Guest speakers

Three guest lecturers will be featured during the conference (the order shown here is the order of the lectures in the conference program):

Dominique Connan, Professeur des Universités,

Laboratoire Institut des sciences sociales du politique (ISP, UMR 7220),

Université Paris Nanterre

dominique.connan@parisnanterre.fr

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Main research topics: colonial legacy, formation of ruling classes, economic elites, globalization of sports

Personal or corporate/institutional web page, CV:

https://www.u-picardie.fr/curapp/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/CV_CONNAN2017.pdf

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Tuesday, June 04, 2024:

10h30 – 12h

(Auditorium, Convention Centre Building)

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Conference title:

An "imagined global bourgeoisie": golf and the thwarted respectability of Kenyan elites, from independence to the presidency of Mwai Kibaki

Conference abstract:

"Everything to do with horses, for one reason or another, is linked to the great life of the past. It tends to look back, rather than forward. It's always a sport that has, perhaps, a lot to do with the past, rather than the future. Whereas something like golf, I mean, it's all about the future!"  
In Kenya, British settler culture didn't disappear with independence. But the words of Kenyan golfer Samuel Ngaruiha show that the appropriation of the colonial legacy has been selective. It did not boil down to a dialectic with the imperial past, and golf today conjures up an imaginary that, in Kenya's upper classes, refers more to a desirable future than to a crushing past. In this respect, golf clubs have become the object of renewed imaginations and uses. The archaeology of African representations of this sport since independence means coming face to face with the regularly updated enunciation of "imaginaries of success" (Banégas & Warnier), forms of individual honorability (Iliffe) and collective prestige.

In this respect, the formation of leading social groups is the result of two phenomena: the accumulation of capital, of course, but also a more complex symbolic formation, aimed at affirming the value of their position, or rather the dominant value of their lifestyle. This is what the study of golf and its appropriation in Africa reveals.
Consequently, the practice of golf among the Kenyan upper classes always reflects a dual history, indissociably national and international.Africans very early on used the culture of colonialism as a marker of social stratification. After independence, they used golf clubs as theaters for post-colonial revenge against white domination.But this revenge soon turned into an assertion of dignity - that of the elites, of course - in the face of criticism of African powers and states, such as has been voiced in international arenas of all kinds since the 1980s in particular, and which produces the stereotype of a sick, dysfunctional and relegated Africa, whose inhabitants would be, vis-à-vis the rest of the world, second-class beings, governed by elites prone to "corruption", "nepotism" and "tribalism". Golf was therefore the local expression of rejection of this downgrading and exclusion, of rejection of what James Ferguson, in another context, described as "abjection".In Kenya, the exclusion of Kikuyu elites from state resources and rents from the 1980s onwards fuelled this feeling, all the more so as they attributed their downgrading and that of the country to the Kalenjin elites who governed at the time. In this case, "abjection" was the feeling of entrepreneurs excluded from public contracts, lawyers, accountants and doctors whose professional standards had been denied and tarnished under the Moi presidency and who perceived, through their own decline, that of the country.In a situation of abjection, elitist distinction is supported by transnational cultural forms.As a result, the taste for golf cultivated by the Kenyan elite is fuelled by a sense of belonging to what we propose to call an "imagined global bourgeoisie".It takes several forms.First, as a struggle, since its formation owes much to the rejection of the Moi regime's predatory elites and their practices. Secondly, as a lifestyle, since it anchors dignity, respectability and honor in consumption practices, residential strategies, and ways of dressing, drinking, eating, playing sports and entertaining that are similar to those of the ruling classes in countries whose destiny is perceived as exemplary. Lastly, as a teleology, since it associates an elite lifestyle with a "modernity" deemed desirable, following in the wake of the so-called "developed" countries: not only the countries of Europe or the United States, but also and above all the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Qatar.The practice of golf and the number of club-goers are part and parcel of this process.All in all, golf is shaping a relationship with the state, both in terms of association and opposition.It is invested to assert a cultural legitimacy to govern, to claim an interface role between state resources and customer networks.But golf is also a form of criticism, as the regime excludes those who consider themselves the most capable of governing.In short, the Africanization of golf clubs in Kenya is part of a complex national trajectory with ethnic roots, whose issues go far beyond the question of the colonial legacy.

