University of Basel

Centre for
African Studies

Publications

The pages of the key areas of activities provide an overview of recent publications. More comprehenisve lists of publications by our members are avaialable via the research database and the edoc repository of the University of Basel and, respectively, the websites of the partner institutions. 

Latest publications

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Publication: "Bodily ethnography: Some epistemological challenges of participation"

In this article, Till Förster explores the role of bodily interactions in ethnographic fieldwork and the related epistemological problems.
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Publication: Defining clinical trial quality from the perspective of resource-limited settings

This study co-authored by Peter van Eeuwijk suggests that clinical trial quality should be defined by a multidimensional concept that includes not only scientific and ethical, but also quality-promoting factors. From the perspective of…
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Publication: “‘The Only Industry That Can Make Us Hold Our Own’: Black Agrarianism in South Africa from a Transatlantic Perspective, ca. 1910–1930”

In her article, Julia Tischler investigates agricultural education initiatives in early twentieth-century Ciskei and Transkei as vernacular expressions of transatlantic Black agrarianism. The article seeks to expand the historiography of…
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Publikation: "Spanisch in Afrika/Afrika in Spanien. Sprachliche Charakteristika von Spanischsprecherinnen und Spanischsprechern aus Äquatorialguinea in Madrid"

In ihrem Beitrag wirft Sandra Schlumpf aus Sicht der äquatorialguineischen Diaspora in Spanien einen aktuellen Blick auf das Spanische Äquatorialguineas. Die Analyse gewährt auf verschiedenen Ebenen Einblicke in den Sprachgebrauch und die…
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Publication: "MIGCHOICE Country Report: Guinea"

Michelle Engeler is the co-author of the country report on Guinea in the frame of the research project MIGCHOICE. The project lead by the Department for International Development at the University of Birmingham is concerned with migration…
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Publication: "Informal networks as investment in East Africa"

This report sheds light on the functioning of informal networks associated with bribery and procurement fraud in East Africa. Ten mini-case studies from Tanzania and Uganda are analysed and implications for anti-corruption practice…
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Publication: "Tales from the Congo River: Catching Mami Wata"

In this article, Lesley Braun examines how rumours, memes and in-group culture endure through time by taking Mami Wata as an example for memetic transmission. Mama Wata is a half-human and half-aquatic water deity who features prominently…
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Publication: Coloniality of Infrastructure

The Coloniality of Infrastructure essay series is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture, Critical Urbanisms at the University of Basel, and the African Centre for Cities of the University of Cape Town. Contributors include Samia…
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Publication: Left Button Picture, Right Button Bomb. Nature, Warfare and Technology in a Southern African Border Region

With a focus on the Mirage IIIR2Z, an aerial reconnaissance and ground-attack supersonic jet, James Merron and Luregn Lenggenhager examine the relationship between nature conservation and military technology in north-eastern Namibia during…
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Publication: The role of informal networks in promoting illegal wildlife trade: a qualitative analysis from Uganda

While the role of informal networks in sustaining illegal wildlife trade is ever more on the radar of scholars and practitioners, their modus operandi remains largely understudied. This paper by Jacopo Costa, Claudia Baez‑Camargo, Saba…
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Publication: The Weight Women Carry. Research on the Visible and Invisible Baggage in Suitcase Trade between China and Africa

This article co-authored by Lesley Braun follows the transnational trajectories of African trader women between China and West and Central Africa and takes stock of some of the weight they shoulder. This refers to the to materiality of the…
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Publication: (Un)Sighted Archives of Migration—Spaces of Encounter and Resistance

This special issue of Visual Anthropology co-edited by Fiona Siegenthaler takes a close look at (un)sighted migratory archives and archives of migration. In their introduction, the editors invite readers to engage with archives as spaces of…
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Publication: Outlines of a Pentecostal Dominion Theology

This book chapter by Andreas Heuser is a detailed study on the conceptual and operational framework of Dominion Theology, in an effort to make sense of the new interactions between Pentecostalism, politics, societal influence, and public…
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Publication: Turning Land into Money. Land, Inequality and Reforms in Namibia

In their article, Luregn Lenggenhager, Lena Bloemert and Romie Nghitevelekwa show how past and present developments in Namibia created opportunities to make money out of land, leading to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few.
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Publication: Anthropogenic erosion-induced small-scale soil heterogeneity in South African rangelands

