5 - 2014 - CODESRIA

2015 Africa Conference at The University of Texas at Austin: Development, Urban Space, and Human Rights in Africa

Deadline: November 30, 2014

April 3-5, 2015
Austin, Texas

Development, which has always been intertwined with human rights, is increasingly linked to the fate of urban spaces and urban livelihoods. Questions about poverty, economic growth, quality of life, social inequality, human rights and citizenship are framed through the lens of urban planning and development policies. Whether indigenously derived or externally influenced/imposed, development strategies for Africa are based on visions of alternative futures that seek to redefine social relations and spatial organization both within the continent and abroad. The social, political, and cultural landscapes envisioned and created under the context of development highlight the historic and ongoing challenges that frame efforts to transform Africa’s development trajectory. The goal of this year’s conference is to generate interdisciplinary insights that can interrogate development paradigms and intervention practices as they relate to urban space and human rights in Africa.

What does development mean in the context of indigenous strategies of self-determination and global intervention? How do notions of development shape urban space and urban policies in Africa? In what ways have development strategies affected human rights? How is development conceptualized, and how does this advance or foreclose intervention practices? How can development related issues be conceptualized in contexts of vulnerability and crises that arise across urban, government, or individual levels? In what ways do individual voices inform collective strategies that address development, and how do these voices support or contradict dominant/external development goals? How do indigenous collectives and global activists define human rights and urban rights, and how can these definitions shift notions of development?

Potential topics may include:

Development Debates
Narratives of development
Development and the aid industry
Development Paradigms and Conceptualizations of Development
Urban Space and Development Practices
Human Rights Debates
Intervention in Development Issues
Intervention in Human Rights
Urban Rights, Rights to the City
African Development Strategies
Sustainable Development
Gender and Development
Entrepreneurship and Development
Insurgent Development Practices
Methodologies of Development
Human Rights and Border Issues
Urban Informalization/Informality and Citizenship
Social Exclusion, Displacement, and Urban Marginalization
Rhetoric and culture of international human rights
Africom and Intervention
NGO’s and MCC’s and Prospects for Development
Sanctions for Better or Worse (Zimbabwe, Sudan, etc.)
Intellectual Property and Struggle over Resources
_ Urban Planning and Development Strategies
Development and Land and Water Rights
Dependency and Human Rights Issues
Intellectual Property and Struggle over Resources
Concepts of Under-Development, Urban Space, and Human Rights
Education for Development
Children and Youth: development strategies for/impacts, rights and life prospects
Development, Imagined futures, and existing social realities
Development and perceptions of futurity (state-directed conceptualizations of pathways to future progress, notions of risk-laden futures, etc.)

Selected papers for publication will be competitive and we encourage papers that engage critical perspectives and are empirically informed.

As with all our previous conferences, participants will be drawn from different parts of the world. Submitted papers will be assigned to particular panels according to similarities in theme, topic, discipline, or geographical location. Papers can also be submitted together as a panel.

Additionally, selected papers will be published in book form. This conference also has a commitment to professional development which will be fostered through workshops in writing, publishing, and conference presentation. The conference will also provide ample time for professionals from various disciplines and geographical locations to interact, exchange ideas, and receive feedback. Graduate students are especially encouraged to attend and present papers and will be partnered with a senior scholar to encourage their own growth as scholars.

The deadline for submitting paper proposals is November 30, 2014. Proposals should include a 250-word abstract and title, as well as the author’s name, address, telephone number, email address, and institutional affiliation.

Please submit all abstracts to africaconference2015@gmail.com and Toyin Falola: toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu

A mandatory non-refundable registration fee of $150 for scholars and $100 for graduate students must be paid immediately upon the acceptance of the abstract. This conference fee includes admission to the panels, workshops, and special events, as well as transportation to and from the conference from the hotel, breakfast for three days, dinner on Friday night, lunch on Saturday, and a banquet on Saturday evening. All participants must raise the funding to attend the conference, including registration fee, transportation and accommodation. The conference does not provide any form of sponsorship or financial support. The University of Texas at Austin does not provide participants with any form of funding support, travel expenses, or boarding expenses.

