AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER - UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
 

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.

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