By Gérard Amougou, University of Yaoundé II

Bernard Njonga (1955–2021) was a Cameroonian activist whose biographical experience constantly resonated with contemporary global issues.[1] This leader of the peasant world is one among the subject-entrepreneur conceptualized during my doctoral research, which refers to latent historical actors emerging on the edge of the dominant system who are driven by the founding vision of an alternative society. Their biographical experiences revolve around a model of so-called entrepreneurial commitment to reveal a high prevalence of the subject logics, which they strive to foster through the setting up of an enterprise, NGO, or other private company on the one hand, and through the development of a critical narrative regarding the ruling elite on the other hand (Amougou, 2023, 2019). I’d like to briefly retrace his life’s journey to show the extent to which his understanding of societies in the South is part of a global sociological perspective.

Birth and transition to adulthood in a collapsing world

Bernard was born in 1955 in Bangoua, in the western region of Cameroon. At the time, Cameroon was about to embark on a violent process of decolonization that would make the region the scene of a violent war that would be at the root of the invention of Françafrique (Deltombe et al., 2016). These geopolitical stakes, which are at the heart of the emergence of the postcolony (Mbembe, 2001), necessarily influence young Bernard’s childhood and, incidentally, have a definite impact on his socialization path: “The situation was so uncertain that at night women and their children hid in the bush, leaving their houses empty […]. The nationalists who were fighting for Cameroon’s total independence were doing everything to convince the population of the justness of their cause and benefit from wider complicity within it” (Njonga, 2016, p. 18, translated from the French by the author).

Photo of the book La guerre du Cameroun: L’invention de la françafrique, by Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue and Jacob Tatsitsa

The photo above, showing African soldiers with their French instructors, illustrates the global stakes of a conflict long officially presented as essentially local. It provides an insight into the decolonization movements that African countries were to undergo in the wake of the 1960s. It is nevertheless a historical shock that follows on from other, more ancient ruptures experienced by these societies in the face of the encounter with the white man. For example, Chinua Achebe’s 1994 novel Things fall apart shows how the daily, pre-colonial life of an Ibo village in southern Nigeria is turned upside down by the arrival of the British and the imposition of their religion and civilization. This shock, described by several African writers in different ways, foreshadowed the need for a global sociology in the wake of Africa’s independence, in order to provide a better account of people’s experiences and the new configuration of social dynamics. Demonstrating the convergences and divergences between postcolonial critical sociology and global sociology, Marian Burchardt (2022) asserts that:

Postcolonial critical sociology reminds us of the fact that under the global condition, no social relationship unfolds outside of power relationships that are global in scope. Global sociology, by contrast, reminds us of the pitfalls entailed in the idea that this global power relationship always needs to be the central subject of our studies. Such a focus reduces actors in the social worlds of the Global South to passive subjects of global capital whose everyday life is determined by that subject position.

Faced with a world that is collapsing, another reality is simultaneously striving to emerge, logics of action. These lead individuals-actors to adopt concrete positions that oscillate between logics of integration, strategy and subjectivation (Dubet, 1994). Thus, in contrast to his father, who refused to take a position and hardly spoke out on the war of independence, Bernard—admittedly with the benefit of hindsight—asserts that he would probably have joined the nationalists.

While there is no immediate link between his involvement in civil society and the Nationalists’ political struggle, the orientation of his work with the peasants reveals affinities with this first social movement to give Cameroon a political identity (Joseph, 1977). The war of decolonization raging in Cameroon is the most immediately visible form of the conflict of meanings born of the colonial situation (Balandier, 2020). Bernard’s life story overlaps with the experiences of other individuals who, belonging to an almost similar generation, will enter into symbolic opposition with the dominant power structures (Amougou, 2019).

Commitment to the peasant cause predisposed by external factors

In The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber (1905/2014) substitutes probabilistic determinism for Newtonian-type absolute determinism, which posits a symmetrical relationship between cause and effect. In opposition to the latter, the German sociologist coined the concept of elective affinity to demonstrate the heuristic interest of the predisposing factor in place of the mechanical factor. Just as this author demonstrated the elective affinity that links Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism, so I’d like to show the role played by European actors and NGOs in Bernard’s fork in the road, which led him to resign from the civil service in the mid-1980s to commit himself to the farming community.

In concrete terms, Bernard Njonga graduated from high school in 1979 and entered an agronomy school. On graduating, he was assigned to the Institut de recherche agronomique pour le développement (IRAD), and was immediately taken aback by the authoritarian atmosphere of the system in place. However, many civil servants in junior positions are frustrated, but don’t resign. If Bernard deserves credit for resigning to found the Service d’appui aux initiatives locales de développement (SAILD) in 1987, it’s also because he had the privilege of rubbing shoulders with Belgian engineers during his formative years, being recruited by a Western NGO and, last but not least, being able to rely on his new networks to launch his organization. In other words, Bernard benefits from international networks which, after opening his eyes to the workings of peasant societies, provide him with substantial logistical and financial support. Thanks to the support of Swiss and Italian partners, Bernard embarks on a new life experience that directly broadens his horizon of action: “We started by coaching certain peasant leaders, opening them up to others here in Cameroon, Burkina-Faso and Senegal. The aim was to stimulate them to promote initiatives in their villages” (interview, Yaoundé, January 2013, translated from the French by the author). This biographical bifurcation inaugurates a new form of commitment at the heart of the transformations taking place in Cameroon, while at the same time resonating with global issues.

A fight against the import of frozen chickens, linked to global issues

Very often, small local initiatives can lead their authors to the heart of global issues that were little suspected at the outset. This apprehension of large-scale phenomena or global entanglements based on an analysis of local logics of action is at the heart of global sociology (Bahl, 2023). Despite the grip of authoritarian governance, the peasant world seems—at least partially—”uncaptured” (Hyden, 1985) by the dominant powers. Bernard takes advantage of this loophole by training leaders who seem increasingly autonomous. However, the success of his association and the creation of the newspaper La Voix du Paysan remain greatly attenuated by his powerlessness in the face of neoliberal policies and issues. This is how the tension between the dynamics “inside” and those “outside” came to affect a program launched in 1996 to support farmers in raising chickens. After a promising start, chicken sales began to stagnate, and the project ended in failure in 1999. With farmers no longer able to sell their produce on the market, Bernard and his team investigated the causes of this “unexpected” failure. They discovered that it was due to the massive importation of frozen chicken into Cameroon. This flood of chicken cuts “unfit” for consumption is the work of importers acting in collusion with the administrative elite. After two years of unsuccessful denunciation, Bernard draws up a rather mixed assessment of the overall situation:

Massive imports, from 60 tonnes in 1994 to 22,150 tonnes in 2003. A disaster for the national economy, with currency losses of 10.5 billion and the loss of 110,000 rural jobs. A disaster for local producers, 92% of whom had given up poultry farming. A breeding ground for corruption and embezzlement, since 300 or even 400 tonnes of every 100 tonnes authorized for import were actually imported (Njonga, 2016: 96, translated from the French by the author).

Public protest against fraudulent imports of frozen chickens, with José Bové in Yaoundé. Copyright: Images provided by courtesy of ACDIC.

But Bernard Njonga’s team did not give up. To lead this new battle, Bernard Njonga handed over the management of SAILD to a colleague, and in 2003 founded the Association citoyenne de défense des intérêts collectifs (ACDIC). With the help of international partners, he conducted research into the origin of these frozen chickens, which took him all over Belgium, Brazil and France. Braving threats and intimidation, Bernard’s team, accompanied by farmers’ associations, waged a battle against the system of connivance oiled from the top of ministerial departments to customs officers, via local traders and importers. Several campaigns are underway at national, regional and international level. Supported by anti-globalization activist José Bové and African peasant leaders who came to Yaoundé, this battle culminated in the publication of a ministerial decree in 2006 banning the massive importation of frozen chicken cuts into Cameroon. To this day, the impact of this mobilization is visible in Cameroon’s marketplaces, where local farmers’ chickens can be seen in place of imported frozen chicken cuts.

Campaign against the “fraudulent” import of frozen chickens, and promotion of local chicken. Copyright: Images provided by courtesy of ACDIC.

However, the favorable outcome of the battle against frozen chicken imports has not altered the overall direction of development policies. On the contrary, the gap between local entrepreneurs or producers and the authorities has been constantly reshaping itself since the advent of the so-called emergence policies in 2010 (Amougou, 2021). Nevertheless, the fight against the fraudulent importation of frozen chickens into Cameroon shows how an action initiated in a Southern country can be linked to the challenges of a globalized world, and how the regulation of the international system has an immediate impact at national level. This articulation of the local with the global is at the heart of contemporary social movements, where the figure of the activist expert in the proper use of rational calculation is said to be in retreat in favor of the activist concerned with being the principal author of his life and actor in his world (Pleyers & Capitaine, 2016). Speaking at the National Assembly on May 23, 2018, French MP François Ruffin, among other initiators of the Nuit Debout movement, drew at length on Bernard Njonga’s fight against the import of frozen chickens in order to argue for the need for protectionism for French agriculture and that of Southern countries. By concluding his speech with the phrase: “It’s a lesson for Cameroon, for the countries of the South, but also for us“, the French politician confirms the hypothesis of the global resonance of Bernard Njonga’s biographical experience and, in so doing, confirms my interest in the perspective—and necessity—of a global sociology.

[1] This text is based on my article published in the Journal des Anthropologues (Amougou, 2021). It is nevertheless revised and adapted to the problems of global sociology.

Cite this article as: Amougou, G. (2024, April 10). The global resonance of a local biographical experience: Bernard Njonga’s entrepreneurial commitment. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2024/04/10/the-global-resonance-of-a-local-biographical-experience/

References

Achebe, C. (1958). Things fall apart. Anchor Books.

Amougou, G. (2020). Le concept de sujet-entrepreneur: Analyse de nouvelles formes de subjectivités à partir d’une enquête effectuée au Cameroun. Nouvelles Perspectives En Sciences Sociales, 15(1), 207–245. https://doi.org/10.7202/1068183ar

Amougou, G. (2021a). L’engagement entrepreneurial entre monde paysan et enjeux globalisés contemporains: L’expérience biographique de Bernard Njonga. Journal Des Anthropologues, 166–167, 59–75. https://doi.org/10.4000/jda.11069

Amougou, G. (2021b). Les entrepreneurs camerounais face aux pouvoirs publics: Querelles autour de «l’émergence». Anthropologie & Développement, 52, 51–68. https://doi.org/10.4000/anthropodev.1537

Amougou, G. (2023). Subjectivization analysed by the biography of the subject-entrepreneur in a precarious environment. Historical Social Research, 48, 3354. https://doi.org/10.12759/HSR.48.2023.38

Bahl, E. (2023, September 19). Challenges and ambivalences of a global micro-sociology. Global Qualitative Sociology Network, https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2023/09/19/challenges-and-ambivalences-of-a-global-micro-sociology

Balandier, G. (2020). The colonial situation: A theoretical approach. In S. Howe (Ed.), The new imperial histories reader. Routledge.

Burchardt, M. (2022, June 17). Global sociology and postcolonial critique: Notes on affinities, divergences and ways forward. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2022/06/17/global-sociology-and-postcolonial-critique/

Deltombe, T., Domergue, M., Tatsitsa, J., & Mbembe, A. (2016). La guerre du Cameroun: L’invention de la Françafrique, 1948–1971. La Découverte.

Hyden, G. (1985). La crise africaine et la paysannerie non capturée. Politique Africaine, 18, 93–113.

Joseph, R. A. (1978). Radical nationalism in Cameroun: Social origins of the U.P.C. rebellion. The American Historical Review, 83(5), 1313. https://doi.org/10.2307/1854816

Lavigne Delville, P. (1995). François Dubet: Sociologie de l’expérience. Bulletin de l’APAD, 10. https://doi.org/10.4000/apad.1331

Mbembe, A. (2010). On the postcolony. University of California Press.

Njonga, B. (2016). Je continue… Trente ans de lutte citoyenne. Yaoundé.

Pleyers, G., & Capitaine, B. (Eds.). (2016). Mouvements sociaux: Quand le sujet devient acteur. Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.editionsmsh.9891

Weber, M. (2014). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (T. Parsons, Trans.). Angelico Press. (Original work published 1905)

By Nkululeko Nkomo, University of the Witwatersrand

I, too, want to throw in my two cents worth in the conversation on this blog about migration. Or enforced displacement (Alkan, 2024). Or slavery (Bahl, 2023; Santos, 2023, 2024). Or, in my case, political exile. These are distinct yet equally important sociological theoretical and empirical fields of study. There are certainly thematic overlaps between them. The point I want to make and illustrate on this blog is that in the long-standing history of human migration, from slavery’s chains to political exile’s shadows, a comprehensive global sociology of displacement must heed the emotional toll on those displaced, those left in its wake, critically interrogate the reverberations of displacement’s aftermath, the silent and haunting sorrows that linger on. In general terms, we must learn to walk on the fine line that separates the real world from the ghostly shadows that continue to trail the real (Bahl & Berger, 2023; Mishra, 2024; Nkomo & Nkomo, 2023; Santos, 2023).

Those who find themselves escaping their home countries do not always experience the warm welcome that one would wish for in the countries where they flee to find safety and asylum. In pursuit of EU’s unity, post-crisis talks, austerity’s decree, Bhambra (2016) captured the tide, far-right populism, hostility’s stride. Immigrants viewed “as intrusions and as threats” (p. 195) from afar. Outside the Global North. Perceptions jar for us outside observers. South Africa unfortunately stands out in the Global South for its xenophobia towards immigrants from other countries in Africa. Geographically disparate regions brought together by complex and convoluted colonial histories—xenophobic tensions in South Africa and anti-immigrant hostility in the EU. 

Back to exile. Many left South Africa for political exile during the anti-apartheid struggle. It is not uniquely one country or the other’s phenomenon. Let me share a three-act biographical narrative about the costs borne by those who leave their homeland for refuge in other countries and those who stay behind. It is lifted with no changes to the names of those who were interviewed, but slightly modified for the coherence of the narrative from the documentary Zwelidumile about the life and times of the late South African painter and sculptor, Zwelidumile “Dumile” Feni (Suleman, 2010). ‘What’s in a name?’ A fair amount. The name Zwelidumile is defined at the beginning of the documentary. In IsiZulu, Zwe is country or land, and Dumile is famed, renowned or notorious. The name has an air of uncanniness.

