Research Area A: Uncertainty, Innovation, and Competing Orders in Africa
(Disciplines: Anthropology, Culture and Technology in Africa, Development Sociology, Development Studies and African Politics, Engineering Sciences, History of Africa, Islamic Studies,
Law with Focus on Comparative Law, Religious Studies, Social Anthropology)
Over the past years, the three interdependent key concepts of uncertainty, innovation and order have proven fruitful for doctoral studies in this RA, because they have helped deepen our
understanding of important aspects of the African experience. Nevertheless, the current state
of our academic debate suggests some modifications to our previous program. In particular,
within its overall conceptual framework the RA has extended its focus to include the study of
technologies; in this regard the RA is opening up for academic debate and closer collaboration with the engineering sciences at UBT.
Uncertainty arises from a variety of factors, most of which derive from the precarious foundations on which many African countries’ economies rest, political instability and high
vulnerability to natural and man-made disasters (KIRAGU); from continued dependence on
unreliable external financial resources to the countries’ apparent failure to meet the
expectations of the younger generations (Bayart, Ellis, Hibou 1999; KASTNER; Lund 2007;
Raeymakers 2008; Sassen 1996; Vlassenroot, Richards 2005). Other factors relate to rapid
social and political change, which have made traditions and familiar routines less reliable as
sources of order and structure (Bellagamba, Klute 2008; Meagher 2010; Vigh 2006;
Vlassenroot, Raeymakers 2008). Thus, uncertainty seems to be an appropriate notion to
describe the living conditions of most Africans along with the challenges they meet in their
encounters with volatile political, economic, social, cultural and normative orders (Mbembe
2001). In this sense, the notion of uncertainty carries, for better or worse, the idea of an open
future and makes improvisation and innovation its inevitable companions, as these latter
notions invoke change and transformation, whether emerging from within the continent itself
or from domesticated foreign inputs (BAKHIT; HÄNSCH).
Innovation and creativity have increasingly come to be seen as Africans’ responses to their
condition or, to put it differently, as the expression of agency in Africa (BRINKMANN).
Anthropological research has repeatedly shown the enormous versatility of social agency in
responding to natural and human constraints. Terms like innovation and creativity have come
to describe not only a break with the past but also the adaptation of tradition to new
challenges (UMLAUF), Africans’ appropriation of external inputs, the endeavor to integrate
these inputs into their lives and, most importantly, their responses to the ever new situations
resulting from innovation itself (Chabal, Daloz 1999; Little 2003; Lund 2007; Meagher 2010;
Tostensen, Tveden, Vaa 2001; Vigh 2006; Vlassenroot, Raeymakers 2008).
As our experience during the first phase of BIGSAS has clearly demonstrated, there are
three conceptual pitfalls that must be avoided: the functional, the normative and the essentialist. The RA’s key concepts may suggest an all too functional sequence of “problem–response–solution”. Secondly, the concept of “quest for order”, used in the original proposal,
tends to put forward normative interpretations and unfounded anthropological universalities.
Thirdly, Africans’ apparently pervasive innovation skills should not tempt us to unconditionally
celebrate their creativity, or take it for granted. Traditionalism and conservatism, even apathy
and anomie, may also be results of rapid change (Ellis 2007; Rouveroy van Nieuwaal, van
Dijk 1999; Smith 2004). On the other hand, attempts to increase predictability, “making
sense” through constructing social institutions and cognitive ordering of the world as well as
the large variety of technical innovations are particularly prolific and creative in Africa (Beck
2009; Chabal, Daloz 1999; Little 2003; Meagher 2010). This raises questions of both
empirical and theoretical interest. We need to ask how creative or innovative such attempts
are; in what historical contexts they occur; and how disorder and order are precisely related.
It is therefore imperative to put innovation and order in their proper context.
