performatively produced effect of aesthetic surplus. This allows for analysing the performative processes of rhythm, vocals and dance which produce carga in the song-toque "Apaga Fogo" by Noite Dia feat. Puto Lilas. The lens of pleasure politics (Morgan 2013) shapes my interpretation of what kuduro music and dance afford in the Angolan and diasporic context. I expand Morgan's view of pleasure politics as individual performers' empowering strategies and include large-scale strategies to harness kuduro's euphoric mass reception to support presidential, party and state politics. The Black Atlantic (Gilroy 1993) crossed with the Lusophone Martix (Arenas 2011) serves as cultural theory in the background and Music as Performance (Cook 2012) as theory in the foreground. I lay out the musical and historical contexts in which kuduro emerged and proceed to portray kuduro’s spatial hubs (Kiwan, Meinhof) Luanda and Lisbon through case studies. Contributing to the emerging media studies of Africa, I historicise the relationship between dance and mobile video in kuduro, thus investigating kuduro's double existence as local embodied experience and global media phenomenon, as visceral and visual (Daniel 2011).

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Completed Project:

Domínios conceituais das construções locativas, existenciais, comitativas e possessivas em línguas bantas

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the title "Possessivos e seus Domínios Conceituais. Enfoque sobre as línguas do grupo banto".

Completed Project:

The Politics of Religious Sound. Religious Diversity and Conflict in Ghana

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the title "The Politics of Religious Sound. Conflict and the Negotiation of Religious Diversity in Ghana".

"Justice Arthur presents a wealth of intriguing material, an impressive thick description of the conflict and a thorough analysis of the many, very complex factors that contribute to the conflict. His work on the multiple dimensions of the conflict is knowledgeable, comprehensive and plausible and it clearly shows that the so-called religious conflicts are never about `religion' only." - Prof. Dr Eva Spies (University of Bayreuth, Germany)."Justice A. Arthur has laid out a multidisciplinary, multi-perspective and long-term analysis of the clashes on the noise ban in Accra. The chapters are convincingly set up in order to manage the complexity of approaches, covering religious studies, theology, mission studies as well as anthropology, legal and political studies." - Prof. Andreas Heuser (University of Basel, Switzerland).

Completed Project:

Audience Response to Cameroonian Films: The Case of Nina's Dowry and Jungle of Heirs

Project Summary:

Much of 20th century studies on African cinema concentrate on the role of cinema in nation building and its relation to economic and political power characterized by colonialism, imperialism and nationalism. Even though the viewership of African films has expanded considerably in the 21st century, Cameroonian viewers still constantly complain of non-representativeness of their cultural values in present day Cameroonian films. This study investigates this dialectical situation of reception in the Cameroon film scenario seeking to understand current trends of audience behaviour in the emerging Cameroon film industry.

Completed Project:

Traditional Islamic Scholarly Culture in Northern Cameroon, 1900 to the Present

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2017 under the title "Traditional Scholarly Culture in Northern Cameroon, 1900 to the Present".

This dissertation examines how the jauleru (lit. vestibule, entrance hall), also known as the majlissa (scholarly circle), a deep-rooted institution of Islamic advanced learning in the old Adamawa region, has achieved a remarkable level of influence in Northern Cameroon. Drawing on social, historical, biographical, religious and ethnographic research, it provides an account of Islamic scholarship in the region. The study traces several networks of religious knowledge acquisition back to Yola, the capital of the ancient Islamic Emirate of Adamawa under the charismatic leadership of Modibbo Adama (1771–1847). The study also gives due credit to the môdibbo (Muslim scholar), as the most vital asset in shaping scholarly and spiritual authority in Northern Cameroon. It analyzes the question of whether the jauleru has been able to evolve and adapt to meet the challenges posed by the rise of the madrasa (Islamic school) and its precursors, the ustādhs trained in Middle-Eastern institutions of learning. The findings further demonstrate that, in this region, the emergence of the madrasa paved the way for a scholarly generation referred to in this dissertation by the coinage môdi-ustādhs, combining the words môdibbo and ustādh to reflect the “hybrid pedagogies” and “hybrid epistemologies” that this study argues they practice, blurring the lines between the two institutions of learning, each borrowing from the other for pragmatic reasons. It is argued throughout the dissertation that the aim of the madrasa-trained reformists in this region was only ever to “Wahhabize” the jauleru, and not, as others have argued, to wholly erase it as an old and outdated institution, due to the conviction that the traditional (jauleru) way of learning is still the most arduous, thorough and genuine way to acquire Islamic knowledge in the region and the Muslim world in general.

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Completed Project:

Recits d'Origine et de Fondation des Communautes Nomades et Sedentaires du Tassili n Azjer (Algerie/Libye)

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2012 under the title "Les Touaregs du Tassili n Ajjer : Mémoires collective et organisation sociale".

Les matériaux sur lesquels se fonde ce travail de recherche sont le produit d'une requête de terrain effectuée dans le cadre d'une thèse de PhD en anthropologie soutenue, en 2010, à l'université de Bayreuth ( Allemagne). le souci permanent du chercheur, afin d'objectiver sa position is à vis du terrain au cours du procès de la recherche, était la distanciation par rapport aux groupes enquêtés. EN ce sens une telle expérience de recherche est un apport en soi qui s'inscrit dans le cadre des études déjà effectuées par d'autre chercheurs autochtones sur les propres sociétés.

Completed Project:

Identity and Lifestyles Construction in Multi-ethnic Shantytowns: a case study of Al-Baraka community in Khartoum, Sudan

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the title "Identity and Lifestyle Construction in Multi-ethnic Shantytowns".

This book examines the construction of identity and different lifestyles of the Al-Baraka shantytown community. The concepts of lifestyle and localization process are used as basic tools of analysis to develop a theoretical model that can be applied elsewhere. The localization process reveals how Al-Baraka people adopt different kinds of behaviors, institutions and activities from various origins, and re-invent them locally to be their own. The book concludes that the social identity of Sudan today is not confined to a simplistic binary opposition (Arab vs. African), but is constituted of social identities comprised of more complex sets of practiced lifestyles.

Current Project:

"Ni pauvre ni riche": identité de classe moyenne ou construction sociale d'une appartence intermédiaire au Bénin?

Completed Project:

The Perception of HIV/AIDS among Students in North-Eastern Nigeria 

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2015 under the title "The Perception of HIV/AIDS among Students in Northeastern Nigeria".

This study is a comparative analysis of the perception of HIV/AIDS in Hausa and English in north eastern Nigeria. Based on the cognitive linguistic view of language as a reflection of human experience and the way we perceive and conceptualise our world, the study uses a variety of approaches to make analyses and comparisons at various levels. From these, the study concludes that language plays an important role in shaping the discourse of AIDS and its understanding or education via sensitisation messages and that any meaningful improvement in HIV/AIDS enlightenment in Nigeria has to take the role of language into consideration.

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Completed Project:

The Izala-movement in Nigeria: Its Split, Relationship to Sufis and Perception of the Sharia Re-Implementation

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2013 under the title "The Izala Movement in Nigeria: Its Split, Relationship to Sufis and Perception of Sharīʿa Re-Implementation".

The Izala Movement in Nigeria: Its Split, Relationship to Sufis and Perception of Sharia Re-Implementation Abstract The religious landscape of Northern Nigeria is very heterogeneous. Nevertheless two Sufi Brotherhoods, the Tijāniyya and the Qādiriyya dominated the religious field until the 1970s. This situation changed in 1978 with the appearance of Jama’atul Izalatzul Bid’a wa Ikamatis Sunna (Society for Removal of Innovation and Reestablishment of the Sunna). This reform movement was established to fight the so called bidac (in Arabic: non-Islamic innovations) on the basis of the tradition of the Prophet. The long Islam tradition in Nigeria has to be “purified” and the model of al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ (in Arabic: the pious predecessors) should be followed. This created numerous tensions between Izala and Sufi Brotherhoods. In 1999 and during the process of transition to the Fourth Republic Nigeria, Islamic Penal Law was re-implemented by the Governor of Zamfara State Ahmad Sani Yeriman Bakuru. This step was followed by eleven northern states. This meant amongst others the introduction of ḥudūd-punishments – corporal punishments like lashing, hand amputation, or stoning to death. The re-implementation provoked a debate in and outside Nigeria. Many observers raised questions related to the constitutionality of Sharia-laws, human rights, religious freedom and to the democratic process. Opinions on this process were divided. Almost all Islamic organizations of Nigeria stood for the re-implementation of Islamic Law. Izala was among those who supported that project. Sharia goes side by side with Izala doctrine of “islamizing the society”. Izala was ready to compromise within the Sharia context and a kind of “domestication” of the long-going Izala-Sufi struggle seems to have taken place. During the Sharia-reimplementation, no Islamic organization (except of Shiite movement) risked opposing Sharia. Islamic Law was started by a single politician within a political campaign and after him the masses pushed in eleven states to have Sharia re-implemented. Izala claimed being behind the Sharia re-implementation. One could ask if this was a re-orientation strategy of the movement especially after the end of its conflict with Sufi. Do Izala really contributed to the re-implementation of Sharia law?

On the basis on solid fieldwork in Northern Nigeria including participant observation, interviews with Izala, Sufis, and religion experts, and collection of unpublished material related to Izala, three aspect of the development of Izala past and present are analysed: its split, its relationship to Sufis, and its perception of Sharia re-implementation. “Field theory” of Pierre Bourdieu, “Religious Market theory” of Rodney Start, and “Modes of Religiosity theory” of Harvey Whitehouse are theoretical tools of understanding the religious landscape of northern Nigeria and the dynamics of Islamic movements and groups.

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Completed Project:

Re-thinking Gender in Contemporary Uganda using the Comedy of Anne Kansiime

Project Summary:

“African women in general need to know that it’s OK for them to be the way they are – to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence.” – Wangari Maathai Media use in Africa is rapidly changing due to advances in telecommunications, especially mobile phones and the Internet. However, on the African continent as elsewhere on the globe, the media world is still a highly gendered one. Yet this certainly has not kept alternative views of gender from developing in the media industry to challenge patriarchal, heterosexual, “single stories” (in the words of novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie). A look at new acts on Uganda’s comedy circuits reveals that this is happening in refreshingly novel ways. The study therefore investigates women’s agency in hegemonic discourses on Uganda’s contemporary media scene by looking at how a female comedian challenges the status quo on television. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the analysis draws both from discourse analysis discussions in the cultural studies and critical content analysis methods of media studies. This gives rise to questions related to the effects and “effectiveness” of television as a media format. Looking forward, the project also briefly considers how the Internet acts as multiplier for televised shows in the entertainment industry (i.e. YouTube and its metaphors of library, archive, a laboratory or a medium like television as described in new research, e.g. by Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau).

Completed Project:

Intimität und Sexualität vor der Ehe. Werbung (courtship) und Werte im Wandel in Kumasi und Endwa (Ghana)

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2010 under the title "Intimität und Sexualität vor der Ehe. Gespräche über Ungesagtes in Kumasi und Endwa, Ghana".

Lassen sich Jugendliche in Kumasi (Ghana) in ihren vorehelichen Beziehungen von globalen Ideen "romantischer Liebe" leiten, etwa in der Feier des Valentinstages? Welchen Einfluss haben charismatische Pfingstkirchen auf Vorstellungen von Partnerschaft, Ehe und Sexualität? Das Buch fragt nach der Kommunikation von Intimität und lotet dabei auch Momente von Ungesagtem und Schweigen ethnographisch aus. Damit ordnet es charismatisch-christliche Umgangsweisen mit Sexualität und vorehelicher Partnerschaft in den Wandel von Generationen- und Geschlechterbeziehungen der matrilinearen Ashanti ein.

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Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2014 under the title "The Job Hunt. Return Migration and Labour Market Entries of Cameroonian and Ghanaian Graduates from German Universities".

Completed Project:

Dispute Settlement in Eastern Guinea-Bissau: Self-presentations, Stories and Agency

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the same title.

"There is no justice in Guinea-Bissau", many people lament in this West African country. Impunity and legal uncertainty tend to mark their interactions with judges, régulos (chiefs), police officers or imams when they have become involved in a dispute. Based on case analysis, this book analyses dispute settlers’ self-presentations, stories told on them and aggrieved parties’ agency in semi-rural Guinea-Bissau. By introducing a typology of dispute settlers as well as the concepts of person-bound dispute settlement and supporter activation, this book contributes to debates in legal anthropology.