Dumile fled South Africa in 1968 for political exile in England and then in the US. Shortly before his planned return to South Africa as the political negotiations between the apartheid government and liberation movements for a post-apartheid democracy were set to get underway, he died in New York City in 1991. 

I.

The first act in the narrative: the case of the curious daughter with an absentee father she has never met in-person. As a child growing up during the political turmoil of the 1980s in South Africa, Marriam’s curiosity often led her down paths she was not ready to tread. There was a lot of secrecy going around. As Dlamini (2015, p. 8) notes, “apartheid generated an ‘unwanted intimacy’ between people that built an insidious complicity into daily life”. One false move meant the difference between life and death. Many people knew that there were people leaving for exile, but it was something that was barely spoken about, or when it was brought up, it was usually in very coded ways of speaking out of fear of reprisal from the apartheid security forces or their spies who lived in the same communities as the anti-apartheid activists. It was a simple conversation with a family member that planted the seed of doubt about her identity for Marriam. She learned that her father is not the man she thought she knew. Her “real” father had fled the country, leaving her with unanswered questions and a sense of longing for someone she had never known.

Marriam’s innocent mind could not comprehend the complexities of political exile. She held onto hope that her father was just a town away, waiting to be found. Every unfamiliar face she encountered sparked a glimmer of recognition, a possibility that this stranger could be her missing link. It is also possible to see the two father figures—one present and the other absent—as representing the contrast between her increasing awareness of the magnitude of the defiance against oppression, symbolised by her biological father’s absence in her life, and the tenuous accommodation of the repressive status quo that the present father represented. It seems convincing. This is all speculative, however, as she only mentioned the present father in passing in the beginning of the interview about when she found out about her biological and absent father. Perhaps it was less so than it appears.

Through Marriam’s eyes, we see the human desire for connection, the need to belong to someone, somewhere. Her story reflects the broader narrative of fractured families torn apart by political repression and the resulting unrest, leaving behind a generation searching for their roots in a land of uncertainty. The spectral echoes of her absent father who was in political exile finds resonance in the trajectory of her own life narrative. A quest that involves her peeling back the layers of secrecy enveloping her identity, history and heritage.

II.

Another act in the narrative, it is about missing home as a scent that is felt ever more intensely with the realisation that it may never be possible to return to your country for as long as there is still political instability or you are banned from returning. Exile changes a person in ways they never anticipate. For Dudu, it was the subtle reminders of his homeland that kept him tethered to his identity amidst the alienating embrace of England. Dudu was Dumile’s friend before they left South Africa. They met up in England. The smell of a fellow South African in a crowded taxi became a lifeline, a brief respite from the overwhelming sense of displacement. There was an interplay of silence, secrets, and ignorance during exile. It shaped not only the lack of spoken truths, but also deliberate restraint in sharing personal information and a skilful avoidance of personal matters (Manganyi, 1996; Dlamini, 2015; Becker et al., 2023).

As Dudu reflects on his journey, we see how exile not only physically separates individuals from their homeland but also erodes the intangible connections that define one’s sense of self or identity. In his quest for familiarity, Dudu found solace in the mundane, seeking comfort in the shared experiences of his fellow countrymen who were also exiled. Through Dudu’s story, we understand the profound and affecting experience of displacement on the senses, how the scent of home can transcend borders and bring solace to the weary soul adrift in a sea of unfamiliarity.

Dumile Feni and Louis Moholo, exiles in London in 1971 by George Hallett. In the photo, Dumile Feni is the one on the left. Jazz drummer Louis Moholo, a South African, is seen on the right. He also went into exile. Copyright: Wikimedia Commons.

III.

The last act of the narrative conveys the sedimented fragments of loss. Sorrowful. Saddening. Melancholic. Not in the Freudian (1917) register of melancholy as an indefinite, unassimilable or self-berating grief. Cheng (2001, p. 20) drives the point home: “in the long history of grief and the equally protracted history of physically and emotionally managing that grief on the part of the marginalised, racialised people… it has always existed for raced subjects both as a sign of rejection and as a psychic strategy in response to that rejection.” In any case, it is a sense of a critical consciousness of loss. Psychically and socially. The weight of exile is heavy, bearing down on those forced to leave behind everything they hold dear. For Dumile, the pain of separation is compounded by the knowledge that he may never see his family again. Forced to break ties to protect his loved ones from the oppressive regime, Dumile grappled with the guilt of abandoning them to an uncertain fate.

When he reflected on his twenty years in exile, Dumile’s thoughts inevitably turned to his wife, left behind with a growing child. The ache of their separation gnawed at him—a constant reminder of the sacrifices made in the name of freedom. There is no way of knowing what would have become of his relationship with his daughter after the unbanning of political liberation movements in the early 1990s. In theory, one would expect that without the ‘physical separation’ that grew into ‘emotional separation’ they would have had a chance to build a relationship if Dumile had lived long enough to return to South Africa. Theory is one thing and reality is another.

Dumile’s story serves as a poignant reminder of the human cost of political upheaval, the shattered lives left in its wake. Through his eyes, we bear witness to the profound grief of loss and the enduring hope that someday, against all odds, he may be reunited with those he holds most dear. Mphahlele (1976, p. 39) cites the poet Mazizi Kunene regarding exile, and his vision of home:

Our lives were ruined
Among the leaves
We decayed like pumpkins
in a mud field…

 

Bitter, neither young nor old,
Heaving and heaving like a volcano,
Multiplying with fire:
I was all things…

Zwelidumile is a visual archive. “We are presented with pieces of time to be assembled, fragments of life to be placed in order, one after the other, in an attempt to formulate a story that acquires its coherence through the ability to craft links between the beginning and the end” (Mbembe, 2002, p. 21). Plaatje (2007) writes in the epilogue of Native Life in South Africa that it is a narrative of a ‘melancholy situation’. He goes on to capture stories such as those of the Kgobadi family. The family had to hastily move from their land and home after the Land Act came into force in June of 1913. They found themselves wandering and going nowhere with their livestock with no home. They lost their cattle along the way. Their baby succumbed to the cold winter and was buried in a makeshift grave they secretly dug up in one of the farms they came across during their journey. There are several of these stories Plaatje (2007) chronicled in Native Life in South Africa. Peterson (2015) writes about Plaatje’s use of language and writing aesthetic in Native Life in South Africa. He argues that Plaatje’s unique blend of irony, melodrama, parable, metaphor, orature, proverbs and the petition genre make him a historian and writer of profound emotional narratives. A global narrative sociology, in my opinion, is one that aims to uncover and portray the subjective narratives of the marginalised.

At the 4th Narrative Enquiry for Social Transformation or NEST conference in 2018, I presented a draft of the paper that later on we published (Canham et al., 2020) with colleagues at a panel discussion entitled “Triggering Objects: Narrating Grandparents through the Affective Object”. One of the main organisers of the conference was Professor Bhekizizwe Peterson, one of the writers and producers of Zwelidumile. He also chaired or moderated the panel and facilitated the conversation between us and with the audience. In the paper, we explored the affective narratives of objects pertaining to our grandfathers for their value to recuperate erased colonial and apartheid social and personal histories. The contribution my cousin and I authored was a body of published and unpublished newspaper writing by our grandfather from the 1930s to the 1970s. We discovered it a few years prior to the conference. Professor Peterson raised several points in his closing remarks to the audience at the end of the panel discussion. He then turned to the panellists as if he wanted to ensure that we have heard the point, or if we had any doubts about the value of these narratives, that on the contrary, they are very important for addressing the silences and gaps in existing archives of our histories.

“History, by Dumile Feni, 2003, bronze.” The reproduction displayed outside the South African Constitutional Court, serving as a visual commentary on colonialism and apartheid, features two human figures sitting on and being pushed by another human figure. Copyright: Jay Galvin.

In writing and producing the documentary Zwelidumile, Peterson and Suleman (2010) have offered a visual chronicle and depiction of a ‘melancholy situation’ during the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Narratives of ruin, destruction, and refuge. Belonging and alienation, land and landlessness, home and homelessness. Histories of feelings. Present feelings. Of course, feelings can proceed from the future. The hopes, aspirations, and anxieties about the future. There is reason in feelings or feelings have a reason, and they are conveyed in stories. Telling or sharing stories makes us feel alive. When we feel alive, we feel human. That is the struggle captured in Zwelidumile, and our main task in the postcolonial, post-apartheid and decolonial milieu—how to reclaim our humanity in the aftermath of centuries of global colonial and apartheid dehumanisation.

Peterson and Suleman’s (2010) emphasis on the value of narratives in filling in historical gaps is reinforced by the conference experience as well as the documentary Zwelidumile. Storytelling is more than just a way to preserve the past—it is also essential for capturing the complexities of experiences, reclaiming our humanity in the present, and shaping our future. In sharing stories, we not only bear witness to previous and ongoing struggles but also affirm our shared humanity, making storytelling an indispensable tool for social transformation and healing. I suppose my main point is that narratives can be useful in rethinking global sociological theories, methodologies and practice.

Cite this article as: Nkomo, N. (2024, March 27). Global Sociology, spectrality and melancholy. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2024/03/27/global-sociology-spectrality-and-melancholy/

References

Alkan, H. (2024, February 4). When migrants compare: De-centring Europe in migration management. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2024/02/04/when-migrants-compare/

Bahl, E. (2023, September 19). Challenges and ambivalences of a global micro-sociology. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2023/09/19/challenges-and-ambivalences-of-a-global-micro-sociology/

Bahl, E., & Berger, Y. (2023). Processes of South-South migration in their historical context: Biographical case studies from Brazil and China. Historical Social Research, 48, 248282. https://doi.org/10.12759/HSR.48.2023.47

Becker, J., Bromber, K., Chavoshian, S., Moradi, A., Ferrand, A., Ismailbekova, A., Mahazi, J., Scharrer, T., & Schielke, S. (2023). Silence, secrecy, ignorance, and the making of class and status across generations. ZMO Programmatic Texts, 15, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.58144/20231214-000

Bhambra, G. K. (2016). Whither Europe? Postcolonial versus neocolonial cosmopolitanism. Interventions, 18(2), 187–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2015.1106964

Canham, H., Kotze, E., Nkomo, N., & Nkomo, S. (2020). Retrieving grandfathers and histories through objects and affective registers. Emotion, Space and Society, 34, 100650. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2019.100650

Cheng, A. A. (2001). The melancholy of race. Oxford University Press.

Dlamini, J. (2015). Askari: A story of collaboration and betrayal in the anti-Apartheid struggle. Oxford University Press.

Freud, S. (1953). Mourning and melancholia. In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, volume XIV (1914-1916): On the history of the psycho-analytic movement, papers on metapsychology and other works (pp. 237–258). Hogarth Press. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Freud_MourningAndMelancholia.pdf

Manganyi, N. C. (1996). A black man called Sekoto. Witwatersrand University Press.

Mbembe, A. (2002). The power of the archive and its limits. In C. Hamilton, V. Harris, J. Taylor, M. Pickover, G. Reid, & R. Saleh (Eds.), Refiguring the Archive (pp. 19–27). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0570-8_2

Mishra, R.K. (2024, January 23). The whims and fancies of technological modernity: Biometrics and the digital empire of (mis)trust. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2024/01/23/the-whims-and-fancies-of-technological-modernity/

Mphahlele, E. (1976). The voice of prophecy in African poetry. English in Africa, 3(1), 33–45.

Nkomo, N., & Nkomo, S. (2023). Melancholy as witness and active black citizenry in the writing of A.S. Vil-Nkomo. Historical Social Research, 48, 283303. https://doi.org/10.12759/HSR.48.2023.48

Peterson, B. (2018). Modernist at large: The aesthetics of native life in South Africa. In B. Peterson, B. Willan, & J. Remmington (Eds.), Sol Plaatje’s native life in South Africa: Past and present (pp. 18–36). Wits University Press.

Santos, F. (2024, February 10). When was “the global”? Thinking without limits. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2024/02/10/when-was-the-global/

Santos, F. (2023). Mind the archival gap: Critical fabulation as decolonial method. Historical Social Research, 48, 330–353. https://doi.org/10.12759/HSR.48.2023.50

Suleman, R. (Director). (2010). Zwelidumile.

By Fabio Santos, Free University of Berlin

Some knowledge of world history is indispensable to the sociologist; without such knowledge, no matter what else he knows, he is simply crippled.

 

C. Wright Mills, 1959, p. 215

Discussions on global sociology have primarily focused on spatial scales such as the national versus the international, the regional versus the transregional, or the local versus the global. However, there has been a notable lack of attention given to the temporality of “the global.” While the critique of methodological nationalism (Beck & Sznaider, 2006; Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002) has gained traction in the social sciences, the critique of methodological presentism (Elias, 1987) has largely gone unnoticed. This oversight is exacerbated by the tendency that if invoked, historical explanations tend to serve culturally deterministic arguments: As Peter Wagner (2001, p. 78) puts it, “either ‘timeless’ snapshots are taken of the social world, or history is invoked to deterministically explain the present.”

I am writing this blog post to engage the sociological imagination proposed by C. Wright Mills (1959): he argues that the sociologist’s essential role is to place societies and biographies within broader historical processes. I combine this engagement with reflections on the origins and duration of “the global,” audaciously thinking against the theoretical, methodological, and epistemological limits set by the bulk of canonized Northern sociological theories of globalization which date it to the second half of the 20^th century and, in doing so, ignore that early sociological thought was concerned with global issues in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries (Connell, 2007). With the current surge in global sociology publications, events, and classes, the question arises as to whether this interest can be attributed to a sudden realization that we are living in a global age that is distinct from earlier global connections. Several important caveats have been made about the distinctiveness of today’s globality. Retrieving some of these objections, I urge global sociological scholarship to address the temporality of “the global”: Does it follow the mainstream theories of globalization and locate it in the late 20^th century, with globalization being one of the “consequences of modernity” (Giddens, 1990)? Or does global sociology identify global entanglements much earlier, regard them as constitutive of modernity, and make them the starting point for its theorizing? Inspired by connected fields such as global history (e.g. Subrahmanyam, 1997), non-Eurocentric anthropology (e.g. Randeria, 1999), and world-systems analysis (e.g. Wallerstein’s multi-volume opus starting with Wallerstein, 1974), an increasing number of sociologists have advocated for the latter, framing global sociology as global historical sociology (e.g., Bhambra, 2007; Boatcă, 2013; Go & Lawson, 2017; Santos & Boatcă, 2022).

