From rkaur at hum.ku.dk Sun Jun 1 17:50:49 2014 From: rkaur at hum.ku.dk (Ravinder Kaur) Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2014 15:50:49 +0000 Subject: [Sugarman] Schedule of forthcoming workshops, themes, places In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear all, First of all, I want to thank the organisers for inviting me ? a non-Michigan, non-Africanist ? to participate. I found the workshop extremely beneficial and relevant for more reasons than one. I wish I had been able to participate in the full programmme. So I am quite thankful for all the updates. Please count me in on future events/plans related to ?South as the future of Capitalism? and ?Global South as Idea?. As I had mentioned briefly, we are beginning with our research programme ?Emerging Worlds? (2014-18) that will set focus on the yet unfolding connections at multiple levels between Asia and Africa. The website and more information will be available sometimes next week. A heartfelt thanks for the generous and warm hospitality offered by new and old friends in Johannesburg. And hope to see you soon. Best wishes, Ravinder From: Anne Pitcher > Date: Friday 30 May 2014 17:18 To: Daniel Herwitz >, Keith Breckenridge > Cc: "sugarman at lists.wits.ac.za" > Subject: Re: [Sugarman] Schedule of forthcoming workshops, themes, places I'm assuming that with Danny's two posts we are now using the list as a discussion forum. That being the case, let me say that as one of the grant writers, I agree with Danny that it would be useful to engage more seriously with one of the core themes of the grant. As I understand it, one of our goals was to figure out how to bring theoretical and empirical work on both sides of the Atlantic into better dialogue with each other and in so doing, to foster inter-disciplinary conversations between scholars who identify more strongly with the humanities and those who are more firmly connected to the social sciences (although I discovered to my delight that at Wits, the School of Social Sciences is in the Faculty of the Humanities). But I don't think that reading the 5 or so books that Danny suggests will get us there. What I loved about the Global South conference was that it was not only inter-disciplinary but transnational and polycentric. It was interesting to find that South African academia had moved beyond the narrow ( possibly necessary?) parochialism of the anti-apartheid and immediate post-apartheid period and was finally looking to other paradigms, problems, and trajectories in other places including India, Brazil but also Mozambique, the DRC, Angola, etc. or Kinshasa, Luanda, etc. I therefore think that any conversation or any texts that engage with theory and empiricism must be transdisciplinary and comparative; transurban, cross national, multi-local, multi-ethnic. ap Anne Pitcher Professor of African Studies and Political Science Faculty Associate, Center for Political Studies University of Michigan 4700 Haven Hall 505 S. State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1045 From: Daniel Herwitz > Date: Friday, May 30, 2014 9:44 AM To: Keith Breckenridge > Cc: > Subject: Re: [Sugarman] Schedule of forthcoming workshops, themes, places Dear All Were a single workshop to be devoted to the themes I've recited, and which I think are transcribed (or jazz-riffed) from the original Mellon proposal, I think it would be text based: a serious, careful, very critical study of about five books and a couple of articles, maybe less, which illustrate the theme. Off the top of my head and this is purely for conversation purposes since the list would be equally carefully developed by interested parties, we might carefully read Charles Van Onselen, Jeff Guy, Achille and Sara's book on Johannesburg, Blank (ed. Hilton Judin), and a couple of other things, including absolutely work by Keith himself, and Derek and a couple of others. Around these books, and focused on them as materials, the thematic could be developed. I am not sure what kind of writing component might arise from this, whether it would be critically addressed (short pieces) to the archive we read, or independent. That would have to be discussed. But the point is, this would be a workshop devoted to a specificly chosen archive. And lots of time would be spent on each book or article, not one hour but four, if you see what I mean. That way, serious discussion might slowly arise through the focus of the group involved. Best Daniel On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 9:15 AM, Keith Breckenridge > wrote: Hello Danny, all I do of course agree that there is a real tension now between the careful attention to context and the desire for globally significant theory. Sometimes the problem, as you say, can pull in the