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Challenges for South African anthropology in the 3rd Millennium

  • Authors: Palmer, Robin C G
  • Date: 2009
  • Language: English
  • Type: Text
  • Identifier: vital:6111 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008105
  • Description: Towards the end of one’s career, there’s a powerful inclination to look backwards instead of forwards. You become more interested in histories, biographies and obituaries; you reflect on your own life and career. It’s not inevitable, and it can be resisted. Marshall McLuhan was well into his 50s – an obscure Canadian Eng Lit academic – when he had his vision of the nature and future of the media and anticipated a ‘global village’ that the Internet has turned into a reality since his death in 1980 (McLuhan and Powers 1989) – but more on that in due course. Cui Bono? At first I gave into the tendency to look back. Initially, for this lecture, I thought to analyse my own career in South Africa in terms of who benefited most from it: South African anthropology and my students … or me. I would call the lecture ‘Cui Bono?’ But then I realised, with Latin tags on the way out, younger colleagues and students in the audience might think I was referring to a traditional Australian greeting (Coo-ee) and an Irish philanthropist pop singer (Bono). The title would be totally mystifying to many until I explained that it meant ‘to whom the good’ – in other words, who benefits? But there were other objections to this project besides the title. Even the most postmodern of reflexive anthropologists would balk at making such a self-assessment – it was not for me to judge. Anyway, I already knew the answer: My career in South Africa has not been impeded by political harassments, imprisonment or conscription. I did make some small negligible contributions to the ‘struggle’ through writing or drawing, and I did some community service, on campus or off in the same way. At a critical stage I assisted with the process that eventually produced a national staff association, now called NTESU. The only price I have paid for these distractions from serious publishing at a critical stage of my career was deservedly slow promotion. I continue to contribute to the community mainly through membership of the older of Grahamstown’s two very active Rotary clubs. It’s all I have time for, but nothing to boast about. In sum, I’ve enjoyed what my long-term colleague and Grahamstown’s Citizen of the Year (another Rotary initiative) Michael Whisson likes to call ‘sheltered employment’ – his typically ironic way of reminding us of how privileged we academics are, doing what we enjoy, in pleasant surroundings, among intelligent colleagues and the cream of our youth, with plenty of flexi-time and opportunities for subsidized travel. And now I have benefited again by being promoted to full professor without sufficiently earning my keep through subsidies on academic outputs. Whatever I might have given back through teaching and administration the net is in my favour, and I am grateful beyond words.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

From conflict to negotiation: nature-based development on the South African Wild Coast. Special edition

  • Authors: Palmer, Robin C G , Timmermans, Herman G , Fay, Derek
  • Date: 2002
  • Language: English
  • Type: Text
  • Identifier: vital:543 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011730
  • Description: The Rio Earth Summit of 1992 introduced several new approaches to environmental management under the general heading of sustainable development. One of these approaches has forced conservationists to concede that it is no longer feasible or ethical to exlude resident communities from protected areas, as had been the practice for more than a century. The alternative approach highlighting considerations of social justice and economic empowerment, is to recognise that humans are also part of the local ecology, and to find sustainable ways to maintain local livelihoods along with biodiversity. Especially in the global South, resource-dependant communities associated with protected areas had long been subjected to removals or restrictions by the state, and had been forced to modify livelihoods historically dependant on abundant natural resources, usually resulting in their acute impoverishment. Eastern and Southern Africa had been particulr sites of the former protectionist policies and their frequently tragic sequels for communities. Following the Summit much energy has been expended on finding sustainable alternatives to relocation in these regions, particularly new livelihoods linked to ecotourism From Conflict to Negotiation provides a South African case study of the shift from protectionism to sustainable development in the 1990's. Located on the wild coast of the Eastern Cape, Dwesa-Cwebe consists of a nature and marine reserve with eight adjacent resident communities that have historically depended on local forest, grassland and coastal resources. This are has been the focus of one of the earliest efforts in the 'new' South Africa to restore to the Xhosa-speaking residents ownership of the protected area from which they had been excluded for decades. Unusually the resident initiated the process. While others celebrated the advent of the new democracy in South Africa in 1994, the residents of this remote area, whose grieviences had been ignored during the political transition, planned a protest strategy featuring co-ordinated invasions of the protected area. The protest action succeeded to the extent that it gained massive media attention and provoked the special attention of national and regional goverment, non-govermental organizations (NGOs) and academic researchers. An early academic intervention designed to bring the residents and conservationists together was later expanded. Complementing the roles of goverment and NGOs, environmentalists and socio-cultural anthropologists, among others involved in this project, have attempted to address the conundrum of sustainable development policy implementation in a complex setting. From conflict to Negotiation details the findings of this pioneering research project. It is the story of local empowerment regained as confrontation yielded to negotiation and negotiation yielded co-management, local ownership and developmental partnerships. This landmark study will provoke ongoing discussion and research in an exciting new forum of community development.
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  • Date Issued: 2002

