Journal of Southern African Studies: 50 Years of Studying Southern Africa

 

In 2024 JSAS marks 50 years since its founding. Much has changed in the study and scholarship of Southern Africa. The countries, disciplines and topics we study are far more diverse – as is our authorship and readership. We are sponsoring this stream alongside other events in southern Africa, to celebrate that growth and change, while also providing a moment to look back at significant texts and writers which have shaped our understandings. We invite panels and papers which reflect critically on the study of southern Africa in the fields of history, economics, sociology, demography, social anthropology, geography, development studies, administration, law, political science, political economy, international relations, literature, cultural studies, and the natural sciences in so far as they relate to the human condition.  We welcome inter-disciplinary analysis, strong comparative perspectives and original research that reflects new theoretical or methodological approaches.

 

Themes and topics might include but are not limited to: the Rise and Fall and Rise of Agrarian Studies in Southern Africa; Liberation movements, resistance, violence, soldiers’ narratives, film and political ephemera; Migration, borders and citizenship; Gender & sexuality, Women’s labour, Youth, Masculinity, Motherhood; Environment, conservation, land degradation, ecology, alien species; Politics, law, legislation, democratization, power and leadership; Urban space, livelihoods, informal economies, and transformation; Health, healing, HIV/AIDs, Covid; Literature, reading cultures, and the production of books; Communication, media and social media.

 

We particularly welcome proposals from early career scholars, and will have some funding available to assist with attendance by scholars from southern Africa. Please send queries to the JSAS editor Sara Dorman <Sara.Dorman@ed.ac.uk>.

 

Stream: Journal of Southern African Studies: 50 Years of Studying Southern Africa

1. Recent Trends in Historical Writing about South Africa

We aim to highlight some key recent trends in historical writing about South Africa.  Each of us will focus on a specific strand but ensure that our papers speak to one another, particularly because they are intended to connect in a single article. We suggest that biographical writing has become increasingly prevalent in the published historical writing.  Treatments of black South African political and intellectual leaders feature prominently, particularly the early generation who saw themselves at least in part aiming to create political movements and identities outside of the chieftaincies, as early nationalists, as Christians, and addressing a wider audience through media such as newspapers. There has also been dense coverage of those who contributed to the anti-apartheid struggle and have become politically influential after the transition of 1994.  This literature reflects the legitimation of an African nationalist political leadership, a growing number of black authors and the centrality of biography and autobiography in historical thinking, with its focus on individuals. While all our contributions make reference to biography and autobiography, Khumisho Moguerane will focus specifically on this theme.  Historiography has become increasingly diverse and, as has been the case in the past, historians of South Africa have been open to multiple influences in the discipline as a whole. We will briefly illustrate some of these developments, and the insights they offer for an overarching approach – familiar sub-themes to historians working in western countries and beyond, most with journals devoted to exploring them.   William Beinart will focus on recent trends in environmental history and Colin Bundy on sport and society.

 

Convenors: William Beinart, Colin Bundy and Khumisho Moguerane

 

 

2. Generation and regeneration in liberation war history and memory

 

Southern African liberation armies were shaped in profound ways by generational divides and connections, which continue to matter in the politics of history and memory today. Cohorts of men and women joined militaries at different junctures, underwent varied types of international training and had divergent opportunities to rise (or not) within liberation armies. The armies themselves were profoundly transformed from early groups engaged in sabotage to larger, hierarchical military institutions, supported by globally dispersed networks of exiles and allies. Generational divides shaped experiences in camps and on the battlefield. They underpinned loyalties, and influenced politics, possibilities and losses after independence. They also shaped relationships to official state commemorations and dominant liberation narratives. For international military allies, such as the Soviet Union or Cuba, generation also mattered. As those who fought are aging and passing, veterans have sought to convey their own experiences and understandings of war to the next generation, who are asking fresh questions of liberation war history and memory.

