Talks This Week

Netty Carey

Last Week's Recap
On Monday January 9^th, Netty Carey (MA student, Anthropology) gave a presentation to the Social Change and Development in Africa Working Group. Her talk, titled, “‘We are in the air’. Land Claims and Liminal Space on Ghana’s Volta Delta”, discussed the interactions between an Italian-Ghanaian company, Trasacco, and the local community as plans are underway to construct a high-class tourist resort and boat marina on the west side of the Volta River estuary. The research presented was based on 6 weeks of ethnographic fieldwork Carey carried out in Ghana in June and July of 2016.
 
If constructed, the Trasacco resort project will result in the forceful relocation of over a hundred residences. Historically, the community has faced volatile pressures on land by the encroaching sea, which has resulted in residences lost to the sea or moved-inland on at least three different occasions. The dwellings to be demolished and reconstructed elsewhere have been marked by painted yellow numbers. As Carey describes, these numbers have color, presence, and agency as they serve as a warning (a yellow card, as many locals describe it) about the possible pending relocation measures. The numbers, located on structures on one side of the community, paint over the class differences among the households they mark, but many fear those differences will be reinforced by the relocation. Themes of ownership and political patronage are paramount in this issue, particularly because it was the chief who went around with the Trasacco officials to paint the residences (and shrines!) which would need to be moved. That the chief is the custodian of the land who has promised to protect the interests of the community makes many community members view his involvement in the Trasacco deal as a prominent betrayal. As tribal claims, chieftaincy authority, class differences, the power of rumors, and international versus domestic authority interact, Carey’s research offers a close-up view of what tourism development can mean for vulnerable communities in picturesque landscapes.

Dr. Sue O'Brien (left) introduces Dr. Farooq Kperogi (right)
 

On Friday January 13^th, Farooq A. Kperogi gave a Baraza presentation titled, “Citizen Journalism and Nigeria’s Digital Diaspora.” Kperogi is Associate Professor of Journalism & Emerging Media in the School of Communication & Media at Kennesaw State University. He also writes two columns a week for the Daily Trust, a prominent newspaper in Nigeria, as well as maintains an influential political blog accessible here.
 
Kperogi’s presentation focused on the ‘online citizen journalism’ that is carried out by the Nigerian diaspora. His research thesis investigates how people who are voluntarily displaced from their homeland, re-territorialize and then engage in media outreach with their homeland in dynamic or influential ways. Also referring to these communities as “digital diasporas” or “transnations of diasporic communities”, Kperogi argues that media and migration are inextricably connected. Further, the strong media influence of diasporic communities has resulted in a ‘contra flows’ phenomenon where, instead of the historic domination of the media by the West, which then flows to the Rest, contra flows refer to a discourse which subverts that informational flow. Now the prominence of diasporic media sources has resulted in Western audiences accessing these media links.
 
Kperogi explains that the rise of Nigerian diasporic media sources was the result of a dearth of critical journalism in Nigeria, a delay in the technological quality of online news sources coming from Nigeria, and the geographic distance (which also serves as protection) of diaspora citizen media practitioners from the homeland. The print media has always been inextricably linked to democracy in Nigeria, and now both online and print sources are central in sustaining Nigeria’s progress toward democracy. Finally, Kperogi’s talk concluded with a discussion of the immense, and possibly undue, influence of the diaspora for Nigerian politics. This influence translates into the government’s viewing of the diaspora, and diasporic concerns, as more legitimate than domestic voices and results in the Nigerian government responding more directly to Nigerian reports from abroad.