Ano X, n.º 9, Setembro de 2009 Dirigido por Luís Carmo Reis Centro de Estudos Africanos da Universidade do Porto

In the recent decade two somewhat contradictory tendencies may be observed in the relationship between anthropology and development. On the one hand, anthropology has become increasingly marginalised in development debates, where macro-economic and political reforms rather than contextualised socially and culturally sensitive development interventions have been promoted. In the era of budget support and sector-wide approaches anthropologists have had hard time to find new ways of engaging in development. On the other hand, anthropological knowledge and perspectives are nowadays demanded by development agencies as, for instance, poverty and rights based approaches require socio-cultural analysis and understanding. The immediate implication of this is that today actors pay at least lip-service to anthropological approaches and perspectives.

Taken together these two tendencies reveal that despite important works produced by scholars inside and outside the APAD-network, anthropological knowledge and analysis are often referred to, but much less practically integrated in, development interventions. Yet at a time when the boundaries between development aid and public expenses are fuzzier than ever, anthropological analysis is badly needed to understand and, by extension, influence development and social change. While this seems to be largely accepted, today the main challenge is how and by what means anthropology may engage in development in practical and concrete ways, while respecting scientific rigor and methodological requirements.

Central questions that conference participants could address are: What are the prospects for engaging anthropology in major challenges of poverty, inequality, corruption, social fragmentation, violence and ethnic tensions?

How and when should anthropologists be actively involved in development efforts, and political jumbles? What are the responsibilities of anthropology in studying social change? How can anthropology engage in public debate and development policy?

The Euro-African Association for the Anthropology of Social Change and Development (APAD) is firmly engaged in strengthening anthropological research on development issues. Over the years researchers have increasingly turned their attention away from a strict focus on development towards the study of the public space, decentralization, governance and civil society.

The issue of engagement has re-emerged as a key debate in anthropology as a whole. The theme of the 2010 APAD Conference in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, is a way to return to the issue of engaging anthropology in development and social change.

The conference will be organised around the following axes: – Anthropology and the ethics of engagement: Development, politics and cultural exchange; – Setting the agenda in engaged research: Anthropology on public services, media, democratisation, decentralisation, and gender; – Grassroots participation and personal engagement: Anthropologists straddling between the public and the private; – Narratives of development: Integrating anthropology and history; – Anthropological methods in development: Ethnography, participation and the promotion of social change; – Anthropological data and development agencies: Combining research and development work; – Public anthropology: Engaging anthropology in public debate, policy and politics.

For more information on the conference and on APAD go to: www.association-apad.org.”]
– 07 a 10 de Abril de 2010 – Continuities, Dislocations and Transformations: Reflections on 50 Years of African Independence. Conferência Bienal da Associação Alemã de Estudos Africanos (Vereinigung für Afrikawissenschaften in Deutschland – VAD), na Universidade João Gutenberg, em Mainz. [“The year 2010 represents a significant milestone for many countries and a majority of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa, as it marks half a century of political independence. Since 1960 the continent has undergone profound changes, not only politically but also in economic, social and cultural terms, and manifold processes of consolidation, differentiation and transformation have radically increased the complexity of the African social terrain. The conference will focus on and assess these processes and the conflicts arising from them. Of particular interest are the historical continuities, dislocations and transformations that have marked the past 50 years, as well as how this historical legacy impacts the present situation on the African continent and what this portends for future developments.

To reflect on these issues we invite scholars to propose forums and panels that address the numerous interrelated transformations that have shaped Africa over the last fifty years. The following list of suggested themes is not intended to be an exhaustive catalogue, but to present some focal points of discussion along which the conference theme could be explored:

– Whereas just over ten percent of all Africans lived in cities in 1960, today over half of them are urban dwellers. Urbanisation and population growth, which have given rise to particularly young and dynamic societies, are accompanied by various forms of flows, both in terms of population as well as remittances, within and outside the continent. As a result, Africans now show an unprecedentedly strong, if perhaps rather selective, global presence.

