Afraso

we are thrilled to announce the publication of our latest edited volume on African-Asian interactions by our project team members Ruth Achenbach, Jan Beek, John Njenga Karugia, Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel, and Frank Schulze-Engler: "Afrasian Transformations: Transregional Perspectives on Development Cooperation, Social Mobility, and Cultural Change" with contributions from many of our project members and our friends around the world.

African-Asian interactions contribute to the emergence of a decentred, multi-polar world in which different actors need to redefine themselves and their relations to each other. Afrasian Transformations explores these changes to map out several arenas where these transformations have already produced startling results: development politics, South-South cooperation, cultural memory, mobile lifeworlds and transcultural connectivity. The contributions in this volume neither celebrate these shifting dynamics as felicitous proof of a new age of South-South solidarity, nor do they debunk them as yet another instance of burgeoning geopolitical hegemony. Instead, they seek to come to terms with the ambivalences, contradictions and potential benefits entailed in these transformations – that are also altering our understanding of (trans)area in an increasingly globalized world.

Contributors include: Seifudein Adem, Nafeesah Allen, Jan Beek, Tom De Bruyn, Casper Hendrik Claassen, Astrid Erll, Hanna Getachew Amare, John Njenga Karugia, Guive Khan-Mohammad, Vinay Lal, Pavan Kumar Malreddy, Jamie Monson, Diderot Nguepjouo, Satwinder S. Rehal, Ute Röschenthaler, Alexandra Samokhvalova, Darryl C. Thomas, and Sophia Thubauville.

for more details: https://brill.com/view/title/56548

check out this useful resource for finding literature on African-Asian phenomena: http://afrasia-lit.org/ with more than 2100 entries!

Afrasia Lit Afrasia-Lit was created by the research project “Africa’s Asian Options” (AFRASO) at Goethe University Frankfurt, which was funded by the BMBF from 2013-2019 and organized by the two interdisciplinary research centers on Africa (ZIAF) and Asia (IZO). Click here for more information on our rese...

Did you know you could listen to a selection of AFRASO lectures and interviews on the AFRASO homepage? Tune into the lectures by Emma Mawdsley, Yoon Jung Park (check out our interview with her!), Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor and Gerard Toal among others...

Recordings AFRASO Lecture Series | Afraso 6.15 pm, room IG 411, ground floor of the Main Building at Campus Westend of the Goethe University, Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1, 60323 Frankfurt

check out John's contribution on German TV!

alpha-thema: Nachbar Afrika: Nachbar Afrika | BR.de zum Programmkalender Newton Markt der Masken alpha-thema: Nachbar Afrika Nachbar Afrika Ganze Sendung in der Mediathek ansehen Montag, 08.04.2019 20:35 bis 21:20 Uhr Video bereits in der Mediathek verfügbar ARD-alpha 2019 Moderation: Özlem Sarikaya Apokalyptische Bilder dominieren. Postkoloniales ...

Have you seen this yet? Check out this (imho) impressive virtual green tea museum, based on Ute Röschenthaler's exhibition in Mainz! Congratulations, Ute!

Virtual green tee museum Tee - African green tea museum Virtualgreenteamuseum is a portal for tea imported and exported from Africa

We are proud to present our newest AFRASO film: Afrasian Memories in East Africa

Please watch here: https://youtu.be/1NceCl8KPlM

Transregional interactions have produced complex cosmopolitan societies across the Afrasian Sea transregion. Individuals, communities, ethnic groups and nation-states exhibit a competition of memories as to who arrived in which territory first, who suffered more during certain atrocities, who participated or did not participate in which atrocities, who influenced which culture more, who made what contribution to whose culture more, or who should respect whose memory more and how. Such difficult and sometimes divisive dialogues are to be expected in a cosmopolitan space that has existed and constantly evolved across the ages. In such entangled spaces where shared imaginaries and memories of particular groups transcend the national scale or operate at a scale below it, it becomes imperative to investigate the complexities and tensions of scale (local, national, transareal, transregional, transnational and global). At the “Africa’s Asian Options” project at Goethe University Frankfurt (AFRASO), our main focus is contemporary relations amongst African and Asian societies across emergent Afrasian spaces. The film ‘Afrasian Memories in East Africa’ has emerged from our attempt at understanding imaginaries and memories that connect Africa and Asia, how these imaginaries and memories are produced and what they are used for within the Afrasian transregion. The film focuses on connective Afrasian memories while remaining sensitive towards connective Afrabian dynamics. Through interviews with various people, it delves into themes such as: the naming of the ocean, transoceanic trade, transculturality, colonialism, railway memories, identity politics, Kiswahili language politics, Afrabian solidarity politics, slavery memories and Bombay Africans’ Memories amongst others.

