Senegal is among the few African countries that counts with an important agroecological movement. This movement is strongly backed up by a network of transnational partnerships and has recently matured into an advocacy coalition that promotes an agroecological transition at national scale. In this article, we investigate the role of transnational links on the empowerment potential of agroecology. Combining the multi-level perspective of socio-technical transitions and Bourdieu’s theory of practices, we conceptualize the agroecological network as a niche shaped by (...) the circulation of different types of capital. Using social network analysis, we investigate the existing flows of resources and knowledge, as well as membership and advocacy links to critically address within-niche empowerment processes. We show that transnational ties play a key role in building the niche protective space, showing a financial dependency of the agroecological niche on NGOs and international cooperation programmes based in Europe and North America. This configuration tends to favor the empowerment of NGOs instead of farmer unions, which only play a peripheral role in the network. However, the multiple innovations focus of agroecology may open up prospects for more gradual but potentially radical change. Based on our findings, we suggest to include more explicitly core-periphery dynamics in transition studies involving North–South relations, including circulation of capital, ideas and norms. (shrink)

This article focuses on the changing roles of the women farmers of Thieudeme, Senegal. Sociological concepts and methods are combined with women's perceptions to more fully understand the nature of role change from part-time subsistence farming of hardy staples to full-time farming and marketing of vegetables among three generations of women and to compare women's perceptions of change factors with those identified through research and policy analysis. The authors also consider the associations among women's traditional arenas of decision making, (...) increased responsibilities for household maintenance, improved status in the community, and organizing and demands for greater autonomy. Women are more likely to emphasize stress from work burdens and conflicts than to conclude that change has brought them any benefits. (shrink)

The Jola are intensive wet-rice cultivators in the Lower Casamance region of Senegal. In this study, the author examines the reasons behind startling contrasts in the organization of agricultural tasks among three Jola communities located within a 45-kilometre radius from Ziguinchor. In Sambujat, situated in the non-Islamisized region south of the river, wet rice is a monocrop cultivated by both men and women. In Jipalom, in the Kajamutay region north of the river, Islam and cash cropping have been adopted; (...) and in Fatiya, in the so-called 'Mandingized' region of the Kalunay, social relations have become hierarchical and this has had profound effects on the cropping system and on the division of labour. The author examines the shift of power relations over time, and their effects on the way in which production has been organized by age and gender, kin and class. Larger issues dealt with are Islamization, women's labour and the introduction of cash cropping. A concluding section places the history of Jola labour relations within the context of the political economy of Senegal. (shrink)

As climate change in West Africa poses profound limitations on rainfed agriculture, policymakers and practitioners may again turn to irrigated agriculture to provide food for a growing population. Gendered analyses of irrigation projects reveal that in many cases women’s participation in irrigated agriculture has been limited due to a lack of access to land and water. Past research in the Upper Valley of the Senegal River suggests that variables other than access to land and water condition women’s participation in (...) irrigated agriculture. Fully understanding women’s participation in irrigated agriculture demands examination of intra-household dynamics and livelihood strategies as well as the impacts of agricultural commodification. (shrink)

A major programme of irrigated rice extension in the Middle Senegal River Valley has further limited the river’s natural flooding in the floodplain (Waalo), initially reduced by drought. We conducted a transdisciplinary (TD) and gendered study in the region to explore links between agricultural biodiversity and family diets using a social analysis of women’s practices. The results showed how rice expansion impacts local agrobiodiversity, diet quality and the cultural way of life. Disappearance of the singular agropastoral and fishing system (...) of the Senegal River Valley is profoundly modifying the landscape, limiting wooded riverine settings, and is undermining the traditional diversified flood-recession cropping system in the Waalo. This is causing an overconsumption of rice by reducing alternative food sources, such as sorghum, vegetables and animal products (fish, milk and meat). In particular, flood-recession sorghums are in danger of disappearing, yet they are more nutritious than rice and now sell for twice as much, or more. The way of life is being disrupted, notably sociabilities previously based on territorial complementarities, and women are disadvantaged in terms of recognition and added workload. Women’s groups have launched collective irrigated gardens, organic or not, only supported by the local NGO, but any surplus is hardly ever sold on the weekly markets in the neighbourhood. Moreover, this diet imbalance increases nutritional risk factors for health, such as vitamin and iron deficiencies, especially for women, hypertension and diabetes. We argue that, firstly, gendered TD experiences are relevant for documenting women’s activities in order for them to gain political support and, secondly, that targeting women’s care tasks gives more value and impact to TD research results. (shrink)

