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Final Announcement
IUAES Congress
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Transcending postcolonial conditions: Towards alternative modernities
A joint conference comprising an
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3 – 7 December 2006 (Sun-Thurs), University of Cape Town |
Conference organising committee
Andrew ‘Mugsy’ Spiegel (convenor) UCT
Heike Becker UWC
Emile Boonzaier UWC
Sally Frankental UCT
Diana Gibson UWC
Lesley F Green UCT
Susan Levine UWC
Paul Nkwi (Cameroon; PAAA; international)
Steven Robins (Stellenbosch)
Fiona Ross UCT
Owen Sichone UCT
C S Kees van der Waal (Stellenbosch)
Thanks and acknowledgements
We are extremely grateful to the following institutions for financial support without which this conference would not have been possible.
Institut français d’Afrique du Sud, Johannesburg
International Social Science Council, Paris (through IUAES)
University Research Committee, University of Cape Town
Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, New York
The organising committee also thanks the following persons for assistance in planning and organising:
Anna Versveld for a sterling effort on the first drafts of the programme
Conor Ralphs for transforming the image that we have used into the conference logo
The University of Cape Town’s Artworks Committee for permission to use the image for that purpose
UCT’s Conference Management Centre, and in particular Janet Sirmongpong and Deborah McTeer, for logistically supporting the conference and its preparation.
The Conference Logo (on the cover) is taken from a little-known relatively hidden copper sculpture by Cecil and Guy Luck, on the University of Cape Town’s upper campus. It represents an early colonial myth about Cape Town’s weather. Van Hunks, a mythical early Capetonian, is reputed to have fled his ill-tempered wife by going fishing and by climbing the peak that lies alongside Table Mountain, and on the slopes of which the University campus is built, there to puff on his pipe. Whilst there, he is challenged by a cloaked figure to a smoking competition – and the more they smoke, the more they blanket the mountain with large cloud, as occurs when the southeaster blows during Cape Town’s summer. Van Hunks wins, and he discovers that he has been competing with the devil – thus Devil’s Peak. The sculpture includes a Latin saying that roughly translates as “There are dangers in smoking, in fishing – and also in marriage”.
We have chosen the image as our logo because it indicates our conference’s location on the slopes of Devil’s Peak, and because the story seems to reflect the seemingly satanic manner in which the colonising impulse marries us to deadening structures that continue to constrain our postcolonial lives, as well as the passionate struggles of those who resist that impulse and seek imaginative enlivening.
TRANSCENDING POSTCOLONIAL CONDITIONS:
TOWARDS ALTERNATIVE MODERNITIES
Joint Conference comprising the annual conferences of
Anthropology Southern Africa
and
The Pan African Anthropological Association
and an Intercongress of
The International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences
3-7 December 2007, University of Cape Town
Leslie Social Science Building
Welcome to this conference ‘Transcending postcolonial conditions: Towards alternative modernities’. It comprises the 2006 annual conferences of Anthropology Southern Africa and The Pan African Anthropological Association as well as an Intercongress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. We all look forward to a fruitful and stimulating five days of discussions and meetings.
Our theme was chosen because of our wish, as an organising committee, to provide an opportunity for anthropologists from around the world to discuss the predicament of contemporarily marginalised people in all parts of the world, and to bring ethnographic evidence to those discussions. The modernising process implemented by European colonialism, and which endures to the present, succeeded in incorporating vast portions of the world’s population, only then to push many to the global political-economic periphery. Moreover, in many contexts, alternative modernist structures have arisen. The question that arises is whether those alternatives are also structurally such that they will drive many to their margins, or whether the new connectivities they create will be more stable than has been the case for the postcolonial world.
To a large extent the postcolonial condition has been shown to be marked by intermittent and often broken connections that draw people into overarching structures and simultaneously push them to the edges of the institutions that predominate within those structures. Some of these patterns are repeated in contemporary capitalist and imperialist projects. Yet in all such contexts one finds social processes at work whereby people strive to connect and reconnect in new ways, establishing and maintaining diverse social, economic and political links, both between themselves and with the rest of the increasingly globalising world. While seeming to promise a new kind of connectivity of citizenship, all too often those connections too have become ever more intermittent, and sometimes broken.
