When: Friday, August 26, 2016 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, August 27, 2016 at 3 p.m., 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Where: The Gladstone, 910 Gladstone Ave. Ottawa, ON K1R 6Y4. (613) 233-4523

Written, directed and performed by Jacqui Du Toit. An original theatrical storytelling, told by five fictional characters who share their perspective on the life and death of Sarah Baartman. For more information, visit: www.venusuntold.com.

TICKETS: $17.10 + $0.60 ticket fee + HST = $20

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When: Saturday, August 27, 2016 7:30 pm.

Rhema Christian Ministries, 1550 Chatelain Ave, Ottawa.

“L’art Selah” is a collective placing the spotlight on Christian spoken word artists and artisans of different genres . a diverse line-up of poets from the poetic scene. Relaxed ambiance!

Tickets $30 online or $35 at door

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26th Biennial Conference

When: June 21-23, 2017

‘Disputed Pasts, Fractured Futures and the Work of History’

Hosted by the Department of History, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

As southern Africa and the world nears the end of an especially turbulent decade, peoples, ideas, structures of power and institutions are being reconfigured in ways both uncertain and unpredictable. As public debates intensify, the past itself has become disputed, with historiographical orthodoxies, even the academy itself, questioned and sometimes abandoned. Yet, the work of history and historians – putting the past and present into dialogue – is vital for imagining possible futures for our world.

The 26th biennial conference of the Southern African Historical Society (SAHS) will raise questions about the potential of history and the production of historical knowledge to work with or against new economic, political and cultural forces. It asks what fresh perspectives are emerging from and about the discipline of history and how these may illuminate the particular crises of our current socio-economic and political moments.

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Under the auspices of the South African Research Chair for Mobility & the Politics of Difference, the African Centre for Migration & Society at Wits University seeks applications for a 1-2 year post-doctoral fellowship. This position is a response to unprecedented levels of urbanisation and mobility across the African continent. Driven by conflict, ambition, and respatialising economies, such movements are generating novel and theoretically challenging socio-political formations. We welcome applicants from across the social sciences interested in how human movements are transforming modes of social engagement, authority, and political representation in sub-Saharan cities.

Starting during the first half of 2017, the successful applicant will join an interdisciplinary team of scholars aiming to reshape global social theory and academic conversations on mobility, cities and political authority and ethics. Such work is intended to open new scholarly frontiers and while informing and enhancing sub-Saharan Africa’s visibility in both academic and policy debates. With a home base in Johannesburg, scholars will be encouraged to develop and participate in projects across the region.

Applications are due December 1, 2016.

For more information, contact Loren B Landau: loren@migration.org.za

Deadline: October 30, 2016

African Review of Social Sciences Methodology/Revue africaine de méthodologiedes sciences sociales

Epistemological Fractures in a Globalized World: Normalizations, Debates and Alternatives in the Social Sciences

The recurrent allusion to the “globalization of the social sciences” validates the idea of the dominance of Western scientific norms and practices over those of “the rest of the world”. The triumph of the “connected world”, aligned with the Western world, seems indisputable and this “self-evident fact” often mutes the expression of ”other” epistemologies. Instead, such knowledge from “elsewhere” is often dismissed as mere folkloric fiction; “pastoral reveries” used to satisfy a certain, seemingly obsolete indigenous pride. Linked to political and economic domination, the resulting imbalance in the scientific communities rarely allows for such dissonance to be heard in its own right.

This project of scientific hegemony, based on a strong tendency towards standardization and “normalization” (Stephen Hawking, 2007) of knowledge on societies is, however, far from complete. In contrast with dominant epistemological doxa, a large epistemic diversity is brewing under the hegemonic surface, and current cultural and technological measures resulting from the acceleration of exchanges are, paradoxically, encouraging the assertion of epistemic identities from the periphery and thereby exacerbating contradictions in the political realm as well as in the social scientific community.

In preparation for the next issue of Méthod(e)s, we invite colleagues to critically engage with the production of hegemonic methodologies, epistemologies, and ontologies in the social sciences: their enlargement and/or constriction, while taking into account the assertions of autonomous, and even counter-hegemonic movements from within or without these sites of power, to be understood as important moments of particular historical materialist contexts.

We support the hypothesis that, however powerful this contemporary hegemonic tendency may be, it is contested on various levels by different epistemic communities. Throughout the world, concurrent scientific and autonomist spaces present scientific and political challenges to this dominant scientific order. Upon close examination, multiple poles of resistance and of alternatives to the dominant scientific discourse are active throughout the world, leading to some authors considering seriously the advent of a “post-hegemonic” era (Jon Beasley-Murray, 2010).

This issue of Méthod(e)s will put forth critical reflections on the forms and interactions of these scientific movements that challenge the dominant scientific order. Recognition of larger political projects (neoliberalism, decolonization) and their structuring effects on scientific proposals is essential to an understanding of struggles for epistemological hegemony, as the tension internal to political arenas provides a referential normative framework for the production and circulation of scholarly knowledge.

What role do the social sciences play in these political battles that may either subjugate or liberate the social groups and communities with whom we work? What consequences do these clashes add to the cognitive and technical order on which the science is based? We should keep in mind that the history of human societies provides us with numerous examples of scientific hegemonies, and retracing their trajectories will give us an invaluable perspective on the conditions of the appearance and disappearance of past and present epistemological com.

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Dates limites 30 octobre 2016

African Review of Social Sciences Methodology/Revue africaine de méthodologiedes sciences sociales

Fractures épistémologiques dans un monde globalisé :normalisations, contestations et alternatives dans les sciences sociales

L’usage récurrent du terme « globalisation des sciences sociales » tend à entériner l’idée d’un processus de domination achevé, de la clôture d’une extension globale des normes et pratiques scientifiques occidentales ; nous assisterions ainsi à un achèvement de la domination, désormais sans partage, des institutions, des pratiques et des théories scientifiques de la zone atlantique nord sur le reste du monde.

Le triomphe de cette hégémonie sur un « monde connecté », pris dans le giron occidental, semble incontestable et écrase, de fait, toutes les velléités d’expression de trajectoires épistémologiques originales, réduites à n’être alors que de simples fictions folkloriques, des « rêveries pastorales » qui servent à contenter certaines fiertés indigènes obsolètes.

Adossé à la puissance de la domination politique et économique, le déséquilibre dans le domaine scientifique est tel qu’aucun écho dissonant venant des marges de l’empire n’est entendu dans sa singularité propre. Cette hégémonie scientifique qui repose sur une forte tendance à la standardisation, à la « normalisation » (Stephen Hawking 2007) des savoirs sur les sociétés est pourtant stérile et loin d’être totale. Derrière la puissance répétitive du mot, la réalité du monde qu’il exprime jure avec la représentation qui en est donnée ; en contrepoids du discours performatif de la doxa épistémologique dominante, une grande diversité épistémique couve sous la tentative d’englobement hégémonique. Les dispositifs culturels et techniques actuels induits par l’accélération des échanges favorisent paradoxalement l’affirmation des identités épistémiques et exacerbent ainsi les contradictions dans le domaine politique comme dans celui de la production des sciences sociales.

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