[STS-Africa] Southern Africa beyond the West: Political, Economic & Cultural Relationships with the BRICS Countries & the Global South

[Norman Schräpel]

Invitation and Call for Papers: Southern Africa beyond the West: Political, Economic & Cultural Relationships with the BRICS Countries & the Global South

Journal of Southern African Studies 1st Biennial Conference: 7-11 August 2015, Livingstone, Zambia

You are invited to attend the first of a series of biennial conferences organised by JSAS. The second will be held in the UK in 2017, but the first will be in Zambia in August 2015. We also hope that you will submit a paper, even if you are unable to attend.

The primary aim of the conference will be to consider Southern Africa’s place in a future world in which the influence of Western powers is in relative decline. To this end it will focus on social, political and cultural aspects of the region’s relationships with other regions, including the lusophone world, China, India, Russia and their spheres of influence, as well as examples of South-South linkages, recognising at the outset that what are presented as new linkages have a long history. (See inside front cover of the Journal for our coverage of countries within the region.)

Themes

We will be seeking papers on:

1.     China’s changing role in Southern Africa, including historical support for liberation movements, economic development assistance and diplomacy, and China’s contemporary increased investment and activity. Accompanying this have been new forms of cultural and demographic circulation, especially in the southern DRC, Zambia and other Southern African countries where Chinese have settled as well as invested economically, and where Chinese medicine, food, architecture and work practices have now found a sometimes controversial place, as well as Malawi and Tanzania and other countries where thriving Chinese trading communities have developed;

2.     The Indian Ocean World and Southern Africa, inclusive of Swahili and Arab influences, and Madagascar and India, including shifts in the way India interacted with Africa: first through ancient, long-distance trade routes, then as a source of migrant labour and business enterprises under British colonialism, then as a non-aligned nation, and now as a more contemporary India, which is ‘competing’ with China economically and in other spheres. Malawi, Tanzania and Mozambique, among others, have been part of India’s cultural and economic sphere for centuries, exchanging ideas, texts and technologies, as well as peoples and commodities;

3.     Brazil’s relationships with Southern Africa, focusing on its increasing weight in the world economy, including  its links with Portugal and the lusophone African countries, with a Portuguese-centred reconsideration of the Southern African region’s pre/colonial history of exploration, missionary activity, trade and colonisation, and decolonisation and war; as well as current religious movements and forms of cultural, economic, political and demographic circulation across the lusophone world;

4.     Russia, as the most debatable member of the BRICS, still represents a nation with a long history of interaction with Southern Africa, including support for liberation movements, as well as examples of technical cooperation and demographic circulation and networks still active today;

5.     South Africa and other emerging southern African economies: Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana, in addition to regional organisations and corporate linkages, especially South Africa’s hegemony over construction and consumer goods in much of the region (think: the ubiquitous South African shopping mall), as well as long-standing white-settler labour issues common throughout the region and further forms of cultural, economic, political and demographic circulation and networks, not neglecting South Africa’s past history of overt/covert attacks on liberation movements in Namibia, Angola, Botswana and other Southern African countries, and today its leading role in constitutional reform, as well as literature and publishing.

Co-sponsors: JSAS (Journal of Southern African Studies) and the Southern African Institute for Policy and Research (SAIPAR, Lusaka, Zambia)

Venue: Livingstone, Zambia

Deadline for paper proposals:  1 October 2014

Final paper deadline: 1 May 2015

Queries to Lyn Schumaker: lynschumaker at yahoo.co.uk

A full first draft, received by the May deadline, will be required from any authors who want to be considered for funding. Funding is limited and will probably only be available for authors in the southern African region based at universities that do not subsidise conference travel adequately.
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