Of Non-native Cultivation: The Indigenization of the Arabic language in Nigerian Arabic Novels

The Majlis at the ANU: A cross-disciplinary roundtable on historical and contemporary issues across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia

Fri 21 Oct 2022, 1–2pm (AEDT, UTC+11), Online via Zoom
The use of indigenized Arabic forms a collective identity for the Nigerian writers of Arabic to distinguish their literary outputs from other Arabic literary productions…

Decolonial Gazing and Hermeneutic Resistance: Black German Challenges to White German Cultural Hegemony in the Museum

Tomorrow, Thurs 6/10 @4:30pm AEDT (with apologies for late posting)

This work in progress essay highlights the ways that Black Europeans, in this case in the German context, challenge universalizing notions of cultural heritage to highlight decolonial possibilities and interrogate the collection, display, and spectatorship of museum objects in majority-white contexts. I use the Berlin Ethnological museum in its former and current iterations as a representative example of debates about collecting and looking at museums, showing how thinkers like Fatima El-Tayeb and Kum’a Ndumbe III and initiatives like No Humboldt21! offer challenges to universalizing discourses and reflect the gaze back on whiteness. Finally, I offer a reading of a literary challenge to this universalism in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s 2021 novel Adas Raum (Ada’s Realm).

Maureen Gallagher is a lecturer in German Studies at ANU. She holds a PhD in German Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is currently working on a book manuscript on whiteness in Wilhelmine German youth literature and culture based on her dissertation. Her research and teaching interests include race and gender in German colonial literature, Black German Studies, connections between German Studies and Indigenous Studies, and inclusive, anti-racist and decolonial teaching practices.

Details and Zoom link here.

Transforming Small-Scale Irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa

Thursday, 13 October 2022, 2–5pm

Small-scale irrigation schemes have been identified as a major vehicle to improve the livelihood of smallholder farmers and their communities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), including improving food security, education, health and adapting to climate change.

The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) funded the project Transforming Small-scale Irrigation in Southern Africa (TISA) from 2013. The proposal was to use innovative institutions and technologies to address the complex set of challenges and barriers inhibiting the profitability of this sector, and its ability to initiate the process of transforming small scale irrigation schemes from underperforming to sustainable and profitable systems.

This session will report on the outcomes of the first nine years of TISA, which has had a remarkable impact on the livelihoods of smallholder farming families. We also outline our vision for how this success should inform a future program to develop circular food systems to accelerate sustainable rural development.

Speakers

  • Prof Jamie Pittock, ANU
  • Dr Mario Chilundo, Eduardo Mondale University
  • Dr Luitfred Kissoly, Ardhi University
  • Thabani Dube. International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
  • Dr Richard Stirzaker, CSIRO
  • PhD Candidate Karen Parry, UniSA
  • PhD Candidate Michael Wellington, ANU
  • Dr Njongenhle MB Nyoni, The Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network, Pretoria, South Africa
  • Dr Ana Manero, ANU
  • Dr Neil Lazarow, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research

Location

Frank Fenner Seminar Room, Building 141 Linnaeus Way, Acton ACT 2601

Also online via Zoom

Click here for further details

Click here to register

Studying Africa in Australia – Report and Public Lecture

Adjame Market, Abidjan, Eva Blue via Unsplash

The results of research into the current situation of African studies in the Australian Capital Territory, are available online. A lengthy report, contextualizing the past and present situation of African studies in Canberra, with reference to international developments, and a shorter article recently published in the Australasian Review of African Studies, focusing on changes in Australian universities and academic life, reveal the importance of research methodologies rather than regional specialization.

A reminder that this research project will also be the focus on the Future of the Humanities and Social Sciences Annual Lecture, delivered online via Zoom at 5pm on Wednesday 25 May (Africa Day).

Dr Kirsty Wissing’s research on Ghana

Kirsty Wissing is a recent ANU postgraduate from the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia the Pacific, ANU. She received her PhD on July 16th, 2021, although the Graduation Ceremony has been postponed.

Specialising in anthropology, her topic was ‘Permeating purity: Fluid rituals of belonging in Ghana’.

