Tales of Political Monuments in Malawi: Re-storying National History

Lipenga, Ken Junior

doi:10.1080/23277408.2019.1644837

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…50 Popular culture is another gap, as are heritage and contemporary politics. 51 These and other lacunae remain despite our best efforts, yet it is worth emphasising that they are limitations of this special issue rather than of the existing and developing scholarship on Malawi. There is a great deal of work being carried out at present by junior and senior scholars that will add to our knowledge of Malawi in the coming years, broadening our understanding while both confirming the indispensability of John McCracken's work and opening up new terrain that he would have encountered with fascination.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Malawi: Taking Stock in Turbulent Times

Johnson¹

2020

Journal of Southern African Studies

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In 2002, John McCracken co-edited a Journal of Southern African Studies special issue on Malawi. 1 This year marks the 20th anniversary of the conference in Zomba from which that issue, and its accompanying volume, emerged. 2 While contributors were cognisant of the challenges facing higher education in Malawi at the time, 3 it was nevertheless a moment of optimism, marked by 'an upsurge in intellectual activity' 4 following the demise of Hastings Kamuzu Banda's dictatorship and the coming of multi-party democracy. The issue showcased research that had been facilitated by the new conditions in the country: historical sources readily accessed in the national archives, probing research questions more openly confronted and expanded opportunities for field research. However, while optimistic, the authors were also cautious. A subtle shift could already be determined between these publications and those of the 1990s, which, while certainly not uncritical, bore the first fruits of academic freedom. 5 In acknowledgement of changing circumstances, McCracken's introduction was followed by a postscript that addressed events that had taken place in the weeks since the former had been written: 'democratic rights [had] been put under threat', judicial and academic freedoms had been compromised and police had opened fire on students and protesters with fatal consequences. 6 By 2000-2002, then, with President Bakili Muluzi's controversial third-term bid already visible on the horizon, some of the initial scholarly relief that accompanied the change of regime in 1994 was beginning to give way to trepidation and still hopeful vigilance. Almost a decade later, in 2011, following a period of much-lauded economic growth, Malawi was in the throes of political and economic crisis. At its height, tensions surrounding the mishandling of the economy and anger against President Bingu wa Mutharika's regime led to violent demonstrations, in which 20 people were killed at the hands of the police and state security forces. Academic freedom was listed among the demonstrators' demands. 7 From February to October 2011, classes at the University of Malawi were cancelled and campuses shut down in response to police interference when the political scientist Blessings Chinsinga was accused of drawing parallels between Malawi and events of the Arab Spring

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Malawi: Taking Stock in Turbulent Times

Johnson¹

2020

Journal of Southern African Studies

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“…It is therefore useful to trace their nationalism within a genealogy of African anti-colonial nationalism, through the period of “post-Independence disillusionment” when most African commentators started having mixed feelings toward failed nation-building projects and frustrated at rising levels of corruption (Wright, 2004). As Ken Lipenga Jr. (2019) argues, nationalism in Malawi remains fluid and needs to be related to an ever-changing political climate (pp.110–111).…”

Section: Findings and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agency and Incentives of Diasporic Political Influencers on Facebook Malawi

Nyangulu

Sharra

2023

Social Media + Society

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This article examines the agency and incentives that drive the activism of diasporic political influencers on “Facebook Malawi,” an online imagined political community. In their seminal work on “social media dissidents” and “social media self-made activists” in the Global South, Matsilele and Sharra demonstrate that social media activists engage with different strategies to initiate movements, mobilize citizens, and create their brands in strong opposition to authoritarian regimes which repositions them as freedom fighters in the eyes of the masses and enemies of the state. Correspondingly, we frame diasporic political influencers as actors aided by digital technologies who engage in “long-distance nationalism” on Facebook against authoritarianism in the homeland. We deploy a qualitative mixed methods approach to analyze Facebook data of two diasporic political influencers, Onjezani Kenani and Manes Winnie Hale, who gave informed consent to use their Facebook data generated in 2018 and 2021, a period preceding and following the 2019 Malawi tripartite elections. A thematic analysis of 250 Facebook posts and interview data with the two influencers illustrates how they exercise their agency in their quest for a vision of a better Malawi while navigating a complex and ambivalent web of online and offline threats, incentives, and interests. Implicated in the political communication and mobilization of the two are different strategies that include verbal inventiveness, trolling, and exposing. The article also shows how the concept of long-distance nationalism needs to be adapted in studying diasporic political influencers.

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“…We acknowledge that strict 'preservation' may be a legitimate option when CMCH is at risk. However, by reframing these processes as being concerned with continuity, we wish to open up room for discussing what is being continued, the contingent social and political processes that made it so (Mitchell 2003;Igreja 2013), their historicity (Lipenga 2019), and how these processes may exclude uncomfortable heritage narratives or the heritage of marginalised, silenced, or self-silenced groups (Molina y Vedia 2008).…”

Section: Steering Processes: Continuity Discontinuity and Transformativementioning

confidence: 99%

Steering resilience in coastal and marine cultural heritage

et al. 2022

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Coastal and marine cultural heritage (CMCH) is at risk due to its location and its often indefinable value. As these risks are likely to intensify in the future, there is an urgent need to build CMCH resilience. We argue that the current CMCH risk management paradigm narrowly focuses on the present and preservation. This tends to exclude debates about the contested nature of resilience and how it may be achieved beyond a strict preservationist approach. There is a need, therefore, to progress a broader and more dynamic framing of CMCH management that recognises the shift away from strict preservationist approaches and incorporates the complexity of heritage’s socio-political contexts. Drawing on critical cultural heritage literature, we reconceptualise CMCH management by rethinking the temporality of cultural heritage. We argue that cultural heritage may exist in four socio-temporal manifestations (extant, lost, dormant, and potential) and that CMCH management consists of three broad socio-political steering processes (continuity, discontinuity, and transformation). Our reconceptualisation of CMCH management is a first step in countering the presentness trap in CMCH management. It provides a useful conceptual framing through which to understand processes beyond the preservationist approach and raises questions about the contingent and contested nature of CMCH, ethical questions around loss and transformation, and the democratisation of cultural heritage management.

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Tales of Political Monuments in Malawi: Re-storying National History

Cited by 7 publications

References 18 publications

Malawi: Taking Stock in Turbulent Times

Malawi: Taking Stock in Turbulent Times

Agency and Incentives of Diasporic Political Influencers on Facebook Malawi

Steering resilience in coastal and marine cultural heritage

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