Focus on Knowledge: Africa-Centered Perspectives Program

International Workshop
Focus on Knowledge: Africa-Centered
Perspectives
June 26-27, 2015
Iwalewahaus,
University of
Bayreuth
Program
Knowledge is widely regarded as an important resource in the
future organization of human life. Some see the world at the threshold
of a new age, characterized by what is called knowledge society and
based on processes that generate, represent, and disseminate
knowledge among all members of society. The 2005 UNESCO World
Report, titled “Toward Knowledge Societies” attempts to define the
scope, content, and development of such societies. While
acknowledging that access to education and information is unequal
around the globe, the authors nevertheless suggest working towards
the goal of universally benefitting all populations.
Perspectives such as the one taken in the UNESCO report tend to posit
Africa and Africans as objects, as recipients rather than producers of
knowledge. Moreover, development strategies devised in global
organizations are usually predicated on specific assumptions about the
purported beneficiaries of such policies. In other words, the policies
formulated for Africa are based on knowledge about Africa, generated
in think tanks and academic institutions according to specific theories
and methods, some of which are still connected with what has been
called the colonial library. This raises profound questions of
representation and legitimacy: How do we know what we believe to
know about Africa?
We, a diverse group of scholars from various academic disciplines at
the University of Bayreuth mostly (but not exclusively) engaged in
African Studies, are planning to convene a multi-disciplinary workshop
in order to highlight Africa-centered perspectives on knowledge as it
pertains to Africa and its diasporas. We propose to discuss a wide range
of questions revolving around the ways in which Africans—whether
trained in “Western” epistemologies or committed to “African”
epistemologies—engage with the production, transmission,
dissemination, and representation of knowledge. We are not only
interested in the philosophy and economy of knowledge in Africa, but
also in the critical reflection of the power structures that underlie the
production of knowledge in and about Africa. The workshop aims to
create a forum for exchange about the prospects of and challenges to
the study of knowledge in Africa.
Program of Events
Friday, June 26
09:00-09.45
09.45-10:30
10:30-11:00
11:00-12:30
12:30
2:00-3:30
3:30-4:00
4:00-6:00
7:00
9:00-10:30
10:30-11:00
11:00-12:30
Rüdiger Seesemann: Welcome and Introduction
Joseph Tonda: La Violence du Savoir en Afrique
Coffee/Tea Break
Dodji Amouzouvi: Les Savoirs Africains Sont-ils
Systématiques? Statut Épistémologique des Savoirs
sur l’Afrique
Shirley Tate: Black Critical Race Theory and
Decolonizing Higher Education Institutions in the UK
Lunch
Aldin Mutembei: Knowledge, Orature and Media:
Challenges and Prospects of Tanzania’s New
Education Policy
Hassan Kaya: Perceptions of Knowledge Systems
Among African Indigenous Knowledge Holders and
Practitioners in KwaZulu-Natal Province (South Africa)
Coffee/Tea Break
Round Table
Joseph Adande, Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Eric
Anchimbe, Elísio Macamo
Knowledge in Africa, Knowledge About Africa:
Challenges and Prospects
Moderated by Erdmute Alber
Dinner for Conference Participants at Ganesha,
Alexanderstr. 7, Bayreuth
Saturday, June 27
Yacouba Banhoro: le de la
decine Moderne dans
la Lutte Contre les Maladies Sexuellement
Transmissibles dans l’Histoire du Burkina Faso
(Ancienne Haute-Volta)
Paul Richards: Local Knowledge: What We Can Learn
from Ebola Virus Disease
Coffee/Tea Break
Concluding Discussion
Speakers
Joseph C. E. Adandé holds a PhD and teaches history of
art at the University of Abomey-Calavi, Bénin. His writing
focusses on creativity in so-called traditional as well as in
contemporary African societies. As an art critic, he is
convinced that contemporary African art will surprise within
the years to come, when the emotions around it will have
calmed down.