In the present paper, we propose and analyze a harvested predator–prey model that incorporates the dynamics of tourists in the Djoudj National Park of Birds, Senegal. The model describes the impact of migration of waterbirds and seasonal fishing on the global coexistence of species in the site of the Djoudj. By the Mahwin continuation theorem of coincidence degree theory, we investigate the existence of a positive periodic solution. The global asymptotic stability is discussed by constructing a suitable Lyapunov functional. (...) Some computational results are also addressed. (shrink)

The French botanist Michel Adanson spent five years in precolonial Senegal in the 1750s, under the auspices of the Compagnie des Indes. This essay follows the archival traces of Adanson’s engagement with African indigo, including experiments conducted in an ad hoc “laboratory” near the French fort of Saint Louis. A reconstruction of these experiments exposes the multifarious connections to and from the island garden-laboratory, mediated by materials and different kinds of indigo knowledge, including that of local Wolof informants. A (...) microhistory of encounters in and around a tiny island off the West African coast merges with a transatlantic story connecting Senegal to Paris and to French colonies in the Caribbean (Saint-Domingue and Guyana). The essay explores geographies of knowledge and French imperial ambitions through close attention to the material properties of indigo, the practices associated with its cultivation and transformation from plant to dye, and the material remnants of Adanson’s engagement with it in Africa. These remnants—herbarium sheets, experimental notes, color samples on paper strips, dyed fabric swatches, sketched maps, correspondence, collection catalogues, and plant taxonomies—put various kinds of African knowledge and Caribbean plantation experience into dialogue with European botany and dye chemistry. (shrink)

En Afrique subsaharienne, les naissances gémellaires sont entourées de nombreuses perceptions et de diverses pratiques culturelles. La présente étude qui fait suite à des travaux (quantitatifs) en lien avec le taux d’accouchement gémellaire ainsi que la surmortalité des enfants jumeaux s’intéresse aux perceptions, connaissances et attitudes des Subsahariens concernant les naissances gémellaires. Elle analyse des entretiens qualitatifs recueillis au Burkina Faso et au Sénégal auprès de jumeaux, de parents de jumeaux et d’acteurs associatifs, médicaux et religieux (94 entretiens). Les principaux (...) résultats indiquent que le jumeau subsaharien demeure un être « extraordinaire », au carrefour de plusieurs mondes culturels ; ils indiquent aussi qu’il est moins craint et moins menacé de nos jours, mais peut-être plus exposé qu’autrefois par une mendicité chronique des mères. (shrink)

The objective of this study is to analyse the tensions between conceptualizations about Islam, women's sexual health and rights in Senegal. Sexual rights are defined here as the right to choose a partner, the right to enjoy sex without fear of violence or disease, and the right to physical integrity. These rights are examined through legal, Islamic and International frameworks in the context of their relevance to Senegal. The general population's, and Ulamas', positions, attitudes and behaviours about these (...) rights were collected through interviews and focus group discussions. These research methods revealed a strong opposition, from both men and women, to women's individual choice and control over her body as far as family planning, sexuality, or abortion are concerned. Most respondents regarded these rights as "Western." In their view, the idea of equality embedded in international human rights conflicts with local cultures and religion. At the level of service delivery, a large number of health care providers still believe that unmarried women should not be given information or family planning methods. Also revealed is how Islam is used to construct and legitimize existing reproductive and sexual roles and deprive women of rights in these areas. Part of the reason why women's rights are not observed relate to the failure by Senegal to enforce international human rights treaties and conventions that it has already signed. Failure by Senegalese women's associations to give priority to sexual rights, has also contributed to lack of real progress in this area. This study is meant to be used by Senegalese women's rights activist and human rights organizations, as, inter alia, a tool for advocacy for the advancement of women's sexual health and rights. (shrink)

The Rift Valley fever (RVF), which first appeared in Kenya in 1912, is an anthropozoonosis widespread in tropical areas. In Senegal, it is particularly felt in the Ferlo area where a strong presence of ponds shared by humans, cattle and vectors is noted. As part of the studies carried out on the environmental factors which favour its start and propagation, the focus of this paper is put on the decision making process to evaluate the impacts, the interactions and to (...) make RVF monitoring easier. The present paper proposes a model based on data mining techniques and dedicated to trade experts. This model integrates all the involved data and the results of the analyses made on the characteristics of the surrounding ponds. This approach presents some advantage in revealing the relationship between environmental factors and RVF transmission vectors for space–time epidemiology monitoring purpose. (shrink)

