It was a sunny Sunday afternoon in Vienna and I was going for a walk during another COVID-19 lockdown, when a dozen WhatsApp messages reached me from Lubumbashi. Marc thought he was in trouble. And I knew that he usually spent Sundays with his wife at church. Something really must have been bothering him. He texted that he could not yet send me the ODV sâ scanned minutes of the baraza because the secretary of the ODV had asked him for the exact name of âmy cameramanâ, by which he meant my colleague Carl-Philipp Bodenstein, who was documenting the baraza together with the Lubumbashi-based video artist Gulda.
Marc added that the secretary had presented a draft of the minutes to him but felt that it was not yet ready to give to me, and that the secretary wanted to find someone (provided that I pay for this service) to type up his handwritten minutes. Marc (himself born to a UMHK worker) commented in a slightly cynical way: âIls sont trop administratifs, ce sont des vrais gécaminoisâ (They are too bureaucratic, they are real Gécaminois). I thought this was an extremely interesting comment. It reflected what Marc and I both had noticed during our meetings with the ODV s: that they are organised in a most formal way. Their approach would have been â as Marc assessed it so often during my stays in Lubumbashi â âa little out of timeâ.
The ODV s were very strict about meeting procedures, which seemed â as Marc and I noted earlier in Lubumbashi â like an imitation of the organisational procedures of the UMHK/Gécamines they had worked for in the good old days. We interpreted this as their appreciation for an approach that was used when they were still being cared for. Marcâs remark also revealed how the next generation views their parents. I had often heard similar words: they are Gécaminois. Therefore, they would have their own interpretation of things and focus too much on the past.
It took a few messages back and forth to clarify that I would be happy to have the opportunity just to read the minutes. I told Marc that I was used to reading handwritten texts and therefore did not need a typed version; I would have to type the extracts I would present in this publication myself anyway. And above all, the verbatim minutes of that time would be more valuable to me than a revised version. Hours later, I thought about what I had written to Marc and realised that I had once again violated my own claim to let the ODV s decide for themselves what they wanted to tell me, and how. I wanted to see the minutes
That was part of the content of the messages I received that afternoon. The rest of the news was about money. Marc reported that at the last meeting the other ODV board members had expressed that they also were in a precarious economic situation. The âalsoâ was triggered by me sending money to the secretary through Marc to fund his efforts to compile the minutes of the baraza for me and scan them in a shop in town. Marc had advised me to compensate the secretary for his effort and of course expenses. From the beginning of my research trips to Lubumbashi, Marc had always advised me well and knew how to navigate me through the very difficult issue of money. He was well aware that my research budget included what research budgets usually include (flight, accommodation, sometimes a daily allowance). He knew at which moments it was appropriate for me to offer at least food and drinks, copies of pictures taken, allowances for transport, etc.
I will not go into detail about the finances, because this is a very complicated question. I mention it here because the âalsoâ in the sentence made me angry that afternoon. Maybe I was just having a bad day, but I was so tired of the money issue and I felt, I realised later, like prey in a spiderâs web. The ODV s and I had discussed this again and again at every meeting I had attended, and I had made it clear that I would not be able to solve their problem and get them the compensation they were asking for. They were fully understanding each time; they expressed their satisfaction and hope that I would write about them. They gave me gifts, like the copper rooster and malachite jewellery. And at the same time, we kept discussing money.
I comment on that Sunday afternoonâs WhatsApp messages for two reasons. First, they illustrate, in brief, the challenges and opportunities, the beautiful and the displeasing sides of research with a group whose economic situation is dire. Second, thoughts in this context are important to me because of our roles, which were constantly adapted while being entangled.
To think of our entanglement helped me to better understand the negotiation processes during the research. In this chapter, I explain the communication between the participants and the reading and interpretation of themes and roles. After all, it was a challenge for everyone involved to discuss and negotiate a master narrative that I, but also the children of Gécamines ex-workers, felt was ever-present.
To begin with, I describe the report provided by the ODV s on the research visit in July 2019, to illustrate what they presented as the key message of our baraza. I classify their report as a strategy of performative nostalgia; they reconstruct our joint discussions in such a way that their core message remains in the foreground.
The four-page report on the events during my research stay on the occasion of the baraza was written in November 2020 and is based on the notes taken by the secretary of the ODV s at all meetings and events related to the baraza (see Appendix 1). The formalistic text fits the genre of a âprotocolâ, as they called it.
The first thing one notices is the full details of the participantsâ names and locations. I am referred to as âMlle Daniela Waldburgerâ and later in the report as âMlle Danielaâ.1 During our conversations, I addressed my interlocutors as âmamaâ or âpapaâ and their first names, thus exactly as they were introduced to me or had introduced themselves.
However, the board members had to be addressed by the title of their function, as this was how they were introduced to me. I addressed the president as âMonsieur le presidentâ, the secretary as âMonsieur le secrétaireâ, and so on. The ODV s also addressed the board members in this way, even though they had been friends and colleagues for decades. As Marc noted, the ODV s were acting out the hierarchical structure of the company in which they had been socialised, even in the period after their employment and their collective struggle for compensation. For example, the president is mentioned several times in the report, with his title and full name. The director of the Waza Arts Centre is also mentioned by title and name; however, his wife and business partner is titled only as âMadameâ and her first name. The secretary signed the report as âsecrétaire rapporteurâ and his full name. The two video artists were referred to as âcameramenâ followed by their full names.
The correct names of the videographers were of importance to the secretary. As Marcâs message conveyed, the secretary felt that the report would not have been correct without the name of my colleague from Vienna. Although the president and secretary are highlighted by mentioning their functions, they were nevertheless constructed as part of the ODV s, as ânos camaradesâ (our comrades). The term unifies all those suffering and fighting together; the secretary uses the possessive pronoun âourâ and thus describes himself and the president as equal to the other ODV s. The in-group of the workers is described at the very beginning of the report: ex-agents de la Gécamines (surnom départs volontaires).
The report starts with the section points de vue (points of view), where two short points serve as the abstract. The first point states that the meetings, interviews and baraza (in July 2019 â the date is not mentioned in the sentence)
The next point describes the first meeting with the ODV s after my arrival. It took place at the Waza Arts Centre, and all participants from Waza, the video artists and I are mentioned by full name, whereas the ODV board members who attended are not named. The secretary adds that the members came after their weekly meeting on Friday, a meeting that was supervised by the president. Although this point seems irrelevant to me in terms of what happened at our meeting on this Friday, it was important to the secretary to mention it. He then explains that the delegation, referring to the Waza Arts Centre, my colleague and myself, got in contact with the local ODV branch who ârépresentent tous les ex-travailleurs de la Gécaminesâ (represent all ex-workers of Gécamines). Thus the ODV delegation is presented as the voice of all ex-workers and therefore their individual names do not matter.