 

Convenors: Jocelyn Alexander, JoAnn McGregor and Justin Pearce

 

3. Narrations of nationhood: Understanding the politics of nation-building in philatelic circulations

 

As forms of public art and history, philatelic materials (postage stamps, first day covers) provide not only a record of historical and socio-political events, but simultaneously reflect and contribute to the construction of nations. As sites – and sights – of expression and consumption, these materials reflect efforts to communicate values, ideals and stories of nationhood to domestic and international audiences. The narratives presented in these ephemera during and after periods of major political upheaval – including independence from colonialism or transition to majority democracy – provide crucial yet oft overlooked insights into the ways in which (new) nations are envisaged and promoted. This panel will develop conversations relating to the visual turn in history and international relations with a specific focus on the experiences of African states. Engaging with these ephemera allows not only for critical questions to be explored relating to the ongoing generation and regeneration of ideas of nationalism and statehood, but in connection to the construction of archives of national memory. The session will thus provide for critical exploration of philatelic materials as exercises in power and as geopolitical objects of (soft) diplomacy used by (new) nations to simultaneously assert their sovereignty and global standing, and as tools of informal citizenship education intended to foster particular idea(l)s, behaviours and dispositions amongst the citizenry.

 

Convenor: Dan Hammett

 

 

4. The Politics of Opposition in Southern Africa

 

The study of parties, politics and elections of Southern Africa has expanded greatly in recent years, with interest growing in biographical studies, a renewed focus on ideology and discourse, and a continued focus on electoral authoritarianism.  The panel welcomes papers examining these themes and others, bringing new insights, methodological approaches and sources. We seek to contribute to debates about the nature of electoral politics, the challenges faced by opposition parties and civil society, exploration of strategies used by ruling parties, and the national, regional and international responses to them.

 

Convenor: Sara Dorman

 

 

 

5. Wealth, Power, and Authoritarian Institutions: Book launch and roundtable

 

This roundtable brings together researchers whose work explores the political economy of dominant parties across southern and east Africa. Participants will survey the field, discussing their own work alongside a recent contribution, Michaela Collord’s Wealth, Power, and Authoritarian Institutions: Comparing dominant parties and parliaments in Tanzania and Uganda. The book outlines how leaders’ diverse strategies of “politicized accumulation” shape authoritarian institutional landscapes. It details the political economy origins of contrasting ruling party forms, their influence on the legislature, and the implications for distributive politics and accountability. After an initial presentation by the author, the roundtable will allow a more wide-ranging discussion of different approaches to the study of authoritarian parties. Participants will introduce their own, evolving research agendas, consider what Collord’s new book may offer, and identify important avenues for future inquiry.

 

 

Convenors: Michaela Collord and Anne Pitcher

 

 

6. Dealing in Solidarity” – Liberation Movements’ Perspectives on International Aid

 

This panel brings the fast-evolving historiography of global ‘solidarities’ with African liberation movements into dialogue with novel sources that center the perspectives of the ‘recipients’ of such exchanges. During the Global Cold War, the provision of international aid to liberation movements became a transversal practice, common to a whole range of Eastern, Western and non-aligned state and non-state actors who all “dealt in solidarity.” These efforts resulted in the existence of parallel systems for the circulation of goods, ideas, techniques of government, and people – ‘experts,’ volunteers, workers, activists, film makers, journalists. Drawing on the rich archives of universities, (international) organizations and the state, a large and fast-growing scholarship by now chronicles in considerable detail what Burton, Harisch and Schenck have called the “moorings and (dis)entanglements” (Schenck et al. 2021) that constituted solidarity relationships, particularly from East to South. Owing to this archival richness, however, much of this scholarship centers on the perspectives of the ‘donors’ without paying equal attention to the processes through which solidarity relationships were negotiated, contested and practiced from the perspectives of the ‘recipients.’ How did liberation movements pursue, approach and strategize those who “dealt in solidarity”? How did different actors within liberation movements position themselves to craft alliances and play at donors expectations? What was the relevance of the practices that resulted from solidarity exchanges within the context of the liberation movements historiographies?

