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The Omnipresent Past. Historical Anthropology of Africa and African Diaspora
Contributors to this volume discuss a variety of ways the African past (African history) influences the present-day of Africans on the continent and in diaspora: cultural (historical) memory as a factor of public (mass) consciousness; the impact of the historical past on contemporary political, social, and cultural processes in Africa and African diaspora.
This volume is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE).
The article highlights the results of field research conducted in Tanzania in August-September 2018, focused on historical memory about Arab slave trade in East Africa and Indian Ocean in the 19-th century and its influence on modern-day interethnic relations in the country.
The chapter by Dmitri Bondarenko, is on the role of historical memory in shaping the relations between African Americans – descendants of slaves forcibly brought from Africa to America centuries ago – and first-generation African immigrants in the USA. Basing on the first-hand evidence from the filed, the author argues that they do not form a single ‘black community’ and that among the reasons explaining this disunity, an important part is played by the different reflection of the past in their historical memory. Most African Americans and African migrants do not have an integral vision of history – of their own history and even more so of each other’s. Their historical consciousness is discrete: there is no history as a process in it, but there are several isolated bright topoi – the most important events. Although all these topoi are directly or indirectly related to the socio-political and spiritual resistance of black people to the whites’ exploitation in or outside Africa, they can be different or be of different importance to African Americans and Africans. There is no concept of ‘black history’ as common history of all the people whose roots are in Africa in the minds of most African Americans and African migrants, especially poorly educated. Bondarenko shows that the key events in African American and African history (namely, the pre-slave trade and pre-colonial period in Africa, transatlantic slave trade, slavery and its abolition in the USA, colonialism and anticolonial struggle in Africa, the civil rights movement in the USA, and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa) are reflected differently and occupy different places in the historical memory and collective consciousness of African Americans and contemporary African migrants to the USA. To some extent, visions of the past promote Africans and African Americans’ rapprochement as victims of long-lasting white domination. However, a deeper analysis shows how the collective historical memory of both groups works more in the direction of separating them by generating and supporting contradictory and even negative images of each other. In general, the relations between African Americans and recent African migrants are characterized by simultaneous mutual attraction and repulsion. Among all ethnoracial communities in the country, the two groups (and also African Caribbeans) consider themselves as the closest to each other; nevertheless, myriads of differences cause mutual repulsion.
The aim of this volume is to study various manifestations of how the past influences the present in contemporary African societies and diaspora communities (called so irrespective of the generation of migrants to which the people that form these communities now belong). The contributors look at the role of the past in shaping modern Africa and African diasporas in different contexts – cultural, social, political – and from different perspectives: ‘subjectivist’ (through the imprints and reflections of the past in human minds) and ‘objectivist’ (through the ways by which the social, political, and cultural events of the past direct the processes in the respective spheres nowadays).
In the following chapter, the author presents some of the findings of the research project conducted in South Africa from 2011–2013, which was aimed at rediscovering people’s memories of township struggles of the 1980s. The research analyzed life stories and memories of direct involvement in community structures and self-rule in townships. In this text, the author uses a series of in-depth interviews to analyze the notions of ‘people’s democracy’ and different understandings of peoples’ self-organization of the abovementioned period.
The problems of identity are no new theme in the research in African politics. In the foreground of interest of political scientists, historians, philosophers, sociologists and experts in African studies the identity appears in particular in connection with the for¬mation of African nations, the existence of nationalities and ethnics, which have direct influence on the operation of the African political system, especially its institutions. The scholars use a great many different approaches, which suggest the importance of these issues in the research in African integration processes and especially the process of development of modern African nations.
