The creation of images of Africa is an ongoing process with a long dating history. This panel aims to explore the production and mediation by Western scholarship (of different disciplines) of images of Africa and how these are confronted and appropriated by local, regional and national actors in Africa.
The creation of images of Africa is an ongoing process with a long dating history. Images of Africa have been and still are created by African, European and American individuals and institutions, most powerfully in Western academia. Often these images play an important role in the interaction between African societies and the Western world of state-relations and policy making, interventions by NGO's and other international bodies. Mediated through the media and popular culture, these images fuel the interests of specific social, political, ethnic or religious groups in African societies and in the West. They are not only produced in the West, but are also appropriated and put to use by Africans in several discourses and negotiations and can be part of a quest for success, identity and legitimacy in the public domain. Often they are inspired by dominant elite-ideologies, by a nostalgia for things that never were, or by visions confronting the present state of affairs in search of an African utopia. Importantly, there is a noticeable record of an argument of images, that is: these images may speak to others and may be confrontational in nature as is evidenced for example in the way the imagery of the 'cannibalistic' Dogon is recycled for the tourist-industry, or in the way Pentecostals reinvent 'the Devil' for converting African societies. The panel particularly aims to explore the production and mediation by Western scholarship of images of Africa and how these are confronted and appropriated by local, regional and national actors in Africa.
This paper examines how the colonial construction of images of Pemba (Zanzibar) allows us to understand both the development of colonial policies and sheds light on the mechanics of Revolutionary attitudes to the island. These images underscore Pemban efforts to remain in control of their land by pushing outsiders away.
During the 19th century, over 3.000 West Africans enlisted in the Dutch colonial army as soldiers for the Dutch East Indies. This paper focuses on the shifting images of these African soldiers, which reflect the concerns of onlookers rather than the self-image of the persons concerned.
During the 19th century, the African soldiers were variously portrayed as loyal and courageous fighters, untamed savages, undisciplined and mutinous troublemakers, conceited men, unspoilt children of nature. They were however never seen as victims. Although the vast majority of the African soldiers was of slave descent, they experienced a marked rise in social status: as colonial soldiers they were free men entitled to European status.
In the 20th century, the perspective has shifted. The dominant western reflex is now to turn them into victims of unscrupulous colonial rule. The African soldiers are no longer seen as agents -however subaltern- in a historical process but as objects of policy. The case study thus illustrates the broader process of disempowerment of Africans by turning actors into victims.
This paper focuses on the occurrence of Westerners as so-called development chiefs/queens in Ghana. Western media show a fascination for these ‘white’ chiefs and evoke exotic images of Westerners ruling as ‘traditional’ kings over the ‘natives’. However, their installation reflects Ghanaians’ pursuit of development and progress at a grassroots level.
The 'people and parks' debate among international conservation organisations initially focused on so-called community-based natural resource management. Though some stereotyping about the nature of local communities and local livelihoods was evident in the debate, the focus on 'communities' implied a more inclusive approach towards people living in an around protected areas. Recently there appears to be shift in focus towards 'indigenous' peoples instead of 'communities', which entails the exclusion of certain groups of people affected by nature conservation initiatives. The definition of who is indigenous and who is not, according to nature conservation organisations, seems not so much to be linked to ideas about the entitlements of certain groups of people's to certain resources, but to the perceived relationship between these people and nature. Indigenous people are those who are perceived to live 'in harmony' with nature. Nature conservation is justified by arguing that it can contribute to the (sustainable) economic development of indigenous peoples. Yet, if indigenous people would indeed economically develop, with all the material consequences, they would no longer belong in the inclusive European aesthetics of the African landscape and transform from being 'good natives' to being 'bad natives'.
This paper explores the production and appropriation of the Western image of the Maasai and its material effects. Starting with the influential works of early travellers in Africa, the paper traces the metamorphosis of this image up to our time were it is exploited by Transnational Corporations such as VODACOM.
The long-standing scholarly paradigm of a non-African – i.e. Arabian – origin of Swahili coastal society has become commonplace in today’s Kenya and Tanzania. In Zanzibar this Arabia vs. Africa dichotomy not only constituted a crucial element of colonial and post-colonial politics, but also had strong cultural repercussions that have endured until today. The aim of this paper is to analyze how in the sphere of cultural production and evaluation of cultural forms this paradigm has been appropriated by different social actors, thereby interacting with general Islamic-Arabian attitudes towards Africa and local values that stress the importance of an “Arabian” origin as well. The paper will show how Western ideas have become integrated into the basic local strategies of hierarchical and oppositional self-definition, becoming part of the ongoing process of identity negotiation, in which divergent definitions of “Zanzibar culture” are placed in contrast by different groups.
Mämmilä is a fictive town created by cartoonist Tarmo Koivisto (born 1948), whose Mämmilä albums have been published from the year 1978; the eleventh and the last one so far was published in 2002. Mämmilä has a certain flavour of reality partly due to the fact that the artist has been inspired a lot by a Finnish town Orivesi with its real inhabitants, and partly due to the fact that Mämmilä resembles a typical small Finnish town. The name MÄMMILÄ does not only refer to the community, which is a kind of collective main character of the series, but it also connotes to the way of reading: it does not promise a sugarcandy picture about Finland, not even about one Finnish community, but rather a humorous smashing of it. The word MÄMMI refers to a national Finnish food; and because of the outlook of MÄMMI and the pronunciation of it as well, the place name, MÄMMILÄ, has a clumsy and humorous connotation in the Finnish ears. (The outsiders/foreigners then, they tend to find MÄMMI a strange delicacy.)
Here, I will tackle the last four albums of Mämmilä, which describe the town of Mämmilä as multicultural: Naapurin neekeri (1992; Negro as a Neighbour), Ladoja ja dollareita (1994; Ladas and Dollars), Täällä tähtikiekon alla (1996; Here Under the Disc of Stars) and www.mammila.fi (2002). Mämmilä starts to become more multicultural when a Somali Muhammed Al-Zomal and his family move into it; however, no other African (or any, for that matter) refugees or immigrants move there during the time under description, the1990s. I will tackle the multiculturalism of Mämmilä from three perspectives: The first one is from the Finns? prejudices and racism toward the strangers, the second is from the immigrant?s misunderstandings and prejudices, and the third is from the enculturation of the immigrant(s) into Finnish society. All in all, I will try to show the rich image of multiculturalism in the comics of Mämmilä
This paper explores how in the Western world of interventions and policy making the African minor is imagined as a victim of local circumstances and culture. Images of the African child fill the Western media, often allowing little room for a better understanding of their own agency. By analyzing two cases - street children in Chad and Nigerian child-prostitutes in the Netherlands - this paper demonstrates the ways in which ideas of victimhood inform Western interventions aimed at alleviating these minors' predicament while obfuscating elements of their agency.