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On these pages you will find information about Norwegian research on Africa. Through our extensive database you can get in touch with scholars who share your research interests or work within a certain geographical area. You may also use our menu to find useful Africa-related links, or check our list of news/events to do with African studies in Norway and beyond.
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Norwegian scholars make their mark in ”Africa”!
The most recent issue of Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute (vol. 77, no. 3, 2007) includes as many as 3 articles by Norwegian anthropologists. Knut Christian Myhre, Aud Talle, and the trio Astrid Blystad, Ole Bjørn Rekdal and Herman Malleyeck are all well-established scholars, and have presented interesting works before, but that the three parties make an issue of “Africa” half ‘Norwegian’ is a quite special event.
The articles present recent materials from different parts of East Africa (Kenya and Tanzania). All deal with intimate relations, but their foci and analytical frameworks are quite distinct. Each argument is thought-provoking in its own right, and will no doubt add strength to the Norwegian voice in African Studies. Their titles and abstracts read as follows:
Knut Christian Myhre:
Family resemblances, Practical Interrelations and Material Extensions: Understanding Sexual Prohibitions, Production and Consumption in KilimanjaroThrough the ‘procreative paradigm’, sexuality and its relationships to other social practices have recently regained importance in the study of sub-Saharan Africa. Despite its apparent novelty, I argue that this paradigm invokes an anthropological approach that harks back to the discipline’s beginnings. In an attempt at a fresh departure, I use Ludwig Wittgenstein’s late philosophy to investigate the meaning of sexual prohibitions among the Chagga-speaking people of Rombo District, Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania. Starting from local linguistic usage, I describe the multiple ‘language-games’ of the vernacular notion of ‘power’, horu. In this manner, I demonstrate how production, reproduction and consumption are conceptually, practically and materially intertwined through the ‘family resemblances’ of this local concept. Horu is expended through productive practices; in multiple ways it is converted, transferred and exchanged between adults and children in reproduction; and it is replenished through the consumption of specific ‘powerful’ foods. By means of different objects, the activities of work, sex and feeding enable ‘power’ to flow between persons. The multiple vernacular usages of the notion of horu, and its practical and material concomitants, interrelate diverse spheres of social life in such a manner that they constitute an overlapping network that extends laterally.Human capability and well-being are constituted through participation in these activities, and engagement in the mutual flows, conversions and exchanges of ‘power’ that encompass humans, livestock and vegetable matter. The sexual prohibitions of Rombo regulate and channel these flows and conversions, in order to ensure their beneficial effects for the parties concerned. I therefore argue that the sexual prohibitions are not ex post facto interpretations or justifications that explain or control preceding experiences, but rather that they are constitutive of the local mode of life. An appreciation of lateral relationships between concepts, practices and objects enables an evasion of some of the problems that arise from the procreative paradigm.
Astrid Blystad, Ole Bjørn Rekdal and Herman Malleyeck:
Seclusion, Protection and Avoidance: Exploring the Metida Complex Among the Datoga of Northern Tanzania.This article deals with metida avoidance practices as they emerge in daily and ritual practice among the agro-pastoral Datoga-speaking peoples of Tanzania. The elaboration of the avoidance practices varies starkly between and within Datoga segments, but these practices are commonly particularly elaborate in connection with death or death-like events, and with birth or birth-like events. In the study area women may spend years of their lives with severe restrictions on their conduct in terms of movement and socialization. We argue that in making sense of such avoidance phenomena the strong influence of Mary Douglas’s ‘dirt’ and ‘pollution’ concepts has hindered an understanding of the fact that the metida seclusion does not only isolate substances perceived to be dangerously contaminating, but in similar ways secludes fertile and vulnerable elements in order to protect them. A Strathern-inspired transition to a focus on bodies as open and dynamic systems that mingle with other bodies in intimate flows or exchanges of bodily fluids may be fruitful in this context. We indicate, however, that incautious substitution of a ‘pollution’ concept with the concept of ‘flows’ may lead to challenges not entirely dissimilar to those that attended the employment of Douglas’s concepts.
Aud Talle:
‘Serious Games’: Licences and Prohibitions in Maasai Sexual LifeThis article discusses sexual licences and prohibitions among the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania with particular reference to the institutionalized yet controversial sexual relations between young pre-menarche girls and adolescent unmarried men. These relations are referred to as children’s ‘play’ in the local vernacular, and as such fall within a larger moral order of age and gender hierarchies that privilege male seniority. The article uses the metaphor of ‘serious games’ adopted from Sherry Ortner as an analytical device in order to capture the dynamic and ambiguous character of Maasai sexual licences and prohibitions. Being at once serious and playful, ‘games’ lend themselves particularly to players’ creativity, initiative and agency. The article aims to demonstrate how the structures of the games open up and create space for women and other ‘juniors’ to act intentionally and with purpose in their sexual lives.