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.

For example, during the tournament you would not have heard the passionate cajoling and encouragement of parents and coaches as they cheered on their football playing kids at William Herbert Sports Ground, in Cape Town. From May through September, hundreds of young amateur football players congregated here on Saturday mornings to compete in league and cup matches. Strikingly, the sporting atmosphere lacked the shocking bray of vuvuzelas and the bright egregious accoutrements associated with South African fan culture. While these things added colour to the spectacle outside, as many parents regularly affirmed, they were not part of the fan culture here. They supported their kids by being present, and encouraging them vocally, and sometimes very animatedly, from the sidelines.

While this was the World Cup, there was no sign that the ground or any of the clubs had benefited from the competition going outside its bounds. I broached the subject with one finger-wielding coach. His response: “I am not a racist or anything, but it’s only the black kids that benefit. These kids have been marginalised…the coloured people…I mean just look at the Bafana Bafana squad, all the players were from up North. That tells you something.” It appeared utterances of this ilk, ordinarily unhearable, rang loud and clear when the vuvuzelas were out of sight.

Beyond the sports ground’s desolate soundscape, what could clearly be heard was that Africa was united around the World Cup. Pan-Africanism was one of the fundamental premises of the tournament, bearing itself out in the official slogan, Ke Nako, Celebrate Africa’s Humanity, marketing campaigns, and championed by government officials. Following Bafana Bafana’s untimely first round exit, South Africans switched allegiances to whichever African team participated at the time. With Ghana’s continued success through the knock-out stages, it seemed as if the entire continent stood behind the Black Stars, easily trading national allegiance for continental solidarity.

While the beer flowed and vuvuzelas were being blown in support of the Ghanian team’s strident progress, in black townships across South Africa foreign nationals from various parts of Africa gazed at their television sets in fear, having been issued with a blanket warning that the terminus of the tournament would mark the outbreak of xenophobic violence. On Sunday 13 July, whilst almost 500 million viewers from across the globe tuned in to watch the hard-fought World Cup final, foreign nationals were hastily packing their things and fleeing their township residencies.

The din of Soccer City’s cacophonous vuvuzelas had virtually drowned out the fearful protests lodged by members of this African exodus. As media attention about the situation began to mount, state officials claimed to have heard of no credible shred of evidence supporting what they argued were mere rumours. Arguably, the veracity that lay at the heart of the hushed gossip, hear-say and skinner circulating within South Africa’s townships resonated at a wavelength that was seemingly inaudible to those perched at the highest echelons of government. The state’s response to the volley of public outcry about the looming unrest therefore lent credence to Premesh Lalu’s most recent claim that “noise engulfs truth.” Then again, these were but a few of the many disquieting things we did not seem to notice during the wild festivity that so powerfully swept the world off its feet.

Duane Jethro

Duane Jethro is a PhD Student at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of VU University Amsterdam. His research focuses on post-apartheid cultural heritage initiatives and takes place as part of the NWO project Heritage Dynamics. He is currently conducting fieldwork in South Africa and wrote a number of reports about the World Cup for Standplaats Wereld.

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.

Trying to obtain a university degree in Madagascar is not easy. But in the last five years, a special project has been able to provide 16 Malagasy students with a chance to do fieldwork together with a vazaha (white foreign) student. Malagasy students would usually study theory in town and never do fieldwork in their own country. In 2005 anthropologist and Madagascar-specialist Sandra Evers was able to set up a project between the VU and the University of Antananarivo, generously sponsored by the Dutch NGO ICCO. Teams of VU students and Malagasy students went to the field for three months to do research on diverse topics. Through the years the many theses written on land related issues became a specialization.

Halfway through the project, in 2007, a symposium was held in Antsirabe, Madagascar. 28 June 2010 saw its sequel in a Madagascar Symposium held at the VU in Amsterdam, where several speakers shared their insights on the topic: Whose Development? A Critical Lens on Development Issues in Contemporary Africa and Madagascar.

The morning’s program kicked off with Professor Stephen Ellis, who gave a thought-provoking lecture on the postcolonial situation of Africa in general and Madagascar in particular, ending with a plea to rethink the recent situation of post-postcolonial Africa. Professor Ellis postulated that Africa is currently more dependent on outside economic and political organisations than ever.