Within sociology, however, it was Stuart Hall who pioneered the interlinking of globality and history in the 1990s: an exercise in historical discourse analysis, his seminal essay “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power” (1992) exposes the geographical inaccuracy of such oversimplified binaries constructed by and in favor of the self-proclaimed West. To Hall, these are historical rather than spatial categories stabilized time and again through a system of representation in which the manifold groups othered as non-Western have little to no say. It is hence no coincidence that the title of my blog contribution references and pays homage to Hall’s work: in his influential text “When was ‘the post-colonial’? Thinking at the limit” (1996), he defends the field of post-colonial studies against its critics and employs “thinking at the limit” as a method, arguing that instead of cementing essentialist binaries, the term “post-colonial” allows for the analysis of ambiguities and seeming paradoxes resulting from the global transformations set in place by colonialism:

It follows that the term ‘post-colonial’ is not merely descriptive of ‘this’ society rather than ‘that’, or of ‘then’ and ‘now’. It re-reads ‘colonisation’ as part of an essentially transnational and transcultural ‘global’ process—and it produces a decentred, diasporic or ‘global’ rewriting of earlier, nation-centred imperial grand narratives. Its theoretical value therefore lies precisely in its refusal of this ‘here’ and ‘there’, ‘then’ and ‘now’, ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ perspective. ‘Global’ here does not mean universal, but it is not nation- or society-specific either. (Hall, 1996, p. 247)

Moreover, “the post-colonial” has led to much confusion as to its periodization: Hall clarifies that post-colonial thought offers a different storyline of capitalist modernity, centering the peripheries and peripheralizing the centers, thereby anticipating Dipesh Chakrabarty’s (2000) argument regarding the provincialization of Europe: Colonialism, Hall (1996, p. 249) writes, “is signifying the whole process of expansion, exploration, conquest, colonisation and imperial hegemonisation which constituted the ‘outer face’, the constitutive outside, of European and then Western capitalist modernity after 1492.” Though the “post” in “post-colonialism” might suggest otherwise, these power imbalances have not disappeared with formal independence gained by most parts of the world in the 19^th and 20^th centuries: instead, they go beyond its historical context and continue to influence contemporary global power dynamics. In dating global connections back to the euphemistic “discovery” of the Americas in 1492 and in emphasizing today’s legacies of colonialism, Hall’s thinking resembles that of decolonial scholars such as Enrique Dussel (1992), Walter Mignolo (2000), and Aníbal Quijano (2000). Quijano’s concept of the “coloniality of power,” in particular, asserts that the hierarchies and patterns established during colonial times have been ingrained into, or constituted modern structures. These structures outlived the end of formal colonialism, shaping a globally stratified system where some (in fact, most) groups continue to face systematic marginalization while others (a numeric minority) maintain positions of power and privilege.

Post- and decolonial sociologies as well as its precursories such as world-systems analysis and Marxist-inspired British cultural studies thus open up a way to develop a kind of global historical sociology with links to, and relevance for, contemporary issues. I will draw on three works that illustrate the productive use of history in global sociology, though my presentation of these examples remains admittedly schematic due to the format of a blog post. All three sociological monographs illuminate the global through the local: a small village in Transylvania, a port in Rio de Janeiro, and a borderland in Amazonia.

In their book Creolizing the Modern: Transylvania across Empires, Anca Parvulescu and Manuela Boatcă (2022) reconsider fundamental assumptions of literary modernism and sociological theories of modernity. This interdisciplinary examination is informed by, and contributes to, scholarship on coloniality and inter-imperiality. It does so from the perspective of Transylvania, a semiperipheral region sitting at the crossroads of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires that has escaped the purview of both literary studies and sociology. Parvulescu and Boatcă take Liviu Rebreanu’s novel Ion (1920) and its fictional village Pripas as an extended case study (see Burawoy 2009 for its use in ethnography) illuminating Transylvania’s history and presence of multiconfessionalism and multilingualism, as the region has been home to Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, Armenians, Jews, Greeks, and Romani. Yet this diverse society has not only been stratified in terms of nationality, race, and ethnicity but also regarding education, class, wealth, and gender, with the “land question”—the distribution and commodification of land—being a decisive factor in all axes of stratification and an explanation for Transylvania’s obscured place within global entanglements: Parvulescu and Boatcă position rurality and peasantry as an integral component rather than an antithesis of modernity, and agrarian economies based on enserfment and exploited rural labor as a condition for a capitalist world-economy that is literally fed by semiperipheries like Transylvania. For a decidedly global sociology, this study thus offers an important temporal and regional corrective: it demonstrates that inter-imperiality predates coloniality, coexists with it, and persists beyond imperialism. The conventional division between premodern and modern European empires is thus upended by the authors who instead underscore the modernity of both Western and Eastern imperial formations as they contested and mutually shaped each other well into the twentieth century. Transylvania, like several spaces across the world, defies the geopolitically biased classifications and chronologies that sociology has (re)produced.

The ethnic groups of Austria-Hungary in 1910. Based on “Distribution of Races in Austria-Hungary” from the Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1911. Copyright: Wikimedia Commons.

Sérgio Costa and Guilherme Leite Gonçalves follow a similar approach in their book A Port in Global Capitalism: Unveiling Entangled Accumulation in Rio de Janeiro (2020), also reinscribing peripheral and semiperipheral places and people into global historical sociology and political economy. They combine a critical engagement with Marxist theories of capitalist expansion with a detailed analysis across different historical stages of a concrete place: the port area of Rio de Janeiro. In tracing its history and different usages, the authors frame it, first, as a place of mercantile capitalism from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, a period in which the port gained a notorious reputation as the world’s largest slave market. The transition to industrial capitalism occurred as the slave economy gave way to a wage-labor system, rendering the port inadequate for the increasing volume of commodities and losing its status as Brazil’s central point for capital accumulation, cemented by the shift of the capital to Brasília in the 1960s. In the 2000s, Rio’s port area was rediscovered by the real estate and tourism markets, envisioning its integration into financial capitalism by transforming it into “Porto Maravilha,” a gentrified revitalization of the historical port neighborhood. To conceptually capture these global transformations encapsulated in a single spatial unit—the port—Costa and Leite Gonçalves coin the concept of “entangled accumulation,” arguing that capitalist accumulation fundamentally rests on the interconnection and interpenetration of different mechanisms of accumulation, of different spaces and times as well as of different social categorizations such as gender, race, and class.

Part of the Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site in Rio de Janeiro’s historical harbor neighborhood. Having served as the landing site for approximately 900,000 enslaved Africans and composed of several archaeological layers, it is the most important physical trace of the arrival of African captives in the Americas. Copyright: Wikimedia Commons, Halley Pacheco de Oliveira.

My last example draws on my past research project, encapsulated in the book Bridging Fluid Borders: Entanglements in the French-Brazilian Borderland (Santos, 2022). In it, I engage the sociological imagination by way of ethnographic fieldwork and thick descriptions capturing how people deal with increasingly strict border controls at a contested, yet rarely studied border: the one between France’s overseas department of French Guiana and Brazil’s northern state of Amapá. An official part of the European Union that has never achieved independence, French Guiana has become an important destination for increasing numbers of differently positioned migrants from across the world. In the past years, the territory whose size is comparable to that of Austria has witnessed the introduction of several legal exceptions deviating from the status quo of the metropole, including fast-track asylum processing and deporting, legally facilitated identity checks marked by racial profiling, and the deliberate shortage of accommodation and financial support for asylum seekers. While such measures appear to be new ruptures, they are but the latest variant in a longue durée process revealing the exploitability and deportability of racialized and/or politically unwanted bodies to be the norm rather than the exception in the borderland. As I show in the monograph, the deportation of metropolitan and Caribbean convicts during the time of the penal colony as well as of persons fleeing enslavement from Brazil are forgotten historical examples illuminating current developments and countering the coloniality of memory. Though seemingly remote, the French-Brazilian borderland and the infrastructural project of the Oyapock River Bridge linking Brazil and France serve as a magnifying glass making the global relevance in reproducing entangled inequali­ties visible: structurally similar observations can be made at the manifold “European elsewheres” across the globe that have remained under the control of a European state (see also Santos & Boatcă, 2023).

Street art in the Brazilian city of Oiapoque, depicting the Oyapock River Bridge that was opened in 2017. Hailed as a symbol of friendship, the first bridge between Brazil and France has turned out to be a one-way street reinforcing mobility inequalities. Copyright: Fabio Santos.

All three studies are informative for global sociology in that they shift the temporal and spatial specificity of global entanglements to inter-imperial spaces and colonial contact zones. They are, borrowing from Hall (1991, p. 35), “hidden histories of the majority that never got told,” representing “[h]istory without the majority inside it, history as a minority event.” The excavation of such histories inevitably raises questions of how historically cemented inequalities impact our lives to this day—a vital theme in global sociology (see also Boatcă, 2016; Jelin et al., 2018; Korzeniewicz & Moran, 2009).

The guiding question of this brief essay—when was ‘the global?’—extends beyond the answers and examples presented here. Numerous other instances of temporal flashbacks, comebacks, and continuities that pinpoint global interdependencies are conceivable (see Pieterse, 2012). A global sociological agenda aiming to overcome methodological presentism should consider and incorporate these various perspectives. The interest and expertise in our network (e.g., Bahl & Berger, 2023; Nkomo & Nkomo, 2023; Santos, 2023) signal that we have all it takes to think against limits by using our sociological imagination.

Cite this article as: Santos, F. (2024, February 10). When was “the global”? Thinking without limits. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2024/02/10/when-was-the-global/

References

Bahl, E., & Berger, Y. (2023). Processes of South-South migration in their historical context: Biographical case studies from Brazil and China. Historical Social Research, 48, 248–282. https://doi.org/10.12759/HSR.48.2023.47

Beck, U., & Sznaider, N. (2006). Unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: A research agenda. The British Journal of Sociology, 57(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2006.00091.x

Bhambra, G. K. (2007). Rethinking modernity: Postcolonialism and the sociological imagination. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230206410

Boatcă, M. (2013). Two-Way Street. Moderne(n), Verwobenheit und Kolonialität. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 38(4), 375–394. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11614-013-0108-0

Boatcă, M. (2015). Global inequalities beyond occidentalism (R. Holton, Ed.). Routledge.

Burawoy, M. (2009). The extended case method: Four countries, four decades, four great transformations, and one theoretical tradition. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520259003.001.0001

Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference. Princeton University Press.

Connell, R. (2007). The northern theory of globalization. Sociological Theory, 25(4), 368–385. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9558.2007.00314.x

Costa, S., & Gonçalves, G. L. (2020). A port in global capitalism: Unveiling entangled accumulation in Rio de Janeiro. Routledge.

Dussel, E. (1992). 1492: El encubrimiento del otro. Antropos.

Elias, N. (1987). The retreat of sociologists into the present. Theory, Culture & Society, 4(2–3), 223–247. https://doi.org/10.1177/026327687004002003

Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Stanford University Press.

Go, J., & Lawson, G. (2017). Global historical sociology. Cambridge University Press.

Hall, S. (1991). The local and the global: Globalization and ethnicity. In A. D. King (Ed.), Culture, globalization, and the world-system: Contemporary conditions for the representation of identity (pp. 19–39). Palgrave.

Hall, S. (1992). The West and the rest: Discourse and power. In S. Hall & B. Gieben (Eds.), Formations of Modernity (pp. 275–332). Polity Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478002710-009

Hall, S. (1996). When was ‘the post-colonial’? Thinking at the limit. In I. Chambers & L. Curti (Eds.), The postcolonial question: Common skies, divided horizons (pp. 242–260). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203138328

Jelin, E., Motta, R. C., & Costa, S. (Eds.). (2018). Global entangled inequalities: Conceptual debates and evidence from Latin America. Routledge.

Korzeniewicz, R. P. (2012). Unveiling inequality a world-historical perspective. Russell Sage Foundation.

Mignolo, W. (2000). Local histories/global designs: Coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking. Princeton University Press.

Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.

Nkomo, N., & Nkomo, S. (2023). Melancholy as witness and active black citizenry in the writing of A.S. Vil-Nkomo. Historical Social Research, 48, 283–303. https://doi.org/10.12759/HSR.48.2023.48

Parvulescu, A., & Boatcă, M. (2022). Creolizing the modern: Transylvania across empires. Cornell University Press.

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Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215–232. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580900015002005

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Santos, F. (2022). Bridging fluid borders: Entanglements in the French-Brazilian borderland. Routledge.

Santos, F. (2023). Mind the archival gap: Critical fabulation as decolonial method. Historical Social Research, 48, 330–353. https://doi.org/10.12759/HSR.48.2023.50

Santos, F., & Boatcă, M. (2022). Europeanization as global entanglement. In S. M. Büttner, M. Eigmüller, & S. Worschech (Eds.), Sociology of Europeanization (pp. 105–132). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673630-005

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By Hilal Alkan, Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient

In political science and international relations literatures, it is common practice to study migration comparatively—putting numbers, legal frameworks, policies, and outcomes in international comparison. Such comparisons teach us about how migration dynamics are affected by state policies and national contexts with a bird’s eye view. Qualitative sociology, anthropology and human geography, on the other hand, follow methods that get closer to experiences of migrants as persons, their daily lives and practices, struggles, strategies, emotions, and how all these relate to places of origin, transit and arrival. This valuably close-up view often does not engage with comparison but goes into the depths of a phenomenon and unravels its inner tensions. In my research with Syrian migrants in Germany, I aimed to bring comparison into ethnographic research by positioning my research participants as the agents and undertakers of the comparative task.

