Dr. Euclides Gonçalves will give a Boas lecture on: "Memes As Ways of Knowing in Africa". A light reception will follow in 465 Schermerhorn Extension.
Quests to understand contemporary African realities on their terms seem to have gained momentum as we are witnessing the growth of conceptual innovation in the social sciences and humanities, especially by African-based social scientists and activists. This is manifested in scholarly production and the diversification and democratisation of knowledge-sharing publications and dissemination platforms. From this perspective, it seems that frameworks that build on “endogenous knowledge” and interpretive frameworks that have been labelled as “theories” or “epistemologies” from the south have gained recognition as avenues to understand the human condition in Africa.
While scholarship on Africa seems to be moving from thinking by analogy, advances in digital technology and its massification in Africa present new challenges and opportunities for current models of knowledge production in social science and humanities. Dominant modes of knowledge production in Africa struggle to be relevant in a context of intense sharing of information, competition for authority, and a general sense of urgency in life that places high value and reward on the actions of the here and now.
This talk examines memes as artefacts of knowledge. It builds on a long tradition in African thought that draws on expressions of popular culture as entry points to nuanced interpretations of African realities and logics. It explores the power and limitations of memes as an entry point for ways of knowing and being human in Africa and its implication for the practice of social sciences and humanities on the continent. It proposes a social science and humanities practice that embraces risk, ambiguity, contradiction, and uncertainty, characterising African social realities to renew dominant models of knowledge production.
Dr. Gonçalves is a Mozambican social anthropologist trained in Mozambique and South Africa. He co-founded and directed Kaleidoscopio - Research in Public Policy and Culture (2012-2024) and taught at Eduardo Mondlane University (2005-2015). He is currently the director of the Institute for Social and Economic Studies (IESE), a fellow of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER), and an honorary fellow at the Institute of Humanities in Africa in South Africa (HUMA). Dr. Gonçalves’s research focuses on bureaucratic practices and performances, and he has published articles on state bureaucracy, agricultural development, and expressions on popular culture. Notably, he has discussed the prominence of orality in Mozambican bureaucracy and the public engagement of African-based Social Scientists.
