Transnational networking as well as processes of partial decoupling of such networks in some regions lead to new conflicts over the allocation and the constitution of physically, normatively, and virtually constituted spaces in Africa. Not only conflicts over protected areas, natural resources and corresponding reforms of land tenure but also conflicts over “tradition” and “culture” as economic resources and sources of normative orientation in local contexts dominate public debates and development discourses.

African politicians, artists, and journalists as well as the populations of rural regions, of poor urban neighbourhoods, as well as inhabitants of elitist urban ghettos conceptualise current conflicts as contestations about spatial orders. They relate these to critical global and national developments and present these spaces as embattled (or at least worth to be embattled) or they hope that co-operative solutions to these “spatial” problems will ameliorate their living standards substantially. The scarcity of land and other resources portrayed as crucial for development and wellbeing and the competition over them are dramatized and become politically exploited like the loss of “authentic” cultural and ethical values. This loss has obviously been enhanced by intense media networking accelerated by fundamental changes in the media scene. Classic media (print, radio, and TV) become more diversified and the spread of mobile phones and the internet offer new opportunities. Thus, these discussions do not only deal with physical space but deal increasingly with virtual spaces, whose economic, social, and ideational utilization calls for new negotiation processes. Current processes of economic and cultural globalization and the rapid urbanization as well as related discourses and violent conflicts hark back to former disputes which took place in pre-colonial and colonial times. However, specific historical aspects and forms of presentation and negotiation of conflicts are added. Social movements for example refer to globally promoted civil rights and personal freedom and repeat the call for democracy. The concept of a civil society is confronted with notions of autochthony. Such intra-societal contestations always deal with different conceptions of order: spatial structures in the sense of cultural landscapes, social and political order and religious modifications of imagined communities. These different conceptions of order converge and allow different actors, stakeholders, and national institutions to selectively lay claim on them and to use them for the implementation of their specific aims.

The conference intends to reflect on these current and historically established processes on the basis of four topics of interest:
(1) Commoditising Space – Indigenising Land (Panel 01-04)
(2) Contested Environments - Negotiating Spatiality and Resources (Panel 05-15)
(3) (De)Legitimised Orders – New Models of Governance / Alternative Moralities (Panel 16-26)
(4) Language and Media – Signification and Representations (Panel 27-37)

In addition to that there will be a panel about the Arab Spring and five round tables with international discussants. Additionally the scientific program will be accompanied by cultural side events like a film screening by the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), London and a concert by the band Kel Assouf.

PANELS:

Commoditising Space – Indigenising Land

01 Politics of Alternative Land Reforms in Africa: Can the poor profit? (Friederike Diaby Pentzlin, Wolfram Laube) | 02 African Animal Spaces (Winfried Speitkamp, Stephanie Zehnle) | 03 African mobile people, indigenous space & globalization (Dörte Weig, Thomas Widlok, Martin Solich) | 04 Indigenous Identities and embattled spaces in Africa (Michaela Pelican, Junko Maruyama) Contested Environments – Negotiating Spatiality and Resources 05 Bildungsräume in Afrika: Inklusion & Exklusion, Kooperation & Konkurrenz/ Educational Spaces in Africa: Inclusion & Exclusion, Cooperation & Competition (Christel Adick) | 06 Africa’s Land as Contested Arena for international and national biofuel policies and actors (Michael Brüntrup, Kristina Dietz, Aaron Leopold, Raoul Herrmann) | 07 The Politics of Climate Change in Africa: Negotiating Responsibilities, Cosmologies and Adaptation (Detlef Müller-Mahn, Sara de Wit, Mirjam de Bruijn, Wolfram Laube, Martin Doevenspeck) | 08 Wasser und kulturelle Ordnung/ Water and cultural orders (Irit Eguavoen, Hans P. Hahn) | 09 Migration and Resource Conflicts in Rural and Urban Areas (Clemens Greiner, Gabriel Tati, Patrick Sakdapolrak) | 10 ‘Home Coming’ or new displacement:Politics of place, identity and belonging in the context of “return” migration (Ulrike Schultz, Kataryna Grabska) | 11 “Staking Claims in Everyday Life“ – Technological Artefacts and trust in African urban settings (Elísio Macamo, Stephanie Bishop, Pierrick Leu) | 12 „Neue Akteure, neue Ordnung? Interaktionen chinesischer Migranten, afrikanischer Unternehmer und lokaler Bevölkerung im urbanen Afrika“ (Laurence Marfaing, Karsten Giese) | 13 Ethnographies of the Resource Curse. An Anthropological Approach to African Oil Production (Andrea Behrends, Thomas Bierschenk, Nikolaus Schareika) | 14 Africa’s Disputed Borderlands: Responses from Multiple Disciplinary Perspectives (Alexander Zhukov, Aleksi Ylönen) | 15 Large-Scale Infrastructure Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa- spatial inscriptions of imperialism and globalisation? (Birte Förster, Julia Tischler)

