Changes in the Cultural Patterns of Work in Africa – A Comparative Approach
International Symposium in Dakar, Senegal-December 5 to 7, 2011
Call for Papers
In this symposium we aim to focus on changes in cultural patterns of work in various regions of Africa, especially – but not exclusively - in countries that send large numbers of migrants to Europe. The growing European policy debate and analytic discourse on migration could be enhanced by greater attention to the way out-migration from Africa is a result of economic, political, and social changes in Africa itself.
“Work” is a general term associated with a global perspective and an emphasis on inter-disciplinary and cross-regional comparison. In the past, “work” was almost exclusively related to the term “labour” as well as to the struggle for equality and democratization. New understandings of work, especially as related to the concept of lifecyle, inform this project. Work cannot be separated from gender relations, the household, private domestic and official public divisions of labour, state provision of supports and services, and cultural constructions of a job, dignity, the transition to adulthood, being a provider, being dependent, nurturing, children, and personhood. A lifecyle approach thus integrates work in a framework that systematically engages all of these issues, while naturally demanding expertise and tools from many disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. Traditional disciplines concerned with work (sociology, anthropology, history, economics, political science, law) find invigoration in new exchange with scholars of cultural production (literature, film, photography, music, visual art, theater, performance), as well as with colleagues of any discipline who study topics formerly ignored in labour studies (handicraft, marketplaces, fashions, gossip, media, internet, etc.).
In order to address these issues at the micro level we present several general deliberations: What does a regular or an alternative work pattern mean for the cultural and social networks? In which situation will a person or a group of persons move to another region or to Europe to find work? Is this a precedent or does it form part of a culture of migration? Is this migration understood as a possibility to modernize the working conditions at home? What type of work is considered as backward? Is this only due to the educational level, or also related to legacies of slave labour or work with a low status of societal recognition, due to age, ethnic and gender divisions?
We also encourage papers that discuss cases related to the crucial concerns of dealing with land and water problems in rural as well as in urban areas. These problems are often determinant for working conditions in the formal as well as informal sector. Labour law was inherited from colonial times and mostly applies to the formal sector. In the present day, with the increasingly precarious situation of work, the informal sector has become especially important. Africa shares these problems with Asia and Latin America and, therefore, we will include some case studies from those regions.
Paper proposals should clearly address 1) how work itself has changed and 2) how working conditions and contexts have changed. Proposals should present a combination of historical and cultural factors relevant to changes in work, and elaborate concepts, which make these changes understandable by framing them in accordance with subjective and objective categories. This will enable us to map different patterns of change related to a specific regional and historical setting.
We expect that this symposium will contribute to an understanding of aspects of work in Africa in a global perspective, in order to further deconstruct concepts of corruption, laziness, and chaos, often applied unconsciously also in the perception of Africans themselves. Likewise the wave of European migration to the United States in the nineteenth century, migration of workers from Africa results from the lack or the impossibility of change in the region of departure.
In addition to the panels, the symposium will be inaugurated with a keynote lecture on the culture of work from Prof. Andreas Eckert, a distinguished international scholar, historian of Africa and Director of the International Research Centre, Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History (IGK), Humboldt University, Berlin.
On the last day, the West African Labour History Association will be launched. Prof. Marcel van der Linden, a distinguished World labour historian and the Director of Research at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam will speak on the emergence and experiences of similar Associations in other parts of the Africa, Asia, and Latin America in recent years.
The International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, the International Research Centre, Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History (IGK), Humboldt University, Berlin, the Seminar for African Studies, Humboldt University, as well the Faculté des Sciences de l’Éducation et de la Formation (FASTEF) of the Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, will be actively associated with the Symposium proceedings.
The Symposium languages will be English and French (no translation).
Abstract submission deadline: January 31, 2011
Acceptance notification: March 23, 2011
Papers submission deadline: September 30, 2011
Contact Organizers:
Babacar Fall
FASTEF / Université Cheikh Anta Diop Dakar, Sénégal
Email: babacar2.fall@ucad.edu.sn
Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger
Seminar für Afrikawissenschaften, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
Email: phafrhei@cms.hu-berlin.de