Browsing by Author "Nyamnjoh, Francis B"

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    Being and belonging among White English-speaking South Africans
    (University of Cape Town, 2020) Pedersen, Miriam Aurora Hammeren; Nyamnjoh, Francis B
    White English-speaking South Africans - WESSAs - have been an understudied topic in general, and particularly within the discipline of anthropology. In this thesis, I take the reader on an autoethnographic journey of attempting to make sense of life in the suburbs of Cape Town, searching for the elusive middle-class WESSAs and trying to attain an understanding of who they are. What does it mean to be and belong among this fascinating subcategory of Africans of European origin? The thesis takes a novel approach to the topic by viewing it through Nyamnjoh's framework of incompleteness, which posits that humans are incomplete by nature and culture (and cultivation). This framework is based on West/Central African philosophy and draws inspiration from the writings of Amos Tutuola, whose storytelling and conceptual universe also informs this thesis. Two key issues emerging from my fieldwork are power and belonging. A complex interplay exists between these factors of life in Cape Town. On the one hand, I argue that middle-class WESSAs have significant power in my field-site in terms of social status, linguistic dominance as well as control of institutions and the built environment. This hegemony leads to exclusion, marginalisation and Othering of non-WESSAs and less wealthy people, especially people of colour. On the other hand, WESSAs' tendency to perceive their positionality as universal, and their quest for completeness of being, ends up causing alienation and rootlessness even for WESSAs themselves. The themes of rootlessness and non-belonging permeate this thesis, highlighting the detrimental nature of hierarchies of race and class even for those at the top. I join Nyamnjoh in his call for a convivial mode of existence which acknowledges interdependencies, interconnectedness and the inherent incompleteness of human life.
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    Down the rabbit hole: an ethnography on loving, desiring and tindering in Cape Town
    (2021) Junck, Leah Davina; Nyamnjoh, Francis B
    This ethnography on loving, desiring and tindering offers insights into how the dating application (app) Tinder is adopted in establishing various kinds of intimacy in Cape Town. Given the scholarly neglect of intimacy's sensory aspects (especially when looking at Africa), the study, based on interviews and participant observation involving 25 participants, lends weight to phenomenological experiences unfolding in partially cybernated social processes. Considering the body to be a defining dimension of human social existence, it looks at how engagements with relative strangers unfold as virtual reality and realised virtuality. Tinder and other apps have shaped what it means to get to know another individual beyond conventional sensory perceptions. Technologies as means of self-extension in Michel Foucault's sense and practices of relating (and non-relating) reach far in sundry ways. They have a significant impact on social identities, politics, economies and demographic developments. They also hold the promise of different economies of bodies and pleasures, as Foucault presaged. This study's findings show that, although dating apps pervade everyday experiences and are embraced as extensions of the self, they are simultaneously disassociated from daily life and hypernormalised as less than ‘real'. Desires for more meaningful and complete experiences were continuously manoeuvred by study participants despite disappointments, uncertainties and hurt. What these approaches of stretching oneself beyond profiled essences entailed is at the heart of this ethnography. The resolute, adaptive usage of Tinder despite disillusionments owes to the app offering refuge into both fantasy and reality, which have long become hybrid in a digitally enhanced experience. The multitude of dating app experiences in what Stempfhuber and Liegl (2016) have referred to as a ‘rabbit hole' with skewed proportions may not be an absolute escape from reality. However, it does provide opportunities for re-encountering different facets of the self when stretching beyond them. What is, nonetheless, needed to embrace technologically facilitated dating as ‘real' encounters of equals is to understand oneself and others as non-unitary and incomplete. Thus, I argue, a broader view of relationships is needed than ideas and ideals of ‘modern' romance and dating app designs relying on binary categories currently promote.
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    The effects and socio-economic contribution of Batonga Community Museum in Zimbabwe : an ethnographic field study
    (2016) Munyaradzi, Mawere; Nyamnjoh, Francis B
    Zimbabwean history is rooted in ethnic and cultural identities, inequalities, and injustices which the post-colonial government has sought to address since its national independence in 1980. Marginalisation of some ethnic groups has been one of the persistent problems in post-colonial Zimbabwe. Of particular significance to this thesis has been the marginalisation of the BaTonga people of north-western Zimbabwe. The marginalisation of the BaTonga people is historical with its roots traceable from the colonial era through the early years of national independence. Post-colonial Zimbabwe's emphasis on cultural identity and confirmation has, however, prompted the establishment of community museums such as the BaTonga Community Museum (BCM), to promote cultures of the local people. The establishment of cultural heritage sites such as the BCM has, however, impacted on the lives of the local people in various ways. This study critically examines the effects and socio-economic contribution of the BCM to the local communities, which ranges from generation of revenue to education training, environmental conservation and creation of employment in several sectors of the economy. On examining this topic, I draw extensively on the work of Kopytoff, who wrote about biographies of things. In his work, Kopytoff argues that all things, including cultural objects relate in a way that allows the analysis of relationships between persons and things as a process of social transformation that involves a series of changes in status. As Kopytoff (1986) insists, cultural biographical approach is culturally informed given that things are culturally constructed and reconstructed in much the same way people are culturally (re-)constructed through time. I draw on the work of Kopytoff in a critically sympathetic manner to delve into the effects and socio-economic contribution of the BCM to the local communities. I, nevertheless, bring to the fore the argument that although Kopytoff does not explicitly argue that things have life, his cultural biographical approach implies this and that by tracing a biography of a thing we recognise its agency as 7 well. It is through the careful analysis of agency of these things that I examine the effects and socio-economic contribution of the BCM to communities surrounding the site.