In their study, Juliane Krenz, Philip Greenwood and Nikolaus Kuhn analyze soil redistribution in a degraded rangeland in South Africa. Soil erosion in semi-arid drylands induced by land-use changes creates patchworks of soils and…
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Publication: Sites of Contestation. Encounters with the Ernst and Ruth Dammann Collection in the Archives of the Basler Afrika Bibliographien

This edited volume is the product of a long-term student engagement with the Dammann collection housed at the Basler Afrika Bibliographien (BAB). The essays propose creative ways of attending to the politics of race, gender, famine,…
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Publication: Window of the World: Sino–African Encounters through Copies and Simulations

Based on interviews with Kenyan and South African contract workers at a Chinese theme park that features miniature copies of heritage sites from around the world, Lesley Nicole Braun explores ways in which culture is constructed and…
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Publication: Privileged Precariat. White Workers and South Africa's Long Transition to Majority Rule

The South African apartheid state’s ethnic and race-based politics pushed an image of whites as classless. Danelle van Zyl-Hermann's book challenges this view. It focuses on the experience of the white industrial workforce and their unique…
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Publication: Social meaning and material constraints of land scarcity in Northern Namibia

Land access, land distribution and security of tenure are major topics in Namibia, as in many other African countries. In north-central Namibia land is often described as scarce, by both the socio-political authorities as …
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Publikation: Alternativen zur Restitution? Lokale Perspektiven auf ein globales Problem

Mit seinem Kapitel im Sammelband "Geschichtskultur durch Restitution? Ein Kunst-Historikerstreit" leistet Till Förster einen Beitrag an die Debatte über geraubte Kulturgüter und Restitution.
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Publication: Property killed a peace park dream: The entanglement of property, politics and conservation along the Gariep

In their article, Luregn Lenggenhager and Maano Ramtsindela examine the role of the configuration of property regimes and the power relations embedded in them for the establishment of peace parks in southern Africa.
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Publication: Beware the Mineral Narrative: The Histories of Solwezi Town and Kansanshi Mine, North-Western Zambia, c. 1899–2020

In her contribution on Solwezi town and Kansanshi mine in Zambia's Northwestern Province, Rita Kesselring presents an analysis along the nexus of mining, urban development and demography over 120 years.
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Publication: Social network analysis applied to illegal wildlife trade between East Africa and Southeast Asia

In this working paper, Jacopo Costa sheds new light on the dark networks of wildlife traffickers that operate mainly between East Africa and Southeast Asia but have tentacles reaching around the world. 
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A short history of the KFPE. 1994-2019

In this report, Alexandra Hofmänner examines the Swiss North-South relations in historical perspective based on the example of the Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries (KFPE).
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Publication: Speaking Through Houses: Interweaving Biography, Property and Personhood in Urban Zimbabwe

In her JJ Bachofen Lecture in 2019, Amanda Hammar looked at houses from an anthropological point of view. Hammar further builds upon theories of houses as constituants of people's biographies and "how they embody interconnections between…
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Publication: Existential Transformations. Life in the West African Savannah since the 1970s

Till Förster's paper asks how existential transformations are experienced, lived, remembered and conceived by the people, but also by ethnographers. Förster aims at capturing "la longue durée" of his fieldwork among the Senufo in…
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Publication: Anneliese and Ernst Rudolf Scherz’s ‘Ethnographic Object Collection’ from Namibia and Southern Africa

In this BAB working paper series, Lisa Roulet and Dag Henrichsen provide an introduction to the object collection of the Scherz archive at the Basler Afrika Bibliographien and document each object with regard to available historical context…
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Publication: Association of activities related to pesticide exposure on headache severity and neurodevelopment of school-children in the rural agricultural farmlands of the Western Cape of South Africa

In a study published in Environment International by Swiss TPH and partners at the University of Cape Town, researchers found that children in South Africa who engage in pesticide-related farm activities often have more headaches and…
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Publication: Growing Wild. The Correspondence of a Pioneering Woman Naturalist from the Cape

Tanja Hammel and Jasmin Rindlisbacher coedited the publication of Mary Elizabeth Barber's scientific correspondence. Barber was the first woman ornithologist in South Africa, an early archaeologist, keen botanist and interested…
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Publication: Women and Photography in Africa: Creative Practices and Feminist Challenges

The collection "Women and Photography in Africa" edited by Lorena Rizzo, Darren Newbury and Kylie Thomas draws on recent conceptual and methodological developments in photographic scholarship.
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