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From Papyrus to Print-Out: The Book in Africa Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Bibliophilia Africana 8 Conference Proceedings, Centre of the Book Cape Town, 11-14 May 2005

Cora Owens (ed.)

Pretoria and Cape Town: National Library of South Africa, Centre of the Book (2005), 297 pp.

"Loosely divided into three sections that focus on the past, the present, and the future, the papers in the proceedings of the 2005 Bibliophilia Africana conference offer a wide variety of contributions on the state of the book in Africa, and on topics such as promoting a reading culture, book and n ... more

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Facts & Figures 2004: Culture Sector

Stockholm: Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) (2005), 42 pp.

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The Theatre of Violence: Narratives of Protagonists in the South African Conflict

Don Foster, Paul Haupt, Marésa De Beer

Capetwon; Oxford: Institute of Justice and Reconciliation; HSRC Press; James Currey (2005), xii, 364 pp.

"If the dominant media stereotype portrays perpetrators as monsters, as ‘Prime Evil’, then the dominant academic image is the opposite. It paints them as ordinary people (gender ignored, but assumed as male) diligently under sway of modern bureaucratic compartmentalisation (the banality of evil ... thesis), or as obedient to authority and conforming to social pressures (the situationist thesis). No monsters here, just ordinary people under rather extraordinary circumstances. The moral message: we co uld all potentially become perpetrators, depending on the situation. There is a competing view: the perpetrator as a willing, even eager, executioner driven by strong negative emotions against the ‘other’. The scholarly world presents us with antagonistic perspectives. What picture do we get from narrative approaches, from stories told by those actually responsible for politically-related violence? First, there are only a few narrative studies. Second, they also paint competing pictures. On the one hand, is a picture of the perpetrator as a victim – of organisational routines, hierarchies, pressures and secrecy, and of dominant ideologies, as well as brutal initiation rites which instil the practice of obedience to authority. These narrative studies support the situationist and ordinary person line of explanation. They also correct the erstwhile neglect of gender issues by placing emphasis on masculinity as an important ingredient. On the other hand, the South African storytelling studies by Marks (2001), Straker (1992) and Campbell (1992) throw up a different picture. While victims in one sense – of Bantu education, poverty and violence at the hands of both state security agents and older vigilante groups – they are also action-oriented moral crusaders in defence of their communities and in politically-minded offensive against the apartheid state and its allies. Once again, we have contrasting and competing pictures of those responsible for political violence. In these particular storytelling perspectives, differences are partly due to the different positions of protagonists across the dividing line of power: state security personnel on the one hand and resistance activists on the other. Apart from the conflicting images from varying epistemological perspectives and different theoretical angles, the very label or category of a ‘perpetrator’ is more muddied, contested and problematic than a first glance would suggest. We described seven grey areas which challenge or disrupt the dominant binaries of victim-perpetrator and the triangular view of dramatis personae: perpetrator – ‘victim’ – bystander/observer. Moreover, in Chapter 4, we raise a number of moral quandaries or dilemmas in the study of those responsible for violence, which again dislodge the simple and tidy categories. Therefore a central component of the present study aims to problematise and disrupt the complacency of the very label and category of ‘perpetrator’. What should be done? In the face of these competing images and explanations we carve out a ‘third space’ beyond, or perhaps better, between the theoretical antagonisms of situationism versus agency (willing killers); among the grey areas between category labels of victim/perpetrator/bystander. Rather than this being seen as an alternative position, it should be read as an attempt at synthesis. Instead of the oppositional pairing of ‘either-or’, it should be seen in terms of the inclusive pairing ‘both-and’ (Foster, 1999).We argue that those responsible for violence should be regarded as potentially both victim and perpetrator, as well as both subject to circumstances/influences and active initiators." (Conclusion, page 321-322) more

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The Digital Dump: Exporting Re-Use and Abuse to Africa

Jim Puckett, Sarah Westervelt, Richard Gutierrez, Yuka Takamiya

Seattle: Basel Action Network (BAN) (2005), 42 pp. + annexes

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Get Your Book Published in 30 (relatively) Easy Steps: A Hands-On-Guide for South African Authors

Basil van Rooyen

Johannesburg: Penguin Books South Africa (2005), 386 pp.