other direction, with an almost solipsistic focus on the local. I think that it's fair to say that the regional historiographies all work like that here. My own view on this is that Johannesburg is a good place to write from to correct the sweeping claims of contemporary theory -- Latour, Scott, Foucault. I'm sure that there is wide agreement that attention to detail, and to the locally determined meanings of the details, really matters. And I think we all see the value in framing questions and analyses that address wide audiences. What I'm not sure about is how we can frame this specific question in relation to the work that we've done already. Perhaps it is simply a matter of asking each of the concentration areas to be attentive to the tension. But others will have better ideas, I'm sure. K On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 5:22 PM, Daniel Herwitz > wrote: Dear Keith Thank you for this. Of course I did not attend the second week of the workshop and so was not privy to the organization of themes mandated by participants. I do want to add one thing in the light of what the group seems to have evolved. Namely we have lost the initial impetus for the workshops, namely what we, with you in the lead, submitted to the Mellon Foundation as the intellectual basis for the workshops. Now this is in itself hardly catastrophic. Popular democracy is always about shifting initial principles written by the few (call it constitutional amendment), but the initial idea was a really fine one, and I think of great benefit to serious work in the South African academy and also the American. I speak of the initial intuition which those of us writing the Mellon text had, that while historical studies, and not simply historical studies but also literary studies in South Africa have suffered from an excessive case of empiricism, minute attention to detail, provincialized by a lack of cosmopolitan comparison, no doubt aided and abetted by the cultural boycotts of the late Apartheid period, the American academy has suffered the boundless projection and profiling of theory, which in response to the marginalization of the humanities from public life (especially by the media) in America, has foregrounded its best inheritance from the culture wars of the 1980s, themselves the result of American identity politics (the women's movement, black consciousness, anti-colonial/anti-military industrial leftism, etc...), into a critique of representation which generated a great deal of new and significant theory in the 1970s and 1980s but has gradually morphed into a groundless, contextual-less, floating brand which seldom lands in the robustness of context but rather at airports, academic conferences and all too many humanities centers. This bifurcation between American intellectual work and South Africa, is hardly the only thing going in either humanities worlds, and there are many other things happening. But it is central enough to warrant serious intellectual scrutiny of actual writing/scholarship in both places, which was going to be part of what would ground the workshops, or part of them. Now this project might not appeal to all, but the rapprochment between branded theory (with its particular history in America) and excessive empiricism (with its British intellectual tradition in Southern Africa combined with a strong sense of particular context, represents two kinds of provincialism, which want breaking through (breaking bad?). The idea of the actual study of texts, that is, work done in both countries, seemed a way of grounding what can otherwise be an all-over-the-place conversation seeking all manner of input into everythingness, an intellectual department store in the American mode with the theory section over on the left, the technology on the right, the discount empiricism at the back, the plastic containers in the art department, etc... Call that theory in the south. Wiser has among the most exciting breakthroughs going on already, I mean the edited volumes Achille and Sarah have done on Johannesburg, which are at once highly attentive to the details of context (the city of Joburg), and risk taking in bringing in new kinds of ideas. I might also refer to a predecessor of their fine work in the book edited by Ivan Vladislavic called Blank, which Hilton Judin put together and in which I myself had a piece in 1998. In turn it would be work identifying some really good books from America which break out, retaining interest in context, I mean real interest, not passing or superficial or trendy, and which take risks in the bringing in of new ideas (or the remaking of old) to liven the story or analysis. And speaking to the original theme of the Mellon Workshops, theory/empiricism, in the light of these serious