In 2018 and 2019, in Berlin and Leipzig, I conducted life-story interviews with Syrian migrants, who had lived in Turkey before their arrival to Germany. My initial idea was to do a follow-up of my research in Istanbul which focused on informal neighbourhood initiatives that aided Syrians in their settlement in the metropolis (Alkan, 2021b). I wanted to understand how these informal aid groups were perceived and how Syrian migrants managed the power asymmetries that were inherent in the relations that had been formed through these networks. With this purpose I chose people who had lived in Turkey at least for six months, so that they would have found jobs, flats and have had the intention to stay there until at least the circumstances changed in Syria. But my interlocutors were also people who had fled again, going through a second (or third) migration and facing the challenges of building lives from scratch, in another context, within a short period of time. They had a lot to say about what led to this second move and how they were met in Germany.

A line of Syrian refugees crossing the border of Hungary and Austria on their way to Germany. September 2015. Copyright: Wikimedia Commons.

This was the first reason why I did not want to conduct semi-structured interviews that solely focused on the theme of neighbourhood support. Second, in order to test my hypothesis that such informal neighbourly aid had been important in their lives, I had to withhold from providing too much direction and be open to hearing other narratives. So I chose to prompt very little and asked general questions like ‘can you tell me about yourself, how you migrated here and how your life was in Turkey?’  This general prompt gave my research participants freedom to expand on the aspects of their lives as they chose. Some talked a lot about the horrors of the war and the flight. Others dwelled more on economic struggles or changes in family structures. Some were more reserved to talk about their emotional burdens, others less so. But from the first interview on, although I did not ask them anything about Germany, it became clear that they retrospectively perceived their lives in Turkey in comparison to their lives in Germany. Gradually I decided to take up this theme more deliberately and asked them to engage in a comparison towards the end of our conversations. 

Their comparisons opened up many other themes than neighbours and neighbourliness—although neighbours (Alkan et al., 2021b), to my relief, still occupied a significant place—like labour conditions (Alkan et al., 2021a), rental market, human smuggling networks (Alkan, 2021a), education and family. When left to articulate contrasts and reflect on them, my interlocutors were very insightful. They carefully chose their words and engaged in a thought exercise about the reasons of differences and similarities. Their talk was peppered with lots of ‘but’s, ‘although’s and ‘however’s, used as qualifiers and precautions against a one-sided perspective. During the interviews I sometimes took this as an indication of their kindness towards me—a Turkish woman who wanted to hear about their experiences in Turkey—as they sometimes apologized for what they were about to tell. But later when I listened to the interviews over and over again, I figured one more reason, and maybe a more important one, for their meticulousness. As agents of their own lives, they paid attention to how they would narrate these lives and how they would analyze the conditions that shaped their choices. 

The nuanced descriptions and several clauses notwithstanding, social life and future-making were the areas which were presented with greatest contrast between the countries. In Turkey, most of my research participants were surrounded by families, extended kin, friends and neighbours. Turkey’s initial open-door policy allowed Syrians to flee in larger constellations of kin and village/neighborhood networks, and because encampment was not preferred as a state policy, these large networks resettled in closer proximity to each other. The presence of familiar people, as well as the cultural affinity and shared religion with the Turkish and Kurdish residents of the cities they settled partially remedied the pains of exile for my all-Muslim interlocutors. Moreover, many had felt welcome by their neighbours and co-workers (yet hostility and indifference were not excluded either) (Alkan, 2020), and easily established friendships. All three elements of social life—family, Syrian social networks and meaningful, close connections with the locals—were missing in Germany. Their new neighbours occasionally said ‘guten Tag’ and gave a nod when they met in the staircase, and they had very few relatives and family members in Germany, let alone in Berlin or Leipzig.

In Germany, on the other hand, they were more hopeful about their futures. A meaningful and aspirable future was not even imaginable in Turkey. Their time was sucked away by exploitative, back-breaking work in the informal sector, and they did not have many chances to further their education or get their qualifications accredited. Germany promised them time—although it was incessantly interrupted by bureaucratic hassles—and a legal status which would lead to naturalisation after some years. Both made imagining a future possible, even though none of these were immediately accessible. However, on the flip-side they suffered from delayed normalisation of their lives, as they were not allowed to work until they fulfilled several requirements.

A worker at a textile workshop in Gaziantep. 2021. Copyright: Wikimedia Commons.

A global sociology does not have to be comparative. Yet comparison can be a good exercise, when the benchmarks are chosen carefully. Most often what we see in comparisons is an effort to situate non-western contexts on a scale that puts Western norms as the standard. Then differences become deviations from the norm. Yet, whatever we understand as the international (read as European) standards, they are actually highly dynamic and contingent, especially in the realm of migration management. What is considered an absolute right one day, can be easily shelved the next day. Or different standards apply to different migrants, as we have clearly seen with the welcome treatment of the Ukrainian refugees in the EU while there is tremendous effort about increasing border security to stop the migrants coming from African countries, where wars are being waged simultaneously. Such Eurocentric benchmarking also leads to overseeing the politics and policies around migration that do not immediately fall in step with the ‘international’ standards. These can be informal, ad-hoc solutions, rather than well-laid-out and formalized regulations but have tremendous effects on migrant lives whether positive or negative.

We should find ways to look into the specifics of any migration context without immediately subscribing to the norms set by the robust migration control and management regimes in Western Europe. In this line of work, Kelsey Norman identifies ‘indifference-as-policy’, (Norman, 2019) and Wendy Pearlman points to ‘selectiveness,’ (Pearlman, 2020) as defining features of the migration regime of Turkey. Both of these features have formative effects on how migrants establish and fit into the rhythms of daily life, how they experience the current course of their lives, how they relate to their past, and what they aspire for their future. Indifference, as Norman poignantly illustrates, does not mean inaction. Turkey has had several implicit and explicit policies regarding migration. However, these policies (and non-policies) are much less interventionist than their counterparts in Western Europe (and particularly Germany, in this case).

Listening to migrants’ own open-ended comparisons allow detecting these policies in a holistic manner. Because in their narratives they bring together work conditions with intimate family affairs, bureaucratic mile-stones with the soundscapes of cities and give us a more nuanced and thicker understanding of migration contexts. Such comparisons are what a Global Sociology could offer.

Cite this article as: Alkan, H. (2024, February 4). When migrants compare: De-centring Europe in migration management. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2024/02/04/when-migrants-compare/

References

Alkan, H. (2020). Syrian migration and logics of alterity in an Istanbul neighbourhood. In H. Alkan & N. Maksudyan (Eds.), Urban neighbourhood formations: Boundaries, narrations and intimacies (pp. 180–199). Routledge.

Alkan, H. (2021a). Temporal intersections of mobility and informality: Simsars as (im)moral agents in the trajectories of Syrian refugees in Turkey and Germany. Migration Letters, 18(2), 201–213. https://doi.org/10.33182/ml.v18i2.1181

Alkan, H. (2021b). The gift of hospitality and the (un)welcoming of Syrian migrants in Turkey. American Ethnologist, 48(2), 180–191. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13012

Alkan, H., Jurkiewicz, S., Lange, K., & Hussein, J. (2021a). Eine Präkere Gegenwart in der Türkei. Anfänge und Erinnerungen: Verbindungen und Begegnungen zwischen Syrien und Deutschland (Online Exhibition). https://anfaenge-erinnerungen.zmo.de/ausstellungsraeume/arbeit-geld/eine-prekaere-gegenwart-in-der- tuerkei/

Alkan, H., Jurkiewicz, S., Lange, K., & Hussein, J. (2021b). Nachbarschaft. Anfänge und Erinnerungen: Verbindungen und Begegnungen zwischen Syrien und Deutschland (Online Exhibition). https://anfaenge-erinnerungen.zmo.de/ausstellungsraeume/zuhause-finden/nachbarschaft/

Norman, K. P. (2019). Inclusion, exclusion or indifference? Redefining migrant and refugee host state engagement options in Mediterranean “transit” countries. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45(1), 42–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1482201

Pearlman, W. (2020). Host state engagement, socioeconomic class, and Syrian refugees in Turkey and Germany. Comparative Politics, 52(2), 241–272. https://doi.org/10.5129/001041520X15681326148598

By Rajiv K. Mishra, Northwestern University in Qatar

This blog post aims to highlight the resurgence of biometrics as a governance technology from colonial times to the contemporary neoliberal era, and with it tries to open some provocations on the nature of knowledge. In doing so, it reflects upon the fractures in technological modernity and governance in a country like India and other countries of Global South[1]. My central argument is that the fantasy of digital modernity (digital infrastructures and unique identity) is based on the premise of providing welfare governance and development to millions of people (especially Dalits and Adivasis) living in extreme poverty. However, the compulsion to own a digital identity and enrollment in newer digital welfare programs (healthcare) in an extremely unequal and hierarchical society, especially for below-poverty line population groups, shows deep-seated fractures in this utopic fantasy; fractures that show an impinging reality faced by such population groups negotiating between historical, political, and social mistrust, and their survival dependency on the welfare state for food, social security, health, and education as key ones among other social welfare programs.

India is a post-colony projecting itself as a tech-savvy Digital India (Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, n.d.) while being entangled in a past of colonial realities and practices of control and dominance. In the last decade, India witnessed the colossal rise of one of the world’s largest biometrics identification systems—the Unique Identity (UID/Aadhaar) project. The whims and fancies of biometrics-led digital identity/identification systems are to be technologically modern through their ‘efficient’, ‘reliable’ and ‘foolproof’ use for governance and development. However, the ambition of technological modernity and the associated pursuit to be a technology nation is accompanied by fractures which have deep-seated social and human implications. These implications in return demand a more humane and sensitive approach to make sociological sense of the lived experiences of the bodies of unprivileged and poor population groups categorized as BPL—below the poverty line—by the government. It comprises of the bodies of lower Jatis (castes) and Adivasis (indigenous tribes), classified as ‘Scheduled Castes’ and ‘Scheduled Tribes’ respectively in the Constitution of India (Ambedkar & Roy, 2014).

During a recent phase of fieldwork (October 2023), I visited a remote Adivasi village in Jharkhand state. The local district administration had organized a camp with the intent of connecting the Adivasi population of the area to the ‘mainstream’ by extending the assumed benefits of government welfare schemes to them. The camp focused on updating and enrolling the residents on a health welfare program using the biometrics UID system. However, at the ground this intention reflects a distorted reality, different from the utopic fantasy on digitalization, development, and governance. This village was a former rebel-dominated area where they openly revolted against the state, its ideologies, and its ruling apparatus. Most people waiting for their turn were tribals with a history of being left out of the ‘mainstream’ and seen with suspicion and mistrust by society and the state elites. The ground realities of challenges in implementation, and enrolling people having a long history of discrimination create a different picture of actuality compared to what is fantasized of digitalization solving problems of development

Biometrics scanning hardware (fingerprint and iris scanner) and the integrated interface (software) application through a connected laptop and peripherals. The photo was taken during a UID/Aadhaar update camp explicitly organized for a tribal majority village in Jharkhand, India; fieldwork October 2023.

Seeing the assemblage of biometrics technologies as an avatar of technological modernity for the claimed welfare of lower Jatis and Adivasis, reflections of its colonial entanglements with mistrust and suspicion become apparent. Bodies potentially considered subversive and a threat to the interests of the British Empire were recorded in colonial registers and record books (Waits, 2016). Even in its second coming, re-institutionalizing suspicion and mistrust remains at the heart and soul of this governmentality. Using biometrics for governance and development also records the biometrics of these mistrusted bodies, though in the name of a more ‘just’ purpose of improving their life condition with digital access to welfare entitlements. However, unlike earlier colonial practices that served the interests of the empire, the current practice serves the interest of an alliance of the state, market, and international biometric companies. This alliance runs, operates, and perpetuates the digital empire of (mis)trust.

The reach and extent of this pervasive empire is such that it operates over millions of bodies daily. Its cogs run with the help of the technological systems of biometrics, databases, and digital identification infrastructures. It makes a living person digitally present in a database, with means and ways of authenticating the person’s ‘reliability’ and ‘existence’. However, the practice of this empire is not just technological, with the use of biometrics and digitalization. Instead, it is a sociotechnical ideological practice mixed with social and historical discrimination of lower Jatis and Adivasis by upper caste and the ruling elites from colonial times to the present, biometrically marking and algorithmically checking the tagged-digital identity of the person. I believe that the current sociotechnical practice of biometrically identifying (mis)trustful bodies adds a technological layer of inequality over a persistent social structure of deep-seated discrimination. It is a deadly cocktail of caste and tribe-based discrimination by upper caste and class elites mixed with technologies of biometrics rooted in Galtonian ideas of biometry and racial classifications (Breckenridge, 2014). Biometrics-based digital identity recorded in a centralized database is now the source of truth and trust of millions of bodies belonging to the BPL groups. However, the mediation of (mis)trust and establishing the authenticity of bodies now lies with the algorithms—the moment a person submits biometric scans to access essential services.

Biometrics scanning hardware (technology) and a connected laptop’s integrated interface (software) application. Used for biometrics scans to provide healthcare access under the national universal health coverage program (PM-JAY). Jharkhand, India; fieldwork October 2023.  

Without possessing a biometrics-based digital identity, it is practically impossible for millions of bodies belonging to the BPL groups to survive. Within this group, the Adivasis form a significant chunk, totally dependent on the welfare state for food, healthcare, social security, livelihood programs, and education. Having no digital identity or facing problems with their digital identity brings the severe repercussions of being again left out of the ‘mainstream’. A tribal farmer said aptly during my fieldwork, “I do not exist if I do not enrol for the UID/Aadhaar”, and “I am not a human of flesh and bones, but a suspected human reduced to a number, with the onus of proving my identity—to digitally prove that I exist” (Field Diary Notes, 2017).

The implications from the operation of this digital empire are not just at the individual and social level faced by these bodies in India but hold wider ramifications in the context of the increasing push for biometrics for development in other countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. A study of these demands, an analytic and methodological focus that is more ‘global’ in Global South than in the Global North! The level of knowledge, concepts, and methods of understanding this contextual ‘globalness’ thus also requires a sociological imagination that is rooted in people’s everyday lived experiences and unique circumstances. This is a moment of further introspection and intellectual engagement for a crucial network like Global Sociology and Qualitative Research.

