African cinema in the 1960s originated mainly from Francophone countries. It resembled the art cinema of contemporary Europe and relied on support from the French film industry and the French state. ...Beginning in 1969 the biennial Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou (FESPACO), held in Burkina Faso, became the major showcase for these films. But since the early 1990s, a new phenomenon has come to dominate the African cinema world: mass-marketed films shot on less expensive video cameras. These "Nollywood" films, so named because many originate in southern Nigeria, are a thriving industry dominating the world of African cinema. Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-first Century is the first book to bring together a set of essays offering a comparison of these two main African cinema modes. Contributors: Ralph A. Austen and Mahir ?aul, Jonathan Haynes, Onookome Okome, Birgit Meyer, Abdalla Uba Adamu, Matthias Krings, Vincent Bouchard, Laura Fair, Jane Bryce, Peter Rist, Stefan Sereda, Lindsey Green-Simms, and Cornelius Moore
For about five decades, the French colonial government in the Volta region of West Africa failed in its repeated attempts to replace the local monetary form of cowry shells with its own monetary ...system of francs, largely because of local opposition. This article provides an account of these events and explores the reasons for the opposition and why the opposition was successful. Despite government prohibition, the cowries even acquired increased vitality as they became the main money in the emerging urban market. Government measures were partly motivated by practical difficulties that stemmed from the conflicts that the colonial system and monetary policy generated. The article ends with a critical discussion of how money and the colonial transition are treated in anthropology.
This article presents the cases of two migrant men, a Senegalese and a Nigerian, who spent many years in Istanbul. Although their backgrounds, personalities and circumstances were different, they ...both did export-related commercial work in the city. After describing sub-Saharan migration to Turkey and the literature concerning it, the text focuses on the stories these migrants spontaneously presented as they explained why they had become migrants. It was striking that with very different personal details, events and coincidences, both stories attribute the decision to migrate to Istanbul to a traumatic accident that forced the protagonists to change a life that until that point did not involve transnational migration. In the stories the protagonist's ambition, determination and will are rendered invisible and he is presented as a victim. I call this rhetorical topos ‘great mishap’. It resonates with stories I have heard from other migrants. I interpret it as an expression of compunction, of social responsibility weighing on the actor for abandoning close others in favour of an individual quest for self-realisation.
An obituary for Claude Meillassoux, a leading French social anthropologist who influenced the development of Marxist, historically informed anthropology in Europe and in the English-speaking world, ...who died on Jan 2, 2005, is presented. Meillassoux's last major work was on kinship, which he had been preparing for several years--the 480-page tome is not tightly integrated but has a common thread. The book begins with a long chapter maintaining that many anthropological studies of kinship continue to rely surreptitiously on a biological notion of "kinship," projected from contemporary Euro-American understandings.
This ethnographic description and analysis of West and Central African migration to Turkey is based on fieldwork conducted mostly in Istanbul. Sub-Saharan migration to Turkey developed full-fledged ...in the past 15 years. A theoretical discussion of global development and some migration literature leads to an examination of the rising economic growth rates in sub-Saharan Africa and Turkey's developing economic, diplomatic, and educational ties with it, two macro-level circumstances that can be understood as the springboard of migration. The article offers an extensive description of the work, living, and housing conditions of the migrant population and its links with the business world. It concludes that West and Central African migration is primarily a middle-class movement of urban traders and white-collar workers who want to improve their condition. Their objective is to return to their birth country with wealth and take up a more ambitious project. Turkey's production and export boom is feeding the hopes of these migrants, subjective factors overlooked under the blinders of the refugee and transit literatures in migration studies. The migrants are a heterogeneous set, not only in ethnic, religious, gender, and national terms, but also in levels of education, and even such factors as class standing. Despite this diversity, entrepreneurial ambition is a constant among the actors and provides a key to understanding the forms under which this migration is realized.
