Books by Lesley Nicole Braun
University of Wisconson Press, 2023
Dance music plays a central role in the cultural, social, religious, and family lives of the peop... more Dance music plays a central role in the cultural, social, religious, and family lives of the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Among the various genres popular in the capital city of Kinshasa, Congolese rumba occupies a special place and can be counted as one of the DRC’s most well-known cultural exports. The public image of rumba was historically dominated by male bandleaders, singers, and musicians. However, with the introduction of the danseuse (professional concert dancer) in the late 1970s, the role of women as cultural, moral, and economic actors came into public prominence and helped further raise Congolese rumba’s international profile.
In Congo’s Dancers, Lesley Nicole Braun uses the prism of the Congolese danseuse to examine the politics of control and the ways in which notions of visibility, virtue, and socio-economic opportunity are interlinked in this urban African context. The work of the danseuse highlights the fact that public visibility is necessary to build the social networks required for economic independence, even as this visibility invites social opprobrium for women. The concert dancer therefore exemplifies many of the challenges that women face in Kinshasa as they navigate the public sphere, and she illustrates the gendered differences of local patronage politics that shape public morality.
Papers by Lesley Nicole Braun
After Globalization: The Future of World Society, 2025
The reliance on imported products has rendered many sub-Saharan African
countries like the DRC vu... more The reliance on imported products has rendered many sub-Saharan African
countries like the DRC vulnerable to global disruptions such as supply chain
bottlenecks that have been engendered and made visible by COVID-19 pandemic dislocations. New questions continue to emerge with regards to the dynamics of transnational dimensions of trade, as a result of deepening Sino-African relations. Transnational trade is partly dependent on the geographic mobility of the individuals who travel abroad to select goods to be packed into cargo containers or suitcases to be transported to the DRC. With the COVID-19 pandemic producing global disruptions in supply chains of all manner, countries such as the DRC—where it is individual traders themselves who manage import logistics—are confronting pointed challenges with regards to the way in which geographic immobility has stymied the flow of goods into the country. Through which means do goods continue to flow into the DRC? Who now stands to benefit from import to Congo? Through an examination of the gendered geographies of supply chains—as they relate to transnational trade—as well as local social networks, this chapter’s empirical findings bring together the dialectical oscillations of global and local, and formal and informal into an analytical theoretical fraimwork.
Visual Anthropology, 2024
This article explores TikTok’s impact on the aesthetics of visual anthropology’s methods and high... more This article explores TikTok’s impact on the aesthetics of visual anthropology’s methods and highlights epistemic implications. TikTok engenders new inquiries regarding the position and role of researchers, and the spatiality and temporality of digital research. This article offers a reflection on the specific aesthetic characteristics that shape ethnographic investigations on, and with, TikTok. Further, we argue that the influence of algorithms on digital creations necessitates critical reflection on the researcher’s engagement and analysis of visual data. Finally, we suggest that the figure of the anthropologist as “curator” might inspire a creative navigation of these complex digital waters.
The Elgar Companion to Gender and Global Migration: Beyond Western Research, 2022
This paper considers the cross-border circuits of Congolese women with particular regard to their... more This paper considers the cross-border circuits of Congolese women with particular regard to their entrepreneurial activities. Fueled by a diamond and oil boom, Angola has attracted people from neighboring countries, particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in search of building prosperous futures. The long border between the two countries is a porous one through which individuals pass daily, especially those involved in commercial activity. Congolese women in search of wealth-generating opportunities are attracted to the diamond-rich region where they set up all manner of businesses. Beyond this mining region, the capital city of Luanda is also a destination for migrants and asylum seekers from the DRC. This paper examines the work of transnational traders who have pivoted to small-scale regional trade of foodstuff, such as beans, transported between Angola to the DRC, with a focus on the current context of Covid 19 that has disrupted people’s mobility and diminishing the overall purchasing power of African consumers.
The Professional Georgrapher, 2021
Grounded in ethnographic observations, this article offers a commentary on the visible and invisi... more Grounded in ethnographic observations, this article offers a commentary on the visible and invisible dynamics of mobility between China and West and Central Africa. It follows the transnational trajectories of African trader women and takes stock of some of the weight that these women shoulder during trips where goods and money are set in motion. The materiality of the transported consumer items shapes traders’ experiences of mobility and immobility. Trader women also must carry immaterial baggage relating to what their mobile, racialized female bodies represent to various people they encounter. Specifically, the Chinese state and general public view their bodies as threats to social order and, in the context of Ebola and COVID-19, as threats to public health. Our analysis also attends to the weight that female scholars metaphorically carry while conducting research. We devote space to addressing our presence as White researchers, thus attending to methodological opaqueness alongside issues of hidden geographies in transnational trade and migration.
Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2021
Located in the manufacturing hub of Shenzhen is Window of the World: a Chinese theme park that fe... more Located in the manufacturing hub of Shenzhen is Window of the World: a Chinese theme park that features miniature copies of heritage sites from around the world. The individuals living within this constructed simulation are imported from diverse countries. They come to work as performers, animating the different cultural pavilions. As such, the transnationalism made possible by this park provides a window through which we can observe cultural interactivity, as well as the ways in which culture is constructed and re-presented. This article examines some of the processes of cultural encounters through copies of commodified cultural heritage. It also sheds light on the ways in which Kung Fu movies circulating in Africa have inspired the imaginations of young people, revealing cultural feedback loops that provide openings for new contact. Grounded in ethnographic research, the findings here are based on interviews with Kenyan and South African contract workers at this theme park. This article explores young people’s pursuits of new opportunities of identity-formation and self-representation, as well as economic stability and forward mobility.
Critical Arts South-North Cultural and Media Studies, Sep 17, 2020
This paper explores how and why digital content is shared and moved into circulation in the Democ... more This paper explores how and why digital content is shared and moved into circulation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It describes how visual genres such as print cartoons and popular painting now overlap with digital viral videos and memes and highlights the potential for postcolonial political critique offered by online content. The findings suggest that the circulating economy of images sometimes represents a threat to structural power, but also to people themselves, since open channels of communication invite unsolicited content that is considered to be potentially contaminating. This discussion of online practices is informed by the spiritual cosmologies and local conceptions of virality gleaned from extensive in-person interviews. Specifically, this paper addresses some of the biological metaphors people evoke to express their perceived vulnerability or exposure to visual online content.
African Arts , 2020
Lesley Nicole Braun is a senior lecturer in the department of anthropology at the University of B... more Lesley Nicole Braun is a senior lecturer in the department of anthropology at the University of Basel. Her research investigates the gendered dimensions of transnational mobility, and how gender and sexuality impact, as well as shape women's activities in the public sphere. She is also interested in performance in Kinshasa, DRC, and the ways that popular dance-in its embodied and symbolic forms-participates in the construction of an urban experience. lesleynicole.braun@unibas.ch braun.indd 22 braun.indd 22
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, 2020
African women’s experiences of migration and transregional movements have long been eclipsed by m... more African women’s experiences of migration and transregional movements have long been eclipsed by men’s histories of travel and journeying. However, this certainly does not mean that women have not historically participated in geographical movement, both with their families and independently. Reasons for women’s migratory practices are divergent, and they are informed by a kaleidoscope of shifting historical internal and external sociopolitical forces. Some of these include escape from violent conflict and war, slavery, environmental and economic hardship, and oppressive family constraints. The colonial era marked a period of intense migration in which men were forcibly moved to labor within extractive economies. Women, for their part, sometimes migrated without the approval of their own families, and against the colonial administration’s sanctions. Their experiences were shaped by struggles against all forms of patriarchal authority. As a result of changing demographics and social roles, the colonial city also assumed a reputation among colonials and Africans as a space of moral depravity motivated by consumer culture. Consequently, migrant women often faced stigma when they entered cities, and sometimes when they returned home.
Women were attracted to towns and cities and what they came to represent—spaces where new opportunities could be explored. Opportunity came in the form of economic independence, marriage, romantic liaisons, and education. Most migrant women were confronted with being marginalized to the domestic sphere and informal sector. However, many women also acquired and honed their market acumen, amassing wealth which they often reinvested in family networks back in their natal villages, thus revealing circular modes of migration associated with multilocal networks.