Convened by: Professor Toyin Falola, toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu
Coordinated by:Bisola Falola and Ben Weiss, africaconference2015@gmail.com

Call for Applications for the Third Global Economic Governance Capacity Building Workshop

Deadline: 13 June 2014

The Department of Political Sciences, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria, together with the South African Institute for International Affairs, leading foreign policy research institute on the African continent, invites government officials, academics, researchers and officials from relevant civil society organisations to apply for a capacity building workshop on:

Global Economic Governance: A Focus on African Countries

This workshop, the second in our annual series, forms part of a bigger project on global economic governance as the process of rule-setting in global markets and institutions, as well as in global economics. The Global Economic Governance Africa project seeks to interrogate these issues from an African perspective. The project considers economic governance as broadly defined, looking at key institutions and groupings such as the G20, BRICS, G7/8, IBSA, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund etc. The issues are interrogated with a view to contributing to the enhanced articulation of African interests through policy-relevant research. Using the three-pronged approach of research; networking; and capacity building; the project ultimately aims to undertake and promote research driven by African needs; advise policymakers and both stimulate public and media interest on global economic governance while also being a source of information. Economic governance is currently at the core of global political economy debates and will remain in that position for some time to come. It is important, for the betterment of the continent, to ensure that African interests are understood and conveyed effectively.

About the workshop:

A two-week capacity building workshop to be held at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, from the 4th until the 15th of August 2014.

The objectives of the workshop include:

• To strengthen knowledge and capacity building on Global Economic Governance
• To ensure better understanding on the different factors, aspects, processes and key institutions that exist within and make up Global Economic Governance
• To provide extensive discussion and interactive sessions on current issues and trends affecting Global Economic Governance
• To provide a critical assessment of the impact of Global Economic Governance on African countries.

How to apply?

Please note that the workshop will be conducted only in English, therefore a proficiency in English is required. Applications should be submitted electronically to geg_9935@sendtodropbox.com

The following documents are required:
• A letter of motivation, explaining what the applicant and his/her organisation/institution/employer hope to get out of the programme and how s/he will apply the skills learned;
• A detailed CV with clear contact details and
• A letter of support from the applicant’s employer, with clear contact details, committing the applicant to participate for the full duration of the course.

Please note that international travel costs and airport transfers to and from the venue, as well as accommodation costs and all meals will be fully sponsored by the organisers.

Closing date for applications: 13 June 2014.

Note: Only applications complete with all the above information will be considered.
Should you experience any problems with the submission of your application, or have any queries or need for further information, please contact Ms Heather Thuynsma on heather.thuynsma@up.ac.za

Please note: Previous participants may not apply again.

Call for Applications for the Third Global Economic Governance Capacity Building Workshop

Interdisciplinarity and Methodological Challenges in Area Studies: Summer School and platform to recruit PhD candidates

Deadline: 22 June 2014

Dakar, 1st to 6th September, 2014

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and The Centre for African Studies Basel (CASB) call for applications for the 1st CODESRIA/CASB Summer School in African Studies. The Summer School sets out to stimulate and consolidate interdisciplinary approaches in research on Africa. It focuses on African Studies as an instance of area studies and seeks to identify themes that are theoretically, conceptually and methodologically relevant to the reflection on the intellectual challenge of Africa as an object of knowledge and its contribution to general scholarship. It is offered with the generous support of the Oumou Dilly Foundation (Switzerland)in cooperation with CODESRIA and aims at strengthening the links between the community of scholars organized in the CODESRIA community and scholars from the African Studies community in Switzerland.

