The 6th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference
Theme: Everyday Life in Africa: Past and Present
Format: Hybrid (In person, University of Lagos and Virtual)
June 21-25, 2022
Africa is one of the most misunderstood continents in the world for one principal reason—some narratives at different periods of its existence tend to overshadow others. Most of the overarching narratives not only homogenize African experiences, but they also strongly appeal to preexisting notions of powerlessness, poverty, violence, underdevelopment, and nationalism. In this process, people, communities, and institutions are either excluded or reconstituted to fit dominant misguided notions. The quest to understand Africa “as it truly is” has led to the efflorescence of scholarship that takes grassroots economic, social, and political processes seriously. The so-called “micro” or “case study” approaches derive their strength from ideas that connect the small with the large or the experience of relatively unknown communities with broader international process of state building and globalization. Everyday life extends beyond the “real-time” physical interaction—people now live, not just in communities with well-defined cultural and geographical delimitation, but in the digital realm. Digital and real humans have a lot in common, even though their mode of engagement and projected outcomes may defer.
Conceptualizing everyday life in Africa goes beyond arguing that violence, misery, and powerlessness are not the totality of African past and present experience, or that people have “regular” lives filled with joy they derive from sports, music, and other forms of leisure. Everyday life in Africa equally extends beyond explaining how people navigate state institutions, subvert power, and reengineer their communities to meet their needs. Rather, we want to see everyday life as an unending process of existence that derives its strength from the past and recognizes the inevitability of the future. We equally seek conversations that transcend the simplicist conceptualization of everyday life as what people do each day of their lives, to what they consider to be core features of their existence as shaped by structural/discussive/ideological/paradigmatic conditions within and beyond their power. But more importantly, we do not assume that this short description and existing scholarship have succeeded in capturing what it means to live daily in Africa. We are conceptualizing everyday life as a historical, social, and virtual construction that animates through art, music, literature, politics, economy, religion, and even intellectualism. Embedded in the realities of living, dying, and immortalization are experiences that continue to change as people and communities redirect the course of their existence. Hence, everyday life, as a concept and a reality, is always in a state of flux that continues to attract scholarly attention.
Submissions that fall within and outside of the scope of the following subthemes are welcome.
Carnivals and Artistic Consumption
City Life
Comedy: The Ethics and Business of Laughter
Dancing to Victory
Digital Technology and Social Media
Dress and Fashion
Education and Literacy
Films and Nollywood
Gender and Sexualities
Global Art Commodification and the Restitution Movement
Labor, Employment, and Entrepreneur
Language, Literature, and Literary Culture
Leisure and Pleasure
Library and Information Science
Museums in the Making of National and Transnational Identities
Music: Religious and Secular
Peace and Violence
Performance, Theater, and Drama
Popular Culture and Politics
Posthuman and Cyberculture
Religions and Spiritualities
Social Protest and Popular Art
The New Internet Stars: Viral Creativity and Digital Cultural Challenge
Visual Art and Dialectics
Youth Culture
Submission Rules
Individual Submission: Individual proposals should include a 250-word abstract, a short bio, and the email and phone contacts of presenters. Please do not submit more than one abstract. Abstracts cannot have more than two presenters. You cannot present more than one paper, either solo or joint. Submit your abstract here: https://bit.ly/3AZqYhF
Group Submission: Panel, roundtable, and workshop proposals should comprise a 250-word summary, and the email and phone contacts of all panelists. Please email panel proposals to LSA at lagosstudiesassociation@gmail.com
Submission Deadline: December 1, 2021. Notification of acceptance of abstracts by January 15, 2022.
Registration Fee: Local (N10,000); International ($100). Registration fee covers nine full meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) throughout the conference. Everyone listed on abstracts must pre-register by paying the registration fee after acceptance of abstract.
If you have any questions about the conference, contact LSA at:
Email Address: lagosstudiesassociation@gmail.com
Website: https://lagosstudies.wcu.edu/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/205111409881162/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LagosStudies
Donate to LSA: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=7MGBJQ8ALWH6L
The Lagos Studies Association is an international, interdisciplinary organization of academic and non-academic practitioners whose interest focus on Lagos and its peoples. Our members include scholars, students, activists, artists, teachers, donors, policymakers, and development professionals. Through exchanges between academic and non-academic practitioners, we anticipate deepening the rigor of contemporary scholarship as well as encouraging the integration of critical and thought-provoking questions into non-academic projects on Lagos. The LSA achieves its mission by:
- Promoting cutting-edge scholarship and access to key debates in Lagos studies.
- Forming sustained cross-disciplinary conversations among scholars who are working on Lagos from different topical and methodological standpoints.
- Encouraging sustained intellectual exchanges between scholarly theorizations of issues in Lagos studies and the work of non-academic practitioners working in related fields.
- Facilitating exchanges between scholars and practitioners to deepen the rigor of contemporary scholarship on Lagos.
- Encouraging the network of scholars and practitioners through our annual conference and other avenues such as workshops, seminars, and roundtables.
- Through professionalization workshops for graduate students, shape and support the development of emerging scholars.
- Collaborating with institutions and similar associations across the world to promote the study of cities through conferences, seminars, symposia, and other professional avenues.
- Aiding research of members by awarding research and travel grants.
- Publishing a yearly electronic Bulletin/Newsletter highlighting the works of academic and non-academic practitioners of Lagos.