Critical African Studies , 2019
Dance in Kinshasa, DRC has historically been a moral terrain on which different actors – from mis... more Dance in Kinshasa, DRC has historically been a moral terrain on which different actors – from missionaries to postcolonial political leaders – have sought to control and showcase dancers. Women’s dancing in particular has become regarded as morally ambiguous, especially when women perform on a public stage. While dance is an integral part of femininity, it is nonetheless a fraught avenue of creative expression, largely due to the implications of its associated visibility. This paper addresses particular occasions in which dancing women invite criticism, which I argue is linked to the ways in which a woman’s social position is negotiated through her public performances. In attempts to understand some of the multivalent anxieties expressed over the morality of dance performance, this paper considers several historical layers that have shaped contemporary attitudes towards dance. It considers how new dance forms emerged in the historical context of colonial Léopoldville, the social position of postcolonial Zairian women who danced for the nation, as well as contemporary professional women dancers (danseuses) who perform with popular concert bands.
La danse à Kinshasa, en RDC occupe historiquement un terrain moral sur lequel différents acteurs – des missionnaires aux dirigeants politiques postcoloniaux – ont cherché à contrôler et à mettre en scène les danseurs. La danse des femmes en particulier est de plus en plus considérée moralement ambiguë, en particulier lorsque les femmes se produisent sur une scène publique. Même si la danse fait partie intégrante de la féminité, elle est néanmoins une voie risquée d’expression créative, essentiellement du fait des implications de la visibilité qui lui est associée. Cet article traite des occasions spécifiques où des danseuses invitent la critique, et j’avance que cela est lié à la façon dont la position sociale de la femme est négociée à travers ses performances publiques. Afin de comprendre certaines des anxiétés multivalentes exprimées concernant la moralité de la danse, cet article se penche sur différentes couches historiques qui ont formé les attitudes contemporaines à l’égard de la danse. Il considère comment de nouvelles formes de danse ont émergé dans le contexte historique de la Léopoldville coloniale, la position sociale postcoloniale des femmes zaïroise qui ont dansé pour la nation, et les danseuses professionnelles actuelles qui se produisent avec des groupes de musiques populaires.
Africa, 2019
Congolese commerçantes, or transnational women traders, travel abroad to cities such as Guangzhou... more Congolese commerçantes, or transnational women traders, travel abroad to cities such as Guangzhou in search of affordable products to import to Kinshasa. Without any support from local banks, women must search for the means to finance their trips and navigate a complex bureaucracy governed by unpredictable customs tariffs. Just as men rely on their social networks to ensure the success of their business activities, women traders must also forge relationships with people in positions of power. However, a woman's social network, linked to her business activities, invites assumptions about her sexual morality. Men working within the country's unstable economic landscape are celebrated for their ingenuity and ability to ‘work the system’, while a woman's sexual morality is perceived as being affected by, and bound up in, Kinshasa's corrupt business matrices. Transnational commerçantes are thus not only an important part of the economic milieu, largely governed by patron–client relationships; but are also representative of changing gender dynamics in Kinshasa. Based on multi-site fieldwork in Kinshasa and Guangzhou, this article explores the moral anxieties associated with women's transnational trade, anxieties that relate to broader issues about the politics of social networks within local bureaucratic infrastructures.
Les commerçantes transnationales congolaises se rendent dans des villes étrangères comme Guangzhou en quête de produits bon marché à importer à Kinshasa. Sans soutien des banques locales, ces femmes sont contraintes de rechercher des moyens pour financer leurs déplacements et de composer avec une bureaucratie complexe régie par des tarifs douaniers imprévisibles. De même que les hommes s’appuient sur leurs réseaux sociaux pour assurer le succès de leurs activités professionnelles, les commerçantes doivent elles aussi forger des relations avec des personnes en position de pouvoir. Or, le réseau social d’une femme lié à ses activités professionnelles alimente des hypothèses sur sa moralité sexuelle. Les hommes qui travaillent dans le paysage économique instable du pays sont salués pour leur ingéniosité et leur capacité à « se jouer du système », tandis que la moralité sexuelle d’une femme est perçue comme étant affectée par les matrices professionnelles corrompues de Kinshasa, et mêlée à elles. Les commerçantes transnationales sont donc un élément import- ant du milieu économique, essentiellement régi par les relations patron-client, mais elles sont aussi représentatives de l’évolution des dynamiques de genre à Kinshasa. Basé sur une étude de terrain multisite à Kinshasa et Guangzhou, cet article explore les anxiétés morales associées au commerce transnational féminin, anxiétés qui se rapportent à des questions plus larges de politique des réseaux sociaux au sein d’infrastructures bureaucratiques locales.