The report goes on to say that to plan the interviews in Cité Gécamines we met in one of the churches. The secretary uses the term âinterviewsâ in reference to the baraza. Choosing the church as the right place to discuss the baraza was done after the representatives of the Waza Arts Centre and I had gone on a tour to search for a place that would offer enough space; we suggested the church to the ODV board, who agreed. In the following sentences the secretary reports on the event that we (members of Waza and myself) called the âtrigger eventâ. This event was held to share my research idea and archival material with the ODV s, and to discuss the forthcoming barazaâs possible topics, not only with the ODV board (who had already agreed to the idea) but also with the other ODV s, who approved them.
In reference to the archival material I presented, the secretary mentions only the screening of the propaganda film, produced in 1956 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the UMHK. He records that the film portrays the situation during the colonial period and emphasises his view of it, namely, that indeed âla vie des travailleurs était très bonneâ (the life of the workers was very good). The report then summarises the discussions among the participants that followed the screening during the trigger event, taking up the ODV sâ narrative:2
| The social life of the workers was good, wages were paid every fortnight of the month and supplies were regularly replenished, schools functioned normally and medical care was available. |
The next section describes what happened after 2003, which the secretary describes as a turning point, but which was not part of the eventâs discussion. I think he included it because it was important for him to once again emphasise the precarious situation of the ODV s today. It is therefore a statement that is dedicated to me, as it contains details that are known to all the former workers concerned, to remind me again, as the researcher, of the ODV sâ struggles:
| Les ex-travailleurs de la Gécamines vivent actuellement dans la precarité qui nâa pas de nom; la vie sociale ne se justifie pas tout a été jeter dans lâeau. Avant de mettre fin à la carrière, lâex travailleurs de la Gécamines ont fait trente-six mois dâarrières des salaires, ensuites les miettes payes à compte goutte ont durée six mois, on payer cent personnes par jour. Debute au mois dâaoût 2003 pour cloturer en janvier 2004. | The former Gécamines workers are currently living in a precarious situation that has no name; social life is not justified, everything has been thrown into the water. Before ending their career, the former Gécamines workers were thirty-six months in arrears on their wages, then the crumbs paid in dribs and drabs for six months, paying one hundred people a day. It started in August 2003 and ended in January 2004. |
The section that follows is titled Ãvaluation. Under this point the secretary sums up that after the screening of the film the participants were served drinks and baked goods. The other archive material I presented remains unnamed, but the exact name of the venue is repeated in full length, as well as the fact that I had asked the camarades to register for interviews and photos. Once again, here, âinterviewâ refers to the planned baraza. By using the term âcamaradesâ I am represented as a fellow campaigner of the ODV s.
The secretary does not mention that during this event the topics discussed for the baraza were based on suggestions that I had extracted from interviews during my previous two stays in Lubumbashi. The secretary mentions the photo sessions that would go along with the baraza; these had not been suggested before nor been a topic in the earlier discussions. However, he lays out a wish, knowing from previous years that I had a camera and that I took pictures whenever the ODV s asked me to do so, and provided them with printed copies.
In the next point the topics of the baraza are listed. However, the secretary framed the topics in the way he thought to be correct. What I, for instance, described as âsurveillanceâ, he described as âsécuritéâ. What I intended to describe as the roles of men and women is described as marriage and divorce.
The following part of the report records that during the baraza the video artists had taken pictures. During the trigger event, it was discussed whether the ODV s would agree to be filmed, and there were no objections. The representatives of the Waza Arts Centre argued that the videos would not only serve as the raw material for the video artists to produce a movie about them but would also preserve the voices of the ODV s and ensure that their statements would not be forgotten.
The report continues by stating that all participants of the baraza (again the term âinterviewâ is used) received an invitation for what we called the grand baraza at the Waza Arts Centre. The secretary then noted that during that event the participants were welcomed by the director of the Arts Centre and shown the drawn and labelled boards, referring to the cartoons created by the artist Colby (see Appendix 2), which illustrated the interviews between the ODV s and Mlle Daniela. To finish our sharing, as described in the report, beer and soft drinks were offered by Mlle Daniela and Monsieur Carl-Philipp. The last part of the report mentions that each participant received an envelope with money to pay the bus transfer costs to the Waza Arts Centre and back home to Cité Gécamines. The following sentence concludes the report:
| En gros-modo, voilà lâarrivée et le retour de Mlle Daniela Waldburger et Monsieur Carl Philipp Bodenstein parmi les ex-travailleurs de la Gécamines (surnomé ODV) licencie abusivement. | In short, this is how we can describe the arrival and return of Miss Daniela Waldburger and Mr Carl-Philipp Bodenstein among the former workers of Gécamines (nicknamed ODV), the unfairly dismissed. |
With the last two words, the secretary stresses that the ODV s were treated unjustly, and refers to Opération Départ Volontaire, when they were made redundant in 2003. He thus sustains the ODV narrative in his conclusion to the report on the baraza. In summary, the report encapsulates what the secretary considered to be the most important points, but does not represent the different points of view that shaped our discussions and negotiations during the baraza on concepts and terms.
Following Deppermann et al. on communicative practices, specific body-object-space constellations are indispensable as co-players in a situation where communication takes place.3 Thus, bodies and spatial constellations become constitutive participants in many action situations.
As described earlier, the baraza were held in the house where the ODV s had their regular meetings. We (members of the Waza Arts Centre and myself) were thus guests, âintrudersâ, although very much welcomed. In the following, I focus on the negotiation processes during the baraza.
The ODV sâ aim â to frame it provocatively â was to maintain their narrative and convince me repeatedly of their precarious economic situation. They therefore first had to create their group, their community. Bennett explains that the âidea of an original community means that the sense of place, for these people, is âdriven by timeââ.4 I consider the ODV s to be driven by time, in that the turning point in 2003 radically changed their life.5 The association of the ODV was created in that moment. The members share a history as employees of the UMHK/Gécamines and the experience of a shaken present with an uncertain future.