Many canons of the social sciences in general, and Sociology in particular, along with the narratives of ‘modernity’, developed in the West (Europe and the United States) (Adas, 2014). The persistent and unwavering Western notions and canons of understanding social realities placing the postcolony(s) at the peripheries, creates a perpetual market of development and research (Bhambra, 2016)! Moreover, the narratives of newer ideas and practices of development considered, technologically modern states are still largely controlled and dominated by the countries, institutions, and actors from the West. The control of knowledge, narrative and ‘benchmarks’ by the West, continuously makes the postcolony(s) aspire to become ‘developed’ with their newer whims and fancies on technological modernity.

Failure to do so perpetuates the categorization or the classification of a country as underdeveloped and still developing. Moreover, in this well-knit ideological, political, and economic control, the postcolony(s) become the thriving grounds for the market of (digital) development governance, especially in the developing world of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Schiller, 2000). This leads to the formation of an alliance of postcolonial states, neoliberal institutions, and multinational technology companies, perpetuating this digital empire of (mis)trust and constantly re-inventing capital and capitalism. It’s not surprising to see programs such as ID4D (Identification for Development) and ID4Africa (Identification for Africa) being increasingly pushed in the countries of Global South, with the aims of bringing and connecting millions of bodies to the ‘mainstream’. In the context of colonial history and newer forms of market-driven neoliberal practices, we need to rethink the Western notions of ‘modernity’ and the way social sciences canons emerge and revolve around it. The bodies of people belonging to historically discriminated groups by the local elites and colonial masters tend to be discriminated and controlled time and again.

Thus, it is important to bring analytic focus on the way bodies become objects and subjects of a new pervasive digital empire, rapidly carrying its flags in the so-called developing world. Moreover, the analytic focus provides a methodological opportunity (not in a positive sense) to be more sensitive in the ways of making sense of the lived experience of such bodies. Is it enabling or disabling to conduct fieldwork with ‘scientific’ and established practices of studying the field? Or do we need to find ways through which we can reflect the essence of the reality lived by such bodies? Our thoughts and minds are not only colonized by the notions of modernity and development from the West but also by the surrounding realities (Latour, 1993). A dilemma and a challenge that impinges more on researchers and academics at the crossroads of a ‘globalness’ of knowledge and knowledge creation. Can the ‘globalness’ of global Sociology help to make us more aware of the challenges we face? Does it implore researchers who stand at such crossroads to ask if it is the same to do social research in India, Ghana, and Indonesia as it is in England, Germany, and France?

[1] I do not use ‘The Global South’ in a specific manner, because I believe there cannot be one homogeneous clubbing of ‘the’ Global South.

Cite this article as: Mishra, R. K. (2024, January 23). The whims and fancies of technological modernity: Biometrics and the digital empire of (mis)trust. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2024/01/23/the-whims-and-fancies-of-technological-modernity/

References

Adas, M. (2014). Machines as the measure of men: Science, technology, and ideologies of Western dominance (2014 edition, with a new preface). Cornell University Press.

Ambedkar, B. R., & Roy, A. (2014). Annihilation of caste (S. Anand, Ed.; Annotated critical edition). Verso.

Bhambra, G. K. (2016). Whither Europe? Postcolonial versus neocolonial cosmopolitanism. Interventions, 18(2), 187–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2015.1106964

Breckenridge, K. (2014). Biometric state: The global politics of identification and surveillance in South Africa, 1850 to the present. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139939546

Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. Harvard University Press.

Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology. (n.d.). Digital India. Retrieved January 23, 2024, from https://digitalindia.gov.in/

Schiller, D. (2000). Digital capitalism: Networking the global market system. MIT Press.

Waits, M. R. (2016). The indexical trace: A visual interpretation of the history of fingerprinting in colonial India. Visual Culture in Britain, 17(1), 18–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/14714787.2016.1147978

By Rachel Rinaldo, University of Colorado Boulder

Like many majority Muslim countries, Indonesia has experienced an Islamic revival over the past three decades, which has brought changes such as the widespread adoption of headscarves and clothing deemed “Islamic” for women, an emphasis on Islamic actors and ideas in the public sphere, a boom in Muslim educational institutions, and the institutionalization of the Islamic court system. The Islamic revival in Indonesia is multi-faceted in its impact on gender relations, encompassing the emergence of a dynamic Muslim feminist movement, but also Muslim actors who emphasize the domestic sphere as women’s primary responsibility (Rinaldo, 2013). More recently, some Indonesian women increasingly see marriage as a partnership and have higher expectations for their husbands’ involvement in family life than previous generations (Rinaldo and Fehr, in process). Yet many Indonesians are ambivalent about changes in gender norms and practices. Indeed, some women play down their careers by adhering to a gendered script of obedience to their husbands (Rinaldo, 2019). While Indonesian women’s educational attainment and workforce participation are higher than most other majority Muslim countries, some research shows a decline in the age of first marriage, suggesting that the renewed emphasis on Muslim women’s marriage and family obligations may be having an impact. Thus, Indonesians are navigating complex and contradictory trends related to gender, family, and religion.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought challenges for women around the world because it dramatically increased the burden of unpaid carework for women. Mothers especially struggled with caring for children who were out of school or assisting children doing online school. Post-pandemic, it is unclear how the trend of remote work will impact mothers. Most of the research on the gendered consequences of the pandemic has been conducted in Europe and North America. This begs the question of how the pandemic and its aftermath is playing out in the Global South, especially in contexts where gender and social norms render women primarily responsible for domestic labor. Given the recent social trends in Indonesia, it is an essential place to understand how women are negotiating work and family during and after the pandemic.

The research team – clockwise from left to right: Dr. Fina Itriyati, Hartmantyo Pradigto Utomo, Dinda Kamilia, and Dr. Rachel Rinaldo.

Between September 2022 and September 2023, my research collaborators (Dr. Fina Itriyati, Hartmantyo Pradigto Utomo, and Dinda Kamilia, all from the Sociology department at Gadjah Mada University) and I conducted over 140 interviews and extensive observations with women and men working in a wide variety of occupations and economic sectors in Yogyakarta, Central Java. We recruited a diverse selection of interviewees, with an emphasis on mothers of children under 12, as research has shown that this demographic is most heavily impacted by the competing demands of work and family. We talked to them about their work and family lives, their experiences of the pandemic, their domestic division of labor, and much more.

We are just beginning to analyze this data, but a few findings already stand out. First, some women who had not previously engaged in paid work, or who had only done a small amount of paid work, began to do so during the pandemic. Second, most women, whether they were doing paid work or not, continued to do the majority of unpaid work in the household, particularly taking care of children and preparing/cooking meals. Third, most women could not afford paid childcare, with most relying on family members to care for children if they were working outside the house when children were home.

Social scientists have found that women’s workforce participation makes women more economically valuable to their families, results in improved health for women and girls, and is correlated with increased political representation for women, among other benefits. Yet what we were seeing in Indonesia was that women were doing more paid work as well as unpaid domestic work. While a few women seemed unhappy with this situation, many embraced or saw it as normal. Thus, women’s increased involvement in the workforce did not seem to be resulting in men taking on more domestic work, or in women’s income earning being fully valued by their families or the society at large. Given how significant women’s income is for many Indonesian families, and the fact that surveys show that men in many countries are taking on more domestic labor or expressing the desire to do so, we wondered why things seemed so stuck in Indonesia.

The research team interviewing women who have returned from working overseas as maids and nannies.  

For example, Dewi is a 37 year old mother of three children. Her husband has a good job as a civil servant and they can live a middle class life on his income. Dewi used to work as an accountant, but her husband wanted her to stay home when they had children. She agreed, but she also missed her job, and she keeps a foot in the labor market by doing freelance accounting work, usually from home. She is responsible for everything involving the household.  As she commented wryly, “For my husband, apparently, I got a husband who doesn’t really care about the household chores. So, the point is for domestic matters, taking care of the kids it’s all my responsibilities, including picking up the kids to and from the school, if there’s any meeting at school, parents meeting or something like that, it’s all my responsibilities.”

The pandemic seemed to have made Dewi interested in working more, and she spoke about returning to work in some capacity when her children are older. But for now, she seems to have given up on hoping that her husband will help with the household: “If he can’t help then just let him be, we also can’t be demanding. I mean I’m the type of person who doesn’t like to fuss, so I just let things be since I don’t like debating.”

We identified two key processes that contribute to situations like that of Dewi.

First, women are increasingly doing paid work from home. This was particularly the case for educated middle class mothers similar to Dewi. They are increasingly earning income through home-based businesses, often relying on social media to advertise and sell their products. Some of these small businesses have become the primary income for the family. Many women we interviewed sought out such paid work because it is compatible with the gendered division of labor that they believe is mandated by Islam. They can work from home and still take care of their children and household. This form of paid work may be partly what has accounted for the recent uptick in Indonesian women’s labor force participation. It means that women are earning income and gaining work experience, but in a way that reproduces the cultural norm of women being responsible for domestic work.

An employee of a ceramic shop in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Many women in the city work in service sector jobs in shops and restaurants. 

Second, many working mothers rely on unpaid female caregivers. Indonesia has a very large informal economy, and many lower-class women have few employment options in the formal sector. We found that nearly all of the lower-class women we interviewed were engaging in paid work, mostly in the informal sector. Few of these women are able to work from home, and most of them continued working during the pandemic. An advantage of this kind of work for many women is flexibility. Most of the women we interviewed who worked in the informal sector tried to arrange their work around their children’s school hours, and if this was not possible, they relied on their mothers, mothers-in-law, or other female kin to babysit. We found that this was the case even when husbands were unemployed or working fewer hours due to the pandemic. Thus, the reliance on unpaid female caregivers means that the work of caring for children remains strongly associated with women, even when men are home.

What can we learn from this Indonesian case? Generalizing and theorizing from Global South cases such as Indonesia is a thorny issue for sociology. While canonical sociological theories have been rightly criticized for erasing imperialism and colonialism, there is nothing inherent in sociological theory that requires inattention to the Global South. Indeed, early sociologists such as Weber and Durkheim were interested in non-Western societies, even if their analyses were problematic. But as sociology developed alongside its companion discipline of anthropology, a division of labor developed in which sociology became the study of “modern” societies while anthropology became the study of so-called “traditional” societies. In recent years, such binaries have been challenged but their legacy persists for sociology in the oft-repeated question – “How does this matter?”—which is less often applied to cases from within the Global North. This question embeds two assumptions: 1) that cases in the Global South, even if they concern a phenomenon that is not unique to the Global South, are not of interest to sociologists because the Global South is fundamentally different, ie “not modern”; and 2) phenomena that are unique to a Global South context are not of interest because sociology is only interested in generalizable phenomena. The vast amount of sociological research on social dynamics particular to the US suggest that this second assumption mainly applies to research in the Global South.

A woman selling drinks at a street kiosk in Yogyakarta. The majority of Indonesian women work in the informal sector. 

Since the late 1990s, sociologists have sought to theorize from Global South cases. Burawoy’s Extended Case Method (1998) encourages sociologists to use ethnography to examine the dynamics of a local setting and to understand how that setting is shaped by global forces. Transnational feminist sociology investigates global-local linkages and global power/inequalities related to sex/gender (Parrenas, 2015). More recently, postcolonial sociology (Go, 2016) aims to challenge Eurocentric social theories by rooting social theory in the experiences of people and societies at the bottom of the global social hierarchy, examining the interconnections between Global North/Global South, and emphasizing colonialism and imperialism as central dynamics in the development of modernity and capitalism. All of these approaches have generated compelling new research based on Global South cases. Rather than theories in and of themselves, they are frameworks for theorizing.

These frameworks lend themselves best to examining obviously transnational phenomena such as migration or global factories or social phenomena that highlight a crucial aspect of the global economy or global power relations. Yet given that many people’s lives unfold within local and national social structures, such approaches risk overemphasizing the global and transnational. In an era of renewed nationalisms, it is essential to examine local and national asymmetries, inequalities, and power relations. Moreover, such emphasis on global economies and power relations risks neglecting culture and religion, aspects of social structure that are likely to be embedded within a nation-state.

A weekly women’s prayer group meeting at a local mosque in Yogyakarta. 

The recent calls for a more global sociology (Hanafi, 2020) demonstrate an interest in building on such predecessors but with a more eclectic approach to theory and an aim to understanding rather than assuming the relationship between micro and macro/local and global. I would add that a global sociology should also value cases outside the West/Global North in and of themselves. Yet global sociology has not yet provided a method for how to generalize from cases.

In thinking about how to generalize from the case of women and work in Indonesia, I am inspired by recent methodological discussions in qualitative sociology. Such discussions are not so much focused on the geographic location of cases, but on how to generalize from qualitative cases. Recent methodological approaches such as Tavory and Timmermans (2012) “Abductive Analysis” as well as Small and Calarco’s discussion of how to evaluate qualitative research (2022) suggest a way forward. They suggest an approach to qualitative research and theorizing that mixes induction and deduction, toggling interactively between theory and data so that questions can be constantly revised to account for surprising findings. In particular, Small and Calarco propose that cases are always unique, but that processes, mechanisms, and relationships may be common to a variety of situations, and this provides a way to generalize.

Building on this, I propose that scholars studying the Global South seek a deep understanding of the local context in order to develop knowledge about local processes that may be found in a variety of contexts. For example, the two key processes that I highlight from Indonesia — women doing paid work from home and reliance on unpaid female caregivers — can be found widely. In Indonesia, women’s efforts to make paid work flexible often result in their continued responsibility for domestic work. In a place where cultural and religious pressures encourage women to see the domestic sphere as their responsibility, the double burden constrains women’s ambitions, limits their options, and makes many women feel that they must choose between work and motherhood. Yet while the specific context of Indonesia is unique these processes and their outcome can be found in many places. Despite women’s increased income earning, in many societies they still bear the primary responsibility for the domestic sphere, and they are valued primarily as mothers and wives. Changing this situation will require efforts on many levels: revaluing the labor of care, redefining masculinity to include care work, and encouraging work flexibility for all people, not just women.

Cite this article as: Rinaldo, R. (2024, January 11). The gendered dynamics of women’s work in Indonesia: Theorizing from Global South cases. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2024/01/11/the-gendered-dynamics-of-womens-work-in-indonesia/

References

Burawoy, M. (1998). The extended case method. Sociological Theory, 16(1), 4–33. https://doi.org/10.1111/0735-2751.00040

Go, J. (2016). Globalizing sociology, turning south: Perspectival realism and the southern standpoint. Sociologica, 2. https://doi.org/10.2383/85279

Hanafi, S. (2020). Global sociology revisited: Toward new directions. Current Sociology, 68(1), 3–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392119869051

Parreñas, R. S. (2015). Servants of globalization: Migration and domestic work (2nd ed.). Stanford University Press.