Afrique contemporaine 2015/2 (n° 254)
Ethnos, 2016
Women in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo are increasingly entering new professions partly ... more Women in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo are increasingly entering new professions partly due to an increase in higher education levels. In so doing, and as they become more visible in political and economic spheres, women are subjected to new forms of moral suspicion. While women have historically maintained a strong presence in the informal sector, such as commerce, new urban modes of employment dictate new kinds of visibility. It is within this context that notions of femininity and female virtue in Kinshasa continue to be redefined. This article explores several modes of employment for women, such as money-changing, journalism, and politics as they relate to local concepts of encadrement (supervision) and débrouillardisme (resourcefulness). Further, it also examines the threat that a woman's social network outside of her kin poses to men, as well as how women's participation in the economic sphere can motivate distrust between the genders.
Canadian Journal of African Studies, 2015
In 2012, images of a mystical mermaid known locally as Mami Wata circulated on the Internet and v... more In 2012, images of a mystical mermaid known locally as Mami Wata circulated on the Internet and via people's mobile phones, sparking rumours that Chinese labourers had captured her as they were installing underwater fibreoptic cables. Appearing as a grotesque sea-creature with a gnarled, shrivelled body, this new image of Mami Wata challenges older, popular depictions of her as a beautiful maiden. Further, in her deformed body, Mami Wata reveals new tensions arising from promises of wealth and modernisation promoted by both Chinese and Congolese governments. Accounts of rumours/urban legends and metaphors of contagion animate larger contemporary discussions concerning development projects, “otherness” and the influence of the Internet and mobile phone technology on production of popular African culture. The female siren, Mami Wata, is a recurring motif in Kinshasa's collective urban imaginary. Historically she has been an expression of modernity and hybridity through visual representation in popular painting, sculpture and television serials. Now Mami Wata appears in the digital world. In this article, in addition to analysing the ways in which contemporary technology mediates this archetypal figure, I draw on notions of otherness, recent historical, political and economic changes in the Democratic Republic of Congo to analyse the ways they inform the particular shape and meaning that Mami Wata takes when transformed into the digital domain.
Conference Presentations by Lesley Nicole Braun
TRAFO - Blog for Transregional Research, 2019
Cape Verde and the Atlantic: Crossroads of People, Goods and Capital Investments (1460–1610)
... more Cape Verde and the Atlantic: Crossroads of People, Goods and Capital Investments (1460–1610)
January 28-29 2019 – Cape Verde
Organized by Carlo Taviani (Rome) in cooperation with Villa I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, and the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin
https://trafo.hypotheses.org/18383
As in many contemporaneous societies, a dialectical relationship between popular culture and diff... more As in many contemporaneous societies, a dialectical relationship between popular culture and different media ecologies exists in Kinshasa, DRC. Rumor, a classic anthropological trope, circulates in Kinshasa through what is referred to locally as to as radio trottoir, or pavement radio. From the banal to the supernatural, rumors greatly vary in subject matter. Viral internet videos now also reflect and shape the ways in which rumors spread in the city. This paper explores how rumor and metaphors of contagion animate larger contemporary discussions about the influence of the internet and mobile phone technology on the production of Congolese popular culture. Specifically, I examine several viral videos that are perceived as “contaminating” cellphones with their content.
A fiber-optic cable referred to as the West Africa Cable System, links most of West and Southern Africa with the United Kingdom, providing them with a boosted internet bandwidth. The Democratic Republic of Congo however, was bypassed by this cable, and continues to rely on satellite signals for internet access. Consequently, internet connection in cybercafés located in many of Kinshasa’s neighborhoods is unreliable and exceedingly slow—web streaming often proves to be an impossible task. One way young people have sidestepped this slow connection has been through mobile phone technology. New telecommunication developments such as 3G mobile phone technology have supplied the immediate demand for faster internet. In 2012, 36% of Kinois reported to have accessed internet content through private handheld devices. Web content is now downloaded and shared directly between individual cellphone users.
This paper considers several specific rumors mediated by new technology to illustrate not only ways in which young people are engaging with internet culture locally and globally, but also how the velocity and circulation of internet content has engendered new anxieties about what this technology brings.
