Call for papers:
ABORNE Conference on 'How is Africa Transforming Border Studies?'
Hosted by the School of Social Sciences, University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa 10-14 September 2009
The African Borderlands Research Network - ABORNE (
http://www.aborne.org/) - is an interdisciplinary network of over 70
academic researchers and institutions in Europe, Africa and North America.
Its members are from all disciplines of the social sciences, with an
emphasis on anthropology and history. They share a long-term interest in
all aspects of international borders and trans-boundary phenomena in
Africa. The emphasis is largely on borderlands as physical spaces and
social spheres, but the network is also concerned with regional flows of
people and goods as well as economic processes that may be located at
some distance from the geographical border. From April 2009, ABORNE will
be funded by the European Science Foundation as an ESF networking programme.
ABORNE will hold it's third annual meeting at the University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, from 10-14 September 2009.
Papers are invited from scholars of African borderlands and borders at
all levels. Financial support is available for participants.
Both 'border theory' and border studies as a field owe much of their
cross-disciplinary origins and development to scholars of the American
Southwest. By the late 1990s, spurred by the rapid development of the
European Union, Europeanist scholars had contributed not only a wealth
of empirical studies but also significant theoretical insights and
concepts to border studies. What then of Africa, the peripheral poor
relation of the area studies' family? African borders have often been
seen as incomplete or exceptional in relation to mainstream border
theory - due to their supposed porosity, negotiability, arbitrariness,
and lack of impact on popularly rooted social identities. Increasingly,
however, Africanist scholars are making two arguments concerning the
supposed exceptionalism of African borders. Firstly, many African
borders are not indeed as irrelevant, porous and arbitrary as widely
assumed. Secondly, many of the characteristics of African borders, in
their diversity, are also present elsewhere. With increasingly global
theorising, the US-Mexico and European borders may well turn out to be
the exceptions to the global norm. African borders will contribute to
helping us illuminate the functioning and meaning of borders in the
global context. It is this process of bringing theory into Africa and
Africa into theory which guides the present conference.
There are many characteristics of border management, border life, and
borderlanders that operate at borders everywhere, that inform the
comparative and analytical foundations of border theory, and to which
African borders are no exceptions. Indeed, African borders often
exemplify extreme border characteristics. While for example the
performance of sovereignty and control is a high-profile feature of any
border post, it is particularly salient at African borders where the
performance may exist in inverse relation to the substance of the state.
Similarly, as borderlanders everywhere produce their own border theory
rooted in social practice, thereby contesting the conventionally bounded
citizenship imaginary of the state, the distance between borderlander
and state claims to territory and identity in Africa are often
significant, with few avenues for closing the gap. Few African
countries, in contrast to Mexico and some others, have authorized dual
nationality for its citizens, despite the impossibility of preventing it
in practice.
Apart from furthering existing border theory, the empirical and
theoretical insights gained from studying African borderlands are
already transforming the wider field. ABORNE's 2009 annual meeting will
offer a unique platform for both established experts in the field and
younger scholars with empirical insights "fresh from the field" to
explore the most fruitful avenues of investigation. Together, we will
seek to contribute more to the field than an additional set of empirical
case studies. We aim to sharpen the cutting edge of the borderlands
research agenda for years to come, and thereby contribute to the
re-making of border theory in the 21st century.
Prospective areas of current and future enquiry include the meaning of
'national' borders in pre-, post-, multi- or trans-national societies.
While the Westphalian map remains in place, giving borders transnational
political identities of their own, to what extent do they have stability
as cultural markers? Should we start to consider national differences as
purely political and economic matters: are there customs stations for
customs? Using the idea of borders as conduits, how do borders
facilitate cultural exchange just as they equilibrate the disparities of
value of commercial exchange, disparities that are themselves reflected
in culture and in social contestation? In many senses, therefore, the
territorial border becomes less a boundary dividing identities into two
nations than a bridge linking them in mutual dependence. Are these new
forms of political and identity organisation only a reaction to
uncertainty caused by the weakness or even the absence of state
structures? Can these orders substitute the state in the long run? Might
the strength and persistence of local political models lead to the
transformation of the state as the only and unique model of organised
power? Or do they foreshadow a specific form of interlacement between
non-state actors and the state that will lead to heterarchical political
settings in Africa and elsewhere? If so, what kinds of new borders -
manifested physically, discursively, symbolically - are arising around
such political forms?
We invite paper submissions on the following themes, but also welcome
other related topics:
1. Conceptual frameworks for borderland research in Africa and the world
2. Boundaries and borderlands in a comparative perspective:
methodologies and theoretical insights
3. The meaning of 'national' borders in pre-, post-, multi- or
trans-national societies
4. Borderlands and cross-border economies
5. Borderlands and cross-border politics
6. Mobility across fixed and mobile borders
7. Borders in African philosophies
8. Inserting the history into borders and borderlands into history
9. Representations of borders and border crossing in cultural production
10. Borders, identity and borderland identities
Within this wide range of themes, we are seeking papers with the
following characteristics:
* Papers that are conceptual in nature;
* Papers that seek to relate African fieldwork data to larger bodies of
(theoretical) work;
* Papers that are explicitly comparative in focus.
Titles and abstracts are due by 30 April, 2009. To apply, please send
the following information to both David Coplan ([log in to unmask])
and Tara Polzer ([log in to unmask]):
* Name
* Institutional affiliation
* Contact Details (email and phone)
* Abstract (150-200 words)
* Whether you are already a member of ABORNE
* Whether you wish to become a member of ABORNE
For more information please contact David Coplan
([log in to unmask]), Tara Polzer ([log in to unmask]) or
Wolfgang Zeller ([log in to unmask]) or see
http://www.aborne.org/ .
Tara Polzer
Senior Researcher
Forced Migration Studies Programme
University of the Witwatersrand
Email: [log in to unmask]
General Contact Details for Forced Migration Studies Programme
PO Box 76, 2050 WITS, South Africa
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://migration.org.za
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Note: The material contained in this communication comes to you from the
Forced Migration Discussion List which is moderated by the Refugee
Studies Centre (RSC), Oxford Department of International Development,
University of Oxford. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the
RSC or the University. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this
message please retain this disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should
include attribution to the original sources.
List Archives: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/forced-migration.html
RSS: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?RSS&L=forced-migration
Subscribe/unsubscribe: http://tinyurl.com/fmlist-join-leave
|
