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Home Who We Are Contact Us How To Join Activities Links Research & Archives Events HelpZimbabwe BZS RESEARCH REGISTER 2008 Updated June 2008 This is a listing of current research on Zimbabwe, prepared by the BZS as a service to the academic community and other interested visitors to our website. The listing is constantly evolving and makes no claim to be comprehensive. Research projects are included at the request of the researchers concerned; if you would like to have your own research listed here, please contact the compilers: Diana Jeater, University of the West of England diana.jeater@uwe.ac.uk Oliver Phillips, University of Westminster O.Phillips01@westminster.ac.uk Please provide the following information as your submission: Name: Institutional affiliation: Email: Title of Research Project: Short Description of Project (50-100 words): Date of submission: LISTING OF RESEARCH PROJECTS 2008 *************************************************************** Name: Georgina Barrett-Haigh Institutional affiliation: Rhodes University, South Africa** Email: g08b1823@campus.ru.ac.za or george_b80@homail.com Title of Research Project: Security and Human Emancipation in Southern Africa: Lessons from Critical Security Studies Short Description of Project (50-100 words): State-centric orthodox understandings of security provide an unsatisfactory framework for understanding security in Southern Africa, particularly the crisis in Zimbabwe. This research aims to demonstrate that Critical Security Studies offers a more useful theoretical framework for understanding the crisis in Zimbabwe, and security more broadly in the region. Analyses of the structural, contextual and relational factors that influence regional actors’ understandings of, and responses to, security and consideration of additional or “new threats”, and questions about “whose security” and “how and by whom” it can be delivered provide a more human emancipatory approach through which the crisis can be understood and engaged. Date of submission: Expected date of submission Feb 2011 ___________________________________________________ Name: Sarah Bracking, with Lloyd Sachikonye Institutional Affiliation: University of Manchester, University of Zimbabwe Email: sarah.bracking@manchester.ac.uk Title of Research Project: Remittances, Poverty Reduction and Informalisation: a political economy of dispossession? Short Description of Project (50-100 words): This research investigates the role of migrant remittances to household wellbeing in Harare and Bulawayo, using household survey data. We model the privatised social protection system which has arisen as a result of remittances in a period of economic contraction, and explore whether this constitutes a political economy of dispossession. We have found that optimism surrounding the ability of individuals to build informal institutions de facto, if not de jure, in periods of crisis to substitute for failing formal sector ones must be tempered. Remittances, though acts of solidarity, can only temper, not solve, wider crises of reproduction. At http://www.bwpi.manchester.ac.uk/resources/Working-Papers/28-bracking-sach-gprg-abstract.pdf ___________________________________________________ Name: Myrna Capp Institutional affiliation: Assistant Professor of Music, Seattle Pacific University Email: mcapp@spu.edu Title of Research Project: Keeping the Embers Alive: Musicians of Zimbabwe (book) Africa World Press & The Red Sea Press, March, 2008 Short Description of Project (50-100 words): Interviews by Myrna Capp / photographs by Kristin Capp More information available at www.africaworldpressbooks.com, and at www.dandemutande.org (Catalog and Discography; Books; Culture) Since 1984, Myrna Capp lectured, performed and did research in sub-Saharan Africa. She interviewed thirteen Zimbabwean musicians, resulting in fascinating stories told in the musician’s own words. Two themes that emerged were the importance of preserving traditional Zimbabwean music, and the role of improvisation. In 1999, photographer Kristin Capp traveled to Zimbabwe to join her mother in Harare, where they began a collaboration. Myrna Capp interviewed the musicians in their homes, workplaces and performance venues. The book combines interviews and images of the musicians and of Zimbabwe at large. ___________________________________________________ Name: Moses Chikowero Institutional affiliation: Dalhousie University, Canada Email: mchikowe@dal.ca Title of Research Project: Struggles over Culture: Music and Power in Zimbabwe, 1930s-2005 (PhD thesis). Short Description of Project (50-100 words): This research argues that African music has been both a potent tool and Central terrain of struggles over the construction and contestation of power, identities and political legitimacy in colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe. It documents the attempts by both the colonial and postcolonial states and their agencies to harness African music to define and delimit the identities and roles of the colonized and/or governed and how the latter used their songs and dances to complement, subvert, resist and question power. Together with other performative cultures like drama and dance, music has historically mediated the performance of political ideologies of power that include colonizing discourses like the civilizing mission and modernization and liberationist ones like African nationalism and postcolonial sovereignty. Date of submission: July 2008 ___________________________________________________ Name: Zoe Groves Institutional affiliation: History PhD. student at Keele University. Affiliated with the History Department at Chancellor College, University of Malawi and Research Associate at the University of Zimbabwe. Email: groves.zoe@googlemail.com Title of Research Project: The impact of Malawian migration to