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The Africa Institute, Sharjah kicks off its fall 2022 Faculty Seminar Series with a talk titled “Migration and the Outlines of a Macro Sociology of (Contemporary) Africa” by Professor Faisal Garba Muhammed on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at Khalid School Auditorium.
Professor Garba is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he leads the South-South Migration, Inequality, and Development Hub, and convenes the Global Studies Programme (GSP). His most recent publication is a special issue of Zanj: The Journal of Critical Global South Studies on “Migration and Inequality in the Global South” (2022), co-edited with Francis Nyamnjoh and Heaven Crawley.
The talk questions and explores how contemporary African social formations would be conceptualized, theorized, and taught, if our starting point is Africa’s experience of shifting and multiple relationships between territoriality and belonging, as opposed to proceeding from the Westphalian fusion of identity (and a single) place (and in some cases blood).
“This presentation discusses the process to develop a sociology of Africa by rethinking some of the dominant concepts, categories, frames, and methods that are deployed in the study of Africa,” said Professor Garba who works on migration and mobility, social theory, and knowledge production, inequality, and social movements and working-class forms of organizing in Africa.
He went on to explain reasons to study Africa through a macro-sociology perspective. He entailed the three parts of the process that lay the foundation in his study of migration and the outlines of a macro sociology of contemporary Africa: firstly by tracing how migration mediates the emergence and remaking of political communities out of diverse social groups; and secondly by moving away from categories and assumptions that racialize, ethnicize, tribalize and essentialize the public sphere in Africa; and finally proposing an approach to researching and teaching contemporary African societies that emphasizes mobility, territoriality, modes of livelihood, and shifting identities and belonging, as opposed to essence and timelessness.
Professor Garba reflected on the practicalities of doing a macro sociology of Africa that takes Africa and its diverse interconnections as a frame and a method, without succumbing to geographical and or methodological borders. He further shared the implications for research and pedagogy revolving around sociology across the South and student mobility.
The seminar was moderated by Professor Elizabeth W. Giorgis, Associate Professor of Art History, Theory & Criticism, The Africa Institute. Concluding the session, questions were answered from an interactive audience composed of academic faculty, senior and postdoctoral fellows, young visiting scholars and history enthusiasts.
The Africa Institute, Sharjah kicks off its fall 2022 Faculty Seminar Series with a talk titled “Migration and the Outlines of a Macro Sociology of (Contemporary) Africa” by Professor Faisal Garba Muhammed on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at Khalid School Auditorium.
The Africa Institute, Sharjah kicks off its fall 2022 Faculty Seminar Series with a talk titled “Migration and the Outlines of a Macro Sociology of (Contemporary) Africa” by Professor Faisal Garba Muhammed on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at Khalid School Auditorium.
Professor Garba is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he leads the South-South Migration, Inequality, and Development Hub, and convenes the Global Studies Programme (GSP). His most recent publication is a special issue of Zanj: The Journal of Critical Global South Studies on “Migration and Inequality in the Global South” (2022), co-edited with Francis Nyamnjoh and Heaven Crawley.
The talk questions and explores how contemporary African social formations would be conceptualized, theorized, and taught, if our starting point is Africa’s experience of shifting and multiple relationships between territoriality and belonging, as opposed to proceeding from the Westphalian fusion of identity (and a single) place (and in some cases blood).
“This presentation discusses the process to develop a sociology of Africa by rethinking some of the dominant concepts, categories, frames, and methods that are deployed in the study of Africa,” said Professor Garba who works on migration and mobility, social theory, and knowledge production, inequality, and social movements and working-class forms of organizing in Africa.
He went on to explain reasons to study Africa through a macro-sociology perspective. He entailed the three parts of the process that lay the foundation in his study of migration and the outlines of a macro sociology of contemporary Africa: firstly by tracing how migration mediates the emergence and remaking of political communities out of diverse social groups; and secondly by moving away from categories and assumptions that racialize, ethnicize, tribalize and essentialize the public sphere in Africa; and finally proposing an approach to researching and teaching contemporary African societies that emphasizes mobility, territoriality, modes of livelihood, and shifting identities and belonging, as opposed to essence and timelessness.
Professor Garba reflected on the practicalities of doing a macro sociology of Africa that takes Africa and its diverse interconnections as a frame and a method, without succumbing to geographical and or methodological borders. He further shared the implications for research and pedagogy revolving around sociology across the South and student mobility.
The seminar was moderated by Professor Elizabeth W. Giorgis, Associate Professor of Art History, Theory & Criticism, The Africa Institute. Concluding the session, questions were answered from an interactive audience composed of academic faculty, senior and postdoctoral fellows, young visiting scholars and history enthusiasts.
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