Suchergebnisse

This book addresses the paradox of non-migration in the context of a protracted economic unrest. Rose Jaji discusses how individual subjectivities mediate macroeconomic factors in Zimbabwe and critiques simplistic explanations of non-migration, paying particular attention the complexities and contradictions involved in the decision not to migrate.

Anthropologists and sociologists using ethnography set out for the field with a clear boundary between the researcher and researched whichever way this boundary and "otherness" may be defined. The ethnographer is invisible in many classical ethnographic monographs as symbolized by the absence of the pronoun "I" in the methodology and methods sections that tend to be sanitized and devoid of the bumpy experiences that are not alien to human interaction. Published monographs are often polished in ways similar to the final product issued by the film industry. Outside reflexive ethnography, the unvarnished aspects of establishing rapport and experiences of living in a given community for months are rarely discussed. Yet, contrary to being a fly on the wall, the ethnographer is very much part and parcel of situations that unfold during fieldwork. This case discusses the encounter between the ethnographer and research participants and shows how the real experience in the field is not as neat as one reads in many ethnographic studies' methods sections. Based on my research experiences in 2006-2007 with refugees in Nairobi, Kenya, I argue that ethnographic encounters blur many boundaries that are taken for granted, such as those between home and field, researcher and researched, knower and known, insider and outsider, as well as self and others. Embedded in this blurring of boundaries are fluidity and instability of researcher identity which can shift to the point of both puzzling and amusing the ethnographer.

Abstract: This article argues that migration and sedentarism in precolonial Zimbabwe were mutually constitutive, rather than opposites, as suggested by colonial and contemporary migration governance in Zimbabwe. It highlights indigenous configurations that migration studies often gloss over. Using archival documents and current laws relevant to the governance of migration and space in Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, respectively, it demonstrates that migration and nonmigration became binaries only with the advent of the colonial state, which regarded precolonial African mobilities as inimical to colonial governmentality and its sedentarist "civilization" by subjugation agenda. The article draws from the role of migration in precolonial sedentarism and state formation as well as its role in the establishment of the settler colony of Southern Rhodesia. It highlights the migration and nonmigration contradictions inherent in settler colonialism and the inheritance of the colonial governance of migration and mobility in postindependence Zimbabwe.

Economic and political turmoil has driven many Zimbabweans abroad, but others choose to hustle for a living at home rather than risk the strains of family separation or the financial uncertainties of emigration.

This article situates its discussion of young Zimbabwean men's performance of masculinity in a restrictive political space in a broader continental context in which the majority of young people are politically and economically marginalised. It addresses how the older generation's domination and monopolisation of political space presents obstacles to the youth's aspiration to perform normative masculinity. The article also discusses various strategies the youth in Zimbabwe are devising to claim space in a political arena that can be characterised as a gerontocracy. The youth seek relevance in Zimbabwe's congested and gerontocratic political space through strategies that range from co-opting gerontocratic masculinities to subverting them. Notwithstanding the divergence in these strategies, young people who adopt them to create and occupy space in Zimbabwe's political terrain legitimise their choices by appealing to culture, thus showing how culture can be harnessed for contradictory objectives in the performance of masculinities. The strategies also draw from global trends involving the youth's engagement in non-traditional political participation facilitated by their dominance of virtual, social media space.






Rose Jaji, University of Zimbabwe. Email: rjaji@sociol.uz.ac.zw