FINAL ID TERMS Flashcards
“Zombie”
(Week 7 Lecture)
Nigerian singer and pioneer of the Afrobeat music genre, Fela Kuti, released the track “Zombie” in 1976, the same year of the military coup in Nigeria. The new military regime ushered in economic stability, which had faltered under the nationalist projects of the 60s, but simultaneously repressed political dissent. In his politically-charged song “Zombie”, Fela Kuti implicitly criticizes the Nigerian military, referencing a military march with lyrics like “A joro, jara, joro” (Left, Right, Left) which imply that the soldiers are zombies only following orders and not thinking. During this part in the song, the listener is forced to choose between the two polyrhythms: the one saying “left, right, left” (in support of the military), or the common uniting rhythm (in opposition to the first)? The use of polyrhythms in the song highlights to the listener that imitation is not neutral, and that they too would become zombies, dancing “left, right, left” in accordance to command of the military government if they did not make a choice and instead follow the alternate rhythm. Fela was thus an important voice of dissent, and in response to “Zombie” the military attacked his compound and killed his mother, after which he delivered her corpse to the head general to publicly shame him, and subsequently wrote the track “Coffin for Head of State”, and then “Unknown Soldier” when the army tried to blame an “unknown soldier” for carrying out the attack.
The “Big Man” Complex
(Week 7 Lecture)
The “Big Man” is first and foremost a colonial construct borne from the chief as a colonial institution. Under colonial rule, these chiefs were able to gain privatized access to resources which under collective precolonial kinship structures they never would have been allowed to privatize. Using these resources, chiefs can now attract followers who are dependent on these resources, fostering creation of neopatrimonial social alliances based on distribution of wealth from above. Through these patron-client relationships the heads of state in many post-independence governments came to embody the “Big Man” complex. The term “politiques du ventre” can be used to describe the means by which these informal patronage relationships were utilized in order to privatize the resources of the State. An associated image of the Big Man and the politiques du ventre is that of the Big Man eating alone; an image which insinuates accumulation and consumption in private, which is also closely related to witchcraft. In the taboo-ness of eating alone and it’s association with witchcraft, witchcraft serves as a moral language through which to talk about destructive individuality (perpetuated by the Big Man) and its effects on society.
Structural Adjustment Programs
(Week 9 Lecture)
SAPs during the 1980s were the West’s response to the Debt Crisis. African (and many other developing country governments) turn to the World Bank and IMF for loans to help pay off their debts which have mounted since the mid-70s. The IMF grants loans, but along with a stringent set of conditions geared towards cutting government spending of the post-independence period to fit the new neoliberal world order. Conditions of SAPs include: privatization of state industries, reduction of state expenditures, lowering trade restrictions, shift focus of production activities to comparative advantage.
However, the SAPs imposed by the IMF plummeted African economies into negative growth. Colonial export-oriented structures had impeded the growth of a national, and the State then functioned as the major integrating instrument (via clientelism). After Structural Adjustment drastically reduced the economic presence of the state, there was no national market to take over integration of the state. As a result of this, Big Men and their followers took over, fighting over access to what was left of the state, which was called “tribal” politics. When the international community pressures African states to hold multi-party elections to try and mediate, the result is a complete fracture of the state.
Leymah Roberta Gbowee
(Pray the Devil Back to Hell)
Leymah Roberta Gbowee was the leader of a womens’ movement which peacefully protested to end the civil war in Liberia in the 1990s. The women in Gwobee’s movements protesting civil war stripped down outside the negotiation table to emasculate the male peace negotiators who weren’t cooperating in drafting a peace deal, and therefore not acting like real men. This is a manifestation of the new idioms of protest available to women as a result of the widening of opportunities for womens’ political participation in the 1990s with the onset of multi-party elections. Also, these women’s gathering of both Christian and Muslim women via networks within and between churches and mosques highlights the multi-ethnic diversity of African womens’ movements, which often stood in sharp opposition to masculine ethnic warfare.
1985 World Conference on Women
(Week 9 Lecture)
At the 1985 UN Conference on Women in Nairobi, for the first time the conference was held in the “Global South”, and for the first time the majority of the women representatives present came from the Global South as well. Thus, this conference was a highlighting moment of Pan-African feminism within the continent, but also presented a challenge to Western feminism and its handling of issues in the Global South. They also reached a consensus that feminism must tackle oppressive patriarchal structures, it must also work to redefine masculinity.
