Mattia Fumanti | University of St Andrews (original) (raw)

Videos by Mattia Fumanti

What is the place of the colonial past in the postcolonial present? This film aims to answer this... more What is the place of the colonial past in the postcolonial present? This film aims to answer this question by focusing on a precise moment of the day when the legacy of apartheid urban planning and labour regulations emerge most potently in Namibia's post-apartheid urban landscape. The film focuses on Windhoek's commuting time with an emphasis on a precise moment, 5 pm. In this respect the film wants to capture the ways in which ordinary people navigate the present through daily routines that reproduce, and also challenge, what remains of the social and structural world of apartheid. The poetic intervention, through the reading of Lorca's 'Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Meijas', offers an opportunity to explore what is left of the colonial past in Namibia's postcolonial present as well as of emerging political economies with their constraints and possibilities. The film is central to my article, 'The 'haunting' and the 'haunted': Whiteness, orthographies and the (post-apartheid condition'.

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Books by Mattia Fumanti

Routledge, 2022

This book focuses on Akan-speaking Ghanaians in London and explores in detail the experience of A... more This book focuses on Akan-speaking Ghanaians in London and explores in detail the experience of African migrants living in Britain, investigating how they construct their British citizenship through their membership of the church.

Building on extensive ethnographic research in London and Ghana, the author explores the relationship between religion and citizenship, the emergence of transnational subjectivities, and the making of diaspora aesthetics among African migrants. Starting from the understanding that citizenship is dialogical, a status mediated by a subject’s multiple and intersecting identities, the author highlights the limitations of existing conceptualisations of migrant citizenship. Anchored in a case study of the British/Ghanaian Methodist Church as a transnational religious organisation and cultural polity, the book explores diasporic religious subjectivities as both cosmopolitan and transnational, while being configured in emotionally and morally significant ways by the Methodist Church, as well as family, ethnicity, and nation.

Interdisciplinary by nature, this book will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and scholars across the social sciences and humanities working in the fields of anthropology, religion, sociology, postcolonial studies, and African studies, and additionally policy makers interested in diaspora and migration studies.

Scholarly definitions of elites as those who wield political power and control distribution of re... more Scholarly definitions of elites as those who wield political power and control distribution of resources in their locales consistently leave out their capacity to shape morality, civic ethics and the legitimacy of power relations beyond material domination. In this insightful ethnography of Rundu, a frontier town in Namibia, Mattia Fumanti highlights the fundamental contribution elites make to the public space through their much-praised concept of civility and their promotion of nation-building at the local level. In centring his argument on the moral agency of elites over three generations and their attempts to achieve distinction in public life, this book counters an often found and over-generalized view of postcolonial African states as weak, ruling through authoritarian, greedy and corrupt practices. By looking at the intricate ways in which the biographies of a middle-range town and its inhabitants are interwoven, this study draws very different conclusions from the grand narratives of pathologies, chaos and crisis that characterize much of the accepted discourse of African urbanization derived from the study of large cities. Focusing on how generational relations between elites have both shaped, and are shaped by, the transitions from apartheid and civil war to independence and post-independence, the book illuminates public debates on the power of education, the aspirations of youth, the role of the state and citizen, delivery of good governance and the place of ethnic and settler minorities in post-apartheid southern Africa. This book is a vibrant antidote to Afro-pessimism and views that emphasize the spectacle of disaster, kleptomania and corruption of the weak state. By examining the rhetoric of public morality Fumanti challenges this but is, nevertheless, also critical of the ruling elite. This is a sophisticated and nuanced analysis of how small-town elites emerge and how they see the world, a group of people who are potentially vital players in the evolving shape of African cultures and moralities, who have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Robert Gordon, University of Vermont and University of the Free State The Politics of Distinction tackles a perennial anthropological subject with immense brio. Using the most contemporary of social theories and ethnographic methods, Mattia Fumanti addresses the enduring but elusive nexus of inter-generational consciousness and of the ambivalences between generations. That the two generations in this Namibian border town see themselves as the architects and inheritors of liberation imbues their provincial relations with echoes of grand history. Anyone interested in African elite formation, post-colonial governance, and the dividends and distinctions of education, or simply looking for a finely crafted contemporary ethnography, will find Fumanti's a compelling narrative. Richard Fardon, Professor of West African Anthropology at SOAS

