Suchergebnisse

In this article I draw comparatively on ethnographic material from my work with war-affected populations from postcolonial Mozambique and diasporan Liberia to argue for a fundamental shift in the conceptualization and study of displacement. I argue first for a need to shift from an emphasis on physical mobility as the sine qua non of "displacement," to an empirical investigation of the less-than-self-evident relationship between physical mobility and social mobility. I illustrate how the meanings and outcomes of physical mobility are far from given but must be treated as an empirical problem, in which the social opportunity structures that cultural agents ultimately navigate are reconfigured in complex, contradictory, and inadvertent ways that simultaneously generate new and socially differentiated challenges as well as opportunities.

In this article I draw on a long history of successive transatlantic "displacements" and "returns" that have shaped and reshaped Liberian diasporan identities. Proposing that diasporicity is above all an identity discourse, the first part of this article documents and compares dramatic differences in that discourse across historical generations while also examining arguments about this form of identity and social differences in subscription to it within specific generations. This history has been one of successive and often mutually contradictory recastings of where "origin" is located, which have been subject to social argumentation. A comparison of these identity discourses across different historical generations suggests the need to investigate diasporicity as more than merely an affirmation of belonging but rather also a powerful critique of exclusion. Finally, I hone in on the variations of diasporicity that have emerged within the Liberian transnational field during a single historical period (the present) to demonstrate how diasporicity as a particular form of identity emerges under—and inherently references—conditions of experiential fragmentation that are largely unforeseen and fundamentally problematic for current analytical concepts of generation. Describing some of the multiple diasporicities within the current Liberian transnational field, I argue that any concept of diasporic generation must be one that empirically ascertains the boundaries of shared historicity rather than assuming that temporal and social boundaries coincide.

In this article I draw on a long history of successive transatlantic "displacements" and "returns" that have shaped and reshaped Liberian diasporan identities. Proposing that diasporicity is above all an identity discourse, the first part of this article documents and compares dramatic differences in that discourse across historical generations while also examining arguments about this form of identity and social differences in subscription to it within specific generations. This history has been one of successive and often mutually contradictory recastings of where "origin" is located, which have been subject to social argumentation. A comparison of these identity discourses across different historical generations suggests the need to investigate diasporicity as more than merely an affirmation of belonging but rather also a powerful critique of exclusion. Finally, I hone in on the variations of diasporicity that have emerged within the Liberian transnational field during a single historical period (the present) to demonstrate how diasporicity as a particular form of identity emerges under—and inherently references—conditions of experiential fragmentation that are largely unforeseen and fundamentally problematic for current analytical concepts of generation. Describing some of the multiple diasporicities within the current Liberian transnational field, I argue that any concept of diasporic generation must be one that empirically ascertains the boundaries of shared historicity rather than assuming that temporal and social boundaries coincide.

AbstractThis article tracks the most significant transformations in the international migration regime between central Mozambique and South Africa throughout the twentieth century as the product of complex and continuous interactions between the broader political‐economic environment and local forms of gendered and inter‐generational social struggle. A century of perspective brings into resolution the complex linkages between forms of migrancy such as labour migration and refugee displacement that are usually treated as categorically distinct, but which are be demonstrated here to significantly inform each other. As a result of its deployment as a strategy for coping with various forms of political duress, seizing new economic opportunity, and negotiating local social relations, the meaning and practice of migration has been transformed throughout the twentieth century from a strategy for ensuring social reproduction back in Mozambique into the indispensable mechanism for enacting transnational lives that presume and pursue simultaneous social and economic investment and involvement in both South Africa and in Mozambique.

