Fremde und Fremdheit in afrikanischen Gesellschaften: ein Vergleich von Mbuti, Dogon, Dyula und dem städtischen Senegal

Der Umgang mit Fremden und Fremdheit kann höchst unterschiedlich sein. Dies hängt sowohl von allgemein anerkannten Interpretationsmustern - welche entscheiden, wer oder was 'fremd' ist - als auch von der Alltagspraxis ab. Ein Vergleich von vier unterschiedlichen Gesellschaften bzw. gesellschaftlichen Milieus in Afrika zeigt, dass Fremde oft in die alltägliche Arbeit integriert werden. Dadurch lernen sie die Bedeutung der Grundzüge des Lebens in der anderen Gesellschaft kennen. Welche Grenzen eine solche Integration hat, wird schließlich durch den Vergleich mit einem modernen gesellschaftlichen Umfeld deutlich.The treatment and reception of foreigners and of foreignness may be highly diverse. It relies on generally accepted interpretive patterns of what and who is to be foreign as well as on everyday practice. A comparison of four African societies and societal milieus respectively shows that by such practice, foreigners are often integrated into daily work. They thus learn about the importance of the basics of life in the other society. What limits such integration may have becomes apparent when comparing it to a modern societal milieu

Mirror Images: mediated sociality and the presence of the future

Today, most Africans who have a mobile phone have become photographers while professional photographers are going out of business. Picture files displayed on the small screens increasingly replace photoprints. This transformation affects the use of pictures deeply. It facilitates the exchange of pictures and broadens the ways in which ordinary people situate themselves in a social context and how they imagine their own place in their future life-worlds. This contribution looks at how the use of pictures has changed since the incredibly rapid proliferation of smartphones in northern Côte d’Ivoire. It examines smartphones as storage devices and how and when picture files are displayed on the screens of phones. It traces social practices of displaying and commenting on pictures through different social milieus by juxtaposing three examples: the shared watching of pictures in private spaces; the display of pictures as proofs of a specific event, in this case a pilgrimage to Mecca; and finally the use of smartphones as albums to demonstrate artisanal skills. I argue that such practices do not foster a devaluation of the picture but rather endow it with new meanings, as the case of a gay couple shows. Pictures on phones are used to imagine a possible, alternative future of the actors in a changing life-world

Aesthetics of Articulation

Art and social space are not conceivable one without another. Nevertheless, only little research has so far addressed this relationship of creative and social practice and its political and aesthetic implications in urban Africa and its global entanglement. Often, art is conceived either as apolitical practice of beautification and decoration in times of peace or as deeply political in times of unrest and oppression. This applies particularly to African settings that tend to be perceived as sites of crisis while evading the attention of mostly Western-centric art theory. It is therefore of particular importance to understand artistic articulation as a social and creative practice that operates also beyond moments of political and conflictual emergency. In what ways does art articulate social and political imagination, and how does artistic practice relate to such social and collective visions? How does articulation work and in what ways is it generative of visual, oral and performative aesthetics? We have addressed these questions in highly diverse cities in East and West Africa that have experienced different levels of political conflict and forms of cultural activity in the last years. The presented three essays are reflective not only of different traditions and cultures of artistic, political and social expression, but also of the fascinating range of methodological approaches to the topic that social anthropology has on offer for both, the actual process of the study and the presentation of its results. Beyond being empirical studies of aesthetic and political articulation, the three essays also speak to theories of articulation. They embrace politics, aesthetics, and not least the formation of social urban space

Introduction: Re-imagining Cities in Africa

The introduction presents the key concepts and core arguments of this special issue Re-Imagining African Cities: The Arts and Urban Politics that results from a workshop hosted by the Visual Culture Research Group at the Department of Anthropology, University of Basel, in 2016. Summarising and presenting the essays, it offers insights into how urban imagination and the physical cities interrelate in urban aesthetic practices. How do artists articulate their experiences and observations of the city? What position and relevance do the material city, the city image and the urban imagination have in the practice of these visual and performing artists? How does their work relate to the urban as a social space on the one hand and as an imagined entity on the other? The African and diasporic cities of Kinshasa, Paris, Cape Town, Lagos, Bamenda, Freetown, Johannesburg and Kampala are both the sites and research subjects of the authors and of the artists they present. The focus on visual and performative arts provides the vehicle and the critical means of observing, articulating and representing these entanglements of the material cities, their images and their societal as well as artistic imagination