Akosua Adomako Ampofo is Professor of African and
Gender Studies, and Director of the Institute of African
Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. An activist-scholar, her
work addresses African Knowledge systems; Identity Politics
such as Gender-based Violence; Women’s work;
Masculinities; and Gendered Representations in Popular
Culture (music and religion). She has tried to understand
where some of our “gender trouble” has come from and
the new “gender troubles” being invented. Her publications include: Transatlantic
Feminisms: Women’s and Gender Studies in Africa and the Diaspora. Lanham, MD,
Lexington Books (co-edited with Cheryl Rodriguez and Dzodzi Tsikata, 2015);
“Changing Representations of Women in Ghanaian Popular music: Marrying
research and advocacy” Current Sociology (60): 258-279 (with Awo Asiedu, 2012);
African Feminist Politics of Knowledge - Tensions, Challenges and Possibilities.
Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute (Co-edited with Signe Arnfred, 2010); “Phallic
Competence: Fatherhood and the Making of Men in Ghana”, Culture, Societies and
Masculinities (with Michael P.K. Okyerefo and Michael Perverah, 2009).
Dodji Amouzouvi is a social anthropologist and holds a
PhD from Free University of Berlin, Germany in Germany.
Being a specialist in religion, he currently works on local
knowledge, norms, and religion in West African space. He is
scientific director of the « Laboratoire d’Analyse et de
Recherche : Religions, Espaces et Développement »
(LARRED-FLASH/Bénin) and the coordinator of the
partnership of the « Bayreuth International Graduate
School of African Studies » (BIGSAS/Germany) with the Université Abomey-Calavi,
Benin. He currently works as director of the « Etablissements Privés
d’Enseignement Supérieur » with the CEDEAO on questions of scientific research
and regional integration.
Eric Anchimbe teaches English Linguistics at the
University of Bayreuth, Germany. His current research is
on offers and offer refusals in postcolonial communities
from a postcolonial pragmatics perspective, and also
political discourse from below in Africa. Among his recent
publications are the monograph Language Policy and
Identity Construction (Benjamins, 2013) and the edited
volume, Structural and Sociolinguistic Perspectives on
Indigenisation (Springer, 2014). His research interests include world Englishes,
linguistic identity construction, and postcolonial pragmatics."
Yacouba Banhoro is assistant professor of
contemporary history at the University of Ouagadougou,
Burkina Faso. He wrote his PhD thesis at the University of
Hamburg on the history of HIV/AIDS in Burkina Faso. The
focus of his researches is on the history of diseases and
Health in Africa.
Hassan Omari Kaya is the Director of the Department
of Science and Technology-National Research Foundation
Centre in Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) at the
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. Prior to
his appointment at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Prof.
Kaya was the coordinator of the IKS Teaching and Research
Programme at the North-West University (South Africa). He
also the coordinated the NEPAD Agency IKS Regional Node
for Southern Africa which encompasses 12 countries; and is the Patron of the
African Young Scientists Initiative on Climate Change and IKS which organized the
first International Student Conference on IKS and Climate Change and the COP17
Round Table Discussions in Durban (2011) on the Role of IKS and African Young
Scientists in Climate Change. Prof. Kaya has a Ph.D. in Sociology of Development
from the Free University Berlin, Germany; Bachelors and Masters Degree in
Development Studies, from the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He has
researched, lectured, published and presented internationally papers on African
Indigenous Knowledge Systems and other developmental issues for over twenty
years.
Elìsio Macamo is Associate Professor of African Studies
at the University of Basel. Previously (until 2009) he taught
development Sociology at the University of Bayreuth,
where he was a founding member of the Bayreuth
International Graduate School of African Studies. Elísio
Macamo was born and grew up in Mozambique. He studied
in Maputo (Mozambique), Salford and London (England)
and Bayreuth (Germany) and holds an MA degree in Translation and Interpreting
(Salford), an MA degree in Sociology and Social Policy (University of North London)
and a PhD and “Habilitation” in General Sociology (University of Bayreuth).
