Filip De Boeck

Domesticating Diamonds and Dollars: Identity, Expenditure and Sharing in Southwestern Zaire (1984–1997)

This article explores the impact of the recent diamond traffic on both rural and urban life in southwestern Congo‐Zaire, in an attempt at a ‘multi‐sited’ ethnography of the circulation of cultural meanings, commodities, money and identities in an increasingly diffuse time‐space, in which the standard dichotomies between rural and urban worlds, lived world and system, traditional and modern, or precapitalist and capitalist realities have lost much of their explanatory strength. More specifically, the article deals with the widespread phenomenon of the bana Lunda, ‘the children of Lunda’, young Congolese urbanites who travel from all over southwestern Zaire to the Angolan province of Lunda Norte in order to dig or dive for diamonds in the UNITA‐controlled territories. It investigates the changes brought about by the diamond trade and by the influx of these urban youngsters into the rural border area, as well as the impact of the accompanying monetization, known as ‘dollarization’, on the daily life of villagers and urbanites in Southwestern Zaire.

NDEMBU, LUUNDA AND YAKA DIVINATION COMPARED: FROM REPRESENTATION AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING TO EMBODIMENT AND WORLDMAKING

perspectives in the approach to ritual action and social drama in many areas of cultural analysis, whether it be anthropology, the history of religion, literature, or theatre (cf Ashley 1990; Deflem 1991; Moore and Reynolds 1984). That we are capable of engaging in an intergenerational or trialogue-to paraphrase James Clifford (1988)-and of comparing our own field data to his own, is a tribute to Turner the ethnographer, and bears witness to the solidness of his Ndembu data. This study deals with the Ndembu of northern Zambia, and the neighbouring Luunda and Yaka of the Kwaango in southwestern Zaire. Ndembu and Yaka peoples owe a great deal of their ritual institutions to the Luunda. About three centuries ago, Luunda groups left the Ruund nucleus in what is now the Zairean province of Shaba, and started to migrate westwards: some settled in the Upper-Kwaango, while others migrated further northwards to impose centralising political institutions onto Yaka people. The Ndembu issue from a southern migration wave out of the same Ruund core. Drawing upon our respective field research among Luunda and Yaka, we will present a critical evaluation of Turners views on Ndembu ritual from a comparative perspective. We will focus on his approach to Ndembu basket divination, ngombu yakusekula (Turner 1961, 1968, 1975). In a first part, we will discuss Turners cognitivist stress in his presentation of the way in which ritual, symbols, and metaphors

Divining the city: rhythm, amalgamation and knotting as forms of "urbanity"

Drawing on ethnographies of divinatory systems as well as on mathematical theories of the Möbius strip, this article unravels the complex weaving and knotting together of forms of sociality and survival in urban Congo. Inhabiting the urban, the author argues, requires strategies of amalgamation that resist being mapped linearly.Drawing on ethnographies of divinatory systems as well as on mathematical theories of the Mobius strip, this article unravels the complex weaving and knotting together of forms of sociality and survival in urban Congo. Inhabiting the urban, the author argues, requires strategies of amalgamation that resist being mapped linearly.

Forum : resilience & design

Abstract This forum aims to encourage theorists of resilience to engage more closely with different aspects of design theory and practice. The introduction outlines a series of largely unacknowledged parallels between resilience and design, relating to the valorisation of processes over states, the loss of faith in ‘planning’, the ambivalent status of boundaries and interfaces, and open-ended political possibilities. Four short reflections then follow on various design-related topics: the significance of the ‘wicked problem’ in contemporary urban planning and design, and the urbanisation of responsibility; design’s potential to repoliticise and engender new forms of responsibility; the significance of the digital interface and the condition of everyday life in the ‘unplanned’ post-colonial city. Readers are invited to build on or refute the explicit and implicit links made between resilience and design in the various forum contributions.