The population at large of İstanbul takes notice of the presence of large numbers of sub-Saharan immigrants from the ubiquity of African street vendors. The significant role that these immigrants ...assume in export and shipping activities, or the social and cultural activities in which they engage among themselves are much less widely known. Two developments underwrite this immigration movement. On the one hand Turkey’s opening to sub-Saharan Africa, its closer political and economic ties and the relations established through private investments, sport teams, schools, and university students; on the other, rising African growth rates, which stimulate both demand for imports and the desire for outmigration. This article is based on a yearlong fieldwork among West and Central African immigrants in İstanbul. It describes their social life and the range of economic positions they occupy, from daily wage work, to the provision of independent services and crafts, to business ownership. The article ends with a section assessing the economic and social contributions of the immigrants.
Sahra altı Afrika ülkelerinden gelen göçmenler İstanbul’da en çok seyyar satıcı olarak görünürlük kazandı. Türkiye’nin ihracat faaliyetleri ile olan yakın ilişkileri ya da kendi aralarında yarattıkları sosyal ve kültürel kurumlar dışardan daha az biliniyor. Göç hareketinin altında iki büyük eşzamanlı gelişme yatıyor: Bir yandan Türkiye’nin Afrika ülkelerine açılması, devletin siyasi ve ticari girişimleri yanında özel yatırımlar, spor takımları, eğitim kurumları ve üniversite öğrencileri yoluyla kurulan bağlar, öte yandan Sahra altı ülkelerin son yıllarda gösterdiği iktisadi canlanma. Bu yazı bir yıllık alan araştırmasına dayanarak İstanbul’daki batı ve orta Afrikalı göçmenlerin gündelik yaşamlarını, aralarındaki hem ulusal köken ve yaşam tarzı hem de gelir seviyesi bakımından farklılıkları betimliyor, ücretli işçi, serbest meslek veya işletme sahipliği gibi uğraşılarını sıralıyor. Son bir bölüm göçün ülke ekonomisine ve toplumsal gerçeğine katkısını değerlendiriyor.
Guangzhou, Baiyun International Airport, May 2013. Passengers are waiting for their late-night flights out of Guangzhou. A noticeable number of African women and men, some dressed in colorfully ...patterned clothes typical for West African countries, others wearing plain European style; some sitting and relaxing, others queuing up in front of the check-in counters of Emirates Airlines, Kenya Airways, Ethiopian Air. There are remarkably few European passengers. Africans seem to make up a large part of the airport's customers.
Istanbul Judeo-Spanish Hualde, José Ignacio; Şaul, Mahir
Journal of the International Phonetic Association,
04/2011, Letnik:
41, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The Judeo-Spanish speaking population of Istanbul is the result of migrations that were due to the edict of expulsion of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1492. The Ottoman ruler Bayezid II ...provided a haven to the exiles in his realm, and many came as immigrants to the capital Istanbul and other major port cities in that year. A continuous trickle of immigration of Jews originating in Spain continued after that date, as some of those who had gone to exile in other Mediterranean and Western European countries eventually also decided to resettle in Ottoman cities. Some Spanish-speaking families continued to migrate from the cities of the Italian peninsula to Istanbul and other centers of the Ottoman empire up until the eighteenth century. Another stream included Hispano-Portuguese families, Jews who had resettled in Portugal after the expulsion but were forced to undergo conversion there in 1497, and after a period of clandestine Jewish existence started emigrating to other countries in the sixteenth century. First Bayonne in France, then Amsterdam and other Hanseatic cities became important centers for Hispano-Portuguese families that returned to Judaism, and these maintained relations with, and occasionally sent immigrants to, the Jewish communities of the Ottoman cities.
West African anthropology carries the burden of a chasm between what is considered traditional or authentically African and Islamic. This reveals itself in ignoring Islam, misrecognizing the cultural ...legacy of Islam in today's lives beyond self-professed Muslims, and exaggerating the contrast between the "pre" and the "post" in recent cases of conversion. A more balanced, historically informed understanding of contemporary Africa requires greater awareness of the central role of Mediterranean links and the canvas of meaning deposited by Islam. Sections on mobility and literacy provide a rapid survey of these themes, which are emblematic of what social anthropologists ought to bring to the forefront of their vision of West Africa, though typically they do not. A section on politics explores the framework for the impact of Islam, and a final section, on mimesis, discusses some cultural processes still at work. We need to reimagine West Africa, both to reach a new cosmopolitanism to transcend the we-they contrast, and to allow anthropology to make more significant contributions to the study of contemporary Africa. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
PDF
