Suchergebnisse

One of the key challenges of post-apartheid South Africa has been the need to create a South African "nation." The efforts of the leading African National Congress started with Nelson Mandela's reconciliatory discourse of a "rainbow nation," via Thabo Mbeki's concept of the African Renaissance, to the current stream of racial nationalism articulated as "Africanisation." The present article attempts to examine the dilemma which the ANC as the major custodian of nation-building has been facing since the 1990s: how to reach a balance between a civic nationalism based on cosmopolitan values and the need to redress the legacy of apartheid and persisting racial inequalities. It is argued that the current culturalist discourse of Africanisation is not only contentious but also dangerous for the cohesion of the fragile democratic society of post-apartheid South Africa.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain a new concept of Europe as a socially relevant object of study emerged in the social sciences challenging the model of Europe as historical entity, or a philosophical or literary concept. This concept provoked an upsurge of interest in the study of European identity among anthropologists who began to study how Europeanness is constructed and articulated both by the architects of the EU themselves and at a grass-root level. Drawing on notions of European culture and identity, this text examines the image of Europe/the EU in post-communist Europe, particularly in the Czech Republic, from two different perspectives. First, how the institutionalisation of Europe as a cultural idea is viewed by some of the Czech political commentators, and second, from an ethnographically grounded anthropological perspective, focusing on how and at what levels a Czech local community identifies with Europe and the EU. Drawing on a broad range of data, the text attempts to provide new insights into the pitfalls of collective European identity in the making, with the emphasis on its cultural dimension in the post-communist Czech Republic.

"Up to a few decades ago in the anthropology of tourism was regarded as a way to become involved in effortless researches in pleasant settings. Moreover, tourism was portrayed as a sinister carrier of westernization, thus as a menace to the subaltern societies that had to endure it. Nowadays anthropological studies on tourism have established their own legitimacy due also to the considerable socioeconomic significance of tourism in this age of hectic global mobility. This book points up new and important research perspectives showing the impact of tourism on the rural world. The articles presented are a major and groundbreaking contribution to the analysis of the new rurality in global society"--Page 4 of cover

Hana Horäkovä. - Introduction: The contents and the chapters. - Hana Horäkovä. - Knowledge production in and on Africa: Knowledge gatekeepers, . - decolonisation, alternative representations. - Daniel C. Bach. - Africa in international relations: The frontier as concept and . - metaphor. - Dominik Kopihski. - China and the United States in the African petroleum sector: . - Knowledge gaps, myths and poor numbers. - Alzbeta Sväblovä. - Reconciliation in Liberia: Discourse, knowledge, consequences. - Mvuselelo Ngcoya, Naren Kumarakulasingam. - Indigenous gardening: Plants, indigeneity and settling/unsettling . - in South Africa. - Stephanie Rudwick. - Afrikaans and institutional identity: A South African university in . - the crossfire. - Katerina Werkman. - Is Africa exceptionally infectious? A comparison of Ebola and . - SARS coverage in the Czech media. - Katerina Mildnerovä. - "Obscene and diabolic and bloody fetishism": European. - conceptualisation of Vodun through the history of Christian missions. - Viera Pawlikova-Vilhanova. - African historians and the production of historical knowledge in . - Africa: Some reflections. - Maciej Kurcz. - The images of Omdurman: The symbolic role of an African city . - during the period of colonialism from the perspective of archival . - photographs. - Silvestr Trnovec. - History production and interpretation on and within French West . - Africa in 1900-1957: From a French colonial doctrine to an . - African perspective. - Jarmila Svihranova. - Representations of Africans in the documents of the German . - Imperial Office and in pre-war academia in the case of German . - South West Africa

Introduction: The Predicament of the Concept of Power in Africa / Hana Horakova# Section 1: Power as Political Domination # States and Social Contracts in Africa: Time, Space and the Art of the Possible / Paul Nugent# Meles and the Rest: Continuation of the Power Strategy in Ethiopia / Jan Záhoríik# Power and'Powerlessness in Somalia: Ethiopian Involvement and the Transitional Federal Government / Katerina Rudincová From Powerlessness to Power and Back: National Political Liturgies during the Sékou Touré Regime in Guinea / Ruth Mauri# Congolese Women's Power and Powerlessness in the Political Landscape / Albert Kasanda# Section 2: Power as Discourse and Social Practice # Philosophy of the Powerless: The Singer, the Sage, and Philosophy in Africa / Alena Rettová# The Power behind Representations: The World Bank and African Poverty Reduction from 1970-2000 / Vanessa Wijngaarden# English Power Dynamics in Contemporary South Africa / Stephanie Rudwick# The Social Construction of Charismatic Authority of Prophets from a Mutumwa Church in Lusaka / Katerina Mildnerová# In Place of Conclusion: The Power of the Powerless in Africa / Peter Skalnik#