1. ANTH326 Peoples and Cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa

• Meeting 4, Social Structure September 29, 2010

2. Project 3. Related References

Grinker, Lubkemann, and Steiner

4. How to Write about Africa

http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-About-Africa

5. Binyavanga Wainaina Ma famille

Ivoirian series

6. Tou.tv until October 4 7. http://www.tou.tv/ma-famille 8. Africa as Mirror

Define Western by contrast

9. Similar to Orientalism 10. The go-to Other 11. Nostalgia 12. Stigmatization 13. "Third World" 14. Impossible to generalize

Unusual cases

15. Catalogue 16. Contrasting cases within Africa 17. Contrast with alleged reader's notions 18. Particular to broader 19. McCall 20. Approach

Playing with narrative

Start with striking

21. Contextualize What colonial administrators missed 22. What colonial administrators created 23. Intro to Culture

Kinship/household

24. Cultural relativism and polygyny 25. Corporate ownership 26. Gerontocracy 27. Caste-like stratification 28. Infrastructure

Modes of production and reproduction

29. Agrarian by default 30. Market 31. Structure

Authority

32. Joking relationships 33. Solidarity 34. Sodalities

Age sets/grades

35. Cohorts 36. Institutionalized Gender 37. Southall 38. "Tribal"

Preconceptions

39. Technical definition 40. A posteriori definition 41. Defining Groups

Core part of social science

42. Group construction 43. Impact of outside definitions 44. Allegiance 45. Language (Herder) 46. Negotiated boundaries

Barth

47. Constructed Groups

Widespread

Even found in Europe

Divide and conquer 48. United we stand 49. Necessary in context 50. Primary identity 51. Causing wars 52. Solution in ethnic groups? 53. Complexity

Layered identities

54. Fluidity

Changes in identity

55. Urban/rural 56. Social networks 57. Modernity

Modern Africa

58. Associated to colonialism 59. Different from Westernization 60. Nationalism 61. Individualism 62. Contemporary Africa

Modern

63. Young 64. Diverse 65. States in Africa

Long history

Kingdoms and Empires

Next to small-scale groups 66. Embed small-scale groups 67. Nation-states

Somali as textbook case