Her research focused on customary rituals and socio-religious attitudes to and uses of water and other fluids in relation to ideas of cleanliness and purity, resource control and morality. For her PhD, Dr Wissing undertook 14 months of field research in the Akwamu Traditional Area of southern Ghana in 2016, 2017 and 2019. She considered how influences including colonialism, Christianity and the hydro-power industry have affected local attitudes and uses of these fluids and asked how multiple co-existing ideas of cleanliness and purity can become politicised. Through this research, Kirsty brought local Akwamu values into dialogue with larger national issues of energy production, environmental resource responsibility and socio-political power in Ghana.

Dr Wissing has also conducted research into and managed programs about the petroleum, mining and energy industries in Ghana for the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP). She is currently employed as a CSIRO Early Career Research Postdoctoral Fellow where she is researching Indigenous Australian biocultural knowledge and attitudes to the emerging field of synthetic biology as part of CSIRO’s Synthetic Biology Future Science Platform. During her PhD, Dr Wissing was the recipient of two Endeavour Leadership Awards, funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Education, Skills and Employment, and was an Endeavour Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham’s Department of African Studies and Anthropology and the University of Cologne’s Global South Studies Center.

Dr Wissing’s research was brought to the attention of other ANU Africanists when she was awarded the AfSAAP/Cherry Gertzel Prize at the 2017 Conference of the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific (AfSAAP).

The thesis abstract is available online by searching for ‘Kirsty Wissing’ in ANU Library Catalogue. Due to local governance sensitivities in her field site, full access to the thesis is currently restricted. However, Dr Wissing’s research can be publicly accessed in the following articles published during her PhD.

• Wissing, K. 2019, “Assistance and Resistance of (Hydro-)Power: Contested Relationships of Control over the Volta River, Ghana.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, Vol 37(7), pp.1161–1178. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263774X18807482
• Wissing, K. 2019 “Environment as Justice: Interpreting the State(s) of Drowning and Undercurrents of Power in Ghana.” Australasian Review of African Studies, Vol 40(1), pp.12-30. https://doi.org/10.22160/22035184/ARAS-2019-40-1/12-30
• Apoh, W., Wissing, K., Treasure, W. and J. Fardin 2017, “Law, Land and What Lies Beneath: Exploring Mining Impacts on Customary Law and Cultural Heritage Protection in Ghana and Western Australia.” African Identities, Vol.15(4), pp.367-386. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14725843.2017.1319752
• Treasure, W., Fardin, J., Apoh, W. and K. Wissing 2016, “From Mabo to Obuasi: Heritage and Customary Law in Ghana and Western Australia.” Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law, Vol. 34(2), pp.191-211. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02646811.2016.1133986

Tomorrow (20 May): Senegambian Rhythmic Traditions, Embodied Knowledge, and Adaptation

Senegambian Rhythmic Traditions, Embodied Knowledge, and Adaptation

Lamine Sonko and King Marong

Date & time: Thursday 20 May 2021, 3.30–5pm

Location: Kingsland Room, Level 6, ANU School of Music

In this research seminar, Lamine Sonko and King Marong will reflect on their longterm engagement with embodied knowledge of ancient rhythmic traditions in West Africa, as well as current research exploring the adaptation of traditional music, dance, and theatre in contemporary Australia. The seminar will include a discussion and live music demonstration.

Lamine Sonko is a composer, director and multi-instrumentalist, originally from Senegal and living in Australia since 2004. In his artistic practice he draws on traditional wisdom to create inter-disciplinary & multi-sensory arts experiences inspired by his cultural background as a Gewel (hereditary cultural role). His role as a Gewel is to be a keeper and communicator of history, customs, rituals and sacred knowledge through music, dance and oral storytelling. Through his work he has defined new ways to present and re-imagine the traditional African, contemporary and classical synthesis of music and theatre. As a composer he has arranged and recorded award-winning music including two compositions for Grammy Award-winning album ‘Winds of Samsara’ (2015). He has composed and directed large scale works including the Boite Millennium Chorus ‘One Africa’ (Arts Centre Melbourne) and has presented and performed throughout Australia and internationally.

