Conspiracy Narratives from Postcolonial Africa

Conspiracy Narratives from Postcolonial Africa PDF Author: Rogers Orock
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226835855
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Decoding conspiracy thinking at the nexus of sexuality, Freemasonry, and the occult. In this book, anthropologists Rogers Orock and Peter Geschiere examine the moral panic over a perceived rise in homosexuality that engulfed Cameroon and Gabon beginning in the early twenty-first century. As they uncover the origins of the conspiratorial narratives that fed this obsession, they argue that the public’s fears were grounded in historically situated assumptions about the entanglement of same-sex practices, Freemasonry, and illicit enrichment. This specific panic in postcolonial Central Africa fixated on high-ranking Masonic figures thought to lure younger men into sex in exchange for professional advancement. The authors’ thorough account shows how attacks on elites as homosexual predators corrupting the nation became a powerful outlet for mounting populist anger against the excesses and corruption of the national regimes. Unraveling these tensions, Orock and Geschiere present a genealogy of Freemasonry, taking readers from London through Paris to francophone Africa and revealing along the way how the colonial past shapes present-day anxieties linking same-sex practices to enrichment.

Conspiracy Narratives from Postcolonial Africa

Conspiracy Narratives from Postcolonial Africa PDF Author: Rogers Orock
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226835855
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Get Book Here

Book Description
Decoding conspiracy thinking at the nexus of sexuality, Freemasonry, and the occult. In this book, anthropologists Rogers Orock and Peter Geschiere examine the moral panic over a perceived rise in homosexuality that engulfed Cameroon and Gabon beginning in the early twenty-first century. As they uncover the origins of the conspiratorial narratives that fed this obsession, they argue that the public’s fears were grounded in historically situated assumptions about the entanglement of same-sex practices, Freemasonry, and illicit enrichment. This specific panic in postcolonial Central Africa fixated on high-ranking Masonic figures thought to lure younger men into sex in exchange for professional advancement. The authors’ thorough account shows how attacks on elites as homosexual predators corrupting the nation became a powerful outlet for mounting populist anger against the excesses and corruption of the national regimes. Unraveling these tensions, Orock and Geschiere present a genealogy of Freemasonry, taking readers from London through Paris to francophone Africa and revealing along the way how the colonial past shapes present-day anxieties linking same-sex practices to enrichment.

Religion and Development in Southern and Central Africa: Vol 1

Religion and Development in Southern and Central Africa: Vol 1 PDF Author: N. Amanze
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 999606039X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 501

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Book Description
This book is a result of a joint conference, which was held from 18th-22nd July 2017 under the theme Religion, Citizenship and Development Southern African Perspectives." The theme of the conference was adopted in order to underline the importance and significance of religion in the socio-economic development of people in the world generally and in Southern and Central Africa in particular. The papers in the book are divided into two volumes. Volume one consists of papers which directly discuss religion and development in one form or another. The second volume contains papers that discuss religion and other pertinent issues related to development. The papers are grouped into sub-themes for ease of reference. These include Citizenship and Development, Migration and Development, Disability and Development, Pentecostal Churches and Development and Religion and Society. All in all, despite a divergence of sub-themes in volume two, all point to issues to do with the role of religion in development in Southern and Central Africa today.

Magical Interpretations, Material Realities

Magical Interpretations, Material Realities PDF Author: Henrietta L. Moore
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134575572
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
'Magical Interpretations, Material Realities brings together many of today's best scholars of contemporary Africa. The theme of "witchcraft" has long been associated with exoticizing portraits of a "traditional" Africa, but this volume takes the question of occult as a point of entry into the moral politics of some very modern African realities.' - James Ferguson, University of California, USA 'These essays bear eloquent testimony to the ongoing presence and power of the occult imaginary, and of the intimate connection between global capitalism and local cosmology, in postcolonial Africa. A major contribution to scholarship that aims to rework the divide between modernity and tradition.' - Charles Piot, Duke University, USA This volume sets out recent thinking on witchcraft in Africa, paying particular attention to variations in meanings and practices. It examines the way different people in different contexts are making sense of what 'witchcraft' is and what it might mean. Using recent ethnographic materials from across the continent, the volume explores how witchcraft articulates with particular modern settings for example: the State in Cameroon; Pentecostalism in Malawi; the university system in Nigeria and the IMF in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. The editors provide a timely overview and reconsideration of long-standing anthropological debates about 'African witchcraft', while simultaneously raising broader concerns about the theories of the western social sciences.

Transparency and Conspiracy

Transparency and Conspiracy PDF Author: Harry G. West
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 082238485X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Transparency has, in recent years, become a watchword for good governance. Policymakers and analysts alike evaluate political and economic institutions—courts, corporations, nation-states—according to the transparency of their operating procedures. With the dawn of the New World Order and the “mutual veil dropping” of the post–Cold War era, many have asserted that power in our contemporary world is more transparent than ever. Yet from the perspective of the relatively less privileged, the operation of power often appears opaque and unpredictable. Through vivid ethnographic analyses, Transparency and Conspiracy examines a vast range of expressions of the popular suspicion of power—including forms of shamanism, sorcery, conspiracy theory, and urban legends—illuminating them as ways of making sense of the world in the midst of tumultuous and uneven processes of modernization. In this collection leading anthropologists reveal the variations and commonalities in conspiratorial thinking or occult cosmologies around the globe—in Korea, Tanzania, Mozambique, New York City, Indonesia, Mongolia, Nigeria, and Orange County, California. The contributors chronicle how people express profound suspicions of the United Nations, the state, political parties, police, courts, international financial institutions, banks, traders and shopkeepers, media, churches, intellectuals, and the wealthy. Rather than focusing on the veracity of these convictions, Transparency and Conspiracy investigates who believes what and why. It makes a compelling argument against the dismissal of conspiracy theories and occult cosmologies as antimodern, irrational oversimplifications, showing how these beliefs render the world more complex by calling attention to its contradictions and proposing alternative ways of understanding it. Contributors. Misty Bastian, Karen McCarthy Brown, Jean Comaroff, John Comaroff, Susan Harding, Daniel Hellinger, Caroline Humphrey, Laurel Kendall, Todd Sanders, Albert Schrauwers, Kathleen Stewart, Harry G. West