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Completed Project:

Fula spoken in the city of Maroua (Northern Cameroon). A sociolinguistic insight into its use by non-ethnic speakers

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2020 under the same title.

This book investigates the speech of non-ethnic Fulfulde speakers in Maroua, Northern Cameroon, focussed on the Christian community, where the language is adopted as evangelistic instrument beside French. Three key reasons motivate our investigation. First: Context - Fulfulde is embedded in a multilingual contact situation with Indo-European languages (French, English) and many other local languages belonging to Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo phyla. Second: Fulfulde as lingua franca in the region. This status is unique compared to the situation in other countries such as Senegal, Chad or Sudan where it is mainly an intraethnic medium of communication. Third: In contrast to the common perception of Fulfulde as the language of a Muslim community - here we are targeting the Christian Fulfulde speakers who share the language as well as the Bible (translated into Fulfulde) as common goods for interethnic communication in their religious activities.

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Completed Project:

Kleinhandel unter schwierigen institutionellen Voraussetzungen - Reaktionen, Strategien und Lösungen der Händler auf dem Chisokone-Markt in Kitwe/Sambia

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2015 under the same title.

Zambia’s economy is mainly based on copper mining and export; the centre is Kitwe. No other country in Africa’s small scale enterprises are as powerfully affected by volatile commodity prices as those in Zambia. The Chisokone-Market, the field of investigation, is the second largest of its kind in Zambia and has never been officially registered as such. Several actors compete for influence and power. The statutory authority for market management, the Kitwe City Council (KCC), has been unable to ensure administration for years. Market associations have filled this void and act as substitute market administrations. Just like the KCC, these market associations use the Chisokone-Market as a source of income. Those involved often engage in competitive or collaborative activities, depending on the circumstances. Consequently, economic action for small-scale enterprises is becoming increasingly difficult and quite unpredictable.

This project will demonstrate the operational and personal strategies small-scale enterprises use in order to ensure their own economic and institutional survival in this unusual environment. The exposition of traditional economic perspectives goes beyond this and furthermore focuses on the standards and value system of retailers – a crucial factor in the local market. This project works out success factors for a favourable economic development of small-scale enterprises and also discusses the limits of economically rational theories in the Zambian context.

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Completed Project:

Competing and Conflicting Power Dynamics in Waqfs in Kenya, 1900-2010

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2017 under the same title.

This project seeks to investigate the practices of waqf in Kenya during the post-colonial period (1960-2010). Waqf was an important element of personal status law in Islam, a significant segment of the Islamic economy that had an inherent symbolic value and a source of social authority and symbolic power. Administered autonomously according to normative traditions, it became a vehicle for enhancing common identity of an autonomous social group keen on protecting and advancing the particular interests of its members (Hoexter 2002; Powers 1989; Kozlowski 1998), a scenario that became antithetical to various political regimes.

Thus, it could be argued that state control of awqaf as witnessed in the Ottoman Empire (1826), British Zanzibar (1905), and French Algeria (1831), was not only a sharp departure from normative autonomous administrative traditions of the institution but also a deliberate move to control and manipulate the political and economic spaces. Such competing struggles for the control of political and economic spaces could not possibly be explained better than in societies like Kenya which is predominantly Christian and where Muslims are perceived as a significant minority and marginalized group. What types of awqaf exist in contemporary Kenya? How do state legislative and judicial constructs influence waqf practices in Kenya? How do Muslims negotiate the waqf practices vis-à-vis state policies and judicial constructs? How do debates and practices about waqf in the Islamic sphere influence the practices of waqf in Kenya? These are the central questions that the study seeks to answer. The main objective of the study, therefore, is to interrogate the influence of state policies on one hand, and debates about practices of waqf in the Islamic sphere on the other, in the contemporary practices of waqf in Kenya.

The study aims at breaking new ground in academic research by providing insights in to practices of waqf in modern states where Muslims are a minority, a sharp departure from earlier works (Anderson 1951; Oberauer 2008) that studied the institution of waqf during the colonial times in the East African region. This project is multi-disciplinary and would significantly seek to employ theoretical frameworks on state-society interface. As an empirical multi-disciplinary study, the methodological approach would as well be multifaceted comprising of qualitative social science research techniques and fieldwork.

Completed Project:

Logiques sociales de la solidarité envers les personnes vivant avec le VIH: Etude de cas menée dans les zones transfrontalières de la Côte d'Ivoire avec le Ghana et du Ghana avec le Togo

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2015 under the title "Logiques sociales de la solidarité envers les personnes vivant avec le VIH".

Appeared at the beginning of the Eighties, the aids pandemic became quickly a social plague. The disease causes the deterioration of the social fabric of the infected person. Facing the profound impacts of HIV/aids, families and some association mobilize their efforts together to fight against any form of social exclusion and to improve of the living conditions of the infected person. However, the lack of financial resources for the activities of PLWHA’s organizations is one of the major difficulties in ensuring support to its members living in the border localities of Noé (Côte d’Ivoire), Elubo and Aflao (Ghana) and Kodjoviakope (Lome). Also, the solidarity network between the family’s members is weakened due to their situation of poverty. Also, people create different strategies to maintain the solidarity within the social group and to provide a social security. These forms of solidarity are various and complex. The research raises questions about the functioning of the logics of solidarity by underlining the reasons that motivate people to come together to help the PLWHA. This qualitative and a quantitative research seeks to analyze the social relations between people and the infected person to HIV and also to see to what extend solidarities vary within the different social groups such as families and associations.

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Completed Project:

The Re-implementation of Sharia in Northern Nigeria and the Education of Muslim Women 1999-2007

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2013 under the same title.

This study investigates the impact of the re-implementation of Sharia on the education of Muslim women between 1999 and 2007, in four states in northern Nigeria namely, Zamfara, Kano, Bauchi and Kaduna. The study fills the research gap in the description of the status of women with respect to education under the Sharia dispensation re-introduced in 1999. Before this era, scholarly works have documented the state of female education in northern Nigeria; however, none deals directly with post re-implementation and its impact on Muslim women’s education. This period is particularly interesting because it coincides with the return of the country to democratic rule after a string of military rules.

Using interviews with Sharia proponents, school administrators, women and reports from Sharia Commissions in these states, the work establishes that while Zamfara and Kano States underwent transformations in the educational sector as a result of the programs introduced by the Sharia governments, the changes in the educational domain in Bauchi and Kaduna were exceedingly triggered by the return of democracy in Nigeria after decades of military rule. The results arrived at in this study reveal interesting facets of the relationship between Sharia and the education of Muslim women. The research shows that proponents of Sharia used the premise (also supported by verses from the Qur’an and Prophet Mohammed’s teachings) that education is an important part of Islam to which both males and females have equal rights, to sell the Islamic-based educational programs introduced by the Sharia regime. Using religion to promote these programs, the predominantly male Sharia bodies, mitigate the often tough cultural practices and religious dogmas that have prevented women from having full access to formal, western education. However, the type of education offered to women under these Sharia programs is a hybrid of formal education and Islamic education which pays strict attention to such cultural and religious practices like the wearing of the hijab, the separation of males and females in schools, the teaching of practical, home craft skills such as knitting and baking to the women. So, instead of the education taking women out of the home domain in which they have been restricted in the past, it rather further maintains them while providing them access to formal education which they will hardly use in any public career.

Completed Project:

Spoken Word Goes Digital. Performance Poetry und Social Media in Harare (SIMBABWE) und Johannesburg (SÜDAFRIKA). Eine gendersensible Analyse.

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the title "Spoken Word Goes Digital. Performance Poetry und Social Media in Harare (Simbabwe) und Johannesburg (Südafrika)".

Digitale Technologien sind aus der zeitgenössischen afrikanischen Literatur und Kunst nicht mehr wegzudenken. Die hier vorgestellten Poet_innen aus Harare und Johannesburg experimentieren mit den Möglichkeiten Neuer Medien. Sie nutzen Social Media, um sich untereinander zu vernetzen und neue von Verlagen unabhängige Publikationsmöglichkeiten zu schaffen. Poetische Performances finden nicht mehr ausschließlich live statt, sondern werden im virtuellen Raum als Videopoetry oder in poetischen Blogs re-inszeniert. Dabei kommt es zu vielfältigen Überschneidungen und Verflechtungen zwischen beiden Sphären und zwischen künstlerischen offline- und online-Aktivitäten. Die Grenzen zwischen Produktion und Rezeption verschwimmen, und Performances finden gleichzeitig als lokales und globales Ereignis statt. Die Autorin nähert sich diesem rezenten Phänomen mit einem doppelten Fokus: Sie widmet sich einerseits poetischen Netzwerken wie den Word N Sound Series aus Johannesburg und dem House of Hunger Poetry Slam aus Harare. Andererseits analysiert sie Werke von Kgafela oa Magogodi, Lesego Rampolokeng, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers und Comrade Fatso, die ihre poetischen Performances mit Medien wie Film, Theater, Video oder Audio kombinieren. Im Zentrum stehen dabei Fragen nach dem Verhältnis von Textualität, Oralität, Theatralität und Medialität. Die Arbeit leistet einen bedeutsamen Beitrag zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung von Spoken Word und Performance Poetry in zwei urbanen Zentren des südlichen Afrika sowie zur Konzeptionalisierung neuer ästhetischer Formen im virtuellen Raum.

Completed Project:

Conflicts, Narratives of Entitlement and Competing Views over Nech Sar National Park, Ethiopia

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the title "Wilderness or Home? Conflicts, Competing Perspectives and Claims of Entitlement over Nech Sar National Park, Ethiopia".

This book critically probes into the politics of nature conservation and commodification. Building on political ecology, the book argues that conservation is used by state and non-state actors as an instrument of controlling multidimensional spaces of indigenous communities. The study creates a nexus between the hegemonic discourse of wilderness conservation in colonial Africa and Ethiopia's appropriation of this narrative and how it internally exported it to its peripheries. It found out that the successive Ethiopian regimes (the imperial, military and developmental state) share commonalities in using nature conservation both for political control of societies and their territories, and as a means of economic extraction through commodification.

Completed Project:

Studierende als Akteure im politischen Wandel Afrikas. Eine vergleichende Analyse studentischer Mobilisierung und Organisation in Mali und Kenia

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2020 under the title "Studierende als Akteure im politischen Wandel Afrikas. Ein Vergleich studentischer Mobilisierung und Organisation in Mali und Kenia 1960-2018".

Anna Deutschmann untersucht die Bedeutung studentischer Mobilisierung und Organisation. Die Auseinandersetzung mit Erkenntnissen der Elitesoziologie und der sozialwissenschaftlichen Bewegungsforschung bildet die Grundlage für die Analyse zweier empirischer Fallstudien. Die Fälle Mali und Kenia zeigen im kontrastierenden Vergleich Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede der Entwicklung und Bedeutung studentischer Organisation in spezifischen politischen Gelegenheitsstrukturen und illustrieren, wie situative und strukturelle Gelegenheiten politisches Handeln rahmen und fördern. Die Autorin stellt dabei eine changierende Bedeutung der Akteure – auch für die (Rekrutierung von) politischen Eliten – fest.

Completed Project:

Wood for the kitchen: Towards a history of the supply and use of fuelwood in an urban setting of West Africa: The case of Lomé (from 1907 to 2017)

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2021 under the same title.

Up to today, fuelwood (wood and or charcoal) remains one of the most important sources of energy used for cooking purposes in the majority of West African cities. In line with the accelerating urbanization, especially during the later 20th century, this demand for fuelwood has been steadily increasing, causing at least two major problems: On one hand, the hinterland areas supplying the cities with the needed material has continuously expanded and led to accelerating deforestation there. On the other hand, the rising demand for fuelwood and the increasing distances of supply areas have an increasingly significant impact on the income of households that cannot afford other sources of domestic energy (electricity or gas). The environmental as well as socioeconomic and social causes and consequences of fuelwood consumption in the context of urbanization in Africa have so far found little attention in research. Considering all these challenges, a historical approach appears to be particularly promising, because it helps to look at changes regarding the fuelwood as energy source in a shifting political and socio-economic context. For that matter, this dissertation project examines the supply as well as the use of fuelwood for cooking in Lomé, the capital of Togo. The case study provides an analytical framework for a better understanding of the development and of the changing mechanisms of fuelwood demand and consumption. This will clearly help for an assessment of the future of fuelwood demand and supply in West African capital cities. The thesis is therefore raising the following questions:

How and by what factors has the supply and use of energy or rather wood use for the domestic need in Lomé, evolved in different historical periods, from the colonial period up until today? How have prices of fuelwood developed over time? Which measures have been taken by the authorities before and after 1960 to intervene in this sector, for instance in deforestation caused by the production of charcoal, or in marketing mechanisms? Who used, and why, which kind of domestic energy for cooking at different times? How has the constant growth of the population affected the need for fuelwood as well as the socioeconomic situation of households? How did households try to cope with the situation in different historical and social contexts? What changes in the size and sources of domestic energy supply can be anticipated for the future in view of these historical experiences including the opinions of different actors involved in the process of supply and use of fuelwood?

