The Nordic Africa Institute – Publications

For centuries livestock have formed the backbone of the Somali economy. Camels are especially highly valued by Somali herdsmen.

The practical uses of the camel have been eloquently described by Somalis in their extensive oral poetry, handed down through generations from father to son. It forms a complete literacy tradition composed of poems, proverbs, metaphors and tales of wisdom.

The collection and preservation of Somali oral literature are important subjects that require urgent attention. This rich literature was transmitted to us orally from generation to generation. The cultural and historical life of the Somali people is reflected in this ancient oral data.

The present collection of oral literature on the Somali camel is the result of an extensive research work. Oral literature has been one of the subjects studied by the "Somali camel research project", a bilateral undertaking between Somalia and Sweden (the Somali Academy of Sciences and Arts, SOMAC, and the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries, SAREC).

The volume brings together papers by African and Nordic/Scandinavian gender scholars and anthropologists, in attempts to investigate and critically discuss existing lines of thinking about sexuality in Africa, while at the same time creating space for alternative approaches. Issues of colonial and contemporary discourses on 'African sexuality' and on 'female genital mutilation' are being discussed, as well as issues of female agency and of feminists' engagement with HIV/AIDS. The volume contributes to contemporary efforts of re-thinking sexualities in the light of feminist, queer and postcolonial theory.

AFRICAN FEMINIST POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE is a book that aims at exposing the dilemmas and conflicts that feminist researchers and practitioners living and working in the Global South have to deal with on a daily basis. The book attempts to disentangle some of the dilemmas, tensions, challenges and possibilities of feminist research and activism in the minefields of the cultures, practices and expectations of university bureaucracies, donor agencies and North-South collaboration. The authors, living and working in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana and Mozambique, are all researchers. They theorise from their experiences as persons based in Africa, highlighting the dilemmas and conflicts posed by identities as academics and researchers on the one hand, and dependence on donor funding on the other.

This research report is concerned with the irrelation between cultural diversity and continental and national unity.

The significant number of involuntary returns of labor migrants to Burkina Faso is a relatively neglected aspect of the armed confl ict in Côte d’Ivoire. Between 500,000 and 1 million Burkinabe migrants were forced to leave Côte d’Ivoire between 2000 and 2007, placing tremendous pressure on local communities in Burkina Faso to receive and integrate these mass arrivals, and causing those returning labor migrants an acute sense of displacement. Th is article analyzes the experiences of displacement and resettlement in the context of the Ivorian crisis and explores the dialectics of displacement and emplacement in the lives of involuntary labor migrant returnees; their young adult children; and Burkinabe recruits returning aft er their service in the Forces Nouvelles rebel forces in Côte d’Ivoire.

In the period 1999-2007, more than half a million Burkinabe returned to Burkina Faso due to the persecution of immigrant labourers in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire. Ultranationalist debates about the criteria for Ivorian citizenship had intensified during the 1990s and led to the scapegoating of immigrants in a political rhetoric centred on notions of autochthony and xenophobia. Having been actively encouraged to immigrate by the Ivorian state for generations, Burkinabe migrant labourers were now forced to leave their homes and livelihoods behind and return to a country they had left in their youth or, as second-generation immigrants in Côte d’Ivoire, had never seen.

Based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, the thesis explores the narratives and everyday practices of returning labour migrants in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso’s second-largest city, in order to understand the subjective experiences of displacement that the forced return to Burkina Faso engendered. The analysis questions the appropriateness of the very notion of “return” in this context and suggests that people’s senses of home are multiplex and tend to rely more on the ability to pursue active processes of emplacement in everyday life than on abstract notions of belonging, e.g. relating to citizenship or ethnicity.

The study analyses intergenerational interactions within and across migrant families in the city and on transformations of intra-familial relations in the context of forced displace-ment. A particular emphasis is placed on the experiences of young adults who were born and raised in Côte d’Ivoire and arrived in Burkina Faso for the first time during the Ivorian crisis. These young men and women were received with scepticism in Burkina Faso because of their perceived “Ivorian” upbringing, language, and behaviour and were forced to face new forms of stigmatisation and exclusion. At the same time, young migrants were able to exploit their labelling as outsiders and turn their difference into an advantage in the competition for scarce employment opportunities and social connections.

Wars unsettle our commonsense understandings of movement and mobility. Simultaneously entropic and inertial, they conjure up images of rampant disorder and chaos as well as strained and crippled formations locked in negative tension. On the one hand, detrimental movement; on the other, deadly stalemate. Both mobility and immobility are, as such, associated with the iconography of warfare and conflicts. They may be presented as out of time through pictures of empty streets, ruins, trenches, and dead bodies frozen in contorted positions, yet, conversely, some of the most archetypical images of war connote speed, flows, and movement, seen in images of troop advances or retreats, rows of traveling refugees, and hauls of humanitarian aid shipped or flown into airports and harbors from afar. In temporal terms, conflict and violence are oft en represented in the lethargy of decay or the entropy of aggression.

Why do young men use mirrors and make-up more than girls? Why do the Wodaabe nomads of West Africa have beauty parades for men? Wodaabe's extraordinary and unique live performances are often misunderstood by outsiders. The book provides some answers about these aesthetic activities. One answer is courtship and "wife-stealing ceremonies" involving enemy clans, another is ethnic identity. Beauty and existence are linked. Wodaabe dances and visual arts are not "exotic" but are arenas for social action and identity politics in the largely agricultural society of the arid regions of Niger, Nigeria and Chad.

The author describes Wodaabe cultural choices as "active archaisation". Different art forms are analysed in the light of identity construction by the Wodaabe. Their elaborate cultivation of beauty in make-up, tattoos, body paintings, calabash carvings, embroideries, and architecture all follow the principle of symmetry and order in the cosmos. The author emphasizes the gendered aspects of social life and identity construction and explores masculinity among nomadic Wodaabe men, who are living sculptures displaying their beauty as a spiritual act, full of honour and dignity.

The book has many colour photographs and examples of Wodaabe art.

The difficult position of women in Ghanian society lies both in structures that are manifested through the policy of the state, and in factors that are specific for this society, having their origin in this traditional structure. The relinquishment by the peasants of control over their immediate situation has led to the loss of traditional techniques and distortion of social relations. Money rather than labour claims has become the medium of social interchange.

A case study conducted in a village in Ghana is used to illustrate the position of women in a patriarchial society subjected to pressures from various directions. Changes in the traditional agriculture caused by the introduction of cocoa resulted in greater pressure on land used for food production. Together with overcopping and the destruction of forests by charcoal-burners, there has been a general impoverishment of land resources and a reduction of the nutritional value of the crops grown.

In 1972 the role of women as food producers began to be recognised and the role of female extension officers has become more important. The disadvantageous position of women in agriculture and in coping with the exigencies of social life is emphasised. The analysis shows how a new type of woman-headed household has emerged. In relation to the male-head the womanhead is always in an inferior situation since she has to cope with subsistence responsibilities at the same time as her access to resources is poorer.

Today, about half of the refugees in the world are Africans. More than half of Africa's refugees originate from Ethiopia and live in the Sudan and Somalia. as a source of refugees, Ethiopia is surpassed only by Afghanistan. This book is about this mass exodus from Ethiopia.

The author maintains that in the absence of a clear understanding of its root causes it is impossible to find lasting solutions to this problem of mass displacement. Therefore, he employs an historical approach and commences the study with an investigation of the links between the past history of the peoples of the Horn of Africa and the conflict which currently plague the region.

This book focuses on the lives and experiences of young people in Africa. On agents who, willingly or unwillingly, see themselves as belonging to the socio-generational category of youth and the ways in which they seek to shape and unfold their lives in a positive manner. Rather than seeing youth as either a social or cultural entity in itself, or as a predefined life-stage, the book argues for an exploration of how youth position themselves and are positioned within generational categories. In studying young people, social scientists must conceptualise youth as both social being and social becoming; a position in movement. It is from the duality of being positioned and seeking one's own socio-generational position that this book engages in the debate on contemporary African youth.

Muridism is a Sufi order which originated in Senegal, West Africa, at the end of the 19th century and is now in rapid expansion with the Senegalese emigrants around the world. Among the Murids the belief is strong that the founder Shaykh Amadou Bamba and his mother Mame Diarra Bousso can help them gain a better life on earth and entry into Paradise. The book gives an account of some Murid women the author has met in Senegal and on Tenerife. Their various paths of life are described with a focus on trade, religion and gender relations. In what ways do women's conditions of life differ from those of their own country? What do the women strive for? And how does Muridism influence their daily life in Senegal and in the diaspora?