The respondents were all keen to create an identity for themselves as authentic members of this community in the past, as did Backâs (2009) market traders. Back (2009), Green (2013), Savage et al. (2005), Robertson et al. (2008), Fortier (1999) and Blokland (2001, 2003) all show how individuals place themselves in an explicit moral relationship to a past community through eliciting memories which are distant enough to create
a distinct sense of âothernessâ with the present. âWeâ then become the group who can ârememberâ, and âtheyâ are those who cannot (Blokland, 2001). Being an authentic member of the community is, as Back (2009) says, âa moral projectâ. Only the authentic âweâ can draw on the nostalgic tropes of memories of âourâ past.6
Bennett concludes that authenticity is connected to nostalgia because people create a sense of continuity by linking back to shared origins. Thus, I consider the construction of the âweâ among the ODV s to be one of the underlying aspects of their nostalgia. Nostalgia can be seen to happen only in the present and only in opposition to the past. The creation of an authentic âweâ brings past and present together.
Bruner discusses narratives that he evaluates as âa version of reality whose acceptability is governed by convention and ânarrative necessityâ rather than by empirical verification and logical requirednessâ.7 He identifies ten features of narratives, of which the second in his list, âparticularityâ, is useful for my undertaking to pin down the ODV sâ master narrative. âNarratives take as their ostensive reference particular happenings. But this is, as it were, their vehicle rather than their destination.â8
Particularity achieves its emblematic status by its embeddedness in a story that is in some sense generic. And, indeed, it is by virtue of this embeddedness in genre, to look ahead, that narrative particulars can be âfilled inâ when they are missing from an account. The âsuggestivenessâ of a story lies, then, in the emblematic nature of its particulars, its relevance to a more inclusive narrative type. But for all that, a narrative cannot be realised save through particular embodiment.9
The individualsâ perspective on the past that existed before that moment may vary, but among the ODV s they are all connected as camarades, as they stressed frequently. They share being départs volontaires and are thus united as an in-group. The creation of that âweâ first required that former staff of different categories â senior staff and blue-collar workers â agreed to join together in one group. Thus, the social relationships distinguished by class while they were employed, and could be categorised as one-dimensional, changed to a
During the baraza the participants thus presented themselves as an in-group, as camarades beyond the formerly existing class differences, and as one group that adhered to their master narrative. The following is a description of the six baraza with some excerpts that illustrate how the ODV s maintained the narrative.
2.1 Baraza One
Planned to talk about the role(s) of women.
Setting: Two men (the secretary of the ODV s and a former teacher), six women (one of them the widow who was the owner of the house that served as the meeting place of the ODV s; she had no teeth, which made communication difficult, but she usually expressed her joy by dancing and singing at the end of a baraza), myself, Carl-Philipp, Gulda, Patrick Mudekereza and Sari Middernacht of the Waza Arts Centre, the last two both taking notes.
We (the ODV board members, members of the Waza Arts Centre and myself) agreed that my role should be to officially welcome everybody and start the baraza. However, it was one of the two men, the secretary of the ODV, who took a leading role at the beginning by suggesting that everybody should introduce themselves. To state our names was important to him and most likely to the other participants, so that the attendees from the Waza Arts Centre, who were there to take notes, would be able to carefully report on those attending. And the secretary, who was present as participant and/or observer during most of the baraza, equally noted down all the names as part of his careful documentation of the process. He wrote these notes in the very same book where all the weekly meetings of the ODV s were written down.
However, he stressed, a âfemme travailleuseâ was not able to fulfil these responsibilities; her house was dirty. This was also the reason, as the two male participants added, why it was the husband who decided if the wife was permitted to take up employment. Women who worked for the company were, as the teacher explained, treated very badly at the workplace. Therefore, men usually preferred that their wives take care of the house and the children, a role for which they got heshima (respect). In addition, they were in a place where they were treated well.
The attending women kept quiet, listened and did not add anything to these points, but nodded in agreement. The manner of the menâs discussion did not invite the women to contribute; it was a presentation by the teacher to me of how things had been during those glorious times. The teacher, the educated one, took on the role of the historian to explain how things had been. The women were silent, the form of language expected from them.
During the individual interviews I had conducted in the two previous years, however, I was very often told by women that for them it was extremely important to have employment too, because it was there at the workplace where they would have experienced heshima, and not at home. During the baraza this point was not raised, and therefore I queried whether working women would have experienced heshima at work too. The attending women stressed that it was very important âkuheshimia baba ya nyumbaâ (to respect the head of the household). However, they did not explicitly say that they experienced heshima at home. Thus, it seemed that they did not want to contradict the teacherâs statement directly; they confirmed that it was important to respect the husband without referring to the actual question.
There was not only the question of gender but â and maybe equally important â that of the hierarchies among the participants. The secretary and the former teacher both had a leading voice in the ODV sâ battle for compensation and were the leading voices when we discussed this point. One of the reasons might have been the language choice. Whereas I was using French and Swahili, the two men spoke French only. The teacher took on the role of interpreter, as indeed some of the women seemed to be more competent in Swahili than in French. Linguistically, the women were thus handicapped. With the teacher translating most of the French quotations, it was with âhis helpâ that the women agreed to the menâs conclusion that it was a matter of âmentalité et educationâ (mindset and education) that women preferred to stay home instead of taking up employment. Most women worked before they married, but, the teacher emphasised, the womanâs heshima grew with the change of marital status.
We then discussed the status of unmarried women and married women without children. The teacher stated, and all the women nodded in agreement, that if a couple did not conceive children there was pressure applied on the husband by his family to search for another woman: âIl était obligé de solliciter dâune autre femme dâessayer un peu dâavoir la chanceâ (He was forced to ask another woman to try a bit of luck).
I drew attention to âunofficial womenâ, by citing a woman I had interviewed a year earlier who stated that âin the Cité men behaved liked saints but those who had children in the city were numerousâ. I intended to discuss the perceptions of different hierarchies among women in the society based on whether they were married to a worker or were in an unofficial relationship with him. The first reaction of one of the two men was to point out that this was the system of polygamy. The other took the floor and agreed that there were indeed âthose womenâ but that we were now in this baraza to talk about the roles of women â in their understanding, the duties of women. The discussion thus reached a point where the master narrative of the male ODV s as victims of circumstance was challenged by a topic that was not mentioned in the interviews before: the existence of âother womenâ.
At this moment one of the women spoke up. Whereas earlier she was silenced, or preferred to be silent, she became the leading voice. She confirmed
The discussion moved on to the femme célibataire (single woman), who the participants considered to be in a kind of waiting room until she got married. Thus, as the attending men and women concluded, to have children within a marriage was the most important matter for women as well as men: âOn était respectéâ (one was respected) â again the notion of heshima.
I asked the attendees how respected a woman was who was a senior staff member and married to a blue-collar worker. I was told that this was rarely the case. However, in such a case, she would not have been as respected for her senior position as a man, because â and this would have been true for all aspects of life â âle pouvoir était toujours avec le mariâ (the power was always with the husband).