The dissertation addresses all these questions by using an interdisciplinary approach (diverse fields of history - such as economic and social history, environmental history, history of energy, fieldwork and archival research-, cultural studies).

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Completed Project:

Ent-Täuschung des weißen Blicks. Rassismussensible Strategien für eine ideologiekritische Filmanalyse

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the same title.

Das Buch „Ent-Täuschung des weißen Blicks. Rassismussensible Strategien für eine ideologiekritische Filmanalyse“ ist ein Handbuch für alle, die Rassismus in Filmen identifizieren und dekonstruieren möchten. Durch die Re-Lektüre des Ursprungstextes der feministischen Filmtheorie wird die Grammatik rassifizierter Repräsentation, die bislang vor allem von Schwarzen Theoretiker_innen in verschiedenen Einzelwerken erarbeitet wurde, zusammengeführt und systematisiert. Für diese Systematisierung liest Julia Dittmann den Ursprungstext der feministischen Filmtheorie „Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema“ von Laura Mulvey mit einer spezifizierten Lesart des symbolischen Phallus nach Lacan und weitet Mulveys gendersensiblen Analyseansatz zu einer diversitätssensiblen Analysemöglichkeit von Filmtexten aus. Die als Fazit entstehende und einfach zu handhabende Analysematrix fokussiert rassismussensible Strategien für eine ideologiekritische Filmanalyse. Zur Entwicklung dieser Analysematrix wird die in okzidentale Mainstream-Spielfilme eingeschriebene Ideologie des Rassismus anhand der Blockbuster Eine Weiße unter Kannibalen (D 1921), Geschichte einer Nonne (USA 1959), Jenseits von Afrika (USA 1986) und Die weiße Massai (D 2005) offengelegt und inszenatorische Gegenstrategien anhand des Third Cinema-Klassikers La Noire de… (Kamerun/Fr 1966) von Ousmane Sembène aufgezeigt.

Completed Project:

Territory, Identity and Local Politics in the Frontier Zone of Central Benin

Project Summary:

This study refers to the ongoing debate on the political geography of migration, land conflicts and political power in sub-Saharan Africa, and is based on the interpretative framework of the "African frontier". It intends to scrutinize the inter-linkages between struggles over access to land and questions of belonging and local politics in the frontier zone of central Benin, West Africa. The research has three main objectives: First, the study is to understand the dynamics of land ownership in the study area. Second, it seeks to analyze the socio-spatial strategies of controlling and maintaining political power. And third, it investigates how new hybrid forms of local politics and political structures emerge in order to understand to what extend these new trends affect the relationship between the different ethnic groups in the region and beyond. Specifically, the focus is to examine the connections between land ownership, identity representations, institutional arrangements and socio-political innovations.

The study aims at giving new insights into how the issues of migration, territory and identity can be a vehicle of domination and political control in a West African country. The research will also help in understanding how local and national politics are linked to land dynamics in a frontier zone. A multi-sited approach will be applied, using narratives interviews, group discussions, participant observation and mapping.

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Completed Project:

Le foncier urbain à Bamako / Mali - Processus dans l'impasse et diligence des acteurs face à l'équation

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the title "Une sécurisation foncière urbaine dans l’impasse, exemple de Bamako, Mali".

Dans un cadre d’anthropologie juridique et politique, cette étude décrit les enjeux du foncier urbain à Bamako comme une dynamique transitionnelle et transactionnelle dans l’impasse. Les formes endogènes de la pratique foncière dans le contexte de croissance exponentielle urbaine ; la pénurie de l’espace à occuper ; la manière pour l’État de garder la notion de domanialité et de propriété qui représente pratiquement son cauchemar, sont entre autres des thèmes traités de cette recherche. Comment appréhender le foncier urbain bamakois, relevant des communs, à partir d’une description empirique de la pluralité de normes existantes et d’acteurs en compétition pour l’enjeu ?

Research Interests:

Colonial History, Global History, Print Media, Literacy, Knowledge-producing Institutions/(Higher) Education

Geographical Area:

Nigeria

Completed Project:

Writing back to Empire: Newspapers, Non-Elites and Decolonisation in the Global Public Sphere, 1937-1957

Using the often neglected bottom-top analytical approach, this research investigates how non-elite groups (loosely defined as semi- and non-literate groups) in colonial Nigeria from 1937 to 1957 engaged with and shaped the decolonisation agenda using a local newspaper. This research has significance beyond academia. For development practitioners, it will help reduce (information) inequalities and increase community participation by demonstrating how news content was historically disseminated, digested and debated particularly in the absence of modern technology, infrastructure and wide spread illiteracy that still exists today. For African national governments, it will provide useful contexts in understanding the socio-economic environments that have led people to debate and act on issues that affect them.

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Further information (CV, publications, conference contributions & talks)

Completed Project:

Enfances. De quelques recueils francophones de récits d'enfance

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2015 under the title "Traces d’enfance : Analyse littéraire de trois recueils francophones de récits d’enfance".

Le recueil de récits d’enfance tire son intérêt et son originalité de son caractère collectif en rupture avec la conception classique du récit d’enfance comme entreprise individuelle et autonome. L’impact de la forme brève imposée par le recueil sur le récit d’enfance pose avec acuité la question du renouvellement (ou non) des modalités d’écriture de l’enfance : sélection des souvenirs, reconduite ou subversion des motifs liés à l’enfance. Tirant profit des théories stipulant le dynamisme du recueil, cet ouvrage prône une lecture hypertextuelle de trois collectifs rassemblant des écrivains francophones d’horizons divers qui, à partir d’un fragment d’enfance, relatent leurs rapports complexes à la grande Histoire et à la petite histoire mais aussi au pays d’origine et au pays de l’exil, à la langue maternelle et à la langue d’écriture. Au-delà de la problématique postcoloniale, la poétique des textes transversale pratiquée cherche à tracer des liens transculturels entre des enfances issues de mondes très différents.

Completed Project:

Religious Syncretism and Dispute Settlement: A Study of Sufi Shrine in North Eastern Ethiopia

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2015 under the title "Faith at the Crossroads: Religious Syncretism and dispute settlement in Northern Ethiopia".

Based on Meron Zeleke Eresso’s doctoral project carried out from 2008 until 2010 at an Islamic Sufi shrine of Teru Sina in northern Ethiopia, this volume presents the syncretic elements of religious practices at the contemporary Islamic shrine, where elements from Christianity, Islam and Traditional Religion are brought together. It discusses the changing nature of religiosity in the first and second generations of the shrine by examining the different factors that have accounted for the formation of syncretic religious elements. Furthermore, it analyzes how these elements are reflected in the dispute settlement process of a faith-based court, yäšeykoc celot, held regularly at the shrine.

Against the backdrop of the complex blending of various religious traditions, the first part of the book examines the formation of syncretic religious practice. The second part presents how these practices are reflected or mirrored in the dispute settlement process of yäšeykoc celot.

The book is a useful complement to the existing academic analyses in the fields of anthropology, religious studies and sociology of religion. It is also an addition to the theoretical discussion in legal anthropology and to discussions pertaining to legal pluralism.

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Completed Project:

Technology-Culture Dialogue: Cultural and Sociotechnical Appropriation of Mobile Phones in Ethiopia

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the same title.

This study explores the dialogical relation between technologies and societies with a focus on cultural and socio-technical appropriation of mobile phone use in Ethiopia. It dovetails mobile technology related issues; how and why mobile phones are shared among users; how relations are mediated between married couples; what opportunities the mobile technology offers for repair men and women in the country. Informed by the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) approach, the study represents mobile phone users as "relevant social groups." It compares the meanings that come out of these groups and makes a critical examination of the notion of "co-construction" in SCOT.

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Completed Project:

Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver is a Word Spoken at the Right Time. The Translation of Biblical Metaphors in Hausa and Swahili

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2017 under the same title.

This comparison of metaphor translations in four Hausa and six Swahili bibles identifies different methods of metaphor translation. In the focus are metaphors containing entities, which are part of the biblical cultures, but not of Hausa or Swahili speaking areas versus metaphors involving terms that Hausa and Swahili speakers are familiar with. A look at metaphors from different semantic fields (human body, animals, botany, inorganic nature, material culture, social culture) investigates if certain translation methods dominate in a particular semantic field.

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Completed Project:

Three Essays in Development Economics

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2019 under the title "Child Labour in Sub-Saharan Africa: Empirical Evidence and New Perspectives".

Completed Project:

"Recently there were a lot of changes" - Translations of the "Adaptation to Climate Change Paradigm" in Rwanda

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2017 under the title "Changing Climates: Translating Adaptation in/to Rwanda".

This study examines how the idea of having to adapt to a changing climate influences recent Rwandan environmental politics and the relations with international organizations and NGOs. By conceptualizing adaptation as matter of translation, processes of resignification and network building are highlighted, taking broader social developments, historical trajectories and the makeup of Rwandan international relations into consideration. Based on analyses of a variety of primary and secondary data, the main findings add to a more detailed understanding of rationalizing, planning, and implementing climate change adaptation.

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Completed Project:

Polygyny Among the Middleclass in Ghana: An Anthropological Study of Urban Family Life

Project Summary:

The study focuses on power issues at play in polygynous families in the Tamale Metropolis (the Regional capital of the Northern region of Ghana). It explores the choices that both men and women make in such families; how these choices differ between both women and men, between different life stages and the implications for meeting both their practical and the strategic needs for safeguarding their reproductive health and rights in this social context. This study will demonstrate the divergence of interests and the agency of individual actors within polygynous domestic groups. It seeks to demonstrate the need for innovative sexual/reproductive health interventions that take cognizance of the cultural position of women and men in polygynous unions.

Triangulation of methods will be crucial in this study. Data will be gathered through focus group discussions, participant observation, biographical narratives and a survey questionnaire using the interview approach.

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Completed Project:

Generationen-Bande. Ordnung, Praxis und Geschichte der Generationenbeziehungen bei den Lama (Kabiye) im nördlichen Togo

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the same title.

Die Beziehungen zwischen Generationen sind in einer Gesellschaft allgegenwärtig. Sie strukturieren gesellschaftliche Ordnung, sind die Basis verwandtschaftlicher Fürsorge, werden von historischen Einflüssen geprägt und verändern sie - so auch bei den Lama (Kabiyé) im Nordosten Togos. Diese Monographie beschreibt Bindungen und Reibungen zwischen den Generationen im Dorf Ass'er'e angesichts gesellschaftlichen Wandels. Sie hebt die Stabilität und Belastbarkeit dieser Beziehungsachse hervor und leistet damit einen Beitrag zur aktuellen ethnologischen Generationenforschung.

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Completed Project:

Towards a History of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in Ethiopia since the 1960s

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the same title.

Despite its enormous human and natural resource potential, Ethiopia is a textbook example of structural poverty that has left the majority of the people in abject misery, hunger and backwardness. This was particularly true following the mid-twentieth century, as the country repeatedly experienced severe droughts and famines. Since the 1960s, successive governments have made attempts to tackle the problem; unfortunately these attempts did not lead to any substantial breakthroughs. The effort of the government to ameliorate the conditions of Ethiopians was supported by non-state development actors in which Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are currently a more visible part. This research intends to examine the role national and international development-oriented NGOs have played in the fight against poverty since the 1960s and the circumstances in which they operated. More specifically, it explores how NGOs managed to deal with the difficult relationships with state and non-state actors with a view to achieving their objectives. Thus, this study explores the logical contradictions and collaborations NGOs have had with international funding agencies, beneficiaries, civic organisations, community elders, local institutions, scholars and activists. In doing so, the study will examine how the varying interest of each and every party affects the discourse of NGOs’ involvement in development activities and its outcomes. Such aspects will be studied in a manner that clearly identifies the broad spectrum of interests and parties involved in local and national development and that enables the state and other stakeholders to competently handle the management of NGOs for a better result.