breakthrough books. I have the feeling, and please tell me I'm wrong if I am, that Derek Peterson, and you yourself, would appreciate at least one of the retinue of workshops to follow on this theme. I certainly would, for what it's worth. Best Daniel On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 3:44 AM, Keith Breckenridge > wrote: Dear all, My apologies for filling your mailboxes. At the end of the meeting on May 17 we discussed, at some interesting length, the plans for forthcoming workshops and their themes. We agreed that it would be good to be able to support special issue concentrations that emerge from the main workshops, as one means of encourage tangible outputs. That will obviously be budget dependent, and something we can discuss on this list. We also agreed on the following sequence. The dates and names are still tentative. Please do speak up, ideally on the list, if you can see a problem or would like a different arrangement. Scheduled Workshops 2. Intellectual property and curatorship in the digital humanities * Ann Arbor, November 6 - 17, 2014 3. Public spaces, informality and infrastructures in the desegregating city Joburg, Feb - May 2015, ideally to link with Antipode Workshop, last week of March (?), and Coordinating with Capitalism from the South 4. Legacies of the imperial archive in post-colonial history and museums * Linked to Social History after Edward Thompson, Sparks & Eley?, 2015. * & Toxicity in Ann Arbor in October, 2015. 5. Cultural studies of science and technology in Africa * Joburg, June - August 2016 6. Narrative, visual forms and biopolitics in the medical humanities * Ann Arbor, April - May 2017. 7. Textual analysis, performance, visual culture and the state in the making of African publics June - Oct 2017 -- Place? Currently not scheduled: * Interrogating Neoliberalism as idea and explanation * The politics of literacy, legibility and expert knowledges in Africa * Vernacular literatures in the making of transnational movements and subjects & Province and diaspora in African intellectual history * The politics of heritage -- Keith Breckenridge W I S E R - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272 | Fax: 0867654213 | Web: wiser.wits.ac.za This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. _______________________________________________ Sugarman mailing list Sugarman at lists.wits.ac.za http://lists.wits.ac.za/mailman/listinfo/sugarman -- Daniel Herwitz Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor Department of Comparative Literature University of Michigan 2012 Tisch Hall 435 South State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003 -- Keith Breckenridge W I S E R - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272 | Fax: 0867654213 | Web: wiser.wits.ac.za -- Daniel Herwitz Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor Department of Comparative Literature University of Michigan 2012 Tisch Hall 435 South State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003 This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. _______________________________________________ Sugarman mailing list Sugarman at lists.wits.ac.zahttp://lists.wits.ac.za/mailman/listinfo/sugarman This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pitchera at umich.edu Mon Jun 2 15:53:46 2014 From: pitchera at umich.edu (Anne Pitcher) Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 09:53:46 -0400 Subject: [Sugarman] Biennial Conference Journal of Southern African Studies Message-ID: Dear all, The editors of JSAS have asked me to circulate a call for papers with respect to their First biennial conference to be held 7-10 August 2015 in Livingstone, Zambia. As the theme directly relates to many of the themes we just discussed (and criticized) at our workshop, it is quite relevant to this group. It would be interesting to put together a panel or two to present at the conference. Best, Anne Anne Pitcher Professor of African Studies and Political Science Faculty Associate, Center for Political Studies University of Michigan 4700 Haven Hall 505 S. State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1045 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: JSAS 1st Biennial Conference Call for Papers.