This film project has emerged from a collaboration between AFRASO and Community Images. Dr. John Njenga Karugia from AFRASO at Goethe University Frankfurt collaborated with one of East Africa’s most renowned documentary film-makers, Ramadhan Khamis of Community Images, in producing this film. The filming involved extensive travel across East Africa, the Indian Ocean and India. The film was launched during an AFRASO symposium titled “Afrasian Entanglements: Current Dynamics and Future Perspectives in India-Africa Relations” at the University of Mumbai in June 2018. This film was sponsored by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Thanks to: Abdilatif Abdalla, Pheroze Nowrojee, Stambuli Abdillahi Nassir, Athman Hussein, Kuldip Sondhi, Ranjit Sondhi, Muhammad Mbwana, Mohamed Ali, Abdulrahman Bakathir, Mkuu Vae, Mbarak Abdulkadir, Hassan Mohamed, Amina Harith Swaleh, Kassim Mohamed, Dr. Kalandar Khan, Neera Kapur, Villoo Nowrojee, Siti Amina, Lorenz Herrmann, Athman Omar, Edwin Demla.

Acknowledgement: Asian African Heritage Trust, National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi Railway Museum, The Reef Hotel Mombasa, Siti & The Band – Zanzibar, Gedi Ruins Museum, Rabai Museum, Swahili Hub Mombasa, University of Mumbai – India, Dhow Countries Music Academy – Zanzibar, Centre for Interdisciplinary African Studies – ZIAF, Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform – FSMP, Africa’s Asian Options (AFRASO) – Germany, Goethe University Frankfurt, German Federal Ministry of Education and Research – BMBF.

Special thanks to: Prof. Dr. Astrid Erll, Prof. Dr. Frank Schulze-Engler and Dr. John Njenga Karugia from the AFRASO Indian Ocean Imaginaries and Memories Research Project Team at Goethe University Frankfurt.

Dr. Ruth Achenbach
Wiss. Koordinatorin | Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Ostasienstudien
Interdisciplinary Centre for East Asian Studies (IZO)
AFRASO - Afrikas Asiatische Optionen | Africa's Asian Options
Bockenheim Campus | Juridicum Building | Room 814 | PO Box 20
Goethe University Frankfurt | Senckenberganlage 31 | D-60325 Frankfurt am Main
Phone +49(0)69 798 23284 | Fax +49(0)69 798 23275
Email [email protected] | Web www.izo.uni-frankfurt.de; www.afraso.org

Afrasian Memories in East Africa Transregional interactions have produced complex cosmopolitan societies across the Afrasian Sea transregion. Individuals, communities, ethnic groups and nati...

Thank you, Seifudein Adem, for the newest addition to our AFRASO working paper series! Check out this timely piece entitled "Japan and China in Africa: Allies, Partners or Adversaries?"

Japan and China in Africa: Allies, Partners or Adversaries? | Afraso author(s) / editor(s) : Adem, Seifudeinpublication year: 2018publication / journal / website title: AFRASO Working Papername of the editor(s): Ruppert, Uta, Schulze-Engler, Frank, Achenbach, Ruth & Beek, Janvolume / issue number / newspaper date / website last viewed: No. 2publication upload: ...

Check out the interview with world-renowned scholar Homi K. Bhabha by AFRASO scholars Frank Schulze-Engler and John Njenga Karugia with Pavan Kumar Malreddy, conducted on the occasion of our "Afrasian Transformations" conference! Congrats on this wonderful piece, gentlemen!

“Even the dead have human rights”: A conversation with Homi K. Bhabha (2018). “Even the dead have human rights”: A conversation with Homi K. Bhabha. Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Ahead of Print.

check out Veit's new blog entry!

The Anti-Politics Machine revived? | Afraso Submitted by veit.bachmann on Mon, 04/12/2017 - 11:01   It is almost three decades ago that the American anthropologist James Ferguson first laid out his arguments on the “Anti-Politics Machine” (Ferguson 1990). His empirical work on migrant labour in Lesotho during the 1970s, on which his argu...

check out Alexandra's new blog entry!

Africans in Malaysia: students, husbands and victims of racial discrimination. Interview with the author of a Malaysian travelogue about Ghana. | Afraso Submitted by Alexandra.Samok... on Tue, 28/11/2017 - 11:59   African population in Malaysia has been actively growing in the past two decades. A few Africans arrived as construction workers to build the venues for the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. A decade later, many more young Africans...

New blog post with some insights into the fieldwork of our AFRASO members.

Indian Ocean as Memory Space: Islam in Indonesia and South Africa | Afraso Submitted by john.njenga.karugia on Mon, 13/11/2017 - 10:03 In 2015, during a research stint in South Africa, I visited the Bo-Kaap Museum in Cape Town, South Africa together with some colleagues from the AFRASO project. The museum “showcases local Islamic culture and heritage” associated with Cape…