Edited Books by Mattia Fumanti

This book explores the role and implications of responsibility for anthropology, asking how respo... more This book explores the role and implications of responsibility for anthropology, asking how responsibility is recognised and invoked in the world, what relations it draws upon, and how it comes to define notions of the person, institutional practices, ways of knowing and modes of evaluation. The category of responsibility has a long genealogy within the discipline of anthropology and it surfaces in contemporary debates as well as in anthropologists’ collaboration with other disciplines, including when anthropology is applied in fields such as development, medicine, and humanitarian response. As a category that unsettles, challenges and critically engages with political, ethical and epistemological questions, responsibility is central to anthropological theory, ethnographic practice, collaborative research, and applied engagement. With chapters focused on a variety of cultural contexts, this volume considers how anthropology can contribute to a better understanding of responsibility, including the ‘responsibility of anthropology’ and the responsibility of anthropologists to specific others.

Lighthouse Publishers, 2014

I am an anthropologist and much of my work involves listening to other people’s stories and retel... more I am an anthropologist and much of my work
involves listening to other people’s stories and
retelling them to different audiences. Among the
many stories we encounter in our field research,
there are personal and collective stories that often
remain untold. They are stories we record and
archive but which ultimately do not find space in
our ethnographic work. There might be different
reasons why we chose not to include these stories
in our accounts. These might be autobiographical
and ethical, or point to the inadequacy of the
conventional modes of ethnographic
representation. I am interested in those accounts
that remain untreatable through conventional
modes of representations because of the
relational consequences they sustain. In taking as
a point of departure the idea that ethnographic
representations remain inherently relational -
ethnographic representations, do far more than
communicate about a subject; they open the
possibility for new forms of relationships, with
academic and non-academic audiences and the
people we encounter in the field, whilst, I must
add, simultaneously closing old ones- I am
interested in exploring different forms of
ethnographic representation, that would allow us
to reveal these untold stories.
‘Imagining the future’ is one such story. It is the
story of a Namibian woman, but also the story of
countless ordinary Namibians and their personal
suffering in times of great hardship. It is also the
story of my personal engagement with this and
other stories and my own predicament as to how
best represent these accounts.
With this short story I respond to this predicament
by engaging with the realm of imagination.
Imagination is intuitively central to fiction but not
so obvious perhaps in ethnographic writings.
From my first visit to Namibia more than a decade
ago imagination soon became a key experience.
Imagination in those first years after Apartheid,
not that Namibians have lost in the meantime the
capacity to imagine, was a very powerful personal
and political process. It was an individual and
collective effort at nation-building and at coming
to terms with the violent past of the Apartheid era
in order to rebuild the world through, among
other things, the prism of imagination. Many times
in the course of my fieldwork in Namibia I was
asked ‘to imagine’. And so ‘imagine’ became for
me the verb that epitomized a mode of
engagement and of being in the course of my
stay. It became my way to understand the world
around me and to locate myself in it. Imagining
people’s experiences helped me to be relational
not only in the widely accepted sense of relating
to people through sharing activities, the classical
tenet of ethnographic fieldwork, but also through
the process of imagining alongside my friends
what life was like and or will it be like. In this way,
my anthropological understanding emerged from
these encounters of the imagination.
Imagining the future is one such encounter of the
imagination/s. It is the encounter of Scholastica’s
imagination, the main character in the story, my
own imagination as the ethnographer, and that of
Tuli-Mekondjo, a renowned Namibian artist. Tuli
has illustrated this story through her own
imaginative work. In doing so she has given a
visual representation to this encounter of the
imagination and perhaps captured the unseen of
imagination through a range of stunning
drawings. I hope this story and Tuli’s illustrations
will encourage the readers’ imaginative process.

Papers by Mattia Fumanti

It is our great pleasure to introduce this themed issue of Anthropology Matters. The five article... more It is our great pleasure to introduce this themed issue of Anthropology Matters. The five articles assembled here developed out of a workshop held at the University of Manchester, which set out to explore the role of play in ethnographic research and its transformation into different forms of knowledge. The impetus for this event had been provided by the fact that the process of conducting ethnographic research is commonly referred to as 'fieldwork'. And yet, in our fieldsites, some of us have spent considerable amounts of time playing football or learning to dance. This irony sparked off a series of questions: Could such enjoyable pastimes really be considered a kind of work? Conversely, could any activities that were taken seriously by their practitioners be seen to be nothing but a form of play? How did the meanings of play and of work differ crossculturally? What sorts of skills were necessary to play competently and successfully? Could play be used as a research technique? And finally, how could knowledge gained of and through play be incorporated into standard academic formats?