This article is about the life of Dmitry Bystroliotov (1901-1975), a Soviet intelligence officer, about his adventures in the Sahara desert and the Congo in the 1930s. Some information about Bystroliotov and about his trip emerged many years after his death, in the 1990s. But even today much of the story remains mysterious. Bystroliotovs first publications although a mystery too appeared in our journal in 1963. We continue the story on the basis of what has come to light since then.
journalism x
the Soviet intelligence x
Africa x
Congo x
Katanga x
Abstract Most studies have shown that when men have higher levels of education they are less likely to beat their wives. Some have also shown that consumption of alcohol tends to be a negative catalyst in provoking inebriated males to commit domestic violence against their intimate partners. Thus, understanding the likely causes and/or associated factors of intimate partner violence with ever more concentrated studies is imperative. Studies in the past have not examined four possible categories of husbands to determine a correlation to intimate partner violence: those that are educated and tend to be alcoholics, those that are educated and tend not to drink alcohol, less-educated individuals who tend to be alcoholics, or those that are less educated and tend to not to be alcoholics. Employing the Demographic and Health Survey data for Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, this study has shown the likelihood of each category of husband to perpetrate domestic violence on intimate female parnters in Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan using the multivariate logistic regression at a 95% confidence interval. From the research it has been found that a husband’s educational level in and of itself offers no significant correlation to IPV perpetration in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, whereas in Nigeria, educated men were a little more likely to perpetrate IPV compared to men with less education as seen in the following: AOR 1.14, CI 1.02- 1.27; p-value < 0.001. In all, alcoholic men were at least 3 times more likely to commit IPV than nonalcoholic men as suggested in the formula of: CI 3.08-5.56; p-value < 0.001. In Nigeria, men with little or no education, who lived in rural areas and were non-alcoholics were less likely to perpetrate IPV compared to their counterparts in urban areas as suggested by AOR 0.75, CI 0.61-0.93; p-value < 0.01, while alcoholic men with little or no education, who lived in rural areas, showed the strongest proclivity to beat their wives as suggested in AOR 4.37, CI 3.5-5.42; p-value < 0.001. Alcohol seems to outweight the effects of education as an instigator of domestic violence. Its introduction consistently increases the likelihood of IPV and strengthens its statistical significance across sites.
Keywords: Intimate partner violence; husband; education; alcohol; Nigeria; Kyrgyzstan; Tajikistan
The authors discuss why conflicts emerge and how they are settled in different African regions and countries. Prospects for their peaceful resolution are studied. Basing on case studies, the authors propose theoretical approaches to conflicts.
In the chapter of the textbook on primitive command economy traditional societies are in general characterized, primitive communal system periodization criteria are given, neolithic revolution is described, functions of reciprocity and redistribution in primitive society are analyzed. The study and methodical materials are enclosed.
HIV first appeared in West-Central Africa, then spread to the South, East and West and, at the same time, practically did not reach North Africa. A possible explanation of this pattern could be in the role of Islam which pays particular attention to the prevention of extramarital sexual relations. In addition, one can mention that circumcised men suffer from HIV significantly less frequently than non-circumcised. Against such background, we had certain grounds to expect that Islamic societies would have lower levels of HIV prevalence than non-Islamic. Our cross-cultural tests have supported this hypothesis. The data have been analyzed with power-law regression. We have found a significant (p < .001) and really strong (r = -.747) negative power-law correlation between percentage of Muslims and the HIV prevalence in African countries. Of course, one should take into account that the stigma attached to HIV is also much higher among Muslims and so, Muslims tend to be tested, identified and monitored at lower numbers than those from other religious and cultural backgrounds, which implies that further in-depth research is necessary in order to detect the real relationship between variables in question.
The results of cross-cultural research of implicit theories of innovativeness among students and teachers, representatives of three ethnocultural groups: Russians, the people of the North Caucasus (Chechens and Ingushs) and Tuvinians (N=804) are presented. Intergroup differences in implicit theories of innovativeness are revealed: the ‘individual’ theories of innovativeness prevail among Russians and among the students, the ‘social’ theories of innovativeness are more expressed among respondents from the North Caucasus, Tuva and among the teachers. Using the structural equations modeling the universal model of values impact on implicit theories of innovativeness and attitudes towards innovations is constructed. Values of the Openness to changes and individual theories of innovativeness promote the positive relation to innovations. Results of research have shown that implicit theories of innovativeness differ in different cultures, and values make different impact on the attitudes towards innovations and innovative experience in different cultures.