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Identities and Conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa

Obviously, identity is a subject that is à la mode in the humanities, and the study of African cultures has fully embraced this turn. We are aware as well that this subject easily assumes forms that are little coherent, but that, on the other hand, it is a huge advantage to assemble specialists focusing on different aspects of the identity repertoire of individuals. The group was born in February 2007 when we held a successful conference with colleagues from the UK and Canada on questions of ethnicity and conflict in the longue durée. The approach then selected was to use the project group as a group of moderators to bring in know-how to introduce subjects to be treated in workshops or conferences in close co-operation with partners from other universities, which will mostly be sought within the AEGIS initiative.

The core of the projects presented and related to the different aspects of the analysis of identities in sub-Saharan Africa in the longue durée, has, necessarily, an historical perspective. They focus on ethnicity and ethnogenesis in Western Africa, on identity, ethnicity and mobilisation in the emergence of nationalist movements (from the example of Guinea-Bissau, which is obviously at the heart of the ensemble of nationalist experiences in Portuguese-speaking Africa), and on ethnicity, trade and network-building (in the case of Angola, which is the 'classical case' on Euro-African trade relations before the establishment of effective colonial control in the hinterland of the colony). While being concentrated on particularly significant cases, the researchers working on the core projects will also function as principal intermediaries in order to organise the joint projects on aspects of identity.

We also profit from a number of additional collaborators working with the group, who bring in knowledge on sociological methods on:

• the so-called "traditional organisation" (that is, chieftaincy) and on communication;
• on linguistic evolutions;
• on questions of ethnological perspective, ethnography and cultural heritage, namely the recuperation of colonial African art collections;
• on gender and group mobilisation in particular religious environments.

Those perspectives will be relied upon to enlarge the focus with relation to the scientific events planned by the group.

Those scientific events are:

1. In April 2009, the project group will organise an international conference on "Tradition under fire: dispute about identities in colonial and post-colonial situations in sub-Saharan Africa, ca. 1850 to the present". The result of this conference will be a book that is planned to be a successor to the study "Ethnicity and the longue durée: the African experience", based on the February 2007 conference on identity and to be published in 2008.
2. In 2010, the members of the project group will proceed to publish a third book in the studies series, to be based in this case on their different but complementary views on identity, under the topic "Power and the individual in Africa: strategies of identity shifts in African communities in the modern and contemporary period".
3. With those three publications, the group envisages to direct the frequently vague discussion on identity in Portugal and elsewhere to more concrete bases of discussion.
4. Also, during the period 2008-10, the African art collection of the Museu de História Natural of the Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto will be studied and catalogued in order to create a virtual museum and to organise temporary exhibitions. An important art catalogue is to be published as another principal result of the project. This project will involve discussing questions of identity through an analysis of African objects and their presentation during the decades.

ESTIMATED OUTPUTS