His contribution was followed by that of Jan van Doggenaar, International Program Director of ICCO, who gave an insightful speech about the changes in development approaches in general, and especially about the changed methods of ICCO during the past 50 years. This Dutch NGO has grown out to be a renowned intermediary, actively working together with local Southern partner NGO’s and agencies.

In the afternoon program, I was given the chance to report about my own research in a rural Malagasy village. I argued that a village is far from a homogeneous bunch of poor people. In fact the different groups and factions within a rural Malagasy village can cause intricacies and difficulties for development projects, like the land certification project I did research on.

Then, the floor was given to former VU anthropology student Caroline Seagle, whose 2009 fieldwork in South East Madagascar on large-scale mining was the basis of her fascinating lecture. Her research showed how a large mining corporation has driven hundreds of people from their land. While the corporation sees itself as minimizing the environmental damage and providing excellent development projects and opportunities to the original inhabitants, her research also emphasized the negative impacts of these Malagasy farmers on the biodiversity of flora and fauna. However, the Malagasy are put in a difficult situation due to the mining project and have not gained what they might expect from these “development projects”.

The symposium was ended with a highlight: the presentation of the new issue of Madagascar’s social science journal Taloha, which was proudly presented to Jan van Doggenaar of ICCO by Chantal Radimilahy of the University of Antananarivo. ICCO’s support to the research project has been crucial for the publication of the new issue. The new issue Madagascar Contemporain et les Objectifs du Millénaire pour le Développement / Contemporary Madagascar and the Millennium Development Goals, which was the result of the 2007 symposium in Antsirabe, shows how fruitful the relations between the VU, the University of Antananarivo, ICCO and the 16 couples of Western and Malagasy students can be.

Aliene van Dijk is a Master’s student in Social and Cultural Anthropology at VU University Amsterdam.

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.   

In Bishkek, however, the only sign of this aggression was a modest pile of foodstuff and other goods brought to the central square in order to be transported to the affected areas. Even more astonishing, little reminded of the street revolution in early April, during which president Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted from power. Marks of destruction on a few government buildings were the only visible testimonies of this event that had sparked the political instability leading to the ethnic clashes in the south.  

Central square in Bishkek with a destroyed house on the side

The violent protests of April were the culmination of a larger opposition action, nurtured by widespread resentment over nepotism and corruption in the presidential administration. While the president and his family managed to enrich themselves, mainly by crony privatizations, the already impoverished population of Kyrgyzstan was faced by an increasingly desperate economic situation coupled with large tax increases and price hikes in energy and other commodities.  

Bakiyev could have expected large-scale protests: he himself had come to power in 2005 on the waves of the “Tulip Revolution”, a similar street revolution in which his predecessor, Askar Akayev, had been ousted for broadly similar reasons. In fact, I was told that in earlier large-scale protests against Bakiyev’s rule, the opposition had been careful not to demand his resignation, as “we did not want to have a new Tulip Revolution each year.”  

It is likely that the history of the 2005 Tulip Revolution gave people confidence that it was possible to overthrow the government despite the violent attempt to crack down on the protests. On the other hand, the long term failure of the Tulip Revolution could also have worked as a deterrent for new actions. Back in 2005, the overthrow of Akayev had resulted in the coming to power of Bakiyev, who subsequently gained the reputation of being a much worse president; especially by people in the north (Bakiyev had his support base in the south of the country).  

So – apart from the obvious resentment over Bakiyev’s policies, what were people’s immediate motives to join the April protests, even when these turned violent? One of the reasons seemed to have been the arrest of several opposition leaders on April 6, one day before large-scale protests throughout the country had been announced. According to several informants, most politicians have a support base that is, for a large part, formed through family and clan ties. Thus, as one person put it, “people just came to the protests [in Talas and Bishkek] because they were worried about their relatives.”  

Another person present at the protests in Bishkek mentioned his anger over the situation in Talas (north-west Kyrgyzstan), where protests had started one day earlier and the government was violently cracking down on the opposition: “On the radio, they [government representatives] said that they had everything under control. But my brother told me there was chaos. They were lying to us, and that is why I went to protest.”  

Finally, several people mentioned the importance of the 2005 revolution in establishing a frame for political action. In a country where there is little possibility for official political participation, many people “see going to the street as the epitome of democracy”.  Overthrowing the government thereby becomes the possible substitute for voting them out.  