Local responses to political policies and socio-economic change in the Keiskammahoek district, Ciskei: anthropological perspectives

The effects of externally induced socio-economic and political changes in rural areas: the Keiskammahoek district 1948-1986: a pilot project

  • Authors: de Wet, Christopher J , Leibbrandt, M V , Palmer, Robin C G , Mills, M E , Tantsi, V
  • Date: 1989
  • Subjects: Land use -- South Africa -- Keiskammahoek Keiskammahoek (South Africa) -- Economic conditions Keiskammahoek (South Africa) -- Social conditions Ciskei (South Africa) -- Social conditions Ciskei (South Africa) -- Economic conditions
  • Language: English
  • Type: Book , Text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/1848 , vital:20233 , ISBN 0868101893
  • Description: This Working Paper contains the results of a pilot investigation undertaken in 1986/87 in selected areas of the Keiskammahoek District of Ciskei. The pilot study was undertaken in order to compile a comprehensive plan for a long-term study of the Keiskammahoek District as a whole. Such a study would be designed to analyse socio-economic and political changes which have taken place in the District, measured against the results of a major multidisciplinary research project (The Keiskammahoek Rural Survey) which was undertaken in the area between 1948 and 1950. The existence of the Keiskammahoek Rural Survey affords a unique opportunity for comparative social science research, particularly because it is well known that substantial changes have taken place in the District. However, the precise nature and scale of the changes were unknown; hence, the decision to conduct a pilot survey first. The results of the pilot survey, published here, have turned out to be extremely valuable in formulating proposals for a subsequent on-going research undertaking; and have fully justified the time and money devoted to the exploratory investigation which constituted the basis of the pilot project. , Digitised by Rhodes University Library on behalf of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER)
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  • Date Issued: 1989

Migrancy and development: prelude and variations on a theme

  • Authors: Whisson, Michael G , de Wet, Christopher J , Manona, Cecil W , McAllister, Patrick A , Palmer, Robin C G
  • Date: 1982
  • Subjects: Labor supply -- South Africa Africans -- Employment Working class -- South Africa Ciskei (South Africa) -- Economic conditions Xhosa (African people)
  • Language: English
  • Type: Book , Text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/2101 , vital:20255 , ISBN 0868100994
  • Description: Communities which have been characterised by migrancy for a long period of time, such as the Xhosa and the Italians considered in this paper, develop sets 6f terms which describe migrants. The Xhosa have varied criteria for their categories, e.g. amajoyini - those on contract to mainly the mining and construction industries; abafuduga - those who deliberately sell up and go elsewhere; amagoduka - those who intend to return home; imfiki - impoverished migrants from white owned farms. Italians tend to view the crossing of international boundaries as the essence of migration and classify their migrants by the state in which they work e.g. Inglesi, Americani, rather than by the more complex terminology of the Xhosa. Some terms are simply descriptions, others are categories with wider connotations, into which people place others and themselves. As far as possible we shall use the peoples' own categories, which define their relationships to "home", the region to which they migrate and to migrancy as a way of life, as these have important implications for what happens at home. , Digitised by Rhodes University Library on behalf of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER)
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  • Date Issued: 1982
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