In order to sharpen the RA’s key concepts of uncertainty, innovation and competing orders,
we have come to understand them as academic perspectives, not as given facts; they mark
specific questions or approaches with respect to African actors and the African continent. We
depart from the methodological assumption that any attempt to ground these categories
empirically must take into account the actors’ perceptions and options. What we perceive as
uncertainty may, in their understanding, reflect a state of normality dealt with through routine
(Macamo, Neubert 2008; Spittler 1989). In some situations, creative adaptation and
innovation may NOT take place (ILO 2002). Actors may choose from “competing concepts of
order” (or even disorder, Chabal, Daloz 1999; Neubert 2011), depending on the
circumstances. Such conceptual adaptations have led us to consider additional notions, such
as heterarchy, social improvisation or navigation (Bellagamba, Klute 2008; Ingold, Hallam
2007; HÄNSCH; OLDENBURG; Vigh 2006, 2009). Seen from this perspective, “orders” may
represent processes of (heterarchical) figuration rather than static frameworks; they may be
incomplete or fragile. New orders that offer certainty and predictability for some may
destabilize others. Therefore innovation is always both a historical and a political process,
tentative, navigational and improvisational. Uncertain environments in particular have the
potential to turn into “seedbeds of creativity” because of their inherent interpretative flexibility
(K. Beck 2004).
Creativity, local agency and available solutions are, nonetheless, not unlimited. Actors
develop them against the background of existing normative orientations and values that are,
in turn, constrained by the historical experience of Africans as well as by outside influences
embedded in processes such as modernization, globalization or trans-local flows. The
solutions that Africans engineer may not be consistent with, or may even be contradictory to,
the normative assumptions of policy makers, human or children’s rights’ activists, or
development experts (Bayart, Ellis, Hibou 1999; Chabal, Daloz 1999; Geschiere 1997; Lund
2007; MORISHO; Trotha 2011b). Yet these solutions make up for Africa’s realities and it is the
researchers’ task to describe, analyze and understand them according to their own logic and
context.
The notions of uncertainty and innovation invite us to challenge concepts such as “state”,
“democracy” or “family”, particularly with regard to processes of social change in Africa. They
also encourage us to develop fresh approaches to some of the basic tenets of social science,
history and cultural studies well beyond the African continent. Recent concepts from
empirical research in Africa, such as social improvisation or navigation (Vigh 2006, 2009),
suggest that common social science notions such as system or structure carry the historical
experience of their origin, namely Euro-American modernity. Therefore, the perspective
taken here gives African area studies a unique opportunity to contribute to the development
of their respective disciplines based on their expertise in one of the epistemologically most
challenging parts of the world (Trotha 2000).
Given the extreme heterogeneity of African settings and the pivotal role uncertainty and
innovation play in this context, Africa can be seen as a laboratory where a multiplicity of
actors are (and were) engaged in experimenting with a multitude of innovations. This is a
challenge that knows no disciplinary boundaries. The interdisciplinary nature of the Graduate
School is therefore ideally suited to this enterprise, as it is open to a wide range of
methodological approaches.
We have chosen the following specific foci for SFs’ and JFs’ research projects:
1. Social and Political Orders, New Civic Associations
The debate on the state in Africa has drawn our attention to the vitality and innovativeness of
local discourses and practices of power (Sousa Santos 2006). A striking feature of Africa’s
new social and political landscape is its variety as expressed in a wide range of
organizational forms, ranging from militias and vigilantes, politicized religions and ethnicity to
new civil society organisations (ABDALLA; Bellagamba, Klute 2008; DANIELS; KAGORO).
Religious movements in particular are important producers of new societal moralities and
identities (Ahmed, von Oppen 2005; BEN AMARA; DANFULANI; ELHASSAB; ZÖLLER). These new
forms of order are at times conflicting or circumventive, at times in alliance with or parasitic to
the state order. Processes of informalization and privatization of sovereignty and
governance, which occur worldwide – albeit in various forms, are particularly visible on the
African continent, leading to an uncertain future beyond familiar models of (Western)
organization.
2. Religion and/as Magic
Many religious traditions in Africa provide their followers with magical solutions to cope with
personal problems, structural ruptures and uncertainty (Seesemann 2011). Although official
religion often discourages magic, followers nonetheless seek out religious specialists who
claim to communicate with spirits or the unseen world (Ashforth 2005; Gemmeke 2009).
Analyzing Africans’ recourse to magic thus opens a window on the ways they deal with
uncertainty. While some of the fastest-growing religious movements today, such as
Pentecostalism (BAIYEWU; Echtler, Ukah 2009) and Islamic reform movements of Salafi or
Wahhabi inclination, explicitly oppose magic (BEN AMARA; DANFULANI; WARIO), other thriving
religious groups derive their popularity precisely from the services they offer in the fields of
divination, spirit possession and healing (ERESSO; KUHN). Studying the nexus of religion and
magic also allows us to critically reconsider the notion of magic itself as well as the
purportedly modern character of witchcraft in the African context (Geschiere 1997).
