Nancy Jacobs | Brown University (original) (raw)
Papers by Nancy Jacobs
South African Historical Journal, 2021
Washington Okumu (1936-2016) went to South Africa in April 1994 as part of the Kissinger-Carringt... more Washington Okumu (1936-2016) went to South Africa in April 1994 as part of the Kissinger-Carrington team charged to mediate Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)-African National Party (ANC)/National Party (NP) differences on the interim constitution. A few days after the collapse of that effort he emerged as the individual broker for a behind-the-scenes agreement that brought the IFP back into South Africa's democratic elections. His appearance was not a fluke. Rather, it was the culmination of a career with a conservative Christian network that was active in track-two diplomacy and constitutional theory from the 1970s through the 1990s. This article looks at this genealogy of compromise and mediation and treats it as a mode of politics in its own right, with interests, a constituency and a strategy. Okumu's network envisioned South Africa as an interracial Christian society living under a Biblically sound legal system. They did not try to preserve apartheid, but held that federalism, free markets and protection for the heteronormative family were divinely ordained. These concerns provided essential context to Okumu's appearance and signal a mode of politics that was not interested in either segregation or the project of deracialisation, but he was thoroughly conservative on social and cultural matters.
African Studies, 2019
Biography (with autobiography) has become the most popular type of non-fiction in South Africa, b... more Biography (with autobiography) has become the most popular type
of non-fiction in South Africa, but the recent expansion of works has
not inspired commentary. Here we describe four ‘constellations’
of biographies: political biographies of the individual-as-leader;
social history biographies of the individual-as-exemplar; literary
biographies of the individual-as-vessel-of-self; and critical studies
biographies of the individual-as-fragmented-subject. Reviewing
the politics of biography in South Africa and the nature of the
project, we conclude that biography is an inescapably awkward
enterprise, because of the intimate and fraught politics between
author and subject, author and sources about the subject’s
internal life, and author and audiences. Together with the authors
in this Special Issue, we hold that it is generative to face the
inevitable difficulties of biography and that it is not a failing to
expose them to view.
African Studies, 2019
Washington Okumu (1936–2016) is now largely forgotten, but he had had a burst of fame as the med... more Washington Okumu (1936–2016) is now largely forgotten, but he
had had a burst of fame as the mediator that brought the Inkatha
Freedom Party back into South Africa’s democratic elections of
1994. This article concerns his professional life until 1988. In
addition to reconstructing his life, it comments on the awkward
challenges of this biography. Interviews with Okumu yielded
confusing and often untruthful testimony. The research process
involved extensive corroboration and correction. Okumu’s story
was about his great achievements, but his greatest achievement
was to position himself on the edges of power. All the same, he
had a remarkable life that included relationships with Kenyan
political leaders, study at Harvard and Cambridge universities, a
likely relationship with the CIA, political imprisonment, and
employment by the United Nations. His deepest connection was
with the Fellowship (an international Christian network best
known for hosting the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington,
DC). Most remarkably, it arranged for Okumu to conduct secret
shuttle diplomacy between South African Prime Minister BJ
Vorster and Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere in 1976. His life
through early middle-age was well connected and eventful, but
his initiatives do not appear to have been politically
consequential. Indeed, the most significant event of life before
1988 may have been that he met IFP leader Mangosuthu
Buthelezi at the Prayer Breakfast in Washington and that he
gained the trust of the South African National Party government
History in Africa, 2018
This article describes the archives of the Fellowship Foundation, best known as the organizers of... more This article describes the archives of the Fellowship Foundation, best known as the organizers of the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC. The secretive character of the Fellowship probably accounts for its lack of visibility in African historical narratives to date. This article makes a case that this evangelical network was significant as a clandestine “track two” diplomatic organization with ties throughout Africa. Historians of international relations, it is suggested, may find useful sources in the public archives of Fellowship Foundation correspondence at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in Illinois. The article reviews the records for several countries and offers examples of the banal, secretive, and sometimes usefully suggestive evidence to be found in the correspondence.
Nancy Jacobs, Professor of History at Brown University, Rhode Island (USA), provides a rich and p... more Nancy Jacobs, Professor of History at Brown University, Rhode Island (USA), provides a rich and personal account of practicing interdisciplinary research. On a field trip to uncover knowledge and beliefs about the African grey parrot in Cameroon, Nancy worked together with her brother (an
, a professor of History at Brown University, shares her experience visiting a CBI eld station. J... more , a professor of History at Brown University, shares her experience visiting a CBI eld station. Jacobs is a historian of South Africa, of colonial Africa, of the environment, of animals, and of knowledge about the environment and animals.
