The Jugaad Project

Sep 16

Sep 16 Convivial Scholarship in an Incomplete World: Interview with Prof. Francis B. Nyamnjoh

This is a transcript of a podcast interview conducted on September 15, 2024, for Season 2, Episode 1 of the Embodied Worlds Podcast in which Dr. Urmila Mohan interviewed Prof. Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Anthropologist, University of Cape Town. We are grateful to Dr. Lindsay Crisp, Lecturer, Open University, London, and Emily Levick, our Editorial Project Manager, for researching Prof. Nyamnjoh’s work on incompleteness and providing some of the questions in this interview. Francis’ philosophy of conviviality and collaboration is part of his framework of ‘incompleteness’ and he discussed its use in contexts of ecology, healing systems, and knowledge making. We have started our podcast’s second season with this interview of 50 mins. because Francis’ voice and actions embody our values of interdisciplinary engagement, imagination, and acknowledging incompleteness-in-motion as the state of our common world.

Sep 7

Sep 7 Gazing to Africa: A Conversation with Art and Ethnology at the Museum

Alexandra Antohin

Articles

This short essay explores how museum displays have traditionally shaped static public knowledge about Africa and Africans. Impressions from the spectator’s experience of the exhibit Beyond Compare: Art from the Bode Museum will serve as a springboard to reimagine how art and ethnological collections can dismantle ideologies of cultural domination embedded in these items’ preservation and presentation to the public.

Jul 27

Jul 27 On Blood and Words: How Certain Objects Become Subjects Among the Mande (West Africa)

Agnès Kedzierska Manzon

The author explores how Mande ritual specialists in West Africa, who own and manipulate power-objects called basiw, turn these objects into "gods forever in the process of construction" thanks to blood sacrifices and speech. While doing so, they construct at once these object's agency and their own identities as accomplished, powerful and respected individuals.

Jul 25

Jul 25 Material, Embodied and Lived Religion: Basket Divination in Practice and Theory

Sonia Silva

Articles

The author draws upon her ethnographic work with basket diviners and their clients in northwest Zambia, Africa, to argue that the practice of basket divination is a material and embodied one. Further, it is a lived religion defined by the precariousness of human life and the transformative force of suffering. Without this broader existential context, basket divination would not be a lived religion.