"A revised and updated edition of the popular How to Get Published in South Africa (1996), dealing with all the steps involved in finding the right publisher and breaking into print. The focus is on non-fiction, although there is much practical advice here for writers of all genres." (Hans M. Zell, ... more

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African Renaissance and Discourse Ownership in the Information Age: The Internet as a Factor of Domination and Liberation

Eric Van Grasdorff

Münster: Lit (2005), 128 pp.

"The information revolution is transforming the world, especially the industrialised world. But what are its implications for the implementation of an African renaissance? Based on a Foucaultian analytical framework this book argues that the Internet has become a major Western instrument of dominati ... more

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Afrique Centrale: Médias et Conflits. Vecteurs de Guerre ou Acteurs de Paix
Deep Insights

Marie-Soleil Frère, Ross Howard, Jean-Paul Marthoz, Pamphile Sebahara (eds.)

Bruxelles: Groupe de Recherche et d'Informacion sur la Paix et la Sécurité (GRIP) (2005), 320 pp.

"Tel est donc l’objectif de cet ouvrage : allier la réflexion théorique sur le rôle des médias dans les conflits et les processus de paix à des études de cas pratiques issus de l’expérience récente de neuf pays d’Afrique centrale. Cette recherche vise donc, d’une part, à mieux compr ... more

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Mediating Religion and Film in a Post-Secular World

Stephen Hughes, Birgit Meyer (eds.)

Postscripts, volume 1, issue 2-3 (2005), pp. 149-374

"This special issue seeks to explore the common ground shared by practices of filmmaking and religious institutions located within postcolonial settings and increasingly linked in global infrastructures. The articles presented here converge in combining theoretical reflections about the interface of ... film and religion with specific examples or historical and ethnographic cases. Written by authors with backgrounds in film studies, religious studies, and anthropology, the contributions to this multidisciplinary issue are based on two common, more or less explicit, points of departure. One concerns the realization that the actual entanglement of religion and film highlights the limitations of a modernist view proclaiming the retreat of religion from the public sphere as an inevitable consequence of the processes of modernization and secularization. In our perspective, the interface of film and religion can more fruitfully be addressed from a postsecularist perspective, which seeks to overcome the unproductive, teleological, and normative understanding that religion should be confined to the private sphere. As the contributions to this issue show, in contexts as diverse as India, Ghana, Nigeria, Brazil, and postsocialist Poland, the accessibility of modern mass media in conjunction with the politics of neo-liberalism actually facilitate the proliferation of religion in the public sphere. This implies not only that religions may assume a strong public presence, but also that religion and entertainment are increasingly difficult to distinguish from each other. For example, as Maria José de Abreu shows, the Catholic Charismatic priest, pop-singer, and film actor Marcello Rossi embodies this convergence. Not only has film become a prime medium of religious expression, films also often address a religious audience which in turn is seen to authorize audiovisual representations of the transcendent or divine as truthful and authentic. Ravi Vasudevan argues here how Hindu devotional films represented their own religious spectators as a kind of selfauthenticating redefinition of the social with the divine. Whether this authorization actually occurs, as the articles by Birgit Meyer on Ghanaian pentecostally-oriented video-films and by Matthias Krings on Hausa videos in Northern Nigeria show, is a matter of an intense politics and aesthetics of persuasion that may or may not be successful. While in our era of globalizing media the condition of the possibility for religion to assume a public role appears to depend on the successful accommodation of filmic media, the incorporation of such media also threatens to transform religious practice into a form of mass entertainment. The fear of being made subject to superficial visual regimes, as the articles by Mattijs van de Port and Marleen de Witte highlight, may lead religious practitioners to be highly suspicious about the formats and styles that go along with audiovisual mass media. In addition to this postsecular stance, the articles presented in this special issue also share a commitment to moving beyond the assumption of an ontological difference between religion as a domain of the transcendent, on the one hand, and film as a domain of neutral technology, on the other. In this regard, we prefer the notion of mediation as a more open-ended, non-determinist solution for exploring the multiple relationships between religion and film. For example, once religion is understood as a practice of mediation, media appear not as alien to the realm of religion, but as an inalienable element on which any attempt to access and render present the transcendental ultimately depends. By using “mediation” we hope to shift our emphasis away from religion and film as abstract substantialized essences towards a non-dualist emphasis on the relational and contingent practices in which film and religion overlap and engage each other. Brent Plate, in his contribution to this issue, coins the term “religious cinematics” to stress explicitly this point where religion and film merge through the embodied practices of the human senses." (Guest Editors’ Preface, pages 150-151) more