This book was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. For the publisher's link, please ... more This book was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. For the publisher's link, please click "URL" above.
This image is taken from Charles Metcalf, "Railway Development of Africa, Present and Future," Th... more This image is taken from Charles Metcalf, "Railway Development of Africa, Present and Future," The Geographical Journal 47 (1). [Wiley, Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)]: i–viii. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1780303.
To see the map, please click on "URL" above.
W. Rudyerd Boulton was a museum ornithologist in New York, Pittsburgh and Chicago who became a sp... more W. Rudyerd Boulton was a museum ornithologist in New York, Pittsburgh and Chicago who became a specialist in the birds of Africa, notably Angola. He participated in several expeditions to Africa and the Americas, but published little. With the onset of World War II, he joined the newly formed US intelligence and espionage agency, the Office of Strategic Services. He became head of the Secret Intelligence desk for Africa and was connected to the top-secret import of Congolese uranium for atomic bomb development. His postwar career remains largely classified, but in 1953 he was employed in a personnel office of the Central Intelligence Agency. Retired in 1958, he then moved to Southern Rhodesia, where he managed the Atlantica Foundation, an organisation of his own making, which appeared to have extensive funding of unknown origins. Boulton spent the rest of his life on his 'ecological research station', a farm outside Salisbury that he offered to American and Rhodesian scientists as a research base. A retired CIA official who moved to Africa during decolonisation is inherently suspicious. Despite exhaustive efforts, Boulton's continuing connection to Washington could not be documented. In fact, several indications – including his own managerial shortcomings – argue against the conclusion that he moved to Africa as a CIA plant. This paper provides an alternative explanation for his relocation, that it was the organic culmination of decades of self-construction effected through three marriages to accomplished women, two of whom were wealthy. Through his partnerships with Laura Craytor, Inez Cunningham Stark, and Louise Rehm, he developed into an expert on African nature, a liberal on American racial matters, and a wealthy patron of scientific work. Evidence of Boulton's intelligence gathering may yet turn up, but for now the intimate politics of his life provides a better way to explain his relocation to Africa. Although American interests cannot explain his presence, his American origins mattered in that his African retirement was based on wealth, prestige and racial privilege gained in that country. Keywords Ornithology in Africa, decolonisation of Africa, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Rhodesia
International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 2004
The 1998 South African National Asbestos Summit proposed a post-apartheid asbestos policy for the... more The 1998 South African National Asbestos Summit proposed a post-apartheid asbestos policy for the country. In the areas of environmental rehabilitation, health care, and compensation, it envisioned connecting asbestos mitigation to participatory development. In 2001, the Asbestos Collaborative, an international and interdisciplinary team, conducted follow-up research on the recommendations of the 1998 Summit, researching environmental, health, and compensation issues through consultation of documents and interviews with officials in urban areas and with people in Kuruman, a former crocidolite-mining site with high rates of asbestos-related disease. In Kuruman, local opinion supported the recommendations of the Asbestos Summit, insisting that policies to mitigate the problem of asbestos must also address poverty. In the wake of the 2001 research, a new organization, the Asbestos Interest Group (AIG), has been founded to facilitate grassroots participation in asbestos issues. One success of the AIG has been the settlement of a lawsuit by former workers against the former mining company in Kuruman.
The Journal of African History, 1996
ABSTRACT
Environmental History, 2004
Robert Godfrey’s 1941 publication drawing on schoolboys’ essays, in Xhosa, Bird-Lore of the Easte... more Robert Godfrey’s 1941 publication drawing on schoolboys’ essays, in Xhosa, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape Province described two species of birds as herding stock by whistling to them. These were the umcelu (wagtail species of the Motacilla genus) and intengu (fork-tailed drongos, Dicrurus adsimilis). It is possible to take this extraordinary claim about herding birds seriously. The birds have reputations throughout eastern and southern Africa for interactions with both people and stock. Vernacular and ecological knowledge provides a context for these claims: the honeyguide (Indicator indicator) and sentry birds – for example, the go-away bird (Corythaixoides leucogaster) – are widely recognized in Africa as effective interspecies communicators. Ecological studies of ‘heterospecific alarm calls’ have confirmed that birds and mammals communicate with each other. Research suggests, however, that if drongos and wagtails do whistle to herds and flocks, they seek advantages other than the safety of stock. Experimental research on this interspecies network would reveal more about participation by and affordances to stock, birds, and insects. But, what the boys say about their engagement with this network can be taken seriously. Social worlds theory, with its emphasis on collaboration without consensus and imperfect translations, supports a discussion of networks of interspecies communication.
