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Reception of the site> meetings> on 2007> Mobilities, traces and borders in Africa of the Great Lakes, XIITH - XXITH century

Mobilities, traces and borders in Africa of the Great Lakes, XIITH - XXITH century

Conference, on Thursday, 18, Friday, 19 and Saturday, October 20th, 2007, Paris

Locations
On Thursday, October 18th : room 216 in the Pantheon
University of Paris I Panth�on Sorbonne
12 place of the Pantheon 5th Paris
RAPID-TRANSIT RAIL SYSTEM B : Luxembourg or underground St Michel-Cluny the Sorbonne or Underground Od�on

On Friday, October 19th, 2007 : Auditorium, rdc
National centre for scientific research - regional Island delegation of France Paris A
27 street Paul Bert 94200 Ivry on Seine
Underground :ligne 7 Door of Choisy or Door of Ivry

On Saturday, October 20th : room 2 in the Pantheon
University of Paris I Panth�on Sorbonne
12 place of the Pantheon 5th Paris
RAPID-TRANSIT RAIL SYSTEM B : Luxembourg or underground St Michel-Cluny the Sorbonne or Underground Od�on

Partners :
Universit� di Torino, Missione Etnologica Italiana in Africa Equatoriale
Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne university, Centre of Studies of the Africain Worlds

French-Italian Plan university Galileo ‘History and anthropology of Africa of the Great Lakes’

Organisation :
Cecilia Pennacini (cecilia.pennacini@unito.it)
Henry M�dard (medard@univ-paris1.fr)

Thursday, October 18th, 2007

Session of morning
President : Henry M�dard (Donatecarcenter.com-Universit� Paris I)

11 h 00 - 11 h 30
Introduction
- Cecilia Pennacini (University of Turin), Henry M�dard (Donatecarcenter.com-Universit� of Paris 1)
11 h 30 - 12 h 30
Dynamics of borders and urban mobilities
- Clear M�dard (IRD) : Dynamics of fronts and of borders. International border, internal borders, fronts of population and conflicts : The Mount Elgon (Kenya / Uganda)
- Francesco Remotti (University of Turin) : The circulation of capitals in the ancient kingdoms of Africa of the Great Lakes

12h30h - 14 h 30 Pause meal

Session of afternoon
President Cecilia Pennacini (University of Turin)

14 h 30 - 15 h 30
Borders and ancient mobilities
- Henry M�dard (Donatecarcenter.com-Universit� of Paris 1) The world and the imaginary migrations of Kintu, father and first king of Baganda
- Sylvia Nannyonga-Tamusuza (University of Makerere) : Female-Men, Male-Women, and Others : Constructing and Negotiating Gender among the Baganda of Uganda

15 h 30 - 16 h 00 Debate

Friday, October 19th, 2007

Session of morning
President : Thomas Vernet (Donatecarcenter.com-Universit� Paris I)

10h00-11 h 30
Border and colonisation
- Jeans Pierre Christian (Donatecarcenter.com-CNRS) The role of the Rwandan and Burundais in the definition of their colonial borders
- Shane Doyle (University of Leeds) : The Lost Counties Dispute : Ethnic Politics in Modern Uganda

10 h 30-11h00 pause

11h30-12h30
Borders, trade and migrations
- Luca Jourdan (University of Bologna) : The opportunities of a border. Small and big trade between Congo and Uganda
- Elizabeth Behlouli (Donatecarcenter.com-Universit� of Paris 1) : From conservation to the border : the national park Queen Elizabeth (Uganda)

12 h 30-14h pause meal

Session of after midday
President : Sandrine Perrot (CERI-Sciences Po)

14 h 00 - 15 h 30
Borders and musics
- Serena Facci (University of Rome 3) : Dances nande 1980 - dances konzo on 2000 : traces of a political-cultural border
- Crupi winnowed (University of Rome, Sapienza) : Broadcasting and circulation of log xylophones in the region African Great Lakes
- Anna Baral (University of Turin) : Political potential and changeability in ganda runs music : observations one Albert Ssempeke s biography, between tradition and transformation.

15 h 30 - 16 h pause

16 h 00 - 17 h 00
Conflicts and borders
- Christine Deslaurier (IRD) : People of the plain, people of hills : the sociopolitical borders of the geographical and historical zoning of the populations of the South of the Burundi.
- Alexander Hatungimana (University of the Burundi) : War in the Burundi : forced mobility and rural exodus.

17 h 30 - 18 h debate

18 h 00 : Reception (Ivry)

Saturday, October 20th, 2007

Session of morning
President Carlo Carbone (University of Calabre)

9 h 30-11h
The building of "ethnic " and "racial" borders
- L�on Saur (Donatecarcenter.com-Universit� of Paris 1) : Ethnic border as tool of conquest of power : the case of Parmehutu
- Aude Laroque (Donatecarcenter.com-Universit� of Paris 1) : From Rwanda to the Burundi : the ethnic group, in the middle of the movements of populations and of the logic of violence.
- Antoine Gorce (Donatecarcenter.com-Universit� of Paris 1) : Racial Segregation and interracial sociability in Uganda of 1950s

11h-11h30 pause

11h30-12h30
Religious borders
- Cecilia Pennacini (University of Turin) : Transcend borders : the possession of the kubandwa beyond the political, cultural and individual borders
- Alessandro Gusman (University of Turin) : Transnational and transgenerational movements of ideas and beliefs. The example of Pentecostalism in Uganda.

