Blogs ingedeeld als ‘English posts’
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
getagged: Duane Jethro, South Africa, vuvuzela, World Cup, World Cup mania
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
getagged: Aliene van Dijk, Caroline Seagle, development, ICCO, Madagascar, postcolonial Africa, Stephen Elllis
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
getagged: Akayev, Amieke Bouma, Askar Akayev, Bakiyev, Bishkek, democracy, ethnic violence, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, Kyrgyzstan, Otunbayeva, Roza Otunbayeva, Tulip revolution
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
getagged: IC, intercultural communication, interculturele communicatie, Pal Nyiri, Vrije Universiteit, VU
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
getagged: Cape Town, Duane Jethro, FIFA, Gees, Hyuandai, Soccer City, vuvuzela, World Cup, World Cup mania
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
getagged: integratie, Wilders, nationalisme, Pal Nyiri, Hungary, nationalism, Gypsies, immigration, xenophobia, immigratie, xenofobie, Menedek, Andras Kovats, integration
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
getagged: Ghana, Accra, Fieldwork 2010, beauty, Virginia Woolf
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
getagged: Duane Jethro, FIFA, South Africa, vuvuzela, World Cup, World Cup mania
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.
