Search

Methodological nuptialism in the study of relationships has contributed to an academic hiatus of studies on non-marital relationships and the sustenance of negative attitudes towards such relationships. Approaches that most scholars have adopted in the study of marital relationships have hardly been problematised. Through a 14-month (in total) ethnographic fieldwork using focus group discussions (FGD), in-depth interviews, participant observations and snowballing in two wards in Molepolole this studies has demonstrated that by avoiding methodological nuptialism cohabitation can be understood better. The major finding of the study is that cohabiting unions are not homogenous. There are different types of cohabiation, namely, Go adima mosadi (wife-borrowing); Go inyadisa (non-consensual cohabiation) and Go bulela ntlu (Visiting rights). The different types of cohabitation generally denote those types that carry the consent of parents and therefore signal social, cultural and moral level of justification as compared to those that fall outside the consent of parents. Contrary to some literature, the formation of cohabiting relationships does not always exclude parents. Reasons for cohabitation vary; however, the desire to raise children together cuts across all cohabiting relationships in the study. Other reasons include low socio-economic status, negative HIV status, death of parents and love and commitment to each other.

Résumé de la thèse Cette thèse porte sur le rapport entre communication, pouvoir et violence au Tchad depuis la pénétration coloniale jusqu’à la période postindépendance. Les régions du Moyen-Chari et du Guéra illustrent cette problématique structurant l’interaction communication, pouvoir et violence au Tchad. Ce territoire connut des violences multiformes liées à la mise en place et à l’usage des systèmes de communication. Pendant la colonisation, l’instauration de l’autorité coloniale sur ce vaste territoire avait nécessité la création des voies de communication dont les réalisations ont été dramatiques pour les populations paysannes. Celles-ci étaient astreintes aux corvées de portage des matériels militaires et des travaux forcés. Pendant, les guerres civiles postindépendances, les systèmes de communication ont été intégrés dans les stratégies de violences. Les routes et les divers moyens de l’information et de transport constituent des enjeux stratégiques pour lesquels les forces militaires en guerre projettent la violence sur les populations rurales. Les nouvelles technologies de l’information et de communication révolutionnent l’organisation des forces rebelles et les stratégies de guerre au Tchad sans exclure les violences sur les populations. Cependant, les guerres civiles successives ont gravement impacté sur la conduite de l’appareil étatique tchadien.

In this thesis, the (mal) functioning of the Senegalese state in the context of conflict (the Casamance crisis) is analyzed through four domains namely local administration, the security sectors, the borders and the communication domain where high ‘state density’ is expected in order to maintain its authority and sovereignty. However, the grip of the state on the social body remains weak and its powers are very limited in these sectors leading to necessary and continuous negotiations with other actors (traditional leaders, rebels, NGO, etc.), which sometimes are a serious threat to the state’s authority and are a symptom of its fragility. By using the metaphor of a sponge, hence the concept of “the Spontex State”, I demonstrate that, paradoxically, states in Africa in general, and the Senegalese state in particular, are keen to strategize their weakness. Their sponge-like characteristics permit a form of retractability. It allows absorbing and resisting forces that contest its power. Its retractability helps the state to avoid, at least partially, more serious confrontations with various actors. The capacity of retention and retraction of the sponge, reflected in the state, leads to great flexibility, through which the state sustains it grip and, ultimately, reinforces its overall authority.

With a focus on Cameroonian migrants from Pinyin and Mankon who are currently living in Cape Town and the Netherlands, this volume examines the workings of the social fabric of mobile communities. It sheds light on how these communities are crafting lives for themselves in the host country and simultaneously linking up with the home country thanks to advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and road and air transport. ICTs and mobilities have complemented social relational interaction and provide migrants today with opportunities to partake in cultural practices that express their Pinyin-ness and Mankon-ness. Pinyin and Mankon migrants are still as rooted in the past as they are in the present. They were born into a community with its own sense of home, moral ethos and cultural pride but live in a context of accelerated ICTs and mobility that is fast changing the way they live their lives

The Zimbabwean issue has often divided opinion. President Robert Mugabe's domination of the country__s political and media landscapes has attracted scrutiny and criticism from the West. The "oppressed" people of Zimbabwe are said to have not had an alternative to state-sponsored TV or daily media outlets. The availability of new media vices including the Internet is being seen as offering a new platform to fight these perceived forms of dictatorships. This PhD employed qualitative methods to probe the potential of new media in sustaining democracy in Zimbabwe.

This thesis is about northerners within an urban setting in Ghana. It discusses the processes by which Alhaji Braimah, the unelected but recognised chief and spokesman of northerners in Accra, was able to utilise British colonial urban policy in Accra to establish a community called Tudu. Tudu did not only become an urban space where northerners only lived but also engaged in economic activities- specifically transport and trade. The thesis therefore contributes to our understanding of the role of northerners in Accra and how northerners contributed to the economic development and physical establishment of Accra. The thesis combined the analysis of social relations, history and individual biography. This was made possible by focusing the discussion on one community (Tudu) and one social group (northerners), which were used as basis for both analysis and presentation. The field work and archival research on which the analysis was based was carried out in Tudu a sub-urban of Accra, Ghana between 2007-2009 and in the archives in Ghana and Britain in the same period.

Based on rich and wide-ranging data, this thesis describes the sensitive issue of the contemporary emancipation trajectories of agro-pastoralist Fulɓe in Central Mali. It explores how people are currently dealing with hierarchies they inherited from past master-slave relations and focuses on the relational dynamics between members of a network of migrants. The importance of mobility to identity is explored by analyzing the tensions that exist among migrants to reproduce or change hierarchical relations in post-slavery societies. To purchase a copy, please email: asc@ascleiden.nl, or check www.ascleiden.nl, under Publications.

Physical mobility of people from place to place as individuals or as groups is essentially horizontal, potentially limitless, and generally motivated by the desire and ambition to take advantage of new opportunities for self or group advancement. Geographical mobility is the basis of Grasslanders’ communities in Anglophone Cameroon and beyond. In this study of Kom, the second largest kingdom in the Bamenda Grasslands, the life histories and rich archival files enlighten the history of mobility in relation to the development of communication technologies. Between 1928, when the St. Anthony’s Primary School, Njinikom, Kom was opened and 1998, when the road linking Kom and Bamenda was tarred, the number of people travelling out of Kom and back steadily increased. This spatial mobility was greatly facilitated and accelerated by ‘modern’ transportation and communication technologies like the roads and vehicles. Such persons were usually among those whose horizons had been widened by other modern agencies of change like the schools and churches which are themselves considered as technologies in this study.Kfaang, a notion of newness, has become the core to understand the flexible identity of Kom people and their appropriation of ICT in their notions of being Kom and a Kom community that transgress international borders.