Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T19:20:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria das Gracas de Santana Rodrigue.pdf: 931602 bytes, checksum: a9e50346adc63baa90b5eabe9d9566ea (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-06-25 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The research carries out his first approach to the archetypical unconscious present in the world of symbols. Symbols standing in the Ilé Àsé Òpó Afonjá religious context regarded as a living heap of African cultural tradition in Brazil, a historical and cultural heritage, a Nago traditional jewel box of learning in diasporic Bahia. Bahia, a privileged area for these cultures preservation, offers us the possibility to examine more deeply the African contribution to Brazilian identity constitution. We have present in our minds the African Diaspora, especially on the two ways route between Nigeria and Salvador in Bahia. The area in which has been built this cultural bridge was the South Atlantic. In this area a continuous cultural bridge has been built along the last three hundred years. Comparisons and connections have in traffic and cultural mobility two of his constitutive pillars. Our research is restricted to the Orí, to the comprehension of his nature and characteristics in human existence as psycho-social phenomenon. In the African cosmovision, strictly unitary, the visible world and the invisible one are not separated, they interpenetrate each other in continuity, so the importance to well understand the interrelation between them, between the Orun and the Aiyé. The Orí presence and motion in these worlds is marked by an important role. Our hypothesis understands that Orí fulfils an epistemological function in the Orishas tradition. Thus, the comprehension of his meaning is fundamental for the Orishas acquaintance as well as for their rituals. For that tradition descendents the undermost gestures do make sense. They are actions that wave to the human condition boundaries reflected in the rituals. This means that on the Terreiro and in the regarded rituals he is meant again. Therefore, his symbols can be read by the archetypal way. Orí inside the human being is a conscious light. He is the African ancestry meant again in the New Atlantic / A pesquisa realiza uma primeira aproximação do inconsciente arquetípico presente no mundo dos símbolos sobre Orí. Símbolos presentes no contexto religioso do Ilé Àsé Òpó Afonjá, considerado um autêntico acervo vivo de Tradição e Cultura Africanas dos Orixás no Brasil, um patrimônio histórico e cultural, um porta-jóias dos saberes de tradição nagô na Bahia diaspórica. A Bahia, um dos espaços privilegiados de preservação das culturas africanas, oferece-nos a possibilidade de examinar mais profundamente as contribuições africanas para a constituição da identidade brasileira. Tem-se presente a Diáspora Africana, especialmente no seu percurso de mão dupla entre a Nigéria e Salvador-Bahia. O espaço no qual se construiu essa ponte cultural foi o Atlântico Sul. Nesse espaço, ao longo de trezentos anos, uma contínua ponte cultural foi edificada. Comparações e conexões têm no trânsito e mobilidades culturais dois de seus pilares constitutivos. Nossa pesquisa está circunscrita ao Orí, à compreensão de sua natureza, relevância e funções na existência humana como fenômeno psicossocial. Na cosmovisão africana, marcadamente unitária, o mundo visível e o invisível não estão separados, interpenetram-se em continuidade um com o outro, daí, a importância de se compreender bem as inter-relações entre eles, entre o Orun e o Aiyé. A presença, a movimentação do Orí entre esses mundos reveste-se de um papel importante. Nossa hipótese compreende que Orí exerce uma função epistemológica na Tradição dos Orixás. Sendo assim, a compreensão do seu significado é fundamental para o conhecimento dos Orixás e dos rituais. Para os descendentes dessa tradição os ínfimos gestos fazem sentido, são ações que acenam para os limites da condição humana refletida nos rituais. Isto significa que no Terreiro e nos rituais observados ele é re-significado culturalmente. Portanto, seus símbolos podem ser lidos pela via dos arquétipos. Orí no ser humano é uma luz da consciência. É a ancestralidade africana re-significada, na nova conjuntura atlântica