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 16543 bytes Desc: not available URL: From Pamila.Gupta at wits.ac.za Tue Jun 3 12:50:46 2014 From: Pamila.Gupta at wits.ac.za (Pamila Gupta) Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2014 10:50:46 +0000 Subject: [Sugarman] Last Call for Abstracts: Toxicity, Waste, Detritus--due June 6 Message-ID: Hello all, Thus far we have an exciting set of abstracts for the toxicity themed group. Just a friendly last reminder for those who would still like to join us to submit your abstract online (please follow the instructions for uploading below) by this FRIDAY June 6th. Thanks, Pamila and Gabrielle From: Gabrielle Hecht [mailto:hechtg at umich.edu] Sent: 15 May 2014 10:18 AM To: sugarman at lists.wits.ac.za Subject: [Sugarman] Toxicity, Waste, Detritus: Abstract solicitation and upload Instructions Dear all, The "Toxicity, Detritus and Waste" group (managed by Pamila Gupta and me) met this week to discuss ways of moving forward with this theme. In the long term, we hope to produce a collection of short, experimental verbal or visual essays (~2000 words), aimed at venues such as Africa is a Country Somatosphere Chimurenga and others (suggestions welcome). Steps toward that goal include articulating preliminary ideas, reading works in common, holding a workshop, and others to be determined. Step 1: sharing preliminary abstracts We agreed to share preliminary abstracts: low-stakes paragraphs merely intended to sketch out initial ideas about what we each want to explore. Capitalizing on the momentum we've built, we agreed to do these by TOMORROW, Friday 16 May. We'd initially thought we'd upload these into Dropbox, but Natasha heroically seized the day and built a WordPress site. So, please follow the instructions below to upload your abstract directly onto our Wordpress site! It's very simple, we promise. NOTE: We welcome your participation even if you couldn't attend the retreat (and thus the discussion). Please just let me and Pamila (Pamila.Gupta at wits.ac.za) know that you'd like to join us. We will ask that you too upload an abstract, but we'll give you an extra week to do it (i.e., until Friday 23 May). Please do pipe up soon: we will create a separate email list for this theme, so as not to burden the whole Sugarman site. If we don't know about your interest, we can't include you! These abstracts will enable us to identify and clarify common interests and sharpen our focus and intentions. We can consider them as provisional, so you need not feel that you're locking yourself in! Step 2: sharing bibliographic material In order to have a common base, we ask everyone to submit up to 5 bibliographic items pertaining to our theme by 15 June. These can be texts, video, artistic material, etc. We will send more detailed guidelines later -- for now this is just a heads up. Step 3: setting a workshop date By the end of August, we aim to have set a date for a workshop sometime in the 2nd half of 2015. Keep an eye out for emails on this point. Looking forward to interesting collaborations! WORDPRESS UPLOAD INSTRUCTIONS A. Overview As mentioned above, Natasha Vally went ahead with setting up our site, and with writing instructions for all of us. THANK YOU Natasha! The intention is to have a very simple website that we can use for collaboration and sharing of text, video, audio and pictures. We will also use it for our longer term scheduling. View this as an experimental space -- we can update and shape it as needed. B. Wordpress Instructions These are really very simple and, if you have email, should not be a challenge at all. In order to keep this fun and collaborative, we need everyone to "buy in" by doing your bit! To add your abstract to the site http://toxicityandwaste.wordpress.com/ 1. Go to the Wordpress login page at https://en.wordpress.com/wp-login.php 2. As your username: toxicitywastedetritus password: toxicityandwastepassword (Note: if you already have a Wordpress account, you'll need to log out of that and log back in with the above username) 3.You will be taken to the Toxicity and Waste Wordpress site 4. On the left you'll see a tab that says "pages", click on "all pages" 5. If you scroll down you will see a page called "preliminary abstracts" and when you hover your mouse under it you will see "edit" click that 6. Now you just need to insert your paragraph into the block, below the ones already there. Please format your text following the ones that are already there: title in bold, your name and affiliation in italics, then your abstract in regular font. 7.Once you are done, click "update" on the right hand side of the page (it is is a blue button) 8. Done! You can view all the abstracts and all other information at http://toxicityandwaste.wordpress.com/ If you are having serious issues, you can email natasha.vally at gmail.com for assistance. But please don't just ask her to do it for you -- give it your best effort first! Closer to June, we will resend instructions on how to add your bibliographic suggestions. They are very similar to the instructions above. Gabrielle Hecht Professor of History, University of Michigan Director, Program in Science, Technology, and Society Associate Director, African Studies Center -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nrhunt