Such conditions are very marked in postcolonial states. But they are also increasingly experienced by the metropolitan ‘first world’s’ own marginalised people and by people in ‘second world’ countries and regions that, having thrown off the shackles of empire, now find their connectivity rather more tenuous than had been anticipated, both to centres of power and to each other. And we need to ask, therefore, whether the processes that create alternative modernities in postcolonial and other emerging modern states are structurally as distinctive as the rhetoric of alterity in modernity might suggest.
We have been fortunate to have attracted well over 200 papers that in one way or another offer to contribute towards the above discussion. And, as an organising committee, we are delighted to be able – for the first time ever – to have been able to attract to a conference in South Africa anthropologists from all around the world.
We welcome all participants – whether presenting papers or attending to contribute to discussion. What follows is a set of guidelines and a programme for the conference.
The Conference Organising Committee
Venues:
Registration for the conference will take place in the foyer of the Leslie Social Sciences Building at the southern end of University Avenue, on the University of Cape Town’s Upper Campus. The registration desk will be open from 14h00-16h00 on Sunday and from 07h30-15h45 from Monday to Thursday.
A noticeboard which may be used for participants to leave messages for others is alongside the registration table. We recommend that each participant checks it at least once daily.
The welcome cocktail party will be held in the same area – Leslie Social Science Building Foyer – directly after the opening plenary session, late afternoon on Sunday 3 December.
All formal academic activities of the conference will be held in lecture rooms in the same Leslie Social Sciences Building. Most sessions are scheduled to take place in Rooms 1A to 1E on the lower ground floor (see programme outline), while plenaries and film showings are scheduled to take place in Room 2A (University Ave level).
Lunches will be served in the foyer and on the mezzanine floor of the Leslie Social Sciences Building to all registered participants (please ensure that you wear your name tag). A special area will be set aside on Tuesday 5 December for the lunch-time roundtable discussion.
The Conference Dinner (for those who have paid) is scheduled to take place in the Smuts Hall Dining Room. Smuts Hall is one level below University Avenue on Residence Road, and within three to five minutes easy walking distance from the Leslie Social Sciences Building.
Internet access
10h00-14h00 Monday – Thursday
Basement (opposite LT B101) Beattie Building (diagonally opposite Leslie Building)
Please wear your name badge
Programme
The programme below outlines the main proceedings of the conference. It has three parts:
a schematic outline of the programme’s sessions day by day, showing session titles, times, venues and chairpersons of sessions
an alphabetical list of presenters which indicates in which session/s their particular papers are scheduled for presentation
a chronological schedule of all sessions with session title and the names of presenters, paper titles and chairpersons.
Please check the programme and ensure that you have contacted the chair of your session before it begins and that you arrive in time at the session in which you are scheduled to present.
Please note that the total time allotted for your presentation and discussion of your paper is 25 minutes – so, if you want comment and discussion on your paper, we suggest you ensure that your presentation is no longer than 12-13 minutes in length. Session chairs have been asked to ensure that all presenters are given equal time for presentation and discussion.
Any changes to the programme that might have to be made will be posted on a noticeboard in the Foyer of the Leslie Social Sciences Building, near the area of the registration table.
Notes to chairs of sessions:
Please ensure that sessions start punctually and end on time, particularly those where there is no tea or lunch break between sessions.
Sessions are either 75 minutes or 100 minutes long – respectively for three and four papers to be presented. That means that there is a total of 25 minutes allotted to each presenter – including both presentation and discussion time.
It is up to chairs of sessions to decide, in consultation with those presenting, whether to organise that all papers in a session are presented sequentially followed by a combined discussion, or whether each paper is presented and followed by its own discussion.