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Completed Project:

The intraurban dimension of reproductive choices variation in Maputo, Mozambique – a qualitative study

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2022 under the same title.

Available data suggests that, in Mozambique, over the last 30 years or so, there have been small decline in the Total Fertility Rate at national level. This decline seems to comprise robust declines in the major urban areas and weak elsewhere. Mostly, research has sought to shed light on the proximate determinants of fertility changes at country level, often disregarding fundamental differences between rural and urban areas. Therefore, the understanding about driving factors of fertility decline in urban areas in Mozambique remains at large elusive. Fertility dynamics are one of the key dimensions about Population and Development issues in the sub-Saharan countries such as Mozambique. Nonetheless, seldom the studies about donor-driven intrusion impacting the wider urban population with regard ongoing fertility dynamics have been conducted. The main objective of hereafter research is to analyze to what extent donor-driven interventions have, actually impacting the wider urban population in Mozambique regarding fertility and among whom, specifically, the impact is high. To reach this goal, qualitative methodologies will be employed, rather than quantitative methodologies that seems to dominate fertility studies in Mozambique.

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Completed Project:

"Lehrjahre sind keine Herrenjahre": Die Bedingungen in der Ausbildung und der Umgang mit internationalen Normen und internen Verordnungen zu Kinderschutz bei Schneidern, Schweißern, Maurern und Eisenflechtern in Benin

Project Summary:

Trotz des generalisierten Kampfes gegen die Beschäftigung von Minderjährigen im Allgemeinen sowie gegen die handwerkliche Ausbildung von Kindern (Vgl. ILO Koventionen 138, 182; Internationale Konvention über die Rechte des Kindes 1989; Afrikanische Charta der Rechte und des Wohlergehens des Kindes 1990; Loi n° 2015-08 portant code de l’enfant en République du Benin), werden die Normen und Verordnungen in Benin nicht eingehalten. Die Sanktionsbedrohungen haben die Eltern nicht davon abgehalten, ihre Kinder weiterhin einer handwerklichen Ausbildung nachgehen zu lassen.

Im Gegensatz zu dieser normativen Betrachtung der Situation der Kinder ermöglicht ein sinnhaftes Deuten es, das Handeln der Eltern, Kinder und Jugendlichen, der Lehrmeister und der Behörde zu verstehen. Viele Formen der Beschäftigungen von Minderjährigen im Allgemeinen und besonders die handwerkliche Ausbildung von Kindern in Werkstätten und auf Baustellen sind sozialisierend (Vgl. Bourdillon und Spittler 2012; Dougnon 2012; Alber 2012; Liebel 2012; Marguerat: 2000; Adekola 2013). Die Erziehung und Bildung in den meisten afrikanischen Gesellschaften basiert auf „Arbeiten“, d.h. auf Beobachten und Ausprobieren. Indem Kinder beobachten, erlernen sie nicht nur die Aktivitäten der Eltern, sondern auch das Leben in der Gemeinschaft (vgl. Rogoff 1990; Mahati 2012; Dougnon 2012; Spittler 2012; Adekola 2013; Erny).#

So beschäftigt sich meine Forschungsarbeit mit dem Sinn und der Bedeutung der handwerklichen Ausbildung für Kinder und Jugendliche in den Werkstätten und auf Baustellen in Benin. Im heutigen Kontext der Massenarbeitslosigkeit ist es notwendig eine neue Betrachtung der handwerklichen Ausbildung zu konstruieren. Diese Ausbildung in Handwerkberufen, wie Schneider, Schweißer, Maurer und Eisenflechter werden von den Kindern und Jugendlichen sowie von den Eltern als Hoffnung gesehen. Abgesehen davon, dass die Ausbildung Kindern und Jugendlichen, die keine Schule besucht oder sie abgebrochen haben, eine berufliche Integration ermöglicht, ist sie auch eine Erziehungsform. Sie ist in der Gesellschaft als eine soziale Institution verankert, die die Zeit überdauert hat.

Completed Project:

Moroccan Language Policy and the Amazigh Language Revitalization: Implications for Amazigh Ethnolinguistic Vitality

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2022 under the same title.

Research Interests:

Social Protection, Social Policy and Conflict Transformation

Geographical Area:

Rwanda

Current Project:

Social protection for elderly people in the context of rapidly ageing population in Rwanda

Formal social protection for elderly people in Rwanda is limited to those who worked in the formal sector, while the elderly people who worked in the informal sector do not receive such protection. In the absence of formal social protection services to the growing number of elderly people in the informal sector, these elderly people rely solely on intergenerational support that is given by their families. Intergenerational support is an invaluable source of care that forms an important part of the social fabric. However, less attention has been paid to the intergenerational support to elderly people, and so, the factors and dynamics that underpin the intergenerational support to elderly people in Rwanda remain underexplored, and it has not yet attracted anthropological scholarly attention.

The aim of this research project is to contribute to the current anthropological debate on day-to-day intergenerational support in the wave of social changes. In Rwanda, social changes such as rural-urban migration of younger generations, changes in housing patterns and land scarcity as well as the 1994 genocide greatly influence the current intergenerational support to elderly people in rural areas. This research will explore factors underpinning intergenerational support to elderly people in relation to the care expectations of elderly people in rural areas of Rwanda. The issue of intergenerational support for the elderly becomes ever more important in the wake of social changes since such social changes leave a gap which renders the elderly in rural areas without daily care. This research will analyze how care is provided to elderly people and the motivation to provide care in the context of social changes. It will also explore what happens to these elderly individual when neither their families nor the government provides care for them.

Contact

Further information (CV and conference contributions)

Completed Project:

Refugee women and the experiences of local integration in Nairobi, Kenya

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2010 under the same title.

It seems trendy for current studies to argue that the term refugee is no more than a policy category which does not reflect the circumstances of the people that it subsumes. Such studies further argue that the circumstances of refugees are not necessarily different from those of local populations. This study argues that theoretical positions emanating from such observations do not have a universal application as illustrated in Nairobi where the term refugee is not merely a policy category or legal label but also experiential. Understanding the concept refugee is very much an outcome of empirical enterprise which locates those who bear the refugee status in specific contexts.

The study draws attention to cases of targeted rape, raids, exclusionary discourses epitomised by negative stereotyping and xenophobia as well as refoulement which are specifically aimed at refugees in Nairobi. The refugee status is intertwined with other variables such as refugees´ ethnic, national and religious identities in ways that restrict inclusion of refugees into the host country. As a gendered experience, exile impacts on intra-household dynamics and transforms gender roles and relations within refugee households in ways that are simultaneously enabling and challenging for refugee women. Although local women also experience Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV), for refugee women this intersects with the vulnerability that the refugee status entails resulting in refugee women being abused even by police officers and officials who are tasked to protect them thus leaving them with limited channels for recourse. SGBV thus becomes salient because of its targeted nature. Emphasised in the study is the fact that refugee women are heterogeneous such that it is more appropriate to refer to refugee women´s experiences rather than the refugee woman experience. Exile as occupation of marginal space is however not solely about constraints as it also creates opportunities and possibilities that may not have been available to the women prior to flight. Contradictory as it may seem, the refugee status is mediated by the same variables that lead to exclusion at a macro level in ways that facilitate inclusion at a micro, interpersonal level characterised by interaction between refugee women and locals as fellow congregants or as neighbours who share the same plight of poverty in Nairobi´s slums. This is coupled with refugee women´s agency by which they convert obstacles into resources and create space for themselves in a country which advocates encampment and expects refugees to reside in the designated areas. Through their own agency, refugee women are able to navigate structural barriers meant to deter integration in ways that demonstrate that the absence of an official integration policy does not necessarily deter integration; individual agency has a countervailing impact on measures instituted to deter integration.

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Completed Project:

Militarization in Post-1986 Uganda: Politics, Military and Society Interpretation

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2015 under the same title.

This book discusses the phenomenon of militarization in post-1986 Uganda. It takes a holistic approach to connect different facets of militarization: the social and political; the macro and micro levels; the disguised and explicit forms. On one hand, the author illustrates that the military remains a crucial factor of political processes while on the other showing how military ethos such as uniform and training are a source of symbolic capital in both politics and social spheres. Ultimately, the book shows that militarization is a bi-directional process - macro politics facilitating it from above, while social forces such as ordinary people, media, and musicians reproduce it from below.

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Completed Project:

The Basic Narrative of National Unity and Peace in Cameroonian Political Speeches: A Discourse Analytical Perspective

Project Summary:

This study analyses the patterns of language use in the speeches of three Cameroonian politicians with the aim of determining what discourse strategies they use in times of socio-political and economic crises to impose their worldviews or specific readings of a given situation. The analysis follows two main paths viz. representation and argumentation. With regard to (political) representation, I am interested in pronouns, metaphors, agency and nominalisation as indexical elements. The research focuses on topoi or argumentative schemes, with a view to understanding the ideologies expressed by the different political actors. The recurrence of linguistic patterns at different times of Cameroon’s history, as well as in similar contexts, is considered here as evidence to the presence of a Basis Erzählung (basic narrative) set into motion in times of social unrest. Ultimately, the work will contribute to a description of discourse as an “instrument and effect of power” at the highest stratum of the Cameroonian political sphere. The discourses analysed include both written texts and audio-visual material of the above-mentioned political actors in specified moments of crisis. This work espouses a postcolonial comparative perspective and examines a variety of influences on political communication in Cameroon, ranging from local culture(s) to foreign western culture(s) and traditions.

Completed Project:

Language and Interaction in the Chinese Community in Cameroon: A Sociolinguistic Profile

Project Summary:

The present study aims at analyzing the sociolinguistic profile of Chinese community in Cameroon. In fact, the number of Chinese migrants in Africa has been growing. In Cameroon, their presence is noticeable in various sectors like in teaching, the medicine, and the agricultural sector. Some of these migrants also work in stores and in construction. It is my purpose to highlight how and in which languages the Chinese communicate in a country of almost 300 languages. The research will center on two Cameroonian cities: Douala and Bamenda which are chosen firstly because of the considerable presence of Chinese migrants in these cities and secondly because of the major languages spoken in the two areas: French in Douala and English in Bamenda. Through observations, questionnaires and audio recordings, I will interrogate (i) the level of interaction in the Chinese community in Cameroon (ii) the linguistic outcomes that occur during such interactions (iii) the variance in the Chinese linguistic profile according to the geographical area they occupy, that is, Francophone and Anglophone. The research is intended to be a contribution to the field of Sino-African studies and will also serve as a comparison for the study of Chinese migrants in other African countries.

Completed Project:

The Best Interests of the Child Principle: A Critical Analysis of the Tanzanian Intercountry Adoption System

Project Summary:

The best interests of the child principle is one of the cardinal principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989 and African Convention on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, 1990 that must strictly be adhered to in all actions affecting the child. According to the Conventions, in child adoption, the best interests of the child must be the paramount rather than primary consideration. This reflects an increased need for protection when a child is adopted. The best interests of the child principle however remains an undefined concept, with no specifically set criteria for determination in both the United Nations and African Conventions on the Rights of the Child. Arguably, this is a deliberate omission so as to allow different interpretations of the notion depending on context and circumstances. This flexibility however, creates a lack of consensus on what best interests of the child entail. Consequently, this may occasion problems in practice where the best interests of the child may be erroneously construed to the detriment of the child.

This study investigates and critically analyzes the law, policy, practice and institutional setup governing intercountry adoption in Tanzania. Focus is mainly on problems relating to best interests of the child determination, child's right to identity and the subsidiarity principle. Challenges in balancing the need for intercountry adoption to be a measure of last resort and in the best interests of the child are paid particular attention.

Research Interests:

Processes of Regional Integration, Judicial Politics, Politics of Development Negotiations

Dissertation Project:

Judges as agents of regional integration: A relational analysis of judicial networks in African regional courts

Diana is interested in the link between judicial decision-making and processes of regional integration in Africa. Her research project conceptualises judges on regional courts as actors, with agency, who operate within existing configurations of power. Therefore, it adopts a relational approach to investigate how the judges’ diverse relational attributes potentially shape and influence their decision-making, and in turn, how this impacts regional integration processes. Specifically, it examines how regional court judges understand their role in regional integration, probes into what shapes this understanding and traces the judicial networks that matter in advancing regional integration. Possible constraints to judicial power and individual interests that tend to deter regionalisation will also be investigated. The study employs semi-structured interviews to probe judicial relations and Social Network Analysis to analyse the structural properties of these networks.