Rinaldo, R. (2013). Mobilizing piety: Islam and feminism in Indonesia. Oxford University Press.

Rinaldo, R. (2019). Obedience and authority among Muslim couples: Negotiating gendered religious scripts in contemporary Indonesia. Sociology of Religion, 80(3), 323–349. https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/sry045

Rinaldo, R., & Fehr, T. (Forthcoming). “I have a right to a better imam”: Women, divorce, and Islam in Indonesia. Manuscript currently under review.

Small, M. L. (2009). “How many cases do I need?”: On science and the logic of case selection in field-based research. Ethnography, 10(1), 5–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138108099586

Small, M. L., & Calarco, J. M. (2022). Qualitative literacy: A guide to evaluating ethnographic and interview research. University of California Press.

Timmermans, S., & Tavory, I. (2012). Theory construction in qualitative research: From grounded theory to abductive analysis. Sociological Theory, 30(3), 167–186. https://doi.org/10.1177/0735275112457914

By Weishan Huang, Hong Kong Shue Yan University

In previous research, I discussed the difficulties faced by urban planners in China due to various unforeseen social factors. These factors have been partly influenced by the rapid growth of religious activism among young city residents and the government’s control over religious expansion in urban areas. I highlighted two patterns of Buddhism’s continued presence in Shanghai. One is the traditional, tourist-oriented temple activities sponsored by the government to generate revenue. The other is the less visible but progressive grassroots initiatives, socially engaged Buddhism, that aim for social issues through the intersection of religion and social welfare but lack “legitimate” physical spaces. After briefly introducing the latter trend, I will in this piece engage in a discussion why urban Chinese youth flock to the previously-mentioned established, government-sponsored temples and how this can be assessed with a global sociological lens.

The visible religious infrastructure in China consists of temples supported by the state, as cultural heritage sites featuring impressive architectural designs. The less visible (or invisible) religious infrastructure pertains to the emergence of non-monastic Buddhist movements, which have gained popularity among young, middle-class city dwellers. The invisible religious infrastructure potential becomes an invisible strength in civil societies. In 2014, I discovered that urban youth in Beijing were turning to engaged Buddhism to address social welfare issues. Non-monastic Buddhist movements, such as reform Buddhism, emerged as the major agents for the moral aspirations of the new urban middle classes. I observed a similar trend in Shanghai (Huang 2018), where cosmopolitan and well-educated middle-class individuals were attracted to groups that could provide answers about the relationship between religion and modernity. Unlike public monasteries, I view Buddhist Tzu Chi’s volunteer mobilization as a public expression of moral reform in a more secular setting, placing it in the social context of the religious revival in contemporary China. These grassroots efforts were carried out at the local neighborhood level. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many Buddhist Tzu Chi volunteers stepped up as neighborhood volunteers, including daily COVID-19 testing. In the post-COVID-19 period, I learned that young local volunteers in Tzu Chi Shanghai had taken over leadership roles in all local branches of this global network.

Young individuals have been expressing their eagerness to volunteer at Buddhist temples, taking inspiration from renowned abbots. 2018.

Currently, in my research, I turn my attention to another phenomenon in this context: the ongoing development of visible religious infrastructure and how it influences the faith of urban youth in the context of the period after COVID-19, within the framework of infrastructuring religion (Burchardt, 2023). Burchardt turns to the material embedding of religion in urban space and considers

“the ways in which religious life is premised upon the production, maintenance, and working of mundane materials that link spaces into networks of provision and make possible the circulation of energy, goods, coded meanings, and bodies. This means that religion is mediated not only by sacred architecture, rituals, and holy objects, which operate as ‘sensational forms’ (Meyer, 2009), but routinely also by infrastructures – building materials for temples, roads used for processions, water involved in religious hygiene, and electricity used to illuminate prayer rooms and power microphones, amplifying the Holy Spirit.”

The concept of infrastructuring religion helps us understand the recent fever of young Chinese flocking to established urban Buddhist temples. With the crisis of economic recesses and the anxiety about future careers, many urban youths rush into Buddhist temples and hope for numinous responsiveness from the prayers. This new phenomenon provoked media attention but so far little academic explanations.

Why are urban youths visiting Buddhist temples? It’s important to understand that this trend of worshipping deities in temples is different from the stereotype of the “foxi youth” in Chinese culture. The “foxi youth” (foxi qinian 佛系青年) is seen as having a carefree attitude, looking down on everything, and not having any career or life aspirations. However, current urban youths are flocking to temples due to anxiety about their career prospects and job opportunities during the economic downturn. In fact, these youths are showing a strong desire to participate in capitalist society. This was also observed among urban youths in Sri Lanka, where the Buddhist “Bodhipuja” movement in 1970 became a collective representation of Sri Lankan youth (Seneviratne & Wickermeratne, 1980). The Bodhi tree is worshipped for both worldly and spiritual gains. Modern Buddhist movements in urban Sri Lanka emphasize Buddhist worship for gaining particularly this-worldly benefits. Can we in this vein attribute the rise in temple visits of Chinese youth to this new focus on job opportunities? In modern urban China, Buddhism is often practiced with the intention of achieving intangible benefits in this life. However, for these educated, unemployed urban youths, temple visits provide an outlet for expressing their religiosity, which differs from the secular piety of society.

There has been a growing interest among young people in socially engaged Buddhist groups located in urban Shanghai. 2017. 

Why do urban youth choose Buddhist temples? The Chinese government, after the Mao era, has allowed some degree of freedom for religious beliefs and practices. However, there are legal and regulatory limitations to this freedom. The government owns all urban land, and while they consider the recovery of religious sites as cultural heritage or tourist sites, their usage is still restricted. Religious practices and rituals may only be conducted in government-approved religious sites, and any practices outside of these sites are considered illegitimate. Predestined spaces for religious purposes have specific limitations and opportunities for different religious communities. In an effort to revitalize neighborhoods, the government is focusing on consumer activity and increased real estate values. With Buddhism being the state-approved religion, Buddhist temples benefit from a monopolistic arrangement where each temple is given a defined territory in urban areas. Following the start of the new millennium, urban temples persisted in utilizing their business district locations for reconstruction and expansion. However, this necessitated increased effort in negotiating land acquisition and resolving conflicts with neighboring communities. According to Burchardt, the practice of infrastructuring, the linking of profane materialities and artifacts into assemblages which enable religious life, brings religious practices into the secular realm of everyday urban life, with potential effects of either secularization or re-enchantment.

Global qualitative sociology, to me, is above all the methodology of comparison. It involves comparing local case studies in different countries to identify patterns and anomalies in the data, provoking skepticism on existing theories. My primary method of data collection is through ethnography and informal interviews. At the beginning of my study, I believed in investigating and scanning the similarities and differences of cases in the field, locally and historically, before narrowing down my focus to target groups. This approach helps me to identify the strangeness of the data and gain a better understanding of the research subject. For instance, I have applied the framework of religious infrastructure to my old data in Shanghai to interpret current events. In the context of infrastructuring, it is possible to understand the reasons behind the increasing popularity of Buddhism in downtown Shanghai. My earlier findings point out that the Chinese government has given institutionalized Han Buddhism, along with Daoism, a privileged position in preserving and passing on “Chinese culture” to the present generation since the beginning of the revival. According to my research up to 2018, there are 122 Han Buddhist temples in Shanghai, while there are only 31 Daoist temples. My study found that institutionalized Han Buddhism’s leadership has achieved more significant results in terms of temple claiming and renovation. The location in downtown areas is also a vital factor in the development of the temple economy. After 40 years, it is evident that downtown temples are more resourceful in terms of temple economy and manpower due to continuous temple expansions or infrastructuring.

A beautiful ritual of receiving Buddha relics in the Buddhist communities of Shanghai. 2018. 

In addition, I analyze past data using the new framework. The building of astonishing Buddhist temples highlights how religious architecture serves as a symbol of power in urban areas. The association between these temples and the real estate industry and consumerism signifies the perspective of urban space in modern neoliberalism. I can undoubtedly make a connection to Burchardt’s work (2023). Thus, insights gained from his ethnographic fieldwork in Cape Town, South Africa, can be applied to cities in other parts of the world, such as China. Another source I consulted was the work of Seneviratne and Wickermeratne (1980) on the youth Buddhist movement. Both helped me conclude how Buddhist infrastructure can shape human behaviors. The construction of Buddhist infrastructure, which is carried out by both the Chinese state and temple leaders, shapes human behaviors, habits, and social interactions. Therefore, when the economy experiences a downturn, young people often turn to Buddhism, not only for iconic buildings but also for the most elaborate faith practice in the urban setting.

In “Comparative Urbanism,” Robinson (2016) emphasizes the importance of “Thinking with variation and repetition, rather than trying to ‘control for difference’” when conducting comparative studies. It’s crucial to consider different urban contexts by focusing on the revisability of inherited (and located) understandings and incorporating insights from diverse sources. Inspired by Robinson, to me, global sociology involves examining social processes rather than fixed city spaces, analyzing repeated instances instead of controlling for differences, and focusing on mid-level theory instead of universal grand theory.

Cite this article as: Huang, W. (2023, December 16). Urban comparativism and studying secularity: Interpreting young Chinese swarming to Buddhist temples. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2023/12/16/urban-comparativism-and-studying-secularity/

References

Burchardt, M. (2023). Infrastructuring religion: Materiality and meaning in ordinary urbanism. Space and Culture, 26(2), 180–191. https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221130248

Huang, W. (2018). The place of socially engaged Buddhism in China: The emerging religious identity in the local community of urban Shanghai. Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 25, 531–568.

Robinson, J. (2016). Comparative urbanism: New geographies and cultures of theorizing the urban. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 40(1), 187–199. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12273

Seneviratne, H. L., & Wickermeratne, S. (1980). Bodhipuja: Collective representations of Sri Lanka youth. American Ethnologist, 7(4), 734–743. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1980.7.4.02a00080

This is an abridged version of my key note address delivered during the workshop of the network in Accra “Global Sociology and Comparative Urbanism,” February 15, 2023.

By Steve Tonah, University of Ghana

During the first half of the 19^th century more than 10,000 individuals of Afro-Brazilian descent are estimated to have left Brazil to settle in West Africa. This followed the numerous slave revolts across Brazil with each revolt being punished with arrests, imprisonments, harsh punishments, and forced deportations of the ring leaders and their supporters by their Brazilian and Portuguese overlords and slave-masters. Many of these returnees consisting of former slaves, freed persons and wealthy individuals landed in the coastal towns of Lagos, Cotonou, Lomé and Accra where they established themselves and were engaged in farming, trading, slavery and other lucrative businesses along the West African coast. In Lagos (Nigeria), these groups of returnees from Brazil are referred to as the ‘Agudas,’ in Cotonou (Benin Republic) and Lome (Togo) they are called ‘Les Breziliens’ while in Accra (Ghana) they became known as the ‘Tabon’ or ‘Tabom.’

Successive Tabon immigrants in Accra between 1820 and 1850 settled mainly in the Otublohum section of Ussher Town, which was then under the jurisdiction of the Dutch government. They intermarried among the indigenous Ga population and adopted their language and many of their cultural practices, and with time were also integrated into the Ga traditional political system. Nevertheless, the Tabon people maintained their Afro-Brazilian identity and many of the unique cultural practices that they brought along from Brazil and during their sojourn on the West African coast such as their professions, dressing, food, music and dances, social and cultural rites, religion etc. The leadership exuded confidence and gave impressions of being brave, well-mannered, competent, disciplined, hardworking and well organized.

Earliest Tabon stone building in Accra (1840s). Source: Steve Tonah, 2022.

This blogpost examines the contributions of the Tabon returnees from Brazil to the growth and transformation of Accra, from a small sea-side settlement into an urban and cosmopolitan centre during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Tabon contributions to the development and transformation of Accra have to be understood against the background of two major changes in the status of the town. The first was the emergence of the British as the only remaining colonial power in Accra by 1850. The second was the decision of the British colonial authorities to move the administrative capital of the Gold Coast colony from Cape Coast to Accra in 1877 which contributed to the infrastructural and population boom that the town later experienced.

The central argument of this blogpost is that the Tabon returnees through their rapid integration and active participation in Ga society, contributed immensely to the transformation of Accra from a fishing settlement into an urban, diversified, and cosmopolitan town mainly through the skills, lifestyle and experiences that they brought along from Brazil and elsewhere in West Africa. Furthermore, the paper indicates that the Tabon returnees provided alternatives to and sometimes complemented the skills, training and infrastructure provided by European merchants, missionaries, settlers and the British colonial authorities in Accra. As a result of their skills and innovative ideas, the Tabon became a source of inspiration and pride to the traditional leaders, the elite and other residents of Accra opposed to British colonial rule in the Gold Coast.

The Tabon returnees upon their arrival in Accra in the early 1800s participated actively in the wars of resistance of the indigenous Ga people against their Akan neighbours thus contributing to the ethnic cohesiveness of the Ga people and the consolidation of the diverse migrant groups in Accra into a resilient and united political unit. Indeed, Tabon participation and successes in the inter-ethnic wars of the early 19^th century that resulted in the liberation of the Ga people from Akan domination still feature prominently in their ritual songs and celebrations today.

Hand-dug well by the Tabon in Central Accra (1840s). Source: Steve Tonah, 2022.

The first generation of Tabon returnees to Accra were engaged in three main economic activities that transformed the lives of the residents in several ways. The first consisted of those who took up self-employment in Accra using artisanal skills that they had acquired in Brazil including masonry, carpentry, tailoring, goldsmithing, well-digging, painting and other professions. These individuals introduced many new professions and diversified the type of skills available to the town’s residents. Among the first major challenge that the Afro-Brazilian returnees faced and had to assist resolve was the perennial water shortages that plagued Accra, especially during the long dry season. While the Europeans stored water in underground cisterns in their forts to survive the dry season, the Tabon returnees introduced the construction of wells in the town thus making life much more comfortable and thus reducing the drudgery associated with fetching water from distant streams.