colonial Harare circa 1920-1975 Short Description of Project (50-100 words): My research is a social history of Malawian migrants in the developing urban centre of Salisbury from 1920-1975, a time of significant political and social change. I will examine questions of national and ethnic identities, class and gendered aspects of migration, social dynamics between indigenous and non-indigenous residents and the cultural and religious contributions of Malawian migrants to Salisbury's urban life. This study will combine archival material from the Malawi and Zimbabwe National Archives with life histories collected from migrants who have remained in Zimbabwe and those who have returned to Malawi. Date of Submission: September 2010 ___________________________________________________ Name: Coralie Hancock Institutional affiliation: Aberystwyth University, PhD Candidate Email: cah06@aber.ac.uk Title of Research Project: Landscape and Resistance: Identity and Representation in Zimbabwe and its Diaspora Short Description of Project (50-100 words): The project explores how landscape in situe, memory and various representational forms reflects, reveals and enables processes resistance. The intention is to explore these themes across Zimbabwe's history from 1890-present day and across its diverse communities both within and outside of the country. The project also seeks to ask questions about Zimbabwean identity formation with respect to resistance and landscape both in terms of how identity has influenced the construction and representation of landscape, and how interaction with landscape has shaped identity itself. Date of submission: 2010/11 ___________________________________________________ Name: Paul Hubbard Institutional affiliation: UNISA Email: hubcapzw@gmail.com Title of Research Project: Archaeology, History and Recreating and Ndebele Identity in Zimbabwe, 1830-1896. Short Description of Project (50-100 words): The study will investigate the transformations that occurred in the economic and socio-political realms of Zimbabwean Ndebele society between 1830 and 1896. In contrast to previous studies of the Ndebele, the proposed research is intended to examine the changes that occurred throughout the entire state system from the elite at capital sites to ordinary people of the society during the stated period. Briefly, I aim to do detailed archaeological surveys to locate and document Ndebele sites within the study area; to document and compare the archaeological material between different sites; to explore the spatial relationships between sites and aspects of their environmental and social settings; and to relate what is realised in the archaeological record to historical reconstructions of the Ndebele state. Date of submission: +/- December 2011 ___________________________________________________ Name: Rebekah Marks Institutional affiliation: University of Exeter Email: ram205@ex.ac.uk Title of Research Project: How HIV/AIDS has impacted households and traditional culture within the context of Zimbabwe today. Short Description of Project (50-100 words): By tracing the impact that HIV/AIDS has had on families and traditional culture I hope to give the reader some idea of the vast burden borne by individuals and households in the midst of what is now the fastest shrinking economy in the world with an inflation rate of over 1000%. I will lay out and examine the social and economic impact HIV/AIDS has on households and how traditional culture is changing and evolving to deal with the added pressures of the pandemic. Date of submission: April 2008. ___________________________________________________ Name: Beacon Mbiba Institutional affiliation: Department of Planning, Oxford Brookes University Email: bmbiba@brookes.ac.uk Title of Research Project: Planning for Population Change Short Description of Project (50-100 words): International migration has risen to the top of the policy and political agenda in recent years and with climate change and global security can be considered the major topics that preoccupy policy makers and researchers at the global level. With special reference to Zimbabweans migrating to the United Kingdom, the aim of the research is to identify and examine the socio-economic and political impacts of this migration on home communities, the host communities and on the migrants themselves. Outputs from the research will generate teaching materials for a postgraduate course and contribute to emerging policy debates both in Zimbabwe and in the United Kingdom on the need to better understand and communicate to the public the social and economic impacts of international migration. A working paper “ Zimbabwe’s Demographic Contribution to the United Kingdom, 1995-2006” will be available soon. ___________________________________________________ Name: Elaine Windrich Institutional affiliation: Stanford University Email: ewind2@yahoo.com Title of Research Project: Broadcasting in Zimbabwe: An Historical Perspective Short Description of Project (50-100 words): This is a study of the continuity of censorship and propaganda in broadcasting in Zimbabwe. It also shows how the state broadcaster was under white control until 1980 and black control thereafter. It begins with the inauguration of the Central African Broadcasting Station, which then served the African listener in Southern Rhodesia. It goes on to include the Southern Rhodesia Broadcasting Corporation, dominated by the white "Establishment"; the takeover by the Rhodesian Front, which imposes censorship and propaganda; and, finally, control by the African majority through the ruling party with the establishment of the monopoly Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. ___________________________________________________ *** * * Who We Are Contact Us Home How To Join Activities Links Research & Archives Events** Copyright 2009 Britain Zimbabwe Society