How sustainable is such a situation? On the one hand, it is obvious that most people – and especially those from the north – were happy to get rid of Bakiyev. On the other hand, most people do not seem to have high expectations from the new government either. The high approval rates for the interim government and the new constitution as seen in the national referendum seem to have been caused more by the desire for political stability than by a real enthusiasm over the new leaders. It is therefore to be hoped that the interim  government, now that it has been legitimized by the referendum, will be able to change the political system sufficiently for the people not to feel the need to overthrow the government in able to be heard.  

Amieke Bouma is a PhD student at the History Department of VU University Amsterdam. She carries out historical anthropological research on Kyrgyzstan. Her full report of her recent visit to Kyrgyzstan, including an eye-witness account of the events of April 6-7, can be found on the Euopean Studies website of the University of Amsterdam.  

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.

The VU is generally seen as the Dutch university with the most ethnically diverse student body, yet the students – despite certain tentative attempts at “internationalization” – are overwhelmingly from the Netherlands and most use Dutch as their first language. It follows that the tasks of “intercultural learning” will be different from the usual framework, which has been developed to deal with the learning habits of students from other countries who are non-native speakers of the language of instruction.

It is far from clear to what extent the ethnic background of the students’ families — as opposed to, for example, their class background or place of residence — will be the most important determinant of their learning habits. Yet the email from the Onderwijscentrum identifies “learning to stimulate the learning of students from diverse ethnic groups” as the objective of the training.

On the other hand, the elements of the training — making a videorecording of one’s own classroom teaching and then analysing it — are in the self-reflexive mode that we find useful.

It would be good if colleagues in anthropology followed this training and offered their views on its usefulness.

Pál Nyiri is Professor of Global History from an Anthropological Perspective at the VU University. See his earlier posts on Standplaats Wereld. He also writes regularly for the Culture Matters and China Can’t Stop Saying No weblogs.

Foto door Abiola Lapite

Door Jethro Alons De eerste wedstrijd van Nederland tegen Denemarken keek ik bij een vriend van mij. Toen we tijdens de rust bij hem voor de deur stonden, gekleed in onze oranje shirts, toeterden veel auto’s naar ons en juichten de inzittenden ons toe, waarop wij natuurlijk vrolijk terug juichten. Wat mij opviel was dat veel automobilisten van origine geen Nederlanders waren. Als antropoloog vond ik dit heel interessant. Hoe kan het dat mensen die elkaar totaal niet kennen elkaar toejuichen wanneer “ons” elftal speelt?

Mijn tweede ervaring was op de Grote Markt in Den Haag. Hier vierde ik – en vele andere in het oranje geklede mensen – op grote wijze de overwinning op Uruguay en het behalen van de finale plaats. Na uren van juichen, zingen en het feliciteren van mij totaal onbekende mensen, is de antropoloog in mij toch weer gaan nadenken. In mijn euforie dacht ik: “Is dit het? Is hij hier te vinden? Is dit de Nederlandse identiteit?”

De laatste jaren is er een maatschappelijk debat aan de gang over het wel of niet bestaan van de Nederlandse identiteit, recentelijk ook op Standplaats Wereld (zie de eerdere berichten van mij en van Maarten Deprez). De Nederlandse identiteit zou niet bestaan. En als hij wel bestaat, dan is hij zo divers en dynamisch dat hij niet meer definieerbaar is. Maar ik denk nu dat onze nationale identiteit wel bestaat. Hij is te vinden in een spel waar 22 man tegen een bal aanschoppen.

Wanneer Nederlanders spreken over het Nederlands elftal dan spreken zij meestal van “wij”. “Wij gaan winnen” of  “wij worden kampioen”. Is het niet vreemd om van een collectieve prestatie van een land te spreken, terwijl slechts elf jongens deze prestatie leveren. Hierin is duidelijk een collectieve identiteit merkbaar wanneer wij ons zo identificeren met het Nederlands elftal.