at umich.edu Thu Jun 5 02:29:03 2014 From: nrhunt at umich.edu (Nancy Hunt) Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 20:29:03 -0400 Subject: [Sugarman] Outcomes--Global South as an Idea | Detroit-Jo'burg as a Paradoxical Pair In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: dear all, Thanks for this Keith and to you and all at Wiser for such a gracious, stimulating time. My recollections and thoughts are the following: 1) That we thought it might be an excellent idea to enfold parts of 3 and 4 together. I would pleased to continue to work on this theme as a stand-alone, but we did back off the initial idea of launching this theme in Ann Arbor with 20 some persons (perhaps 12-15 from UM) from in and outside the Africa box taking a stand on the subject for a spare 5 minutes, and then mounting these on a website for further discussion. We did not want to jettison the theme but rather link it to other critical, theoretical, and methodological issues. 2) What also emerged was the idea of linking ?Global South as an Idea? to the idea of Detroit as a city in the Global South. By the end of our discussions, the idea emerged of Cath Burns and I using the original Mellon biopower, medical humanities and visual culture theme to undertake work on the problematics of how or whether Joburg and Detroit count (and for whom) as cities of the Global South, especially in relation to health (broadly defined), medicine, healing, pathology, well-being, and the like. Cath and I managed to begin brainstorming on this issue in Joburg just before I left, including in relation to her larger medical humanities goals and funding. Howard Stein and Damola Osinulu have kindly agreed to join with me in organizing the Ann Arbor-UM effort; indeed, we will be meeting on 1 July to begin discussions about how best to proceed, with likely a first significant meeting happening in Detroit-Ann Arbor in April 2017 for a full two weeks during a Detroit Semester when such issues are already being taught and diverse field sites are worked out for visits; and a Jo?burg followup probably one year later. We are aiming at a special issue of a major journal discussing the findings, as well as an article in The Lancet setting out our ambitions/conclusions. In Ann Arbor, we will involve expertise coming out of DAAS (notably Damani Partridge given his wonderful student film laboratory experiment of last year, but also UM?s best historians and other scholars of Detroit), Public Health, Medicine, STS, Architecture & Urban Planning (Andrew Herscher??already working on trash/waste I believe), History, Anthropology, and the Detroit Semester. We are also mostly likely aiming to involve Wayne State faculty, notably Todd Meyers, medical anthropologist and George Canguilhem translator there (whose theoretical texts we may use): Meyers is already working on matters Detroit. The work will in many senses be a laboratory for critical, comparative medical humanities. All the other Mellon themes will be relevant and desirable to embrace: toxicity, capitalisms, the South as an Idea, and critical theory focused on reading, writing, the visual, the aesthetic, and the like (Salt & Cedar will be helpful here hand provide a South African-Detroit tinge) At the same time, we will with Howard?s help aim at assembling core social epidemiological facts and sorting out their significance, while also seeking to bring these into focus in and through the humanistic, the poetic, the religious (the Pentecostal), and the digital. THUS, as other calls have been, this one remains VERY wide open. If you would like to be involved, have an idea, abstract, criticism, or objection, please do direct these my way before 30 June. I, in turn, will report on our first Ann Arbor meeting and these contributions in due course. Howard and Damola and Cath have vetted none of this text yet, so please do know that all remains under discussion. It would be especially wonderful to have some additional South African participation. Again, many many thanks to the entire Jo?burg team for a marvelous time, Nancy Hunt On May 29, 2014, at 2:57 AM, Keith Breckenridge wrote: > Dear all, > > If you haven't yet completed the assessment survey on the first workshop please do so now; to date we have a small group of responses and it would be good to have a bigger group. The survey is available from links off http://wiser.wits.ac.za. > > For the purposes of planning I wanted to remind the list that we have five concentration areas, each with two or more organisers. These groups have different plans for their work, and some of those have already been posted here. If you have questions please feel free to post them to the general list. > > 1) Toxicity, waste, detritus -- Gabrielle Hecht and