The Center for African Studies at The Ohio State University will sponsor a conference on the territorial origins of African civil conflict and conflict-alleviating institutions that integrate localities into national political and economic development processes. The conference will take place at the Pietermaritzburg campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, January 29-30, 2010. The University of Kwazulu-Natal will cosponsor the conference.

While conflict situations in Africa have received significant scholarly and media attention in recent decades, less attention has been paid to the long tradition of peacemaking that kept its societies in peaceful equilibrium. This conference seeks to examine successful handling of potential conflicts that have been resolved in their early stages, as well as the range of ancient, historic and contemporary tools for mediation. WARA/WARC invites proposals on traditional and contemporary methods of avoiding and resolving conflicts in the past and the present.

Migration is a rich and controversial field, relevant for current political, sociological and media debates. In a globalized world, characterized by increasing cultural diversity and societal complexity, discussions about migration, integration, assimilation and (inter)cultural identity, call for a nuanced and in-depth discussion of the way in which people with different cultural backgrounds (try to and have to) live together and shape their cultural self-understanding. A comprehensive and thorough insight in these matters asks for a study of their long term development, and thus for a multifaceted historical perspective. The acknowledgment of this necessity forms the starting point and scientific backbone of the conference.

Alors que Nouadhibou vient de vivre son premier siècle d’existence, aucun ouvrage n’est encore dédié à la ville. Les articles mêmes sont rares. Ce projet de publication ambitionne de combler cette lacune. Nous nous efforcerons de rassembler 15 à 20 articles en français, de chercheurs issus de disciplines et de pays divers sur des aspects multiples de la réalité urbaine de la seconde ville mauritanienne. Partant de travaux de recherche menés actuellement dans le cadre du programme PACOBA , Mohammed Said ould Ahmedou, historien et directeur du Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches Historiques à l’Université de Nouakchott, et Benjamin Acloque, anthropologue rattaché au Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale du Collège de France, chargés de la direction de la publication, cherchent à élargir le panel des contributeurs et les sujets abordés. La sortie du livre est espérée en 2010.

Contemporary conflicts produce zones of war, violence, displacement, and resettlement in which social relations, livelihoods, and community structures undergo transformations. Forms of identity are disrupted and reconfigured within families, ethnicities, and nations. In short or long-term conflict situations, actors also demonstrate flexibility, innovation, and solidarity by strategically employing sociocultural resources in response to emerging community needs and changing realities. Community leaders and international actors, including governments, civil society, and humanitarian aid organizations, often seek to seek to influence and shape those responses on local and global scales. This panel examines the ways in which conflict and post-conflict settings engender new forms of social organization, participation, cultural production and communication and the broader implications of these adaptive strategies for communities living with and recovering from recent experiences of conflict.

Contributions are sought (and encouraged) from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Although we strongly encourage graduate students, we also welcome submissions from undergraduates, professionals, post-doctoral researchers, lecturers, professors, activists, and practitioners. Abstracts or descriptions of the presentations should be no longer than 250 words and should include contact information, name, mailing address, telephone number, affiliation, department, and email address. Please respond no later than March 5, 2009. The ASA deadline for completion of the panel proposal including all membership and conference registrations for participating members is March 15.

Both ‘border theory’ and border studies as a field owe much of their cross-disciplinary origins and development to scholars of the American Southwest. By the late 1990s, spurred by the rapid development of the European Union, Europeanist scholars had contributed not only a wealth of empirical studies but also significant theoretical insights and concepts to border studies. What then of Africa, the peripheral poor relation of the area studies’ family? African borders have often been seen as incomplete or exceptional in relation to mainstream border theory – due to their supposed porosity, negotiability, arbitrariness, and lack of impact on popularly rooted social identities. Increasingly, however, Africanist scholars are making two arguments concerning the supposed exceptionalism of African borders. Firstly, many African borders are not indeed as irrelevant, porous and arbitrary as widely assumed. Secondly, many of the characteristics of African borders, in their diversity, are also present elsewhere. With increasingly global theorising, the US-Mexico and European borders may well turn out to be the exceptions to the global norm. African borders will contribute to helping us illuminate the functioning and meaning of borders in the global context. It is this process of bringing theory into Africa and
Africa into theory which guides the present conference.