Esta pesquisa analisa a historiografia que abordou a formação das culturas afro-americanas e os intercâmbios culturais entre africanos e euro-americanos, mostrando como ela tem sido marcada por uma coexistência contraditória de premissas universalistas e particularistas a respeito da natureza da cultura. Tais contradições já podem ser observadas na antropologia culturalista de Franz Boas, que desliza entre duas definições de cultura por um lado, como um espírito orgânico e estável e, por outro, como um agregado histórico e dinâmico de costumes e ideias , apontando a permanência e a mudança como aspectos simultâneos dos contatos culturais. Melville Herskovits fundamentou-se na obra boasiana e herdou essas contradições ao realizar seu estudo sobre as culturas afro-americanas, representando-as simultaneamente como uma aculturação, na chave da descontinuidade com o passado, e como uma preservação de africanismos, na chave da continuidade com as culturas africanas. Tais dificuldades desdobram-se até o debate contemporâneo em torno do conceito de crioulização e da obra de Mintz e Price, que descreve das culturas afro-americanas ressaltando ao mesmo tempo a criatividade e a sobrevivência de estruturas africanas. Autores filiados à chamada corrente afrocêntrica tentaram resolver esses impasses minimizando a transformação e privilegiando a continuidade com o passado, no que intensificaram o dualismo implícito na vertente particularista de análises anteriores. Uma outra tradição de estudos sobre os intercâmbios culturais em sociedades coloniais incluindo autores como Gilberto Freyre, Fernando Ortiz e outros associados ao pensamento pós-colonial desenvolveu um modelo conceitual distinto, centrando-se nas ambivalências e inversões presentes na dimensão afetiva dos contatos culturais. Com isso, esses autores compreenderam o intercâmbio cultural a partir de uma lógica dialética, desconstruindo raciocínios dualistas, abraçando o caráter autocontraditório dos fenômenos e propondo, assim, uma alternativa teórica aos modelos herdados do culturalismo antropológico. / This work analyses the historiography which has studied the formation of African-American cultures and the cultural exchange between Africans and Euro-Americans, sustaining that it has been characterized by a contradictory coexistence of universalistic and particularistic presuppositions about the nature of culture. These contradictions can already be observed in Franz Boass Anthropological culturalism, which moves between two definitions of culture on the one hand, as an organic and stable spirit and, on the other hand, as a historical and dynamic aggregate of customs and ideas , indicating permanence and transformation as simultaneous aspects of cultural contact. Melville Herskovits was grounded on Boass ideas and inherited these contradictions when he studied African-American cultures, representing them simultaneously as an acculturation, focusing a discontinuous relation with the past, and as a preservation of africanisms, stressing a continuous relation with African cultures. These difficulties have unfolded themselves up to the contemporary debate about the concept of creolization and Mintz and Prices work, which describes African-American cultures focusing cultural creativity and the survival of African structures at the same time. Authors of the so-called afrocentric perspective have tried to solve this impasse by minimizing transformations and stressing continuity with the past. By doing so, they have intensified the dualism implicit on the particularistic arguments of previous analyses. Another tradition of studies about cultural exchange in colonial societies including authors such as Gilberto Freyre, Fernando Ortiz and others associated to post-colonial thought has developed a different conceptual model, which focuses on the ambivalences and inversions that can be observed on the affective dimensions of cultural contacts. These authors have interpreted cultural exchange through a dialectical logic, deconstructing dualistic thoughts, embracing the self-contradictory nature of the fenomena, and thus indicating a theorical alternative to the models inherited from anthropological culturalism.

Social and economic challenges in one part of the world influence budgets, security, health, and well being of populations globally as was the case with the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Deficits in healthcare, education, governance, and the economy in African nations result in financial and social contributions from the diaspora residing in the United States. Many African-born immigrants to Florida came with useful knowledge and experience from their home nations that could be a valuable resource in carrying out effective development initiatives. However, accessing that knowledge is challenging. The purpose of this research was to explore the inclusion of members of the African diaspora community in Florida nonprofit development initiatives. The transnational theory of migration underpinned the following research question: What are barriers to, and opportunities for, including members of the African diaspora in Florida-based NPOs that carry out development programs in Africa? Semistructured interviews were conducted with Florida nonprofit leaders (N= 21) who have development projects in Africa. Manual and computer assisted methods using NVivo 11 were used to develop codes and themes for data analysis. Identified barriers to including African diaspora in NPOs included lack of established networks and organizational awareness as well as limited service areas, service locations, funding, and leadership roles. All respondents expressed interest in engaging with diaspora members and other nonprofit leaders via expat networks. Successful engagement with the African diaspora community could promote positive social change by improving program delivery, communication, and programmatic outcomes for a mutual impact in both African and Florida-based communities.

