Association pour l’anthropologie du changement social et du développement
Association for the anthropology of social change and development

Colloque Apad 2024

“Frontierization”: fixity and migrations (Syria and Zimbabwe in the 19th century)

par | 25 Mar 2020 | Non classé

“Frontierization”: fixity and migrations (Syria and Zimbabwe in the 19th century)

Auteur(s) : Rey Matthieu ;

This research explores the relationship between the creation of imperial borders in Africa and the Middle East, the intense migrations of the period, and the destruction of old pattern of organization. During the first half of the 19th century (1800-1860s), both Southern Africa and the Middle East were characterized by intense movements of people. This work focuses on two regions — of southern Zimbabwe/ Northern South Africa and the Euphrates rivers — compares how demographic realities radically changed. This occurred through the intrusion of nomadic groups who settled and reorganized the areas through new political economies and practices of land management based on a loose but real territorial control.

This massive disruption in the political landscape resulted from several factors, including environmental change and conflicts. Over the course of just a few years, new groups migrated, took root, and destroyed or completed the process of destroying prior order. At the same time, another dynamic, mostly from exogenous actors, affected the relations between authority and space.  In the region of the Euphrates River the Ottoman Empire sought to establish new fixed points of control and spatial delimitation; in Southern Africa several actors from both the mercantile and political spheres set similar events in motion. These twin processes underline a global phenomenon, frontierization, from which modern borders emerged and which deeply affected the borderlands.

A comparative approach, as Marc Bloch delineated, allows us to highlight this encounter between spatial regimes, analyzing it not as a South African dynamic with local specificities (the advent of the Boer Republic, beginning of colonial British order) nor an Ottoman process (recapturing provinces by the center) but a world dynamic in power relations. Such a comparative approach, informed by oral histories collected in both areas, traveller diaries, Ottomans records, and Zimbabwean archives, helps to clarify how nomads and sedentary powers evolved in this crucial period. The concept of frontierization refers, therefore, to the control imposed on the newcomers who had already changed the demographic, social, and economic situations. In a sense, frontierization is the direct product of a crisis as the notion underscores both destruction and advent of a new reality.

Mot-clé : borders, empire, migrations, et nomads

Conectez vous pour accéder au texte complet
[caldera_form id="CF601abc919576c"]
Toutes les communications appartenant au même panel :

Voir le panel Les frontières en temps de crise : circulations des personnes et des objets / Borders in Times of Crisis: Circulation of People and Objects

Voir tous les panels du colloque Apad conference 2020

Chinese media in Africa, 1955-1999: an overview of an enduring asymmetric relationship

par | 25 Mar 2020 | Non classé

Chinese media in Africa, 1955-1999: an overview of an enduring asymmetric relationship

Auteur(s) : Madrid-Morales Dani ;

Shortly after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party began the revamping of its external propaganda program, which had begun in the early 1940s. Half a decade later, African countries became a primary target of Chinese propagandists, who were caught up in a competition with both the Soviet Union and the United States for increased discursive power. Copies of the Peking Review became available, first sporadically, and then regularly, in bookshops from Marrakesh to Dar Es Salaam as early as 1952. The Xinhua news agency opened its first foreign bureau in the continent in Cairo in 1956, and Radio Peking began regular broadcasts in Swahili and Hausa in 1961 to reach audiences in East and West Africa, respectively. Although the history of Sino-African relations has been extensively scrutinized, only superficial accounts exist about the scope, purpose, reach and intensity of Chinese media engagements with the continent. A deeper understanding of how mediated exchanges between China and Africa evolved is necessary to fully comprehend phenomena in the twenty-first century. Based on published first-person accounts of Chinese correspondents in Africa, and declassified documents from the United States Information Agency (USIA) that have not previously been systematically examined (reports, diplomatic cables, letters and public opinion polls), this paper provides a description of mass mediated activities by the PRC between 1955 and 1999; it offers evidence of the very limited impact of Chinese external propaganda on the general population, and it argues that, beyond the narrative of comradeship, the media primarily served to legitimize an asymmetric relationship between China and most African nations, one which persists today.

