Comments on Katja Uusihakala’s “Keeping the Flame Alive”

Authors

• Helena Jerman University of Helsinki https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8150-1151

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30676/jfas.v33i3.116383

Abstract

The purported aim of a conference held recently at Rutgers University on “The Future of White Africa” was to explore “how different groups of white Africans have responded to the challenge of finding a place for themselves in the rapidly shifting social landscape that is Africa today” (my emphasis).1 It is a theme which corresponds well with the paper Katja Uusihakala presented during this seminar. The first part of my comment develops this idea in the direction of doing ethnography, raising issues which are certainly complex but which we can discuss. How, for example, do white anthropologists find a place for themselves and their research in this—“rapidly shifting social landscape?” The second part of my comment flows on from that to deal with the intimate relationship between two such seemingly different things as memory and place.