– African agriculture has undergone significant shifts. While in some areas it has been intensified and commercialised to varying degrees so that African produce helps supply a growing urban and a global market, much as was the case in the colonial era, in other areas agriculture has stagnated, with rural areas undergoing processes of de-agrarisation and becoming increasingly dependent on financial flows from the cities or from the diaspora.

– Although in the 1960s many countries began to undergo industrialisation, the economic crises of the 1970s interrupted this development and ultimately resulted in the increasing marginalisation of many African countries vis-à-vis the global economy. Since 1990, however, international development agencies have in response to these economic crises reintensified their engagement with Africa and attempted to implement structural policies that aim not merely to foster economic development, but to achieve a fundamental remodelling of African societies along the lines of neo-liberal principles.

– Africa is currently experiencing a second economic resurgence as the prices of primary resources have skyrocketed, attracting new international actors, most notably China, India and Japan. While this intensifies existing internal conflicts as well as sparking new ones within the continent’s rentier societies, it also presents new opportunities for the development of post-service economies.

– Today the state is far more present in society than it was 50 years ago, although this presence remains highly fragile and conflict ridden. One major instrument of this intensified reach of the state has been schooling, with school attendance ratios having spread rapidly from extremely low levels inherited as part of the colonial legacy. This trend of a stronger state presence in society has been compounded by the effects of political decentralisation that became national policy in many African nations in the 1990s. At the same time, the end of the Cold War did much to undermine and destabilise state structures in a number of countries.

– Many African states have in the last twenty years undergone a second wave of democratisation (albeit a very precarious one). Today, the political circumstances on the continent are highly variegated, ranging from those of ‘model democratic countries’ like Benin and Ghana, to those of ‘failed’ states like Somalia.

– Various forms of regional conflict and cooperation have developed between African states, such as border conflicts and new forms of economic cooperation. South Africa, once the pariah of the international system, has become an important actor in African regional policy.

– The process of globalisation notwithstanding, the nation-state continues to delineate an important moral community to which African political elites and societal groups in general address their demands and feel accountable. Furthermore, despite the undeniable strength of regional loyalties and ethnic ties, we can indeed observe thriving projects of nationbuilding, both from above and below, in many African countries. Nation-building and state-making depend on the creation of a physical national infrastructure of bureaucrats and bureaucratic institutions, communication networks, schools and other state institutions. At the same time, the process involves a symbolic dimension, including the contested (re)writing of ‘national’ history which reveals the fault lines of the nation under construction.

– Societal relations have become far more differentiated. Family models have diversified so that today we not only continue to find families based on traditional forms of polygynous marriage, in both rural and urban areas, but also encounter ‘modern’ monogamous families with few children, as well as a range of variations that fall somewhere between the two. Similar processes of differentiation are also evident in the area of elite formation.

– Following independence, many states relegated religion to the private sphere. But for quite some time now, the African continent has been experiencing a boom in religiosity that is manifest not only in the major religions Christianity and Islam in their increasingly diverse forms, but also in indigenous forms of religious practice. New types of religious groups, beliefs and practices are developing, and an unprecedented internationalisation of religious practice is taking place, while religion is also increasingly present in the public sphere as well as in popular and political cultures.

– With the development of modern media, new publics have emerged and multiplied. The mass-media, once controlled by the state, have more recently been faced with increasing competition from newly established private radio and television stations, a flourishing popular press and small-scale cassette or disc-based media which often disseminate unofficial perspectives on everyday African life. The mobile telephone has also become immensely important, not only for everyday communication, but also for political mobilisation and economic activity.

– In the area of cultural production Africa has achieved international prominence in the last 50 years, bringing forth a number of Nobel-laureates in literature and internationally renowned artists. Yet elite artistic activity has been able to exert only limited influence on societal processes in the countries in which it originates. In contrast, the broad field of popular and, for the most part, urban cultural production (music, theatre, video, comics, etc.) has time and again proved to be an important indicator of social developments and provided insightful commentary on societal relations as well as political trends of the past 50 years.