(De-)Legitimised Orders – New Models of Governance/ Alternative Moralities

17 Neubewertung des religiösen und politischen Raumes im afrikanischen Kontext (Helga Dickow, Andreas Heuser) | 18 Normative Turbulances: The African Union and the Negotiation of New Normative Orders (Antonia Witt, Ulf Engel; Discussant: João Gomes Porto) | 19 Um Ordnungen streiten: Das Zusammenspiel transnationaler, nationaler und lokaler Diskurse und Handlungsrepertoires (Jana Hönke) | 20 Security Governance and (Dis-)Orderly Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa (Christoph Haferburg, Fred Krüger) | 21 Understanding ‘Security’ in Africa (Julia Hornberger, Thomas G. Kirsch) | 22 Moving (at) the Borders: Körper, Wissen und Wege in den Migrationen nach Europa (Kristin Kastner, Délia Nicoué, Magnus Treiber, Christian Ungruhe, Michael Westrich; Discussant: Christian Ungruhe) | 23 Changing Family Spaces in Africa (Thamar Klein, Sonja Gierse-Arsten, Gertrud Boden, Martina Gockel-Frank; Discussants: Erdmute Alber, Julia Pauli) | 24 Contested Peace Processes in Local and National Arenas (Andreas Mehler, Denis Tull) | 25 Mobile Akteure und (post-) koloniale Ordnungen (Stefanie Michels) | 26 Changing and Contested Urban Ethnic Landscape: Ethnic Residential Segregation in African Cities (George Owusu, Samuel Agyei-Mensah) Language and Media - Signification and Representation 27 Representing the Rural-Urban Divide: Relating Old and New Orders (Rose Marie Beck, Claudia Böhme, Nadine Sieveking) | 28 Spatial and Special Turns in the Topography of Africa. Postcolonial (Re-) Writing of Space, Place and Land (Kira Schmidt, Bruno Arich-Gerz) | 30 Das Museum im 21. Jh. – Fragen des Sammelns und der Repräsentation (Clara Himmelheber, Oliver Lueb) | 32 (New) spaces and strategies for negotiating art and cultural knowledge in African cities (Kerstin Pinther, Larissa Förster) | 33 Religion, Media and Contested Space in Africa (Simone Pfeifer, Patrick Desplat; Discussant: Tilo Grätz) | 34 Local festivals, new ethnic identities, and citizenship in Africa (Ute Röschenthaler, Antoine Socpa) | 35 Perspektiven zu Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien in afrikanischen Ländern (Nadia Cohen, Sophia Thubauville) | 36 African Geo/ Graphies: The Literary Production of (Other) Spaces (Antje Ziethen) | 37 Spaces of Death, Places of Power: The Politics of Mourning (Dorothea Schulz, Ute Luig)

Arab Spring

38 Contested political orders. Post-revolutionary dynamics in North Africa and the Middle East (Cordula Weisskoeppel, Martin Zillinger)

Round Tables

1 Sahara Region (organized by Georg Klute, Dida Badi, Baz Lecocq) | 2 Arab Spring (organized by Cordula Weisskoeppel, Martin Zillinger) | 3 The Politics of Mourning (organized by Dorothea Schulz) | 4 Adaptation and Creativity in the Tanslation of Circulating technologies and significations (organized by Richard Rottenburg, Ulf Engel) | 5 Conceptualizing Competing Social and Political Orders (organized by Elke Grawert,Dieter Neubert)

The conference will take place at University of Cologne,
Seminargebäude and main building, and in the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cologne.