Pamila Gupta > 2) Capitalism from the South -- Sharad Chari and Howard Stein > 3) Global South as Idea -- Achille Mbembe, Nancy Rose Hunt and Adedamola Osinulu > 4) Cultural theory from the Global South -- Sarah Nuttall, Jennifer Wenzel and Joey Slaughter > 5) States from the South -- Anne Pitcher and Claire Benit-Gbaffou > > There was some discussion of a sixth concentration area around performance, which seems like a good thing to me. > > Many thanks, K > > --- > > > > > > -- > Keith Breckenridge W I S E R - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272 | Fax: 0867654213 | Web: wiser.wits.ac.za > This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. > _______________________________________________ > Sugarman mailing list > Sugarman at lists.wits.ac.za > http://lists.wits.ac.za/mailman/listinfo/sugarman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From burns at breckenridge.org.za Thu Jun 5 06:11:34 2014 From: burns at breckenridge.org.za (Catherine Burns) Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2014 04:11:34 +0000 Subject: [Sugarman] Outcomes--Global South as an Idea | Detroit-Jo'burg as a Paradoxical Pair In-Reply-To: <538fb9ea.c269b40a.4d62.ffffaeb5SMTPIN_ADDED_BROKEN@mx.google.com> References: <538fb9ea.c269b40a.4d62.ffffaeb5SMTPIN_ADDED_BROKEN@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <158771493-1401941385-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-10079684-@b26.c5.bise7.blackberry> Thanks to Nancy and hello all, The Jhb part of this engagement could well draw on emerging and well established health and medical ethnographies of Joburg, linking our work to central themes of African Migration and Wits people in Sociology (Lorena Nunez and others), Anthropology (Nolwazi Mkhwanazi and co), and Visual Arts, History, Public Health, Demography, Community Health, Health Economics, and Family Medicine here at Wits. An event at Wiser last night on migrancy and health as well as an exhibition many of you saw at WAM (Wits Art Museum) provoked rich ideas. A current Wiser linked Medical Humanities project on tissues, transplants, transfusion in Jhb works with artists, nephrologists, haematologists, nurses, therapists, anatomists, cultural and social theorists, religious analysts, psychologists and literary theorists on board. Here I think that the way people in Detroit face and respond to health and medical rights and aspirations in the face of food and social vulnerability, rising hypertension and kidney diseases, addictions and dependencies, STIs, depression, child health, could chime with work on this project in and around Jhb. Entities like Wits Medical School, Hillbrow Day Maternity Clinic, innovative city health centres for young men, Chiawelo Community Centre and so on can be examined as centres of social and medical expertise in the entire region, and can be juxtaposed with crumbling and poorly run sister institutions, some of them minutes away from each other. We imagine Detroit-Ann Arbor will have similar uneven geographies of health, medicine and healing. Like Nancy I welcome Witsies on this list from Media, Politics, Philosophy, CISA, Music, and Film, to expand, shape, work with this theme. Warmest wishes, Cath -----Original Message----- From: Nancy Hunt Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 20:29:03 To: Keith Breckenridge Cc: Subject: Re: [Sugarman] Outcomes--Global South as an Idea | Detroit-Jo'burg as a Paradoxical Pair _______________________________________________ Sugarman mailing list Sugarman at lists.wits.ac.za http://lists.wits.ac.za/mailman/listinfo/sugarman From howstein at umich.edu Tue Jun 10 16:34:00 2014 From: howstein at umich.edu (Howard Stein) Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 10:34:00 -0400 Subject: [Sugarman] Capitalism from the South: Call for abstracts and readings In-Reply-To: <0A7507A7310AB24FBD25341240F2A9692AB75B6B@Elpis.ds.WITS.AC.ZA> References: <0A7507A7310AB24FBD25341240F2A9692AB75B6B@Elpis.ds.WITS.AC.ZA> Message-ID: Dear All: Just a little reminder that Sharad and I are very much looking forward to receiving your brief abstracts on topics related to "capitalism from the south" along with five recommended readings. Topics discussed at the meeting in Bakubung and related details are below. Please try to get this to us by June 15. (sharad.chari at wits.ac.za; howstein at umich.edu). With all best wishes, Howard and Sharad On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 6:14 AM, Sharad Chari wrote: > Dear All, > > A group of us met over 'capitalist lunch' at Bakubung to discuss various > themes with respect to 'capitalism from the south' or 'southern critiques > of capital' and related themes. Some of the things that came up: > > - Southern critiques of capital/ capitalism > - Critiques of 'mono economics' from a development economics perspective > - Jane Guyer's Marginal Gains and lived economies > - Margins, traffic jams as sites of blockage and productivity (marginal or > informal activity) > - Biometric cash transfers as a way of dealing with identity in the > absence of a biopolitical state > - Property relations and indirect rule in Africa, minerals and special > rights in property > - Art markets and the commodification of 'African art' > - Lawyers from Brazil and China, and the place of SA corporate law firms > - Peter Braithwaite's Regulatory Capitalism > - James Hodge (sp?) and critical institutionalism > - Financial literacy/ numeracy > - Non-capitalist economic activity, Gibson-Graham's alternative economies, > the real economy of fishing in Lake Victoria > - Environmental thought, Marxism and Capitalism - Jason Moore, Fernando > Coronil > - Dow Chemical's acquisition of Union Carbide > - The Corporation as an organisational form > - Dispossession, extraction and climate change > - Crises of futurity, capital accumulation and the accumulation of carbon > - Pentacostalism and the prosperity gospel, 'winner's chapel', Pentacostal ccupation > of old industrial buildings, middle class aspiration > - Informal economy, consumption, housing > > As you see, it is quite an array of themes (and forgive me if they are > incomplete, but you will appreciate that they are difficult to summarise!) > Yet, there was a sense that it might be worth trying to formalize what > it might mean to interrogate Capitalism from the South from different > perspectives and across the human sciences. We expressed an interest in > sharing readings on these topics, and of reconvening with papers for > journal special issues (to be determined by the sets of papers that might > logically group together). > > The idea was to have a workshop on 'Capitalism from the South' sometime > in the future, an additional day tacked onto one of the other > WiSER/Wits-Michigan exchanges, which would also include a few others whose > work is germane to the topic (Jane Guyer, Keith Hart, and various others > come to mind, including several former Michigan Anthrohistorians including > of course Coronil but also David Pedersen, Marina Welker and others, and > Ravinder Kaur - this decision should of course be a product of conversation > amongst the working group that emerges from this.) We talked about aiming > for papers next year, and a workshop either next year or the following. > > If you are interested, please send a short paragraph abstract and 5 key > readings that from your perspective attend to the topic of 'capitalism > from the South' by June 15 to me (sharad.chari at wits.ac.za) copied to > Howard (howstein at umich.edu). Please note that whether or not you were at > Bakubung, if you are part of the broader Michigan-Wits community interested > in this theme, we welcome your abstracts and 5 key readings. > > All Best, > Sharad > > ------------------------------ > *From:* Gabrielle Hecht [hechtg at umich.edu] > *Sent:* Thursday, May 15, 2014 10:17 AM > *To:* sugarman at lists.wits.ac.za > *Subject:* [Sugarman] Toxicity, Waste, Detritus: Abstract solicitation > and upload Instructions > > Dear all, > > The "Toxicity, Detritus and Waste" group (managed by Pamila Gupta and > me) met this week to discuss ways of moving forward with this theme. In the > long term, we hope to produce a collection of short, experimental verbal or > visual essays (~2000 words), aimed at venues such as Africa is a Country > Somatosphere > Chimurenga > and others (suggestions welcome). Steps > toward that goal include articulating preliminary ideas, reading works in > common, holding a workshop, and others to be determined. > > *Step 1: sharing preliminary abstracts* > > We agreed to share preliminary abstracts: low-stakes paragraphs merely > intended to sketch out initial ideas about what we each want to explore. > Capitalizing on the momentum we've built, we agreed to do these by *TOMORROW, > Friday 16 May. *We'd initially thought we'd upload these into Dropbox, > but Natasha heroically seized the day and built a WordPress site. So, > please follow the instructions below to upload your abstract directly onto > our Wordpress site! It's very simple, we promise. > > NOTE: We welcome your participation even if you couldn't attend the > retreat (and thus the discussion). Please just let me and Pamila ( > Pamila.Gupta at wits.ac.za) know that you'd like to join us. We will ask > that you too upload an abstract, but we'll give you an extra week to do it > (i.e., until Friday 23 May). *Please do pipe up soon: we will create a > separate email list for this theme, so as not to burden the whole Sugarman > site. If we don't know about your interest, we can't include you!