Een belangrijke bijdrage aan deze collectieve identiteit is de kleur oranje van het Nederlandse team en de supporters. Dit is een duidelijk symbool dat ons Nederlands-zijn markeert – en recentelijk ook mensen die een affiniteit met Nederland of het Nederlands voetbal hebben. Het is een symbool dat ons uniek maakt als land, supporters en inwoners. Er zijn veel nationale teams die in bijvoorbeeld rood of blauw gehuld zijn, terwijl er maar één team is dat in oranje speelt. Dit maakt oranje heel duidelijk “onze” kleur, en maakt ons ook herkenbaar voor andere landen. De oude “typisch Nederlandse” symbolen zoals klompen, windmolens en tulpen zijn allang niet meer van toepassing op de Nederlandse identiteit. Maar oranje is nog altijd een heel actueel symbool voor Nederland en Nederlanders.

Het creëren van een nationale identiteit  door sport is geen nieuw fenomeen. De film Invictus is hiervan een mooi voorbeeld. Deze film is het waar gebeurde verhaal van Nelson Mandela in het postapartheid Zuid-Afrika die een nationale identiteit probeert te creëren. Hij gebruikt hiervoor rugby, dat als een blanke sport werd gezien, om de zwarte en blanke bevolking samen te brengen en een eenheid te creëren.

Kortom er bestaat wel degelijk de Nederlandse identiteit, of althans een aspect ervan, en deze is terug te vinden in voetbal. Wanneer we nationale identiteiten onderzoeken, is het van belang goed te kijken naar massale uitingen van nationale trots en saamhorigheid, zoals bij dit WK het geval is. Dit kan tot belangrijke inzichten leiden. En nu maar hopen dat we de finale winnen!

Jethro Alons is  student culturele antropologie aan de Vrije Universiteit. Hij schreef eerder op Standplaats Wereld over Henk en Ingrid , Apple as religion en over een gastcollege van Harvey Whitehouse. Andere berichten in de serie World Cup mania zijn geschreven door Duane Jethro vanuit Zuid-Afrika. Martijn de Koning schreef op zijn weblog over hetzelfde thema: Orange Fever: Notes on the Worldcup, football, nationalism and Deep Play in the Netherlands.

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.

If in the months leading up to the World Cup South Africans lacked a term to describe the achy, charged sensations evoked by the news of the impending tournament, then Hyundai provided them with a concise, lofty expression describing the religious like atmosphere that was being conjured up. Gees is an Afrikaans word meaning spirit or ghost, and is specifically rooted in Christian religious rhetoric. Through their marketing campaign, Hyundai have therefore attempted to tap into the almost transcendent sentiments associated with the World Cup. At the same time, as far as religion is a cultural phenomenon, the company has also seemed to have spawned an invented tradition.

That said, the emergence of this term can not simply be put down to the heavenly financial gains the Hyundai company would reap from this branding exercise, since religion has been a pervasive feature of this World Cup. Examples abound. Prior to the start of the tournament, FIFA™ was alerted to the widespread use of a combination of traditional pharmacopeia and religious practices that were employed widely across the African continent as a means of improving on field performance. In that instance, FIFA™ lowered their gaze from the heavens and the efficacy of divine influence and focused instead on the as yet unknown potency of potions that formed part of many African football teams’ performance improving regimes.

In another instance, the ground upon which the opening game was to be staged at Soccer City had to be consecrated by members of the Traditional Healers Council, ‘as a means of blessing the stadium as a symbol of welcome to the nations that are coming, and calm the ancestors who may be frightened by the many different languages spoken by foreign fans’. The ritual included the burning of incense and special medicines, and the slaughtering of a cow, since bovine symbolized strength and would aid global camaraderie since the specimen sacrificed in this instance was “a unifying cow”.

Hyundai were onto something when they erected their massive vuvuzela on the unfinished flyover, since there was some truth to the idea that the vuvuzela resonated with real religious power. While the plastics manufacturing company Mascincedane Sports could be credited with popularising the instrument during the 2000’s, it was the Shembe Church that claimed original ownership of the horn. For members of this congregation, their horn, known as the imbomu, has been used in their most sacred religious rituals since 1910. In the wake of the vuvuzela’s increasing popularity, the church came out forcefully against it, protesting not at the fact revenue that was being generated by their sacred horn, but the theft of their religious power. As one member of the Church declared, “when people are playing football and hearing the vuvuzela they are getting the power of our Holy Spirit”. In that sense, while it may not always sound like it, this tournament may certainly be blessed.