What are the non-monetary dimensions of selling sex? This article offers a cultural approach to the question of sexual labors, drawing on field observations and interviews in a community of gay men in Dakar, Senegal. Removing the notion of sexual labors from the stigmatized zone of “survival sex,” I explore the affective, extramonetary dimensions of sexual labors. The men in this study labor not simply to make money. Instead, I argue that against a highly gendered cultural backdrop, one where (...) male admiration is often written synonymously with money and gift giving, gay men experience a validation of their self-worth and homoerotic attraction through sexual labors. The extent to which they derive recognition from sexual labors not only subverts the gendered heteronormative paradigm, but also is paradoxically conditioned by it. Beyond sexual labors, however, this article also engages a broader question—how do gay men forge a positive sense of self amidst a variety of oppressive forces? The answer is not only through sexual labors, but also through initiation into a gay identity and community, an ethos of generosity and solidarity, kinship ties, and an ethic of sexual discovery, each taking shape alongside these labors. (shrink)

La question des migrations en Afrique subsaharienne, longtemps négligée, a émergé dans le champ scientifique dans le contexte de la volonté renouvelée des États de maîtriser les flux migratoires et les transformations des années 1990. Cependant, en dépit des progrès dans la connaissance historique, le rôle des femmes dans les processus migratoires en Afrique sahélienne francophone demeure un champ de recherches encore neuf, que le livre de Marie Rodet contribue à enrichir, en proposant une hi...

Gender differences in knowledge of NRM practices have long been noted in Senegal and throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. An exploration of these differences among a sample of rural Senegalese men and women shows that these differences are, in part, a function of extension agent interventions. The level of knowledge of a set of NRM technologies is associated with contact with three key types of extension agent in rural Senegal: extension team leaders, forestry agents, and women's agents. Analysis of intra-household (...) variation in levels of knowledge shows a degree of interdependence between the knowledge levels of husbands and wives for some practices. However, multi-variate analysis, controlling for personal and contextual factors, clearly demonstrates the independent impact of extension agents on gender differences in rural Senegalese NRM knowledge. It can be concluded that contact with extension agents increases knowledge of NRM practices. In particular, contact with the women's agent is a strong predictor of the level of women's NRM knowledge and, surprisingly, also contributes to the level of men's knowledge. Despite the small number of women's agents in the field, they appear to have significant positive impact on the dissemination of NRM knowledge among rural Senegalese women and men. (shrink)

Les débats menés autour de l’État africain, ces trente dernières années, ont reflété les grandes idées qui ont agité le monde contemporain, mais ils sont, dans l’ensemble, restés muets sur des questions soulevées au cours des deux décennies des Nations Unies pour la femme. Or une approche de genre des questions du politique s’avère indispensable sur bien des plans. Elle aide désormais à mieux saisir la manière dont l’inégalité entre les sexes est instituée, prolongée, voire renforcée au cœur du politique. (...) Cet article vise à montrer l’importance des travaux sur le genre, l’État et le politique et la logique dont ils procèdent. Il vise également à faire comprendre en quoi consiste l’interrogation sur le sexe de l’État en Afrique, sur la dimension masculine et patriarcale de l’État et son impact sur les politiques, sur les femmes et sur les rapports et les rôles sociaux des sexes. On ne saurait tendre vers les objectifs d’égalité dans le développement en Afrique sans reconsidérer le sexe de l’État et de ses politiques. (shrink)

Les débats menés autour de l’État africain, ces trente dernières années, ont reflété les grandes idées qui ont agité le monde contemporain, mais ils sont, dans l’ensemble, restés muets sur des questions soulevées au cours des deux décennies des Nations Unies pour la femme. Or une approche de genre des questions du politique s’avère indispensable sur bien des plans. Elle aide désormais à mieux saisir la manière dont l’inégalité entre les sexes est instituée, prolongée, voire renforcée au cœur du politique. (...) Cet article vise à montrer l’importance des travaux sur le genre, l’État et le politique et la logique dont ils procèdent. Il vise également à faire comprendre en quoi consiste l’interrogation sur le sexe de l’État en Afrique, sur la dimension masculine et patriarcale de l’État et son impact sur les politiques, sur les femmes et sur les rapports et les rôles sociaux des sexes. On ne saurait tendre vers les objectifs d’égalité dans le développement en Afrique sans reconsidérer le sexe de l’État et de ses politiques. (shrink)

