Architects of Communication Scholarship

Ellen Wartella 0:02
ICA presents

Ellen Wartella 0:16
Hello, I'm Ellen Wartella and welcome to this episode of the Architects of Communication Cholarship Podcast series, a production of ICA Podcast Network. Today our architect is Frances Nyamnjoh. Francis Nyamnjoh holds a BA and an MA from the University of Yaounde, and Cameroon and a PhD from the University of Leicester. He joined the University of Cape Town in August 2009 as Professor of Social Anthropology from the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, where he served as Head of Publications from 2003 to 2009. He has taught sociology, anthropology and Communication Studies at universities in Cameroon and Botswana, and as researched and written extensively on Cameroon in Botswana, where he was awarded the "Senior Arts Researcher of the Year" prize for 2003. He is a fellow of the Cameroon Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the African Academy of Science, a fellow of the Academy of Science of South Africa, Chair of the Board of Lango research and publishing center in Cameroon, and was chair of the editorial board of the South African Human Sciences Research Council. His current research interests include incompleteness mobility, encounters, belonging, citizenship, and conviviality. Today he will be in conversation with Herman Wasserman. Herman Wasserman is professor of Media Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. And here's Herman.

Herman Wasserman 1:37
I am delighted today to be speaking to Francis Nyamnjoh, an esteemed scholar of media, culture and communication in Africa, a colleague here at the University of Cape Town, where he's a professor of social anthropology, and an old friend, Francis and I met when he was head of publications that the Council for the development of social science research in Africa or Kadesh, area in Dakar, Senegal, and I've been following his inspirational work with great interest ever since. Francis's training and disciplinary location in anthropology and sociology, in forming study of media and communication from the perspective of the everyday lived experiences of Africans, steeped in the knowledge of the social and economic conditions, which differ vastly from the Global North. Francis himself also has the gift of creativity and imagination. Not only does this academic writing always display a characteristic flair, but he has also published several novels which complement the scholarly production. And in some ways, today's discussion follows on an earlier interview I did with him in 2009, which was published in the journal journalism studies. And I'm really excited to continue our conversation. So good afternoon, Francis, how are you doing?

Francis Nyamnjoh 2:53
I'm well, Herrmann is good to connect.

Herman Wasserman 2:57
Francis, I'm really happy to be talking to you again about your work, you have been one of the most influential voices in communication scholarship on the continent. Your influence stretches far beyond, certainly South Africa and your native Cameroon, to the rest of the continent, but also internationally. And to my mind, that certainly qualifies you as one of the architects of communication scholarship on the continent. So I'd like to reflect a bit or ask you to reflect on the journey that brought you to this point. So maybe let's start at the beginning. Can you tell us a little bit about where you grew up your background and how that influenced your educational trajectory and made to work?

Francis Nyamnjoh 3:40
Thanks very much for such a generous introduction, Herman. I grew up in the Cameroon grass fields, which currently is at the heart of the what you call the Anglophone crisis, or the Cameroonian state, I went to a secondary school called Sacred Heart College, which at the time, was headed by the Marist brothers from from Scotland, Marist Brothers of the Virgin Mary from Scotland. I went to the University, which at the time was the only university in the country since the 1960s. To the 1980s. Today, there are many more universities. I also went to the University of Leicester, were one of the first centers for media studies in the UK was established. I have worked in Cameroon, in universities in Cameroon and Botswana. I am currently at the University of Cape Town, here in South Africa.

Herman Wasserman 4:43
I was wondering if you could maybe tell us a bit more about how you think that varied background influenced your work, your view of communication scholarship, but also maybe if there are specific mentors that stand up that have influenced your work in particular

Francis Nyamnjoh 5:00
I was fortunate that in 1985, Cameron joined the countries that initiated a national television service and at the time, they wanted some researchers to study the social relationship between television and wider communities. So I had a scholarship from the Cameroonian government that took me to Leicester, the Center for mass communication research, the and where I did my PhD, from 1986 to graduating in July 1990. And the title of of the PhD was broadcasting for nation building in Cameroon, development and constraints. And this thesis was supervised by James Halloran, who served as president of AI MCR for quite some time. I wouldn't call it mentors as such, but rather, those whose ideas and word home conversations over the years have inspired and deepened my sense of communication, and how we should go about studying it as a process. So in that regard, I would say my professor whom I just mentioned, James Halloran, and others from the Center for Communication Research at Leicester, who were Peter Goldin, Paul Hartmann, Olga Linne, Anderson Hansen, and my colleagues in who were students, fellow students at a time such as Pradip Thomas, Musa Mohammed, Paul Martin, Zeki Waweru, and many others were equally influential. Other professors of sociology and anthropology back in Cameroon, such as Bernard Fonlon, Jean-Marc Ela, Jean-Pierre Warnier, and others like Mike Rowlands at University College London have all helped in in shaping my conversations in the field of communication. But there are more African communication scholars such as Frank Okwo Ugboajah, Francis Kasoma, Temba Masilela, Polly McLean, Cheryl Renee Goach, Francis Wete, Charles Okigbo, Winston Mano, Viola Milton, Eddah Mutau, Cecil Blake, Kwami Baofo, Luke Uka Uche, Audrey Gadzepo, Peter Nwosu, Levi Obijiofor, Aghi Bahi, Regina Traore, Hughes Kone, Arnold de Beer, Ruth Tomaselli, Keyan Tomaselli, your humble self Herman and others of the various African scholarly associations and networks to which I have belonged, such as the African council for communication education, SACOM, Highway Africa, and CODESRIA. Last but not least, my mother and aunties and the communities of the two kingdoms in the Bamenda grass fields of Cameroon where I grew up, I think they have all been part of the mentoring process if you insist on mentorship, but I will rather talk in terms of conversation partners. Thank you.