Visual Anthropology Review, 2024

This special section, titled “From the Field to the Screen: Reflexivity and collaboration in Visu... more This special section, titled “From the Field to the Screen: Reflexivity and collaboration in Visual and Multimodal Contemporary Practices,” presents a collection of papers that explore the challenges, opportunities, and ethical considerations inherent in reflexive and collaborative practices within ethnographic visual and multimodal research.
Drawing from diverse methodologies and approaches, the papers delve into topics such as autobiographical storytelling, virtual reality, sensory experiences, and archival-based filmmaking. Through critical reflections and case studies, the section aims to provoke dialogue and reflection on the complex intersections of reflexivity and collaboration in visual anthropology. It addresses the challenges and pitfalls of producing visual and multimodal ethnographic data beyond film through a multilayered
analysis that conveys ethical, aesthetic, and methodological implications. Each paper invites readers to engage with innovative methods and perspectives that complicate research processes—from design to dissemination—contributing to contemporary debates in visual and multimodal anthropology with implications for audiences beyond the discipline.

Claudio Costa, Danilo Eccher (ed.), Silvana Editoriale, Milano, 2023

Journal of Southern African Studies, 2023

Journal of Southern African Studies, 2022

Lateral, 2021

Right from the emergence of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, national governments and internationa... more Right from the emergence of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, national governments and international institutions have been relentlessly qualifying it as an “unprecedented” event. We have been told that the virus sees no color or class and that equal sacrifices from each one of us are and continue to be necessary to contain its spread. We have been instructed to look at the virus in scientific, neutral terms as if we had equal chances of being affected by it—as if its routes, that is, did not follow the roots of sedimented histories of oppression, exploitation, dispossession, and structural violence. This forum departs from such narratives to look at how the current COVID-19 pandemic intersects with other pre-existing and enduring pandemics, such as those produced by racism, capitalism, and speciesism. In building on the emerging critiques by Indigenous, feminist, Black, and queer academics, movements, and activists, the contributions it hosts offer multimedia reflections on affects triggered or evoked by the current pandemic, such as rage, fear, despair, restraint, care, and hope. Coming from different parts of the globe and disciplinary approaches, authors convey the “Corona(virus) a(e)ffects” in multisensorial ways, combining written essays, poetry, videos, and photographs. By contextualizing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic within a historical legacy of structural violence within and across species, this forum moves beyond deceitfully single-focus and temporally flat narrations. In so doing, it provides a space for the expression of radical affectivities of dissent and hope that its outburst has arguably made only more visible and pressing.

History and Anthropology, 2021

In this paper I contend that a project of recovering one's ethnographic archive can engender not ... more In this paper I contend that a project of recovering one's ethnographic archive can engender not only a process of reflexivity, including on one's positionality, but also offer a heuristic device for exploring wider ethnographic issues. In starting with a reflection on my position as a white male researcher in Namibia, I focus my analysis to a broader exploration of whiteness in Namibia, and the enduring presence of apartheid in the (post)-apartheid era. In building on Tina Campt's haptic, I confront my own nostalgia and hauntings which emerged during the course of retrieving the orphaned ethnographic archive. In the process, I made space for making sense of the nostalgia and hauntings of other whites in Namibia, and more broadly, for exploring the relationship between whiteness and the (post)-apartheid condition. Further, I argue that a new vocabulary and orthography are needed for engaging with the (post)-apartheid condition. In traversing it as a series of puncta, I explore the complex interrelationship between whiteness' hauntingsits historical claims on people, space and timeand the ways in which apartheid's traces continue to haunt whiteness in the (post)-apartheid period. Haunting and haunted, I argued that white people's experiences, narratives and perceptions in Namibia are characterized by historical inequalities and privilege, as well as a sense of dislocation and dispossession. Ultimately, it is my belief that, as noted earlier, (post)-apartheid must be viewed as a condition that does not yet fully exist, but can only be desired, being understood as deferred.