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Further information (CV and conference contributions)

Completed Project:

Performative Künste in Äthiopien. Internationale Kulturbeziehungen und postkoloniale Artikulationen

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the same title.

Dynamik und stetige Transformationsprozesse prägen die aktuellen Kunstszenen von Addis Abeba. Aus strategischen Gründen gehen performative Künstler_innen Äthiopiens temporär auch Allianzen mit europäischen Kulturinstitutionen vor Ort ein. Durch eine Betrachtung der Geschichte und Ästhetik des äthiopischen Theaters und einer Analyse der strukturellen Bedingungen des Kunstfeldes macht Grit Köppen deutlich, dass der transkulturelle Austausch in der Kunst maßgeblich durch ein Gefüge politischer, ökonomischer, struktureller, materieller und diskursiver Machtrelationen gekennzeichnet ist. Gleichzeitig wird auf die ästhetischen Strategien performativer Künstler_innen verwiesen, in diesem Rahmen dennoch kritische, selbstreflexive und postkoloniale Artikulationen vorzunehmen.

Completed Project:

Description comparative des langues du sous-groupe Bia Nord: agni, baule, anufo

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the same title.

The project is a description and a comparison of the three Northern Bia languages: Baoulé, Agni and Anufo. The situation of this group is unique, because of the historically documented conditions of the migration of the Anufom. In fact, the Anufom people moved from the Ano area (today Prikro in Côte d’Ivoire) to settle in Northern Togo which is a Gurma area. With the establishment of Anufom in the Gangam area, there is a situation of language contact. This project aims also to show in which level this contact has affected the language system of anufo.

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Completed Project:

Die Ordnung hinter der Ordnung. Ethnographie einer islamischen Geheimwissenschaft (Senegal)

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the title "Die Ordnung hinter der Ordnung. Ethnographie einer islamischen Geheimwissenschaft".

Basierend auf langjährigen ethnographischen Forschungen bekommt der Leser Einblicke in die Anwendung und Weitergabe einer islamisch geprägten Geheimwissenschaft, der sogenannten ilm al-asrar. Große Teile dieses Geheimwissens werden aus der Perspektive eines Lernenden beschrieben. Dieser auf einen lokal begrenzten Kontext bezogene, dezidiert subjektivistische Zugang, erlaubt zwar keine direkten Rückschlüsse auf größere historische Entwicklungen, dafür geht er auf beeindruckende Weise in die Tiefe und zeigt die individuellen, gesellschaftlichen und theologische-philosophischen Implikationen dieser Praxis auf.

Completed Project:

Vigilantism, State, and Society in Plateau State, Nigeria: A History of Plural Policing (1950 to the present)

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the same title.

The main focus of this doctoral research is to account for the emergence and continued existence of a plural policing landscape in Plateau state, Nigeria. Consequently, the research seeks to answer three main questions: First, which groups have constituted and still constitute the main actors in a plural policing landscape? In other words what are their origins; how are they structured and internally organised? What are their relationships with the societies/communities they operate in? The second question the research focuses on is how these groups encounter the Nigerian state. Nonstate policing groups operate in different space scenarios, i.e. in areas where state policing is visible and dominant, visible but weak and areas where it is non-existent. The research examines the dynamics that characterise relationships and interactions within a space of plural policing. However, in our case plurality is not strictly defined by focusing on actors, i.e. state vs. non-state; there is a case for understanding how a landscape inhabited by a plurality of actors – who are guided by a plurality of legal codes – creates a plurality of practices. The third key question of this doctoral research seeks to deepen understanding of the effects and impacts of vigilantism and non-state policing: As a phenomenon, what does it create? How have these groups responded to a changing political and social context? Conceptual and analytical underpinnings of this research are derived from two key strands: First, I rely on existing literature on the post-colonial African state with particular focus on the Nigerian context and content, the legacies of its colonial past and the contradictions of its post-colonial history – particularly as it relates to the provision of security – and the maintenance of law and order. Second, I also use varied sources of primary data, mainly research interviews, archival material and observational notes.

Completed Project:

Struggling for visibility. The politics of diabetes diagnostics in Uganda

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2019 under the title "Making Diabetes: The Politics of Diabetes Diagnostics in Uganda".

This book asks how the glucometer, the often only choice to diagnose diabetes in Uganda, contributes to the making of this disease in a setting with weak health infrastructure.

Completed Project:

A Mediação na resolução de conflitos O caso de Bambadinca

Project Summary:

This PhD project is conducted within the framework of a collaborative research project denominated “Local Strategies of Conflict Management in Guinea-Bissau”, carried out in cooperation between INEP (Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa, Guinea-Bissau) and Bayreuth University and funded by Volkswagen Foundation.

My research has evolved on the basis of combined qualitative and quantitative methods of fieldwork. Countless interrogations where raised, particularly with regard to the data collected at the Sector’s district court. In the field of study there is evidence of a veritable legal pluralism legal pluralis, as considered in various theoretical perspectives. Furthermore, when compared to other regions of the country, noticeably few conflicts are brought before the district court in Bambadinca, even though the Mandinga as the area’s main ethnic group co-habit with other ethnic groups, particularly the Balanta, Fulbe and Beafada. Furthermore, when compared to other regions of the country, noticeably few conflicts are brought before the district court in Bambadinca, even though the Mandinga as the area’s main ethnic group co-habit with other ethnic groups, particularly the Balanta, Fulbe and Beafada.

Recent fieldwork revealed that conflict prevention is a crucial factor, and both history and social structure play an important role in the resolution of legal disputes. The existing good social relations are also enhanced by the Mandinga’s internal forms of self-regulation, relating to cousin relations (sanakouya).In addition, an ethnolinguistic analysis shall provide for a better understanding of the Mandinga’s general juridical thinking.

Completed Project:

Straßenhandel mit Souvenirs im Senegal: Akteure, Arbeit und Organisation

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2020 under the title "Straßenhandel mit Souvenirs im Senegal".

Ethnografisch und theoretisch fundiert beleuchtet der Band den Straßenhandel mit Souvenirs aus Sicht der lokalen Händler. Die Untersuchung zeigt, wie sich endogame Handwerkergruppen der Wolof den Souvenirhandel aneigneten, welche Bedeutung die internationale Kulturpolitik auch für Straßenhändler spielen kann, wie der Arbeitsalltag verschiedener Straßenhändler verläuft und in welchem Spannungsverhältnis deren "Informalität" mit Staat und Tourismusindustrie steht. Auf Basis dieser Ausführungen entwickelt die Studie das Konzept des relationalen Markttauschs, das den wirtschaftsethnologischen Diskurs - nicht nur zum Straßenhandel - um einen wichtigen Aspekt ergänzt.

Completed Project:

Les discours sur l'homosexualité au Sénégal. L'analyse d'une lutte représentationnelle.

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the same title.

This research project aims to give a systematic, historical and anthropological account of the different representations of and discourses on homosexuality in Senegal.

In many African countries sexual relationships between persons of the same sex are increasingly under denial - denial that is legally underscored by the interdiction of homosexuality in thirty-nine states. In Senegal the legal repression of homosexuality predicates on Article 319 of the Criminal Code, which allows for the conviction of individuals in homosexual relationships with up to five years imprisonment. Meanwhile, the issue of homosexuality figures frequently within public speeches by religious leaders and authorities who see same-sex sexual practices as a sign of “depravity” and “vice” resulting from colonialism and the continuous contact with western civilisation. Recently this legal and religious condemnation has been accompanied by growing efforts of political and social mobilisation resulting from a novel increase of severity conveyed by public accusation.

In light of these recent developments, my study is an effort to understand the meaning of homosexuality and its contestations in the contemporary Senegalese society, as well as amongst those living within samesex relationships.

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Completed Project:

Inter-firm Relationships and Governance Structures: A study of the Ethiopian leather and leather products industry value chain

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2011 under the same title.

Interest in the topic of governance and interfirm relationships in the Ethiopian leather and leather products industry was developed after observing a gap in the literature on value chain research at the international level and finding only a few empirical studies on value chains at the local level. Most of the value chain research conducted throughout the world are either too general or are simply functionalistic and, thus, fail to address the socio-cultural context. This study contributes to the literature in several ways: firstly, the present research suggests that a central focus of value chain analysis should be the examination of social networks within local, but also global, value chains, as social relations might play an important and so far neglected role in the struggle to participate in the rapidly changing world economy. Secondly, as a clear departure from mainstream value chain research, this study makes use of a mixture of value chain and network approaches for exploring processes and micro-level interactions used by individuals to construct and maintain networks.

Completed Project:

Sensibilisation contre le VIH/SIDA au Cameroun: Analyse sémiolinguistique des affiches

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the title "Sensibilisation contre le VIH/SIDA au Cameroun".

The fight against HIV/AIDS in the world is no longer concentrated only on biomedical research since it includes nowadays the involvement of preventive strategies based on social communication. In Cameroon, this social communication against HIV/AIDS is jointly done by the governmental and nongovernmental organisations. Both make use of the same channel of communication in order to inform, to sensitise or to strengthen the population’s knowledge and safe reaction against this pandemic. This dissertation project entitled “Analyse sociolinguistique et communicative des sensibilisations médiatiques contre le VIH/SIDA au Cameroun" aims at analysing the messages of social communication spread by fix media in Cameroon. Our objective is to study and find out whether the media sensitisation messages in this specific milieu match with target groups’ perceptions and expectations to achieve the aim of creating awareness on HIV/AIDS. From this expectation, we assume that a clear and objective picture of the communication forms and situation on HIV/AIDS in this specific context relies on actors’ language and metalanguage/epilinguistic activities on this health phenomenon. To achieve our research goal, we are going to integrate content analysis approach to the qualitative method for empirical data collection with the aim of coming out with two types of data: in one hand, the fix images from their different locations and, in the other hand, the respondents’ perceptions on HIV/AIDS prevention discourse in their environment.

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Completed Project:

Gender Equality Legislation and Institutions at the Local Level in Kenya: Experiences of the Maasai

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2020 under the same title.

Globally, women are under-represented in governance structures, resulting not from conscious discrimination, but due to various forms of bias in civil society institutions and the political sphere. In Kenya, political structures and processes have been recognized as the main reason for reduced spaces for women to voice their knowledge, opinions and concerns, providing no room for alternative interpretations of needs and policy solutions. Despite being a voting majority, traditional customs and societal attitudes have limited women’s political space in Kenya. Gender stereotypes, male resistance to women’s participation, limited resources and political structures and processes have significantly contributed to the under-representation of women in decision making positions.

Among the Maasai, gendered separation has resulted in the women’s absence from the political spheres and a lack of involvement in politics, prolonging struggles over power and property in the community.

This research project seeks to explore how a new constitutional dispensation that enforces women’s public participation affects the position of women in the political economy. Informed by an assessment of the political realities of localised understanding and meanings of gender roles and poverty among the Maasai, it will investigate engagement mechanisms in designing, planning and executing development efforts within the new governance structure.

Completed Project:

DEAF-DEAF-DIFFERENT. Ambiguities of being deaf in Benin

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2023 under the same title.

“Being deaf” is more than a physical or medical phenomenon. It is a social role and position that is constantly shifted and renegotiated between the deaf and the hearing individuals and communities. In my research project “learning to be deaf in Benin”, I seek to understand how deaf identity is established within, across and beyond the various religious, ethnic and linguistic groups in Benin.

Completed Project:

The History of Use and Conservation of Marine Resources in Zanzibar: Nineteenth Century to the Present

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2017 under the same title.

This study aims to examine the historical evolution and context of conservation of marine resources in Zanzibar, from the early colonial era up to the present period. More specifically, the study will examine the use and misuse of mangroves and coral reefs in Zanzibar. It will show how activities such as unregulated fishing and relatively massive constructions - using coral stones and mangrove poles as significant building materials - have affected marine environment in Zanzibar over the historical period. Also the study will analyze the way people perceived, adapted and cope with changes as well as the resulted effects of the environmental changes. Another part of the study will account for the indigenous conservation methods and practices as well as the interface between them and the modern methods, practices and policies of conservation of marine resources in Zanzibar.