Duane Jethro

Duane Jethro is a PhD Student at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of VU University Amsterdam. His research focuses on post-apartheid cultural heritage initiatives and takes place as part of the NWO project Heritage Dynamics. He is currently conducting fieldwork in South Africa and regularly writes reports about the World Cup for Standplaats Wereld.

Steminkt

Lidewyde Berckmoes doet onderzoek met jongeren in Burundi. Eind mei vonden er de gemeenteverkiezingen plaats. Tegen de verwachtingen in, leden oppositiepartijen een grote nederlaag, waarop zij zich terugtrokken uit de presidentiële verkiezingen van twee dagen geleden. Zij wilden niet deelnemen aan oneerlijke, ‘gestolen’, verkiezingen. In het land is het sindsdien onrustig. Gelaten wacht iedereen af wat de toekomst brengt. Oorlog, dictatuur, of is er toch nog kans op  vrede en democratie?

Sinds kort heb ik het gevoel dat ik een vreemde ben in dit land. Ik ben mijn feeling kwijt met wat er speelt. Het begon op de dag van de start van de presidentiële verkiezingscampagne, ongeveer 2 weken geleden. Ik zat bij een Ethiopisch restaurantje met wat vrienden toen de eerste smsjes over granaataanvallen in de stad binnenkwamen.

Vier granaten: twee in populaire buitenwijken, één bij een lokale bar, één midden in het centrum voor de ingang van het luxueus hotel dat voorheen Novotel heette en nog steeds bij die naam bekend staat. Er waren gewonden, geen doden gelukkig. Sinds die avond valt er iedere avond ten minste één granaat. Vaak in de hoofdstad, maar ook elders in het land. Niemand weet echt wie erachter zit. Oppositiepartijen beschuldigen de overheid, overheid de oppositie. ‘Een onverzadigbaar fantoom’, volgens een lokale krant.

Vlag van de partij aan de macht

Een paar dagen later zat ik in het binnenland, in Ruyigi. ’s Avonds stuurde een Nederlandse vriendin me een bezorgd smsje om te zeggen dat ik beter binnen kon blijven, want het was erg onrustig in de hoofdstad. Er gingen geruchten over geplande aanvallen. Ze was even vergeten dat ik buiten de stad was. De Burundese collega’s met wie ik voor het avondeten in een restaurantje zat, kregen ook aan de lopende band angstige berichtjes van familieleden uit de hoofdstad. Eén dame aan tafel keek bezorgd omhoog naar een klein ruitje ongeveer 3 meter boven ons hoofd. ‘We hebben onze tafel niet zo strategisch gekozen’, merkte ze op, ‘ze zouden daar een granaat door kunnen gooien en dan zitten wij er direct onder’. Alle andere tafels waren leeg, maar niemand stond op om te gaan verzitten. Niemand leek zich te willen overgeven aan die angst.

Een week ervoor vroeg een vrouw me nog of ik niet bang was om in Burundi te zijn, een land dat net uit de oorlog komt. Ik antwoordde steevast: ‘Ik word pas bang als de lokale bevolking ook bang wordt’. Maar nu het zover lijkt te zijn, weet ik het niet goed. Moet ik nu bang zijn? Ik voel eerder een mengeling van teleurstelling en boosheid. Al weet ik niet zo goed op wie ik boos moet zijn.

Weer terug in de hoofdstad, sprak ik er met een paar jongeren uit mijn onderzoek over. Zij leken niet zo bang. Maar was dat omdat er toch niet zoveel is om zorgen over te maken, of ligt hun ‘alarmgrens’ hoger? De buitenwijken waar zij vandaan komen zijn de afgelopen decennia tenslotte zwaarder getroffen door het geweld dan de meeste andere plaatsen in het land. Ze zijn wel wat gewend. Ik herinner me dat toen ik een paar maanden geleden een jongen vertelde dat ik niet zo goed had geslapen nadat ik geweerschoten in mijn buurt had gehoord, hij merkte op dat er bij hem altijd een soort warme jeugdherinneringen opkwamen als hij dat weer eens hoorde na lange tijd.

