¿Independencia política y dependencia lingüística?:

Trascurridos cincuenta años de la primera oleada de independencias africanas, la mayoría de los nuevos estados viven lingüísticamente instalados en el statu quo colonial. Por su carácter intrínsecamente alienante y excluyente, este orden de cosas es política, cultural y educativamente lesivo para la construcción nacional de esos estados y coarta su desarrollo económico y social. El análisis de la experiencia africana pone en cuestión el modelo eurocéntrico tradicional sobre el papel de las lenguas en los procesos sociales e invita a un cambio de paradigma. De lo que se trata en definitiva es de alcanzar para todos el empoderamiento a través de las lenguas. Y ello supone no sólo el desarrollo por las lenguas, sino también el desarrollo de las lenguas.

Staying With the Tension: “Estranged Intimacy” and Gendered Expectations in the Field

The position of the anthropologist in the field is discussed, in this article, as a position of “estranged intimacy”, that is to say, the anthropologist occupies an ambiguous position of becoming intimately involved whilst concurrently standing back. This definition derives from reflections upon fieldwork, conducted in the north of Portugal, with Cape Verdean migrant young women and their experiences as mothers. The article discusses two aspects related to the fieldwork. Firstly, the way in which diverse strategies of establishing relations in the field placed me in a position of “estranged intimacy” which reconfigured the meanings I had initially attributed to the term “Cape Verdean women”. Secondly, how becoming unexpectedly involved in a situation of intense conjugal conflict led me to reconsider my understanding of Cape Verdean gender relations. Both cases demonstrate how the endeavour to produce analytical and ethnographical knowledge was shot through with an unstable mix of detachment and involvement and how coming up against the unexpected may contribute towards the reconfiguration of ethnographic knowledge, in this specific case, with regard to the dynamics of gender relations.