African Borderland Research Articles

From dependence to conviviality: unaccompanied youth and host communities at the Zimbabwean–South African borderland

AbstractUnaccompanied child and youth migrants negotiate with local host communities in their attempts to find a place to belong to, yet research has generally neglected their participation in the making of relationships with the people around them. Providing a perspective of the longue durée, the Zimbabwean–South African borderland teaches us that time is critical in young migrants’ ability to negotiate their positioning and actively shape relationships with host communities, based on mutual interest. While at the beginning of their stay, unaccompanied children and youth were at the mercy of others, time enabled them to accumulate knowledge and develop skills that were in demand, shifting their place in society and setting the ground for conviviality.

Angela Impey, Song Walking: women, music, and environmental justice in an African borderland. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press (hb US$105 – 978 0 226 53796 2; pb US$35 – 978 0 226 53801 3). 2018, 288 pp.

Angela Impey, Song Walking: women, music, and environmental justice in an African borderland. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press (hb US$105 – 978 0 226 53796 2; pb US$35 – 978 0 226 53801 3). 2018, 288 pp.

Geographies of unease: Witchcraft and boundary construction in an African borderland

African borderlands – such as those between South Sudan, Uganda and Congo – are often presented by analysts as places of agency and economic opportunity, in contrast to hardened, securitized borders elsewhere. We emphasize, however, that even such relatively porous international borders can nevertheless be the focus of significant unease for borderland communities. Crossing borders can enable safety for those fleeing conflict or trading prospects for businesspeople, but it can also engender anxieties around the unchecked spread of insecurity, disease and economic exploitation.Understanding this ambiguous construction of borders in the minds of their inhabitants requires us, we argue, to look beyond statist or globalizing discourses and to appreciate the moral economies of borderlands, and how they have been discursively and epistemologically negotiated over time. Narratives around witchcraft and the occult represent, we argue, a novel and revealing lens through which to do so and our study draws on years of fieldwork and archival research to underline how cartographies of witchcraft in this region are, and have long been, entangled with the construction of state political geographies, internal as well as international.

The “Borderlandization” of the Horn of Africa in Relation to the Gulf Region, and the Effects on Somalia

ABSTRACT Over the last decade, the Gulf states and their rivals have become major players in domestic and regional politics in the Horn of Africa. Through the process of “borderlandization,” their influence has contributed to the shift of the region, and particularly Somalia, from an African borderland to an Arabic-Muslim borderland. In addition, borderlandization has provided a framework for the import into Somalia of conflicts between Gulf states and the debate between different Muslim countries, which could easily jeopardize the fragile Somali state. This is due to the fact that factionalism and division are deeply embedded in Somali politics, thus creating an opportunity for local groups to employ the support of foreign actors to maximize their influence and power.

Boko Haram, bandits and slave-raiders: identities and violence in a Central African borderland

ABSTRACT Boko Haram is a religiously motivated insurgency with a complex history in Nigeria and origins in urban Maiduguri. Through most of its existence Boko Haram has shown an affinity for border regions: the frontier zones between Nigeria and Niger, the Mandara Mountains on the border with Cameroon, and the shorelines and islands of Lake Chad. This paper argues that this is an historically mediated process. Boko Haram as a borderland phenomenon echoes the hijra of Usman dan Fodio, but also structured forms of violence and wealth creation that have historically united elites and their followers in the region. Moreover, there are continuities between the actions and actors associated with earlier phases of border violence and processes involving Boko Haram today. This suggests that Boko Haram will not be “defeated,” but rather that the region will see a reversion to forms of border violence that were prevalent as recently as the early 2000s.

Alfredo González-Ruibal, An Archaeology of Resistance: Materiality and Time in an African Borderland

Review

Commuter Migration Across Artificial Frontiers: The Case of Partitioned Communities Along the Zimbabwe-Mozambique Border

ABSTRACTThis article engages the border perceptions and experiences/uses of partitioned African borderland communities along the Zimbabwe–Mozambique border so as to understand and explain the prevalence of cross-border commuter migration. Using ethnographic data gathered from the ethnic Shona communities straddled across the border, it observes that commuting is rampant due to subtle ethno-nationalist beliefs that have flouted official norms of sovereign nation-statism and control. Despite the fact that these trans-border communities are quite conscious of the border's existence, they have chosen not to recognize its juridical functions, claiming that it is artificial. Hence, they have viewed it as an imaginary boundary; a transnational environment or frontier where socio-economic-cultural inter-connections can be made without restrictions. Thus, many commute daily on foot using illegal crossing points scattered along the mountainous boundary. Those in Mozambique prefer shuttling to the better Zimbabwean schools and hospitals across the border, while those in Zimbabwe conduct kinship rites, shopping/trade and engage traditional authorities in Mozambique. In the process, the Zimbabwe–Mozambican border has been reduced to an artificial and arbitrary boundary which does not respond to what the local people believe to be rational boundaries. Consequently, the border has become highly fluid and elastic as it constantly shifts according to the dictates of the partitioned communities.