Herman Wasserman 8:55
I think the maybe the Western or idea from the global north (if you want to use those terms) often is that there are certain leading lights, certain eminent scholars that shaped the field. And you know, that's the way that we also view you. But I mean, the way that you have now turned it around and said this, this big community of people, that scholarship is, if I understand you correctly, almost this long conversation that starts, you know, with your aunties and your mother and then continues. It's, on the one hand, a very generous way of looking at the process. But at the same time, it makes me think that it brings to mind the concept that has been central to your scholarship, namely conviviality. And I was wondering if you could maybe say something about the role or the place of that notion of conviviality and community in the way that you've studied communication over the years?

Francis Nyamnjoh 9:47
That would say that, as you noted, amongst those I named the storytellers who might grew up with listening to and read it over and above my mother and aunties they're proliferate throughout Cameroon and Africa, and they make serious business of speaking and storytelling. They use proverbs and delight in interactions not to hurt feelings. Words are important, and they have to be deployed with utmost care. Amongst them are authors such as Chinua Achebe, the novelist famous for his novels such as Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God. He famously describes proverbs as the palm oil would which words are eaten. I have found one of his proverbs, "The world is like a dancing masquerade". If you desire to see it, well, you cannot afford to stand in one place, which is very useful for thinking communication as a dynamic process, in which meaning is constantly renegotiating with changing context, I see communication as a process that is predicated around recognizing and providing for incompleteness as a universal attribute of being. And which such incompleteness, there's a necessity for mobility to activate one set of three encounters with others. So for me, my study of communication is underpinned by the idea of incompleteness, and mobility and conviviality.

Herman Wasserman 11:33
I'm wondering also that the role of technology in African societies and communication, it's also been something that's been throughout your work, and you've done interesting work, for instance, on the mobile phone and the way that those technologies feature in African societies. But maybe if you could reflect on those aspects of technology and subjectivity and creativity and how that plays out in the African context,

Francis Nyamnjoh 11:58
I think of technologies basically, as activators, that make our sociality possible, that extend us as incomplete beings. And because we want to be able to make the social possible. We use technologies as mechanisms or tools for extending ourselves beyond the limitations of our incompleteness to cultivate a socialities. So I am I'm particularly interested in communication in that sense. As what enables us to be mobile, what mobilizes us and how are we in that mobility encounters others? And how are we productive? And how are we able to reproduce similarities and differences in those encounters? And how do we position ourselves in relation to them? It is that process that brings me into conversation with communication studies. I've done this through my study on cell phones, my studies on other technologies that are used, either in indigenous technologies within Africa, or modern technologies coming into conversation with such cultures and practices of being and belonging to a shared community.

Herman Wasserman 13:31
I wondering if these ideas of yours of conviviality, sociality incompleteness what do those offer us and how do they help us think about communication maybe in ways that are still marginalized in the in the global study?

Francis Nyamnjoh 13:51
What my research has shown is that when we use incompleteness and mobility as universals and not as something some people have, or and while others do not, and we are able to approach society and societal challenges from a particular vantage point as communication scholars. It provides for understanding the messiness of being human through into interconnections and interdependencies and in a manner that would disabuse scholarship of binary opposition's or dichotomies. When we use, incompleteness and conviviality as a framework for addressing those things, we can also use it for addressing the challenges posed by elitism and populism. And that's something I did recently when I focused on on Donald Trump and populism and citizenship using the framework of incomplete.

Francis Nyamnjoh 15:00
This lecture turned to what you see as important questions for communication scholars in the next decade. And also in organizations like the ICA, we increasingly hear this idea of the westernization decolonizing being brought to the fore. And you know, many of us would say this is high time. So, this is maybe a bit of a leading question, but in your mind, is this challenge of decolonization still one of the big intellectual challenges for communication scholars? Are there other big challenges? And if so, how do you think we should go about to tackle those those challenges?

