Doing Research with Young People: Participatory Research and the Rituals of Collective Work

This is an exciting juncture at which to bear witness to the growing, multidisciplinary support for youth participation and more inclusive collaborative research practices in geography and the social sciences. Participatory action research and practice offers a promising new framework for researchers who are committed to social justice and change. The multiple benefits of engaging the perspectives of young people in research have served to challenge social exclusion, redistribute power within the research process and build the capacity of young people to analyze and transform their own lives and become partners in the building of more sound, democratic, communities. In this paper, I offer a broad overview of the principles of participatory research and reflect on my own experience of doing a participatory action research project with young people. Specifically, I will discuss a ‘collective praxis approach’ (a set of rituals and practices for sharing power within the research process), the role of the facilitator, and the processes of collective data analysis.     

Urban Unemployment and Migrants in Africa: Evidence from Harare 1985–1994

Unemployment is a major problem in urban centres in sub‐Saharan Africa. The impact of policies associated with structural adjustment programmes has frequently meant major formal job losses in both the public and private sectors. Although it is widely recognized that there has been a major (further) shift into the informal sector, it is also often claimed that ‘unemployment’ rates have greatly increased. When it is also assumed that net rural–urban migration has continued at a rapid pace, this is believed to be a significant contributor to the rise in unemployment. However, because ‘unemployment’ and ‘underemployment’ are hard to measure and to keep discrete when studying urban Africa, it is apparent that there is much confusion over current levels and trends in unemployment. This article discusses the problems of analysing African urban unemployment, drawing in particular on a recent ILO report, and presents evidence from long‐term research on migrants in Harare which casts doubt on the extent to which net in‐migration is a major factor contributing to unemployment in contemporary, economically adjusting sub‐Saharan Africa.     

Language and Archaeology in Southern Africa: The Search for Post-colonial Reality

Issues to do with languages, particularly those of the former colonizers and the dominant have always been very emotive topics in post-colonial settings. Surely, such languages are living reminders of the bad associated with domination. Ironically, the same languages have emerged as mediums of communication in many post-colonies replete with ethnic groups who speak unrelated languages. For example, the thriving nature of English remarkably contrasts with the fast disappearance of many of the world's languages. However, as archaeologists and in view of the diversity of our languages, how do we communicate and understand each other? We may invent a neutral language or translate every other article into our many languages. But at what cost? Half the world is dying of hunger and disease as we argue over the need to make all languages important; research money is becoming difficult to access. Therefore, the need to communicate is probably more important than the need to perpetuate a victim mentality.     

中非关系的发展与非洲中国新移民

本文从新移民的规模、特点、构成类型及其与当地社会关系等方面,简要分析了中国在非洲新移民群体所普遍存在的问题。认为中国新移民与当地社会某些阶层经济利益上的竞争关系、中国新移民相对封闭的文化和生活方式、所在国的政治斗争和政治动员以及西方媒体的渲染歪曲等因素,影响到新移民与当地社会的关系。就目前情况来看,除少数的移民个人具有较为突出的成就外,新移民群体还没有达到足以在非洲各国产生影响的程度。语言、文化和价值观念的差异可能会妨碍新移民融入当地社会。     

Shifting Cultivation and Deforestation in Tropical Africa: Critical Reflections

Shifting cultivation is the agricultural technique employed by the majority of farmers in the tropical regions of Africa. The dominant narrative recited by policy experts, non‐governmental organizations and many scientists is that this practice is a principal cause of deforestation in tropical Africa. This article unpacks the various elements of this narrative and explores whether there is any evidence to substantiate it in West and Central Africa. The results challenge the conventional wisdom that shifting cultivation is leading to accelerating deforestation in tropical Africa.     

Goats (Capra hircus), the Khoekhoen and Pastoralism: Current Evidence from Southern Africa

The current archaeological evidence for the presence of goats among herder societies in southern Africa is reviewed. Presumably, the Khoekhoen obtained goats from Bantu-speaking farmers, but the exact timing of diffusion is still unknown. Archaeological evidence for the presence of goats in the Western Cape remains, to date, elusive, despite historical reference to goats. It is very often impossible to distinguish sheep from goat based on fragmentary archaeological remains such as those commonly found in southern Africa. Intrinsic physiological characteristics make goats suitable farm animals, and they may commonly have acted as sheep-leaders during prehistoric times, a practice noted amongst the Khoekhoen during the early part of the 19th century. Acting as sheep-leaders might have required herders to deliberately keep goat numbers low. There are few depictions of goats in southern African rock art. Résume La preuve archéologique actuelle pour la présence de chèvres parmi les sociétés de berger dans Afrique méridionale est réexaminée. Vraisemblablement, le Khoekhoen a obtenu des chèvres de fermiers parlant Bantu, mais le moment exact de diffusion est toujours inconnu. La preuve archéologique pour la présence de chèvres dans les restes de Cap de l’ouest, dater, insaisissable, malgré la référence historique aux chèvres. C’est très souvent impossible de distinguer le mouton de la chèvre basée sur les restes archéologiques fragmentaires tels que ces ordinairement trouvé dans Afrique méridionale. Les caractéristiques physiologiques intrinsèques font des chèvres les animaux de ferme convenables, et ils ont pu servir ordinairement des mouton-dirigeants pendant les temps préhistoriques, une pratique réputée parmi le Khoekhoen pendant la première partie du 19e siècle. Servir des mouton-dirigeants pourrait avoir exigé que les bergers aient exprès gardé le niveau bas de nombres de chèvre. Il y a peu de représentations de chèvres dans l’art de rocher Africain méridional.     

