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Radio interview on African Village/ “Germans&Japanese less sensitive about race”

Published on June 20, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Europe, Us and Them

The African Village at the zoo in Augsburg, Germany is still debated in the international media.

“An African culture festival creates a storm in Germany. Critics say it’s like shows in colonial times that degraded Africans. The flap has sparked a broader discussion about racism in Germany, and what it’s like to be both dark-skinned and a native German”, the National Public Radio (NPR) summarizes the debate around the african village in the zoo in Augsburg. >> listen to the radio report by NPR

On L’express and several other news sites comment the African Village like this: “Germans and Japanese are less sensitive about race in general and about Africa in particular than, say, people in France or the United States, where a significant minority of the population is of African descent >> continue

The African Village at the zoo in Augsburg, Germany is still debated in the international media.

"An African culture festival creates a storm in Germany. Critics say it's like shows in colonial times that degraded Africans. The flap has sparked a…

Rituals – mechanisms for both creating solidarity and for increasing conflict

Published on June 20, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, Asia, culture traditions, politics, religion cosmology, Us and Them

Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research

Dutch-sponsored researcher Farsijana Adeney-Risakotta analysed the dynamics of the conflict between Muslims and Christians in the Molucca Islands. The anthropologist proposes that rituals play an important role in this. Ritual was found to unite and mobilise people in a confrontation with real or supposed outsiders, but it also helped them to reach an agreement after the confrontation. >> continue

Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research

Ethnomusicologist uses website as an extension of the book

Published on June 14, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, fieldwork / methods, internet, music, websites

(via Fieldnotes): Ethnomusicologist Aaron Fox has set up a website and blog as an “extension of the book”: “I’m not going to republish the book on the site, but the book deals so much with sound that I had to make it possible for people to hear the music”, he explains and adds: “I also really wanted to be able to interact with readers — as we are doing now! Seems to me this is just the most under-used capacity of the web as an adjunct to traditional publishing. It’s not like academic books sell in the tens of thousands, so it seems perfectly reasonable and possible to enter into a real dialogue with serious readers.”

Anthropologist Tad McIlwraith on Fieldnotes comments: “I think about this in the context of my work with First Nations people and wonder if I could convince them to allow their actual voices to be found in files on my website. I think my work would be enhanced if they’d agree to that.”

Aaron Fox’ book is called Real County: Music and Language in Working Class Culture and is according to Tad McIlwraith “a fantastic ethnography”.

(via Fieldnotes): Ethnomusicologist Aaron Fox has set up a website and blog as an "extension of the book": "I'm not going to republish the book on the site, but the book deals so much with sound that I had to…

In Detroit and London: More African Villages in the Zoo

Published on June 13, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, Us and Them

There’s been much discussion about the African Village in the Augsburg Zoo that took place last weekend. At the same time, the Detroit Zoo has arranged an African American Festival: “It will feature storyteller Ivory D. Williams, arts and crafts, authentic style food, hip-hop lessons, dance groups and an African American Community Resource area.” They plan even more festivals like the Middle Eastern Festival, Caribbean Festival and the Native American Festival. No Bavarian or European festival, though. >> read the press release

The African Village in the Augsburg zoo wasn’t actually a village. Visitors and journalists told about the usual stands with rings, arts and food that one finds on every festival. As Zeyneb Kaengo, 39, an African who was cooking at an African food stand, told the press: “I do not understand why people are protesting. Maybe they thought we were going to be put in cages, but that’s not true,” she said.

Nevertheless, the question remains “why Europe is suddenly obsessed with this exotic fascination for Africa, which only the zoo can provide” as the Guardian (Nigeria) asks in an interesting article. They write about forthcoming “African nights” in the London Zoo.

On the zoo’s homepage we read:

“In addition to the unique opportunity to experience the animals settling in for the evening, visitors will be able to soak up the African culture with themed animal shows, live African performances, licensed bars and African food on offer throughout the evening. For the children there will be the opportunity to learn how to make Maasai masks, listen to traditional African stories and have their faces painted like tribal warriors!”

>> continue

As anthropologist Nina Glick Schiller commented, the city of Seattle, USA, put Africans in a Zoo in May 2001, see article in the Seattle Post

SEE ALSO:

BBC: Row over German zoo’s Africa show

Radio interview on African Village/ “Germans & Japanese less sensitive about race”

African village in the Zoo: Protest against racist exhibition

There's been much discussion about the African Village in the Augsburg Zoo that took place last weekend. At the same time, the Detroit Zoo has arranged an African American Festival: "It will feature storyteller Ivory D. Williams, arts and crafts,…

Seeing Africa as exceptional underestimates common experience of globalisation

Published on June 13, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, culture traditions, Us and Them

Anthropologist Christopher Davis, The Guardian

Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa has left me bewildered. As an anthropologist interested in “traditional” medicine, I was delighted to see its report’s attempt to take an Africa-centred point of view. Reading a sentence stating that “history shows African cultures to have been tremendously adaptive, absorbing a wide range of outside influences” is a relief to those of us who have tried for years to make this point.

But I was frustrated by what seems to be our incapacity to escape our own mental traditions – the casts of mind that always seem to come into play when we imagine Africa. Nowhere were these more in evidence than in the report’s discussion of the role of religion in African social life. The risk is of the return of the 19th-century idea of “primitive mentality”: the idea that “they” are less rational than “we” are. >> continue

>> see comments by Kerim Friedman /Savage Minds

Anthropologist Christopher Davis, The Guardian

Tony Blair's Commission for Africa has left me bewildered. As an anthropologist interested in "traditional" medicine, I was delighted to see its report's attempt to take an Africa-centred point of view. Reading a sentence stating that…