Eva Evers Rosander has been Associate Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden, until 2014. She is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, and has done extensive anthropological fieldwork in Spain, Senegal and Morocco.

The attainment of sound and sustainable environmental management is one of humanity's greatest challenges this century, particularly in Africa, which is still heavily dependent on the exploitation of natural and agricultural resources and is faced with rapid population growth. Yet, this challenge should not be reduced to Malthusian parameters and the simple question of population growth and failing resources.In this volume, ten anthropologists and geographers critically address traditionalMalthusian discourses in essays that attempt to move "beyond territory andscarcity" by:- Exploring alternatives to the strong natural determinism that reduces natural resource management to questions of territory and scarcity.- Presenting material and methodologies that explore the different contexts in which social and cultural values intervene, and discovering more than 'rational choice' in the agency of individuals.- Examining the relevance of the different conceptions of territory for the ways in which people manage, or attempt to manage, natural resources.- Placing their research within the framework of the developing discussion on policy and politics in natural resource management.

The studies are drawn from a range of sub-Saharan African countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Lesotho, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan.

CONTENT

Introduction. Quentin Gausset and Michael Whyte

Land and Labour: Agrarian Change in Post-retrenchment Lesotho. Christian Boehm

Social Resilience in African Dryland Livelihoods: Deriving Lessons for Policy. Michael Mortimore

The Making of an Environment: Ecological History of the Kapsiki/Higi of North Cameroon and North Eastern Nigeria. Walter van Beek and Sonja Avontuur

Agro-pastoral Conflicts in the Tikar Plain (Adamawa, Cameroon). Quentin Gausset

Transhumance, Tubes and Telephones: Drought Related Migration as a Process of Innovation. Kristine Juul

Understanding Resource Management in Western Sudan: A Critical Look at New Institutional Economics. Leif Manger

Within, and Beyond, Territories: A Comparison of Village Land Use Management and Livelihood Diversificationin Burkina Faso and Southwest Niger. Simon Batterbury

Moving the Boundaries of Forest and Land Use History: The Case of Upper East Region in Northern Ghana. Andrew Wardell

Transnational Dimensions to Environmental Resource Dynamics: Modes of Governance and Local Resource Management in Eastern DRC. James Fairhead

African women have a long history of political involvement. Yet, the fervour with which they participated in anti-colonial struggles and supported national liberation were not acknowledged after independence leaving them to fight for representation and personal liberation on other fronts. This study looks at women’s struggles in Southern Africa where the last ten years have seen the most pervasive success stories on the African continent. Tracing the history of women’s involvement in anti-colonial struggles and against apartheid, the book analyses post-colonial outcomes and examines the strategies employed by women’s movements to gain a foothold in politics. In this book, the author presents in depth analyses and women’s narratives of their experiences in political parties, in the national machinery for the advancement of women and in the autonomous women’s movements.

Sexual identity has emerged into the national discourse of post-apartheid South Africa, bringing the subject of rights and the question of gender relations and cultural authenticity into the focus of the nation state’s politics. This book is a fascinating reflection on the effects of these discourses on non-normative modes of sexuality and intimacy and on the country more generally. While in 1996, South Africa became the first country in the world that explicitly incorporated lesbian and gay rights within a Bill of Rights, much of the country has continued to see homosexuality as un-African. Henriette Gunkel examines how colonialism and apartheid have historically shaped constructions of gender and sexuality and how these concepts have not only been re-introduced and shaped by understandings of homosexuality as un-African but also by the post-apartheid constitution and continued discourse within the nation.

The articles in this book attempt to illuminate the complex interactions between ecology and society in arid lands and the range of representations developed by africans - be they pastoralists, fishermen or farmers.

This book brings together two bodies of research on urban Africa that have tended to be separate: Studies of urban land use and housing, and studies of work and livelihoods. Africa’s future will be to an increasing extent urban. Nevertheless, the inherited legal, institutional and financial arrangements for managing urban development are inadequate. The recent decades of neo-liberal political and economic reforms have increased social inequality across urban space. Access to employment, shelter and services is precarious for most urban residents. Extra-legal housing and unregistered economic activities proliferate. Basic urban services are increasingly provided informally. The result is the phenomenal growth of the informal city and extra-legal activities. How do urban residents see these activities? What do they accomplish through them? How can these “informal” cities be governed?