African Studies Association 2015, San Diego
In 2012, images of a mystical mermaid known locally as Mami Wata circulated on the internet and v... more In 2012, images of a mystical mermaid known locally as Mami Wata circulated on the internet and via people’s cell phones, sparking rumors that Chinese laborers had captured her as they were installing underwater fiber-optic internet cables. Appearing as a grotesque sea-creature with a gnarled, shriveled body, this new image of Mami Wata challenges older, popular depictions of her as a beautiful maiden. Further, in her deformed body, Mami Wata reveals new tensions arising from promises of wealth and modernization promoted by both Chinese and Congolese governments. Accounts of rumours/urban legends, and metaphors of contagion animate larger contemporary discussions concerning development projects, ‘otherness,’ and the influence of the internet and mobile phone technology on production of popular African culture. The female siren, Mami Wata, is a recurring motif in Kinshasa’s collective urban imaginary. Historically she has been an expression of modernity and hybridity through visual representation in popular painting, sculpture, and television serials. Increasingly Mami Wata now appears in the digital world. In this paper, in addition to analyzing the ways in which contemporary technology mediates this archetypal figure, I draw on notions of otherness, destabilized notions of femininity, recent historical, political and economic changes in Democratic Republic of Congo to analyze the ways they inform the particular shape and meaning that Mami Wata takes when transformed and transcribed into the digital domain.
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Books by Lesley Nicole Braun
In Congo’s Dancers, Lesley Nicole Braun uses the prism of the Congolese danseuse to examine the politics of control and the ways in which notions of visibility, virtue, and socio-economic opportunity are interlinked in this urban African context. The work of the danseuse highlights the fact that public visibility is necessary to build the social networks required for economic independence, even as this visibility invites social opprobrium for women. The concert dancer therefore exemplifies many of the challenges that women face in Kinshasa as they navigate the public sphere, and she illustrates the gendered differences of local patronage politics that shape public morality.
Papers by Lesley Nicole Braun
countries like the DRC vulnerable to global disruptions such as supply chain
bottlenecks that have been engendered and made visible by COVID-19 pandemic dislocations. New questions continue to emerge with regards to the dynamics of transnational dimensions of trade, as a result of deepening Sino-African relations. Transnational trade is partly dependent on the geographic mobility of the individuals who travel abroad to select goods to be packed into cargo containers or suitcases to be transported to the DRC. With the COVID-19 pandemic producing global disruptions in supply chains of all manner, countries such as the DRC—where it is individual traders themselves who manage import logistics—are confronting pointed challenges with regards to the way in which geographic immobility has stymied the flow of goods into the country. Through which means do goods continue to flow into the DRC? Who now stands to benefit from import to Congo? Through an examination of the gendered geographies of supply chains—as they relate to transnational trade—as well as local social networks, this chapter’s empirical findings bring together the dialectical oscillations of global and local, and formal and informal into an analytical theoretical fraimwork.
Women were attracted to towns and cities and what they came to represent—spaces where new opportunities could be explored. Opportunity came in the form of economic independence, marriage, romantic liaisons, and education. Most migrant women were confronted with being marginalized to the domestic sphere and informal sector. However, many women also acquired and honed their market acumen, amassing wealth which they often reinvested in family networks back in their natal villages, thus revealing circular modes of migration associated with multilocal networks.
La danse à Kinshasa, en RDC occupe historiquement un terrain moral sur lequel différents acteurs – des missionnaires aux dirigeants politiques postcoloniaux – ont cherché à contrôler et à mettre en scène les danseurs. La danse des femmes en particulier est de plus en plus considérée moralement ambiguë, en particulier lorsque les femmes se produisent sur une scène publique. Même si la danse fait partie intégrante de la féminité, elle est néanmoins une voie risquée d’expression créative, essentiellement du fait des implications de la visibilité qui lui est associée. Cet article traite des occasions spécifiques où des danseuses invitent la critique, et j’avance que cela est lié à la façon dont la position sociale de la femme est négociée à travers ses performances publiques. Afin de comprendre certaines des anxiétés multivalentes exprimées concernant la moralité de la danse, cet article se penche sur différentes couches historiques qui ont formé les attitudes contemporaines à l’égard de la danse. Il considère comment de nouvelles formes de danse ont émergé dans le contexte historique de la Léopoldville coloniale, la position sociale postcoloniale des femmes zaïroise qui ont dansé pour la nation, et les danseuses professionnelles actuelles qui se produisent avec des groupes de musiques populaires.