The question of power and the right of the man over the woman took an interesting turn when we discussed access to wages. The former teacher asserted that in the case of the woman and husband both being employed, the two wages would have been combined. However, the women present objected immediately. One of them said that if the woman was employed it would have been her money, while the two men shook their heads to demonstrate that this had not been the case à lâépoque. It is worth noting that none of the women attending this baraza had been employed in earlier times; they were married to former workers and took care of the house and the children. They were thus sharing their opinion on this topic during the baraza without first-hand experience.
The secretary and the teacher then linked the point of access to money to the many cases they knew where a man had been left by his wife around 2003 because he was not able to offer her a good life anymore (the secretary emphasised that he personally had been affected by this). On the one hand, the two
The women in the group then took the lead and recounted their own experiences of pay day, which was on the 15th of every month. The woman who started this discussion said that on the 15th, he (the husband) was the boss; then he disappeared, and on the 25th he came back and then she suffered. The other women nodded in agreement while the men disagreed; an emotional, very fast discussion ensued for several minutes. I was able to follow only partially. When they calmed down, the teacher summarised for me in a very short sentence that the women had sometimes suffered but that this would have been the exception. That a husband would have used the money for his own enjoyment certainly would have been an exceptional case. In this way, the teacher attenuated the womenâs complaint; I understood his move as a strategy to provide me with an image of decent and upright fellows, which reinforced his performance of masculinity as understood in this cultural context.
Since the teacher had presented the duties of women à lâépoque, I asked about the duties of the men. The secretary said that this was not something to discuss; the man was the one working and thus had no obligations. Nobody commented on that statement. So I switched topic and asked the women what they considered to be the most important issues in their life before 2003. They mentioned harmony between husband and wife, to be respected and what they described as âéducation dans la familleâ (education in the family). The teacher did not nod to the woman who mentioned these three points but at me, and he commented: âElle a bien réponduâ (she responded well). Thus the teacher was in a position that he thought required him to assess the womanâs statements and he did so by using the third person singular and addressing his judgement of the womanâs performance to me.
It is obvious that the teacher and the secretary wanted to ensure (consciously or unconsciously) that the groupâs performance this day was in line with the narrative of câétait bien à lâépoque. The criticisms by women of some men who used the salary that was for the family for outside pleasures were not translated by the teacher at all, or only in an abbreviated version. Thus, he again deleted the womenâs voices, although they were present. It was mainly the teacher and the secretary who set up the rules of this baraza: first, by their choice of language for the baraza, insisting that the official language of the
2.2 Baraza Two
Planned to talk about surveillance and control.
Setting: Six men (one of them the teacher), myself, Carl-Philipp, Gulda, Patrick Mudekereza and Sari Middernacht of the Waza Arts Centre, the last two taking notes.
During the trigger event we had agreed on this topic for a baraza after I had suggested it, based on my archival material and the interviews. I had proceeded from the assumption that the ex-mineworkers must have suffered from the measures taken by the UMHK/Gécamines to control their work life and private life. However, during the baraza it became clear that the ODV s missed the surveillance and control of that time and that they understood these concepts differently from me. For them, surveillance and control were proof of being taken care of well.
We started this session with an introductory round of statements, everybody sharing why they chose to attend this discussion. The first participant stated that this topic was important because his former employer had indeed offered surveillance, in taking care of workers who were ill; in addition, their health was surveyed because there used to be a health check every three years. The second participant agreed that these were exactly the reasons that motivated him to join this discussion. The third participant stated that his former job was to control machines and so he felt that he wanted to contribute to this discussion. The fourth participant also held a position that was, as he explained, linked to surveillance. He used to work for the mining companyâs department of industrial safety. Another participant added that he had joined this baraza to talk about two types of control: in a material sense, and in relation to people. He stressed that he was interested in both forms. The sixth participant told us he had a position where he was responsible for control, without further elaboration.
I began my contribution by describing my previous research in the archives, where I had come across the institution of the tshanga tshanga, and added that during the interviews many had talked about these controlling bodies. I explained that, from my perspective, I would classify the tshanga tshanga as
He continued, arguing that this system represented true management and that thanks to it there were no social problems or fights in Cité Gécamines. It took me several minutes and several attempts to frame my reading of this system to the participants, as one that did not protect the workers and the families but controlled them beyond what I considered ethical. However, it was clear that our understandings differed. One participant vehemently declared that they were not controlled in the way I understood control, because they were not controlled everywhere. He argued that the tshanga tshangaâs influence was limited to the area of Cité Gécamines and there was still the possibility to go elsewhere (ailleurs); he was referring to other parts of the city, where they were free to move around.
However, one difficult side of this controlling body was brought up by another participant. He added that the company did not allow family members to visit them in Cité Gécamines, and he concluded: âÃa nous a fait un peu malâ (That hurt us a little). One participant countered that because of these regulations of visitors there were fewer problems in the Cité Gécamines. He concluded that this was difficult, but in the end was a good way to live in a safe environment. Another participant explained to me, âNous les Africains, nous les Congolais, nous avons vécu en famille élargieâ (We Africans, we Congolese, have lived in an extended family), thus indicating the importance of family visits. I was framed as the outsider, because I was not part of nous (we) and not familiar with the Congolese way of living. From the beginning, the UMHK and Gécamines tried to prevent their workers from living in extended families by promoting the nuclear family preferred by Belgian (European) ideology. The participantâs comment thus referred to a difficult situation for âthemâ since the start of the Belgian colonial approach to family. And his comment was one of the very few explicit criticisms of life as an employee of the mining company.
The workersâ leisure time outside Cité Gécamines was the next point we discussed. One of the male participants mentioned that only about 20% of the workers went outside for pleasure activities. Most stayed in Cité Gécamines after working hours because the cercle offered everything. Recalling what the cercle offered triggered the next statement by another participant, who added that the company offered everything, not only in the cercle, except one thing â a decent salary. That was the second criticism during this baraza. However, another participant countered this statement in the following way:
| People were happy without knowing it. We were like servants. You are given everything but you do not think about the future, there were no developments. |
This participant defended the company without mentioning it explicitly: âOn te donne toutâ (you are given everything). Another participant took up this statement to criticise the mining company: âLa société nous a pris comme des esclaves. On était sans avenirâ (The company took us as slaves. We were without a future). He not only explicitly mentioned the company, but also described the workers as slaves and not âonlyâ as servants. Like the previous speaker, he emphasised the lack of a future. The next speaker explained that the slogan âGécamines njo mama njo babaâ (Gécamines is the father and the mother), which I had heard very often before and after this baraza, meant that your parents would give you everything because you were a child; you received housing, food, health care, simply everything. However, by reference to the mantra in this context, the benefits offered called for the beneficiary to accept the role of a child. Children receive what they need, but not more. The participant explained that with the very low salary they received, there was no opportunity to save money.