BZS RESEARCH REGISTER 2008

Updated June 2008

This is a listing of current research on Zimbabwe, prepared by the BZS as a service to the academic community and other interested visitors to our website. The listing is constantly evolving and makes no claim to be comprehensive. Research projects are included at the request of the researchers concerned; if you would like to have your own research listed here, please contact the compilers:

Diana Jeater, University of the West of England diana.jeater@uwe.ac.uk
Oliver Phillips, University of Westminster O.Phillips01@westminster.ac.uk

Please provide the following information as your submission:

Name:
Institutional affiliation:
Email:
Title of Research Project:
Short Description of Project (50-100 words):
Date of submission:

LISTING OF RESEARCH PROJECTS 2008

*****************************************************************
Name: Georgina Barrett-Haigh

Institutional affiliation: Rhodes University, South Africa

Email: g08b1823@campus.ru.ac.za or george_b80@homail.com

Title of Research Project: Security and Human Emancipation in Southern Africa: Lessons from Critical Security Studies

Short Description of Project (50-100 words):

State-centric orthodox understandings of security provide an unsatisfactory framework for understanding security in Southern Africa, particularly the crisis in Zimbabwe. This research aims to demonstrate that Critical Security Studies offers a more useful theoretical framework for understanding the crisis in Zimbabwe, and security more broadly in the region. Analyses of the structural, contextual and relational factors that influence regional actors’ understandings of, and responses to, security and consideration of additional or “new threats”, and questions about “whose security” and “how and by whom” it can be delivered provide a more human emancipatory approach through which the crisis can be understood and engaged.

Date of submission: Expected date of submission Feb 2011
___________________________________________________

Name: Sarah Bracking, with Lloyd Sachikonye

Institutional Affiliation: University of Manchester, University of Zimbabwe

Email: sarah.bracking@manchester.ac.uk

Title of Research Project: Remittances, Poverty Reduction and Informalisation: a political economy of dispossession?

Short Description of Project (50-100 words):

This research investigates the role of migrant remittances to household wellbeing in Harare and Bulawayo, using household survey data. We model the privatised social protection system which has arisen as a result of remittances in a period of economic contraction, and explore whether this constitutes a political economy of dispossession. We have found that optimism surrounding the ability of individuals to build informal institutions de facto, if not de jure, in periods of crisis to substitute for failing formal sector ones must be tempered. Remittances, though acts of solidarity, can only temper, not solve, wider crises of reproduction. At http://www.bwpi.manchester.ac.uk/resources/Working-Papers/28-bracking-sach-gprg-abstract.pdf

___________________________________________________

Name: Myrna Capp

Institutional affiliation: Assistant Professor of Music, Seattle Pacific University

Email: mcapp@spu.edu

Title of Research Project: Keeping the Embers Alive: Musicians of Zimbabwe (book) Africa World Press & The Red Sea Press, March, 2008

Short Description of Project (50-100 words):

Interviews by Myrna Capp / photographs by Kristin Capp

More information available at www.africaworldpressbooks.com, and at www.dandemutande.org (Catalog and Discography; Books; Culture)

Since 1984, Myrna Capp lectured, performed and did research in sub-Saharan Africa. She interviewed thirteen Zimbabwean musicians, resulting in fascinating stories told in the musician’s own words. Two themes that emerged were the importance of preserving traditional Zimbabwean music, and the role of improvisation.

In 1999, photographer Kristin Capp traveled to Zimbabwe to join her mother in Harare, where they began a collaboration. Myrna Capp interviewed the musicians in their homes, workplaces and performance venues. The book combines interviews and images of the musicians and of Zimbabwe at large.

___________________________________________________

Name: Moses Chikowero

Institutional affiliation: Dalhousie University, Canada

Email: mchikowe@dal.ca

Title of Research Project: Struggles over Culture: Music and Power in Zimbabwe, 1930s-2005 (PhD thesis).

Short Description of Project (50-100 words):

This research argues that African music has been both a potent tool and Central terrain of struggles over the construction and contestation of power, identities and political legitimacy in colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe. It documents the attempts by both the colonial and postcolonial states and their agencies to harness African music to define and delimit the identities and roles of the colonized and/or governed and how the latter used their songs and dances to complement, subvert, resist and question power. Together with other performative cultures like drama and dance, music has historically mediated the performance of political ideologies of power that include colonizing discourses like the civilizing mission and modernization and liberationist ones like African nationalism and postcolonial sovereignty.

Date of submission: July 2008

___________________________________________________

Name: Zoe Groves

Institutional affiliation: History PhD. student at Keele University. Affiliated with the History Department at Chancellor College, University of Malawi and Research Associate at the University of Zimbabwe.