This chapter examines how slavery was imprinted on material culture and settlement at Gorée Island. It evaluates the changing patterns of settlement, access to materials, and emerging novel tastes to gain insights into everyday life and cultural interactions on the island. By the eighteenth century, Gorée grew rapidly as an urban settlement with a heterogeneous population including free and enslaved Africans as well as different European identities. Interaction between these different identities was punctuated with intense negotiations resulting in the emergence (...) of a truly transnational community. While these significant changes were noted in the settlement pattern and material culture recovered, the issue of slavery — critical to most oral and documentary narratives about the island — remains relatively opaque in the archaeological record. Despite this, the chapter attempts to tease out from available documentary and archaeological evidence some illumination on interaction between the different communities on the island, including indigenous slaves. (shrink)

Reshaping our methodological research tools for adequately capturing injustice and domination has been a central aspiration of feminist philosophy and social epistemology in recent years. There has been an increasingly empirical turn in recent feminist and political theorization, engaging with case studies and the challenges arising from conducting research in solidarity with unequal partners. I argue that these challenges cannot be resolved by merely adopting a norm and stance of deference to those in the struggle for justice. To conduct philosophical (...) research in an engaged and solidaristic manner, I suggest that deference be supplemented by three methodological and normative principles: 1) epistemic humility, 2) accountability, and 3) co-producing knowledge. I situate these principles within contemporary philosophical work on solidarity, and show how they might help confront power imbalances and other methodological hazards that arise when conducting research in solidarity with others. I arrive at these principles in part by critically reflecting on my own attempt to conduct research in solidarity with women’s rights activists in Senegal. (shrink)

Based on fieldwork in northern Senegal, this paper shows how some pastoralists in Ferlo have managed to use market opportunities as a means to maintain their “pastoral way of life” Increased market involvement has enlarged the field of opportunities for pastoral activities as well as the vulnerability of these activities. This has given rise to a dialectic process of diversification and specialization. The paper is concerned with the portfolio of livelihood activities pastoralists use in order to respond to adverse (...) socio-economic and environmental conditions. Depending on the possibilities and values of a household, a certain combination of activities is chosen and this may change from one year to another. Hence, the activities are used in a dynamic way within households. On the basis of pastoral livelihood activities, four ideal types of pastoral livelihood strategies can be constructed: “agro-pastoralism,” “Tabaski pastoralism,” “commercial pastoralism,” and “non-herding pastoralism.” These four types illustrate how pastoralists re-invent their livelihoods in order to continue a pastoral way of life. (shrink)

Field research on customaryland tenure conducted in two villages inEastern Senegal suggests that theexisting tenure regime places a higher value onaccess than on security, long considered acornerstone of investment in increasedagricultural productivity. The underlyingreasons point to tenure's cultural dimensions.Interview accounts and observation are used todevelop the cultural link between tenure andsubsistence, and to describe the underlyingsocial relations and processes through which a``subsistence ethic'' is expressed. Such an``embedded'' approach to land tenure analysisimplies that understanding tenure dynamics andsocial change is a (...) complex challenge, onebenefiting from a sociological perspective thatgoes beyond behavior models that treat tenureas a primarily economic phenomenon. Land useand customary tenure are dynamic phenomena, buttheir responsiveness to economic forces istempered by the importance of householdinterdependence and the harsh materialrealities of living on the environmentalmargins. Market-based interventions that woulduse security as a means to effect land usechange may generate more social or spatialproblems than they solve. (shrink)

This article examines Shaikh Amadu Bamba Mbacké and his theology as a cogent response to White Supremacy as expressed in French Colonization of Africa. White Supremacy has as its primary goal, the recreation of the whole world in the image of Whiteness upon the premise that the possession of White skin makes one inherently superior. Theism counters this ontological assault with an unabashed turn to a believer's God. Shaikh Amadu Bamba Mbacké's insistence on Islam counters White Supremacy thereby providing an (...) ideological and metaphysical space for the non-whites of Senegal to exist without succumbing to the temptation to aspire to a Euro-centric ideal. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a descriptive and normative analysis of the requirements for effective transnational solidarity between southern NGOs and their northern partners. Drawing on interviews conducted with staff members of Senegalese women’s rights NGOs and a private international development foundation, I contend that existing theories of feminist transnational solidarity cannot allow us to properly acknowledge the power asymmetries and obstacles to solidarity that these NGOs are facing. After assessing the divisions related to gender interests and limited resources that (...) characterize this NGO-ized development landscape, I develop a partial theory of transnational solidarity that would center power asymmetries in order to address practical and political obstacles to solidarity. I argue that an effective account of transnational solidarity must include a commitment to disrupting global hierarchies of power as well as to building practices of accountability and attentiveness to power structures. (shrink)