* > > These abstracts will enable us to identify and clarify common interests > and sharpen our focus and intentions. We can consider them as provisional, > so you need not feel that you're locking yourself in! > > > *Step 2: sharing bibliographic material* > > In order to have a common base, we ask everyone to submit up to 5 > bibliographic items pertaining to our theme by *15 June*. These can be > texts, video, artistic material, etc. We will send more detailed guidelines > later -- for now this is just a heads up. > > > *Step 3: setting a workshop date* > > By the end of August, we aim to have set a date for a workshop > sometime in the 2nd half of 2015. Keep an eye out for emails on this point. > > > Looking forward to interesting collaborations! > > *WORDPRESS UPLOAD INSTRUCTIONS* > > > *A. Overview * > > > As mentioned above, Natasha Vally went ahead with setting up our site, > and with writing instructions for all of us. THANK YOU Natasha! The > intention is to have a very simple website that we can use for > collaboration and sharing of text, video, audio and pictures. We will also > use it for our longer term scheduling. View this as an experimental space > -- we can update and shape it as needed. > > > *B. Wordpress Instructions* > > These are really very simple and, if you have email, should not be a > challenge at all. In order to keep this fun and collaborative, we need > everyone to "buy in" by doing your bit! > > To add your abstract to the site http://toxicityandwaste.wordpress.com/ > > 1. Go to the Wordpress login page at > https://en.wordpress.com/wp-login.php > > 2. As your > *username*: toxicitywastedetritus > *password*: toxicityandwastepassword > > *(Note: if you already have a Wordpress account, you'll need to log > out of that and log back in with the above username)* > > > 3.You will be taken to the Toxicity and Waste Wordpress site > > 4. On the left you'll see a tab that says "pages", *click* on "all > pages" > > 5. If you scroll down you will see a page called "preliminary > abstracts" and when you hover your mouse under it you will see "edit" > *click* that > > 6. Now you just need to insert your paragraph into the block, below > the ones already there. Please format your text following the ones that are > already there: title in bold, your name and affiliation in italics, then > your abstract in regular font. > > 7.Once you are done, *click* "update" on the right hand side of the > page (it is is a blue button) > > 8. Done! You can view all the abstracts and all other information at > http://toxicityandwaste.wordpress.com/ > > If you are having serious issues, you can email natasha.vally at gmail.com for > assistance. But *please* don't just ask her to do it for you -- give it > your best effort first! > > Closer to June, we will resend instructions on how to add your > bibliographic suggestions. They are very similar to the instructions above. > > > > *Gabrielle Hecht* > *Professor of History, **University of Michigan* > *Director, *Program in Science, Technology, and Society > > *Associate Director, *African Studies Center > > > > > > This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. > > > _______________________________________________ > Sugarman mailing list > Sugarman at lists.wits.ac.za > http://lists.wits.ac.za/mailman/listinfo/sugarman > > -- Dr. Howard Stein Professor Department of Afroamerican and African Studies Adjunct Professor Department of Epidemiology University of Michigan, 4700 Haven Hall 505 S. State St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Phone 734 763-5519 Fax 734 763-0543 Office Haven Hall 5514 United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Economic Report for Africa, 2014-"Dynamic Industrial Policy in Africa: Innovative Institutions, Effective Processes and Flexible Mechanisms" (Principal Co-author) http://repository.uneca.org/unecawebsite/?q=eroa#.UzmTQhDijv4 "Beyond the World Bank Agenda: An Institutional Approach to Development" (University of Chicago Press, 2008) http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=269209 "Good Growth and Governance in Africa: Rethinking Development Strategies" (Oxford University Press, January 2012) (edited with Joseph Stiglitz, Akbar Noman and Kwesi Botchwey) http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Economics/Developmental/Regional/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5OTY5ODU3OA == "Gendered Insecurities, Health and Development in Africa" (Routledge Studies in Development Economics, July, 2012) (edited with Amal Fadlalla, ) http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/books/details/9780415597845/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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