Argonauts of West Africa

Argonauts of West Africa PDF Author: Apostolos Andrikopoulos
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226822621
Category : Africans
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
"Argonauts of West Africa examines the paradoxes of kinship in the lives of unauthorized African migrants as they struggle for mobility, employment, and citizenship in Europe. In a rapidly changing and highly precarious context, migrants turn to kinship in search of security, stability, and predictability. Through the exchange of identity documents, assistance in obtaining such documentation, marriage, or cohabitation, new kinship dynamics are continually made and remade to navigate the shifting demands of European states. These new kinship relations, however, often prove unreliable, taking on new, unexpected dynamics in the face of codependency; they become more difficult to control than those who entered into such relations could have imagined. Through unusually close ethnographic work in West African migrant communities in Amsterdam, Apostolos Andrikopoulos reveals unseen dynamics of "siblinghood" through shared papers, the tensions of race and gender that develop in mutually beneficial marriages, and the vast, informal networks of people, information, and documentation on which migrants rely. Throughout, Andrikopoulos demonstrates how inequality, exclusionary practices, and the changing policies of an often-violent state demand new forms of kinship to successfully navigate complex migration routes"--

The Lie of 1652

The Lie of 1652 PDF Author: Patric Tariq Mellet
Publisher: Tafelberg
ISBN: 9780624092124
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
The Lie of 1652 debunks the 'empty-land' myth and claims of a 'Bantu invasion', while outlining 220 years of war and resistance. It recounts the history of migration to the Cape by Africans, Indians, Southeast Asians and Europeans, providing a provocative perspective on the de-Africanisation of local people of colour.

Baltic Postcolonial Narratives

Baltic Postcolonial Narratives PDF Author: Almantas Samalavičius
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527519465
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
This book offers an in-depth discussion of how postcolonialism entered the Baltic cultural and literary domain and what difficulties it had, and often still has, to face while encountering local and international cultural and literary discourses. Initially viewed as entirely alien to the Baltic (as well as Eastern European) academic milieu, postcolonial studies have recently started to overcome previous academic prejudices and take shape in this part of the world. This study provides timely insights into Lithuanian prose writing and analyzes some of Lithuania’s best postcolonial literary texts. The author examines novels written during the last decade of the Soviet period as well as some more recent writings produced in the post-Soviet era. The book will be useful to cultural historians and literary scholars interested in the past and present of Eastern European and Baltic cultures and societies.

Conspiracy, Revolution, and Terrorism from Victorian Fiction to the Modern Novel

Conspiracy, Revolution, and Terrorism from Victorian Fiction to the Modern Novel PDF Author: Adrian S. Wisnicki
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415955602
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This book examines the representation of conspiracy in Victorian and Edwardian literature, and traces a genealogy from works by Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Collins, James, Conrad, and others to the modern conspiracy novel.

Narrative, Identity and Ethics in Postcolonial Kenya

Narrative, Identity and Ethics in Postcolonial Kenya PDF Author: Eleanor Tiplady Higgs
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350129828
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Can a Christian organization with colonial roots work towards reproductive justice for Kenyan women and resist sexist interpretations of Christianity? How does a women's organization in Africa navigate controversial ethical dilemmas, while dealing with the pressures of imperialism in international development? Based on a case study of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in Kenya, this book explores the answers to these questions. It also introduces a theoretical framework drawn from postcolonial feminist critique, narrative identity theory and the work of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians: 'everyday Christian ethics'. The book evaluates the theory's implications as a cross-disciplinary theme in feminist studies of religion and theology. Eleanor Tiplady Higgs argues that Kenya YWCA's narratives of its Christian history and constitution sustain a link between its ethical perspective and its identity. The ethical insights that emerge from these practices proclaim the relevance of the value of 'fulfilled lives', as prescribed in the New Testament, for Christian women's experiences of reproductive injustice.

Photography in Africa

Photography in Africa PDF Author: Richard Vokes
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 1847010539
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Gives an ethnographic account of the complexities of the use of photography in Africa, both historically and in contemporary practice. This collection of studies in African photography examines, through a series of empirically rich historical and ethnographic cases, the variety of ways in which photographs are produced, circulated, and engaged across a range of social contexts. In so doing, it elucidates the distinctive characteristics of African photographic practices and cultures, vis-à-vis those of other forms of 'vernacular photography' worldwide. In addition, these studies develop areflexive turn, examining the history of academic engagement with these African photographic cultures, and reflecting on the distinctive qualities of the ethnographic method as a means for studying such phenomena. The volumecritically engages current debates in African photography and visual anthropology. First, it extends our understanding of the variety of ways in which both colonial and post-colonial states in Africa have used photography as a means for establishing, and projecting, their authority. Second, it moves discussion of African photography away from an exclusive focus on the role of the 'the studio' and looks at the circulations through which the studios' products - the photographs themselves - later pass as artefacts of material culture. Last, it makes an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between photography and ethnographic research methods, as these have been employed in Africa. RICHARD VOKES is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and author of Ghosts of Kanungu