Rijk van Dijk

Negotiating Marriage: Questions of Morality and Legitimacy in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora

Among the many immigrant groups that have settled in the Netherlands, the recently arrived migrants from Ghana have been perceived by the Dutch state as especially problematic. Explicit measures have been taken to investigate marriages of Ghanaians, as these appeared to be an avenue by which many acquired access to the Dutch welfare state. While the Dutch government tightened its immigration policies, many Ghanaian Pentecostal churches were emerging in the Ghanaian immigrant communities. An important function of these churches is to officiate over marriages; marriages that are perceived as lawful and righteous in the eyes of the migrant community but nonetheless do not have any legal basis as far as the Dutch state is concerned. This contribution explores why the Ghanaian community attributes great moral significance to these marriages that are taking place within their Pentecostal churches. It investigates the changing meaning of the functions of Pentecostal churches in Ghana and in the Netherlands by distinguishing civil morality from civic responsibility. It seeks to explore how, in both contexts, legitimacy is created as well as contested in the face of prevailing state-civil society relations. Through this exploration, it will become clear why, in both situations, Pentecostalism is unlikely to develop into a civic religion in the full sense of the term.

Christian Creations of New Spaces of Sexuality, Reproduction, and Relationships in Africa: Exploring Faith and Religious Heterotopia

Abstract In many African societies today Christian churches, Pentecostals in particular, are an important source of information on sexuality, relationships, the body, and health, motivated in part by the HIV/AIDS pandemic but also related to globally circulating ideas and images that make people rethink gender relations and identities through the lens of ‘romantic love’. Contextualizing the contemporary situation in the history of Christian movements in Africa, and by applying Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, this introduction and the subsequent papers show that Christian doctrines and practices are creating social spaces of altering relational ethics, identities and gender roles that appeal especially to upwardly mobile women.

Strength beyond Structure

Drawing on a wide range of historical and anthropological case studies from various parts of Africa, this anthology provides an understanding of the importance of agency in processes of social transformation, especially in the context of crisis and structural constraint.

Introduction Connectivity and the Postglobal Moment: (Dis)connections and Social Change in Africa

This bridge (Figures I.1 and 1.2) inspired me when I (Mirjam) was in Saint-Louis in 2009. It connects Saint-Louis to its colonial past. Louis Faidherbe was the Governor of French West Africa in the nineteenth century and is perceived as one of the “creators” of this relationship. The colonial regime has clearly had an impact on present-day Senegal and, in a way, the bridge represents a connection between the past and the present. The bridge is memory and a memory of the technologies that the French brought. It is a memory of colonial times.

Introduction: Economic Ethnographies Of The Marketization Of Health And Healing In Africa

Drawing on extensive fieldwork in nine African countries, this volume offers different perspectives on the emerging markets for well-being. The chapters discuss how medical staff, patients and citizins navigate markets for health and healing.

Markets of Well-being

Drawing on extensive fieldwork in nine African countries, this volume offers different perspectives on the emerging markets for well-being. The chapters discuss how medical staff, patients and citizins navigate markets for health and healing.

Event ethics and their elasticity: weddings in Botswana and the exploration of the tacit extraordinary

Whereas Michael Lambek situates the exploration of the significance of ‘ordinary ethics’ in the everyday as the study of ‘the ethical in the conjunction or movement between explicit local pronouncements and implicit local practices and circumstances’, this article takes the opposite view by drawing attention to special events that appear to engage – or provide space for – extraordinary ethics. Special events and their extraordinary ethics bring into relief the implicitness of the ordinary in everyday ethics. Weddings in Botswana are moments in the social life of the individual, the family and the community that produce such event ethics. On one level, the event ethics relate to the execution of these highly stylized weddings in terms of concerns about their performance and marital arrangements. On another level, the event ethics can have tacit dimensions that belong to the special nature of the occasion. This article argues not only that ‘ordinary ethics’ may be privileged through the study of what is tacit in social interactions, but that ‘event ethics’ also demonstrate the importance of the tacit. Resume: Alors que Michael Lambek situe l’exploration de l’importance de « l’ethique de l’ordinaire » au quotidien comme l’etude de « l’ethique dans la conjonction ou le mouvement entre des enonciations locales explicites et des pratiques locales implicites », cet article prend une position contraire en attirant l’attention sur des evenements particuliers qui semblent faire intervenir (ou fournir un espace a) une ethique de l’extraordinaire. Ces evenements particuliers et leur ethique de l’extraordinaire mettent en relief le caractere implicite de l’ordinaire dans l’ethique quotidienne. Au Botswana, les mariages sont des moments, dans la vie sociale de l’individu, de la famille et de la communaute, qui produisent une telle ethique de l’evenement. Sur un plan, l’ethique de l’evenement se rapporte a l’execution de ces mariages hautement stylises en termes de preoccupations concernant le deroulement et les arrangements conjugaux. Sur un autre plan, l’ethique de l’evenement peut avoir des dimensions tacites qui relevent de la nature particuliere de l’occasion. Cet article soutient que l’« ethique de l’ordinaire » peut etre privilegiee a travers l’etude de ce qui est tacite dans les interactions sociales, mais aussi que l’« ethique de l’evenement » demontre egalement l’importance du tacite.

Introduction: new ethical fields and the implicitness/explicitness of ethics in Africa

Throughout history, people on the African continent have experienced momentous transformations of their lifeworlds andways of living, some of them irruptive, uncompromising and cataclysmic, others of a more subtle and negotiable nature. What remains to be dealt with in more detail by anthropologists are the manifold ways in which these transformations are reflected in, and have a bearing on, people’s ethical demeanours, commitments and debates. Given the complexity and variability of these processes, it is not possible or even desirable to give a conclusive answer to this question. Instead, taking account of historical and sociocultural specificities, this special issue features in-depth case studies of ethics as ideals in practice from several countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Botswana, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania). In doing so, the contributions combine a presentation of ethnographic findings with a discussion of a new conceptual approach for a practice-oriented anthropological study of ‘ordinary ethics’ (Lambek 2010). In this introduction,we argue for a ratherfluid notion of ethics that entails people’s convictions, value judgements and sentiments on how to live a morally good and/or just life.We suggest that themaking and unmaking of ethicalfields takes placewithin the context of state politics, the influence of international organizations and the emergence of new publics and localNGOs that provide people with new ideas aboutwhat is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.We show that these ethicalfields emerge indialectical processes between what we call the ‘implication’ and ‘explication’ of ethics. In what follows, we first briefly reflect on previous anthropological work on ethics in Africa. We then delineate the parameters of our conceptual approach, before finally commenting on how the articles in this special issue broaden our understanding of everyday struggles in contemporary Africa to achieve or to maintain a certain ethical composure, to win relevant others over to committing themselves to particular ethical principles, or to position oneself in relation to the (un)ethical claims of others.