The Oumou Dilly Foundation supports individuals from Africa in their longing for education, especially for higher academic education. The CODESRIA/CASB Summer School in African Studies serves as a platform for the foundation to identify potential candidates for a scholarship for PhD studies at the Centre for African Studies Basel.

Interdisciplinarity and methodological challenges in African Studies

More and more research funding institutions are demanding that research projects are designed in interdisciplinary ways. This seems to express the realization that traditional disciplines – in the social sciences and humanities as well as in the natural sciences – have become too small to accommodate within the questions which they traditionally ask all the aspects that phenomena in the real world possess. To be sure, this is an issue that has been at the centre of debate for over twenty years, if not longer. It was initiated in the humanities, where discussions over postmodernism led to a questioning of the Canon and, by implication, of the organization of knowledge production in the wake of the Enlightenment. The ball on this discussion was set rolling by Jean-François Lyotard’s discomfort about “meta-narratives” which, as discussion came to reveal, drew much of their plausibility and strength from the belief that the project of Modernity, with its narrative of progress and reason, was self-evidently true. Many of those who seized the word to speak about the order of knowledge had been socialised in colonized societies, where the upbeat narrative of Modernity had always been viewed with a great deal of scepticism. They soon became suspicious of the structure of knowledge production itself. As Edward Said, just to name one, noted in “Culture and Imperialism”, it was impossible to speak about the English language and, by extension, English literature, without a look at the historical conditions within which it had come to be a symbol of Nation and English culture (Said 1993). Colonialism was one of those conditions. Jemie Chinweizu, in literature, and Kwasi Wiredu, in philosophy, had earlier drawn attention to the need to decolonize the African mind. Their appeal to a more sovereign attitude towards knowledge production within the context of the African continent was echoed by Paulin Hountondji’s call for the dismantling of the international division of intellectual labour – which turned African scholars into producers of empirical material which European and North American scholars theorised about. It prefigured developments which later created a critical mass for the issues raised by Jean-François Lyotard. These insights sharpened the senses of scholars to the artificial nature of disciplinary boundaries as it dawned on many of them that disciplines did not only enable the organization of knowledge production in theoretically, conceptually and methodologically sound ways, but also helped mask historically engineered relations among cultures at the same time that they helped constitute them. The insights also made room for a more assertive stance from the rest of the world in matters pertaining to knowledge production not only about themselves, but also about what the knowledge produced in their contexts could contribute towards the improvement of theoretical and conceptual tools in the disciplines. Some of these issues were explored in greater detail in the volume edited by, among others, Valentin Mudimbe on Africa and the Disciplines (Bates, Mudimbe, O’Barr 1993).

Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Coloniality of Knowledge/Power approaches became important ways of questioning the authority of the Western Canon beyond a simple dichotomy of social/cultural sciences vs. natural sciences and the relative merits of disciplinary boundaries. In fact, such critical approaches raised questions about the soundness of knowledge produced within theoretical frameworks, which ignored the historical conditions that enabled the constitution of scientific objects, Africa being one of those objects. Indeed, against such a background it seems almost impossible to think of African Studies without reference to such concerns. By their very nature African Studies, and Area Studies in general, have always defied disciplinary boundaries, even if on the whole they are held afloat by the contribution of single disciplines. To ask a sociological question is to ask a historical one; to ask a medical question is to ask an anthropological one; to posit the possibility of economic growth is to suggest ways of interpreting history and how it has constituted geography. Area studies are an interdisciplinary endeavour, of which scholars are aware to different degrees.

In choosing this topic for the inaugural CODESRIA/CASB Summer School in African Studies we aim at placing these degrees of awareness at the centre of discussion. More specifically, we intend to enquire into the extent to which young researchers are aware of the interdisciplinary nature of their study, whatever disciplinary subject it has been formulated in, and how a better awareness of this may be beneficial to their work. From a theoretical point of view we are asking questions about the real scope of the theoretical framework within which researchers working on Africa formulate their questions and expect to have answers.