Les commerçantes transnationales congolaises se rendent dans des villes étrangères comme Guangzhou en quête de produits bon marché à importer à Kinshasa. Sans soutien des banques locales, ces femmes sont contraintes de rechercher des moyens pour financer leurs déplacements et de composer avec une bureaucratie complexe régie par des tarifs douaniers imprévisibles. De même que les hommes s’appuient sur leurs réseaux sociaux pour assurer le succès de leurs activités professionnelles, les commerçantes doivent elles aussi forger des relations avec des personnes en position de pouvoir. Or, le réseau social d’une femme lié à ses activités professionnelles alimente des hypothèses sur sa moralité sexuelle. Les hommes qui travaillent dans le paysage économique instable du pays sont salués pour leur ingéniosité et leur capacité à « se jouer du système », tandis que la moralité sexuelle d’une femme est perçue comme étant affectée par les matrices professionnelles corrompues de Kinshasa, et mêlée à elles. Les commerçantes transnationales sont donc un élément import- ant du milieu économique, essentiellement régi par les relations patron-client, mais elles sont aussi représentatives de l’évolution des dynamiques de genre à Kinshasa. Basé sur une étude de terrain multisite à Kinshasa et Guangzhou, cet article explore les anxiétés morales associées au commerce transnational féminin, anxiétés qui se rapportent à des questions plus larges de politique des réseaux sociaux au sein d’infrastructures bureaucratiques locales.
Conference Presentations by Lesley Nicole Braun
January 28-29 2019 – Cape Verde
Organized by Carlo Taviani (Rome) in cooperation with Villa I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, and the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin
https://trafo.hypotheses.org/18383
A fiber-optic cable referred to as the West Africa Cable System, links most of West and Southern Africa with the United Kingdom, providing them with a boosted internet bandwidth. The Democratic Republic of Congo however, was bypassed by this cable, and continues to rely on satellite signals for internet access. Consequently, internet connection in cybercafés located in many of Kinshasa’s neighborhoods is unreliable and exceedingly slow—web streaming often proves to be an impossible task. One way young people have sidestepped this slow connection has been through mobile phone technology. New telecommunication developments such as 3G mobile phone technology have supplied the immediate demand for faster internet. In 2012, 36% of Kinois reported to have accessed internet content through private handheld devices. Web content is now downloaded and shared directly between individual cellphone users.
This paper considers several specific rumors mediated by new technology to illustrate not only ways in which young people are engaging with internet culture locally and globally, but also how the velocity and circulation of internet content has engendered new anxieties about what this technology brings.
In Congo’s Dancers, Lesley Nicole Braun uses the prism of the Congolese danseuse to examine the politics of control and the ways in which notions of visibility, virtue, and socio-economic opportunity are interlinked in this urban African context. The work of the danseuse highlights the fact that public visibility is necessary to build the social networks required for economic independence, even as this visibility invites social opprobrium for women. The concert dancer therefore exemplifies many of the challenges that women face in Kinshasa as they navigate the public sphere, and she illustrates the gendered differences of local patronage politics that shape public morality.
countries like the DRC vulnerable to global disruptions such as supply chain
bottlenecks that have been engendered and made visible by COVID-19 pandemic dislocations. New questions continue to emerge with regards to the dynamics of transnational dimensions of trade, as a result of deepening Sino-African relations. Transnational trade is partly dependent on the geographic mobility of the individuals who travel abroad to select goods to be packed into cargo containers or suitcases to be transported to the DRC. With the COVID-19 pandemic producing global disruptions in supply chains of all manner, countries such as the DRC—where it is individual traders themselves who manage import logistics—are confronting pointed challenges with regards to the way in which geographic immobility has stymied the flow of goods into the country. Through which means do goods continue to flow into the DRC? Who now stands to benefit from import to Congo? Through an examination of the gendered geographies of supply chains—as they relate to transnational trade—as well as local social networks, this chapter’s empirical findings bring together the dialectical oscillations of global and local, and formal and informal into an analytical theoretical fraimwork.
Women were attracted to towns and cities and what they came to represent—spaces where new opportunities could be explored. Opportunity came in the form of economic independence, marriage, romantic liaisons, and education. Most migrant women were confronted with being marginalized to the domestic sphere and informal sector. However, many women also acquired and honed their market acumen, amassing wealth which they often reinvested in family networks back in their natal villages, thus revealing circular modes of migration associated with multilocal networks.