Francis Nyamnjoh 15:39
Absolutely, decolonization remains a challenge. There's a lot of talk about it. But one often finds oneself asking for more indicators of decolonization. How to go about it? In practical terms, in terms of indicators to do. And my argument is that it is very easy to mistake decolonization for rupture. If it was rupture, then it will require total break with anything that came with colonialism. That means a total break, almost like unraveling to a point where you think this is where I presumed myself to have been before I was contaminated by colonialism. But I think most of the time, what it actually filters through and is not adequately stated, is pursuing decolonization as pointing to the incompleteness, in what passes for knowledge in what passes for theories and practices of knowledge production, and reminding us in the academy to reach out and embrace order epistemic moods of meaning making and knowledge production. And I think there are two other challenges the challenge of citizenship and belonging as an inclusive process predicated on the universality of incompleteness as mobility and mobility as I've indicated, and the challenge of promoting and popularizing what I called earlier Ubuntu scholarship, or better, still convivial scholarship, as an antidote to the scholarship by analogy and mimicry.

Herman Wasserman 17:26
So if I were to ask you that what your research has shown you about the challenges and opportunities where African communication scholarship can make a major contribution to understanding these challenges that you've just mentioned? What can African scholars of communication like yourself, bring to enlighten these broader challenges and questions that we grapple with in the field?

Francis Nyamnjoh 17:50
If what my peers locally and globally says anything to go by, I would say they are particularly appreciate my focus on incompleteness and conviviality as a productive response to the need to make room for African experience in theories, methodology, and research practice in communication scholarship. How to think about and research social processes in Africa as communicative processes is a complex question, by virtue of the hierarchies of which Africans and Africa I part, locally and globally. Africans have, in my research, often defied essentialist and exclusionary identity claims as only informed by real life experiences of how people as incomplete mobile, social, political, and economic beings, negotiate and navigate creatively appropriate the various geographies, cultures, technologies and popular frontier ideas of reality in Africa, to be seen and studied as socially, politically and historically constructed realities. And as permanent works in progress. It recognizes the reality of debt and indebtedness as integral to life and sociality and invites us as communication scholars to disabuse ourselves of a winner takes all approach, it is good to remind ourselves that there is always something old in something new, and that nothing is to us to be used. And finally, when the normative theories constructed in one context, take upon themselves an export component without critically providing for the local and global interconnecting hierarchies that structure power relations. On equal encounters and on equal exchanges, the result is detrimental both to communication scholarship as a social science and to human dignity. My approach to communication scholarship privileges, description and understanding of a prescription and teleology. In this regard, my scholarship transcends academia, to the extent that it it is communicated not only as scholarly publications, but also via, as you mentioned earlier, novels, some of which have been translated into languages at French, and Korean, and some of which have been the subject of doctoral thesis.

Herman Wasserman 20:47
And I want to ask you a very practical question maybe in terms of your own work and your current work and future work. And maybe you can just tell us briefly about what you're working on at the moment, if you're an architect that sees the building as never quite been completed in law, like those old cathedrals that you build in that you never see the end of where, what are you building at the moment? And what are you hoping to build in the years to come?

Francis Nyamnjoh 21:18
Because our traditions of presence was almost like the online was a compliment and a disposable compliment, to the extent possible. But now what COVID has done is to impose it as two sides of the same coin of being human. And you'll notice again, the element of incompleteness or the element that completeness is never really possible, being completely offline or being completely online, and you need not be I pointed to social media as a fantasy space. It will be interesting to see how the place of truth in that fantasy space and what opportunities it provides. And what opportunism aims it provides for the media, broadly speaking, as well as for those who go fishing for opportunities in the media using these technologies. So I'm beginning to think of how more seriously about social media, online possibility, reality realities as a fantasy space worth contemplating and worth inviting for dinner every now and again.

Herman Wasserman 22:33
Thank you. With that, Francis, I'd like to thank you very much for your time today. But also like to thank you on behalf of the communication scholars worldwide, this big community, this big convivial group of people that you listed, all of us that are interested in media and communications research in and about Africa and the world. really would like to thank you as an architect of communication scholarship for the really spacious and inspiring intellectual home that you have helped design for us. I look forward to meeting you again, in either in this fantasy space or maybe in something more prosaic in in everyday life. We wish you all the best for keep inspiring us in the future.

Ellen Wartella 23:24
This episode of Architects of Communication Scholarship podcast series is presented by the International Communication Association Podcast Network, and is sponsored by the School of Communication at Hong Kong Baptist University. This episode was produced by Daniel Christain and Troy Cruz. Our executive producer is Aldo Diaz Caballero. Our production consultant is Nick Song. The theme music is by humans when for more information about our participants on this episode, as well as our sponsor, be sure to check the episode description.

Ellen Wartella 23:54
Thanks for listening.