Mot-clé :

Conectez vous pour accéder au texte complet
[caldera_form id="CF601abc919576c"]
Toutes les communications appartenant au même panel :

Voir le panel Les médias chinois en Afrique : circulation, production, réception / African uses of Chinese media

Voir tous les panels du colloque Apad conference 2020

L’internationalisation des médias chinois en Afrique subsaharienne à la lumière du concept du sharp power: Une casuistique de l’entreprise StarTimes dans la télédistribution numérique par satellite au Cameroun

par | 25 Mar 2020 | Non classé

L’internationalisation des médias chinois en Afrique subsaharienne à la lumière du concept du sharp power: Une casuistique de l’entreprise StarTimes dans la télédistribution numérique par satellite au Cameroun

Auteur(s) : Eric Moreno Begoude Agoume ;

Depuis l’avènement de la politique du Going global (internationalisation) des entreprises chinoises impulsé par Jiang Zemin en 1995 suite à son mot d’ordre <<sortez! Devenez des acteurs mondiaux>>, la Chine ambitionne rattraper son retard dans l’optique de contrebalancer l’Occident. Aujourd’hui plus qu’hier, l’Empire du Milieu renonce à la philosophie du <<profil bas>> pour le <<rêve chinois>>. Cette nouvelle étiquette de la politique de puissance de la Chine s’opérationnalise tant sur le plan national qu’international avec la mise en oeuvre progressive du projet géopolitique axé sur les nouvelles routes de la soie. En raison de cela, la République populaire de Chine va injecter des capitaux aux confins de ses frontières, et ce, dans les secteurs aussi divers que variés (agricole, énergétique, minier, des transports, des médias etc.). Conscient de l’enjeu que représente la circulation de l’information et les contenus audiovisuels au XXIe siècle, la Chine y attache un interêt particulier dont le but est l’amélioration de son image sur l’échiquier international écornée par les médias du Nord. Forte de la concurrence qui prévaut en Afrique dans le domaine de la télédistribution, Xi Jinping, lors de la tenue du IIe sommet du FOCAC qui eut lieu à Johannesburg du 3 au 5 décembre 2015, plante le décor de la promotion d’une numérisation de la télévision en Afrique avec la mise en place d’un projet intitulé <<Accès à la télévision satellite pour 10000 villages africains>>. Ce projet attribué à l’entreprise privée chinoise StarTimes a pour cible 20 pays africains avec un cout global de 215,87 millions de dollars sur financement exclusif du gouvernement chinois. C’est dans ce cadre que cette multinationale chinoise débourse la somme de 6 milliards de FCFA pour doter 300 villages camerounais de la télévision par satellite. En réalité, cette projection médiatique de la Chine au travers de StarTimes ne rend plus efficacement compte d’un entendement sous le format du soft power mais du sharp power. En clair, c’est un <<pouvoir qui perce, pénètre et perfore l’environnement politique et informationnel des pays ciblés>>. De là, la Chine cherche à imprimer sa nation branding en Afrique et spécifiquement au Cameroun. En vue de réduire la fracture numérique qui sied entre zones urbaines et rurales, cette étude soulève la question de la compétitivité de StarTimes avec pour motif la télédistribution en Afrique et notamment au Cameroun. Pour cela, l’on se pose cette interrogation: Comment la puissance chinoise crédibilise son image internationale en Afrique et particulièrement au Cameroun à partir de la télédistribution? La réflexion s’attèle à partir d’un matériau collecté auprès des responsables de l’entreprise chinoise StarTimes, du Ministère de la Communication et surtout les villages récipiendaires. En convoquant l’analyse qualitative traduite ici par les entretiens semi-directifs sur les acteurs sus-évoqués, cette étude tente de montrer le jeu trouble de l’entreprise chinoise StarTimes forge le voile de la télédistribution de 300 villages camerounais au sujet d’une influence certaine et de la conquête silencieuse d’un éventuel marché médiatique.

Mot-clé : Afrique, Cameroun, médias chinois, sharp power, et StarTimes

Conectez vous pour accéder au texte complet
[caldera_form id="CF601abc919576c"]
Toutes les communications appartenant au même panel :

Voir le panel Les médias chinois en Afrique : circulation, production, réception / African uses of Chinese media

Voir tous les panels du colloque Apad conference 2020

Ambivalent encounters: Chinese television in Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire

par | 25 Mar 2020 | Non classé

Ambivalent encounters: Chinese television in Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire

Auteur(s) : Jedlowski Alessandro ;

Existing studies on the expansion of Chinese media companies in Africa published in recent years focus mainly on the expansion in Africa of Chinese state media companies, through an approach that tends to read the activities of these companies as being the direct expression of the Chinese government’s hegemonic project in Africa, and therefore as the result of the soft power policies formulated by the Chinese Communist Party. However, to speak of a coherent and homogeneous “Chinese hegemonic project” is likely to be misleading: China’s international activities, in Africa as elsewhere, are the result of the combination of a multitude of actors who do not necessarily share the same project, and have sometimes diverging interests that can produce a hegemonic dynamic, but can also conflict with each other. On the basis of the preliminary results of an ongoing research project on the activities of the Chinese media company StarTimes in Nigeria, this paper proposes some reflections oriented towards the elaboration of an alternative theoretical and methodological approach to the study of Chinese media in Africa, able to take into account, simultaneously, the macro-political and macro-economic factors which condition the nature of China-Africa media interactions, the political intentions behind them (as, for example, the Chinese soft power policies and their translation into specific media contents), and the micro dimension of the “practices” and “uses” of the media made by the actors (producers and consumers of media) in the field. In particular, this paper introduces the concept of “affective regimes”, a tool that makes it possible to take into account the fluid and fragmentary dimension of the engagements between Chinese media and African publics, while equally emphasizing the power dynamics that underlie them, thus offering a theoretical framework able to go beyond the limits of soft power theory, as it has been applied to the study of China-Africa media interactions.

Mot-clé : affects, African audiences, Chinese media, Nigeria, et StarTimes

Conectez vous pour accéder au texte complet
[caldera_form id="CF601abc919576c"]
Toutes les communications appartenant au même panel :

Voir le panel Les médias chinois en Afrique : circulation, production, réception / African uses of Chinese media

Voir tous les panels du colloque Apad conference 2020

“If even the Chinese grow wings and fly”: Mapping Martial Arts Genealogies in Bagamoyo, Tanzania

par | 25 Mar 2020 | Non classé

“If even the Chinese grow wings and fly”: Mapping Martial Arts Genealogies in Bagamoyo, Tanzania

Auteur(s) : Sheridan Derek ; Rafiq Mohamed Yunus ;

While the Chinese state has recently mobilized the martial arts for cultural diplomacy in Africa, the practice of the East Asian martial arts in East Africa derives from a multitude of sources: Hong Kong films, postcolonial military exchange programs, itinerant migration, and Islamic spiritual knowledges. These illustrate the longstanding presence of Afro-Asian connections, and the significant role played by African martial artists, complicating assumptions about who has authored “East Asian” cultural signs. In this paper, I examine the case of BAFIMA, a Karate Dojo in Bagamoyo, Tanzania and its founder, Sempai Ally, who views his life as a debt to reveal the “real pasts” of the martial arts through writing books, practicing karate, and making films. Based on collaborative fieldwork and preliminary oral historical research tracing martial arts genealogies to Zanzibar, Korea and the world of viumbe (beings), I trace how a particular set of practices/aesthetics have come together which can neither be considered derivative of East Asia nor glossed simply as “African appropriation,” but are rather mapped within Islamic geographies which defy continental categories. In the process, I consider the work of mapping genealogies, the shifting meaning of “China” and “Chinese teachers” in these genealogies, and the implications for the politics of claims regarding authorship of Afro-Asian cultural heritage.

Mot-clé : Martial Arts; Afro-Asia; Swahili Coast; Islam; Geneologies; Body Cultures

Conectez vous pour accéder au texte complet
[caldera_form id="CF601abc919576c"]
Toutes les communications appartenant au même panel :

Voir le panel Les médias chinois en Afrique : circulation, production, réception / African uses of Chinese media

Voir tous les panels du colloque Apad conference 2020