Today there is libertinage (liberation), but, as the same speaker further explained, there is no more discipline; everybody does what they want. This seemed to be an explanation for the fact that life in the Cité Gécamines had become dangerous. The discussion went back to the role of the tshanga tshanga, who, during the âgood timesâ, had authority because there were only UMHK/Gécamines workers living in this neighbourhood and not âall sorts of peopleâ, as is the case today.
I wanted to share another point that I linked to surveillance after going through the archival material: medical surveillance. In the archives, I had read about the medical examinations the UMHK carried out among workers in the early years â not only to make sure that they were healthy, but equally for medical experiments. The participants, however, insisted that all the examinations they experienced were solely intended for their wellbeing. One speaker explained that before someone was employed they had to go for a health check, including radiology and laboratory work. At this point a medical record of that person was kept. Every three years the health check was repeated except if there were urgent medical issues.
When I tried to dig deeper to understand if they ever felt discomfort or the sense of being treated as an experimental object during these check-ups, one
The speakers then explained that silicosis was quite widespread, caused by the work they did. However, it was presented as a disease one simply had to accept, and that the risk could be taken because the company cared for them if they were affected, and they received very good treatment. Furthermore, other work that could be carried out with this chronic disease was then offered to the worker.
The next statement then repeated what I had heard many times before: today, there was no more medical care, they were neglected. Even the NGO Caritas had neglected them. One participant said that this NGO had left because those responsible did not âsee the truthâ, as he put it. He was referring to the overall precarious situation. The discussion around silicosis was thus turned into a complaint about the overall bad healthcare today and that nobody would see the truth that they were neglected, even by the NGO.
As it was rather late and I knew that some participants had a long way to travel back home, I suggested that we summarise this baraza and come to a common conclusion of our understanding of surveillance and control. Everybody agreed. One participant immediately declared: âIl faut nous payer!â (We must be paid!). At first, this surprised me, because it did not refer to any point we had discussed during this baraza. But it summed up the ODV sâ general fight for compensation. It also underscored the need to be attentive to the differences between the researcherâs interests and the interests of the communities we work with. Then he added: âNous sommes comme des combattants. Il faut nous donner ce qui nous est dû, les salairesâ (We are like fighters. We have to be given what we deserve, the wages).
Wage is a term that usually refers to the money one earns when one is employed. In the ODV sâ terms, the compensation they were fighting for did not correspond to a salary. The speakerâs wording can probably be interpreted as an expression of the wish to still be employed by the company or the wish to be in a situation as existed before 2003. The concluding remarks repeated this request for compensation and payment several times. It was a repetition of the master narrativeâs goal â to get compensation â without making explicit reference to what we had actually discussed during this baraza, which was surveillance and control. At a distance from the moments of our exchange, I now perceive this emphasis as legitimate.
Planned to talk about health and hygiene â the presidentâs baraza.
Setting: Three men (one of them the president of the ODV), one ODV woman, myself, Carl-Philipp, Gulda, Patrick Mudekereza and Sari Middernacht of Waza Arts Centre, the last two taking notes.
We started this discussion as with the other baraza: each participant was invited to explain why they had chosen to join this baraza. The president of the ODV opened the baraza and explained that he had been employed in the health sector. The next speaker, the woman, added that she had joined this group because the health situation was very bad these days. The following speaker stated that he, his wife and his son had needed medical care for 16 years but had not received it. The two other members nodded in agreement. Furthermore, one person added: âNous mourrons chaque jour iciâ (We are dying every day here). Accordingly, we started the baraza with this statement on our minds.
The president led the conversation. He started by explaining to us â or most likely to me â in a long monologue, the chronology of health-related issues there and how they had changed, while the other participants nodded in agreement. In those days â referring to the times of UMHK â two diseases predominated: malaria and typhus. Therefore, the service de lâhygiène de UMHK disinfected the houses regularly, and every evening the streets were fumigated to prevent people from contracting disease. Every three years, workers and their families were vaccinated against typhus. It was mandatory. But nowadays, he added, something like this did not exist anymore. Even worse, he continued, today a member of the ODV even lacks the chance to buy simple aspirin. And he added: âUn ODV malade est une invitation de la mortâ (A sick ODV is an invitation to death). In the good times, the company even provided the workers and families with prevention tablets against malaria if they went on holiday. Nowadays, nobody cared for the ODV s anymore, and the president asked the rhetorical question: âComment va-t-il vivre?â (How will he [a member of the ODV] live?) Then he used the slogan: âGécamines njo baba njo mama parce que on avait toutâ (Gécamines is the father and the mother because we had everything).
As the president paused, I raised the question of whether there was a difference in health care for blue-collar workers and for senior staff members who lived in Makomeno. The president explained that everybody got the same medical care; the only difference was that senior staff members were immediately examined by a doctor whereas blue-collar workers were examined first
I alluded to the fact that in another baraza we had talked about the unofficial women. I did so because I wanted to bring up the question of health issues related to them. The president immediately reacted and explained that at that time life was so easy and that therefore, yes, that would have been the case (that were unofficial women). Another participant then added that men went to see other women because: âIci chez nous la première femme devient fatigueâ (Here the first woman becomes tired). However, as someone else emphasised, the company did not recognise the other women. It was unclear if the president shared this opinion. But he added that the wife was the one who had the authority; she was the one who was recognised and respected by the company and society.
Another participant declared that it was Mobutu who said that children with someone other than the wife should be recognised by their father. This would have been the time when children from outside began to live in Cité Gécamines and go to school there. I was told that it was the workerâs wife who took care of the husbandâs offspring with other women, which again reinforces womenâs agency in this context.
The window of opportunity opened for me to ask about health issues in relation to relationships with women outside Cité Gécamines. Again, the president took the stand. At that time HIV was not an issue, there was syphilis, but once you were affected, the president said, it was not a problem because there was treatment at the hospital and people were discreet; nobody knew about a sexually transmitted disease. The only disease that became public knowledge was leprosy, because if you were infected you were isolated and therefore everyone knew about it.
During this baraza I tried again and again to motivate other participants to share their thoughts, mainly through nonverbal signs, so as to not interrupt the president while he was speaking. However, generally everybody nodded in agreement, and only once in a while did someone else further specify a point. I realised that this baraza was the presidentâs baraza. He had assumed the role of explaining to me, the researcher, how things had been and would be today, while the others took on the role of supporting his statements.