Current frameworks for analyzing conflict in developing nations usually focus on the agendas of national-level parties to conflicts. This article draws heavily on the author's own ethnographic work in central Mozambique to demonstrate how political alignment during the Mozambican civil conflict (1977-92) was regarded by local actors as a tool for engaging in family- and community-level political struggles. Comparing findings from his own work in the district of Machaze to that of other ethnographic researchers who focused on wartime experiences elsewhere in Mozambique, he shows how the means of violence of national-level parties during the civil conflict were appropriated by local actors in service to local forms of social struggle. He proposes the concept of 'fragmented war' to describe such contexts in which national 'civil wars' take on a large degree of local character and in which there is considerable variation in that local character as a result of sociocultural and ethnic diversity within a country. The article then documents how wartime migration - as one of the most visible and consequential strategies for reacting to violence - was organized primarily as a response to such micro-level political struggles rather than merely to the state of hostilities between national-level political actors. Different local 'logics of violence' thus produced different patterns of wartime displacement throughout Mozambique. Some of the key historical conditions that made wartime violence in Mozambique susceptible to 'fragmentation' are reviewed, in order to reflect more broadly on what general conditions might produce 'fragmentations of violence' in other war contexts. The article concludes with a discussion of how anthropological approaches can contribute to the demographic analysis of forced migration in culturally diversified war zones.

In 1974, Portugal's 25 April revolution and the rapid decolonization that followed ushered over half a million residents from the former African colonies into the country within little over a year's time. Although all these "decolonization immigrants" (Smith) were termed "retornados" (literally translated as "returnees"), almost 40 per cent had actually been born in Africa and had never set foot in Portugal. Based on almost two years of field research, conducted intermittently between 1987 and 1996 in "Olival,"1 this article explores the social trajectories of these decolonization immigrants, as they sought to negotiate a problematic entry into the Portuguese imagined community (Anderson) between 1976 and 1996. It traces the transformation of retornado identity from prominent public signifier of moralized and racialized social exclusion to private signifier of prestige.

This article introduces some of the challenges of doing ethnography in contexts such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea—places where violence and the certainty of uncertainty have become the backdrop for social interaction. It also considers the potential contributions to anthropological theory of such an undertaking. In particular it outlines a fundamental re-orientation towards the concept of "the event." Drawing contrasts with conventional anthropological understandings of how small scenarios (social situations) and paradigmatic social events (rituals) speak to broader processes, this piece argues for an analytical recasting of the "event" as a moment in which cultural creativity is harnessed to the tasks of effecting and legitimizing the social transformations that crises often demand. Such "events" affirm the continuity of social groups even as they participate in the re-organization of social practice and are thus ultimately relevant to any anthropology of actors who confront and seek to effect change.

The economic anthropology of Africa / Jane I. Guyer -- Revisiting the social bedrock of kinship and descent in the anthropology of Africa / Pauline E. Peters -- Witchcraft in Africa / James H. Smith -- Law, dispute resolutions, and justice / Jessica Johnson -- Illness and healing: Africanist anthropology / Rebecca L. Upton -- Power, meaning, and materiality in the anthropology of African religions South of the Sahara: a dialogue with religious studies / Joseph Hellweg and Jesse C. Miller -- Who are the new natives? Ethnicity and emerging idioms of belonging in Africa / George Paul Meiu -- Culture by other means: an Africanist anthropology of political violence and war / Danny Hoffman -- The anthropology of forced migration in Africa / Stephen C. Lubkemann -- Sex and sexuality in Africa / Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala -- Social trauma and recovery: emergent themes / Victor Igreja and Erin Baines -- Questioning humanitarian exceptions / Louisa Lombard -- Rights, inequality, and social justice / Carolyn Rouse -- Anthropology and the politics of childhood in Africa / Kristen E. Cheney -- Africa has moved!: new African diasporas and the anthropology of transnationalizing Africa / Dianna Shandy and Stephen C. Lubkemann -- Anthropological approaches to media in Africa / Katrien Pype and Alessandro Jedlowski -- Environmental anthropology in Africa: from cattle complex to environmentality / Raquel Rodrigues Machaqueiro and Roy Richard Grinker -- Anthropology and Africanist political science / Eric Kramon -- African anthropological practice in the "era of aid": towards a critique of disciplinary canons / Euclides Gonçaleves -- African participation in, and perspectives on, the politics of knowledge production in Africanist anthropology / Mwenda Ntarangwi.