– With the emergence of youth and urban idioms, new forms of linguistic diversity have emerged. National languages, which previously only existed ‘on paper’, have developed into nationally used and accepted linguae francae. Almost all African states have established the research and study of ‘their’ languages at university level and regard the exploration of this legacy as an important and sensitive matter without, however, wishing to compromise themselves by making overt decisions for or against certain languages.

– The academic capacity of African societies for self-reflection has increased significantly through the development of the African university and research systems. This has had notable effects on the nature of scientific and scholarly engagement with the continent, with African voices gaining greater weight in this process. Changes in the nature of African scientific research and scholarship over the past half century, and in research and intellectual reflection on Africa outside the continent, will also be an important topic of discussion at the conference. The fact that in 2010 the VAD will be approaching the 40th anniversary of its establishment presents an opportunity to reflect on these important changes.

The conference will be staged jointly by the German Association for African Studies (VAD) and the Association for African Languages and Linguistics (Fachverband Afrikanistik), which will each host separate panels.”

“Please check our conference website for further information. Should you have additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact us: VAD2010@uni-mainz.de”] Mais informações:

The Atlantic world, formed between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries, maintained tight relations with the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific. Its specificity, however, lay in the conjunction of three interrelated phenomena whose entangled effects were not found elsewhere: European colonization, the slave trade, and racialized slavery. This symbiosis led to the formation of original new societies in the Americas, which differed from the European, African, and Native societies from which they were born. Moreover, the societies of origin in the ‘Old Worlds’, from which large numbers of people left for the Americas, were also forever changed in return.

If the new Atlantic history has benefited from an enthusiastic reception, it has also given rise to intense debate. One of the numerous criticisms, as voiced by Alison Games, is that the new historiographical current risks offering only ‘an expanded history of the colonial Americas.’ In order to verify the relevance of the Atlantic paradigm, this conference seeks to reverse viewpoints by focusing on the transformations in Europe and Africa that resulted from their integration in trans-Atlantic dynamics. While the new Atlantic history has mostly been investigated by historians of the ‘New World’, and while specialists of North America clearly dominate the field, this conference seeks to reach out to historians of Africa and Europe in order to enlarge and enrich a still unexplored question. The goal is thus to gather together the whole community of historians potentially concerned with Atlantic history.

Since the Atlantic world was born of both European and African migrations, the conference will consider both continents together. Atlantic history begins with the Portuguese explorations along the coasts of West Africa from the outset of the fifteenth century. These travels led to the development of long-lasting phenomena: the beginning of the Atlantic African slave trade first to Europe then to the Americas, the creation of the big slave plantation model in the African islands like São Tomé before its transfer to the ‘New World’, and the formation of the first Creole societies in the Euro-African Atlantic world. However, Europe and Africa were not linked by the same imperial relations that united Europe and the Americas. The Atlantic slave trade developed precisely because the African kingdoms maintained their sovereignty. It is only from the middle of the nineteenth century that Europeans really began to colonize the interior of Africa, while the Atlantic slave trade was abolished everywhere. The comparison of the impact of the Atlantic world on Europe and on Africa will be one of the main questions of this conference.

Which Europe and Africa were affected by these transformations? No frontiers have been set a priori: the relative importance of the Atlantic world in geographical and social space with variable dimensions is another question that will to be explored during the conference. In addition, the inclusion of all social actors means that we will take into account individuals and groups from all social and ethnic backgrounds. One first series of interrogations will deal with the degree to which various Africans and Europeans’ lives were affected by the formation of an Atlantic world. Who was concerned by and who cared about the Atlantic world? Was the Atlantic world part of the social imagination of European and African populations and societies? Who had knowledge of it; what was the quality of that information; how did they acquire it? Who were the individuals and groups that had imperial and Atlantic interests?

