Overall concepts Flashcards
Kanju (Olopade)
a specific creativity born out of African hardship. Refers to the extraordinary ability to manage and get things done despite challenges like unreliable electricity, poor infrastructure and lack of strong social safety nets. Not out of pityness. Practical solutions over subjective beauty. Doing more with less.
Normative humanism (Goodale)
a central analytical framework for critical anthropology of human rights. A way of understanding a basic cross-cultural fact of collective ordering: that given the right circumstances (no outside constraints, power influence), people will organize themselves to establish conditions for meaningful interactions. posits a foundation of human-centered, but does not anticipate specific legal, moral, or other normative orderings in advance, except within broad limits informed by anthropological experience and basic human imperatives. Thus, basic human rights, needs, duties, or laws cannot be predicted. Contradicts universal human rights, but still agrees that it can be used as a framework. no radical relativism because the range of possible rights and duties are constrained by cognitive, physical, and emotional requirements leading to rather repetitive normative systems. focus on collective capacity. collapses the etic to the emic.
Big D-development (Bakker and Nooteboom)
-Progess instigated by interventions, eg. reform, knowledge transfer and modernization.
-Global North continuing to control processes of change in developing countries
-Neo-colonial
-Evolutionary
-Euro-American-centrist
-Over-simplifying human similarities at the expense of differences between cultures and societies
-Achieve progress through planned actions, in contrast to little-d
often intersect with big-D
processes of inclusion and exclusion are understood by anthropologists to be not only caused by outside interventions of big-D but also shaped by people’s own actions
Little d-development (Bakker and Nooteboom)
-Geogrpahically uneven, profoundly contradictory set of historical processes
-Specifically refers to broad, unfoldning processes of global change, particularly capitalism
-Differs from big-D, since its viewed as an unintentional practice that also involves the study of immanent processes of development
-Brings relational, unintended, and bottom-up factors into the development process
Fat economy (Olopade)
-Exemplified by countries within the Organisation for Economic Cooperitation and Development (OECD) where “plenty is normal” and “abundance is the average”
-In fat economies, problem-solving goes beyond basic needs such as vaccination and sanitation. Even poorest people are seen to be more comfortable than most people through history
-Also face FAT problems such as high obesity rates and subprime mortage crises
Lean economy (Olopade)
-Example of Africa
-Disease burden is significantly different with malaria, AIDS/HIV
-Despite challenges, there are silver linings, like wasting less food and low carbon footprint, no financial crises since not a part of global market
-Honored innovations are different to fat economies
-Innovation to innovate
Reification (Wolf)
turning names or abstract concepts into concrete things with inherent qualities and clear boundaries. leads to false models of reality. like the example of billiard balls. makes it easy to sort the world into different “civilizations” like “global east” and “global west” as opposition to the other, prosecution of the cold war. underdevelopment is also a result of reification, treated as a state of a country rather as a consequence of external relations. leads to polarized models where eg. The billiard ball of the west will help to push the billiard ball of the south to a more developed state.
Modes of production (Wolf)
capitalist, tributary, and kin-ordered. Through using this marxist concept it is possible to systematically compare different ways to organize in society. The modes of production give a frame to analyze how different societies organized their labor and how this affected the encounter anf conflicts with Europe. Also gives an idea how people integrate with each other and nature, activating labor, distribution of products. Uncovers class and power structures. Visualizes both intersystematic and intrasystematic relations to understand how capitalism interacted with other modes of production and how they got influenced by that. to understand how capitalism works it is important to place that in contrast to other modes of production. Not static types or stages in cultural evolution, but rather as constructions to understand strategic relations that form the terms of human life. how Europeans expanded and the consequences of that. The laborer is always in relation to someone.
Illicit economy (Gregson and Crang)
a way to think about the illegal and illicit as part of economies. It challenges the separation of social sciences where economy in a traditional sense only focuses legitimate actors and formal regulation, and the illicit and illegal is given to criminology and other societal and cultural analyses. Questions the binary separation of illegal and legal in products and actors where the term illicit is more open to intercept a wider reality than only illegal. Moral economy where some illegal activities can be accepted and some legal activities not morally accepted. circulation is important, illegality is not only one separated network but a part of a bigger circulation where both illegality and legality happens.