Indeed, the first generation of Tabon returnees was able to pass on many of their artisanal skills unto the larger Ga population, thus improving the quality of life in the town. For example, the Tabon leader Aruna Nelson established the famous ‘Scissors House’ in 1854, the first professional training centre where hundreds of Accra residents were trained in tailoring and associated skills. The impact of the Tabon on the dress code and fashion business among the city’s elite population was immense. Tabon males, particularly the educated leaders, were remembered as “all-round men who dressed properly […] in European suits with top hats” (Amos & Ayesu, 2002, p. 51). The men through their dressing and behaviour became the epitome of civilization, self-confidence and gentleness among the elite of Accra during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Similarly, they introduced the skills of stone-cutting into blocks using the appropriate tools and used these stone-buildings for the construction of their homes. The stone-buildings of the Tabon painted in white stood out distinctively amidst the surrounding mud and thatched-roof dwellings of the local residents. These early 19^th century rugged stone-buildings were subsequently improved upon with time. It did not take long for the Afro-Brazilian architecture introduced by the Tabon to be emulated by the wealthy Ga elite across other quarters of Accra and in the newly established suburbs.

Tabon-inspired Sobrado architecture in Accra (ca. 1920s). Source: Steve Tonah, 2022.

The second major economic activity involved persons who went into both subsistence and large-scale cultivation of food (cassava, maize, tomatoes, vegetables etc.), horticultural, herbal medicinal products as well as tree crop plantation (cashew, mango, silk cotton, among others) after clearing the wooded savanna lands at the outskirts of Accra. The produce from these agricultural ventures secured and diversified the food sources available to the growing population of the town. The Tabon returnees also introduced new dishes to the residents thus diversifying the culinary scene in Accra. As the population of Accra expanded, many of these so-called Brazilian farmlands in the outskirts of the town were later converted into residential and commercial properties for use by the colonial authorities and the residents. With the construction of new residential buildings in the suburbs of Accra to cope with the rapid expansion in the population of Accra during the early 20^th century, the one-storey sobrado and the two-storey térreo buildings depicting the Afro-Brazilian Tabon architecture spread throughout the town and still dominate the architectural landscape of central Accra today.

The third major economic engagement of the Tabon that impacted on the lives of the residents included a group of traders and wealthy merchants engaged in commercial trading activities in Accra and along the West African coast using their network of relationships with other returnees from Brazil. The Tabon built several warehouses in Accra that were used for the storage and transhipment of goods such as textiles, light manufactured items, palm oil, gold, traditional medicines, artefacts as well as slaves to the West African coast, Brazil and the Americas. These trading activities created employment for the youth in Accra, increased economic activities in the town and cemented Accra’s position as a major trading town in West Africa.

Tabon Agbe group performing at a funeral with the Tabon priestess. Source: Steve Tonah, 2022.

Finally, I would like to mention the contribution of the Tabon returnees to the provision and popularization of education in Accra. The Tabon were among the first to demand from the British, who had taken control of Accra from the Dutch in 1850, to establish a secondary school for their children and as a result the Wesleyan mission established the first post-primary school in Accra in 1876. Indeed, the Tabon were so passionate about education that they are even reported to have supported their slaves and servants to pursue education.

Generally, in the theoretical discussion on the emergence of cities in the 18^th and 19^th centuries,  emphasis have frequently been placed on cities as locations with large, high population density, heterogeneity of economic activities, high levels of economic specialization, increased individualism and anonymity, a socially diverse population, among many other characteristics. The emergence of cities in Africa has often been associated with the activities of European merchants and colonial administrations. While not disputing this fact, this paper has established the contributions of Tabon immigrants from Brazil and the South Atlantic to the making and transformation of Accra during the early 19^th century. They played a key role in securing the town and strengthening the traditional leadership and polity, as well as in the cultural, social, and economic transformation of Accra into a modern, cosmopolitan town with diversified economic activities and a skilful and educated population. They also contributed to the cultural diversity and hybridity of Accra and the city’s tradition as a place where strangers are welcome and given the opportunity to thrive.

Nevertheless, we did also argue that the Tabon leadership also made several errors of judgment upon their arrival in Accra. Their involvement in the slave trade and slavery, particularly at a time that the European powers had formally banned the trade, remains a blot on their otherwise illustrious contributions to the growth and modernization of Accra. Furthermore, their management of the group’s agricultural lands at the outskirts of the town and their consequent transformation of these lands from group ownership into private ownership created divisions, bitterness and acrimony among successive generations of the Tabon. This accounts for the numerous intra-group feuds and court cases and the estrangement of some Tabon families from the group’s activities. The mismanagement of the agricultural lands and the chaotic allocation of these lands have also contributed to the chaos, disorderliness and violence associated with the management of land in Accra since the early 20^th century.

Cite this article as: Tonah, S. (2023, October 4). Making the town: Afro-Brazilian Tabon returnees and the transformation of Accra from the early colonial times. Global Qualitative Sociology Network.

https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2023/10/04/making-the-town

References

Amos, A. M., & Ayesu, E. (2002). “I am Brazilian”: History of the Tabon, Afro-Brazilians in Accra, Ghana. Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, 6, 35–58.

By Eva Bahl, University of Göttingen

The palm oil and spices, a white-clad priestess, the omnipresent Adinkra symbols[1]… the many connections and interrelationships between Ghana and Bahia, Brazil cannot be overlooked in the research project on collective memories of enslavement[2] I’m currently involved in. In the project, we do field work in different regions of Brazil and Ghana. The aim is to understand differences and similarities, as well as entanglements, between the two world regions and on a smaller level—like between northern and southern Ghana or between the Brazilian states of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. How is the history of enslavement remembered and told? By whom? In which ways? Is the knowledge transmitted in families via religious and everyday practices, or rather in schoolbooks, or through monuments in public spaces?

African Influences (Salvador, Brazil): Bahian Food with Palm Oil. Copyright: Lucas Cé Sangalli.

But before I turn to the project and discuss some of the ambivalences and challenges of a Global Sociology with which it confronts me and my colleagues, I will briefly consider the question: what is Global Sociology? It is a sociology that requires us researchers to deal with our own positionalities and to look beyond our geographical and contextual horizon in all phases of the research process (from the first drafts and the application to the presentation of results), and on all levels (methodological, epistemological, practical) of the research. Global Sociology is “a pluralistic, multi-perspective social theory which takes non-Western societies seriously, not only as objects of sociological research and theory formation, but also—and especially—as sites of social-scientific knowledge production” (Randeria, 2001, p. 178), and it recognizes “research as a significant site of struggle between the interests and ways of knowing of the West and the interests and ways of resisting of the Other” (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999, p. 2). It aims to counter the “biases of Eurocentrism and Androcentrism” (Alatas & Sinha, 2017, p. 1). Furthermore, Global Sociology means—as Elísio Macamo argued during our first workshop (in presence, in Göttingen)—“resisting taking things for granted”[3]. It is a sociology that tries to explain global phenomena (like climate change, migration, the Covid-19 pandemic) and their effects on the daily life of people. Thus, it is a micro-sociology that looks at small-scale phenomena and compares them to similar—or very different—ones elsewhere in the world. Doing such empirical ground-level sociological research does not mean limiting ourselves to small scales. It just means using a bottom-up approach, or analyzing large-scale phenomena via analytical access to small-scale phenomena. 

Adinkra Symbols (Accra, Ghana): The sankofa bird pictured above has been adopted as an important symbol in an African Diaspora context (among others in Brazil) to represent the need to reflect on the past to build a successful future. Copyright: Lucas Cé Sangalli.

Accordingly, in my work, following Norbert Elias (2001), I understand the micro-sociological level as being closely intertwined with the macro-level, and I am interested in their interdependence. Meticulous, micro-sociological investigations with methods appropriate to the subject matter are the basis for understanding the “bigger picture”. Consequently, I align my research concerns with Julian Go when he says, “I believe that the best postcolonial studies begin from the lived experiences of colonized subjects [. . .] we need social scientific postcolonial studies, alongside postcolonial studies in the humanities” (Boatcă et al., 2018, p. 433). Accordingly, I see my contribution to a Global Sociology in an empirically grounded and actor-centered analysis of historical processes, collective memories, and global entanglements. Without going into the details of our findings so far, I will use my ongoing research on collective memories of enslavement to discuss some of the challenges that I think a Global Sociology brings with it. I will address the following aspects:

1.) Actor’s perspective

2.) Historical context

3.) Sites of knowledge production

4.) Comparison

5.) Reflexivity in respect of one’s own role

6.) Collaboration

7.) Climate impact

Entanglements (Accra, Ghana): Brazil Road named after the former enslaved people who (re)migrated from Brazil to Ghana in the 19th century. Copyright: Lucas Cé Sangalli.

1.) Actor’s perspective: Anyone engaging with the legacy of slavery—or other comparable contexts—is confronted with the fact that history tends to be written by the perpetrators, with visual and textual testimonies of historical events mostly reflecting a racist, pejorative perspective. To learn about the perspectives of the ones affected by these processes through historical data is a challenge. The question of whose voices are (or can be) heard is a constant companion of our research process. Focusing on the perspective of those involved in, and affected by, social phenomena is a major goal and strength of interpretive methods and micro-sociological perspectives. However, it poses various challenges in the current project with its long-term historical perspective. There were projects in the 20th century where researchers were still able to speak with survivors of enslavement. The biographies written by the anthropologists Zora Neale Hurston (on Oluale Kossola, a.k.a. Cudjoe Lewis 2018) and Miguel Barnet (on Esteban Montejo 1977) are outstanding. These are very valuable contemporary testimonies. In our project, however, we do not work with these historical testimonies, but with people of the present. We talk to descendants—mainly of enslaved people, but also of people who were involved in the trade and exploitation of enslaved people. So, this project is decidedly not about what the concrete historical facts were, but about what is known by today’s generations, which perspectives there are on history, what role this history and these perspective play in people’s lives, and so on. As a biographical researcher who usually studies the biographical experiences of people and how they are remembered and presented in the present (of the interview) (cf. Rosenthal, 2006), I am learning that ‘remembering’ has a different meaning in this context. The people we’ve interviewed so far mostly speak about their experiences with collective memories and discourses and the respective conflicts. So, while this is a different way of remembering, perhaps in some cases more detached from the biographical experience, I still tend to use the term ‘remembering’ because I assume it emphasizes the practice, which is what I am most interested in.

It is enormously important, and a great strength of biographical research, to give space and priority to the relevances of the interviewees over one’s own interests or interests of the research project. However, the challenge often arises that it remains unclear which historical phases and events our interviewees are referring to, and to which historical events and experiences we should relate this knowledge. For example, during our research in northern Ghana, we found that Babatu, a warlord and notorious slave raider in the late 19^th century (cf. Weiss, 2008, p. 121 ff.), was so present in the narratives of our interviewees that the question arose to what extent he occupies a proxy position in the telling of centuries of enslavement history. Thus, when it becomes clear that concrete historical experiences have not been passed on to current generations for various reasons, the question arises as to what function certain memories or discourses of memory have.

The point is to approach the following questions from the actor’s perspective: Which knowledge is transmitted, and which is not? What can be known at all, and is it “book knowledge” or incorporated knowledge? Which perspectives do today’s descendants of people who experienced enslavement have on these historical processes? There should be more research on the transgenerational transmission of enslavement experienced by relatives, and thus especially on the question of the transgenerational consequences for the descendants of enslaved people, but also of owners or traders of enslaved people.

2.) Historical context: The question of actor perspectives is closely related to the historical context. We have repeatedly found that our interviewees have a diffuse knowledge, which is mediated, for instance, through everyday family or religious contexts, or through music, while the concrete historical facts do not really play a role for them. As researchers, we are curious about which historical phases their statements refer to, but we have to live with the imprecision, or reconstruct the historical events and phases that are referred to latently.

In sociology, a social phenomenon must always be regarded as something that has become and is becoming (cf. Elias, 1987). The dangers of ahistorical thinking include: (1) mistaking phenomena that actually have a long history for new phenomena, (2) failing to recognize continuities, and (3) analyzing social phenomena as static. This is particularly true of Global Sociology for a variety of reasons.

In the case of our project, we are working on historically distant phases. Slavery was officially abolished in Brazil in 1888 (it was one of the last countries to do so), almost 150 years ago. And the first registered enslaved people were deported from Elmina, Ghana, in 1519. That is more than 500 years ago. This poses a number of challenges. First, the obvious one: we need to do a lot of historical research to be able to understand these long-term historical processes (at least to some extent). Second, we need (very good) contextual knowledge when dealing with social fields into which we have not been socialized, or when dealing with transregional processes. Third, there are always things we cannot grasp or understand. And fourth, we have to offer the reader or partner in the scientific dialogue an introduction to the respective historical and social context, which is not necessarily familiar to them. Although this may appear self-evident, I argue that it is a special challenge for Global Sociology, where research is not carried out and presented (mainly) in the context of a single nation state. This last aspect, which concerns above all the communication of our results, may become even more complicated if theoretical references are added which are not necessarily known in our scientific community.

3.) Sites of knowledge production: I constantly try to ask myself: What literature do I use? What theoretical references do I make? And I become aware again and again that German-language sociology strongly refers to, and tends to stay inside, its own nation-state “container” (see Beck 2000, p. 23ff.). This is reflected in the use of literature and theoretical references. A minimum standard for sociologists could be to quote authors from the regions of the world that they are writing about. However, this requires language skills. For example, while I am able to read and cite Portuguese and English literature, I cannot read texts in the indigenous languages of Ghana and Brazil. As the production of scientific texts mostly takes place in the languages introduced by the colonizers, this is not such a big problem in Brazil and Ghana. But when I was doing research in the Moroccan-Spanish border zone (cf. Bahl, 2021), my lack of knowledge of Arabic (and to a lesser extent Tamazight) closed my access to relevant research literature from a Moroccan perspective. The greater challenge is to access this literature from Germany. Open access formats are valuable for this, and I take a heavy suitcase full of books home with me every time I go on a research trip. In the long term, beyond this reception of locally produced literature, it is necessary to work toward ensuring that research in and from the Global South is not perceived as insignificant and regionally specific, while universally applicable theories emerge in “the West”. We need to start “provincializing Europe” (Chakrabarty, 2000). Reflecting upon my own sociological and theoretical socialization and its limits is related to a broader reflexivity in respect of my role in research and society.

