forwarded from H-Announcement (H-Net service)

On Friday February 16 2007 the Africa Research Centre (ARC) of the  
K.U.Leuven organizes a one-day workshop on “beer as a local and  
transnational commodity in Africa”. This workshop welcomes  
contributions from scholars across the humanities and social sciences  
working in and on Africa. The emphasis is on discussion and the  
exchange of ideas; graduate students in particular are encouraged to  
present their work.
This workshop concentrates on the role of beer in Africa’s recent  
past and present. Taking beer and drinking as a tangible lead to  
study agency and subjectivity, this workshop’s ambition is to  
explore new, exciting and especially different pathways to study the  
cultural, social and political dynamics of colonialism and modernity.  
Central to our concern are the tensions and ambivalences epitomized  
by drinking alcohol in general and beer in particular. These tensions  
relate to economic insecurity, gender, authority, identity, migrant  
labour or centralized state rule – to name but a few – and they  
equally characterize day-to-day activities and the grand, hegemonic  
narratives (such as on apartheid, civilisation, tradition or  
globalisation) in the background. The dialectic between foreground  
and background, however, cannot be reduced to the simple opposition  
of global versus local, hegemony versus resistance or colonizer  
versus colonized. On the contrary: bottle stores, canteens, pubs and  
dance joints emerge as arenas where locality is continuously being  
negotiated, where colonial and contemporary identities are being made  
and unmade. The underlying question then is: what can microscopic  
studies of beer and drinking tell us about the ‘true nature’ of  
the colonial encounter? Of the postcolonial state, of modernity and  
of development in Africa?
The deadline for submitting paper proposals is September 1 2006.  
Proposals should include a title, a 250 to 500-word abstract and the  
author’s contact information. They can be submitted to Steven Van  
Wolputte ([log in to unmask]), Africa Research  
Centre, Tiensestraat 102, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium. Tel: ++ 32 16 32 54  
96; fax ++ 32 16 32 59 02. This call for papers, thematic outline and  
other information regarding this workshop can be found on http:// 
ppw.kuleuven.be/antropologie/arc/events/beer/beer_intro.html or via  
the website of the Africa Research Centre (www.africaresearch.be).
Tentative outline of themes
1. Bottles and brews
Beer as commodity
o Beers, frontiers, and the making and unmaking of boundaries
o Beer and labour
o Beer and monetization
o Beer, emancipation and dependency
o The social life of beer
o Beer and (de-)commodification
o consumption and production
2. A pub without beer?
Imagining colonialism, modernity, and state
o Beer and the history of apartheid
o Legal and illegal brewing
o Beer and the colonial state
o Beer and governmentality
o Beer and morality
o Beer, hegemony and counterhegemony
o Beer and the imagination of ‘race’
o Beer and authority
o The politics of drinking
3. Through the drinking glass
Identities and local dynamics of change
o Beer, homogenization and heterogeneity
o Beer, village, city
o Beer and religion
o Beer, self-fashioning and subjectivity
o Beer and ethnicity
o Beer and the (un)making of identity
o Beer and morality
o Beer and modernity
o Alcohol and violence
4. Beers and locality
The cultural logic of drinking
o Beer and locality
o Beer and sociality
o Beer and ethnography
o The semantics of alcohol and beer
o Beer, authority and subversion


Steven Van Wolputte
Africa Research Centre, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
102 Tiensestraat
Phone: + 32 16 32 54 96
fax: +32 16 32 59 02
Email: [log in to unmask]
Visit the website at http://ppw.kuleuven.be/antropologie/arc/events/ 
beer/beer_intro.html