Mobility not only challenges the everyday lives of millions of people, it also challenges scientific understandings of society, culture and space. Based on long-term mobile ethnographic research ...connecting Zanzibar, the Tanzanian mainland, Mombasa, Dubai and London, this volume takes up this challenge by exploring the translocal space emerging around contemporary Swahili trade. Examining translocality as a lived experience, the book succeeds in refining often overly abstract notions of mobile settings and relational space.
In recent years, several attempts to revitalize Area Studies have concentrated on oceans as the unifying force to create regions. In this respect, the Indian Ocean has become a prime example to show ...how economic as well as cultural flows across the sea have contributed to close connections between its shores. However, by doing so, they not only seem to create a certain, rather homogeneous, Indian Ocean space, they often also lead to a conceptual separation between “coast” and “hinterland,” similar to earlier distinctions between “African/Arab” or “East/Central Africa.” In this contribution, so-called “Arab” traders who settled along trade routes connecting the East African coast to its hinterland will serve as an empirical ground to explore and challenge these boundaries. Tracing maritime imaginaries and related materialities in the Tanzanian interior, it will reflect on the ends of the Indian Ocean and the nature of such maritime conceptualizations of space more generally. By taking the relational thinking that lies at the ground of maritimity inland, it wishes to encourage a re-conceptualization of areas that not only replaces a terrestrial spatial entity with a maritime one, but that genuinely breaks with such “container-thinking” and, instead, foregrounds the meandering, fluid character of regions and their complex and highly dynamic entanglements. Au cours de ces dernières années, plusieurs tentatives de revitalisation des études régionales ont été consacrées aux océans qui sont ainsi devenus une force unificatrice pour la création de régions. À cet égard, l’océan Indien est devenu un excellent exemple pour montrer à quel point les flux économiques et culturels le traversant ont contribué à l’établissement de liens étroits entre ses côtes. Cependant, ces études ont non seulement semblé créer un espace assez homogène mais elles ont également souvent conduit à une séparation conceptuelle entre “côte” et “arrière-pays,” répétant ainsi des distinctions antérieures entre “Africains/Arabes” ou “Afrique centrale/Afrique de l’Est,” Dans cette contribution, les commerçants dits “arabes” établis le long des routes commerciales reliant la côte est-africaine à son arrière-pays servent de base empirique pour explorer et contester ces distinctions. En étudiant les imaginaires maritimes et leurs matérialités connexes dans l’intérieur de la Tanzanie, cet article se penche sur les extrémités de l’océan Indien et sur la nature d’une telle conceptualisation maritime de l’espace. En prenant la pensée relationnelle qui est à la base de la maritimité intérieure, il souhaite encourager une re-conceptualisation des zones qui non seulement remplacent une entité spatiale terrestre par une entité maritime, mais qui rompent véritablement aussi avec une pensée caractérisée par un cadre géographique rigide. Au lieu de cela, cet article met en évidence le caractère sinueux et fluide des régions et leurs enchevêtrements complexes et hautement dynamiques.
While much has been written about the history of mobility and trade in the Indian Ocean, recent trading connections between Eastern Africa and Asia have so far only gained very little attention. ...However, in Zanzibar alone, hundreds of traders regularly embark on journeys reviving old routes and further develop them, in order to take advantage of the way the global economy works today. By providing an ethnographic account of such a journey undertaken by four Zanzibari traders to Jakarta, this article gives an insight into the organization, calculations and imaginations involved in contemporary Indian Ocean trading networks. Although this trade journey clearly marks a new form of translocal mobility among Zanzibari traders, this mobile ethnography highlights how the journey is at the same time closely linked to, evokes and enlivens very old processes of mobility across the Indian Ocean, thus highlighting the dialectics between old and new mobilities, and between familiarity and strangeness.
In light of climate change, projected population growth, increasing conflicts over land and the question of food security, the Tanzanian government takes the respective visions of environmental ...futures as a cause and justification for particular measures in the here and now. One such modality through which agricultural futures in the Kilombero Valley are currently made present and decided upon is the use of the Mobile Application to Secure Tenure (MAST). Through the use of this application, on the one hand, a more capital-friendly land legislation should be developed. On the other hand, by issuing Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCRO), which are supposed to offer a certain security to current land users, expected conflicts are sought to be reduced and prevented. Thus, by examining the use of MAST and the particular ways in which it renders possible futures actionable, we contribute to ongoing research that aims to illustrate how “humans ... do not own and shape ‘their’ future alone” (Granjou et al. 2017: 8). While such technologies are generally developed and employed to increase certainty, following the implementation and effects of MAST, in particular, we will show how the specific materiality of this mobile application not only allows to secure tenure, but at the same time creates new insecurities that contribute to the complex emergence of environmental futures in this part of rural Tanzania.