In seeking answers to these questions, we welcome papers that center the perspectives of actors within liberation movements who were responsible for seeking, negotiating, and implementing international aid programs in Africa before and after independence. Bringing to the front the way in which liberation movements understood, negotiated, implemented and used international aid with a huge arrow of different national, transnational, and international actors can shed new light onto the way in which recipients shaped solidarity programs, and solidarity programs shaped national histories of liberation and independence.

 

Conveners: Johanna Wetzel and Alba Martin 

 

 

7. ‘Artisanal and small-scale mining’ in Southern Africa: Critical Perspectives on Gender, Labour and Development

 

What scholars and others categorize as “artisanal and small-scale mining” (ASM) refers to a widespread direct economic livelihood and social activity for millions of people in southern Africa, including several million in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia, plus their dependents. This panel proposes to provide more substantially insightful analyses of different configurations of ASM in the three countries, while attending to how varied social and political imaginations of this economic activity promoted by donors, media and policymakers influence some actions towards those involved in this economic activity. In particular, papers in this panel will examine some of the social relations, power dynamics and developmental perspectives influencing, among other topics, the (gendered) labour practices, forms of accumulation, and environmental effects of particular sites of ASM, while also situating them within broader political economies and forms of belonging to households, families, communities, subjectivities and territories.  Different papers will thoroughly engage with relevant scholarly debates in southern Africa concerning social reproduction, labour exchanges, brokerage and dependencies, precarious livelihoods, gender, environmental degradation, labour exploitation, and/or rural/urban development in areas where ASM is becoming more and more prevalent.

 

 

Convenors: Blair Rutherford  (Carleton University)  and Melusi Nkomo (Princeton University)

 

8. Rethinking Informal Economies in Southern Africa

Many countries in southern Africa have been characterised by the expansion of informal economies in the aftermath of economic liberalisation in the 1990s. Some earlier studies on the urban informal economies focused on their limited scope and uncharacteristic features for mainstream economies in the region, exploring the linkage between labour reserve economies and economic informality. Later, scholars looked at the intersection of economic informality and urban governance, party politics, protest, migration, citizenship, gender relations, and everyday practices of survival. For many countries, the rapid and possible inevitable expansion of the informal economy became a difficult change to embrace. At the same time, it became the only source of livelihood for millions of people in both urban and rural areas and had a lasting impact on labour practices, associational life, gender relations, urban governance, and politics. This panel welcomes papers that address the themes related to urban and rural informal economies in southern African countries, including the questions of citizenship, modernity, entrepreneurship, labour, social justice, and politics of the informal sector.

 

 

Convenor: Kristina Pikovskaia (kristina.pikovskaia@ed.ac.uk, University of Edinburgh)

 

9. Past Futures: New Histories From Southern Africa

 

This panel brings together new research on past struggles to redefine the future of southern Africa’s communities. New histories continue to be written from fresh perspectives, underutilised archives, and emerging methodologies. This panel thus showcases emerging research, whether histories of claim-making, politics of resistance, regional Cold War politics, contractions over sovereignty and rights, labour mobilities, political movements and political activism, or environmental histories.

 

 

Convenor Jonathan Jackson

 

10 Narrative, storytelling and health in Southern Africa

 

This panel welcomes papers which explore how the experiences and understandings of health, illness and wellbeing in southern Africa are conveyed and mediated through diverse narrative forms and storytelling practices. We are interested in the conceptual, cultural and political infrastructures that contribute to the creation and circulation of narratives and storytelling as particular ways of speaking, knowing and performing health in the region. We also wish to explore the potentialities and limits in the health policy sphere of taking narratives and storytelling in southern African communities seriously as a form of health intervention. How may a focus on narrative and story meaningfully influence health outcomes? We invite papers that consider health narratives and storytelling across diverse genres, such as in literature and in popular, oral and media cultures.

 

 

Convenors: Elleke Boehmer and Rebekah Lee