Antipode, 2021

In this paper, we put forward an examination of the interconnections between public space, the ev... more In this paper, we put forward an examination of the interconnections between public space, the everyday, and the event in order to rethink the spatiotempo-ral modalities of political action. Recent mass mobilisations and civil unrest events around the globe have brought to the fore the complex relationship between political practices and public space. These indicate a critique of representative democracy, authoritarian governance, and precarious living conditions, as well as entailing new ways of doing and conceptualising politics. Our paper approaches the production and (re)-configuration of public space through a spatiotemporal analysis of collective action based on the events that took place in Athens, in December 2008, and in Tottenham, London, in August 2011. By considering the everyday socio-political dynamics of public space as formative of radical political practices, we also pay attention to its evental (re) production. Such a process, we argue, entails the potentiality for rupture, contestation and radical imagination.

Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 2020

While the links between colonial psychiatry and racism figure prominently in histories of the dia... more While the links between colonial psychiatry and racism figure prominently in histories of the diagnosis, treatment and institutionalisation of the mentally ill in Africa, there is an absence of patient-centred accounts, in the analysis of the efforts of the colonial-era subjects themselves to be pro-active not merely as the mentally ill, by clinical or court definition, but as persons embedded in social relationships with their kin and significant others. Moreover, despite an emerging scholarship, little is known of the experience of European settlers. In this respect there is a need for a more balanced representation, one that shows the ambivalence of colonial psychiatry and its reach into the lives of colonial subjects, Africans and Europeans alike. In this paper I focus on the narratives of a settler in German South West Africa and her efforts to escape diagnosis and institutionalisation. In building on a feminist approach to illness narratives, in particular on the idea of bearing empathic witness, I will explore the ways in which illness narratives can reveal the complex moral and political economies of the colonial world.

Somatosphere: Science, Medicine and Anthropology, 2018

Il convient plutot de s'attacher à ce que signifie ȇtre un homme, avant de problématiser la folie... more Il convient plutot de s'attacher à ce que signifie ȇtre un homme, avant de problématiser la folie en terms de santé et maladie, Ludwig Binswanger, Le Rȇve et l'Existence On a cold winter morning I walked on Independence Avenue, Windhoek's main thoroughfare in the heart of the capital's central business district, with M. a young man whom I had known for some months. I felt slightly under dressed for the occasion. Partly because I wasn't prepared for the cold, and partly because M. was as always dressed very elegantly. On that chilly and windy morning, he was wearing a stylish blue velvet jacket, a nice red shirt, a pair of matching corduroy trousers, and some fine leather shoes. Wearing his sunglasses and his long dread locks, he stood out from the crowd and made, with his combination of vibrant colours, for a very visible and distinguished figure among the Windhoek morning crowd. As we walked along the street, M. greeted several people with his warm smile and strong handshake. This was sometimes accompanied with a joke that made people laugh. Sometimes he would also add a significant hand gesture. He would touch his chest with his fist and then reach out to his interlocutor with his hand, 'peace my brother', before departing. I asked him if the people he greeted along the way knew about his condition, and he said 'no, they don't'. I found this to be strange in light of what he had told me previously, but I decided not to question him further. We turned off Independence Avenue, and made our way to his office, located in a new commercial building where we sat down for a while. M. was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, or manic depression, in the early 2000s. M. had told me how at the onset of the illness, he was taken to Angola by his mother, an Oshiwambo speaker who lives in the north of Namibia, to see an onganga, a traditional healer.

Terranova Ferdinando. Sanita’ e Insanita' Pubblica nell'Italia neoliberista. Dall conquista del diritto alla salute alla sua negazione. Percorsi Ideologici dall’Unita’ d’Italia. Firenze: Altra Linea Editore, 2016

Love: Contemporary Art Meets Amour, Danilo Eccher (ed) Skira: Milano. Exhibition Catalogue, 2016

Christian Boltanski: Souls From Place to Place, Danilo Eccher (ed.) Silvana Editoriale, Milano, 2018

Critical African Studies, 2015

This paper explores the making of the entrepreneurial self in contemporary Namibia. Rather than l... more This paper explores the making of the entrepreneurial self in contemporary Namibia. Rather than locating my ethnography within well-rehearsed arguments on ‘occult economies’ in Africa, I want to explore the relationship between neo-liberal discourses and practices and idioms of play, contingency and fortune. My ethnographic evidence comes from fieldwork conducted among young entrepreneurs living in Windhoek, Namibia's booming capital. Ambitious and enterprising, these youth have transformed their knowledge of IT and the media into an online and televised competition called Taramo Live. The business, with its sleek graphics and catchy tunes, is the latest addition to the appearance and consolidation of raffles, mobile phone competitions and prize draws in Southern Africa. In this paper, I bring to the fore the ways in which youths' processes of entrepreneurial self-making rely on composite biographical narratives that are constantly created, imagined and performed within the context of Namibia's ‘fortunational capitalism’. Here, I will show that what constitutes valued work has been reconceptualized to accommodate emerging discourses on entrepreneurship.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681392.2015.1055775

