Social and cultural anthropology

Navigating youth, generating adulthood : social becoming in an African context

Medarbetare:	Christiansen, Catrine | Utas, Mats | Vigh, Henrik E.
Utgivare:	Uppsala : Nordiska Afrikainstitutet
År:	2006
Ämnesord:	youth, adolescents, children, Social environment, Living conditions, human relations, Social and cultural anthropology, case studies, Africa, Social anthropology/ethnography, Socialantrolopologi/etnografi

This book focuses on the lives and experiences of young people in Africa. On agents who, willingly or unwillingly, see themselves as belonging to the socio-generational category of youth and the ways in which they seek to shape and unfold their lives in a positive manner. Rather than seeing youth as either a social or cultural entity in itself, or as a predefined life-stage, the book argues for an exploration of how youth position themselves and are positioned within generational categories. In studying young people, social scientists must conceptualise youth as both social being and social becoming; a position in movement. It is from the duality of being positioned and seeking one's own socio-generational position that this book engages in the debate on contemporary African youth.

Zangbeto : Navigating Between the Spaces of Oral Art, Communal Security and Conflict Mediation in Badagry, Nigeria

Upphovsperson:	Hunsu, Folashade
Utgivare:	Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Conflict, Displacement and Transformation | Uppsala : Nordiska Afrikainstitutet
År:	2011
Ämnesord:	Grass roots groups, Traditional culture, Vigilantes, Human security, Peaceful coexistence, Ethnic groups, Social and cultural anthropology, Yoruba, Nigeria, Badagry, SOCIAL SCIENCES, SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP

This Discussion Paper critically examines Zangbeto, a highly revered society, among the Egun people in the town of Badagry, near the city of Lagos, in south west Nigeria, that have creatively re-invented tradition to serve multiple purposes. It shows how Zangbeto has in the context of economic crisis and challenges linked to urban growth, adapted its roles to include communal policing, conflict mediation, oral art and entertainment, and the maintenance of communal order. In more ways than one, it captures the essence and multiple identities of Zangbeto within Badagry society. The involvement of Zangbeto in local policing or ‘night watching’ provides an alternative or an exception to the dominant representation of vigilantism in Nigeria as disorderly violence, sometimes for political or criminal ends. This paper also demonstrates how Zangbeto, drawing upon local Egun culture and traditional practices is able to maintain security and local order at the community level. It is argued that rather than act in an arbitrary and violent manner, Zangbeto operates through the combination of traditional symbolic actions and oral art in mediating local conflicts and preserving social harmony and local order. An interesting point relates to how Zangbeto co-exists peacefully with formal political and security institutions, and operates without causing tensions within Badagry town, where some inhabitants share different ethnic identities and religious faiths. The study also opens up a humanist perspective to how the aesthetics of Zangbeto’s cultural tropes of oral presentation, rhetoric and representation act as a powerful force for preserving cherished communal norms and values, and facilitating communication in ways that strengthen social cohesion. In this regard this paper demonstrates the wealth of possibilities that exist within Africa’s traditional cultures and oral arts for alternative grassroots based conflict mediation and security.

The bush is sweet : identity, power and development among WoDaaBe Fulani in Niger

Upphovsperson:	Loftsdóttir, Kristín
Utgivare:	Nordiska Afrikainstitutet
År:	2008
Ämnesord:	Ethnic groups, Pastoralists, cultural identity, Ethnicity, Traditional culture, Social change, Social and cultural anthropology, Fula, Niger, Social anthropology/ethnography, Socialantrolopologi/etnografi

In this book Kristín Loftsdóttir gives the reader a highly personal insight into the lives of the Wodaabe nomads of Niger, who are striving to make a living between the bush and the city. Spending nearly two years as a Wodaabe, within a Wodaabe extended family and alternating between the nomadic setting of the bush and the urbanised life-style of the capital, Niamey, she was in a unique position to observe the effects that increasing urbanisation and globalisation, together with the modern tourist industry’s preconceptions and demands, have had on the identity and power relations of the Wodaabe. Interwoven with the abstract scientific observations are the more personal reflections and analyses of a young white woman on living within, and sharing all aspects of, the everyday lives of the Wodaabe with the broad spectrum of reactions which this entails. These sensitively written and honest descriptions, including details of what the author at times experiences as her own shortcomings within her project, give a most interesting dimension to the work not always found in social science studies which means that this book should appeal to a wider readership than might initially be expected.

The medicine man among the Zaramo of Dar es Salaam

Upphovsperson:	Swantz, Lloyd
Utgivare:	Nordiska Afrikainstitutet | Uppsala : Nordiska Afrikainstitutet; Dar es Salaam Univ. Press
År:	1990
Ämnesord:	Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, East Africa, Zaramo, Traditional medicine, Ethnic groups, Anthropology, Social and cultural anthropology, SOCIAL SCIENCES, SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP

As an urban anthropologist, pastor and teacher the author has lived for many years among the Zaramo. This revised doctoral thesis is an important and well documented study of the traditional healers in the urban setting.