4.) Reflexivity in respect of one’s own role: Referring to Simmel and Mannheim, Patricia Hill Collins (1986) discussed “the potential usefulness of identifying and using one’s own standpoint in conducting research” (p. 16). Depending on the research field, different positionalities and belongings become relevant. For me in my current research project, this is chiefly my position as a white European researcher whose ancestors may potentially[4] have been involved in slavery practices and/or colonial violence, and the fact that I am currently based at a German university. An interesting difference that has emerged is that this positionality of mine didn’t seem to play an explicit role in my research in Ghana, while it was very quickly “on the table”—and openly thematized by interview partners—while doing field work in Brazil. In Ghana, my positionality as a white European researcher was rarely openly addressed or questioned. In Brazil, on the other hand, a question that was often asked, especially in marginalized Quilombola communities, but also in a university where the majority of students saw themselves as Africans or of African descent, was: why are you white people doing this and what do we get out of it? The answer was never easy and always constituted a process of negotiation. Honesty also requires us to share our own interests, such as career building and ‘successful’ research. My assumption is that these different research experiences (among other components) are related to the difference between the two post-colonial societies: Brazil is a very diverse society with a strongly inherent racist hierarchy, while Ghana is a post-colonial nation state where the current elites are not of European descent. This kind of comparison can be very helpful in the research process.

5.) Comparison: In the project, we work with a permanent logic of comparison. We make comparisons between Ghana and Brazil, between Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, between northern and southern Ghana, and so on. This does not mean, however, that we assume that stable comparison parameters exist in the process. Rather, I argue (1) that comparison is a permanent sensitization to similarities and differences, to questions that should still be asked and facts that should still be researched; (2) the units of comparison are constructed by us as researchers: they arise from field work; and (3) as discussed above, they refer to our belongings as researchers and mutual attributions with the research subjects, since we are part of the field and comparison logic. We need to ask ourselves which ascriptions, which “we-” and “they-”images (cf. Elias, 1994) become relevant within the shifting power relations in our field. From a micro-sociological standpoint, we must ask which of these images are relevant for people who experience different social phenomena in their everyday lives, i.e., in their interactions with family members, with neighbors, or with ‘us’ as ‘researchers’. We do this by systematically comparing different cases within the units or groupings we discover in the field, and by carefully reconstructing the different ‘framings’ of interviews, group discussions and participant observation, based on the question: which cases might help us to understand more about a particular grouping and its figurations with others? As Jörg Niewöhner and Thomas Scheffer have pointed out, “objects of comparison are not found ‘out there’. They are not ready at hand. They are produced through thickening [analogously to Geertz’ thick description] contextualisations, including analytical, cross-contextual framings that are meant to facilitate comparison” (2010, p. 4). To give an example, although Rio de Janeiro is not part of our research project, visiting the museums and memorials there made us aware of how they were largely absent in Salvador and all of Bahia. And probably we wouldn’t have been aware in the same way of the common use of Adinkra symbols in theme-related cultural projects in Brazil (cf. Nascimento & Gá, 2022), of the similarities of food, religious clothing, and music (to name but a few) between Ghana and the Brazilian Northeast if we hadn’t gone to both places to look for these entanglements and differences.

Visiting Ussher Fort (Accra, Ghana) with our colleagues Ishmael Osei Boampong and Patricia Nyamekye from the University of Ghana. Copyright: Lucas Cé Sangalli.

6.) Collaboration: Above (see paragraph 4), I’ve already mentioned the question “what do we get out of it?” The subsequent negotiations often led to thinking about possible forms of cooperation. This leads me to the more general questions: With whom can I collaborate (inside and outside academia)? Who is involved in knowledge production? How can we overcome the structural inequalities in transnational research projects? The research discussed here is being conducted in cooperation with German(-based), Brazilian and Ghanaian researchers. Even if such a collaborative project is riddled with complex balances of power (related, among others, to unequal access to financial resources, international publishing platforms and travel for research and conference purposes), it leads to a broadening of horizons on both sides, and has the potential to make us aware of certain “blind spots” or presuppositions that are shaped by our respective contexts of socialization. In our case, the discussions often extend far beyond the project area: from religion and lifestyle to German migration policy and its connections with the labor shortage. But even the very banal observation by our Ghanaian colleague that he was perceived as a tourist guide when in our company at memorial sites was an enlightening insight for me. This attribution made him feel uncomfortable because he was ascribed a different social role, but above all he was seen as a competitor. The possibility and necessity of this kind of exchange and empathy with the perspectives of others, takes me to my last point.

7.) Climate impact: In their report on the restitution of African cultural assets, most of which were stolen in a colonial context, Felwine Sarr and Benedicte Savoy speak of a “new relational ethics” (2018) that must go beyond mere restitution. I think this logic can also be applied to the practice of Global Sociology: decolonization needs personal encounter and mutual understanding, critical self-reflection, openness to change and trust. The hurdles we face (or have faced) are, on the one hand, the pandemic travel restrictions or the visa policies of European authorities, which can make it difficult for colleagues from other continents to enter our country. On the other hand, flying between continents produces a clear dilemma for Global Sociology because the man-made climate change has led to an urgent need to curb such activities. “Academic mobility for field work, research dissemination and global outreach is increasingly recognized as an important contributor to the overall environmental footprint of research institutions” (Arsenault et al., 2019). I increasingly ask myself how this dilemma can be resolved. On the one hand, I always argue for an opening-up of sociology beyond its Eurocentric horizon, and I am incredibly enriched by fieldwork in Ghana and Brazil, and by my exchanges with colleagues from other continents. At the same time, I am concerned with the question of how a sociology that analyzes and criticizes global power inequalities can be organized in a way that contributes less to their amplification through climate change.

Conclusion: I’ve briefly discussed some challenges and ambivalences of empirical research in global contexts. All of them need to be, and will be, discussed further and more profoundly in our Research Network and in future publications. I’ve argued that a micro-sociological perspective can help us to explain global phenomena and their impact on people’s lives. In conclusion, one can say that with Global Sociology we try to do what every “good” sociology must do: we reflect upon our positionalities, we think about translation and perspectives, about how to understand each other, and about the impact and consequences of our work. We try to expand our sociological perspectives beyond nation-state and continental horizons which in turn confronts us with other dilemmas. During one of our first network meetings, Yvonne Berger said: Doing Global Sociology is a privilege! And we should be grateful to be able to practice it.

[1] Adinkra are symbols from the Akan Culture (based in today’s Ghana) that represent certain cultural concepts or mottos.

[2] The research project “Individual and collective memories of slavery and the slave trade: A contrastive comparison of different communities, generations and groupings in Ghana and Brazil” is led by Maria Pohn-Lauggas and Gabriele Rosenthal. Cooperation partners are Hermílio Santos (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul; Porto Alegre, Brazil) and Steve Tonah (University of Ghana; Legon, Ghana). The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG; PO 2422/3-1; RO 827/23-1) from 2022–2025.

[3] Quoted according to my minutes.

[4] I do not have any concrete knowledge of such an involvement.

Cite this article as: Bahl, E. (2023, September 19). Challenges and ambivalences of a global micro-sociology. Global Qualitative Sociology Network.

https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2023/09/19/challenges-and-ambivalences-of-a-global-micro-sociology

References

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Arsenault, J., Talbot, J., Boustani, L., Gonzalès, R., & Manaugh, K. (2019). The environmental footprint of academic and student mobility in a large research-oriented university. Environmental Research Letters, 14(9), 095001. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab33e6

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Weiss, H. (2008). Between accommodation and revivalism: Muslims, the state, and society in Ghana from the precolonial to the postcolonial era. Finnish Oriental Society.

By Martín Hernán Di Marco, University of Oslo

Over the past decades, gender-based violence has become a central topic in social sciences, as well as other academic fields. The increasing alarm about this form of harm-doing has shaped a new academic and institutional landscape in many regions of the world (Dawson & Mobayed Vega, 2023). In this context, the expanding use of the terms femicide/feminicide—the intentional killing of women and girls based on their gender—has become an indicator of social change, shifting social discourses and political transformation.

While the definition is not without analytical and methodological debate, there is consensus regarding its purpose: it aims to highlight that these killings are not isolated events, but social actions defined by how perpetrators see their victims. From this perspective, culture is key, as it provides the context in which gender unfolds and violence is performed. This was the original intention of the term when it was coined by Diana Russell (1977). Femicide underscores the gendered nature of certain forms of violence and, therefore, denounces a pervasive pattern in how femininity and masculinity are conceived.

“In memory of all those women killed by those who said they loved them”. Tigre, Buenos Aires, Argentina. July 2020.

However, most efforts have been devoted to identifying and describing the “bigger picture” of this phenomenon. This approach has impacted the existing literature: most of the studies are quantitative in nature and focused on the victims. Sociological studies reproduce this same trend, by identifying risk factors, developing risk assessment tools, discussing legal frameworks, and describing the overall patterns linked to femicide.

As a qualitative sociologist, I am interested in understanding the reasons behind people’s actions. In this context, a key question to be asked is ‘why?’. What motivates a person to perform such an extreme form of aggression? What stories and beliefs instigate these ways of harm-doing? And, most importantly, how can we prevent them? As Alfred Schutz (1976) discussed, understanding the subjective point of view is an unavoidable and necessary step to comprehend a social problem. Exploring the narratives and social trajectories of perpetrators is fundamental since they are key drivers of such violence. Unfortunately, only a few scholars examined the rationalities of those who commit the crime. I believe that the usual answers to these questions are based on prejudice, lack of evidence and enduring myths. This goes hand in hand with the current obsession of academics and state officials to produce standardised numerical data (Val Suárez, 2021).

Focusing our research questions on the aggressors’ worldviews implies, at least, two major challenges for sociologists working with a global approach (i.e., paying attention to the interconnected nature of a phenomenon and the knowledge production systems). The first one relates to comparisons. How can we analyse common patterns of violence in different countries, while maintaining a nuanced approach? How can cultural sensitivity be balanced with the understanding of cross-cutting practices and logics? Can we analyse actors in heterogeneous scenarios from a qualitative perspective? Of course, this challenge is not specific to femicide studies: it is linked to an inaugural debate in qualitative methodology (i.e., associated with the Chicago School) about its scope and context. Yet, it is also a crucial and ongoing debate amongst the members of the Global Qualitative Sociology Network.

“In March there are more femicides than days”. Santiago de Chile, Chile. March 2022. 

In this day and age—in which most of the attention is being directed to prevention—going beyond local realities and examining transnational aspects in the lives and perspectives of these men is fundamental. While focusing attention on context-specific domains has been key in theory-building and in producing information suitable for public policies, comparison between places with different social circumstances forces us to engage in a broader conversation about gender, violence, and institutions. Comparison, which has always been a central element in qualitative methodologies, fosters a better understanding of social phenomena, even when considering diverse geographical realities. Hence, developing sensitising concepts or finding broader patterns with this empirical inductive approach might push the envelope to better describe these killings.

Two examples illustrate this point. First, similar notions of love and intimate relationship emerge when interviewing these men. The blurry boundaries between the coercive control, jealousy and ‘passion’ are integral parts of the interviewee’s ideas of what a romantic relationship is. Second, from a perspective focused on the social capital, another example is the role of male friendships. Identifying the role of bystanders in ignoring, rationalising and, ultimately, covering up violence are common across countries. This key element in their lives only appeared when the principal of openness was adopted in the interviews.

A second challenge relates to the existing categories and discourses about gender-based violence and femicide. The dominance of official State discourses, institutionalised guidelines and statistical approaches has cemented ways of viewing, thinking, and studying this issue. Naturally, the theories developed are tied to the geographical nature of knowledge. The key role of international actors in this topic (most notably, the United Nations on Drugs and Crime) is fundamental to understanding the current state of affairs. As Raewyn Connell (2007) argues, the production of theories and terminologies is grounded in uneven relationships between regions. Mainstream terms are usually imported into the Global South through a global network of institutions, including scientific organisations, academic journals, educational institutions, and standardised intervention programs.

This prompts the question: which categories are dominating this field and are being used uncritically? This challenge underscores the need to rethink how femicide is understood, formulated, and scrutinised. For instance, how can we analyse the nature of the overused risk factors associated with femicide? What does, for example, adverse childhood experiences (ACE) mean to these men? The hegemony of this term—as well as other medicalising categories—result in reifying lived circumstances or events, without actually achieving a sociological understanding of their processes.

“Feminism for everyone”. Mexico City, Mexico. September 2022. 

I do believe these two challenges are not contradictory. Promoting an inductive qualitative study of perpetrators in different countries and challenging pre-existing terms to address this issue (motivation, trauma, hatred, denial, etc.) concur with a bottom-up methodological approach. It is through empirical analysis that we can build theory and contest dominant discourses that have infiltrated academia.

In my mind, both challenges should be addressed to stimulate a useful and open sociological discussion of femicide. Deciphering the perpetrators’ worldviews, accounting for the underlying logics of this crime, and challenging pre-established categories are necessary steps to pursue a nuanced understanding of this problem. The reluctance to directly inquire about the offenders and not problematising discursive hegemonies hinder our collective reflections on this issue.

Cite this article as: Di Marco, M. H. (2023, July 17). Shifting the focus of femicide research: The challenges of studying perpetrators from a global sociological perspective. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2023/07/17/shifting-the-focus-of-femicide-research/

 

References

Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Polity.

Dawson, M., & Mobayed Vega, S. (2023). The Routledge international handbook of femicide and feminicide. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003202332

Russell, D. E. H. (1977). Report on the international tribunal on crimes against women. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 2(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.2307/3346102

Schutz, A. (1976). The social world and the theory of social action. In A. Brodersen (Ed.), Collected Papers II (Vol. 15, pp. 3–19). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1340-6_1

Suárez Val, H. (2021). Marcos de Datos de Feminicidio. Reconstrucción ontológica y análisis crítico de dos datasets de asesinatos de mujeres por razones de género. Informatio, 26(1). https://doi.org/10.35643/Info.26.1.15