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Routledge, 2022

Lighthouse Publishers, 2014

Visual Anthropology Review, 2024

Claudio Costa, Danilo Eccher (ed.), Silvana Editoriale, Milano, 2023

Journal of Southern African Studies, 2023

Journal of Southern African Studies, 2022

Lateral, 2021

History and Anthropology, 2021

Antipode, 2021

Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 2020

Somatosphere: Science, Medicine and Anthropology, 2018

Love: Contemporary Art Meets Amour, Danilo Eccher (ed) Skira: Milano. Exhibition Catalogue, 2016

Christian Boltanski: Souls From Place to Place, Danilo Eccher (ed.) Silvana Editoriale, Milano, 2018

Critical African Studies, 2015

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681392.2015.1055775

Critical African Studies, 2017

This special issue sheds lights on The Politics of Homosexuality in Africa through a series of in... more This special issue sheds lights on The Politics of Homosexuality in Africa through a series of in-depth analyses and ethnographic accounts that challenge existing essentialisms while bringing to bear a more complex and subtle representation of queer politics on the continent. In building, and yet departing from, the emerging scholarship on this topic, the contributions to this volume underline how the often-cited draconian legislations, the state-sponsored homophobic violence, and the heated public debates on homosexuality, should be seen not simply as the product of political chicanery and Pentecostal religious fervour, but as part of the (re)-emergence and (re)-articulation in postcolonial Africa of old and novel discourses on African independence and nation-building, of citizenship and human rights, and of morality and the place and recognition of Africa, and Africans, in the world.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681392.2017.1282724

The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Anthropology, 2017

Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World, Raminder Kaur and Parul Dave-Mukerjee (eds) London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi, Sidney. Bloomsbury Publishing. ASA Monographs, 2014

For Akan-speaking Ghanaians in London, public events and rites of passage are constitutive of the... more For Akan-speaking Ghanaians in London, public events and rites of passage are constitutive of their diasporic subjectivity and sociality, re-establishing and reinforcing material and symbolic connections within the diaspora and the home country. Their participation reasserts their ontological presence in the world and renders them visible and distinct in the eyes of fellow migrants, thus denying their social marginality. This ontological presence is produced through a uniquely Akan aesthetic, realised in linguistic terms, through proverbs, mottoes and wise sayings; in material terms, through sartorial ostentation and the use and display of elaborate dresses and other material objects; in taste, through the consumption of ethnic food; and in visual terms, through the use of videos and photographs. By drawing on a range of ethnographic examples from London and Ghana, this paper shows the complex overlap between the discursive and the material in the formation of Akan migrants’ aestheticised subjectivity as they reassert their place in the London diaspora.

How are transnational aesthetics transformed and appropriated in the diaspora? In theorising the ... more How are transnational aesthetics transformed and appropriated in the diaspora? In theorising the very possibility of a transnational aesthetics, our primary focus goes beyond cognition to aesthetics as 'sensuous participation' -the making of beauty, distinction and sensual pleasure as participatory performance, embedded and re-embedded in social worlds of literary art or celebration forged in diaspora. Going beyond current debates in the anthropology of aesthetics, we argue that the transnational appropriation of aesthetic literary and embodied performative traditions, objects, sartorial styles or foods in the diaspora points to the transformational power of mimesis: what appears on the surface to be derivative and imitative, taken from elsewhere, engenders authentically felt cultural competences and a sense of ontological presence. Thus it is that diasporic sociality and aesthetic cultural performance create the grounds for appropriation and ownership in the alien place of non-ownership, that is, in the diaspora, the site of exile.

American Anthropologist, 2016

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2009

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2011

Archaeology, art, and material culture Fardon, Richard. Fusions: masquerades and thought style ea... more Archaeology, art, and material culture Fardon, Richard. Fusions: masquerades and thought style east of the Niger-Benue confluence, West Africa. 207 pp.

PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2013

Karen Engle has written a timely book that considers recent advances in human rights-based indige... more Karen Engle has written a timely book that considers recent advances in human rights-based indigenous advocacy, but also the potential limits of such advocacy. Engle provocatively explores how indigenous rights, understood as human rights, surprisingly might be detrimental to the development of indigenous communities and their pursuit of sovereignty. As a set of arguments in legal scholarship, this book offers much food for thought about the role of advocacy in the work of anthropology and the potential for ethnography to serve indigenous movements.

Africa, 2005

Henning Melber (ed.), Re-examining Liberation in Namibia: political culture since independence. U... more Henning Melber (ed.), Re-examining Liberation in Namibia: political culture since independence. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet (pb £15.95 -91 7106 516 4). 2003, 149 pp.

On Sartre Street is a collaborative film that explores the relationship between social media and ... more On Sartre Street is a collaborative film that explores the relationship between social media and entrepreneurship in Windhoek, Namibia. In focusing on the efforts of a group of young entrepreneurs to 'make it big', the film addresses youthful aspirations in the context of rapid socio-economic transformations that are taking place in Namibia and more widely in the region. Filmed over three years and with access to the work and lives of these youths the film reveals the working of entrepreneurship in Namibia and the process at self making that accompanies it. But 'On Sartre Street' is also a film about collaboration and its limits, and about the ethical and moral predicaments of collaborative work in ethnographic film-making.

In Ghana charismatic and evangelical churches represent the fastest growing Christian congregatio... more In Ghana charismatic and evangelical churches represent the fastest growing Christian congregations. These churches are very popular, especially with the youth, because of their vibrant and ecstatic style of worship and their promise for wealth and success. Their music is powerful and moving. Their rituals speak with the force of the Holy Spirit and move large congregations into ecstatic performances and into trance. In these congregations it is young preachers and evangelists who are said to be blessed with the gift of the spirit: they speak in tongues; they anoint; they deliver from evil spirits; they heal and give counseling to their patients; and they possess the gift of prophecy. They are the ‘vanguards’ of what is seen as the never-ending spiritual battle against the forces of evil, against Satan, against witches and other malevolent spirits which blight people’s daily quest towards prosperity, well-being and a better future.
This film follows a group of young charismatic as they travel from Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti region, to attend a Methodist Christian Crusade in the small town of Kwame Danso. The film captures this youth at work as they preach, heal and counsel the local population in their effort to bring the Christian gospel to this remote region and attract new converts into the Methodist church. While in this film there is much of the on stage performances of these religious rituals, culminating on the last day on a dramatic deliverance and trance session, the film equally captures its off stage and less visible dimension. The film does so through a close observation of the daily tasks carried out by these charismatic preachers to reveal the more mundane, less efficient and even humorous side to the work of these religious practitioners. There is extensive footage of the preparations of these events, of the music rehearsals, of the arguments over food and daily tasks, and of the palpable frustration for the lack of progress, resources and funds. Space in the film is also given to the convivial nature of this Crusade, to the recounting of past humorous tales, to the jokey relationships that binds people and to the flirting that goes on between the young members of the congregation. The film also captures the intergenerational tensions within the Methodist church between this new generation of young charismatics and the established Methodist clergy. Charismatic practices are a recent phenomenon in the Ghanaian Methodist Church and are regarded with suspicion and resistance by the older generation of Methodists ministers and lay members. Yet reluctantly the Methodist church, like other more traditional Christian denominations, has accepted the emergence of charismatic practices in its rituals in order to attract new converts and survive the challenge posed by the fast growing and popular charismatic and evangelical churches.

The article presents a review of Mattia Fumanti’s The Politics of Distinction (2016), a provocat... more The article presents a review of Mattia Fumanti’s The Politics of Distinction (2016), a provocative study on the complexities of elite formation and elites’ influence over emerging public spaces in post-apartheid Namibia. Based on an intermittent long-term fieldwork and archival research on old and new elites in Rundu, a frontier town in Northern Namibia, the book goes beyond its ethnographical setting, offering a plethora of alternatives to general pessimistic readings about colonial and post-colonial Africa. Recognizing its contribution to central analytical concepts in debates about state and society in the continent, the article unveils the ethnographic drama and attempts to contextualize it in relation to contemporaneous political changes taking place in the continent since 1990, the year of Namibian independence. Assessing the importance of the book in its capacity to suggest optimistic perspectives about African politics, the article expands its analysis of the moral bases of the public space in Rundu, suggesting that the future of democracy in Namibia and elsewhere in the continent might rest in the development of moralizing arenas of deliberation and dialogue.