The aims of the Summer School can be broadly defined in the following manner:

• The Summer School allows PhD and MA students, under the guidance of senior scholars, to engage critically with new theoretical, conceptual and methodological developments in African Studies and area studies in general and make them relevant to their work;

• stimulates PhD students to reflect on the potential relevance of knowledge on Africa to the task of improving our theoretical, conceptual and methodological tools both for the disciplines as well as for interdisciplinary work;

• fosters among PhD students a sense of belonging to a community of scholars in pursuit of knowledge and scholarship;

• encourages junior scholars to work towards carving a space for African Studies or area studies in general in the broader field of scholarship and in this way helping to place itself right at the centre of knowledge production.

• Serves to identiy young scholars who wish to develop or finalise a PhD-project in the field of African Studies and Area Studies in general and to give them access to a scholarship in Switzlerland to develop a relevant approach.

Summer School Director: Elísio Macamo (CODESRIA/CASB)

Workshops: Participants will engage in four workshops: Theory & Interdisciplinarity; Working with Concepts; Methodological Issues; Theory Construction. Each participant will be assigned to one of four working group preparing inputs for discussion in one of the four afternoon-sessions. The members of each group will exchange by email and will hold a preparatory meeting on the weekend preceding the summer school.

Invited Speakers: tba

Application & Registration: Participants will be selected on the strength and merits of a five-page application in which they explain (a) what they are working on, and (b) how their work relates to the topic of the Summer School. Applications must be supported by a CV and two letters of recommendation. Please submit your application as PDF to to Aminata.Diaw@codesria.sn and veit.arlt@unibas.ch (until 22 June 2014).

ورشة عمل لتكوين المكونين في المنهجية موضوع الدورة : الطرق الكيفية والكمية في بحوث العلوم الاجتماعية المكان : دكار- السنغال، في الفترة من الاول وحتى الخامس من سبتمبر 2014

دعوة لتلقى طلبات التقديم
الاجل النهائي لتلقي الطلبات هو 30 مايو 2014
هل أنت تدرس في احدى الجامعات الأفريقية ؟ هل تدرس مناهج البحوث ؟ إن كنت كذلك فهذا الإعلان يهمك.
يتشرف مجلس تنمية البحوث في العلوم الاجتماعية في أفريقيا بالإعلان عن عقد دورة تكوينية لسنة 2014 لفائدة الباحثين الأفريقيين المتخصصين في تدريس مناهج البحث في العلوم الاجتماعية في جامعاتهم سواء في مرحلة التعليم الجامعي أو الدراسات العليا.