South African Historical Journal, 2021
Washington Okumu (1936-2016) went to South Africa in April 1994 as part of the Kissinger-Carringt... more Washington Okumu (1936-2016) went to South Africa in April 1994 as part of the Kissinger-Carrington team charged to mediate Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)-African National Party (ANC)/National Party (NP) differences on the interim constitution. A few days after the collapse of that effort he emerged as the individual broker for a behind-the-scenes agreement that brought the IFP back into South Africa's democratic elections. His appearance was not a fluke. Rather, it was the culmination of a career with a conservative Christian network that was active in track-two diplomacy and constitutional theory from the 1970s through the 1990s. This article looks at this genealogy of compromise and mediation and treats it as a mode of politics in its own right, with interests, a constituency and a strategy. Okumu's network envisioned South Africa as an interracial Christian society living under a Biblically sound legal system. They did not try to preserve apartheid, but held that federalism, free markets and protection for the heteronormative family were divinely ordained. These concerns provided essential context to Okumu's appearance and signal a mode of politics that was not interested in either segregation or the project of deracialisation, but he was thoroughly conservative on social and cultural matters.
African Studies, 2019
Biography (with autobiography) has become the most popular type of non-fiction in South Africa, b... more Biography (with autobiography) has become the most popular type
of non-fiction in South Africa, but the recent expansion of works has
not inspired commentary. Here we describe four ‘constellations’
of biographies: political biographies of the individual-as-leader;
social history biographies of the individual-as-exemplar; literary
biographies of the individual-as-vessel-of-self; and critical studies
biographies of the individual-as-fragmented-subject. Reviewing
the politics of biography in South Africa and the nature of the
project, we conclude that biography is an inescapably awkward
enterprise, because of the intimate and fraught politics between
author and subject, author and sources about the subject’s
internal life, and author and audiences. Together with the authors
in this Special Issue, we hold that it is generative to face the
inevitable difficulties of biography and that it is not a failing to
expose them to view.
African Studies, 2019
Washington Okumu (1936–2016) is now largely forgotten, but he had had a burst of fame as the med... more Washington Okumu (1936–2016) is now largely forgotten, but he
had had a burst of fame as the mediator that brought the Inkatha
Freedom Party back into South Africa’s democratic elections of
1994. This article concerns his professional life until 1988. In
addition to reconstructing his life, it comments on the awkward
challenges of this biography. Interviews with Okumu yielded
confusing and often untruthful testimony. The research process
involved extensive corroboration and correction. Okumu’s story
was about his great achievements, but his greatest achievement
was to position himself on the edges of power. All the same, he
had a remarkable life that included relationships with Kenyan
political leaders, study at Harvard and Cambridge universities, a
likely relationship with the CIA, political imprisonment, and
employment by the United Nations. His deepest connection was
with the Fellowship (an international Christian network best
known for hosting the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington,
DC). Most remarkably, it arranged for Okumu to conduct secret
shuttle diplomacy between South African Prime Minister BJ
Vorster and Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere in 1976. His life
through early middle-age was well connected and eventful, but
his initiatives do not appear to have been politically
consequential. Indeed, the most significant event of life before
1988 may have been that he met IFP leader Mangosuthu
Buthelezi at the Prayer Breakfast in Washington and that he
gained the trust of the South African National Party government
History in Africa, 2018
This article describes the archives of the Fellowship Foundation, best known as the organizers of... more This article describes the archives of the Fellowship Foundation, best known as the organizers of the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC. The secretive character of the Fellowship probably accounts for its lack of visibility in African historical narratives to date. This article makes a case that this evangelical network was significant as a clandestine “track two” diplomatic organization with ties throughout Africa. Historians of international relations, it is suggested, may find useful sources in the public archives of Fellowship Foundation correspondence at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in Illinois. The article reviews the records for several countries and offers examples of the banal, secretive, and sometimes usefully suggestive evidence to be found in the correspondence.
Nancy Jacobs, Professor of History at Brown University, Rhode Island (USA), provides a rich and p... more Nancy Jacobs, Professor of History at Brown University, Rhode Island (USA), provides a rich and personal account of practicing interdisciplinary research. On a field trip to uncover knowledge and beliefs about the African grey parrot in Cameroon, Nancy worked together with her brother (an
, a professor of History at Brown University, shares her experience visiting a CBI eld station. J... more , a professor of History at Brown University, shares her experience visiting a CBI eld station. Jacobs is a historian of South Africa, of colonial Africa, of the environment, of animals, and of knowledge about the environment and animals.