The study will use both qualitative and quantitative techniques. It will employ stratified random sampling technique to select a population, basing on age, gender and occupations. Population will be selected from different selected areas, villages and houses/households. The study is expected to find out and analyze the available indigenous methods used to conserve marine resources in Zanzibar during and after the colonial period. It will further examine the way the indigenous people interacted with the different new social and economic environments from the early colonial period in Zanzibar up to the 2000s.

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Completed Project:

La perception du milieu naturel à travers la littérature orale Touareg Kel Aïr du Niger

Project Summary:

The relationship between Kel Ewey Tuaregs with their environmental area will be analyzed in case of dichotomy between nature and culture in Aîr and Tenere National Natural Reserve, particularly in Local Park founded by legendary mystic Sheikh Sidi Mahmud el Baghdadi or Shurufa. Here many people among Twareg of north Niger think that numerous species are protected by divine malediction or habitats of jinns; some plants have a soul (e.g Olivier de Laperrine (Alaw) and can be used only by respecting certain rituals. Also, the notion of environment or the relationship between man and environment is based on the dichotomy between nature and culture. In Tchighozerine tin ennig (local park of north Niger), we meet one side, the occidental conception (Nature – Culture) categorized by P. Descola (2005) as naturalism in his topology of epistemologies, on another side the cultural conception of Shurufa inhabitants, specialists in geomancy intermediaries between the two worlds and offspring of the prophet that I propose to study: the domestic one and the wild one.

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Completed Project:

Icons of Zimbabwe's Crisis and their Interpretation by European Union Officials

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2021 under the same title.

The power of the media in driving or influencing foreign policy or decisions of institutions is often overlooked, yet the media could play a significant role in influencing decision making of institutions ranging from private companies, governments, NGOs, and regional organisations, among others. This research aims at assessing the extent to which the media has influenced the EU foreign policy in Africa. The study makes a comparison between Zimbabwe and Kenya. Considering the history of electoral violence and human rights violations in Zimbabwe and Kenya, this research is particularly interested in the role that pictures (images) and videos play in influencing the EU foreign policy positions on Kenya and Zimbabwe. The media channels under investigation for the research are CNN, France 24, BBC and Aljazeera English. They have been chosen because of their international outlook and they also have specific desks on African news. The research utilises Iconology, Agenda Setting Theory and the Complex Interdependence Theory as analytical instruments. Additionally, the study utilises qualitative research and uses key informant interviews on EU officials, media experts, and media houses, among others, as sources of data collection.

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Completed Project:

Wohltätigkeit – Entwicklung – Unternehmertum im Namen des Islams. Strukturen und Prozesse islamischer glaubensbasierter Organisationen (FBOs) in Tansania

Project Summary:

Institutionalised forms of charity in Islam are nearly as old as Islam itself. Contemporary representations are the so called Islamic faith-based (FBOs). While generally relating to values and institutions grounded in Islam, specific forms of Islamic charity such as pious endowments or trusts (waqf/auqāf) and of alms-giving (zakāt and ṣadaqa) might be integrated into a broader provision of social welfare services and development aid activities by these organisations. Islamic FBOs, especially Islamic NGOs in East-Africa have so far attracted little research.

The project aims at contributing to close this gap by a) developing an overview of the diversity in organised Muslim charity in Tanzania b) examining the stakekolder's sources of motivation for their engagement in Islamic FBOs as well as c) analysing the organisations’ and stakeholders’ embeddedness in the (trans-)national historical as well as contemporary contexts of Tanzania. Secular as well as religious factors will be considered as well as negotiation-processes between organisations, donors and potential supporters in their surrounding community. Based on this contextualisation, the project d) clarifies the role of Islamic FBOs within Tanzania’s civil society. This allows e) to contribute to the analysis of Islamic FBOs between inner-Islamic debates, the globalized model of non-governmental organisations and the social and political role of Muslims in East-Africa. The project thereby transgresses the limitations of the NGO debate which generally focusses on Western or Christian organizations and their narratives of the future.

Further information

Completed Project:

Land, Power and Identity: The politics of scale and violent conflict in Masisi, “DR Congo”

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2019 under the same title.

Violent conflicts in North-Kivu province in Eastern Congo have been mainly associated with struggles about mineral resources. Issues of land and local power and the ways the two involve ethnicity in conflict dynamics are often overlooked. The aim of this research project is to better understand the role of ethnicity for both access to land and political power. Actors networks as well as the complex institutional landscape in which they operate will be analysed to identify key drivers of the ongoing tensions.

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Completed Project:

State/Society: Narrating Transformations in Selected African Novels

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2017 under the same title.

"In this remarkably meticulous work, Gilbert Shang Ndi succeeds in bringing together the aesthetic and political dimensions of the texts and in broadening interpretative perspectives in very convincing analyses. Each author is handled in his peculiarity and the theoretical ambitions of the project contribute to fruitful and innovative readings of major African literature texts by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Ahmadou Kourouma, Ayi Kwei Armah and Sony Labou Tansi." Prof. Xavier Garnier, Université de Paris-Sorbonne III.

Completed Project:

Kulturtransfer in der Übersetzung von Literatur und Film am Beispiel von Semèbene Ousmanes Novelle Niiwam und deren Verfilmung Niiwam der lange Weg

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2014 under the title "Kulturtransfer in der Übersetzung von Literatur und Film. Sembène Ousmanes Novelle Niiwam und deren Verfilmung Niiwam. Der lange Weg".

Dieses Buch bietet Einblicke in die Diskussion um die Kulturtransferforschung aus übersetzungswissenschaftlicher Sicht. Im Mittelpunkt der Studie steht der Versuch, die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer interkulturellen Kommunikation zwischen Senegal und dem deutschsprachigen Raum anhand der Übersetzung von Literatur und Film mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Untertitelung zu untersuchen. Über die Übersetzung sprachästhetischer und kulturspezifischer Elemente hinaus werden kulturelle Inhalte, die sich in literarischen Texten, Filmdialogen, Filmbildern und Tonspuren niederschlagen, im interkulturellen Vergleich erforscht und näher erläutert.

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Completed Project:

Funeral Performances in Kenya: A Contribution to Communicative Genre Analysis

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the title "The Funeral Performances among the Bukusu of Kenya: A Contribution to Communicative Genre Analysis".

This book is about interactions in the funeral context among the Bukusu people of Kenya that brings together many religions. The author describes and accounts for hybridity as it is revealed by communicative techniques used by the priest and the comforter in the two communicative genres - the sermon and the traditional public comforting - that belong to the Christian and the Traditional Bukusu religions respectively. By approaching the over-a-century-co-existence of the two religions from a linguistic perspective, the study aims at ascertaining the relationship between the two religions.

Completed Project:

La vente des produits de santé dans les cars interurbains au Cameroun : une analyse interactionnelle

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the title "La vente de produits de santé dans les cars interurbains au Cameroun. Une analyse interactionelle".

Cet ouvrage porte sur la vente itinérante de médicaments dans les transports interurbains. Il y ressort que les interactions qui composent le corpus ont des filiations avec la consultation, la publicité et le commerce dont les spécificités sont décrites au travers d’analyses empiriques.

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Completed Project:

Migration et Savoirs. Reconstruction ethnographique des itinéraires et périples de l'apprentissage sur le parcours migratoire de jeune Éthiopiennes entre l'Éthiopie et l'Allemagne

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the title "Migrations et Savoirs. Stations, itinéraires et périples, de l’apprentissage sur le parcours migratoire entre l’Éthiopie et Allemagne".

D'où viennent les réfugiés qui arrivent jusqu'en Allemagne ? Quelles sont les particularités du parcours et du vécu quotidien des femmes dans ces mouvements migratoires ? La migration des servantes domestiques est analysée comme un processus dynamique d'apprentissage et de quête de soi qui mène des jeunes femmes éthiopiennenes jusqu'en Europe. Leur parcours apparaît plus comme un parcours expérimental d'apprentissage continuel et non comme un projet de migration reconçue au départ de l'Ethiopie.

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Completed Project:

Handwerkliche Arbeit als soziale Praxis: Eine ethnologische Studie über die handwerklichen Praktiken der endogamen Handwerker.innengruppe des inadas des Aïr in Niger

Project Summary:

My project investigates the social and material aspects of crafting performed by the Inadan Tuareg in Niger.

The aim is to approach the craftspeople's work not only as activity of crafting but also to understand that kind of work in the context of Tuareg culture within the Inadan are integrated as an endogamous professional group. Hence, three dimensions intersect: The craftspeople's work as dealing with materials, the craftspeople's work as organized in an endogamous professional group (i.e. in the family) and the craftspeople's work in Tuareg culture.

The work of crafting is related to the group of Inadan so extensively that a member of that group is considered as craftswoman/ craftsman, even if she/ he does not carry out „the Inadan's work“. Nevertheless, most Inadan learn to craft in childhood at home and from older family members – whether or not they live on craft eventually.

The phenomenological approach allows to grasp the full scope of action in physical, material as well as social and cultural spaces with its hub in the workshop. Artefacts (tools and outcome) emerge in social relations and are inevitably embedded in culture. As I consider artefacts as medium and materialised signs of common ideas, of successful (or failed) comprehension, fabricating things is examined in the context of relations to purchasers, the family and the wider group of Inadan. Thus, crafting is communicative and social action, although it seems to be a sole individual undertaking of dealing with material at a first glance.

The study of craftspeople's work as dealing with material focuses on the engagement of the body, the mode of practice (Arbeitsweise), i.e. the How of crafting, rather than on stocktaking of raw material, tools and outcome that are in the hands of the craftspeople anyway. Most investigations on West African crafting so far have focused on the material in process and treated work as production of things solely, instead of looking at what the artisan is actually doing. The PhD project thus turns around the angle beginning with the working man him/herself.

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Completed Project:

Kindheit, Autobiografik und Interkulturalität. Eine vergleichende Studie zu Kindheitstexten von Laye Camara, Elias Canetti, Jean-Martin Tchaptchet und Yusuf Yeşilöz

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2010 under the title "Kindheit, Autobiografik und Interkulturalität. Ein Beitrag zur sprachüber-greifenden und (kon-) textorientierten Literaturtheorie".

In der Literaturtheorie wird oft versucht, die Kulturspezifik der Autobiografik zu erfassen. Dabei wird die Kulturkomponente jedoch nur auf das Herkunftsland des Autors reduziert. Vertreten wird diese These v. a. über autobiografische Texte von Autoren afrikanischer Herkunft, die kulturelle Elemente aus Afrika in sich tragen. Aus dieser Perspektive wird die Herkunft des Autors allein als Ferment der Autobiografik präsentiert. Solche Überlegungen rufen komparatistische Studien zwischen "afrikanischen" und "europäischen" Lebensgeschichten hervor. Deswegen werden deutsch- und französischsprachige Kindheitstexte einander gegenübergestellt, damit es deutlich wird, ob man zu Recht von einer typisch afrikanischen Autobiografik reden kann. Es geht um Canettis Die gerettete Zunge, Tchaptchets La Marseillaise de mon enfance, Camaras L'Enfant noir und Yesilöz' Steppenrutenpflanze.

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Completed Project:

The Media and Terrorism. Editorial Cartoons, Framing and Legitimacy in the Kenyan Press, 1998-2008

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the same title.

The editorial cartoon, perhaps one the most enduring feature of the African newspaper, carries perception of a less cerebral form of journalism consigned to laughter and flippancy. However, editorial cartoons' effectiveness goes beyond laughter. Indeed, this book not only responds to the call for a broader debate on media and terrorism, but also examines how editorial cartoons in Kenya, majorly between 1998 and 2008, contributed to the discursive construction of terrorism and the so called war on terror. Drawing from events surrounding major terror attacks at the high noon of `al-Qaida terrorism', this book highlights how editorial cartoons in Kenya provided insights into the vicissitudes that characterized terrorism and its war.

Completed Project:

International Environmental Law and Trans-boundary Resource Co-operation Frameworks in the Lake Victoria Basin: An Assessment of Effectiveness

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2017 under the title "Trans-Boundary Resource Cooperation in the Lake Victoria Bay: An International Environmental Law Perspective".