State Formation in Southern Africa: A Reply to Kim and Kusimba

Kim and Kusimba misunderstand the archaeological data pertaining to K2, Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe because they rely on secondary sources. Before these capitals can be categorized according to definitions of early states elsewhere, they need to be interpreted in their own terms. Ultimately, Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe are no less complex because they differ from early states in Asia or Middle America.     

Authority,Gender and Knowledge: Theoretical Reflections on the Practice of Participatory Rural Appraisal

Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) methods are increasingly taken up by public sector organizations as well as NGOs among whom they have been pioneered. While PRA methods are successfully employed in a variety of project planning situations, and with increasing sophistication, in some contexts the practice of PRA faces constraints. This article examines the constraints as experienced in the early stages of one project, and suggests some more general issues to which these point. In particular, it is suggested that, as participatory exercises, PRAs involve ‘public’ social events which construct ‘local knowledge’ in ways that are strongly influenced by existing social relationships. It suggests that information for planning is shaped by relations of power and gender, and by the investigators themselves; and that certain kinds of knowledge are often excluded. Finally, the paper suggests that as a method for articulating existing local knowledge, PRA needs to be complemented by other methods of ‘participation’ which generate the changed awareness and new ways of knowing, which are necessary to locally-controlled innovation and change.     

Gender Awareness in Migration Theory: Synthesizing Actor and Structure in Southern Africa

Recent developments in migration theory mirror two concerns writ large across the development literature, namely the attempt to reconcile structure and agency and the importance of gender. Using the specific context of southern Africa, this article analyses the development of migration theory over the last forty years and the dialectic between gender and the structure-agency dyad. It is argued that gender is an essential tool for unpicking the migration process and that a gender perspective has enriched and been enriched by a model of migration allowing analytical space for both the agency of migrants and the structures which surround them. Juxtaposing the various theories which have been brought to bear on migration in southern Africa also reveals the extent to which new models and classificatory systems have developed on the basis of agendas set by preceding conceptual frameworks, distinctions between competing models rarely being as clear-cut as the mode of scholarship would have them appear.     

Decisive Evidence for Multidirectional Evolution of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Africa

While pioneers of archaeology in any given region have established the foundations of the discipline, their views have not remained unchanged in places such as Europe, North America and Australasia. In these regions, successive generations of researchers changed the direction of their work based not just on new observations but also in light of new methods and theories. For example, the idea of a Bronze Age revolution popularised by V. G. Childe in Europe was superseded by multiple alternatives over the years. In southern African Iron Age studies, John Schofield, Gertrude Caton-Thompson, Roger Summers, Keith Robinson and Peter Garlake created an impressive platform upon which successors could build. Confronting firm disapproval from more experienced researchers in the early 1980s, Huffman speculated that the evolution of sociopolitical complexity in our region was a linear relay from Mapungubwe to Khami via Great Zimbabwe. This position was sustained as the conventional wisdom largely, we argue, because no new research was being carried out in key areas of the region, and too few students, in particular African ones, were being trained to expand the focus of investigation. Here, we present new data to support our argument, that the pathway to sociopolitical complexity in southern Africa was multilinear. We propose looking forward rather than back, and to continue to seek the exposure of scales of interaction between multiple but chronologically overlapping entities associated with the rise of sociopolitical complexity in southern Africa.     

A cultural proxy for drought: ritual burning in the Iron age of Southern Africa

In traditional Bantu-speaking societies in southern Africa, drought is caused by breaches in rules of pollution. At times of severe drought (3–5 consecutive seasons), rainmakers ascend special hills to perform special rituals. The archaeological signature of this unique activity forms a cultural proxy for drought. New research shows that burnt daga structures also correlate with high δ¹⁵N values for small stock. Burnt structures thus form a new component to the proxy. According to the ethnography, farmers implicated in the cause burnt their grain bins, and sometimes houses, as a ritual of cleansing. The dating of these structures provides a revised climatic sequence for the plateau portion of the summer rainfall region. Among other new results, there was a drought at the end of the Mapungubwe period (ca. AD 1300). At about AD 1650, droughts associated with the arrival of maize caused people to stop growing it as food for a while.     

Some Evidence for Seasonality amongst Later Stone Age Hunter-gatherers in Southern Africa

Abstract

The Later Stone Age (LSA) period in Southern Africa is characterised by a succession of cultural traditions. The LSA hunter-gatherer populations were ancestral to the present-day San. They moved around in small bands, within a semi-fixed territory visiting open air and shelter sites to coincide with available resources.

The hunter-gatherers filled every niche in the environment, including the high mountains, deserts and semi-deserts, bush savanna and grass lands. They were well aware of the food sources available in their territories during the course of a year and utilized these opportunities. As winters in southern Africa are relatively mild, and most regions have foods available throughout the year, seasonality is difficult to demonstrate.

In only a few instances there is some evidence for seasonal use or seasonality. Age profiles of seals at Elands Bay Cave suggest short occupation periods during late winter and early spring. In the high mountains of South Africa and Lesotho, where winters are cold and frost and snow common, the faunal and floral remains suggest occupation during late spring, summer and early autumn. Abbot's Cave in the semi-arid central Karoo was used as a hunting lodge during September, relating to the lambing season and migratory behaviour of springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis).