@article{THESIS,
      recid = {3633},
      author = {Schoots, Leo Jonathan},
      title = {Novelty, Networks, and the Rise of African Nationalism:  African Intermediary Intelligentsia and the Making of  Political Innovation in Colonial South Africa (1860-1890)},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2021-12},
      number = {THESIS},
      pages = {341},
      abstract = {In the late 1800s in the eastern Cape Colony in present  day South Africa new forms of political understanding,  identity, organization, and action were emerging which  would transform the vision and practice of politics across  the African continent. This dissertation studies the  earliest moments of emerging African nationalism in South  Africa in order to understand the social transformations  and relational dynamics which made this political  innovation possible. It studies the relational conditions  of political novelty across four levels of analysis,  focusing on the rise of a class of ‘Intermediary  Intelligentsia’ who were able to generate new political  frameworks and repertoires by bridging between colonial and  African political communities. By analyzing biographical  and experiential transformation at the level of the  individual, Chapter 1 shows how macro-social  transformations invalidated old political frameworks, and  how missionary-educated Africans were able to generate  innovative new political answers and identities from their  emergent intermediary social position. Chapter 2 follows  how these intermediary figures were able to forge new  connections between colonial and isiXhosa speaking  political communities which enabled new avenues for  impactful political practice. In order to bridge divided  communities, I study how intermediary intelligentsia must  develop multivocal political forms which resonate with  their different audiences. This is exemplified through an  examination of how the concept of isizwe or African  nationhood was used by intermediary intelligentsia as they  engaged colonial, missionary-educated, and  rural-traditionalist audiences. Chapter 3 extends the focus  on linkages by studying the inter-organizational  connections formed by nascent African political  organizations which emerged in the 1880s. The  proto-nationalist political network is examined through  network analysis techniques to show how the political  structure shaped and enabled different forms of political  innovation, and how cross-domain linkages enabled the  consolidation of diverse local movements. Finally, Chapter  4 studies the transforming political vision of the larger  discursive community through the 1880s through  computational text analysis of the isiXhosa newspapers and  qualitative coding of political organizations’ newspaper  reports. This analysis tracks how the core identities and  political emphasis of nascent African nationalism emerged  over time in the isiXhosa newspapers. Taken together, this  dissertation contributes a sociological analysis of this  important period of political transformation and theorizes  the social and relational conditions which facilitate  political transformation and innovation more broadly. },
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/3633},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.3633},
}