Scholarly definitions of elites as those who wield political power and control distribution of resources in their locales consistently leave out their capacity to shape morality, civic ethics and the legitimacy of power relations beyond material domination. In this insightful ethnography of Rundu, a frontier town in Namibia, Mattia Fumanti highlights the fundamental contribution elites make to the public space through their much-praised concept of civility and their promotion of nation-building at the local level. In centring his argument on the moral agency of elites over three generations and their attempts to achieve distinction in public life, this book counters an often found and over-generalized view of postcolonial African states as weak, ruling through authoritarian, greedy and corrupt practices. By looking at the intricate ways in which the biographies of a middle-range town and its inhabitants are interwoven, this study draws very different conclusions from the grand narratives of pathologies, chaos and crisis that characterize much of the accepted discourse of African urbanization derived from the study of large cities. Focusing on how generational relations between elites have both shaped, and are shaped by, the transitions from apartheid and civil war to independence and postindependence, the book illuminates public debates on the power of education, the aspirations of youth, the role of the state and citizen, delivery of good governance and the place of ethnic and settler minorities in post-apartheid southern Africa. This book is a vibrant antidote to Afro-pessimism and views that emphasize the spectacle of disaster, kleptomania and corruption of the weak state. By examining the rhetoric of public morality Fumanti challenges this but is, nevertheless, also critical of the ruling elite. This is a sophisticated and nuanced analysis of how small-town elites emerge and how they see the world, a group of people who are potentially vital players in the evolving shape of African cultures and moralities, who have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Robert Gordon, University of Vermont and University of the Free State The Politics of Distinction tackles a perennial anthropological subject with immense brio. Using the most contemporary of social theories and ethnographic methods, Mattia Fumanti addresses the enduring but elusive nexus of inter-generational consciousness and of the ambivalences between generations. That the two generations in this Namibian border town see themselves as the architects and inheritors of liberation imbues their provincial relations with echoes of grand history. Anyone interested in African elite formation, post-colonial governance, and the dividends and distinctions of education, or simply looking for a finely crafted contemporary ethnography, will find Fumanti's a compelling narrative. Richard Fardon, Professor of West African Anthropology at SOAS
Scholarly definitions of elites as those who wield political power and control distribution of resources in their locales consistently leave out their capacity to shape morality, civic ethics and the legitimacy of power relations beyond material domination. In this insightful ethnography of Rundu, a frontier town in Namibia, Mattia Fumanti highlights the fundamental contribution elites make to the public space through their much-praised concept of civility and their promotion of nation-building at the local level. In centring his argument on the moral agency of elites over three generations and.
This book focuses on Akan-speaking Ghanaians in London and explores in detail the experience of African migrants living in Britain, investigating how they construct their British citizenship through their membership of the church. Building on extensive ethnographic research in London and Ghana, the author explores the relationship between religion and citizenship, the emergence of transnational subjectivities, and the making of diaspora aesthetics among African migrants. Starting from the understanding that citizenship is dialogical, a status mediated by a subject’s multiple and intersecting identities, the author highlights the limitations of existing conceptualisations of migrant citizenship. Anchored in a case study of the British/Ghanaian Methodist Church as a transnational religious organisation and cultural polity, the book explores diasporic religious subjectivities as both cosmopolitan and transnational, while being configured in emotionally and morally significant ways by the Methodist Church, as well as family, ethnicity, and nation. Interdisciplinary by nature, this book will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and scholars across the social sciences and humanities working in the fields of anthropology, religion, sociology, postcolonial studies, and African studies, and additionally policy makers interested in diaspora and migration studies.
The day her husband was killed, Scholastica came home earlier than usual. She was desperate to spend time with her new born baby Amutenya. She wanted to cuddle him... she was desperate to kiss him and hold him close to her chest, feeling the rhythm of his gentle breath in her arms...looking at his little eyes wondering uncertain in his attempts to concentrate on her mother's face and make sense of the strange noises, the giggles and cackles coming out of her mouth... Amutenya was only four months old. The third son of Scholastica and her husband Pedro, Amutenya had brought an air of renewed optimism in the house. Things had been difficult for everyone in that corner of Namibia, in that town that overlooked the Okavango River on the border with Angola. Despite the visible signs that Apartheid was about to end, South Africa had started to withdraw from Angola after the defeat of Cuito Cuanavale, the South Africans troops who were stationed in town continued with impunity to perpetrate their sadistic abuses on the local population. After years of violence and open resistance, people had resigned to these daily acts of public humiliation. This time their resignation was different tough it was as if it had been strengthened by the wind of change blowing through the town's dusty streets...
This book is a journey through the defining moments and choices in the life and career of Christian Boltanski, which led the artist to reflect upon the outcome of some of the main historical events of the twentieth century and on the need to reconsider appropriate methods of representation. History, histories and the statute of the image are the fulcrums of the conversation he proposes. This conversation focuses in particular on the following fundamental themes: the difference between collective memory, recollection and oblivion; the relation between the individual and the crowd; the entity of absence intended as proof of a destroyed presence, but also as a device for the reactivation of memory; the incidence of an isolated gaze, that of the observer, upon whose primacy the history of western art has built its foundations."--Back cover.
This book focuses on Akan-speaking Ghanaians in London and explores in detail the experience of African migrants living in Britain, investigating how they construct their British citizenship through their membership of the church. Building on extensive ethnographic research in London and Ghana, the author explores the relationship between religion and citizenship, the emergence of transnational subjectivities, and the making of diaspora aesthetics among African migrants. Starting from the understanding that citizenship is dialogical, a status mediated by a subject’s multiple and intersecting identities, the author highlights the limitations of existing conceptualisations of migrant citizenship. Anchored in a case study of the British/Ghanaian Methodist Church as a transnational religious organisation and cultural polity, the book explores diasporic religious subjectivities as both cosmopolitan and transnational, while being configured in emotionally and morally significant ways by the Methodist Church, as well as family, ethnicity, and nation. Interdisciplinary by nature, this book will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and scholars across the social sciences and humanities working in the fields of anthropology, religion, sociology, postcolonial studies, and African studies, and additionally policy makers interested in diaspora and migration studies.
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