علما منه بالمشاكل المتعددة التي تواجه منظومة التعليم العالي في أفريقيا بشكل عام والجامعات على وجه الخصوص، خلال ثلاثة عقود ،فقد استثمر الكوديسريا في توفير للطلبة والمهنيين في منتصف حياتهم المهنية ، فرص التكوين في المنهجية الكيفية والكمية في البحوث. تركزت المرحلة الأولى من فرص التكوين على أساليب البحث الكمية. تحول بعد ذلك الاتجاه، خلال السنوات الأخيرة ، صوب الاهتمام بالأساليب الكيفية. فالتكوين عبارة عن ندوات و اوراش عمل متقدمة تتيح للمشتركين التعرف على العديد من الأساليب المنهجية وخلفيتها التاريخية فضلاً عن موقعها في فلسفة العلم.
يقوم كوديسريا بتنظيم خمس ورش عمل للمنهجية كل سنة بواقع ورشة لكل منطقة فرعية في أفريقيا. وتختص الورشة الأولى بأفريقيا ألشمالية والثانية بأفريقيا الغربية والوسطى ، اما الثالثة فتخص جنوب و شرق أفريقيا. الورشة الرابعة خصصت لنيجيريا والدول الأفريقية الناطقة بالإنجليزية والواقعة في وسط وغرب أفريقيا . اما الورشة الأخيرة فتهم تكوين المكونين في المنهجية والتي تجمع باحثين مسئولين عن إمداد آخرين بالمهارات اللازمة ليكونوا باحثين أكفاء.
ويبقى المنطق والهدف الرئيسي من وراء كل ورش عمل كوديسريا المعنية بالمنهجية واحد. وفي ضوء كونها مجال للمعرفة، تحتل الأساليب الكمية والكيفية موقعاً خاصاً حيث أنها لا تدرس لكافة الباحثين في العلوم الاجتماعية لضمان إتقانهم لكافة التفاصيل الدقيقة والأفكار الفلسفية المتعلقة بالأبحاث التي يجرونها. كما أن مجال مناهج البحث في العلوم الاجتماعية – سواء على مستوى الأساليب والمناهج الكمية أو الكيفية – يشهد قدرا كبيراً من التطور و التحسن التدريجي في الأدوات والتقنيات المتاحة للباحثين. إلا أنه وعلى الرغم من ذلك ، يبقى هذا المجال المعرفي ضعيف نسبياً في أفريقيا. ويرجع هذا الضعف الي هجرة الأدمغة بعد بروز أزمة التعليم الجامعي في الدول الافريقية. انعكست هذه الظروف على جيل شباب باحثين في العلوم الاجتماعية ، خصوصا ضعف جودة البحوث.

ولعلاج هذه الفجوة أصبح من المهم إمداد الباحثين بهذا النوع من التكوين لضمان جودة أبحاثهم،وعليه يمثل برنامج تكوين المكونين إستراتيجية من إستراتيجية الخاصة بكوديسريا والتي يتقاسم أهدافها مع الجامعات الأفريقية .
وستتضمن دورة 2014 والخاصة بورشة عمل تكوين ألمكونين حوالي 25 من المكونين و تعتمد على الإنجليزية والفرنسية كلغتى عمل. و بالإضافة إلى العروض التي يقدمها الخبراء المدعوين ، ستنظم الورشة على شكل منتدى للتفاعل، للنقاش والتواصل بين المشاركين خارج الجلسات الرسمية لضمان تبادل الخبرات بينهم. ويتم تيسير الورشة عن طريق الخبراء المدعوين إلى جانب الأشخاص المسئولين عن إعداد المادة العلمية على أن تعقد الجلسات على مدار خمس أيام متواصلة.

وعلى السادة الراغبين في الاشتراك في دورة 2014 التقدم بطلب للمشاركة على أن يحتوي هذا الطلب استمارة التقديم كاملة ، رسالة تحفيز و نسخة من المقررات التي يقوم الباحث بتدريسها، ورقة حول أهم المشاكل التي يواجهها الباحث في تدريس مناهج البحث ، شهادة من رئيس القسم أو عميد الكلية توضح تدريس الباحث لمناهج البحث، ونسخة محدثة من السيرة الذاتية. أما فيما يتعلق بالراغبين في الاشتراك في الدورة كمسيرين او مسئولين عن إعداد المادة العملية ، فيرجى إرسال الآتي : رسالة طلب المشاركة ، نسخة من السيرة الذاتية ، مخطط تمهيدي للموضوعات التي يرغب الباحث في تقديمها وتغطيتها في العروض التقديمية ، بالإضافة إلى عينة أو أكثر من آخر أعماله المنشورة. على أن يتم استقبال كافة طلبات التقدم للسكرتارية التنفيذية الخاصة بكوديسريا في موعد غايته 30 مايو 2014 ، وترسل الطلبات للعنوان الآتي :

The CODESRIA Training of Trainers Methodology Programme
The CODESRIA Secretariat
BP 3304, Dakar, CP 18524, Senegal
Tel.: +221-33 825 98 22/23 – Fax: +221-33 824 12 89
E-mail: training.trainers@codesria.sn
Website: https://codesria.org

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