We then talked about health issues in relation to housing in Cité Gécamines. Here too, the president took the lead and presented a chronicle of housing there. He started by describing the Cité in the beginning, although it was
We also talked about accidents at work. To put this topic in the right context, the president first explained the pension system for those workers who became disabled as a result of a work-related accident. The pension received was determined by the percentage of the disability, and one was entitled, as the president specified, to all âbenefitsâ except the amount for transport to the job, which was otherwise added to the salary. Depending on the degree of disability, people could then either remain in their previous position or were assigned a new job that corresponded to their remaining physical abilities. There was also, the president stressed, a service for prostheses. This statement immediately triggered another reference to the overall good situation at that time: âOn avait toutâ (We had everything).
However, at this point, one member of the Waza Arts Centre stated: âYou did get everything, except a decent salary! You got everything, except a future, what kind of emancipation was then possible for a worker?â At first there was some uncertainty among the group about how to react. The president essentially agreed, adding that workers at that time had everything: housing, education, healthcare, food, and so on, and that this therefore would have been a kind of emancipation because workers felt respected by being provided with these benefits. The person from the Arts Centre approached the president and wanted to know if this relationship [between employer and employee] should be a model for the future. The president answered in the affirmative.
Another participant added that the prime mobilier (furniture allowance) was a good system, and someone else listed all the benefits the company provided in the good times as the model for the future. And then he declared: âVous êtes notre interprète!â (You are our interpreter!) to summarise his thoughts. So, I was again pushed into the role of the one who gets information and, above all, receives an assignment. At that moment, I was not a participant in the conversation but a recipient.
The president took up the issue again and explained that in the good times, the UMHK and Gécamines employed the workersâ children after they had been educated at their schools. Today, however, the few remaining jobs were no longer automatically given to children of former workers. In this context, I was also told that at that time if the husband died during his employment the wife was automatically employed by the mining company, a system that saved the family. All statements referring to the future started with âDans le temps â¦â (At that time â¦) and thus referred to one phase: a time when the situation was perceived as good. The present was considered miserable.
When I initiated the closing phase of this baraza, everybody was invited to express concluding remarks. Again, the president rose to speak. He stressed the importance of the wages, described todayâs catastrophic situation again and, in short, retold the history of the 10,655 members of the ODV, and mentioned that every week some of them would die. Moreover, their children would leave home. Generally, the community was characterised by precarity, divorce and death, an echo of the master narrative.
2.4 Baraza Four
Planned to talk about health and hygiene.11
Setting: Nine men (one of them the secretary of the ODV), Carl-Philipp, Gulda, myself, Patrick Mudekereza and Sari Middernacht of Waza Arts Centre, the last two taking notes.
As soon as everyone was seated, a participant announced that we would pray. We all stood up. His words were difficult to comprehend and spoken very fast. However, I understood that he referred to the ODV sâ very difficult situation. Reference to a divine force accompanied the opening of this baraza. As it
Every introduction centred around the ODV sâ current situation, in line with the lay preacherâs words during the prayer. Some participants specified their difficulties, stating for example: âSince 2003 we have had no more access to the hospital; there is nothing and we are living very badlyâ. The master narrative dominated the content of each statement, with slight variation. One speaker cried out: âTuko abandonné depuis 2003. Quel crime avons-nous commis? Tuna-kufa! Hatuna chakula. Haina bienâ (We have been abandoned since 2003. What crime have we committed? We are dying! We have no food. It is not good). He repeated âWhat crime have we committed?â several times; he was shouting and crying. I wept. Silence followed. Finally, one participant took the floor and repeated the master narrative âCâétait bien à lâépoque!â; so did the following speaker, who added that he was very ill.
The next speaker also restated the master narrative, and said that he had worked for the mining company from 1961 to 2003. He emphasised todayâs problems of poor healthcare provision, relating that there was not even any malaria treatment available. He concluded his statement with âAsante, mama, kutuvisiter, tunakufaâ (Thank you, Daniela, for visiting us, we are dying). What exactly did he mean by this sentence? Gratitude that I was there, but visiter means to visit, not to support. Was it clear that I had no political or economic influence and that there was no expectation of me, although I had been given the role of the interpreter in an earlier baraza? In this moment, it became clearer to me that listening to them had helped them. They appreciated me for coming several times. Creating the opportunity for them to share their thoughts and feelings brought them some relief. They opened their hearts and expressed their hope that my book would open new doors to them. The last person to introduce themselves was the secretary. However, as was the case during the previous baraza he had attended, he did not speak about himself but stated that he was there to assist me.
I started by raising the issue of occupational illness. I asked them, as with the previous group discussing health issues, if they felt any anger towards the mining company because silicosis was a consequence of working in the mine. I also asked because I knew that some of the participants suffered from this disease. Again, I was not able to elicit a reply. Rather, the participants preferred to emphasise that the company had taken good care of them. I was told about the medical examinations workers attended in the good old times, and that the
As in the other baraza on the same subject, I touched on the fact that I had read in the archives that workers underwent the medical examinations for statistical and scientific purposes. One participant reacted by saying that all was good at the time of the UMHK; they were well taken care of. None of the other participants expressed anything different. I then asked if they felt that they were treated as well as the senior staff in Makomeno in terms of medical care. One person confirmed that they received the same medical care, with the only difference being that the senior staff had a docteur de famille (a family doctor).
The discussion then shifted back to occupational accidents. Several of those present reported that they had had an accident at work. One participant had lost a finger, another had a serious problem with his foot, and another had broken his leg. They all asserted that they had received excellent medical care after the accidents, that they had been able to return to their former jobs and that it had not been necessary to transfer them to another job because of the permanent damage. Once again, someone cited ânjo baba njo mamaâ and underscored that the company took care of them.
As we began to gather conclusions from this baraza, one speaker voiced a qualified criticism, saying that they had worked a lot for a small wage but that they also got everything. The secretary then spoke up for the first time and vehemently claimed that they were exploited. This was the first time he had uttered a criticism during a baraza. Up to that point I had felt that he was protecting the master narrative, that in his function as secretary he was also respected by the others, and that this hierarchy did not allow any criticism of the master narrative. Since the president was not present this time, the secretary was the one there with the highest status, which may be one of the reasons why he made this statement. This was one of the few occasions when the master narrative broke open, and as before, it was in the context of the level of pay.
Again, it was a member of the Waza Arts Centre who asked from the back: âWhat should the work look like for the next generation?â The answer from one participant corresponded to what we were told at an earlier baraza. He explained how it was in the good old days and that children were very well educated both at school and in the workplace; as a result, they were employed. The idea of the future seemed to be the desire to renew the past.
