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Blogs ingedeeld als ‘English posts’

World Cup Mania: Beyond the vuvuzela

22/07/2010 · Geef een reactie

By Duane Jethro Since the conclusion of the World Cup, questions have been raised about what could be done with the vuvuzelas accumulated during the tournament. In response, the renowned South African cartoonist Zapiro offered a few creative, novel suggestions in one of his weekly sketches for the Sunday Times. These included deafened fans using their vuvuzelas as a hearing aid, following Paris Hilton’s lead and using it as a cannabis pipe, or as the case may be with recently sacked coach Raymond Domenech, using it as a receptacle for collecting change from the public while begging on the street.

Just as the vuvuzela’s uses as a material object were open to a multiplicity of reinterpretations, the horn has also lent itself to myriad symbolic readings that connected it to notions of culture, religion and social identities. In that case, we could perhaps find another, alternate use for the vuvuzela, using it telescopically to look back and scan the uproarious terrain of the World Cup and canvass some of the things that had been overlooked and not really heard. (meer…)

Categorieën: English posts · Globalisering & Ontwikkeling · Identiteit & Religie · Regio Afrika
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Whose Development? A Critical Lens on Development in Africa and Madagascar.

20/07/2010 · Geef een reactie

Photo by Sandra Evers

By Aliene van Dijk I still remember vividly the expectations that I had of visiting one of the libraries supposedly holding anthropological studies in Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo. I naively thought that even in a country as poor as Madagascar, at least the library would be decent. But it proved quite a deception. In a small one-room building, with walls covered in old books, I found out that reality was different. Sitting on the floor and looking through a very old-fashioned cabinet of cards to look up relevant material, my research partner and I found none. It would probably be interesting for a historian, since the books were so old, but for present-day anthropological fieldwork it was not very useful. ‘How can they study in these circumstances?’, I thought.

(meer…)

Categorieën: Antropologie & Wetenschap · English posts · Globalisering & Ontwikkeling · Regio Afrika
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Democracy, Kyrgyz-style

15/07/2010 · Geef een reactie

Remnants of a destroyed government building in Bishkek (photos by Amieke Bouma)

By Amieke Bouma  

On the 27th of June, a nation-wide referendum confirmed Roza Otunbayeva as the new president of Kyrgyzstan. The referendum was endorsed by most international actors, despite the fact that they had not sent any observers. This was deemed too dangerous due to the violent situation in the south of the country. The relative calm during the referendum therefore obviously caused relief. Only a week before, I had also been astonished by the quiet situation in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek. Ethnic violence was raging between the Kyrgyz and the large Uzbek minority living in the Ferghana valley in the south of Kyrgyzstan, in which an estimated 2000 people died, and another 400.000 fled their homes. (meer…)

Categorieën: English posts · Oorlog & Vrede · Politiek & Burgerschap · Regio Azie
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Interculturalism at the VU

13/07/2010 · Geef een reactie

Pál Nyíri

By Pál Nyiri I have recently received an email from the Onderwijscentrum VU (also known as the  Centre for Educational Training, Assessment and Research, or CETAR) announcing a training  called ‘intercultureel werken in het onderwijs’ (Working interculturally in education). In Seeing Culture Everywhere, Joana Breidenbach and I painted a critical, perhaps even somewhat unkind, picture of the intercultural communication (IC) business, arguing that it often amounts to little more than ethnic stereotyping couched in pseudo-scientific terms like Geert Hofstede’s “cultural dimensions”. At the same time, we acknowledge that there is a useful kind of IC training, which focuses on making participants reflect on the inherent cultural biases of their own practices they might see as universal. (meer…)

Categorieën: De Lage Landen · English posts · Multicultureel & Migratie
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World Cup Mania: Feel the Gees

07/07/2010 · Geef een reactie

Hyundai's giant vuvuzela (picture by Duane Jethro)

By Duane Jethro The car company Hyundai has come up with a solution for those whom the expression “Feel It. It Is Here” has no real emotive purchase. In support of their slogan for the World Cup, “We bring the Gees”, the company has erected a 37 metre long vuvuzela on an abandoned flyover in Cape Town’s city centre. To affirm their commitment to pumping up the World Cup spirit, the instrument is not merely a striking piece of visual advertising, but sonically brings the company slogan to life as a fully operational noise making instrument.