The case studies are drawn from a diverse set of cities on the African continent. A central theme is how practices that from an official standpoint are illegal or extra-legal do not only work but are considered legitimate by the actors concerned. Another is how the informal city is not exclusively the domain of the poor, but also provides shelter and livelihoods for better-off segments of the urban population.

The articles in ‘Dealing with Uncertainty in Contemporary African Lives’ are based largely on work in Tanzania which has been spared much of the turmoil that elsewhere has uprooted populations and destroyed communities. Nevertheless they illuminate phenomena common throughout sub-Saharan Africa as modernity in its many guises undercuts old certainties, outmodes established knowledge of how to order life and deal with crises, introduces new hazards, and frustrates ambition and expectations. But as the editors, Haram and Yamba, point out, uncertainty and insecurity have a positive side, providing the basis for ‘curiosity and exploration’. The case studies demonstrate both the increasing uncertainty and insecurity of life in contemporary Africa and the ways that people respond, including warding off and reaching out. Scapegoats are sought. Witch beliefs become elaborated as explanations of failures and malaise while witchfinding becomes a lucrative profession. Pentecostal or other fundamentalist churches burgeon as they assure people that life has meaning and better times are before them if only they believe. Suicide and insanity are other possible responses. All in all, a thought-provoking volume. Elizabeth Colson, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

Amna, Kvinna i Sudan, bestämmer ingenting själv. Det är hennes man som fattar alla beslut både för henne och familjen. Och det inte mannen bestämmer i hennes liv avgör djuren, vädret och den muhammedanska religionen. Amna är en av de många kvinnor, som lever ett nomadiserande liv i oändliga halvöknar.

Berit Härd ger i den här boken en närbild av en kvinna från kababish-nomaderna och en inblick i hennes vardag.

How to Be a ‘Proper’ Women in the Time of AIDS is written as a piece of music for multiple voices. The voices of Katja Jassey and Stella Nyanzi – both professional women, both mothers, both anthropologists, one European, one African – are intertwined with the voices of other women (and men) telling about their lives coping with AIDS and/or struggling against the epidemic.  Personal storylines and interviews are interspersed with analytical reflections and a string of amazing photographs of African HIV/AIDS billboard posters, captured by Suzy Bernstein.

Unconventional questions are posed: What kind of sexuality is portrayed in the anti-HIV/AIDS campaigns? Why is there such an absence of messages that would include or make sense to those living with HIV? What does it mean to be a ‘proper’ woman in the time of AIDS? The authors decided that instead of producing yet another publication citing the number of people infected, they would reflect on their own stories and professional experience, how they had come to think and react to HIV, and how their different positions influenced their understandings. By doing so they manage to create new insights and open new perspectives. They don’t say what is right and wrong. They say stop! Stop awhile and think about yourselves. Stop and think for yourselves.

The research area of this study was once the focal point of colonial penetration in East Africa. The author traces evolution of ethnicity from the 15th century until the post-colonial period. She argues that ethnic group identification is used as a self-referent. People's perception of the present is a reflection of the colonial practice of dividing people into tribes. Yet, villagers in the Bagamoyo District stress commonality - another dimension of ethnic consciousness.

The first time that I met Angolan women was in 1976 when Ruth Neto and Maria Mambo Café visited Stockholm, gathered by Svenska Kvinnors Vänsterförbund (Women’s Association of the Swedish Left, SKV). In 1978 I received a journalism scholarship by SIDA (Swedish International Development Agency) and spent six weeks in Angola to get acquainted to know the Organization of Angolan Women (OMA, Organizacão de Mulher Angolana). I travelled to Huambo with two OMA officials: Irene Neto, (sister of the first president of the Angolan republic, Augustinho Neto) and Luisa Chongolola. The visit to Angola resulted in a book, jointly written with Hillevi Nilsson of AGIS (The Africa Groups of Sweden) published in Swedish, about the OMA in the form of written testimonies about the role of the Angolan woman. I returned to Angola invited to a congress of the OMA in 1983, and later, in 1990, to work in Luanda for the OMA until 1993. I made joint articles with Idalinda Rodrigues who at that time was an employee of the OMA. Helena Cunha acted as consultant regarding portuguese language. All the articles have been published/appeared in the Jornal de Angola. The photographer Cinquenta of the Jornal de Angola also helped me get to know Luanda well. We tried publishing a book in 1992, but this was not possible due to the reemergence of war in Luanda in the end of October of that year. The texts were written between 1979 and 1992, and AGIS added a chapter in 2006.