De geruchtenmolen draait in ieder geval op volle toeren. De belangrijkste oppositiekandidaat, en tot 2008 rebellenlegerleider, is sinds een paar dagen uit het zicht verdwenen. Hij zou gevlucht zijn om in Congo weer een rebellenleger op te bouwen, of om arrest te voorkomen, of hij is gewoon op vakantie? In de populaire wijken waar ik onderzoek doe, zouden ook een aantal jongeren zijn verdwenen, wellicht om zich aan te sluiten bij de rebellen. Bovendien zouden er wapens ingezameld worden onder de ex-strijders, en een vreemde vracht zou zijn aangekomen op het vliegveld van Bujumbura. Het is moeilijk om te zeggen of deze geruchten gevoed worden door alleen angst, of ook door concrete aanwijzingen. Het gerucht dat de hoofdstad zou worden gebombardeerd op de dag van de verkiezingen, eergisteren, bleek gelukkig niet waar te zijn.

Lokale stembureau Cibitoke

Op zijn of haar manier probeert iedereen zich een beetje in te dekken. Ik ook. Toch maar de nummers van veiligheidsexperts noteren, misschien wat extra eten inslaan, ‘s avonds wat vroeger naar huis dan anders, extra batterijen voor de radio om op de hoogte te blijven van het laatste nieuws, extra krediet voor de telefoon, en misschien voorlopig even niet naar de Havana club, want, als ik het fantoom was en de expatgemeenschap wilde raken, dan zou ik daar als eerste toeslaan. Op mijn vraag hoe Burundese jongeren hiermee omgaan, antwoordde een jongeman me: ‘als het oorlog wordt, dan is het niet onze eerste keer. We zullen veel lijden, heel veel lijden. Maar we weten hoe we moeten vluchten.’ Hij probeert de situatie zo kalm mogelijk te benaderen.

Misschien ben ik toch niet mijn feeling kwijt met wat er speelt, maar is dat het precies: een onbestemd gevoel. ‘De tijd zal het ons leren,’ de frase die mij hier al tig keer is verteld, krijgt steeds meer betekenis voor me.

Lidewyde Berckmoes is promovenda aan de Afdeling Sociale en Culturele Antropologie van de VU. Op het moment is ze in Burundi voor haar onderzoek naar de rol van jeugd in vredesopbouw. Op Standplaats Wereld schreef ze eerder over Burundi Bakstenen en wantrouwen, Over demobilisatie en (on)vrede en Vergeten we Burundi?

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.

Just then an excited female South African fan comes bounding by, blasting her vuvuzela wildly past the gentleman’s face. “Blaas it in’ie lig, nie in ons gesigte nie” [Blow it up in the air, not in people’s faces] he complains. “Haybo Mr, this is South Africa, vuvuzela is our culture”.

This notion had been pointed out to me some days before already when I approached an elderly lady to find out how she felt about vuvuzelas and the idea that it was an African thing. She emphatically declared that “my boy, [the vuvuzela] is our culture. You must be proud. This is your inheritance. This is what we struggled for during apartheid”.

Outside of the fan park, the word culture is inescapable, featuring daily in the print and digital media, in advertisements and in the conversation of everyday, ordinary people. And in most cases these discussions about culture probably had to do with vuvuzelas. This little plastic horn, in the context of all the media attention during the World Cup, has really got South Africans talking about national culture and cultural identity.

The incidents cited above highlight three of the most common ways the vuvuzela elicited the word culture amongst the South African public. In the first instance, culture is something that is to be put on display, on show, out in the public, as a mark of the nation’s cultural distinctiveness. Secondly, culture is invoked as a means of defense when questions about the legitimacy or tastefulness of certain beliefs and practices are raised. Thirdly, culture is something which cannot be explained but its existence is always beyond question.

The way people talk about culture here is not unique, but it is really interesting because, since the fall of apartheid, South Africans have struggled to forge a truly united national identity. During this time, sport has emerged as one of a few common denominators that touch the hearts of South Africans from all walks of life. This has lead many to suggest that the World Cup has been a real plus for helping to unite the nation. As a friend of mine remarked, seeing the number of South Africans in the stadiums out to watch the games, suggested to him that the kind of togetherness the tournament fostered is priceless.

All this engagement with and about culture does have its drawbacks. Since the start of the World Cup there has been an outbreak of a condition known as vuvuzela lips – a particular cracking and swelling of the front, centre lip tissue, not unlike a bee sting, that results from excessive, rapturous blasting of the horn. Like I said at the beginning, culture is on everybody’s lips.