12 h 30-14h30 pause meal

Session of after midday
President : Alexander Hatungimana (University of the Burundi)

14 h 30 - 15 h 30
Natural and frontier reserves
- Cristina Zavaroni (University of Turin) : The Rwenzori Mountains National Park (Uganda) : has physical boundary in Bakonzo spiritual life

15 h 30 - 16 h pause

16h00-16h30 Fence
- Camille Lefebvre (Donatecarcenter.com-Universit� of Paris 1)

12h-12h30 general Debate

Presentation

Far from immobile Africa, we offer to approach mobile Africa for a long time, there - included in its self-defining conception and its pantheon ; Africa where the persons, objects, ideas circulate ; Africa of the fronts of population (' Frontier ' of Kopytoff (1989) where the space stretches, retracts, to stretch better again ; Africa where political power - ancient as recent - tries to control the movements of its population by establishing between others of administrative or national borders.

Africa of the Great Lakes is famous for its spectacular and dramatic migratory movements of political refugees (for example following genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, then following war in Democratic Republic of Congo). These movements are inserted in much longer logic : economic migrations of Rwandan and from Burundais towards Uganda during colonial period (Richards without date, Christian 1993), political migrations in independence, but also in the XIXth century the whole palette of free or forced migrations (milked by slaves, deportation of whole communities for example from Toro towards Bunyoro in 1890s...) and also economic migrations of the dry zones towards zones more fecund as Ukerewe (Hartwig 1976), Buganda... Influenced by racist thought and diffusionnisme, a lot of researches by the Europeans as the Africans were performed on the myths of origin and the ancient migrations. It is epoch when the Africain stories of migrations try to grab hold of imaginary master races and peregrinations of Ham and his descendants by discovering ancient routes towards Egypt or Ethiopia. Europeans and Africans compete of imagination to invent traces and proof (Christian 1977).

Ancient fronts of population exist in the XIXth century who push Rwanda for example (Newbury, 1989), the Burundi (Gahama and Thibon, on 1994) and Bunyoro westward. In the XXth century, demographic crisis depopulates whole regions of the centre and push to migrations of peripheries towards the centre (West Nile, West of Kenya towards Buganda and Bunyoro, but also Congolese and Rwandan and Burundais).

Movements and migrations leave traces, places of memory all the more if they are of recent or imaginary invention (cf many sacred, often rival places, memorialising the passage of Kintu or of Bacwezi on the West east of or north of Uganda). We offer therefore to come back for example on the routes of migration gathered in Africa of the Great Lakes, for example that of Nande or those of Kintu (father of Baganda), to see the places of memo which punctuate their road as impact (or not) international borders on this migratory imagination.

The migrants also transport with them objects, ideas, create links which punctuate their roads. It is only to see specialised trade which marks every stage of the buses of the road of Mombasa to Rwanda (crease oranges in Mombasa, pears in Kikuyu and Limuru, in Naivasha, potatoes in Mau Escarpement, tea in Kericho, mosquito nets in Kisumu, peanuts in Busia, different types of banana, of chicken or of drums according to stages across Buganda, tilapia in the passage of Katonga).

The migrations of worship and of religions are the most spectacular, that it is those of the ancient divinities in the region, that are inserted in Kubandwa, those of Islam and of Christianity for the XIXth century or more recently those of new worship come of Kenya or from Nigeria or coming from American evangelical and fundamentalist sphere of influence. The game of borders is used with more or less of success to control the broadcasting of religions (separation between Muslims, Catholics and Protestants in Uganda, exclusion from the not Catholics in Belgian territory, delay of the development of new religions in Uganda, in the Burundi and in Rwanda in comparison with Congo and in Kenya).

The zones of border have their clean logic, creating zones of exchange specific or markets, in the current frontier posts, but also along the more ancient borders for example between Bunyoro and Buganda (Uzoigwe, on 1971). Border also creates migrations by cutting united or supplementary areas. The creation of national parks (often leant on international borders and it is not a chance), favouring an ecosystem more than other one, construct obstacles to obtain the necessary elements for the manufacture of musical instruments or pilgrimages towards sacred places. So local pilgrimages become international migrations...

The mobility, in its contemporary dimension, signals peculiar experiments as collective experiments. Job, firm, trade, religion, therapy, music and dance push the persons to the mobility, crossing social, political, cultural and linguistic borders. Already in ancient epoch, the mediums for example moved beyond local borders and augmented religious and therapeutic offer. The patients too travelled in search of solutions in their problems. Such mobility stretches out of borders even of ancient systems of belief. It also borrowed from new "universal" religions striving for the constitution of diagrammes always larger and globalisants. In that way ideas, manufacture, property and material and insubstantial products circulate through large networks, inside whom cultures recreate, renovate. We therefore want to give examples of this dynamics or even individual experiments, which often introduce flare and significant experiments (migration from the city to the even temporary campaign, mobilities, trips). All these opportunities of change contribute to renew permanently the cultural organisation of the region.

The participants are invited to think on migrations, borders, fronts pioneers, ancient or recent, human or not, real, mythical or imaginary, and their effects on a multitude of objects and historical or sociological phenomena.

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