The Secular in the Spiritual: Missionaries and Knowledge about Africa

The Secular in the Spiritual: Missionaries and Knowledge about Africa

Organizer
Zentrum für Afrikastudien Basel, Prof. Patrick Harries, University of Basel, Switzerland; Prof. David Maxwell, University of Keele, UK
Venue
Location
Basel, Switzerland
Country
Switzerland
From - Until
30.11.2007 - 01.12.2007
By
Dreier, Marcel

Specialists in Mission- and science history will present at the international conference "The Secular in the Spiritual: Missionaries and Knowledge about Africa"

This conference explores new trends and debates in researching the role of missionaries in the production of knowledge on Africa. Scholars have become increasingly aware that missionaries were responsible for much of the knowledge about Africa produced in the days before the establishment of university disciplines. Both the positive and negative aspects of these “Aufklärer” in Africa will be examined at this conference, which convenes specialists researching and teaching at universities in Africa, Europe and Northern America.

Programm

Friday, 30 November 2007

Session A: Natural Sciences and Cartography (09:00 – 11:00)

1) Patrick Harries, Basel University, Switzerland
“Metropolitan intellectuals and missionary fieldworkers: the case of the natural sciences”.

2) Guy Thomas, Mission21, Basel University, Switzerland
“Faith in Maps: Exploring Horizons of Missionary Cartography in West Africa”.

Session B: Missionary Ethnography (11:15-12:15; 14:00-17:40)

3) John Cinnamon, Miami University Hamilton, USA
“Fetishism and Totemism among West African Missionaries: Missionary Ethnology and Academic Social Sciences in early 20th Century Gabon”.

4) David Maxwell, University of Keele, United Kingdom
"’The Soul of the Luba': The Work of W.F.P. Burton, Evangelist and Ethnographer for the Congo Evangelistic Mission”.

5) Dmitri van den Bersselaar, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom:
“Missionary anthropology: the case of G. T. Basden”.

6) Deborah Gaitskell, London University, United Kingdom:
“Dora Earthy & the early years of professional anthropology in South Africa”.

7) Veit Arlt, Basel University:
"'A pure scholar and only in part of importance to the mission’. Johannes Zimmermann and the Basel Mission in Krobo, Eastern Ghana 1851-1872”.

Special Session (18:00 - 18:45)

8) Paul Jenkins, Basel
“Science publishing by the Basel Mission in Kannada”.

Saturday, 1st December 2007

Session C: Linguistics (9:00-12:15)

1) Sara Pugach, California State University Los Angeles, USA
“Missionary linguists in West and Southern Africa”.

2) John Stuart, King’s College London, United Kingdom
“Dorothea Lehmann: German missionary and linguist in British colonial Africa, 1949-64”.

3) Erika Eichholzer, Germany/Switzerland
“Missionary linguists: The Basel diaspora”.

Session D: ‘Catholic’ Missionary Organisations and Research (14:00 – 16:00)

4) Natasha Erlank, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
“Transcultural and Catholic Renditions of Conjugality: The International Missionary Council and Research into African Marriage and Family”.

5) Honoré Vinck, Centrum voor Historische Pedagogiek, KULeuven, Belgium:
“Aequatoria, a 'Centre de recherches africanistes' at the Mission Station of Bamanya, (R.D.C.) 1937 – today. Ideology in missionary linguistics and ethnology”.

Session E: Missionary Medicine (16:30 – 18:30)

6) John Manton, University of Ulster, UK
“Mission, Clinic and Laboratory: Curing Leprosy in Nigeria, 1945-67”.

7) Walima Kalusa, University of Zambia
“Christian Medical Discourse and Praxis on the Imperial Frontier: Explaining the Popularity of Missionary Medicine in Mwinilunga District, Zambia, 1906-1935”.

18:45 Closing session (30 minutes).

Contact (announcement)

Marcel Dreier
Email: marcel.dreier@unibas.ch
Tel.: +41 78 803 05 49

http://www.unibas-zasb.ch/english/events/2007/11/Conference_Secular_in_the_Spiritual.php
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Published on
30.11.2007
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