Nederlandse bibliotheken zijn te bescheiden. Ze spelen een belangrijke rol in de Nederlandse maatschappij, maar scheppen daar nauwelijks over op, vindt Jos Damen. De onlangs verschenen boeken over... Show moreNederlandse bibliotheken zijn te bescheiden. Ze spelen een belangrijke rol in de Nederlandse maatschappij, maar scheppen daar nauwelijks over op, vindt Jos Damen. De onlangs verschenen boeken over de geschiedenis van de universiteitsbibliotheken in Groningen en Leiden maken dat enigszins goed. Show less
The article discusses the history of the abstracts and indexing journal originally known as 'Documentatieblad,' which was renamed to 'African Studies Abstracts (ASA)' and later to 'African Studies... Show moreThe article discusses the history of the abstracts and indexing journal originally known as 'Documentatieblad,' which was renamed to 'African Studies Abstracts (ASA)' and later to 'African Studies Abstracts Online' (ASAO), published by the African Studies Centre (ASC) in Leiden, the Netherlands since 1968. Key themes are socioeconomic and political developments, government, law and constitutional development, history, religion, anthropology, women's studies, education, and literature. Publications are in a western language. Due to increased Internet connectivity in African countries, the monthly print edition of ASAO was discontinued from March 2012 onward. The number of subscribers to the ASAO mailing list has increased from 472 in 2004 to 1681 by the end of 2012. By contrast, the number of subscribers to the printed abstracts journal never exceeded 350. Of the 260 journals systematically scanned in 2013, some 160 were wholly or partially abstracted with the remainder being indexed. Over time the abstracting of monographs became increasingly selective. There have been various initiatives over the past twenty years to further cooperation in documenting African Studies material, including 'Africa-Wide Information', 'AfricaBib' and 'ilissAfrica' of the European Librarians in African Studies (ELIAS) network. Notes, ref., sum. [ASC Leiden abstract] Show less
The use of testimonies in performance is enjoying increased artistic and critical popularity on contemporary world stages and has a long and rich tradition on South African stages. Both... Show moreThe use of testimonies in performance is enjoying increased artistic and critical popularity on contemporary world stages and has a long and rich tradition on South African stages. Both internationally and locally, emerging and established playwrights working on migration and refugee issues are seeking to incorporate the testimony of asylum seekers into their work. This necessitates a need to critically reflect on the influences that shape and structure the staging of testimonies. This study argues that increased migration and the mounting number arrivals of asylum seekers on South African shores, has motivated at times violent interaction between host communities and the new arrivals. These incidents have inspired a distinct trend of testimonial performances around the concept of asylum. This dissertation uses Narrative analysis to read examples of contemporary theatre of testimony plays that examine this phenomenon. The study examines how playwright positioning informs the structuring of asylum testimonies on stage in addition to contextualising the ethical and moral complexities the playwright's positionality places on their practice. Through three case studies, the study interrogates how playwright positioning informs notions of authorship, authenticity, truth, theatricality and ethics. The study further investigates the challenges speaking for 'self' and speaking for the 'other' place on testimonial playwrights. Chapter One explores the use of testimony in the documentary theatre tradition. The chapter defines terms and associated terminologies in fact-based theatre to explore the insights various epistemologies reveal about the development and evolution of the documentary tradition to its multiple contemporary manifestations. Chapter two outlines the methodological frame that informs the reading of the body of work under investigation. Chapter Three presents the first case study The Crossing, (2008) which is an autobiographical work written and presented by an asylum seeker Jonathan Nkala. The chapter investigates how the playwright's positioning informs the structure of the testimony and concludes by examining what the testimony itself communicates about the asylum condition. The study argues that the testimony forecasts the escalation of violence against migrants and asylum seekers. Chapter four problematizes the work of a playwright who used testimonies solicited from survivors, perpetrators and witnesses of the 2008 mass violence against foreign nationals in South Africa in The Line (2012) by Gina Shmukler. The chapter concludes by interpreting the mass violence presented in the testimonies as constituting acts of genocide. Chapter Five is a critical and reflexive analysis of the researcher's own practice in devising a play Asylum:Section 22 from the testimony of asylum seekers. The chapter explores the devising and creation process from interview to writing. The chapter also examines the significance of the site of testimony production in the dramaturgical choices. Show less
Within discourses on farm worker empowerment the views of farm workers themselves are an often overlooked aspect. This thesis fills this void by examining farm worker priorities and perceptions on... Show moreWithin discourses on farm worker empowerment the views of farm workers themselves are an often overlooked aspect. This thesis fills this void by examining farm worker priorities and perceptions on empowerment. These are contrasted to the priorities and perceptions farmers have. Data for this thesis were collected between August 2012 and January 2013 during fieldwork in Stellenbosch, South Africa. A combination of interviews, focus group discussions, self-administered surveys and secondary sources make up the data. This research shows that the farm worker community is heterogeneous in regard to their priorities. Farm worker needs are a mix of priorities relating to material, immaterial, short-term, long-term, personal and impersonal objectives. Increased salary is the most important priority for farm workers and this is acknowledged by farmers. Work enjoyment is also highly important to farm workers yet overlooked by farmers. Farmers, more so than farm workers, are aware of the limitations to empowerment. The limitations in terms of scope and speed to empowerment will result in many farm workers not being greatly empowered leading to disappointment. Furthermore, empowerment as it currently stands will benefit those with permanent employment contracts while it might further marginalize non-permanent farm workers. Show less
Boin, M.; Polman, K.; Sommeling, C.M.; Doorn, M.C.A. van 2013
