10. Mediators and Brokers in Africa
Gregor Dobler and Tilo Grätz (Regionalgruppe Afrika)
15th september 2011
The workshop focuses on a particular category of actors which are conceptualised as social and cultural mediators, as agents of mediation between different social, cultural or religious actors, regimes or realms of meaning. In Africanist anthropology, these mediators have been also often termed brokers, middlemen, speaker, negotiator or simply agents. Initially predominantly used in political (i.e. M. Gluckman) an economic anthropology, e.g. with regard to trading relations (A. Cohen), this category of actors has been meanwhile entered anthropological studies on much broader domains of public life, popular culture and media.
With regard e.g. to the anthropological study of new arenas constituted by development projects, the concept of development brokers, mediating between donor organisations and local communities, has proven to be very relevant (T. Bierschenk, D. Mosse), as well as the notion of ethnic brokers in plural settings (C. Lentz, W. Van Binsbergen, K. Schilder, D. Welsh) or conflict areas; communal brokers as political agents for aspirating politicians i.e. in election campaigns (D. Koter), or the idea of cultural brokers as it was applied to actors such as artists (B. Omojola), journalists or filmmakers (O. Thalén). Finally, social mediators and counsellors in private (conjugal) conflicts or community disputes constitute an important new professional field in various African countries. Without neglecting significant semantic differences between the mentioned terms, we are trying to look at their common conceptual basis, and discuss the usefulness and limits of such model categories. We will examine whether these concepts are always appropriate to deal with variable domains and conditions of individual agency, whether we may also address instances of non-human agency (including mediating technologies) and the ways in which local actors appropriate these notions. We are expecting paper proposals that either discuss these concepts from a theoretical point of view, or explore them in the light of rich empirical case studies. We are especially inviting contributions that will apply the concepts of mediators/mediation, brokerage/ brokers etc. to new areas of study (arts, technology, and education) and various other contemporary social and cultural processes.
Focussing primarily on theoretical concepts also relevant to other (regional) fields within anthropology, we very much hope to draw the attention of colleagues from various sub-fields and regional specialisations.