NAB XVIII 2019

Much of the ongoing violent conflict
in the Eastern Democratic Republic of
Congo is related to both volunteer and
forced migration of Kinyarwanda speakers
in the past, and linked disputes of autochthony,
identity, and access to land.
In the course of one of the most recent
population movements in the region, the
massive, but until now non-documented,
migration of Hutu peasants from North
Kivu to Ituri, one can already observe
the development of similar conflict lines.
By empirically analysing the migration
of Hutu toward, and their settlement in,
Ituri, as well as the rumours and stereotypes
travelling with this population
movement, this research project will conceptualise
the Banyarwanda movement,
the migration of Kinyarwanda speakers,
as a “travelling idea” which connects and
reconnects various actors along its trajectory
and results in a variety of informal
conflictual institutions and assemblages
which can both trigger and solve conflict.
Migration Control, Forced Immobility
and Violent Mobilization in the Border
Triangle of Burkina Faso, Benin, and
Niger
Research Team: Uli Beisel,
Martin Doevenspeck, Kamal Donko,
Abou-Bakari Imorou, Daouda Traoré
The externalized European “migration management”
in West Africa has technologically
modernised and militarised border posts
threatening visa-free travel, freedom of settlement,
and borderland economies in parts
of the Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS). At the same time,
one can observe intensified and asymmetrical
violent conflict in some of these borderlands.
This project aims to understand
to what extent forced immobility relates to
violent mobilisation and constitutes an unexpected
result of European migration control
on the African continent. The project
conducts a multi-sited ethnography at the
border triangle of Burkina Faso, Benin, and
Niger, studying the various practices and
ramifications of movement and stasis and
their relations. Migration control, forced
immobility, and violent mobilisation as a
paradigmatic case of multiplicity are also examined,
shedding light on the consequences
of how Europe is situated in Africa and, in
turn, of how Africa and Africans are situated
in the world.
Research Section:
Moralities
Health Discourses as Moral Communication?
Linguistic Case Studies
from Ivory Coast and Cameroon
Research Team: Martina Drescher,
Oumarou Boukari, Jean-Benoît Tsofack
The research project zooms in on moral
communication in Ivory Coast and Cameroon.
It adopts a comparative perspective
and engages with everyday moral talk in
the domain of health. Since the articulation
of ordinary ethics and language is still
under-investigated, the research team aims
to contribute to this rather new intersectional
field of study by bringing forward a
specific linguistic understanding of moral
communication. The project refers to constructivist
and phenomenological conceptualisations
of ethics, assuming that there
are no moral phenomena, but only moral
communication about phenomena. According
to such a view, conversationalists
constantly and co-constructively
bring about the moral
meaning of a state of affair or
an event. The paramount aim
is to investigate the interactive
processes by which moralities
emerge and are negotiated in
communication.
Photo: Martina Drescher
Religious Engineering. The
Making of Moralities,
Development and Religion
in Niger
Research Team: Ibrahim
Bachir Abdoulaye, Hamissou
Rhissa Achaffert, Paula Schrode,
Eva Spies, Mahaman Tidjani Alou
The interdisciplinary research group studies
religious projects of transformation in
Niger in their relation to international development
activities. Understanding such
projects of improving, developing, or
transforming Nigerien society as mutually
influencing ethical projects, the study
explores moralities in the making. Along
the lines of different cases, it will scrutinise
how actors refer to “religion” as well
as to other actors, projects of transformation,
donors, target groups, and the state,
and ask how and which moralities are
generated in and through such multiple
processes of relating. Ethics/moralities
are thus not conceptualised as discrete
principles and rules that clash in contexts
of competing transformative projects, but
as outcomes of the practices and performances
of “doing ethics”.
Moral Geographies of Re-Existence:
Socio-cultural Practices and Visions
of a Good Life in Afro-descendant
Communities in Salvador da Bahia
(Brazil) and Cartagena de Indias
(Colombia)
Research Team: Valerie Gruber,
Eberhard Rothfuß, Livio Sansone
This research project sheds light on the
ways in which Afro-descendant communities
resist and re-exist in postcolonial
and post-slavery Latin America. The focus
is on Salvador da Bahia (Brazil) and
Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), two
major arrival ports of the transatlantic
trade in enslaved Africans, recognised as
UNESCO World Heritage since the 1980s.
In these traumatic places, the research
team collaborates with Afro-descendant
leaders and young artists from peri-urban
neighbourhoods which tend to be “off the
map” of many tourists, researchers, and
political actors. Applying ethnographic,
documentary, and participatory action
research methods, they jointly explore the
socio-structural, moral-cultural, and identity-related
dimensions of transformation
stimulated by arts-based community initiatives.
While breaking new ground in
the field of moral geographies, this project
adopts a transdisciplinary approach of
knowledge co-production, fostering dialogues
between diverse theoretical, methodological,
and practical experiences from
Africa, Latin America, and Europe.
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