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Claiming craft, claiming culture – The creation of value in post-colonial Namibian craft markets
Full text linkTourist crafts in Namibia serve as memories of exciting trips and holidays. The consumption of craft intersects with the consumption of culture because craft is seen as a marker of cultural identity. Purchasing decisions are made by an evaluation of cultural attributes of objects on offer. This paper describes the valorisation process of craft in the Namibian craft market. The history of craft objects will be contrasted with the perspectives of the tourists on craft in order to demonstrate how value(s) is imposed on craft objects. By presenting the production chain of Namibian crafts, colonial traces in the creation of value will be exposed. This paper shows that the perceptions of the tourists contradict with the history and the conditions of production of craft objects which leads to a fetishization of the crafts
Editorial: An anthropological encounter with post-colonial realities in Namibia?
Full text linkThis article offers an overview of the research undertaken in Namibia in 2019 by a group of emerging academics studying at Hamburg Germany to shape the core of this volume. We aim to tackle the challenging question of the speaker position within a field of discourse around post-colonialism from which our group can legitimately speak, and sketch the necessities for and challenges facing a decolonization of language, action and research. It is impossible with a small – though sensitive and ambitious – group of upcoming anthropologists to do more than scratch the surface of a problem that is so big and multidimensional. So, in this volume we present partial glimpses of our encounter with post-colonial realities in Namibia, and do not claim to be able to paint more than a rough picture. Here we have chosen to present our projects within a broader description of the current Namibian condition including aspects of history, sociality, politics, economics and ecology, religion, gender, identity and art. Such a contextualized depiction, we hope, will offer the reader a more comprehensive picture with which to understand our contributions
Belonging and friction – how tradition is negotiated within two Pentecostal congregations in post-colonial Windhoek, Namibia
Full text linkReligion has the potential to preserve collective memory and can therefore establish belonging. In colonial and imperial settings, religion was often used as a legitimation of inequalities and therefore as tool of oppression. At the same time, religion, and especially Pentecostal belief systems, can be employed as politicized and de-colonizing efforts in struggles of liberation and empowerment. In Windhoek, a distinction is drawn between the so called “traditional” mainline churches, which are pre-dominantly Protestant and the Pentecostal ones. Main markers of distinctions are worship practices. It can lead to a sense of belonging, but on the other hand to frictions with members of mainline congregations. Within this discourse the meaning of “tradition” is negotiated by members of Pentecostal congregations. In this paper, the different meanings, and consequences of the use of the word “tradition” in the context of pentecostal believe systems in Windhoek will be shown
Ex-Voto. A Photo Essay
Full text linkBased on my research at three pilgrimage sites – Ballyvourney in Ireland, Mount Grabarka in Poland and Lourdes in France – this photo essay explores the meaning of religious offerings (known as ‘ex-voto’) and provides an intimate view onto sacral landscapes, temporally and spatially removed from the everyday. Through the complex entwining of people, places and objects, these images raise numerous potential arguments, about travel, devotion, belonging, traces and the meaning of home
Those Who Left and Those Who Stayed: Diasporic ‘Brothers’ Seen as the New Others in the Bosnian Context
Full text linkThis article explores the division between the diaspora and the homeland dwellers in the context of post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. More specifically, the focus is on the constructed otherness of perceived co-ethnics who left because of the war (the ‘leavers’) in relation to those who stayed in the country (the ‘stayers’). I argue that the division into stayers and leavers presents one of the most prominent non-ethnically framed Bosnian divisions. The article is based on two qualitative research projects, which I conducted between 2011 and 2016. The narratives selected to support the main argument were taken from my thirty-five interviews with people who experienced displacement. Twenty of these interviews were conducted with people resettled abroad (the diaspora) and fifteen involved people who were repatriated after living abroad for many years (the returnees). The case study thus provides the opportunity to explore the otherness that my interviewees experienced as one of the social divisions based on experiential and socio-economic differences. This type of division can – to some degree – challenge the perceived solidarities based on ethnic sameness among the people who reside in and originate from Bosnia and Herzegovina