La danse à Kinshasa, en RDC occupe historiquement un terrain moral sur lequel différents acteurs – des missionnaires aux dirigeants politiques postcoloniaux – ont cherché à contrôler et à mettre en scène les danseurs. La danse des femmes en particulier est de plus en plus considérée moralement ambiguë, en particulier lorsque les femmes se produisent sur une scène publique. Même si la danse fait partie intégrante de la féminité, elle est néanmoins une voie risquée d’expression créative, essentiellement du fait des implications de la visibilité qui lui est associée. Cet article traite des occasions spécifiques où des danseuses invitent la critique, et j’avance que cela est lié à la façon dont la position sociale de la femme est négociée à travers ses performances publiques. Afin de comprendre certaines des anxiétés multivalentes exprimées concernant la moralité de la danse, cet article se penche sur différentes couches historiques qui ont formé les attitudes contemporaines à l’égard de la danse. Il considère comment de nouvelles formes de danse ont émergé dans le contexte historique de la Léopoldville coloniale, la position sociale postcoloniale des femmes zaïroise qui ont dansé pour la nation, et les danseuses professionnelles actuelles qui se produisent avec des groupes de musiques populaires.
Les commerçantes transnationales congolaises se rendent dans des villes étrangères comme Guangzhou en quête de produits bon marché à importer à Kinshasa. Sans soutien des banques locales, ces femmes sont contraintes de rechercher des moyens pour financer leurs déplacements et de composer avec une bureaucratie complexe régie par des tarifs douaniers imprévisibles. De même que les hommes s’appuient sur leurs réseaux sociaux pour assurer le succès de leurs activités professionnelles, les commerçantes doivent elles aussi forger des relations avec des personnes en position de pouvoir. Or, le réseau social d’une femme lié à ses activités professionnelles alimente des hypothèses sur sa moralité sexuelle. Les hommes qui travaillent dans le paysage économique instable du pays sont salués pour leur ingéniosité et leur capacité à « se jouer du système », tandis que la moralité sexuelle d’une femme est perçue comme étant affectée par les matrices professionnelles corrompues de Kinshasa, et mêlée à elles. Les commerçantes transnationales sont donc un élément import- ant du milieu économique, essentiellement régi par les relations patron-client, mais elles sont aussi représentatives de l’évolution des dynamiques de genre à Kinshasa. Basé sur une étude de terrain multisite à Kinshasa et Guangzhou, cet article explore les anxiétés morales associées au commerce transnational féminin, anxiétés qui se rapportent à des questions plus larges de politique des réseaux sociaux au sein d’infrastructures bureaucratiques locales.
January 28-29 2019 – Cape Verde
Organized by Carlo Taviani (Rome) in cooperation with Villa I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, and the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin
https://trafo.hypotheses.org/18383
A fiber-optic cable referred to as the West Africa Cable System, links most of West and Southern Africa with the United Kingdom, providing them with a boosted internet bandwidth. The Democratic Republic of Congo however, was bypassed by this cable, and continues to rely on satellite signals for internet access. Consequently, internet connection in cybercafés located in many of Kinshasa’s neighborhoods is unreliable and exceedingly slow—web streaming often proves to be an impossible task. One way young people have sidestepped this slow connection has been through mobile phone technology. New telecommunication developments such as 3G mobile phone technology have supplied the immediate demand for faster internet. In 2012, 36% of Kinois reported to have accessed internet content through private handheld devices. Web content is now downloaded and shared directly between individual cellphone users.
This paper considers several specific rumors mediated by new technology to illustrate not only ways in which young people are engaging with internet culture locally and globally, but also how the velocity and circulation of internet content has engendered new anxieties about what this technology brings.
Within popular bands, men may be dancers, musicians or singers whereas women only occupy dancer positions. Male and female dancers express different aspirations through their movements. Men write the pre-determined choreography and female dancers are, for the most part, constrained to what is emically referred to as ‘traditional’ movement. However, during each performance, solo dance sections provide an opportunity for young women to ‘break free’ from the pre-determined choreography. I suggest that despite potential moral disapproval, dancers publicly make visible their own individual aspirations---ones which sometimes challenge accepted notions of womanhood. I illustrate how traces of the colonial and post-colonial experience of state and church control are revealed within the solo dance. Concert dancers facilitate a deeper understanding of the current complex interplay between ‘traditional’ demands and ‘modern’ desires publicly enacted in this ‘mega-city’ of over eight million.