Cet article porte sur la question du génie créateur de la femme africaine et sa capacité à intégrer l’abstraction ; il s’intéresse notamment aux conditions d’émergence de sa production culturelle, découlant de la révolution “féministe”. Il souligne que, même si la prise de la parole dans l’espace public par la femme est un phénomène récent, son expression par l’image remonte à la nuit des temps. L’art relevant du domaine de la fonctionnalité dans les sociétés agraires où la femme, généralement, joue (...) un rôle religieux, l’esthétique relève ainsi de son univers. (shrink)

The Age of Enlightenment is more global and complex than the standard Eurocentric Colonial Canon narrative presents. For example, before the advent of unscientific racism and the systematic negligence of the contributions of Others outside of “White Europe,” Raphael centered Ibn Rushd (Averroes) in his Vatican fresco “Causarum Cognitio” (1511); the astronomer Edmund Halley taught himself Arabic to be more enlightened; The Royal Society of London acknowledged the scientific method developed by Ibn Al-Haytham (Alhazen). In addition, if we study the (...) Transatlantic texts of the late 18th century, it is not Kant, but instead enlightened thinkers like Anton Wilhelm Amo (born in present-day’s Ghana), Phillis Wheatley (Senegal region), and Toussaint L’Ouverture (Haiti), who mostly live up to the ideals of reason, humanism, universalism, and human rights. One obstacle to developing a more balanced presentation of the Age of the Enlightenment is the influence of colonialism, Eurocentrism, and methodological nationalism. Consequently, this paper, part II of two, will also deal with the European Enlightenment’s unscientific heritage of scholarly racism from the 1750s. It will be demonstrated how Linnaeus, Hume, Kant, and Hegel were among the Founding Fathers of intellectual white supremacy within the Academy. Hence, the Age of Enlightenment is not what we are taught to believe. This paper will demonstrate how the lights from different “Global Enlightenments” can illuminate paths forward to more dialogue and universalism in the 21st century. (shrink)

Rarely is the problem of the diversity of languages taken into account whenever population groups are formed into States. When the problem does come up, it is later, in a primarily political context which tries to find political solutions, such as we may presently see them in Canada or in Belgium for instance. These solutions are few and they deal with situations that may contain a host of nuances.Certain countries have chosen a vehicular language while keeping their local languages: the (...) common language in the USSR is the language of one of its republics. In Senegal it is French, which is of a totally foreign origin but has the advantage of avoiding the rivalry existing among the native languages, and it also has a place within the international community. Other countries have accepted as official languages the different languages spoken within its borders. Thus Switzerland is officially tri-lingual (French, German, Italian), giving legal status to what somewhere else may simply be an accepted fact. Many Alsatians speak three languages (Alsatian, French, German). As far as it concerns countries with a strong linguistic heterogeneity, whether it be their history or their size making for a centralizing policy, they have adopted, with the resulting neglect of all others, the language or the idiom of the region which was politically or culturally the dominant one at the time of their unification. Pekinese has been extended to all of China, Florentine to Italy, Hindi to India. Some original combinations can be found: in Israel Jewish immigrants who came from more than seventy different countries, have again taken up the nation's old cultural and religious language, which had been out of use for two thousand years, and have placed it on equal footing with Arabic spoken by the local population, while English is being used for international relations. (shrink)