Satellite (Rodney)
Metropolis (Rodney)
Core countries (Wallerstein)
Peripheral (Wallerstein)
Both Wallerstein’s and Rodney’s theoretical frameworks describe hierarchical relations between different types of states and economies in the global system. Both perspectives describe a power imbalance. Both use exploitation as a central mechanism that sustains this hierarchy. Rodney describes how the metropolis drains resources and hinders the development of the satellites through trading, colonialism, and investments. Wallerstein explains how the core countries use the peripheral countries for resources and cheap labor. Both describe a relation of dependency.
The difference is Wallerstein’s inclusion of semi-peripheral countries which describe a middle state. Wallerstein states a bigger dynamic and potential movement of the countries in between the states whereas Rodney describes a persistent effect of the exploatation and dependent relation, even though he says it can change with an introduction of a socialist system. Rodney also focuses more on the historical relation of Africa and Europe. Rodney puts focus on socialism as an alternative to the system of capitalism.
Wallerstein gives a more nuanced description.
Semi-peripheral (Wallerstein)
they get exploited but also exploit other countries. they are more industrialized and more diversed economies than peripheral countries but miss the domination and capital of core countries.
Sapé fa (Pardo)
central to the entrepeneuralism of Naples. A culture of cleverness. to collect all resources, both material and immaterial to get to goals and improvement. on economic terms it can be translated to expand or establish small or micro businesses, often in the informal sector, to the relation of the whole market. “help yourself”, “do not want to be subdordinated anyone”, indicates strong independence and initiative.
Can resemble kanju, since both are born out of dealing with challenges. Though, sapé fa is more about striving for improvement in a context of informal and formal is interconnected and kanju is a response to specific difficulties and lacks in the societal infrastructure and social security in Africa.
Formality bias (Olopade)
a tendency to assume that formal structures, institutions and solutions are the only valid or effective ways to understand and engage with development issues, particularly in the context of lean economies like Africa. This bias often leads to overlooking or undervaluing informal systems, networks, innovations and solutions that are common and often crucial in these economies
Unidisciplinary (Wolf)
isolation of the object of study, eg. state, nation, or culture which creates a false picture of reality since the object are analyzed separately when they interconnect, a kind of reification. the history of the development of social sciences contains an emerge of seperate theoretical frameworks, concepts and methods, which has led to limited understanding of complex phenomena. makes it hard to understand the interconnectedness of universal processes, the world parts are mutually dependent on each other. need of interdiciplinary approach.
Fail states (Olopade)
shabby public service provision. not a “failed” state! play an overlooked role in modern Africa, crises of faith in African governments have forced dynamic “kanju” responses from ordinary people, alternative arrangements. Africa is distinct from other lean economies, public service issues exist in other lean economies, even in fat, but more mature governments, where in Africa there is n true compact between citizen and government. “fail states” leads to “kanju”.
Historicism (Chakrabarty)
a particular form of development thinking. defined by the assumption that one object, under its existence, retains a unitary form and reaches its full potential goal through a developmental process in a secular historical time. fails to catch the complex and discontinuity of historical processes, treats historical categories like transcendental in relation to happenings or runs like an empty equability through history (Foucault). was common in the anti-colonial nationalist thought. this thinking has made it possible to postulate a certain “europe” as home to the modern
Deculturaization (Matunhu)
abandoning or losing one’s own culture, values, norms and attitudes in favor of those of another culture, particurarly that of the former colonizers of the “metropolis”. seen as a necessary step for Afroca to follow the developmental stages of Europe (modernization). “abonding african identity”. undermines the traditional practices. “enlighten the dark continent”. Africas own development was discarded in favor of an external driven one.
“Maps” (Olopade)
uses the metaphor for maps to challenge the tradtional and misleading way to understand and represent Africa’s structure and dynamic. a contradiction to the map of Africa that was drawn out at the Berlin conference that was characterized by ignorance, eurocentric perspective and lack of understanding of the local reality. These old maps have led to a misconception of Africa as a “dark” undeveloped continent. these maps, created by west, could be more dangerous than no maps at all and “finding” Africa. it puts forward informal and local structures, that often are overlooked by traditional development actors, NGO’s and journalists. Everyday practices that people use to build their lives are overlooked. Olopades maps bring these hidden strengths and innovations forward, kanju. These maps are contested by formality biases. but can be used as a compass for future commitment. through the maps she bridges the two publicities, informal and formal, that are vital for Africa.