Intended to be sounded off every time a goal was scored during the tournament, the giant trumpet’s sonic booms have, however, been curtailed by the city council on the grounds that it would seriously disrupt traffic at the major intersection below. While the project has been a failure in this sense, it has succeeded in promoting the notion of gees and linking it with vuvuzelas. (meer…)

Categorieën: Antropologie & Wetenschap · English posts · Identiteit & Religie · Ondernemerschap & Organisaties · Regio Afrika
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World Cup Mania: Talking about Culture

28/06/2010 · 1 reactie

Dutch Fan Culture

By Duane Jethro Culture is on everybody’s lips. Another game at the fan park: Spain vs Switzerland, if I remember correctly. Cold beer in hand, I am engaging in conversation with a middle-aged gentleman about the World Cup vibe. It’s a chilly, grey day and the sparse crowd is quiet, subdued, passively absorbing Spain’s demise. Minutes later, a group of about 10 or so excited Bafana Bafana supporters congregate in my vicinity and start generating some gees. They sing popular local songs in isiXhosa, and blow their vuvuzelas in time to the tune, all the while drawing foreign bystanders into the enticing rhythm.

The scene is priceless and I remark that once people get hold of vuvuzelas they go mad. “Ja, ma wat kan jy doen is os culture”, [Yes, but what can you do, it’s our culture], he replies curtly. “A culture van geraas maak en tekeere gaan?” [A culture of making a noise and showing off], I cheekily quip. “En Party” [And partying], he adds, and we both laugh.

(meer…)

Categorieën: English posts · Identiteit & Religie · Regio Afrika
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Putting Wilders in perspective

26/06/2010 · Geef een reactie

Gypsies performing (photo: stevenimmons)

By Pál Nyiri I watch with a certain envy how my colleagues take part in discussions of and protests against the PVV’s growing strength and its position on immigration. After a year in the Netherlands, I do not yet feel confident enough to participate in these debates myself, and there may be no need for it: anthropologists are perhaps represented with enough voices.

For the time being, I feel more closely connected, and more responsible, for what is happening in Hungarian politics, my country of birth, although I am growing increasingly alienated from it because I feel that the space in which any reasoned discussion of immigration is possible has shrunk to naught with the rapid shift of public discourse to higher and higher levels of nationalism and xenophobia. (meer…)

Categorieën: De Lage Landen · Discriminatie & Man/vrouw · English posts · Identiteit & Religie · Multicultureel & Migratie · Politiek & Burgerschap · Regio Europa
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Fieldwork 2010: The Lingering Field

23/06/2010 · Geef een reactie

Anna-Riikka Kauppinen reports from Ghana regarding her research on beauty centers. This post is part of the fieldwork 2010 series.

Shea butter is warming up in my hands. I rub my palms together in order to dissolve the waxy texture into a soft and glowing substance. Akosua, 3 years old, is sitting still on the bed. I start applying the cream over her tiny body. First come the shoulders, neck and back. She raises her hands so that I can rub the armpits and stands up to let me work on the belly, buttocks, tights, legs, feet and toes. Lastly, I gently rub her cheeks and forehead.

Fieldwork could be compared with what Virginia Woolf calls balancing between “moments of being” and “moments of non-being”. (meer…)

Categorieën: Antropologie & Wetenschap · English posts · Regio Afrika
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World Cup Mania: Ke nako, feel it is here!

20/06/2010 · Geef een reactie

Aged supporter in Cape Town (all pictures by Duane Jethro)

By Duane Jethro Ke Nako is a Sotho phrase that roughly translates into “it is here” or “it is time”. Playing on this traditional term, the South African Broadcasting Corporation sought to tap into the charged feelings of anticipation and excitement with the prospect of the looming World Cup, with its own slogan, Feel It is Here. On June 11th, 2010, it arrived. The day marked a watershed moment in South Africa’s history, as the nation celebrated the opening of the highly anticipated FIFA 2010 World Cup™, to be staged on home soil. World Cup day, as it may be termed, was not only eagerly anticipated, it was also raucously celebrated. (meer…)

Categorieën: English posts · Globalisering & Ontwikkeling · Regio Afrika
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World Cup Mania: what’s the vuvuzela about?

16/06/2010 · Geef een reactie

Duane about to blow the vuvuzela

In our new series on the Football World Cup, Duane Jethro will regularly report from South Africa. Duane is currently doing his PhD research in his home-country, looking at cultural heritage initiatives in the post-apartheid era. The World Cup, with its articulations of a (putative) South African authentic culture, has become an important site of Duane’s investigations. In this first part of the series we’ll reproduce Duane’s report on the festivities in the context of the World Cup’s final draw, in which he discusses an object that has recently become somewhat controversial in the Netherlands: the vuvuzela. What does the vuvuzela stand for and where does it come from? (meer…)

Categorieën: English posts · Globalisering & Ontwikkeling · Regio Afrika
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