The Nimbleness of Being Fulani

Nyamnjoh,

doi:10.2979/africatoday.59.3.105

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 27 publications

(35 reference statements)

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“…Such a ‘hierarchy of purity’, informed by an uncritical mapping of ‘difference’, remains embedded in the professional practices of anthropologists (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997: 11–18). Straddling worlds the way nimble-footed and flexibly mobile Africans do in the capacity as ‘frontier persons’ (Kopytoff, 1987: 17–23; Nyamnjoh, 2011, 2013a, 2013b) is not always positively perceived by those who (like our western(ised) baby) feel more embedded in either world, especially when mobile Africans behave in ways that translate into opportunism, dishonesty, lack of loyalty or impermanence in relationships with others (Alhaji, 2014).…”

Section: Africans As Frontier Beingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incompleteness: Frontier Africa and the Currency of Conviviality

Nyamnjoh

2015

Journal of Asian and African Studies

164

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This paper makes a case for conviviality as a currency for frontier Africans. It argues that incompleteness is the normal order of things, and that conviviality invites us to celebrate and preserve incompleteness and mitigate the delusions of grandeur that come with ambitions and claims of completeness. Conviviality encourages frontier Africans to reach out, encounter and explore ways of enhancing or complementing themselves with the added possibilities of potency brought their way by the incompleteness of others, never as a ploy to becoming complete, but to make them more efficacious in their relationships and sociality. Frontier Africans and conviviality suggest alternative and complementary modes of influence over and above the current predominant mode of coercive violence and control.

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Section: Africans As Frontier Beingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incompleteness: Frontier Africa and the Currency of Conviviality

Nyamnjoh

2015

Journal of Asian and African Studies

164

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“….] political significance" in Nigeria and have been used to deny rights and citizenship to those who, by contrast, are consequently defined as "'non-indigenes' [or as] 'migrants'" (Osaghae and Suberu 2005, p. 8), and this has particular implications for the Mbororo-Fulani, as Francis B. Nyamnjoh and others have pointed out (Nyamnjoh 2013). Once again, Heinemann can hardly be accused of being the root cause, but perhaps it is fair to say that its investment in ideas of authentic ethno-regionality hardly worked to challenge the kind of essentialist thinking that would undergird the entrenchment of the iniquitous inter-ethnic relations that had been fostered by the colonial regime and perpetuated by post-independence administrations (Osaghae and Suberu 2005, p. 9).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Pursuit of the “Real” Nigeria/n through the Archives of Heinemann’s African Writers Series

Walsh

2023

Humanities

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This paper will depart from the premise that with the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe as its flagship author, exemplar and editorial adviser, Heinemann Educational Books, which aimed to represent Africa and Africans through its African Writers Series (AWS) had a tendency to privilege and prioritise realist literary expressions coming out of Africa. This, combined with the fact that the series was published by an educational company looking for a way to market its product in an environment that did not yet have a place for African writers when it was first launched, might also be regarded as having fostered a tendency within the publishing house to treat the works submitted to it more as socio-historical documents than as works of literary fiction and to lead to their framing in anthropological terms. The paper will investigate the precise terms in which this takes place in two case studies of some of the archival material relating to Heinemann’s interest in representing Northern Nigeria and Nigerians in the early years of the series, and it will investigate the consequences and implications of a drive towards producing a series that could be marketed as representative.

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“…This research intends to illustrate how the narrative infrastructures and it's the processes of mutual legitimation that are internal to it allow capitalist globalisation to be take for granted. While critical social science analyses of heterogeneity and contingency in economic practices reveal the incompleteness of meta-narratives of progress (C. Nkwi, 2015;Nyamnjoh, 2013b), belief in a singular capitalist logic, shapes our world. Trulsson (1997) who has conducted a study of entrepreneurs in Tanzania during the structural adjustment era uses Long's actor-oriented approach with the understanding that:…”

Section: Ho (2005) Asksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fabricating Silicon Savannah

Wahome

2023

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This PhD research thesis offers an historicised account of Silicon Savannah, a digital technology entrepreneurship arena in Nairobi, Kenya. Silicon Savannah is an opportunity to study the appropriation of technology innovation and commercialisation models in a lower income, developing economy. Fieldwork took place over 2015-6, a period when this embryonic 'arena of development ' (Jorgensen and Sorensen, 1999) is subject to scrutiny about its high, but largely unverified, hyped expectations. As a result, this thesis dwells on how actors develop strategies to adopt and adapt to processes over which they have no discretion.Actors in Silicon Savannah individually and collectively develop strategies and gaming systems for enacting legitimacy and attracting resources. The analytical frame reveals a dimension of persistent colonial modality inherent in the practice of global capitalism of which the digital economy and ICT developmental projects are a part. This is indicated in policy discourses of digital entrepreneurship that disclaim alternatives and multiplicities, and take for granted that there is a standardised typology of progress. The result is a paradox where entrepreneurs are incentivised to demonstrate alignment with discourses that might not reflect their experience.The study aims to produce a 'view from Nairobi' by integrating the interpretive frameworks of the subjects of the study with the researcher's analysis. Thus, it relies on ethnographic interviews and observations, and historical reconstruction using resources preserved in internet-based repositories like weblogs, emails and social media. Through this empirical work, this study makes several contributions to knowledge: First, it produces a rich historical account of Silicon Savannah as a zone of friction between ecologies of knowledge and practice. In this way, it is conversant with ethnographies of policy implementation and academic research interested in interactions between received prescriptions and local milieu.Second, it its discussion of actors' strategic use of 'narrative infrastructures' (Deuten and Rip, 2000) and engages with the use of narrative in the production of and practices in arenas of 7.3 Performative Technology Entrepreneurship.

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The Nimbleness of Being Fulani

Cited by 8 publications

References 27 publications

Incompleteness: Frontier Africa and the Currency of Conviviality

Incompleteness: Frontier Africa and the Currency of Conviviality

In Pursuit of the “Real” Nigeria/n through the Archives of Heinemann’s African Writers Series

Fabricating Silicon Savannah

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