Duane Jethro

Duane Jethro is a PhD Student at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of VU University Amsterdam. His research focuses on post-apartheid cultural heritage initiatives and takes place as part of the NWO project Heritage Dynamics. He is currently conducting fieldwork in South Africa and regularly writes reports about the World Cup for Standplaats Wereld.

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.

Andras Kovats, a sociologist of migration who is the director of Menedek, an organisation for migrants of which I am a member, has recently given an interview to a news site. He talked about immigration, “integration,” and the responsibility of the host society, taking what can be described a moderate left-liberal position (for Dutch readers: something along the lines of D66). Immigrants are only 2% of Hungary’s population, and most of those are ethnic Hungarians (who come from neighbouring areas that used to belong to Hungary before 1919), so that immigration is not a major political issue.

What is a major issue is the position of the Gypsies, some 6% of the population, largely living in extreme poverty and suffering severe discrimination. The party Jobbik gained almost 20% of the votes in a recent election after a campaign focusing on  ”Gypsy crime.” This is the party that Wilders refused to sit in the same faction with in the European Parliament, because it is also anti-Semitic and homophobic. Its anti-Semitism does not prevent it from being anti-Arab when it comes to “keeping Europe white.”

The idea that Gypsies are to Eastern Europe what Arabs are to Western Europe is remarkably popular with Hungarian commentators of all political hues, whether they see them as a cultural threat or as an ethnicized, excluded underclass. Andras, too, invoked this parallel in his interview — a parallel that I believe has only limited validity (in many ways, a parallel with Aboriginal Australians is more accurate).

Andras invited us to comment, but when I looked at the comments of earlier readers I realised that there would be no point. These comments ranged from “damned Gypsy-whitewashers” to “there should just not be any Arabs or blacks in the German football team.” It is fascinating how the issue of immigration can serve as a proxy for the airing of racist views in a country with almost no immigration at all, but, clearly, this was not the place to engage in such elevated discussions. I envy my Dutch colleagues the discursive space they have. Clearly, however bad Wilders is, this is a far cry from what is happening in Hungary.

Pál Nyiri is Professor of Global History from an Anthropological Perspective at VU University Amsterdam. He earlier wrote about the ethnic politics of Jobbik in Hungary. See also his other posts.

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”.Moments of being are temporal fragments of time when we are perfectly conscious of our surroundings. This moment could also be described as an experience of the world as a genuinely meaningful entity beyond seemingly trivial details. Moments of being are memorable – we can recall the exact same situation accurately even after a long time has passed.

Rubbing Akosua’s skin on that Sunday morning was probably one of such “moments of being” during my fieldwork on the Ghanaian beauty culture in Accra. I can remember the smell of the shea butter as vividly as if it were right now, at the moment of writing, on my hands. I remember the smoothness of her skin, the kind of velvety surface that using those rich, dense, oily creams brings about. I remember her mother’s smile when she came to the room and said: “Anna, you are trying, looks good. Now hurry up, we are late for church.”

Woolf opposes moments of being to “cotton-wool”, the flow of time consisting of routine actions, events and details that are easily forgotten, such as walking and eating. Sometimes I felt the need for more cotton-wool. Exhausted of the noteworthy details in every conversation, public sign, smell, advertisement, dress, hairstyle, way of walking and painted nail, I would escape to an air-conditioned cafeteria that appeared as the most “meaningless” place to be. There would certainly be nothing special to see, hear, feel, taste or smell.

How wrong. That cool, luminous, pastel-colored space occupied by Ghanaian corporates and foreign diplomats was far from cotton-wool. Now, different meanings would emerge. It seemed that the “temperature of globalization” never exceeded +23, according to the digital numbers on the air conditioner placed in a visible place beside the counter. When it showed +25, the clients would complain. In this temperature, it was easy to be “beautiful”: no sweat, no dust, no loose hair, no oily faces.

Interestingly, fieldwork experience seems to cultivate the skill of noticing details in “cotton-wool”, even in spaces and instances that could be regarded as the most familiar. At least all the five senses tune into a more receptive mode, which does not necessarily “switch off” at home. Can we sense “the field” in our backyards, bathrooms, grocery stores, jogging routes and favorite cafés? Is cycling a means of transport, or a journey? Ultimately, are we “in the field”, or is the field in us?

Anna-Rika Kauppinen is a Master’s student in Social and Cultural Anthropology at VU University Amsterdam.