Brexit, Grenfell, Windrush, and the mooring, un-mooring, and re-mooring of home
Full text linkThe article argues that three events presently shaping the consciousness of British people - the 2016 Brexit referendum and its continuing fallout, the fire at Grenfell Tower in June 2017, and the ‘Windrush Scandal’ of 2018 – derive from closely related sources deep in the foundations of British political culture, one (of many) source being contempt by the British ruling class for the working class and migrants (especially Muslims). The three events raise key issues about the nature of home and post-home in an age of high migration including forced migration. The cries “Go Home” uttered on both sides of the Atlantic reveal a deep lack of understanding about what home means. Using the terms mooring, un-mooring, and re-mooring, we ask other questions. Where and what is home? Where and what is home for migrants and refugees? Who has what roles in enabling the housing of those who have been expelled from home (by fire, war, or politico-economic processes)? How much of the hostility in the UK towards migrants and towards Europe derives from feelings of being dispossessed? How much from nostalgia for lost empire? Has hostility driven out hospitality? To what extent has the extreme political right been responsible for the fracturing both of British society and home itself? How might we resist
‘This isn\u27t Canada, it’s Home’: Re-claiming Colonized Space through the Host-Guest Relationship
Full text linkThe settler-colonial Canadian nation-state envisions national parks as places for citizens to recreate ideals of wilderness and the colonial frontier. In Canada, an idealized wild nature has become a central motif in settler-Canadian visions of home with outdoor recreation a hallowed pastime that has become a cornerstone to national identity. Yet as indigenous peoples increasingly assert their claims to territory, the state\u27s spatial designations and Canadian nationalist landscape narratives are challenged and complicated. In 1992, Peter and Monique Knighton made the decision to leave the main reserve where the Ditidaht people had been consolidated by the state in the 1960s, and return to Qua-ba-diwa, their ancestral home. However, Qua-ba-diwa, which the state calls Indian Reserve Number 6, lies within the boundaries of the West Coast Trail Unit in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. Since their move to Qua-ba-diwa, the Knighton family have built cabins, sold food, and provided shelter to tens of thousands of hikers, often to the consternation of parks officials. In a state where First Nations people have been continuously removed from their homes, taking on the role of territorial host through the provision of hospitality becomes a political act. I discuss the Knightons’ strategies of resistance to state efforts to confine their home to tourist-oriented visions of a wild Canadian nature, as well as the wider implications of their experiences for understanding the dissonance between indigenous and settler-Canadian conceptions of the same territory
The Dera Paradigm: Homecoming of the Gendered Other
Full text linkThis article engages with the idiosyncratic dwelling practices of khwajasara, a Pakistani gender-variant subjectivity better known as hijre in the larger South Asian context. As a prevalent type of khwajasara household, the dera plays a paradigmatic role in their homecoming narratives; whether as a post-home, the refuge from an unhomely natal familial house and a terrorising school environment, or as an intermediary bodily, spiritual and communal sanctuary on a journey towards one’s Home after post-home. Anchored in the idea of the dera, and especially as intimated to me on a late September afternoon in Lahore, this article zigzags through khwajasara’s historical and present-day multi-local experiences of homecoming, which is posited here as both spatial and identitary journeying towards collective thereness. As a property of dwelling with kindred souls, I argue that thereness equips khwajasara with exploratory senses of the subject, including, at times, those of being otherworldly and nomadic. Such thereness disrupts the very idea of settlement and allows the dera and its inhabitants to not only transgress communal boundaries—such as those of gender, religion, ethnicity and language—but also to construe home as a journey, not a destination. At the same time, it reveals various productive anxieties about khwajasara’s—or, indeed, everyone’s—classed, urbanised, economised and gendered home-life