In light of climate change, projected population growth, increasing conflicts over land and the question of food security, the Tanzanian government takes the respective visions of environmental ...futures as a cause and justification for particular measures in the here and now. One such modality through which agricultural futures in the Kilombero Valley are currently made present and decided upon is the use of the Mobile Application to Secure Tenure (MAST). Through the use of this application, on the one hand, a more capital-friendly land legislation should be developed. On the other hand, by issuing Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCRO), which are supposed to offer a certain security to current land users, expected conflicts are sought to be reduced and prevented. Thus, by examining the use of MAST and the particular ways in which it renders possible futures actionable, we contribute to ongoing research that aims to illustrate how “humans ... do not own and shape ‘their’ future alone” (Granjou et al. 2017: 8). While such technologies are generally developed and employed to increase certainty, following the implementation and effects of MAST, in particular, we will show how the specific materiality of this mobile application not only allows to secure tenure, but at the same time creates new insecurities that contribute to the complex emergence of environmental futures in this part of rural Tanzania.
Over the last two decades, a number of cyclones and tropical storms have hit Zimbabwe with devastating effects. Expecting these events to happen even more frequently in the near future, a major ...emphasis is put on improving cyclone predictions and early warning systems. However, a main challenge appears to be in communicating the information about a potential cyclone to the affected communities. Drawing on ethnographic research in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe in the context of cyclone Idai, this article shows how a lack of information from official institutions led to the emergence of alternative communication networks. Yet, while these generally fit current trends towards bottom-up approaches and the increasing relevance of social media, the empirical insights also reveal some of the “darker sides” of informal disaster governance (Duda et al., 2020) 1. In particular, we illustrate how a lack of trust in government institutions translates into a general mistrust among community members, further amplified by an unequal access and scepticism towards new communication tools, which severely hampers disaster communication. Overall, we therefore argue that community-based disaster communication, rather than mainly being celebrated as a successful expression of local dynamics independent from the state, offers important insights to better understand the intricate relationship between local communities and the government as it plays out in an emergency.
When Korf (2014) recently invited (critical) geographers to come to terms with the problematic heritage of our discipline, especially with respect to spatial political thought, he first of all drew ...our attention to the intellectual contributions of Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt. While he urges us to rethink our ongoing references to these key thinkers, especially in light of the rather strict avoidance of politically problematic figures within our own discipline, such as Haushofer and Ratzel, this article now wishes to address geography's (dis)engagement with its politically problematic heritage from the opposite angle: focusing on Friedrich Ratzel, it asks if we might have been too radical in condemning his work as only poison? What if the neglect of Ratzel has actually led to a moment where his ideas feature prominently in current geographical debates without us even noticing it? By drawing on his contributions to cultural geography and, in particular, the establishment of the cultural historical method and German diffusionism, this article takes up on this question and reflects on the (imagined/actual) role of Ratzel's scholarship in contemporary geography. By pointing out striking similarities to more recent discussions about mobility, materiality and relational space, it illustrates the contemporary, though widely unnoticed, (re)appearance of Ratzel's ideas, and uses this example to emphasize the need for more critical reflection concerning the history of our discipline as well as the complex ways in which political ideologies and intellectual reasoning relate to each other.
Abstract Objectives: To compare the feasibility of mass screening by flexible sigmoidoscopy with screening by faecal occult blood testing (Haemoccult) and both tests combined. Design: Patients were ...randomised to screening by flexible sigmoidoscopy, faecal blood testing, or both tests. The flexible sigmoidoscopy examinations were performed by a general practitioner. Setting: General practice. Subjects: 3744 patients aged 50-75 years. Main outcome measures: Uptake, positive results, detection of neoplasia, complications, and recall for diagnostic colonoscopy. Results: Uptake was significantly higher in the flexible sigmoidoscopy group (46.6%) than in the faecal blood test group (31.6%; P<0.001) or than in the group having both tests (30.1%; P<0.001). Telephone reminders increased uptake of sigmoidoscopy to 61.8%. In total, 1116 sigmoidoscopy examinations were performed without major complication. Polyps were found in 19.3% (95% confidence interval 17.0% to 21.6%) but only 6.8% (5.3% to 8.3%) had adenomas and 2.4% (1.5% to 3.3%) “high risk” adenomas. Cancer was detected in four subjects. The faecal blood test yielded positive results in 0.8% (0.2% to 1.4%) but missed at least one cancer and 30 cases of adenoma which were found by sigmoidoscopy in the combined group. Use of histological criteria—shown elsewhere to correlate with future risk of colorectal cancer —to select “positive” patients could reduce recall for diagnostic colonoscopy from about 20% to less than 5%. Conclusions: Some of the predicted obstacles to screening with flexible sigmoidoscopy are surmountable. Clear evidence relating to efficacy will be obtained only from a randomised controlled trial.
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