Born in The Gambia, King Marong has been performing professionally since the age of 12. King developed his skills in the coastal fishing village where he grew up surrounded by the griots (hereditary musicians) and international musicians who were his mentors for Senegambian drumming and cultural priorities. In his late teens he formed his band Kunta Kinteh and consequently toured The Gambia, Senegal, UK and Europe. King has since built an international reputation as a master of many African drumming styles on instruments such as the Djembe, Boucarabou, Doundoun and Sabar, performing and teaching percussion to students from around the world.

 

God, Development, and Technology Transfer: Mediated Ethics between Chinese and Ethiopians

Dr. Liang Chen
Australian Centre on China in the World
Thursday, 22 April 2021, 4.00pm5.30pm

Online and in person, China in the World seminar rooms (Building 188), Fellows Lane, ANU

Details and link to registration here.

Abstract The rolling out of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and overseas projects provides a window to examine the intercultural dynamics between Chinese expats and local communities. Ethiopia, an East African country, has become a strategic partner of China and hosts a growing population of Chinese developers, business people and workers. In this contact zone, assumptions and misassumptions, tentative adjustments, and reevaluation of Chinese and local communities’ relations are abundant to the extent that any culturalist explanation is insufficient to grapple with the Chinese’s evolving ethical experience. This study shows how the Chinese and Ethiopians relate to one another ethically in different contexts and why the boundary between them becomes explicit or less so.

Bio Dr Liang Chen’s research interests involve migration, urbanisation, and intercultural encounters in China and Africa. He has been studying the trans-continental business network of African expatriates in China, the Chinese working in Ethiopia, and Afar pastoralists’ urbanisation in Ethiopia and Djibouti since 2016. He is currently visiting the School of Culture, History, and Language of ANU.

The Individual Deprivation Measure South Africa Country Study Results

Helen Suich, Senior Research Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy (ANU)

The Individual Deprivation Measure, or IDM, is an individual-level, gender sensitive measure of multidimensional deprivation—it measures deprivation at the individual rather than household level, and is designed to discern differences in the experiences of poverty between men and women. The IDM program was a partnership between the ANU, the International Women’s Development Agency and the Australian Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade. The ANU led a studies in Indonesia in 2018 and in South Africa in 2019. The IDM programme ran between 2016 and 2020, and related research is being taken forward as the Individual Measurement of Multidimensional Poverty at ANU.

In South Africa, 14 dimensions of deprivation were measured (shown in the figure below). Some of these are already partially covered in some existing surveys (e.g. food security and access to drinking water), but the IDM includes a range of economic and social aspects which are not usually covered (e.g. the relationships, clothing and footwear and voice dimensions). Further, several IDM dimensions include aspects beyond that which is typically assessed. For example, the work dimension covers not only issues around paid work, but also includes themes on unpaid domestic and care work and on the double labour burden that can arise when both paid and unpaid work are done.

The South African country study had two parts:

  • a national-level main sample, that interviewed 8,652 individuals, 16 years and older;
  • a purposive sample that interviewed 826 individuals with disabilities and their household members (2,311 individuals in total), in Gauteng and Limpopo provinces.

There are a wide range of resource available for those who are interested in the results of the survey and the methods used for the analysis.

A revised analysis of the data was undertaken, using slightly different methods, and a series of briefing notes and documentation was produced. There are six briefing notes, describing the results for the main sample, as well as the analyses by gender, by age group, by disability status and by rural/urban locality. The sixth summarises the South African country study and the revised data analysis methods. Accompanying documentation includes reports describing the revised methods in detail, as well as providing all of the revised results. A comprehensive report published in May 2020 summarises the initial analysis of both the main sample and the purposive sample, which is available here.

There is also a series of videos, one summarising the South African country study, one for the overall results of the main sample, based on the revised analysis methods, and one each describing the results by gender, age, rural/urban locality and disability status.

A launch of the report was held in early August 2020, with Australia’s High Commissioner to South Africa, Ms Gita Kamath, and the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations in South Africa, Nardos Bekele-Thomas, which you can watch below.