3. Kinship and Law, Life Course and Intergenerational Relations
Kinship relations have been perceived as a bulwark of stability and structural continuity in the
absence of state-organized social security systems. A research perspective that focuses on
everyday practices of kinship in the light of uncertainty and rapid change, however, does not
confirm this assumption. Rather it focuses on the transformations of kinship norms and practices
that reflect changing demands in everyday life and face crises (Alber, Häberlein, Martin 2010).
Continuity, however, seems to be found in the principal importance kinship relations play for
people (Alber, Häberlein 2011). Dissertation projects question these assumptions about high
levels of flexibility and change on the one hand and stability on the other (HÄBERLEIN; WAFULA).
We are also interested in international legal conventions and laws as factors of change (S.
BELLO).
4. Urban Culture and Youth
For a long time Africans living in cities maintained strong ties to their rural areas of origin.
Today there is an ever emerging city life; urban social environments appear to be opening up
increasingly to a creative blend of diverse cultural influences (BAKHIT); at the same time they
provide space for the elaboration of new cultural expressions, which are also transported to
rural areas (Hahn 2010; UNGRUHE). Some of these expressions form the background for new
social movements with new discourses on social and political life in general. Others appear
to be an expression of an emerging “middle class” (GLOVER). The study of young people and
youth movements is particularly promising. Setting aside popular notions of contemporary
African youth as a “lost generation” (Cruise O’Brien 1996; Treiber 2007), youth has either
been perceived as a non-conventional societal category to be forced into conformity with
existing orders or as a dynamic, productive source of social change (Honwana, de Boeck
2005). In this sense, it is a phase of life open to uncertainty, experimentation and innovation
(Christiansen, Utas, Vigh 2006; OLDENBURG).
5. Conflicts and Violence
We start from the assumption that violence in society is a form of power, the object of which is
the human body. It is dynamic, often takes the form of a spiral of violence or manifests itself as
violence breaking its own boundaries (Trotha 2011a). We then assume that all social entities –
both state and non-state – must cope with violence in order to assure sustainability (Bellagamba, Klute 2008; DAHLMANNS). Hence, they must develop regular modes of conflict resolution. From a historical perspective, however, solutions to the violence problem vary greatly, and
the monopolizing of violence by the modern state is but one among many. In view of the emergence of “alternative sovereignties” (Vigh) or new forms of power (Klute) in Africa, we are interested in local solutions to the violence problem beyond those proposed by the state (BALOI,
BORSZIK, GOMES, KUHN, LAR, MANÉ, MENDES). In situations of uncertainty, solutions may be
quite different and may even compete with one another, thereby creating new conflicts
(OMANGA).
6. Appropriation of External Goods, Technologies and Ideas
Perhaps no other continent has been permeated to the same extent by external goods,
ideas, technologies and institutions as Africa. Whereas the conventional diffusionist
approach simply assumes processes of adoption and imitation, the appropriation approach,
by contrast, points to the fact that inputs are often locally redesigned and put to uses they
were not originally intended for (Appadurai 2000; Liep 2001; MacKenzie, Wajcman 1996).
Processes of appropriation are characterized by marked uncertainty and interpretative
flexibility (FANTAW ; Powell 1995). The various uses to which the “foreign” is put unleash new
visions, social and moral debates (ABD-ELKREEM), and technical innovations (K. Beck 2009;
S. Beck 1997; Bijker 1997; Kline 2000). Technologies, in particular, pose a challenging field
of inquiry; for they are commonly envisaged to be technically determined, as opposed to
ideas and institutions, and therefore orders impenetrable to local redesign. On the other
hand, thorough research has revealed instances of redesign. The question is therefore not
whether technology in the process of appropriation is open to human agency or not, but
under which conditions and with which types of technology. We therefore propose to explore
these research questions further in order to gain deeper insights into the relationship between
innovation, uncertainty and order. In the process we will employ a cross-disciplinary approach
that combines social, political, religious and engineering aspects.
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