Ataya: HUMA Interdisciplinary Seminar Series
Elísio Macamo is Professor of African Studies and Sociology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. From 2011 to 2018, he was the Director of the Centre for African Studies and from 2015 to 2018 Head of the Social Science Department at the same University. His research interests cover a broad range of subjects, from development issues through risk and disasters to technological artefacts in everyday life. In recent years he has paid more attention to methodological issues in African Studies. He is the author of Sovereign Reason – Issues in African Studies (forthcoming, African Minds).
Topic: What is it we are studying when we claim to be looking into anything? More specifically, what are we learning when we say that we are studying Africa? The most straightforward answer to these questions is to conflate the intellectual agenda of our discipline (social anthropology, sociology, political science, etc.) with the object, arguing, for instance, that we are studying culture, society and politics. In this presentation, I will discuss the challenge of defining the object in African Studies. The claim I will put forward is to the effect that a clear definition of ‘the object’ is not an empirically retrievable phenomenon but rather the work we do to construct what we are able to know. The aim is to argue for African Studies as a refined version of the methodology of the social sciences.
Access paper*
*'Before we start: science and power in the constitution of Africa' by Elisio Macamo, Chapter 15 in The Politics of Nature and Science in Southern Africa, edited by Maano Ramutsindela and Giorgio Miescher. Published by Basler Afrika Bibliographien in 2016. | See book | Extract made available with the kind permission of the author.
How Ataya works: One presenter and their work – in exchange with the audience. Each Ataya session engages with selected work by the presenter (a text, artwork, performance, even food). The presenter introduces their work and grounds the subsequent discussion with the participants. For best engagement, we recommend participants to view the work (made available in advance on our website) before the session. More on the Ataya Series
