The proposed panel will focus on transnational networks between Africa and other Southern nations and their role in current processes of globalization. In particular, it will examine whether these South-South ties can be characterised as forming part of an alternative form of globalization
Social, cultural, ethnic, economic and religious linkages across borders have a long history in Africa. Due to contemporary migration trends, new ties and networks have and continue to be established between communities in and outside of the Continent. However, to date most research on contemporary transnational African ties tends to still be mainly conducted along a traditional North-South axis. In comparison, research on networks between African countries and/or other Southern nations has been relatively neglected.
The aim of this panel is thus in part to draw theoretical attention to these South-South connections and moreover to do so from a comparative perspective. In practice this means that several thematically and regionally different case studies will be presented.
How did these networks develop, how do they manifest themselves and how are they structured? Moreover, how are they articulated, both locally and transnationally, and what have their influences/effects been on local communities/societies? More generally speaking, how can these South-South ties best be understood, particularly given the still more dominant North-South migratory trends and transnational network structures? Can one for instance speak of an alternative form of globalization, in the form of a conscious reaction to or critique of the dominant forces and discourses of globalization? Or perhaps of a ‘second class/tier’ form of globalization, whereby networks are established between migrants in the South who for one reason or another did not make it to the ‘desired’ North? These are some of the common, key questions the panel’s participants will discuss from their different regional vantage points.
The paper will look at South-South ties, through the case study of Cuba’s social collaboration (in health care and education) with Africa. Apart from the official, state ties the social assistance programs have given rise to a wide range of ongoing grassroots initiated ties and networks between Cubans and Africans. The paper will examine some of these ties as well as the agents behind them.
The paper presents two cases of transnational trade networks and examines their role in linking the local and the global. The gemstone trade is a recent example of how networks manage to gain and control access to the world market. Trade relations between Zanzibar and Oman on the other hand have a long history based on social ties.
Long-term historical connections between people repeatedly manifest themselves in new guises, contemporary globalisation notwithstanding. This is apparent in the Zanzibar International Film Festival/Festival of the Dhow Countries, where Zanzibar’s locals and non-locals use the idiom of the ‘arts festival’, arguably a North construct, to invoke Africa’s connections with the Western Indian Ocean to position self and community firmly in the contemporary South.
The development of Chinese trade in Oshikango, the main border post between Namibia and Angola, is a good example for the growing importance of South-South trade relations in Africa. It cannot, however, be understood without taking into account “first tier” globalisation models for life adapted from northern concepts.
The paper investigates how globalising forces contribute to processes of transnational dynamics such as cultural translation. Modernities develop in parallel, not as 'alternative' to 'dominant' discourses. Parallel modernities are situated in a 'third space', outside the dichotomies of the West and 'the rest'. 'Hindu' dance troups imitate Bollywood dances and perform them at soirées indous. This phenomenon can be read as a result of transnational dynamics (of media: Bollywood films) between two 'subaltern' regions, namely Africa and India, resulting in cultural translation and imagination of the 'exotic other'.