Motivations, organization and stakes of craft sale in South Africa

A case study in Port-Elizabeth

French Institute Seminars in Humanities (FISH)
06 April 2016

14:00 – IFAS Conference Room, 62 Juta Street, Braamfontein

Alicia Renard
Université Lille I

This presentation will be an opportunity to discuss my ongoing research concerning the sale of crafts by African immigrants in Port-Elizabeth. It seeks to highlight the determining factors of migrations, and migrants’ organization and way of life within a South African context characterised by recurring xenophobic violence. The socio-historical factors, as well as personal and rational choices, influence the migration, and the particular form that it takes, especially due to migrants’ work: traditional workmanship and craft sale in Port-Elizabeth. All these elements, combined within a context of violence against foreigners influence the way of life of these sellers in South Africa. I’m trying to trace the journey of those migrants and their life between “here” and “over-there” through a ethnographical inquiry.

Alicia Renard is currently in her second year of a master’s degree in Anthropology of Global Transformations and Regional Implications. She started university by studying history and sociology, before specializing in athropology with a particular interest in South Africa