2.5 Baraza Five
Planned to talk about identity.
Setting: Eight men, Carl-Philipp, Gulda, myself, Patrick Mudekereza and Sari Middernacht of the Waza Arts Centre, the last two taking notes.
Since the participants referred to themselves as âagentâ (agent) and âtravailleursâ (worker), I wanted to understand the difference. They explained that an agent was superior to the workers and that this function existed among the senior staff and blue-collar workers. A long explanation ensued about the different classes among the workers of the mining company, the kind of benefits associated with each class according to which class one was promoted, and so on. I was amazed at how well everyone could remember the different classes and exact benefits associated with each category of job. This included, for example, the details of the food rations.
My desire was to understand how the participants saw and described themselves. But I realised that this question about identity was too academic; I had to rephrase it several times to make myself understood. One speaker then said that he understood what I meant, but that identity was not something one would use for oneself; rather it was something used by others to describe a person. He explained to me that he had chosen his wife and his religion himself, and now lived in Lubumbashi, but that he was originally from the Kasai region, so you could say he was a Kasai. Nevertheless, what he really felt was that he was a gécaminois, which means that the job of mineworker was more prominent in his identity than categories such as origin, gender and marital status. This was strengthened by his new group identity as an ODV.
The discussion then moved on to what it means when people come from different regions and all work for the same company. I asked if there were occasional disputes owing to different origins. One participant stated that there were only small fights. The âtshanga tshanga qui était notre patronâ (the tshanga tshanga who was our boss) took care of these little disputes. Back in the good times, that would have been the case. Today, on the other hand, there was a risk of serious violence, but there was no one left to deal with it. This argument was directly related to politics and was the trigger for the next speakerâs statement. He said that nowadays politicians would try to use the former workers in their favour and destroy the sense of community. This would not work, he stressed, at least not among the ODV s, because they were all gécaminois and stuck together.
I followed up and asked if they could not exist without a father. The answer was that every group needs a leader: âOn a besoin dâun conducteurâ. Besides, he confessed, they were tired because they had been fighting for a long time and more than 4,000 of them had already died. Another participant added that he would not be able to look for another father because the time for another father was already over in financial terms, because âNous tous sommes déjà à la finâ (We are all at the end). He concluded: âWatulipe faranga yetu â huyu ni babaâ (The one who should pay us â that is the (new) father).
2.6 Baraza Six
Planned to talk about surveillance and control.12
Setting: Seven men, one of them the secretary, one ODV woman, Carl-Philipp, Gulda, myself, Patrick Mudekereza and Sari Middernacht of Waza Arts Centre, the last two taking notes.
In the round of introductions, it turned out that three of the men used to have a job that involved surveillance and control, which is why they wanted to participate in this discussion. The secretary, as in earlier baraza, was present, but did not want to introduce himself. He emphasised once again: âJe suis là pour lâassistanceâ (I am here to assist).
As in the previous baraza dedicated to the same theme, I wanted to reproduce some quotations from the interviews in which people stressed the importance
Peace and order applied not only to working life but also to private life. There were, I was told, les fiches disciplinaires (disciplinary files), which were a good system because they controlled people and were in line with la convention collective (the collective agreement) on how life should be organised and be. One speaker added: âLa surveillance était bien, cela allait jusquâaux jeux des enfantsâ (Supervision was good, it went as far as childrenâs games). Someone added that they were happy to comply with the UMHK/Gécamines regulations back in the good old days because wages were paid on time, and meals and healthcare were available. Today, however, there was nothing. Then another person stated that they had suffered in the three years before 2003 when they were not paid, and since then âNous sommes dirigés par les gens sans âme qui ne pensent pas aux autres. Il nây a pas de surveillance, nous sommes abandonnés à nous-mêmesâ (We are led by soulless people who do not think about others. There is no surveillance, we are left to ourselves). One person said that they were in a way doomed. Another participant described themselves as follows: âNous sommes des victimes pour rienâ (We are victims for nothing). The reference to victim linked the past with the present.
I quoted a statement from an interview I remembered at this moment: âPeut-être on était mal préparé pour le futureâ (Maybe we were not prepared well enough for the future). How would the ODV s in this baraza evaluate this statement? A speaker then started talking about Mobutu and said that Mobutu had indeed been pro-Gécamines, that he had not closed his eyes, that in Mobutuâs time everyone was paid on the same day, at the same hour, everywhere. Another participant answered: âPour quelquâun qui a bien mangé on est distrait, personne nâa pensé à sâorganiser parce que tout venaitâ (For someone who has eaten well you are distracted, no one thought of getting organised because everything came to us).
The following points were then mentioned in connection with the future: pessimism about healthcare, because today only incompetent nurses were working in the health centres â this was not the case in the good old times; and difficulties for the younger generation to find employment today. One speaker said that his sons would have no work and therefore they, their wives and children would live with him and his wife on the same property, all around un petit rien (a little nothing).
The future depends on the World Bankâs willingness to pay compensation â that is the understanding of the ODV s. They are waiting for the World Bank
Our discussion about the future became a description of todayâs situation, which was dire in comparison to the glorious past. For the ODV s, talking about the future seemed possible only in reference to the past. The master narrative plays an important, if not the most important, role in reflecting on the future and highlighting the change they have experienced. In their current situation, nostalgic references seem to be the only strategy to cope with the present. One participant concluded in this baraza: âTunateswa sana, haina bienâ (We suffer a lot, it is not good). Another nodded in agreement and added, looking at me: âVous êtes notre ambassadeur, notre espoirâ (You [referring to me] are our ambassador, our hope).
As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, my role in the solution to their problem was a recurring theme, and in the preparation of the baraza, during the trigger event and during many individual conversations I made it clear that I could not change the situation. My contribution would be the book. And each time they assured me that they understood and that the book was a good thing. But during the baraza, every now and then I was put into the role of the conducteur they were hoping for, the papa they had lost. After all, I was the researcher from the global North who obviously had enough money to fly to Lubumbashi several times by plane. I cannot blame those who expressed their hope that I would become their conducteur.
3 Feeling Lost, but Productively
I often felt lost about how to describe the ODV sâ situation, how to deal with this master narrative that seemed non-negotiable and how to handle the feeling that I could not live up to the expectation of being the leader.