ASA Online provides a quarterly overview of journal articles and edited works on Africa in the field of the social sciences and the humanities available in the ASC library. Issue 42 (2013).... Show moreASA Online provides a quarterly overview of journal articles and edited works on Africa in the field of the social sciences and the humanities available in the ASC library. Issue 42 (2013). African Studies Centre, Leiden. Show less
This is a paper about expectations surrounding a potentially highly transformative moment in East Africa's history: the arrival of underwater fibre-optic broadband communications cables into the... Show moreThis is a paper about expectations surrounding a potentially highly transformative moment in East Africa's history: the arrival of underwater fibre-optic broadband communications cables into the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa. It combines a media content analysis with findings from interviews with business owners in Kenya's nascent business process outsourcing (BPO) and software development sectors in order to explore how such moments of technological 'connectivity' are imagined, marketed and enacted within economic development. It argues that connectivity is not just a matter of boosting physical/material capacity but also about redressing conceptual connectivity; bringing places 'closer together' involves rehabilitating the images of places in peoples' minds and removing imagined senses of distance. As such, technologies of connectivity are marketed not just as tools of altered communications affordances, but more importantly, as momentary opportunities for revisiting the image of places from afar. Additionally, the cables reveal the importance of fostering internal linkages in order to better build international recognition and connections. 'Moments of expectation' that surround new ICT technologies reveal how discourse and representation play a strong role in enabling markets to form and change. The very idea of 'connectivity' itself is driving plans and policies throughout the region. Show less
Three informal settlements in the city of Kisumu (Kenya) are compared in terms of water provision and livelihood. In two of the areas (Wandiege and Katuoro), a major water intervention has taken... Show moreThree informal settlements in the city of Kisumu (Kenya) are compared in terms of water provision and livelihood. In two of the areas (Wandiege and Katuoro), a major water intervention has taken place, whereby in the one (Wandiege) the community has taken things completely in their own hands (culminating in their own, officially registered water company), while in the other (Katuoro) the community and KIWASCO (Kisumu's major water provider) have joined hands (the delegated management model). In the third area (Bandani) nothing of the sort has happened. Survey results show that, despite all kinds of challenges and problems, the interventions in Wandiege and Katuoro did have a substantial positive impact on several livelihood aspects of the households - measured as well as perceived by the respondents - leading to the conclusion that both types of interventions deserve to be replicated elsewhere. Show less
ASA Online provides a quarterly overview of journal articles and edited works on Africa in the field of the social sciences and the humanities available in the ASC library. Issue 43 (2013).... Show moreASA Online provides a quarterly overview of journal articles and edited works on Africa in the field of the social sciences and the humanities available in the ASC library. Issue 43 (2013). African Studies Centre, Leiden. Show less
Stigmatization of people associated with HIV can be devastating, even more so than the virus itself. It destroys the lives of HIV positive people and their loved ones. All too often in Ghana, those... Show moreStigmatization of people associated with HIV can be devastating, even more so than the virus itself. It destroys the lives of HIV positive people and their loved ones. All too often in Ghana, those with no direct HIV experience do not see the depth of the impact of stigma on individuals, households and communities. This monograph, the result of fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in two communities in Ghana, brings to the fore the lived experiences of people infected with and affected by HIV from their own perspectives. In particular, their negotiations between resignation to fate and the struggle for survival as they cope with stigma are presented. Significantly, this book shows that being infected with or affected by HIV is as much a social issue as a medical one, and those associated with HIV/AIDS require more than medical care and support. Concerted efforts by all stakeholders - social and political leadership, the untested, the uninfected, the infected, the affected, service providers and policy makers - would go a long way to reduce the main problem that persists with regard to HIV prevention and treatment in Ghana: stigma. Show less
This article examines three Swahili books with the same title Fimbo ya Musa ('The Rod of Moses'), published between 1970 and 2010, each of which critically investigates Qur'an translations and... Show moreThis article examines three Swahili books with the same title Fimbo ya Musa ('The Rod of Moses'), published between 1970 and 2010, each of which critically investigates Qur'an translations and vernacular religious texts in Swahili. The first Fimbo was written by the Kenyan Ahmad Ahmad Badawy and criticises one of the earliest Swahili Qur'an translations, by Abdullah Saleh al-Farsy. In the second, Nurudin Hussein Shadhuly, head of the Shadhuly/Yashrutiyya ?ufi branch in Tanzania examines and condemns the translation efforts by Saidi Musa, a student of al-Farsy. The final Fimbo is a treatise by the Ibai scholar Juma al-Mazrui from Oman and digitally distributed in 2010 which deals with the doctrine of God's visibility in the hereafter and is an answer to the Salafiyya Tanzanian Kassim Mafuta's 2008 work on this topic. The example of these three polemics over the last four decades shows the shifting concerns in the reaction to the translated Qur'an in Swahili. The act of translation from Arabic to the vernacular is no longer attacked, but rather the theological implications of a deficient translation are at the heart of the more recent discussions. While authoritative knowledge is still associated with a high command of Arabic, affiliation to a particular school of law or intellectual genealogy is not. Religious learning is no longer primarily transmitted through well-established links of personal authorities, but can increasingly be derived from private study and reading. As a direct result of this opening up of a wide field of knowledge for a non-Arabic reading audience, the potential numbers of discussants increases: each new Swahili Qur'an translation reveals more of the enigmatic character of the Qur'an and fuels new debates. Show less