In order to analyse all the possible transformations of Africa and Europe that resulted from interconnections developed in the Atlantic world, the conference intends to exclude no historical field from the collective reflection, including political, military, economic, social, religious, and cultural arenas. Of course, it will be impossible to exhaust all of these research inquiries: the conference only aims to raise new questions as to how an Atlanticist perspective reveals new perspectives on European and African history.

The conference also does not wish a priori to put aside old debates, such as the demographic impact of European and African migrations on areas of departure, the role of the slave trade and colonial trade in the launching of the industrial revolution, the effects of the slave trade on African economies, or the transformations of consumption in Europe and Africa, if they are renewed with original perspectives, through, for example, the comparison between Europe and Africa. In regard to the impact of trans-Atlantic exchanges on European and African economies, several gateways are conceivable, such as the conditions and effects of the marketing of one product (European or American in Africa / American or African in Europe), the complexity of trade circulations and networks through various scales of analysis, the interlope on European coasts, the rivalries between African states and European powers on African coasts, war not as a recurrent accident that disrupted Atlantic exchanges but as a means to restore trade balances and payments of the various colonial powers, etc.

As for the socio-cultural effects, papers might consider migrations of «Americans» from all backgrounds (the return of European migrants and the arrival of Natives, African slaves, and free people of color in Europe, as well as projects of colonization by former slaves and descendents of slaves in Africa), the slave trade to Europe, the settling of Europeans and the formation of Euro-African societies in Africa. It would also be very fruitful to consider the ‘New World’ as a space of social experimentation for re-considering work, gender, and race on the other side of the Atlantic. Through a complex system of circulations back and forth, European and African societies were transformed by the development of racial ideologies and the racialization of political and social orders that went with the formation of an Atlantic world.

Finally, the conference will explore the nature of political relations linking Europe and Africa to the rest of the Atlantic world. Papers could re-consider, concepts of domination, empire, and the ‘colonial situation’, or trace the evolution over time of these political forms and systems, before, during, and after the era of revolutions. Since the emphasis is on the «Old Worlds», particular attention should be paid to imperial institutions, colonial lobbies, debates related to the colonies, slave trade, and slavery, and to the abolitionist movements in metropoles. The role of imperialism in the development of modern states in Europe and the transformations of African kingdoms with their integration in trans-Atlantic dynamics will also be of interest.

Conference Organization: The conference will take place in Nantes on June 7, 8, and 9, 2010. Travels and hotel rooms will be financed, but a pre-registration fee of 100 euros is required. Payment of the fee is due after confirmation of participation, between January 1st and April 30, 2010, at the latest.

If you would like to present a paper at the conference, please send a short CV and a summary of your paper (no more than 2,000 characters) in French, English or Spanish before October 31st, 2009. Papers will be selected before November 30, 2009.

The papers may not exceed 60,000 characters or 10,000 words (including spaces, footnotes, and bibliography). They will be pre-circulated and thus must be sent to the organizers before April 30, 2010.

During the conference, papers will be quickly summarized in order to give more time to the discussion, which will be initiated by a commentator. French, English, and Spanish will be the languages of the conference.

Summaries, CV, and papers should be sent to the organizers by e-mail: Guy Saupin, CRHIA –Université de Nantes: guy.saupin@univ-nantes.fr; Cécile Vidal, CENA-EHESS, Paris: cecile.vidal@ehess.fr”]

O Conselho de Ministros procedeu também à nomeação do novo Conselho de Administração da Imprensa Nacional, E.P., cuja composição passou a ser integrada por David de Assunção Barros, na qualidade de Presidente, e Fernando Norberto de Sousa Mangueira e Inocêncio Francisco Miguel, como administradores. Finalmente, foram aprovados os novos estatutos orgânicos do Arquivo Histórico de Angola e do Instituto de Línguas Nacionais.