Lake Victoria is a trans-boundary lake within the East African Community (EAC) shared by three riparian states of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda as well as two basin states of Burundi and Rwanda. The lake currently exhibits an acute ecological decline that the study attributes to unilateral state action in the lake as opposed to the establishment of a common regime for management of the lake as a common resource. The need for cooperation is foregrounded by the fact that states affect each other whether consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or otherwise and the interdependent nature of the lake compels the different states to work together in finding solutions to their mutual resource challenges that cannot be resolved in isolation. While there is consensus that cooperation remains the hub around which all efforts for trans-boundary governance in the Lake Victoria should revolve, there is very little consensus on how this cooperation should be achieved or what its exact components are. Cooperation is particularly difficult to achieve in resource areas such as fisheries and water abstraction in which states have significant vested interests that continue to generate conflicts among the riparian states. This research therefore inquires how international environmental law responds to the collective action problem in Lake Victoria particularly through application of the principle of international cooperation that is proclaimed in all legal instruments that relate to the lake. The study aims to evaluate on-going legal and policy harmonisation efforts among the Lake Victoria partner states and how they contribute to achievement of sustainable management in the lake.

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Completed Project:

Traduire des textes sur le VIH et le sida en basaa : cas des affiches et des dépliants

Project Summary:

This study focuses on the use of translation as an effective means of communication in HIV/AIDS sensitization campaigns in particular, and in health communication in general. The choice of this pandemic was motivated by its social relevance. The group whose language is being investigated in this project is known as Basaa. The Basaa-speaking area is basically located in the southern part of Cameroon, Central Africa.

The main objective of this project is to explore the way HIV/AIDS-related texts could be better translated from French into Basaa. Considering that very little translation activities have been carried out in this area in the Basaa language, the analysis in this project shall be based primarily on texts translated by myself, taking account not only of my personal knowledge and competence, but also of data collected in the field. This study also aims at contributing to a better understanding of HIV/AIDS within the Basaa community by producing a series of translations and glossary on HIV/AIDS and related issues. Lastly, this project is a contribution to research on the Basaa language.

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Completed Project:

The Utendi wa Yusufu. A Critical Edition of the Swahili Poem of Yusuf and a Study of its Adaptation at the Swahili Coast

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2021 under the title "Rewriting Yusuf: A Philological and Intertextual Study of a Swahili Islamic Manuscript Poem".

The story and figure of Yusuf (or Joseph in Christian tradition), has been travelling across time and space. Its popularity in the lands of Islam gave birth to many ‘native’ versions in Berber, Swahili, Persian, Urdu, Malay and Javanese. Adapted and re-adapted several times through the 19th 20th and 21st century, the Utendi wa Yusuf has been an important and popular text at the East African Coast. The oldest existing witnesses on the story in Swahili poetry are manuscripts in Arabic script dating back the first half of the 20th century and ascribed to a famous artist, musician and poet from Lamu on the so called northern Swahili coast. A complete critical edition of the Utendi wa Yusuf has never been published until now. The transliteration and translation of the poem consisting of 729 stanzas, are the departure points framing the first section of my PhD research project focused on the common theme of the ‘linguistic adaptation’. From this perspective, I will look at poem’s versions considering the manuscripts layout and the stanzas arrangement of the narrative, the Swahili orthography conventions in Arabic script, the linguistic register and style.

A second section of my PhD research project will investigate the intertextuality cross-references with which the story is interlinked and shaped by. Considering that any encounter with a text is an act of appropriation, how the story is re-presented at the Swahili coast, across geographical, temporal and cultural borders? Although the author clearly attested to have used both the Qur’an (Sura twelfth) and the Old Testament (Genesis 37-43) as his ‘sources’, the imitation of exemplars and role models drew beyond the religious texts, including Arabic literary prose texts and Persian motifs. The cultural encounter of foreigner stable texts with the Swahili re-reading opens up to a number of questions about the story inter-reading and dialogue: which ‘stories’ the Swahili narrative poem stem from? Which role do quotations and allusions to previous-texts play within the new narrative? Relying on imitatio as the creative practice aiming at transformation rather than reproduction, how the Swahili utendi genre shapes the new narrative and which meaning did the poet make out?

The research is aimed at filling an important gap and making the Swahili version of the text available to comparative studies with other adaptations from the Indian Ocean area and beyond. Following this path, the project may contribute to consider the ‘adaptation’ as an important means of mediating new concepts, given that no one has hitherto considered ‘adaptation’ as a transcultural process in Swahili intellectual history.

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Completed Project:

The Modernity of Witchcraft in the Ghanaian Online Setting

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2017 under the same title.

This project suggests an investigation of witchcraft in West African context. Both the level of cognitive conceptualisation, and the discursive dimensions emerging from there will be analysed. Furthering interdisciplinary research, this project combines social scientific, cognitive linguistic and cognitive theories and methods in the scientific study of religion to cover social representations that target communities refer to as witchcraft. Consequently, our work addresses the following questions: What can we learn about human religious thinking exemplified by the salience and prevalence of the witch as a counterintuitive agent? How can we understand the social function of witchcraft in context of other religions? And what new light will cognitive theories of religions shed on the discussion of witchcraft? To tackle these problems we suggest a study composed of three broad steps: a) empirical field research based upon cognitive linguistic methodology in communities in West Africa, b) widening the scope of data collection to discourse analysis in which the findings of step a can be grounded, c) delivering an evaluative and conclusive discussion of steps a and b with special regard to religious thinking. In this way we hope to contribute to an understanding of the versatility of the conceptualisations of witchcraft and their relation to religions in West Africa.

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Completed Project:

That is not who I am’: Knowledge production and female same-sexuality in KwaZulu-Natal

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the same title.

My research aims to examine the production of knowledge about female homosexuality in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. I aim to show where female non-heteronormative behavior is constructed as permissible, or even reverent, and where it is constructed as the opposite, or even punishable, and why in the contemporary. If we are to understand the cultural within the context of exchanges of meaning, it stands that knowledge is not only inseparable from power but also mediated by image and language. My project is therefore broadly focused on the analytical categories of sexuality and knowledge, and more specifically focused on representations of both sexual subjectivities and the complexities and ambiguities of the sexual life-world. These themes are seldom discussed even though they are at the heart of current debates on homosexuality in South African and international media. I ultimately hope to address how local knowledges are produced, by whom, and to what end through analysis of in-depth interviews that focus on the participants’ visual narratives, alongside an analysis of representations of homosexuality in local and international media practices.

Completed Project:

Housing finance strategies of informal settlement dwellers. Factors of influence and the impacts of planned interventions in Dar es Salaam

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the title "Housing Finance Strategies of Informal Settlement Dwellers. Factors of Influence and Impacts of Planned Interventions in Dar es Salaam".

Access to housing and to housing finance remains a challenge in African cities. This study examines the housing finance strategies of informal settlement dwellers in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and identifies a range of factors that enable or constrain actors to make investments in housing. Based on ethnographic, qualitative and quantitative research, this study provides detailed insights into individual housing biographies, and explains why some actors invest in housing, while others do not. It finally challenges widely accepted development concepts like the provision of housing microfinance, land regularisation, infrastructure upgrading and eviction and argues for a deeper understanding of everyday lives in order to improve housing conditions.

Completed Project:

Dynamic Tensions, Civil Society and Development of the Disability Rights Movement

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2019 under the same title.

This book contributes to the civil society and development debate by adapting a convergent analytic framework that synthesizes neo-institutional and social identity perspectives, to interrogate the competing interests among civil society organizations (CSOs). Within the scope of this objective, It analyses three sub-themes; the internal governance structures of Disabled People's Organizations (DPOs); the dynamics of competition for resources; and the relationship between civil and political society; and how these factors impact on the internal cohesion of the disability movement. The central argument is that the necessity to respond to the institutional pressures from the organizational field interacts with identity based interest articulation of actors, to shape the degree of internal cohesion among CSOs.

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© Nicole Schwab

Completed Project:

‚Some call it slum, we call it home!‘ Aushandlungen von Zugehörigkeit unter den nubischen Einwohner*innen Kib(e)ras, Kenia

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2022 under the same title.

At the heart of the proposed research undertaking is the question how (particularly ethnic and spatial) forms of belonging are lived, experienced and expressed in the multi-ethnic settlement of Kibera, Kenya. The target group at hand is the Nubi community, who claim to be descendants of African mercenaries in the colonial troops and the rightful owners of the former military settlement now turned slum. After discarding the imperial obsession with homelands and native reserves, the relation between individuals and territory has been astonishingly under-theorized in anthropology. These notions, however, continue to influence public discourses in Kenia. The aim of the proposed research is to empirically examine spatial belonging for the advancement of our theoretical understanding of belonging as such, furthermore shedding light on ethnic identity as well.

The contributions of the project to scholarly debate are threefold: On a methodological level, I intend to further the operationalisation of fuzzy concepts such as ethnicity, belonging, and human-space/place-relation. As a contribution to theory, I propose to further the theory building of the concepts mentioned above on the basis of thick empirical research, by studying belonging (especially ethnic and spatial belongings) as ‘practice’ rather than limiting my research to ‘construction’ or ‘discourse’. Empirically, I aim to contribute to the understanding of the particular situation of Kenyan Nubians.

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Completed Project:

Ethnotourismus in der Kalahari

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the same title.

Kultureller Tourismus zu indigenen Gruppen hat sich neben Natur- und Safaritourismus als ein wichtiger Bestandteil der Reisebranche im südlichen Afrika etabliert. Dieses Buch bietet einen Überblick über die aktuelle Situation des Phänomens Ethnotourismus zu sansprachigen Gruppen in der Region, beschreibt und vergleicht deren Angebote und Strukturen. Dabei wird auch auf die Tourismus- und der Minderheitenpolitiken der einzelnen Länder Bezug genommen. Anhand eines Fallbeispiels in Botswana werden die Praktiken vor Ort analysiert und diese mit dem Bild der "Buschmänner", das in tourismusspezifischen Medien diskursiv erzeugt wird, in Verbindung gebracht.

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Completed Project:

Black Lives Matter: Emerging Forms and Subjectivities of Activism in St. Louis, Missouri

This project concerns the ongoing Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) from the perspective of participants in the Network for Black Lives in St. Louis, Missouri. On the one hand, my research aims to focus on the everyday lives of activists and draw connections to the political economy of activism this urban neoliberal landscape. On the other hand, the project focuses on the re-signification, mobilization and enactment of race, with a specific focus on negotiations around blackness. Finally, the project is envisioned as engaged action research where the academic output will be supplemented by journalistic writing and relevant research with my interlocutors.

Research Interests:

Social Movements, Race, Racism, Capitalism, Diaspora

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Further information (CV, publications, conference contributions and -organisations)

Completed Project:

L'usage des mémoires et discours dans les pratiques de légitimation : "Le cas de l'autorité locale chez les Lokpa du Nord-Bénin et chez les Lokpa et Lama du Nord-Togo, 1898-2010"

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the title "L’usage des mémoires et discours dans les pratiques de légitimation : Le cas de l’autorité locale chez les Lokpa du Nord‐Bénin et chez les Lokpa et Lama du Nord‐Togo (1898‐2010)".

This project aims at analysing the use of memory by the Lokpa chiefs. The reconstruction of history has the inherent problem of being incomplete, especially with respect to errors and possible distortions. History is a representation of the past while the memory is still a current phenomenon, a living link to the eternal present. Living memory remains a crucial tool for documenting the history of events, people and their way of life. The Lokpa belong to the people of oral memory. They occupy the boundary area of northern Benin and northern Togo. The chiefs sustain their legitimacy of authority through recourse to oral history that interprets the cultural heritage and their position as authority figures. However, historical accounts are increasingly becoming contentious because of their relationship to the legitimacy of power in the present. Collective memory is therefore manipulated by local actors in order to serve interests of today. This is done partly by interpretations of historical facts and their representations by actors through subjective and selective remembrance. In this sense, the inherent challenge of reconstruction of the past is affected by forgetfulness and memory. The question remains; how can we deal with the resulting errors, distortions and selective conservation? The main objective of this research is to determine through a microhistorical perspective the interpretation of the facts, the subjective and selective nature of memory and the process of their utilisation by chiefs for the social construction of their authority and its legitimacy.

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Completed Project:

Household energy consumption in Mumias, Western Kenya – global and local perspectives

Project Summary:

The sufficient and environmentally friendly supply of energy to the population is undoubtedly one of the pressing socio-political challenges of the 21st century. Even though the per capita consumption of energy is known for the countries of the global South and North, we know little about local processes of dealing with energy. Therefore my project explores local conceptions and perceptions of energy in the western Kenyan town Mumias. Particularly I look at current energy consumption in households, people’s preferences in daily energy use and their wishes and expectations of future energy supply.