Concurrency
(The Invisible Cure, Helen Epstein)
Concurrency is having more than one long-term sexual partner at a time. these concurrency networks, epstein argues, are the reason for the spread of AIDS bc they’re not casual one-time partners, they’re trusted, committed relationships with 2 or three partners at a time, meaning use of condoms is much less likely. this explains why AIDS has spread rapidly through the heterosexual populations in Southern Africa but only remains confined to “high risk” groups in the Global North, like homosexuals and drug users.
Interahamwe
(Week 10 Lecture)
The Hutu paramilitary organization which carried out much of the genocide in Rwanda. known for broadcasting radio propaganda inciting genocide against Tutsis. After the genocide they were exiled to the eastern DRC, where conflicts there consequently arise over congolese resources. The entire thing is the the biggest international conflict in the world since WWII, with a death toll of 5 million
Juvénal Habyarimana
(Week 10 Lecture)
President of Rwanda from 1973 to April 6th 1994, the day when his plane was shot down on the way back to Rwanda from peace negotiations. The real culprits are still unknown, but blame was immediately placed on Tutsi “rebels”, and this served as a signal to Hutu conspirators for the start of the four month Rwandan genocide. It is important to note that this was a signal, meaning the genocide was not spontaneous, but rather the culmination of a large-scale coordination.
Pentecostalism
Africa is the frontline in the global crusade against Islam. This frontline passes straight through Uganda, and the whole arena becomes a testing ground for the later “War on Terror”. Here US evangelizing Christian groups mark their territory to try and re spark their cause because they had already lost the cultural war in the U.S. Global right-wing Christian groups depended on Sub-Saharan Africa as a battleground in which they could push their agenda and “push back” against Islam.
Structural Violence
(“An Anthropology of Structural Violence” by Paul Farmer)
According to Paul Farmer, anthropology needs a shift in focus from studying “ethnographically visible” forms of violence to “structural violence” which entails a close analysis of the institutionalized oppressive “machinery” to which situations of deep poverty and inequality in the Global South can be attributed. (he worked in Haiti, you can then say that first colonialism and then structural adjustment in the 1980s = “machinery” of structural violence
Economic features of the immediate post-independence period
The Period of the 1960s through the mid-1970s in (independent) Africa was a period of modest economic growth, and the Afrofuturism movement held high hopes for reimagining Africa’s future (La Pyramide in Abidjan, Ivory Coast). However, the period eventually saw “perverse development” in which the big projects for economic development driven by a one-party state and the Big Man complex were often left unfinished due to lack of institutional ability in the face of rising expectations.
Features of the immediate post-independence period
The Period of the 1960s through the mid-1970s in (independent) Africa was a period of modest economic growth, and the Afrofuturism movement held quasi-religious high hopes for reimagining Africa’s future (Ex: La Pyramide in Abidjan, Ivory Coast). However, the period eventually saw “perverse development” in which the big projects for economic development driven by a one-party state and the Big Man complex were often left unfinished due to lack of institutional ability in the face of rising expectations.
Features of the immediate post-independence period
The Period of the 1960s through the mid-1970s in (independent) Africa was a period of modest economic growth, and the Afrofuturism movement held quasi-religious high hopes for reimagining Africa’s future (Ex: La Pyramide in Abidjan, Ivory Coast). However, the period eventually saw “perverse development” in which the big projects for economic development driven by a one-party state and the Big Man complex were often left unfinished due to lack of institutional ability in the face of rising expectations.
In response to demands for wage raises, state employment expands and creates a new middle class, in the absence of a single national economy. This is how the vertically-connected patron-client relationships are formed and export earnings are distributed through down to local levels in the form of both wages and corruption. This promoted the Big Man complex, and with it masculine neo-tribalism at the local level.
“Second Independence”
In response to the dilemma of weak, nationalist post-colonial governments, the “Second Independence” emerged in the mid-1970s as a return to “indigeneity”. It acted as a new cult of the traditional and used a racial rhetoric to demonize foreigners. (Ex: Joseph Mobutu in the Congo becomes Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire)
Economic features of the mid-1970s through the 1980s
In 1973 OPEC embargoes oil shipments to the West, sparking the Oil Crisis of 1973 and the end of economic growth. As oil prices skyrocket, the West experiences stagflation and is no longer will to buy African material exports. Most African economies are hurt as well, so many borrow Saudi “Petro Dollars” from British and Swiss banks, but in dollars, not in their local currencies. These debts in dollars gradually become inflated as local currencies become devalued (because the West is not buying their exports), and the Debt Crisis of the 1980s ensues.