We write about what we know, not about what we donât know. And we thus seek to temper that uncomfortable suspicion that âthe world itself lies largely beyond our linguistic and intellectual graspâ (Jackson 2012: 29). Subjecting the world to our orderly aesthetic of straight lines, clear categories, coherent narratives, transparent methods, neat schemes and learnt vocabularies, we provide our readers with a sense of being in control. The people we study may be lost. We are not.13
In the context of this research, the ODV s felt neglected but not lost. I was the one who regularly felt lost. It was they who had a stringent and coherent master narrative, which they pursued with admirable consistency. Being nostalgic is a strategy for survival, though they are criticised for this by their childrenâs generation. Their compliance to a strict master narrative is more than understandable. Sometimes they did this by violating the usual rules of co-operation at a communicative event, namely in not answering a question, or with an answer containing a reference to the master narrative when I had hoped for other information, all to return to the master narrative that was understandably of utmost importance to them.
It is therefore most interesting to reflect on âthe contrast between the routine and deviantâ14 in communication during the baraza. In this sense, the most meaningful statements were those that deviated from the master narrative. The question that then arises is whose voice was raised, and whose heard? Whose voice was valuable? And what strategies were used to silence voices? I consider two elements central to understanding how these voices were weighted during the baraza by the ODV s: hierarchies and place.
Differences in hierarchy between the participants were clearly visible, which reflected that the ODV organisation is hierarchical in its structure. As the discussion of the extracts of the baraza showed, hierarchies were evident between the ordinary members of the ODV and the executive board, especially the president and up to a certain point the secretary and the teacher. But the lay priest also influenced the other participants, as was shown. In retrospect, it comes as no surprise that the secretary criticised the low salaries of the
The ODV sâ hierarchy levels influenced not only the participating ODV s, but me as well. I didnât dare interrupt the president, and the video recordings show that I â like the others â always waited until there was a break that allowed me to take my turn. Perhaps the most insightful baraza in terms of turn-taking was the one in which the teacher and the women negotiated the roles of women, the issue of âother womenâ and especially the access to wages. When the women brought up issues, the image that the master narrative had given me until then crumbled a bit. Strategies to silence the womenâs voices were mainly on a linguistic level. The teacher chose not to translate everything for them, or assessed their statements. The secretary objected several times to topics that were not pleasant (in the sense that they did not support the master narrative), saying that discussing them was not the issue now. Having the power to insist on issues or change them as needed is a sign of power.
4 Entanglements
I interpret nostalgia for places that are no longer there (or are no longer what they once were) as a tactic by which older elites attempt to define Mombasa as âtheirsâ, as a city they have more rights to than others.15
The master narrative belongs to the ODV s, not to me. Their insistence on the master narrative, and their strategy during the baraza to repeatedly steer the topics towards it, is therefore more than understandable.
is a process of bundling, of assembling or better of recursive self-assembling in which the elements put together are not fixed in shape, do not belong to a larger pre-given list but are constructed at least in part as they are entangled together.16
From the baraza I learned many lessons about knowledge co-production and sharing. Co-production of knowledge is constantly challenged by different interests at a given moment. Take, for example, the comment âElle a bien réponduâ (she responded well) made by the teacher. He defined what was the ârightâ answer at that moment from a woman whose voice he thought he could assess and who was addressing me. The main interest at that moment was to provide support for an argument that upheld the master narrative. At the same time, however, all participants were accompanied by the desire to show a common interest in sharing. The baraza were therefore characterised by respectful co-operation even in the case of differences of opinion and resultant communication strategies, such as silence or changing the subject. As described in the introduction, discourse theory assumes that certain people or groups of people are able to influence the body of knowledge much more easily than others. This was demonstrated in the baraza. People in (perceived) positions of power define what is considered âtrueâ, change it and influence it. Various factors affect the perceived power of a person, such as the teacher, the secretary, the president, the researcher. But positions can always change and are always renegotiated in the barazaweb.
I also learned about the need for more sensitive and context-relevant methodology, the place of empathy in research, the need to keep rethinking our vocabulary, the ever-pressing question of our positionality, the beneficiaries of our research projects, the silenced voices (both in the archives and in the baraza), and the need to recalibrate theoretical groundings. The starting point of the research groupâs journey was the umbrella topic âhousingâ. I return to this concept in summarising my part of this journey
The ODV s called me âMama Danielaâ during my visits, using âMamaâ as a term of courtesy. âMademoiselleâ is traditionally applied to unmarried women but is also often used to stress the youthfulness of a female counterpart.
The extracts from the report are quoted faithfully, without correction of typos.
Arnulf Deppermann, Helmuth Feilke and Angelika Linke, âSprachliche und kommunikative Praktiken: Eine Annäherung aus linguistischer Sichtâ, in Sprachliche und kommunikative Praktiken, eds. Arnulf Deppermann, Angelika Linke and Helmuth Feilke, Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2016).
Julia Bennett, âNarrating Family Histories: Negotiating Identity and Belonging Through Tropes of Nostalgia and Authenticityâ, Current Sociology 66, no. 3 (2018): 452.
Makori, who also writes about the ODV s and their nostalgia, raises the question of what configures the local experiences of time: â[g]iven the tumultuous history of the emergence of pensioners and creuseurs in Congo, what particular event can be designated as the rupture that fundamentally altered economic life in Katanga?â Makoriâs interest focuses on his intervieweesâexperiences in ways that often confound strict periodicity, such as âcolonialâ and âpost-colonialâ era, âindustrial pastâ and âliberalised presentâ, or the end of the Cold War (Makori, âArtisanal Minesâ, 111â16.)
Bennett, âNarratingâ, 453.
Jerome Bruner, âThe Narrative Construction of Realityâ, Critical Inquiry 18, no. 1 (1991): 4.
Bruner, âNarrativeâ, 6.
Bruner, âNarrativeâ, 7.
Urban neighbourhoods in Europe from the 19th century to the 1950s were also relatively class homogeneous. Blokland describes the small-scale areas with clear borders and cohesive communities in Rotterdam and argues that class is also tied to space, and that people can use the production of places to form social identity (Blokland, âBricksâ, 268).
There were two baraza on this topic, because so many signed up for it.
There were two baraza on this issue, because so many signed up for it.
Mattijs van de Port, âBaroque as Tension: Introducing Turmoil and Turbulence in the Academic Textâ, in Modes of Knowing: Resources from the Baroque, eds. John Law and Evelyn Ruppert, 1st ed (Manchester: Mattering Press, 2016), 167.
Paul ten Have, Doing Conversation Analysis, 2nd ed., Introducing qualitative methods (Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2007), 145.
Zoe Goodman, âTales of the Everyday City: Geography and Chronology in Postcolonial Mombasaâ (PhD dissertation: SOAS University of London, 2018), 220.
Law, After Method, 42.