By using Mumias as an ethnographic example I will describe how commonly used statistical values on energy consumption translate into real life situations. A special focus is on ‘middle class’ people as I assume that their consumption patterns and often their future visions in general might serve as a model for the whole society. Technically my project is managed by an interdisciplinary team with members of the Department of Social Anthropology, the Institute of Chemical Engineering and the Institute of Biochemical Engineering.

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Completed Project:

Framing texts/Framing social spaces: the conceptualisation of literary translation and its discourses in three centuries of Swahili literature

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2021 under the title "Framing Texts – Framing Social Spaces. Conceptualising Literary Translation in three Centuries of Swahili Literature".

My PhD research project focuses on the construction of a discourse on literary translations into Swahili in three different historical settings with the aim to explore the ways literary translation has been conceptualised and used as a symbolic resource. In the centre of this PhD project are the questions: How is the discourse of and about translation expressed? Which concepts apply to translation as an activity and a process within Swahili culture? How is the notion of the translator constructed and popularised? To what extent translations were used as resources to foster or subvert private or institutional agendas within the Swahili literary and social spaces?

A periodisation approach is designed to compare the development of discourses on and about translation within three macro-periods: pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial. The analysis proceeds by tracking translation flows and subsequently focuses on the paratexts of selected translations falling within each of the above-mentioned periods. Paratextual analysis has the scope to to tackle continuities and ruptures in the discourse surrounding the translation products within the three temporal frameworks and, therefore, to understand how a text has been conceptualised and institutionalised.A further step aims at locating texts in contexts by means of biographical research on selected translators and the analysis of the historical and cultural background in which they were embedded.

The research pursues a history of translation which will shed light on the utilisation of translation both for cultural formation and conditioning by the agents having an interest in a specific transfer and re-production of knowledge within the Swahili context.The results of the analysis will contribute to open new perspectives in the understanding of the development of Swahili literature.

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Completed Project:

Estudo da voz verbal em Kizómbò (H.16k)

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2019 under the same title.

Kizombo is a dialect of the Kikongo-Cluster spoken in the Northern part of Angola. In most theoretical approaches of the syntactic properties of voice, correspondences between the morphological changes of the verbal form and the modification of the syntactic argument scheme are stated, such as upgrading or downgrading, addition or suppression of arguments. Thus, the original subject (Agent) may be expressed by an optional phrase (such as a by-phrase in English), the verb form of the passive is changed in some way (like be+participle in English).

As for Kizombo, the following questions are asked: What are the morphological and syntactical manifestations of voice? How do valence and voice work interact? These are some of the main questions addressed in this project. As an example, we would like to understand how Kizombo uses the opposition between the active and the passive voice from a morpho-syntactic, semantic and discourse oriented point of view. In the same logic, we will also discuss functions of the middle, causative, applicative, reflexive and reciprocal voice in Kizombo. Although there is an extensive literature on Kikongo, mostly on phonology, morphology, or lexicon, we did not identify any linguistic work that discusses the verbal voice from a semantic and discourse oriented perspective in this language cluster. Thus, this project adds new aspects to the knowledge of Kizombo in particular and to Kikongo in general.

Completed Project:

Businified Political Discourse on the State of the South African Nation: A Dialogue between Presidential Speeches and Newspaper Reports

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2016 under the title "The State of the nation. “Businification” of Political Rhetoric in Post-Apartheid South Africa".

Via the idea of businification - a neologism describing the infiltration of business ideology into political and media texts -, this book traces the shift towards neo-liberalism in post-apartheid South Africa through the rhetorical gestures of the country's political narrators. In an application of Critical Discourse and Content Analysis, it examines linguistic changes within the corpus of the annually recurring State-of-the-Nation-Address from 1994 to 2012. This analysis is a contribution to research on business language from a non-Western perspective. Its interdisciplinary approach is of interest to researchers of South African political history, African Studies, Media Studies, and Sociolinguistics.

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Completed Project:

Lasten tragen, Moderne befördern. Wanderarbeit, Jugend, Erwachsenwerden und ihre geschlechtsspezifischen Differenzierungen in Ghana

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2018 under the same title.

Every year hundreds of youths from all over northern Ghana leave their hometowns to go to Accra or Kumasi, Ghana’s biggest cities, to work there for a couple of months or years before going back home. They look for labour in order to pay their school fees, dowries, to buy clothes, mobile phones or to support their families. Most of the youngsters move independently from their parents and do not have relatives in the cities. Load carrying at markets and bus stations is attractive since hometown fellows have been working as kayayei (female head porters) and truckpushers (boys and young men transporting load on wooden pushcarts) for years and may introduce the newcomers to the work and provide shelter and ethnic identity in the alien south. On the one hand, enjoying youth (buying modern goods and appearing urban among peers) is a strong motive for going. On the other hand, appearing mature and caring for the family’s needs would increase the return migrant’s status and lead into the respected sphere of adulthood. Thus, the youths face a constant dilemma and how to act is a matter of consideration and shifting identities in practice. The research project focuses on young migrants in the load carrying business and it is aiming at exploring this balancing act and differentiating between male and female experiences.

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Completed Project:

The Rise and Fall of Kenyan Entrepreneurs: Social Mobility in Kisumu

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2021 under the same title.

The aim of my PhD is to link two current debates in anthropology, those about entrepreneurship and the middle classes in Africa. African entrepreneurship has mainly been addressed under the heading of the informal sector, paying little attention to the successful business people that chose self-employment over employment. The debate on the African middle classes has focused mostly on income and expenditure levels, consumption styles and investment. Middle class jobs have been described as steady and well-paying, but apart from governmental employees fitting this category few occupations have so far received attention.

This study, therefore, focuses on entrepreneurs whose lifestyle and consumption patterns place them in the middle class and seeks to establish why these people chose self-employment over employment and how their businesses have evolved to a certain level of success allowing for such a lifestyle. However, the focus of this project will also include the involvement of the entrepreneur’s family in his business and the relation between the business person and the state, both factors which can either support or hinder business development.

This project is conducted in Kisumu, Kenya, where small-scale entrepreneurs have first received recognition by the government in the late 1980s, and where the debate on the middle class has already taken hold. Using anthropological methods of participant observation, life course interviews and network analysis, a complete picture of the successes and challenges facing entrepreneurs shall be achieved.

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Completed Project:

Narrative Voice and Focalization in the Narration of Generational Conflicts in Selected Kiswahili Novels

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2014 under the same title.

The study examines the representation of generational conflicts in four Swahili novels from Kenya and Tanzania – specifically Kufa Kuzikana (Walibora, 2003), Tumaini (Momanyi, 2006), Kipimo cha Mizani (Burhani, 2004) and Msimu wa Vipepeo (Wamitila, 2006). Generational conflicts in this study refer to the collision of interests or ideals between people of different age groups concerning various social-cultural, political and economic issues.

Its main interest is to analyze how different writers deploy narrative voice as a narrative technique in the portrayal of generational conflicts. It will specifically address questions bordering on how narrative voice has been utilized in the representation of generational conflicts in selected Swahili novels, the particular conflicts depicted in the novels, how these conflicts reflect the socio-cultural and historical backgrounds of the authors and how the narrative techniques employed influence the meaning of the conflicts to the audience.

The study is significant in that it reveals the fact that literature and the Swahili novel in particular is one of the key spaces through which social changes in the society are being communicated to the public. The selection of novels written by both male and female authors can give insights into how the aspect of gender is capable of influencing the depiction of generational conflicts in literary works and in the Swahili novel in particular.

Completed Project:

Networking the Nomads: A Study of Tablīghī Jamāʿat among the Borana of Northern Kenya

Publication:

The dissertation was published in 2014 under the same title.

Tablīghī Jamāʿat is a transnational lay Islamic movement started by Māwlanā Muhammad Ilyās in 1920s in the British India. It came to Kenya in mid 1950s and found transnational partnership with the Kenya’s Sunni Muslims of Asian descent. Despite its early establishment the Tablīghī Jamāʿat remains one of the least researched religious phenomena in Kenya. The movement bring together diverse ethnic groups, maintains a low profile focusing on re-spiritualisation of everyday life of individual Muslims and shuns politics and modern means of publicity opting for face to face preaching and voluntary travels for proselytisation. This study attempts to describe, document and analyse the localisation of the Tablīghī Jamāʿat in Kenya in general and among the Borana of northern part of Kenya particular. The Borana are a nomadic community that straddles the Kenya-Ethiopia border.

The study asks what happens when religious ideas travel across different forms of boundaries to establish itself in new grounds far away from its point of origin. Based on this general guiding question, it explores the growth, establishment and consolidation of Tablīghī Jamāʿat in northern Kenya. It examines the Tablīghī innovative religious practices, pragmatic strategies for membership increase and maintenance, dynamic approaches to deal with the larger society, working faith bureaucracy, politics of space use and place making and engaged interpersonal and inter-regional networks that link local, zonally, national and international adherents in a bond of solidarity and purpose. It investigates the relations between the Tablīghīs and existing Islamic traditions as it navigates an already competitive religious landscape and seek recognition as an equally authentic religious movement based on the core teachings of the faith. It particularly concerns with how the Borana Tablīghīs fit within their own region in the north and also within the national movement. Hence it explores how they preach among their own kin through contextualised outreaches, what motivates them, where they mainly travel to and the implication of movement on religious and ethnic identities and relations with the established religious leadership.

The study employed interdisciplinary approach that incorporated diverse but related disciplines to give the subject of study a holistic perspective. The approaches used in the research were historical, analytical, ethnographic and comparative. The thesis, a seminal one on the Tablīghī Jamāʿat in Eastern Africa, is a timely contribution to the growing literature on the Indian-borne transnational Islamic movement currently on the rise in Africa and it is a notable addition to interdisciplinary studies that focus on the theme of mobility, transnationalisation and religious revivalism in a globalising world.

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Research Interests:

Development Economics, particularly the Economics of Education, Demography and Regional Integration

Geographical Area:

Sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa

Current Project:

Four Essays in Development Economics and Regional Economic Integration

The research anticipated in the dissertation is focused on a quantitative (empirical) analysis of economic development in Africa. I will produce four individual research papers which aim at estimating the causal effect of specific developmental policies and programs of African economies, on both an aggregate-, and on an individual level. The main task will lie in the identification of viable settings for causal inference, the compilation of comprehensive datasets, as well as the subsequent estimation of causal relationships, employing modern econometric methods. My research will contribute to the interdisciplinary research project “MuDAIMa” conducted under the Cluster of Excellence EXC 2052 “Africa Multiple”. MuDAIMa investigates the memberships and affiliations of (Anglophone) African economies’ in multiple, competing, regional economic communities (RECs). As part of this agenda, my research will try to investigate the impact of existing institutional arrangements of African economies. The initial project of the dissertation explores the effect of Free Primary Education policies (FPE) on women’s fertility in three countries of the East African Community (EAC), namely Burundi, Kenya and Rwanda.

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Completed Project:

Internal Migration: Neighbourhood Associations and its Consequences on Political Participation in Urban Slums in Ghana

The thesis explores the nexus between internal migration and political participation in Ghana. While the linkages between internal migration and socio-economic development on both origin and destination and its impact on the well-being of actors have been extensively studied, how the phenomenon influences the participation of actors in politics remains relatively unexplored. The dominant internal mobility in Ghana is north-south migration, in which rural dwellers relocate on a temporal and permanent basis into urban slums in the south. In these slums, migrants live under conditions of precarity and lack of basic amenities and have to negotiate with authorities and sometimes bend the rules and resist forceful evictions through protest and demonstrations. Despite the increasing attention scholars have paid to internal migration in Ghana, how migrants employ political participatory tools to resist evictions and demand development in their communities is largely unaccounted for in the literature. The thesis illuminates this critical blind spot. The key objectives of the study are first and foremost to explore the current dynamics of north-south migration in Ghana. Secondly, to explore how migrants in urban slums navigate the challenge of basic amenities using conventional and non-conventional forms of politics. Thirdly, examine the everyday politics and collective actions of migrant slum dwellers. Fourthly, critically engage the relationships and nuances between slum dwellers and authorities and finally to explore how urban slums could be made more liveable through a bottom-up approach of participatory governance.

Research Interests:

Migration and Development, Urbanization, Urban Governance, Neighborhoods and Citizen-led Development, Urban Poverty and Inequalities, Political Participation and Collective Action, Participatory Governance, Urban Social Movements

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