Macamo’s major interests are the sociology of religion, technology, knowledge,
politics and risk. He takes a special interest in phenomenological and interpretive
approaches to empirical social research. His current research addresses the politics
of the rule of law and comparative studies of development (Africa, Latin America
and Asia).
Aldin Mutembei is is an Associate Professor in the
Institute of Kiswahili Studies at the University of Dar es
Salaam; and the ACALAN focal point in Tanzania. He teaches
African Communication, Literature and Orature, with a
particular focus on Swahili language. His research interest
includes African languages in a Global context, and
communicating health issues through literature where he
has published five books. His published PhD (2001, Leiden)
is on Poetry and AIDS in Tanzania.
Paul Richards is an emeritus professor of technology and
agrarian development at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. He was formerly a professor in the Department of
Anthropology, University College London for many years,
and previously taught anthropology and geography, at the
School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London and the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. In 2014 Richards
was teaching at Njala University in Sierra Leone.
Richards is an anthropological commentator and researcher on agricultural technology and African farming systems. He has worked in Sierra Leone for over thirty
years, conducting ethnographic studies of Mende village rice farming systems and
forest conservation on the Liberian border. After the region became affected by
the Sierra Leonean civil war, he turned to analysis of that conflict and has written
more widely on the anthropology of armed conflicts.
Shirley Anne Tate is Associate Professor in Race and
Culture and Director of the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism
Studies (CERS) in the School of Sociology and Social Policy,
University of Leeds, UK. She became a Research Fellow and
Visiting Professor in the Institute for Reconciliation and
Social Justice in 2014. Her focus is on Black Atlantic
diaspora studies and her research interests are: identities
in the Black Atlantic diaspora, the African descent woman's
body, Black beauty, critical mixed race, transracial intimacies, race performativity,
affect, pain and anti-Black racism in organizations. These are all analyzed within the
theoretical framing offered by post-colonial, Caribbean de-colonial, critical race and
Black feminist theory and the intersections of race and gender.
Her three monographs are: Black Skins, Black Masks: Hybridity, Dialogism,
Performativity (2005), Black Beauty: Aesthetics, Stylization, Politics (2009) and Black
Women's Bodies and the Nation: Race, Gender and Culture (2015). She also has a
co-written book (with Ian Law) Caribbean Racisms (2015) and a co-edited book
(with Encarnacion Gutierrez Rodriguez) Creolizing Europe: Legacies and
Transformations (2015).
Joseph Tonda, sociologist and anthropologist and a
specialist of Congolese and Gabonese culture, society, and
politics, is currently professor of sociology at the University
of Omar Bongo in Libreville. He is also a regular visiting
instructor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences
Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, France. He is the author of Le
Souverain Moderne (The Modern Sovereign), an analysis of
the modern state in central equatorial Africa, its corporeal
structure as an all-encompassing and "composite" power, whose sexualized
imagery lies at the heart of its violent nature after independence. Tonda's areas of
specialization include the anthropology of religion, of medicine, and of the cults of
the body in modern central Africa. He has also written on the relationship between
violence, power, and the imaginary in central Africa. He is one of the founding
members of the Association, Rupture-Solidarité, a network of Congolese dissident
intellectuals.
Abstracts
Joseph Tonda: La Violence du Savoir en Afrique
L’idée que je voudrais développer est qu’en Afrique centrale,
notamment au Congo et au Gabon, il existe une violence du savoir
qui se manifeste par le rapport que celui-ci établit non seulement
entre ceux qui le détiennent, et ceux qui en sont dépourvus, mais
également, entre deux formes du savoir : le corps-savoir et le
savoir-livre. En d’autres termes, l’inégalité créée par la détention de
ces deux formes du savoir est en elle-même une violence au sens où
elle fait violence à l’humanité des hommes et des femmes.