Five key words: Kenya, golf, legs colonial, élites, Mwai Kibaki

Main publications:

2024 (sous presse), La décolonisation des clubs kényans. Legs colonial, sociabilité et formation d’une élite africaine, CNRS Éditions, collection Logiques du Désordre

2024 (sous presse), « Le golf club » in Bussi M., Drozdt M. et Argounès F. (dir.), Lieux Communs,Fayard

2017 - (avec C. Josse-Durand) “Le Pays du miel et du lait. Ethnographie de la campagne électorale d’un professional au Kenya”, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, n°225, 2017/1

2016 -“Une réinvention de la différence élitaire. Un Rotary Club dans le Kenya de Mwai Kibaki”, Critique internationale, n°73, octobre-décembre 2016, pp.133-155

2015 − “Sociabilité et sphère publique coloniale. Les clubs européens dans le Kenya rural” in Bertrand Romain, Emmanuelle Sibeud et al. (dir.), Cultures d’Empires. Circulations, échanges et affrontements culturels en situations coloniales et impériales, CERI-Karthala, Paris, 2015, pp.225-246

2014 -“La Destinée manifeste de l’entrepreneuriat Kényan. Charité et constitution morale d’une élite économique africaine”, Politix, Vol.27, n°108/2014, pp.123-141

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Chris Young, University Professor,

Modern and Medieval German Studies at Department of German and Dutch,

University of Cambridge

cjy1000@cam.ac.uk

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Main search topics: The cultural history of Sport in modern Europe, with special reference to Germany; history of sport, media and art. Medieval literary and cultural studies.

Personal or institutional web page, CV: https://www.mmll.cam.ac.uk/cjy1000

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Wednesday 05 June 2024:

10h45 - 12h15

(Amphitheatre S1, ground floor, Alice Milliat building)

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Conference title:

Rethinking Jesse Owens: Berlin 1936 and the German Media Landscape

Conference abstract:

The master narrative of the 1936 Olympics has two dominant strands: first, that the Games were a propaganda triumph for the regime and based on deception; and second, that Jesse Owens defied the regime but that his portrayal in the press and in Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia film was also based on deception. Though invariably linked in every interpretation of the Games, these strands, on closer inspection, are contradictory. This paper seeks to address this contradiction by looking first at the handling of Owens in the German media (press, newsreel, film). It will look at the nature of the restrictions on press freedom after 1933, as they relate to sport, showing the latitude that journalists enjoyed as well as the constraints they faced. More importantly for the theme of the conference, it will map out the development of sports media in the 1920s and 1930s and explore the global dynamic that sustained and propelled it forward. The global force of sport as a media topic continued unabated in the early National Socialist era and is key to understanding the way Owens was received in Germany. The paper will show that far the Owens story is only partly explained by the blow he deal to the Nazis’ racial politics. While this can hardly be denied, it is more than balanced by the overwhelmingly enthusiastic welcome Owens was given by the German public, not least as a result of the media build-up to the Games. In short: Owens was more of a hit with the German public than he was a shock to the regime. Understanding this dynamic, fuelled and sustained by the media and its global remit, poses new questions about the propaganda triumph of the 1936 Olympics. The paper will conclude, therefore, with some thoughts towards a general reappraisal of the most infamous Games in history.

Five keywords: Jesse Owens, Sports Media, Olympics, National Socialism, Propaganda

Main publications:

The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany (with Kay Schiller), University of California Press: Berkeley 2010.

The Whole World was Watching: Sport in the Cold War (ed. with Robert Edelman), Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, 2020.

Literary Beginnings in the European Middle Ages, ed. with Mark Chinca, Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Weimar in the World: Communication after the First World War, special issue of German History (Oxford University Press), ed. with Malte Zierenberg, 2024.

Willy Meisl – King of the Sports Journalists: A Jewish Career in Times of Change, 1918-1945, with Darren O’Byrne, de Gruyter: Berlin, forthcoming 2024.

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(informations forthcoming)

Florence Carpentier, Maîtresse de Conférences,

CETAPS, UFR STAPS,

Université de Rouen

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Main search topics:

Personal or institutional web page, CV:

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Thursday 06 June 2024:

11h15 – 12h45

(Amphitheatre S1, Alice Milliat building)

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Conference title:

Alice Milliat and the Women's World Games [title to be confirmed]

Conference abstract:

Five keywords:

Main publications: