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1. GOING TO PENTECOST An Experimental Approach to Studies in Pentecostalism

Author:
Annelin Eriksen, Roy Llera Blanes, and Michelle MacCarthy
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Co-authored by three anthropologists with long–term expertise studying Pentecostalism in Vanuatu, Angola, and Papua New Guinea/the Trobriand Islands respectively, Going to Pentecost offers a comparative study of Pentecostalism in Africa and Melanesia, focusing on key issues as economy, urban sociality, and healing. More than an ordinary comparative book, it recognizes the changing nature of religion in the contemporary world – in particular the emergence of “non-territorial” religion (which is no longer specific to places or cultures) – and represents an experimental approach to the study of global religious movements in general and Pentecostalism in particular.
Topic:
Post Colonialism, Religion, Economy, and Colonialism
Political Geography:
Africa, Asia, Australia, Angola, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea

2. European Turkey and European Morocco: Two Identity Construction cases in the path to the EEC membership

Author:
Volkan Ipek and Selin Turkes-Kilic
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Turkish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Institution:
Turkish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Abstract:
This article analyzes Morocco’s and Turkey’s full membership application processes to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1987 from an identity perspective. The construction of both Morocco’s and Turkey’s European-ness are explored alongside aspects of postcolonial and modernization theories rooted in the poststructuralist approach by taking official discourses of the political leaders in the two states at the time of application into account. In the conventional narratives of the establishment of their modern states, Morocco perceived Europe as its other due to the history of European colonialism, whereas Turkey perceived Europe as its other considering it a threat to its national unity prior to the establishment of the Republic in 1923. In spite of this, two states tried to add European-ness into their national identities through their application to the EEC in 1987. In this way, Morocco and Turkey aimed at demonstrating not why European but how much European they were. In Morocco’s case, an obligation for demonstrating one’s European- ness is explained through the lens of postcolonial theory, and in Turkey’s case, the modernization paradigm is applied. Departing from these theoretical standpoints, the study focuses on official European-ness discourses by Moroccan and Turkish leaders, which had taken place as dynamic processes. In this respect, the article unravels how Europe and European-ness that was once regarded as the other by Turkey and Morocco were tried to be included into Moroccan and Turkish national identities on the path to become a full member to the EEC.
Topic:
Post Colonialism, Regional Cooperation, Colonialism, Modernization, Economic Cooperation, and European Economic Community
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Turkey, Asia, and Morocco

3. The Ambiguity Towards Portugal’s African Colonies (1953-1985): Defining Aspects of Brazil’s African Policy

Author:
Kamilla Raquel Rizzi and Patrick Bueno
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Institution:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Abstract:
The Portuguese colonization, throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, was the first bond established between Brazil and the African continent, and it was especially deepened by the slave trade. With the Brazilian independence in 1822, as well as with the end of the slave trade across the Atlantic, between 1845 and 1850, there was a gradual movement away from said continent, once the imperial foreign policy axis was now directed towards the River Plate, to the South, as well as to England, Western Europe and the North of the global system. In the 20th century, along with the two World Wars, the creation of the United Nations, and the Cold War, Brazil’s international projection was drawn according to the opportunities presented in this new world system. The aim of the present paper is thus to analyze the ambiguity between Brazilian political discourse and foreign practice with regard to the Portuguese colonies. The research problem consists in identifying which aspects have exerted an influence on the definition of Brazil’s African policy. As a research question, it is assumed that Brazil, since the Independent Foreign Policy (IFP), with its discourse of non-alignment with the powers of the world system, the identification with the Third Worldist theses, and based on the politics of the “3Ds” (development, decolonization and disarmament), supported the anti-colonial principle and was an advocate for the self-determination of peoples. However, an ambiguity was evident by the official political alignment with Portugal, due to the 1953 Treaty of Friendship and Consultation.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, History, and Colonialism
Political Geography:
Africa, Brazil, and Portugal

4. Uses, Reuses and Abuses: Crossing “Borders” and “Luso-Africanities” in the Historiographies of Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau for the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries

Author:
Alec Ichiro Ito
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Institution:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Abstract:
Contrary to a historiographical study, this article is an essayistic reflection on some notions and understandings that run through African studies about the Portuguese expansion in West and Central West Africa. Therefore, we will not dwell on the conditions of production, ideological affiliations or trends that competed for the elaboration of historical narratives, but on the “itinerant sharing” of ideas, the circularity of conceptual uses and reuses and the “general solutions” provided for some canonical problems. In this sense, we are influenced by a reflection proposal presented by Leila M. G. Leite Hernandez (2014). Our objects of analysis are the most influential works that address the stories of Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau for the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. What are the shares and circularities that mesh the notions of border and Luso-Africanity? How are these ideas associated with meetings and contact studies? Is the notion of boundary necessary for the contemporary epistemic paradigm? Are there risks in neglecting it? These are some of the problems that will be analysed through the text.
Topic:
History, Colonialism, Borders, and Geography
Political Geography:
Africa, Portugal, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Cabo Verde

5. The Palestinian Diaspora and the State-Building Process

Author:
Taher labadi
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
Displacement, dispersal, denial of nationhood, and global power shifts define the existence of the Palestinian diaspora, hindering their ability to connect to each other and to their homeland. This paper outlines diaspora-homeland relationships that, it argues, are shaped by both settler-colonial policies and globalization. “Diasporization” also impacts power dynamics among Palestinians, reflected in the shifting centre of gravity of Palestinian politics toward the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the growing marginalization of the Palestinian diaspora – especially those residing in neighbouring Arab countries. This paper also addresses the emergence of Palestinian diaspora elites who have been involved in inward-bound dynamics within the state-building process. Of particular note are increasing attempts to mobilize Palestinian “expatriates,” intending to strengthen their involvement in both economic development and state-building processes.
Topic:
Globalization, Diaspora, Colonialism, State Building, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
Africa, Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

6. Dual Colonialism and the Formation of the National State: The South African Case

Author:
Maximilian Dante Barone Bullerjahn
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Institution:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Abstract:
South Africa is certainly one of the few countries that has assimilated in such a significant way two distinct colonization processes, at different times. The trading post of the Dutch imperial fleet on the Cape soon became a space for the occupation of European settlers, who, searching for a homeland, found in the vast lands around the Cape the space for the development of a new civilization. Of a Protestant majority, these new European settlers made of the land their acquired triumph. Between the revolutionary turmoil in France and the Napoleonic imperial appetite, the arrival of the English to the Cape region substantially transformed the socio-political relations in the region. The subsequent exodus of the Boers2 enabled a cult for their selfassertion, and the South African space was filled by successive battles over the territory between the Boers, the English, and native peoples. At the end of the nineteenth century, the discovery of mineral riches on an unprecedented scale marked the transition from an economy still lagging behind to one with a modernizing foundation, with the development of a sophisticated financial system initially directed at the primary-exporting matrix, which would later on become the anchor for the incipient process of South African industrialization. The formation of the two Boer republics, beyond Afrikaner3 nationalism, sought to contain the rapid advance of English imperialism in the midst of the discovery of the largest deposits of precious minerals on the continent. After two traumatic wars, a political arrangement emerged: the South African Union (1910), an understanding between English and Boer elites, later on leading up to the federalization of the territories occupied by the Boer republics and the English coastal colonies.
Topic:
Nationalism, State Formation, and Colonialism
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

7. From Mandela to Zuma: The Importance of the Southern Atlantic Region for South Africa’s Foreign Policy

Author:
Anselmo Otavio
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Institution:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Abstract:
As it is known, Ceuta’s conquest by Portugal in 1415 initiated the discovery and, consequently, strategic transformation of the Southern Atlantic region by European powers. It is important to consider, first, that these actions were a process, since from the 14th century the necessary conditions for maritime expansion were being created by Portugal. Secondly, the arrival at Ceuta represented not the end, but the beginning of a phase marked by the search for an alternative maritime route that would connect Europe to India and would grant the Portuguese Crown access to spices from India’s territory. Although this process was initiated by Portugal, it is a fact that, throughout the centuries, countries like Spain, the Netherlands and England have also pursued the same development. From then, the territories belonging to the South Atlantic coast have been impacted by European powers, since, due to colonization, they were encompassed by different political and economic dynamics. While Lisbon connected Brazilian and Angolan territories through a relationship based on the purchase and sale of slave labor, the Netherlands at first, England later, comprised the Cape Colony to the Afro-Asian dynamic, keeping this territory’s interactions circumscribed to their respective colonies in the Asian side.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, History, and Colonialism
Political Geography:
Africa, South Africa, and Portugal

8. Violent Becomings: State Formation, Sociality, and Power in Mozambique

Author:
Bjorn Enge Bertelsen
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Violent Becomings conceptualizes the Mozambican state not as the bureaucratically ordered polity of the nation-state, but as a continuously emergent and violently challenged mode of ordering. In doing so, this book addresses the question of why colonial and postcolonial state formation has involved violent articulations with so-called ‘traditional’ forms of sociality. The scope and dynamic nature of such violent becomings is explored through an array of contexts that include colonial regimes of forced labor and pacification, liberation war struggles and civil war, the social engineering of the post-independence state, and the popular appropriation of sovereign violence in riots and lynchings.
Topic:
Civil War, State Formation, Colonialism, and State Building
Political Geography:
Africa, Mozambique, Southern Africa, and Maputo

9. The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspectives

Author:
Jacqueline Knörr and Christopher Kohl
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
For centuries, Africa’s Upper Guinea Coast region has been the site of regional and global interactions, with societies from different parts of the African continent and beyond engaging in economic trade, cultural exchange, and various forms of conflict. This book provides a wide-ranging look at how such encounters have continued into the present day, identifying the disruptions and continuities in religion, language, economics, and various other social phenomena that have resulted. These accounts show a region that, while still grappling with the legacies of colonialism and the slave trade, is both shaped by and an important actor within ever-denser global networks, exhibiting consistent transformation and creative adaptation.
Topic:
Globalization, Regional Cooperation, Colonialism, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Africa, Liberia, West Africa, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Guinea, and Gambia

10. Uganda—and triggered observations

Author:
Robert Baker
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Rajat Neogy declared himself referee and demanded a formal exchange of insults contest between Paul Theroux and me. It was the fag end of a very Scotch evening in Rajat’s cluttered, dusty living room up in the green hills of Kampala. Brimming ashtrays and empty beer bottles lay on tables and chairs. Everyone was gone except the three of us. Rajat grinned a brilliant grin as he scribbled down his insult scores as Paul and I exchanged jibes. He grinned and goaded us on. We drank some more. Rajat declared that I had won. Paul was briefly sullen but we had another drink and he came around. Paul is smarter than I but had likely drunk more. We staggered out, leaving Rajat as the rising sun peeped through his windows. Rajat in 1966 was the Indian editor of Transition, Africa’s only literary magazine in English, not run by Europeans. Rajat published most of Africa’s leading writers and many from Europe and the U.S. Paul was then an impecunious English teacher living in a bachelor flat at Makerere University and a commercially unsuccessful novelist. I was Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer at the dusty, run-down American Cultural Center and Library on Kampala Road.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Media, Colonialism, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Uganda, Africa, and United States of America