Email: groves.zoe@googlemail.com

Title of Research Project: The impact of Malawian migration to colonial Harare circa 1920-1975

Short Description of Project (50-100 words):

My research is a social history of Malawian migrants in the developing urban centre of Salisbury from 1920-1975, a time of significant political and social change. I will examine questions of national and ethnic identities, class and gendered aspects of migration, social dynamics between indigenous and non-indigenous residents and the cultural and religious contributions of Malawian migrants to Salisbury's urban life. This study will combine archival material from the Malawi and Zimbabwe National Archives with life histories collected from migrants who have remained in Zimbabwe and those who have returned to Malawi.

Date of Submission: September 2010

___________________________________________________

Name: Coralie Hancock

Institutional affiliation: Aberystwyth University, PhD Candidate

Email: cah06@aber.ac.uk

Title of Research Project: Landscape and Resistance: Identity and Representation in Zimbabwe and its Diaspora

Short Description of Project (50-100 words):

The project explores how landscape in situe, memory and various representational forms reflects, reveals and enables processes resistance. The intention is to explore these themes across Zimbabwe's history from 1890-present day and across its diverse communities both within and outside of the country. The project also seeks to ask questions about Zimbabwean identity formation with respect to resistance and landscape both in terms of how identity has influenced the construction and representation of landscape, and how interaction with landscape has shaped identity itself.

Date of submission: 2010/11

___________________________________________________

Name: Paul Hubbard

Institutional affiliation: UNISA

Email: hubcapzw@gmail.com

Title of Research Project: Archaeology, History and Recreating and Ndebele Identity in Zimbabwe, 1830-1896.

Short Description of Project (50-100 words):

The study will investigate the transformations that occurred in the economic and socio-political realms of Zimbabwean Ndebele society between 1830 and 1896. In contrast to previous studies of the Ndebele, the proposed research is intended to examine the changes that occurred throughout the entire state system from the elite at capital sites to ordinary people of the society during the stated period.

Briefly, I aim to do detailed archaeological surveys to locate and document Ndebele sites within the study area; to document and compare the archaeological material between different sites; to explore the spatial relationships between sites and aspects of their environmental and social settings; and to relate what is realised in the archaeological record to historical reconstructions of the Ndebele state.

Date of submission: +/- December 2011

___________________________________________________

Name: Rebekah Marks

Institutional affiliation: University of Exeter

Email: ram205@ex.ac.uk

Title of Research Project: How HIV/AIDS has impacted households and traditional culture within the context of Zimbabwe today.

Short Description of Project (50-100 words):

By tracing the impact that HIV/AIDS has had on families and traditional culture I hope to give the reader some idea of the vast burden borne by individuals and households in the midst of what is now the fastest shrinking economy in the world with an inflation rate of over 1000%. I will lay out and examine the social and economic impact HIV/AIDS has on households and how traditional culture is changing and evolving to deal with the added pressures of the pandemic.

Date of submission: April 2008.

___________________________________________________

Name: Beacon Mbiba

Institutional affiliation: Department of Planning, Oxford Brookes University

Email: bmbiba@brookes.ac.uk

Title of Research Project: Planning for Population Change

Short Description of Project (50-100 words):

International migration has risen to the top of the policy and political agenda in recent years and with climate change and global security can be considered the major topics that preoccupy policy makers and researchers at the global level. With special reference to Zimbabweans migrating to the United Kingdom, the aim of the research is to identify and examine the socio-economic and political impacts of this migration on home communities, the host communities and on the migrants themselves. Outputs from the research will generate teaching materials for a postgraduate course and contribute to emerging policy debates both in Zimbabwe and in the United Kingdom on the need to better understand and communicate to the public the social and economic impacts of international migration. A working paper “ Zimbabwe’s Demographic Contribution to the United Kingdom, 1995-2006” will be available soon.

___________________________________________________

Name: Elaine Windrich

Institutional affiliation: Stanford University

Email: ewind2@yahoo.com

Title of Research Project: Broadcasting in Zimbabwe: An Historical Perspective

Short Description of Project (50-100 words):

This is a study of the continuity of censorship and propaganda in broadcasting in Zimbabwe. It also shows how the state broadcaster was under white control until 1980 and black control thereafter.

It begins with the inauguration of the Central African Broadcasting Station, which then served the African listener in Southern Rhodesia. It goes on to include the Southern Rhodesia Broadcasting Corporation, dominated by the white "Establishment"; the takeover by the Rhodesian Front, which imposes censorship and propaganda; and, finally, control by the African majority through the ruling party with the establishment of the monopoly Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.

___________________________________________________

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