Dodji Amouzouvi: Les Savoirs Africains Sont-ils
Systématiques? Statut Épistémologique des Savoirs sur
l’Afrique
Que sait-on sur l’Afrique en sciences sociales et humaines? Qui
produit ces savoirs ? Comment le sait-on ? Par quels processus ces
savoirs sont légitimés ? Telles sont les préoccupations majeures de
la présente réflexion. La position majeure défendue est que, des
problèmes de systématicité se posent soit au niveau méthodologique, soit au niveau des instances de validation, malgré la qualité
des acteurs et les dispositions prises pour produire les savoirs sur
l’Afrique, aussi bien par les africains ou non. Toute chose qui
brouille le statut épistémologique de ces savoirs.
Shirley Tate: Black Critical Race Theory and Decolonizing
Higher Education Institutions in the UK
In Critical Race Theory’s (CRT) passage from the USA (Bell, 1992;
Crenshaw et al, 1995; Ladson-Billings and Tate, 1995; Delagado and
Stefancic, 2001; Holland, 2012) to the UK (Gillborn, 2008;
Chakrabarty et al, 2013; Hylton, 2008; Warmington, 2012), it has
been transformed without losing its focus on a critical race
conscious analysis (Warmington, 2012). The US focus on legislation
became a focus on policy alongside a specifically UK invocation of
Black as a political term which included activists and intellectuals
who were not from the African diaspora but who were involved in
the development of a critical race conscious scholarship and
activism (Warmington, 2012). This scholarship and activism focused
on ‘the question of liberation on one level and the critique of
‘traditional read “European” ontological claims on another’
(Gordon, 1997a:1). It is this specifically British political Black which
is invoked in Black Critical Race Theory (BCRT). BCRT denotes that
CRT in the UK works with a decentred, unstable Blackness making
clear that African and Asian diasporas are central to the UK’s social
formation (Warmington, 2012). Thus, the Black in BCRT is not
tautological. Black liberation thought is foundational for BCRT which
is crucial for unpicking the operation of white power in Higher
Education institutions.
Aldin Mutembei: Knowledge, Orature and Media:
Challenges and Prospects of Tanzania’s New Education
Policy
The meaning and the production of knowledge have long been
subjects of scholarly interest and discussion in Africa. Be it the
production of knowledge on iron smelting (Schmidt, 1997) or on
sordid narration of African philosophy by Ogotommeli (Fr. Marcel
Griaulle, 1975) the base in Africa has always been first oral, then
written. Even the ancient writings in Kemet (what is today Egypt),
were preceded by orature. This was the source and inspiration for
development. The two aforesaid examples were made possible
through African languages and thinking framework(s). But, if it ever
happened, when did Africans cease to produce knowledge? It is
argued in this discussion that the stagnation in African development
started with the failure to produce knowledge. The introduction of
colonial languages, and its obligatory set up as mediums of
educational instruction, was to become cancerous to the
production of knowledge in Africa. Understanding the impairment,
Tanzania erected Swahili as the therapeutic way for its
development. It has taken the country more than 50 years to realize
its dream. In February 2015 the new education policy was launched
giving way to Kiswahili to become the medium of instruction in all
levels of education. The paper discusses the prospects and
challenges ahead of this decision, pointing out to the positive and
negative role of the media in the process.
Hassan Omari Kaya: Perceptions of Knowledge Systems
Among African Indigenous Knowledge Holders and
Practitioners in KwaZulu-Natal Province (South Africa)
The argument extended is that the test and relevance of any
knowledge system including related capacity building programmes,
is the extent to which it helps to solve life problems, especially
poverty. There is increasing realization among different
stakeholders within and outside Africa that Eurocentric
epistemologies and research methodologies including value systems
have failed to mitigate against Africa’s developmental challenges.
Scientific inquiry should not simply aim to understand, but to
facilitate social change, especially the living conditions of the
marginalized, using their own knowledge systems for them to
control their development processes. Social reality is both
culturally and historically constructed, produced and reproduced
by the people with power to create and transmit “ false
consciousness”. Since from indigenous knowledge perspective there
is no value free science, researchers and knowledge holders must
together go beyond observation to uncover levels of social reality.