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Malaria and the Media: Advocating Healthy Policy and Practice in Sub-Saharan Africa. A Report of a Baseline Study Undertaken in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Gambia from the 21st January – 16 February 2005

Angela Dawson

Gates Malaria Partnership, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2005), 131 pp.

"The work in this report and that found in the International Woman’s Media Foundation / Africa Woman’s Media Centre report, Deadline for Health (2004), provide us with the only insight into malaria reporting in African contexts. Both are baseline studies made prior to journalists training interv ... more

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Régulation des communications électroniques à l'heure de la convergence: Enjeux, état des lieux et perspectives en Afrique de l'Ouest et du Centre

Diana Senghor (ed.)

Dakar: Panos Afrique de l'Ouest (2005), 102 pp.

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A Developing Connection: Bridging the Policy Gap Between the Information Society and Sustainable Development

Terry Willard, Maja Andjelkovic (eds.)

Winnipeg, Manitoba: International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) (2005), 210 pp.

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Société numérique et développement en Afrique: Usages politiques et publiques

Jean-Jacques Gabas (ed.)

Paris: Karthala; GEMDEV (2005), 379 pp.

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WorldCat (201)

Women in Theatre for Development in Cameroon: Participation, Contributions and Limitations

Emelda Ngufor Samba

Bayreuth: Thielmann & Breitinger (2005), 245 pp.

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Access, Empowerment and Governance: Creating a World of Equal Opportunities with ICT

Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Daniele Waldburger, Gabriele Siegenthaler Munide (eds.)

Kuala Lumpur: Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) (2005), 173 pp.

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Thumb Culture: The Meaning of Mobile Phones for Society

Peter Glotz, Stefan Bertschi, Chris Locke (eds.)

Bielefeld: transcript Verlag (2005), 296 pp.

"Mobile communication has an increasing impact on people's lives and society. Ubiquitous media influence the way users relate to their surroundings, and data services like text and pictures lead to a culture shaped by thumbs. Representing several years of research into the social and cultural effect ... more

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Bildkorrekturen: Nur Hunger und Armut? Berichterstattung über das tägliche Leben im Süden, 16.-18. Dezember 2004

Matthias Braun, Jan Schlieter, Dorothee Schmidt, Kayode Salau (ed.)

Feldafing: Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung (InWEnt) (2005), 59 pp.

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A Practical Guide to Bookselling
Key Guides

Oluronke Orimalade, Bridget Impey (eds.)

Oxford; Wageningen: International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP); Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) (2005), 108 pp.

"Although the retail book trade in Africa face problems and obstacles of equal magnitude as their publishing colleagues, bookselling in Africa has perhaps received less attention and support than the more “glamorous” area of publishing, but as is rightly pointed out in the foreword of this guide ... more

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The African Media Barometer (AMB): A New Instrument in Media Development Cooperation

Peter Schellschmidt

Windhoek: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) (2005), 9 pp.

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Go Beyond First Aid: Democracy Assistance and the Challenge of Institution Building in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone

Mohamed Gibril Sesay, Charlie Hughes

The Hague: Netherlands Institute of International Relations 'Clingendael' (2005), xxiv, 139 pp.

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Community TV & Video in South Africa: From Special Event to Main Event? A Scoping Document, 1990-2005

Chris Armstrong

Johannesburg; Reading: Link Centre, Graduate School of Public & Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand; Gamos (2005), 46 pp.

Afrique Centrale: Médias et Conflits. Vecteurs de Guerre ou Acteurs de Paix Deep Insights

A Practical Guide to Bookselling Key Guides

Afrique Centrale: Médias et Conflits. Vecteurs de Guerre ou Acteurs de Paix
Deep Insights

A Practical Guide to Bookselling
Key Guides