<p>At the heart of "American Realities, Diasporic Dreams" lies the following question: How and why do people generate longings for diasporic experience, and what might this have to do with nationally-specific affective and political economies of race, gender, and age? This dissertation focuses on the women of Girlfriend Tours International (GFT), a regionally and socio-economically diverse group of Americans, who are also members of the virtual community at www.Jamaicans.com. By completing online research in their web-community, and multi-sited ethnographic research in multiple cities throughout the U.S. and Jamaica, I investigate how this group of African-American women makes sense of the paradoxical nature of their hyphenated-identities, as they explore the contentious relationship between "Blackness" and "Americanness." </p><p>This dissertation examines how these African-American women use travel and the Internet to cope with their experiences of racism and sexism in the United States, while pursuing "happiness" and social belonging within (virtual and territorial) diasporic relationships. Ironically, the "success" of their diasporic dreams and travels is predicated on how well they leverage their national privilege as (African) American citizens in Jamaica. Therefore, I argue that these African-American women establish a complex concept of happiness, one that can only be fulfilled by moving--both virtually and actually--across national borders. In other words, these women require American economic, national, and social capital in order to travel to Jamaica, but simultaneously need the spiritual connection to Jamaica and its people in order to remain hopeful and happy within the national borders of the U.S. Their pursuit of happiness, therefore, raises critical questions that encourage scholars to rethink how we ethnographically document diasporic longings, and how we imagine their relationships to early 21st century notions of the "American Dream."</p> / Dissertation

This thesis is based on a study examining the concept of African scholarship through the contributions of foreign African academics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) on the Howard College and Pietermaritzburg campuses. Being branded “The Premier University of African Scholarship” the study principally set out to investigate the role played by these academics as possible conduits in the expansion of African scholarship within the knowledge production circuit. The concept of African scholarship, though not a novel term, remains an elusive category that still needs to be defined within the global knowledge economy. A cursory look at written literature around African scholarship reveals a general tendency that presents „the debate‟ much more as a theoretical engagement and less at empirical engagements that could help advance the practicalities of this concept within the different intellectual debates. Among the different pockets of intellectuals concerned with the vision of African scholarship, the African diaspora outside the continent has always played a leading role in the need to address the African knowledge paradigms within the global intellectual production of knowledge. This study is of significance because it engages with an emerging African diaspora within the South African space and attempts to highlight how their experiences as migrants help in broadening the understanding of the African experience as a knowledge site. Using in-depth interviews within a qualitative research framework in combination with the technique of observation, the findings of this study reveal that as an emerging diaspora, foreign African academics at UKZN, are actively taking advantage of the university‟s slogan to meaningfully (re)insert „Africanness‟ in the kind of knowledge that is produced in the institution. Their contributions are measured in terms of postgraduate supervision, new research agendas, pedagogic and curricular development and networks of collaborations with other universities in Africa. Using an anthropological approach the study equally examines the implications of the attempt to position African scholarship within the global knowledge production map. The study further highlights the role that social identities such as gender, language, nationality, and race can play as epistemic spaces in the advancement of African scholarship. By engaging with these markers, the debate advances beyond the current ad hoc manner of presenting African scholarship simplistically within political rhetoric to a more nuanced incorporation of other markers which should occupy epistemic spaces within the discourse of African scholarship. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on March 12, 2009) Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis explores the relationship between identity, social interaction, and social practice, through a case study of young diasporans of Ethiopian origin (YDEOs) from North America and their engagements in Ethiopian development initiatives. Specifically, I examine the ways in which people of Ethiopian descent born and/or raised in Canada and the U.S. construct a diasporic identity and engage with Ethiopian development initiatives through a mutually constitutive process. My methods were qualitative and involved conducting semi-structured in-depth interviews with 55 YDEOs and attending 8 community events in Toronto, Washington, D.C., and Addis Ababa. All of the YDEOs I interviewed had actively engaged in initiatives (based in North America or Ethiopia) intended to contribute towards the social, political, and/or economic development of Ethiopia. Their initiatives included fundraising events, establishing local NGOs, volunteer missions, and taking professional positions within the Ethiopian development sector, among others. Utilising an interactionist theoretical framework, I unpack YDEO motivations for engaging in Ethiopian development, the nature of the development activities themselves, and the ways in which these experiences have shaped YDEO relationships, identities, and trajectories in life so far. Engaging in Ethiopian development was rarely expressed as an extension of a pre-existing sense of Ethiopian patriotism; rather, YDEOs used these practices to explore, test, or build a sense of connection to their country of origin. Further, the development framework made it possible for them to forge a relationship that also resonated with their other social identities, and could even be leveraged to further other personal and professional goals. YDEO engagements in Ethiopian development were not simply interventions; they were fundamentally social processes defined by social interactions. In the process of organising fundraising events, volunteering at orphanages, and working on project reports, YDEOs were also building personal connections, gaining social capital, and redefining attitudes towards their families, communities, development, and Ethiopia itself. This thesis contributes an in-depth and critical analysis of the diaspora/development nexus - a nexus that emerges as a contested space, where people act and are acted upon, where identities are reified and transformed, and where institutions and social structures are both strengthened and challenged. The insights from migrant descendant experiences, such as YDEOs, highlights the ways in which diasporic identities take shape and are imbued with meaning through social practice, and how these practices are connected to broader human psychosocial needs, aspirations, and behaviours.