Africa’s historical and cultural context of knowledge production is
emphasized to understand the impact of imperialism in its various
manifestations of marginalizing indigenous knowledge systems. This
calls for justice and transformation in the global knowledge
economy.
Yacouba Banhoro: le de la
decine oderne dans la
Lutte Contre les Maladies Sexuellement Transmissibles dans
l’Histoire du Burkina Faso
A travers une recherche historique sur le rôle de la médecine
moderne dans la lutte contre les MST, nous avons essayé de mettre
en exergue différentes phases dans le tratement de lacquestion:
une phase de confusions, une autre de développement de
stratégies qui ont permis de mieux comprendre les pathologies
sexuellement transmissibles et de lever l’équivoque sur les
confusions du passé, et une phase de developpement de politiques
sanitaires. Il est remarquable que les connaissances produites ne
furent pas suffisantes pour lutter contre les MST. Cette ignorance,
accompagnée de l’inaction de l’Etat indépendant jusqu‘à l‘explosion
du VIH/SIDA, a probablement contribué à alourdir le bilan du
VIH/SIDA.Dans la recherche de la lutte contre le VIH/SIDA, la
production de savoirs sur toutes les MST s’est avérée
insdispensable. Mais cela a nécessairement allongé le temps de la
lutte en l’absence de connaissances certaines sur les MST. Il est
même à craindre que les pathologies revélée pendant les
recherches sur les MST soient complétement tombées dans l’oubli
et qu’elles commencent à se répandre à bas bruit à l’insu des
autorités sanitaires. Les processus de recherches scientifiques ont
eut des finalités fonctionnalistes et elles ne sont pas encore bien
institutionalisés au Burkina Faso, ce qui fait de ce pays un terrain
encore vierge en matière de recherche et d’application des résultats
de la recherche non seulement en santé, mais aussi dans les autres
domaines du développement social.
Paul Richards: Local Knowledge: What We Can Learn from
Ebola Virus Disease
Clifford Geertz provided anthropology with a durably influential
assessment of the concept of local knowledge. He rejected an
earlier (racist and sexist) notion that knowledge could be divided
into the products of the logical thinking of civilized males and the
pre-logical (emotional) thinking of 'inferior' races and women, but
also rejected the universalizing ambitions of structuralists such as
Chomsky and Levi-Strauss, concerned to discern beneath varieties
of local expression a pan-human 'deep structure' of language and
thought. In perhaps his boldest move Geertz challenged the notion
of common sense. Yes, hard facts did exist, but these were
unimportant, or perhaps just uninteresting. To Geertz, context was
everything; even common sense varied according to its cultural
context. This offers a clear hypothesis. If cultural context was the
dominant factor in shaping local knowledge then there should be
little change in its content independent of change in cultural
context. The recent large-scale epidemic of Ebola Virus Disease
(EVD) in coastal Upper West Africa (Guinea, Liberia and Sierra
Leone) allows us to test this hypothesis. The virus does not aerosol,
so the disease is not spread through random contact. Infection is
through direct contact with the body fluids of a person with the
disease, or through handling the corpse of someone who has died
of EVD. In every case, spread has occurred through culturally
shaped activities (sex, nursing or burial). If cultural context
determined local knowledge of the disease then we would expect
slow adaptation to infection risks. In fact (as the paper will show)
rapid adaptation to infection risk has terminated the epidemic at a
much faster rate than epidemiological models predicted. This local
practical knowledge basic to epidemic downturn has outrun
scientific knowledge, but is also demonstrably in strong conflict with
local cultural norms, e.g. concerning burial practices. In effect,
cultural norms have been suspended to beat the epidemic. Our
data suggest, therefore, that current local knowledge of EVD in rural
Sierra Leone has an empirical content independent both of scientific
medicine and Geertzian common sense.
Notes
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