Bibliography

This bibliography lists items noted between April and June 2015. Adogame, Afe and Lawrence, Andrew. Africa in Scotland, Scotland in Africa: Historical legacies and contemporary hybridities. (Leiden: Brill, 2014). xii + 363 pp. €62. Bellers, Veronica. A speck in the ocean of time [anecdotal account of colonial administration in Africa]. (No place or publisher given; available from Amazon). 298 pp. £8.50. Bøas, Marten. The politics of conflict economies: Miners, merchants and warriors in the African borderland. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015). xxi + 162 pp. $145. Branch, Adam and Mamphilly, Zahariah, Africa uprising: Popular protest and political change. (London: Zed Books, 2015). 272 pp. £14.99. Burgis, Tom.The looting machine: Warlords, tycoons, smugglers and the systematic theft of Africa's wealth. (London: Harper Collins, 2015), x + 319 pp. £16. Cooper, Elizabeth and Pratten, David (eds). Ethnographies of uncertainty in Africa. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). xiii + 198 pp. £58. Coundouriotis, Eleni. The people's right to the novel: War fiction in the postcolony. (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2014). xi + 336 pp. $61.

González-Ruibal, Alfredo: An Archaeology of Resistance. Materiality and Time in an African Borderland

Anthropos , Seite 620 - 622

An archaeology of resistance: materiality and time in an African borderland

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements. Introduction. Outline of the book. Chapter 1. Time and materiality. 1.1. Archaeological ethnographies. 1.2. Archaeologies of resistance. 1.3. The Archaeology of Borderlands 1.4. Time. 1.5. Materiality. Chapter 2. Ecology of a shatter zone. 2.1. Landscapes. 2.2. States. 2.3. Deep rurals and peasants. 2.4. Bandits, missionaries and travelers. Chapter 3. Direct action against the state: the Gumuz. 3.1. Resisting the state north of the Blue Nile. 3.2. The enemy's point of view: origin myths, things and knowledge. 3.3. Making a community of equals: technology, consumption, exchange. 3.4. Bodies of resistance. 3.5. A sense of danger. Chapter 4. Between domination and resistance: the Bertha. 4.1. Memories. 4.2. A fractured identity. 4.3. Double belief: Between paganism and Islam. 4.4. Double materiality. 4.5. Double performance. Chapter 5. Of mimicry and Mao. 5.1. The making of a subaltern people. 5.2. Invisibility and hybridity. 5.3. The gender of resistance. 5.4. A space for resistance. 5.5. Remembering the forest. Epilogue and Conclusions References. Index. About the Author.

Document. Refugee identities and relief in an African borderland: a study of northern Uganda and southern Sudan

Journal Article Document. Refugee identities and relief in an African borderland: a study of northern Uganda and southern Sudan Get access J Merkx J Merkx Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Refugee Survey Quarterly, Volume 21, Issue 1_and_2, April 2002, Pages 113–146, https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/21.1_and_2.113 Published: 01 April 2002

Trading Traitors: Cultural Negotiations of Female Mobility in a West African Borderland

In the Shabe border region of the Republic of Bénin and Nigeria, a combination of transnational political and economic processes has prompted an economic recession and increased competition over economic resources in the borderland. In the wake of economic decline, women and men in the community of Ibere have engaged in struggles over female mobility in the borderland. Debates over women's movements across the international border are being shaped by conceptions of gender, community, and national difference; marketing practices; ritual practice; discourses of sexuality; and cultural constructions of the border.

Palaeoceanographic setting of the Callovian North Atlantic

Summary DSDP/IPOD Site 534 located in the Blake Bahama Basin adjacent to the Florida coast off eastern USA exemplifies the early opening stages of the North Atlantic in Callovian (mid-Jurassic) time. The earliest sediments accumulated on a rugged ocean floor located near the edge of a WNW-ESE-trending fracture zone, not far from the spreading axis. At that time the ocean was c. 500 km wide with a borderland experiencing a tropical climate. Input of both inorganic and organic material was mostly of marine origin, but also included quartz, illite, chlorite and large quantities of fine plant material. Carbonate banks flourished during a time of raised sea-level, shedding large quantities of sediment, mostly peri-platform ooze, which was redeposited by turbidity currents to Site 534 after a marginal ridge (Blake Spur ridge) was finally breached during later Callovian time. The site subsided c. 300 m during the Callovian and for a time lay below the CCD which was still shallower than 3000 m. Distinctive hummocky seismic reflections and sedimentary structures in the cores suggest that sluggish bottom water circulation existed, giving rise to sediment-drifts (‘muddy contourites’). Hydrothermal precipitates drifted westwards from the ridge. Inferred trade wind patterns favoured extensive coastal upwelling along the African borderland, the closest margin to Site 534 during the Callovian. The favoured origin of numerous, but volumetrically minor, black shale intervals is that marine organic matter was concentrated where the oxygen-minimum-zone intersected the shelf-continental rise and that this material was subsequently redeposited by currents and/or gravity flows to form layers which readily became black and de-oxygenated during diagenesis.