This article reconstructs the trajectory of Nicomedes Santa Cruz, one of the foremost Afro-Peruvian intellectuals of all times, whose presence in the public scene transcended a purely artistic ambit and extended to the terrain of social and political criticism. Nicomedes Santa Cruz was a public intellectual whose multifaceted work addressed the most pressing themes of his time: he was a critic of racism, imperialism and social inequality; he supported the Cuban Revolution; he committed himself to the reforms of the Juan Velasco Alvarado regime; and he promoted international solidarity. Likewise, he tried to combine a commitment to socialism with a defense of Afro-Peruvian culture and rights. / Este artículo reconstruye la trayectoria de Nicomedes Santa Cruz, uno de los más notables intelectuales afroperuanos de todos los tiempos, cuya presencia en la escena pública trascendió el ámbito puramente artístico y se proyectó hacia el terreno de la crítica social y política. Nicomedes Santa Cruz fue un intelectual público que abordó en su multifacético trabajo los temas más candentes de su tiempo: fue un crítico del racismo, el imperialismo y la desigualdad social; apoyó la Revolución Cubana; se comprometió con las reformas del régimen de Juan Velasco Alvarado; y promovió la solidaridad internacional. Asimismo, intentó combinar la apuesta por el socialismo con la reivindicación de la cultura y los derechos de los afrodescendientes.

A presente pesquisa buscou compreender os processos históricos relacionados à diáspora africana no litoral Norte paulista a partir de uma perspectiva arqueológica. Com a proibição do comércio negreiro em meados do século XIX, o litoral Norte paulista, tão próximo do Vale do Paraíba onde a cultura cafeeira estava em expansão, foi palco de inúmeros desembarques clandestinos realizados nas praias da região. Por meio da integração de fontes diversificadas, como evidências materiais, indicadores da paisagem, narrativas orais, fontes secundárias e com especial atenção à Historiografia sobre o tema, foi possível traçar possibilidades interpretativas acerca da diáspora africana na região estudada. Destarte, tais levantamentos possibilitaram atribuir ao litoral Norte paulista um alto potencial para o estudo de sítios e vestígios arqueológicos associados à temática, seja em ambiente continental ou insular, em compartimentos emersos ou submersos. / This research aimed at understanding the historic processes regarding the African Diaspora in the north coast of São Paulo from an archaeological perspective. With the prohibition of slave trading in the mid-nineteenth century, the north coast of São Paulo was the scene of countless clandestine landings on the beaches of the region, once it was very close to the Paraíba Valley, where coffee cultivation was expanding. Through the integration of diverse sources such as material hard evidence, landscape indicators, spoken narratives, secondary sources and a particular focus on Historiography, it was possible to draw interpretative possibilities about the African diaspora in the region under study. Therefore, these surveys have made possible for the north coast region of São Paulo to be assigned as a high potential study place of archaeological sites and remains related to the theme, both in the mainland and on the island environment, either as surfaced or immersed compartments.

This thesis argues that events in the postcolonial novel We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo can be viewed as traumatic based on three different aspects; witnessed trauma, transgenerational trauma and cultural trauma. In addition, the thesis provides pedagogical implications and analysis of the novel’s usefulness in the Swedish EFL classroom. What is argued in this essay is that cultural clashes, mourning of home country and lacking of expressive opportunities affect the protagonist’s identity formation. The protagonist’s experiences from and reflections on her home country versus her new one are the focal point of this essay; to prove that belonging to the diaspora is a traumatic, ongoing, event that affects the individual and collective identity process negatively, depicted in the novel. Lastly, the novel’s potential in the EFL classroom is claimed to contribute with insight, understanding and acceptance towards cultural “others” in the Swedish society.