Notes for visitors to Cape Town
Cape Town is a beautifully located coastal city, and the University is situated on the western slopes of a mountain range that bisects the city. That fact, however, means that access to the university can be difficult if attempted on foot. For that reason, we have arranged that a shuttle will be available to transport participants from the university students’ hostel accommodation in Tugwell Hall to the conference venue and back
Return transport will be provided from Tugwell Residence to the Leslie Social Sciences Building:
Tugwell to Upper Campus Upper Campus to Tugwell
Sunday 3 December 13h30 18h30
Monday 4 December 08h10 17h30
Tuesday 5 December 08h10 17h30
Wednesday 6 December 08h10 17h30
Wednesday 6 December 18h45 22h30 (Conference dinner)
Thursday 7 December 08h10 17h30
Please note that participants who do not avail themselves of the shuttle service at these times will have to find alternative private means of transport – or to walk.
Participants who have found accommodation elsewhere in Cape Town should enquire from the accommodation management as to appropriate transport to and from the University’s Upper Campus.
Since the conference is taking place during a student vacation period, there should be adequate parking available on the Upper Campus for those who choose to drive to the conference.
As indicated, Cape Town and the University’s location on either side of a mountain range provides spectacular views and walks. Visitors should be warned that, despite the mountains being right in the middle of the city, they remain dangerous territory – particularly for those who are unprepared for sudden weather changes. We recommend that anyone who wishes to spend time on the mountain either do so by visiting Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens there to ascend the nearby slopes, or by ensuring that they always go in company, and are well provisioned for all eventualities. Those who wish to climb to the top of Table Mountain are strongly advised against going alone or unprepared, and are also strongly advised to take a well known route and to have others know which route they plan to take.
Visitors to Cape Town are also advised that the city suffers a high crime rate, including mountain walk and street muggings, particularly at night. We strongly recommend that delegates use the shuttle service that will be provided between Tugwell Hall, or a taxi service if they choose off-campus accommodation. We also very strongly recommend that delegates exercise caution when visiting other parts of the city, and that they avoid doing so alone, or in a manner that makes it evident to locals that they are tourists who lack local knowledge.
Cape Town offers a wide variety of tourist spots and places of interest. In addition to a variety of top-class beaches around the Cape Peninsula, the city centre hosts a series of museums, galleries libraries and archives as well as the country’s parliamentary buildings. Most are situated alongside the Company Gardens, a relatively quiet park area. The Waterfront shopping mall, within the precincts of Table Bay Harbour, offers extensive shopping experiences and a wide variety of entertainment. It is also where the terminal for ferries to Robben Island (previously a prison where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated) – but please note that one needs to book in advance for such trips, particularly during the busy summer season.
A series of performances in an international music festival being held at the time of the conference includes a piano concert in the City Hall, Cape Town Fri 1 Dec as well as a Festival Symphony Concert on the same day at the Endler Hall in Stellenbosch. Sunday 3 December there is a Festival Pops Concert including Yvonne Chaka Chaka as soloist in Cape Town’s Artscape theatre and on Thursday 7 December the City Hall hosts a concert including pieces by Gershwin, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky.
The area surrounding Cape Town includes a variety of towns and villages – including picturesque Stellenbosch – a university town which is also centre of one of the regional wine routes for which the Cape is famous. And for those interested to see material manifestations of the social contrasts that are a continuing reminder of apartheid’s legacy, a tour through one of the city’s townships is a must.
Smoking: Please note that South Africa has strict smoking laws and that no smoking is allowed in any indoor public areas. UCT has also prohibited smoking in any of its buildings, residence rooms included.
Security & medical emergencies on Campus:
Please contact Bernard Sauls - 082 801 2968
Airport transfers and tours: Robin Troup from Mpumalanga Experience will be at the registration desk on Monday 4 and Tuesday 5 December for departure airport transfer and tour bookings.
Host/Convenor
Conference Coordinator
Janet Sirmongpong
Conference Management Centre
University of Cape Town
Bien vouloir envoyer toutes les communications relatives à la conférence à:
Conference Management Centre
University of Cape Town
Bien vouloir envoyer toutes les communications relatives à la conférence à:
Deborah McTeer
Conference Management Centre
University of Cape Town
Faculty of Health Sciences
Anzio Road , Observatory, 7925
Cape Town , South Africa
Conference Management Centre
University of Cape Town
Faculty of Health Sciences
Anzio Road , Observatory, 7925
Cape Town , South Africa
