Call for Papers: Beer as a Local and Transnational Commodity in
Africa, 02/07
Workshop "Beer as a local and transnational commodity"
Leuven, Belgium, Friday February 16 2007
First call for papers
On Friday February 16 2007 the Africa Research Centre (ARC) of the
K.U.Leuven organizes a one-day workshop on "beer as a local and
transnational commodity in Africa". This workshop welcomes contributions
from scholars across the humanities and social sciences working in and on
Africa. The emphasis is on discussion and the exchange of ideas; graduate
students in particular are encouraged to present their work.
This workshop concentrates on the role of beer in Africa's recent past and
present. Taking beer and drinking as a tangible lead to study agency and
subjectivity, this workshop's ambition is to explore new, exciting and
especially different pathways to study the cultural, social and political
dynamics of colonialism and modernity. Central to our concern are the
tensions and ambivalences epitomized by drinking alcohol in general and beer
in particular. These tensions relate to economic insecurity, gender,
authority, identity, migrant labour or centralized state rule - to name but
a few - and they equally characterize day-to-day activities and the grand,
hegemonic narratives (such as on apartheid, civilisation, tradition or
globalisation) in the background. The dialectic between foreground and
background, however, cannot be reduced to the simple opposition of global
versus local, hegemony versus resistance or colonizer versus colonized. On
the contrary: bottle stores, canteens, pubs and dance joints emerge as
arenas where locality is continuously being negotiated, where colonial and
contemporary identities are being made and unmade. The underlying question
then is: what can microscopic studies of beer and drinking tell us about the
'true nature' of the colonial encounter? Of the postcolonial state, of
modernity and of development in Africa?
The deadline for submitting paper proposals is September 1 2006. Proposals
should include a title, a 250 to 500-word abstract and the author's contact
information. They can be submitted to Steven Van Wolputte (
steven.vanwolputte@ant.kuleuven.be ), Department of Social Anthropology,
Tiensestraat 102, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium. Tel: ++ 32 16 32 54 96; fax ++ 32
16 32 59 02. The full call for papers, thematic outline and other
information regarding this workshop can be found on
http://ppw.kuleuven.be/antropologie/arc/events/beer/beer_intro.html or via
the website of the Africa Research Centre www.africaresearch.be.
Tentative outline of themes
1. Bottles and brews
Beer as commodity
- Beers, frontiers, and the making and unmaking of boundaries
- Beer and labour
- Beer and monetization
- Beer, emancipation and dependency
- The social life of beer
- Beer and (de-)commodification
- consumption and production
2. A pub without beer?
Imagining colonialism, modernity, and state
- Beer and the history of apartheid
- Legal and illegal brewing
- Beer and the colonial state
- Beer and governmentality
- Beer and morality
- Beer, hegemony and counterhegemony
- Beer and the imagination of 'race'
- Beer and authority
- The politics of drinking
3. Through the drinking glass
Identities and local dynamics of change
- Beer, homogenization and heterogeneity
- Beer, village, city
- Beer and religion
- Beer, self-fashioning and subjectivity
- Beer and ethnicity
- Beer and the (un)making of identity
- Beer and morality
- Beer and modernity
- Alcohol and violence
4. Beers and locality
The cultural logic of drinking
- Beer and locality
- Beer and sociality
- Beer and ethnography
- The semantics of alcohol and beer
- Beer, authority and subversion
Steven Van Wolputte
Assist. Professor, Africa Research Centre
Tiensestraat 102
B-3000 Leuven
tel: + 32 16 32 54 96
fax: + 32 16 32 60 00
www.africaresearch.be
Page Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D.