El artículo propone un diálogo Sur-Sur acerca de los desafíos que plantea el campo político en la actualidad. Además de las coordinadoras Joice Barbosa y Moira Pérez, participan Silvina Tapia Tapia de Ecuador, Abdourahmane Seck de Senegal y Verónica Figueroa Huencho de Wellmapu, quienes se desempeñan tanto en el ámbito académico como en el campo social mediante el activismo político y/o comunitario, desde el cual producen conocimientos colectivos de carácter situado. A lo largo de la conversación se analizan temas (...) tales como la expresión de formas contemporáneas de neoconservadurismo y autoritarismo, las disputas de los movimientos sociales con la institucionalidad, sus tensiones con un Estado que tiende a la cooptación pero también mantiene profundas lealtades capitalistas y coloniales, y las posibilidades y experiencias de formas alternativas de organización colectiva y comunitaria. Además, se explora cuál es y cuál puede ser en este escenario el rol de la academia y de quienes trabajan en ella, en la tensión entre los compromisos institucionales y la política radical. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1.Lost Spaces -- Sandy Island -- Leningrad -- Arne -- Old Mecca -- New Moore -- Time Landscape -- The Aralqum Desert -- 2.Hidden Geographies -- The Labyrinth -- Zheleznogorsk -- The Underground Cities of Cappadocia -- Fox Den -- North Cemetery, Manila -- North Sentinel Island -- 3.No Man's Lands -- Between Border Posts (Guinea and Senegal) -- Bir Tawil -- Nahuaterique -- Twayil Abu Jarwal -- Traffic Island -- 4.Dead Cities -- Wittenoom -- (...) Kangbashi -- Kijong-dong -- Aghdam -- Pripyat -- The Archaeological Park of Sicilian Incompletion -- 5.Spaces of Exception -- Camp Zeist -- Geneva Freeport -- Bright Light, 4 Mures Street, Bucharest -- International Airspace -- Gutterspace -- Bountiful -- Mount Athos -- Ranch of Sprouts: Brotas Quilombo -- FARC-controlled Colombia -- Hobyo -- 6.Enclaves and Breakaway Nations -- Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog -- Chitmahals -- Sealand -- United Kingdom of Lunda Tchokwe -- Gagauzia -- 7.Floating Islands --. (shrink)

Pedro Alvares Cabral's ships left Portugal on 9 March 1500 en route for the territory that he first named Terra de Vera Cruz and that later came to be known as Brazil. On the 22 March they called at the island of São Nicolau [Caminha, 1500], one of the northernmost islands of the Cape Verde group; this was about forty years after the discovery of the archipelago in 1460-62 [Albuquerque, 1991]. It is known that Vasco da Gama had stopped at (...) the island of Santiago in 1498 on his voyage to India, and also in 1499 on the return journey. Straight after the discovery of Brazil Cabral sailed for India and on the way back also dropped anchor at Santiago. Indeed, our archipelago, which is situated off Cape Verde in Senegal (the place from which it appears to take its name), was to become an important stopover point for maritime traffic between Europe, Asia and the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, both to allow crews to rest and to take on water, wood and some food supplies. It also became important as a holding point for slaves (a large number of whom came from around thirty Guinean ethnic groups and subgroups). They were dispatched from Santiago, known then as Cape Verde island, to territories such as Brazil from the early sixteenth century onwards, since these territories, which had only recently been discovered and were little known, needed people to work and populate them. (shrink)

From the contents: Culture, nationalism and philosophy (Sophie B. Oluwole).- The relationship between African and European philosophers: what it ought to be (Juergen Hengelbrock).- Against culture and the aliens of modernization: the case of Africa (Christian Neugebauer).- Elements democratiques dans les sagesses du Senegal (Massaer Diallo).- Democracy in an ethical community (Tobias J.G. Louw).

The publication aims to make suggestions for a 'decolonisation of aesthetics' within an Afro-European framework. The texts (whose authors come from different cultural contexts between Germany, France, Senegal, Benin, Nigeria and Tunesia) do not only refer to heterogenous aesthetic practices understood as subversive and decolonial strategies, but also discuss philosophical questions of a renewed (non-in)dividual humanism. The artistic practices analyzed include artistic installations and ensembles as well as actions in urban and rural space, deceptive manœuvres at the borders and (...) their photographic documentation, and many more. (shrink)

This paper investigates the semantic bases of class membership in the noun class system of Gújjolaay Eegimaa (Eegimaa henceforth), a Niger-Congo and Atlantic language of the BAK group spoken in Southern Senegal. The question of whether semantic principles underlie the overt classification of nouns in Niger-Congo languages is a controversial one. There is a common perception of Niger-Congo noun class systems as being mainly semantically arbitrary. The goal of the present paper is to show that physical properties and culture-specific (...) factors are central principles of semantic categorisation in the Eegimaa noun class system. I argue that the Eegimaa overt grammatical classification of nouns into classes is a semantic categorisation system whereby categories are structured according to prototypicality, family resemblance, metaphorical and metonymic extensions and chaining processes, as argued within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. I show that the categorisation of entities in the Eegimaa nominal classification system productively makes use of physical properties such as shape as well as using culture-specific, less productive parameters for the semantic categorisation of entities denoted by nouns. The analysis proposed here also shows that the cases of multiple morphosyntactic classifications of nouns reflect multiple conceptual categorisation strategies. A detailed examination of the formal and semantic instances of multiple classification reveals the existence of conceptual correlations between the physical properties and the culture-specific semantic parameters of categorisation used in the Eegimaa noun class system. (shrink)

Los marabouts, o morabitos, son líderes religiosos de las cofradías musulmanas sufíes africanas. A ellos deben obediencia los talibes, discípulos, tanto en sus lugares de origen como en la diáspora migratoria, de gran intensidad y tradición en el muridismo. Los marabouts, con sus visitas recurrentes a los diversos lugares de migración, articulan la identidad colectiva a la par que recogen divisas para regresarlas a Senegal, redistribuyendo y también ejerciendo de �grandes hombres�, ricos, dadivosos y santos, moviéndose en el capitalismo (...) financiero contemporáneo con recursos y tradiciones propios. Sus roles se analizan de modo complejo por parte de los estudiosos, a veces como figuras de dominación e incluso de explotación laboral hacia los discípulos; otras veces, como líderes movilizadores de capital social, cultural y económico, cuyas obligaciones redistributivas y morales compensan sobradamente el esfuerzo de la comunidad. Aquí se pretende recoger precisamente la densidad de este debate, y dado que las funciones marabúticas caminan entre las prácticas culturales emancipatorias y dominantes aparentemente a la par. (shrink)

Eski Arap şiiri, Atlâl göç edilen yurt veya sevgiliden geride kalan kalıntılar olarak adlandırılan sanatsal bir olgu ile belirginleşmiş olup Arap edebiyatı alanlarındaki yazarlar ve eleştirmenlerin ilgisini çekecek kadar çarpıcı bir şekilde yayılmıştır. Bu olgu, Batı Afrika şairleri tarafından yazılan Arap şiirlerde de bariz olmuştur. Zira Afrikalı şair, geçmişte yaşadığı değerli hatıra ve anıları hatırlatarak ağlayıp sevgilisinin atlâlleri ve onun evlerinin kalıntılarının üzerinde durmuştur. Bu itibarla çalışmam, bu bölgenin şiirinde yer alan emsal kaside mukaddimeleri, örnekler sunarak bu şiirdeki özelliklerini, tezahürlerini (...) ve anlamlarını öğrenmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Aynı şekilde bölge şairlerinin ilkel tanıtımlarına yansıyan duygusal deneyimlerinde özetledikleri psikolojik ve sosyal nedenlerin açıklamaya hedeflemektedir. Bu araştırmanın önemi, Batı Afrika edebiyatçılarını tanımaya yardımcı olan çalışmalardan biri olması, Arap dili ve ilimlerine, özellikle şiir sanatına ne ölçüde ilgili olduklarını göstermektedir. Bununla birlikte, klasik Arapça şiir yazma becerilerini ve kabiliyetlerini de ortaya koymaktadır. Araştırmanın sınırlarına gelince, mekânsal olarak Batı Afrika bölgesiyle (Mali, Gine, Senegal, Nijerya, Gambiya) ve zamansal olarak ise on dokuzuncu yüzyılın şairleriyle sınırlıdır. Araştırmada Batı Afrika Arap şiirindeki atlâl konusuyla ilgili kasideleri toplamak, önemini ve özelliklerini açıklayıp tahlil etmek için betimsel analitik yöntemini kullanıldı. Yapılan bu araştırma sonucunda bir takım bilimsel sonuçlara ve bulgulara ulaşılmıştır. Bunların en önemlileri ve öne çıkanları şu şekilde sıralayabiliriz: Afrika Arap şiirinden seçmiş olduğumuz şiir örneklerinin değerlendirilmesi sonucunda, Batı Afrika Arap şiirleri, klasik edebiyatında bilinen “قفوا ”, “عوجوا”, “ لمن الظعن” ve “ لمن الطلول” gibi geleneksel atlâl şiir kalıplarını içerdiği de tespit edilmiştir. Batı Afrika şairlerinin klasik Arap kasidesinin girizgâhı ve usule bağlı kalmalarının yanı sıra, bazıları onun yerine konunun özüne girmeden önce besmele ile, Allah'ı övme ve peygamberimize salavat getirme gibi dini nitelikli kalıpları kullanmak suretiyle kasidelerinin girizgâhını oluşturduklarını saplanmıştır. Batı Afrika şairleri, sevgilinin terk ettiği diyardaki kalıntılar üzerinde durmak yerine; kültürlerine uygun türbe ve deniz gibi yerleri üzerinde durmayı tercih etmişlerdir. Ayrıca Câhiliye dönemindeki şiirinde geçen Suad, Hind, Mayya, Leyla vb. gibi isimleri de bırakarak yerlerine; Zeynep, Meryem ve Havva gibi kendi sosyal çevrelerinde öne çıkan bayan isimlerini kullanmayı uygun görmüşlerdir. Böylece şiirlerinde bu anlamda yenilikler yaşandığı söylemek mümkündür. el-Âmidî gibi Edebiyat eleştirmenlerin bahsettiği mukaddime talaliyye’nin farklı anlamları, sevgilinin terk ettiği diyardaki kalıntılar üzerinde durmak, hakkında soru sormak, sevgilinin adı, oturduğu diyarı ve onu çevreleyen yerler, şairin durduğu vakti, terkedilen yeri hayvanalar, yağmur ve rüzgâr tarafından tahrip edilmesi, şair terkedilen eve hitap edip onunla konuşmak ve ona soru sorup sorguya çekmek, ona selam vermek ve dua etmek ve benzer anlamlar Batı Afrika şairlerinin Atlâl şiirlerinde de bulunmaktadır. Bahsi geçen bu mukaddimeler beyit sayısı bakımından farklılık gösterebileceği, ancak bu beyitler genellikle az sayıda olduğu bu çalışmadan anlaşılmaktadır. Şairler, amaçlarına ulaşmak için bu mukaddimeler vazgeçilmez bir giriş olarak görmektedirler. Ayrıca, atlâl şiiri söyleyen bölge şairleri durumu yaşadıklarını ya da sevdikleri tarafından terk edilmeleri şart değil, ancak atlâl şiiri birçok şair arasında kabul görmüş bir sanat geleneğidir. Bu çalışma aracılığıyla Batı Afrika Arap şiirindeki mukaddime talaliye, şairlerin yaratıcılık ihtiyacına bir yanıt ve onların şiirsel yeteneklerini geliştirmek için bir gerekçe temsil ettiği da açıkça görülmektedir. Son olarak mukaddime talaliye şairlerin şiirsel malzemeleri için gerekli bir sanatsal üslubu olduğunu da söylenebilir. (shrink)

Danièle-Djamila Minne-Amrane, née à Neuilly-sur-Seine le 13 août 1939, est décédée à Alger le 11 février dernier. Son père, Pierre Minne, professeur de philosophie, ancien résistant puis militant anticolonial au Sénégal, en est expulsé en 1947. Il s’installe alors en Algérie, dans la campagne de Tlemcen où sa femme, Jacqueline Netter, allait devenir institutrice. Après son divorce, cette dernière se remarie avec Abdelkader Guerroudj et tous deux militent au PCA (parti communiste algérien). Da...

Uma das formas do poder feminino-africano se manifesta de forma acentuada no campo da espiritualidade, tanto no mundo visível, ou seja, dos vivos, quanto no mundo invisível, o dos mortos. Este artigo faz parte de uma pesquisa em andamento, sobre o poder exercido pelas mulheres africanas e que raras vezes são consideradas ou visibilizadas como formas de poder na contramão de uma vasta literatura em que as mulheres, na sua maioria, são consideradas submissas. O interesse recai sobre práticas de tornar-se (...) djambakus, Balobêru, nganga, Mutombe ou tchimbanda em duas realidades, a guineense e a angolana. A riqueza dos relatos das experiências de uma guineense, moradora de Ziguinchor, Senegal, com foco nas tradições ancestrais para transmitir e explicar o sagrado por intermédio da história oral, reforçam a análise da concepção do lugar destas mulheres no exercício do poder ocultado. O trabalho é de caráter teórico-qualitativo: revisão de literatura, entrevistas e história oral. O recurso da oralidade dialoga com a condição de escassez de documentos escritos sobre curandeiras, djambacus, Balobêru e nganga que se dedicam a curar. Foi entrevistada uma djambakus que transita entre Guiné-Bissau e Senegal. Os resultados apontam para a potência de mulheres na prática sagrada de cura pelo encontro de conhecimentos populares, saberes africanos tradicionais, ancestrais e do bem-estar de suas comunidades ou tabancas. (shrink)