This book was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. For the publisher's link, please ... more This book was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. For the publisher's link, please click "URL" above.
This image is taken from Charles Metcalf, "Railway Development of Africa, Present and Future," Th... more This image is taken from Charles Metcalf, "Railway Development of Africa, Present and Future," The Geographical Journal 47 (1). [Wiley, Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)]: i–viii. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1780303.
To see the map, please click on "URL" above.
W. Rudyerd Boulton was a museum ornithologist in New York, Pittsburgh and Chicago who became a sp... more W. Rudyerd Boulton was a museum ornithologist in New York, Pittsburgh and Chicago who became a specialist in the birds of Africa, notably Angola. He participated in several expeditions to Africa and the Americas, but published little. With the onset of World War II, he joined the newly formed US intelligence and espionage agency, the Office of Strategic Services. He became head of the Secret Intelligence desk for Africa and was connected to the top-secret import of Congolese uranium for atomic bomb development. His postwar career remains largely classified, but in 1953 he was employed in a personnel office of the Central Intelligence Agency. Retired in 1958, he then moved to Southern Rhodesia, where he managed the Atlantica Foundation, an organisation of his own making, which appeared to have extensive funding of unknown origins. Boulton spent the rest of his life on his 'ecological research station', a farm outside Salisbury that he offered to American and Rhodesian scientists as a research base. A retired CIA official who moved to Africa during decolonisation is inherently suspicious. Despite exhaustive efforts, Boulton's continuing connection to Washington could not be documented. In fact, several indications – including his own managerial shortcomings – argue against the conclusion that he moved to Africa as a CIA plant. This paper provides an alternative explanation for his relocation, that it was the organic culmination of decades of self-construction effected through three marriages to accomplished women, two of whom were wealthy. Through his partnerships with Laura Craytor, Inez Cunningham Stark, and Louise Rehm, he developed into an expert on African nature, a liberal on American racial matters, and a wealthy patron of scientific work. Evidence of Boulton's intelligence gathering may yet turn up, but for now the intimate politics of his life provides a better way to explain his relocation to Africa. Although American interests cannot explain his presence, his American origins mattered in that his African retirement was based on wealth, prestige and racial privilege gained in that country. Keywords Ornithology in Africa, decolonisation of Africa, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Rhodesia
International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 2004
The 1998 South African National Asbestos Summit proposed a post-apartheid asbestos policy for the... more The 1998 South African National Asbestos Summit proposed a post-apartheid asbestos policy for the country. In the areas of environmental rehabilitation, health care, and compensation, it envisioned connecting asbestos mitigation to participatory development. In 2001, the Asbestos Collaborative, an international and interdisciplinary team, conducted follow-up research on the recommendations of the 1998 Summit, researching environmental, health, and compensation issues through consultation of documents and interviews with officials in urban areas and with people in Kuruman, a former crocidolite-mining site with high rates of asbestos-related disease. In Kuruman, local opinion supported the recommendations of the Asbestos Summit, insisting that policies to mitigate the problem of asbestos must also address poverty. In the wake of the 2001 research, a new organization, the Asbestos Interest Group (AIG), has been founded to facilitate grassroots participation in asbestos issues. One success of the AIG has been the settlement of a lawsuit by former workers against the former mining company in Kuruman.
The Journal of African History, 1996
ABSTRACT
Environmental History, 2004
Robert Godfrey’s 1941 publication drawing on schoolboys’ essays, in Xhosa, Bird-Lore of the Easte... more Robert Godfrey’s 1941 publication drawing on schoolboys’ essays, in Xhosa, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape Province described two species of birds as herding stock by whistling to them. These were the umcelu (wagtail species of the Motacilla genus) and intengu (fork-tailed drongos, Dicrurus adsimilis). It is possible to take this extraordinary claim about herding birds seriously. The birds have reputations throughout eastern and southern Africa for interactions with both people and stock. Vernacular and ecological knowledge provides a context for these claims: the honeyguide (Indicator indicator) and sentry birds – for example, the go-away bird (Corythaixoides leucogaster) – are widely recognized in Africa as effective interspecies communicators. Ecological studies of ‘heterospecific alarm calls’ have confirmed that birds and mammals communicate with each other. Research suggests, however, that if drongos and wagtails do whistle to herds and flocks, they seek advantages other than the safety of stock. Experimental research on this interspecies network would reveal more about participation by and affordances to stock, birds, and insects. But, what the boys say about their engagement with this network can be taken seriously. Social worlds theory, with its emphasis on collaboration without consensus and imperfect translations, supports a discussion of networks of interspecies communication.