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VIOLAFRIQUE : Conflicts and ordinary structural acts of violence. Comparative and interdisciplinary approach in eight Africain cities
J. Bouju - Donatecarcenter.com-AIX / ANR (conflicts) over 3 years (2007-2009)
The objective of this research programme is to include the particular nature of conflicts and of ordinary structural acts of violence which implicate social order and public order in the big Africain cities. To wonder about these questions, it is to consider seriously the human and social dimensions of a lasting urban development of developing countries. In exponential growth, eight sub-Saharan metropolises, Bamako, Conakry, Dakar, Kinshasa, Lomé, Mopti, Nouakchott, Ouagadougou that we offer to study will receive 80 % inhabitants of their respective country before 2015 ! And these cities form sociétales shapes mixed, intermediate or ambiguous today. The contradiction between norms transported by the State and the market and those of the society marks the fault of power and anomie which characterises a public order regulated by vote-catching and corruption. This situation draws away a general insubordination in the law which protects no more citizens of violence. Today, the process of globalisation accompanies the decomposition of the institutions which supervised not long ago individual behaviours and social processes and that gave sense to human activities and to their consequences. This context favours a recrudescence of structural acts of violence which procreate return various demonstrations of systematic violence. Sexual and conjugal acts of violence, juvenile delinquency and corruption certify the contempt of the civisme, while economic crisis, unemployment by allowing no more redistribution or solidarity, weakened the family and augmented link the relegation, stirring so the fire of urban conflicts.
They will be interested more particularly in the different daily and ordinary consecutive demonstrations of structural and systematic violence in the confrontations of social order with public order. Structural violence is consubstantielle in public order and in Community order and its expression as its acceptability depend on cultural difference concerning social status and norms to act it in society. To the (structural) normative coercion of these two forms of (public and Community) social order the (systematic) ordinary violence opposes which infringes them every day.
In all research operations, they will explore the tremendous distance which exists everywhere between the normative rules (generators of structural violence) and the real rules (producing systematic violence), between law or custom and social practices, between the fact that they say that they make and what is really made. This distance creates a huge zone of uncertainty particularly advantageous for the development of the reports of force, conflicts and of violence. The daily life in city gets organised around the urban public areas among which access and usage make the object of conflicts of actors and of acts of violence which this research offers to describe and to analyse. In Bamako (Mali), they will study daily incivilities consecutive in the structural violence which constitutes the concentration of garbage as well as the procedures of resolution of conflicts in Mopti (Mali) or the modes of intermediation which regulate the access to the urban public areas in Dakar (Senegal) and in Nouakchott (Mauritania). In Lomé (Togo), they will study the situation of conflicts linked to the insecurity which raises the occupation by waste and by young people of the street of a sacred wood of the district of Bè. In Kinshasa (R.D.C). they will analyse conflicts of inheritance and of usage linked to land speculation on the courts of house of the most ancient families of the old district of the city centre. Finally in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) these are strategies of individual security to fit to consecutive acts of violence generated by consecutive conflicts of types or of generations in the precariousness of social link which will be studied. Indeed, we know a little about these ordinary and daily social acts of violence which, just as much as family, friendly cooperation or the vicinale, structure the social reports.
The understanding of this controversial urban dynamics is unquestionably one of the keys of the intelligence of the social world, its institutions as its current transformations. We chose, in this plan, to adopt an interdisciplinary, empirical and comparative qualitative approach by making work together different specialists in human sciences, French and Africain. The choice of the studied cities testifies a will to confront fields of study and temporal and/or space different ladders of approach. Whatever is the type of studied conflict / violence, method is waited that it highlights continuity and interpenetration of types and of ladders of conflict and of interpretations which are given to events, to situations and to contexts of structural violence.
Our question setting must drive such to a renewal of the analyses of social link and its modes of regulation as they invent in the city. Then, by linking confirmed researchers and young researchers in the countries concerned, our plan participates in the strengthening of the research capacities of our Africain partners (universities, institutes and Africain research departments). Finally, in an objective of application and of popularisation of the results of research, they will make sure that results could serve for constructing a policy of cooperation compatible with a lasting human development.
International collaboration
With the Centre of Africain Studies of Leiden (African Study Center), http://www.ascleiden.nl, with which we have habit to work (as part of APAD) am obvious. Above all, their research topic concerns political and ethnic conflicts which are out of our own research field, this complementarity will allow us to assess continuity and interpenetration of ladders and types of conflicts. Then, as most country concerned is others than those that we kept, this collaboration gives us the possibility of enlarging our comparative base. They are therefore in situation of complete complementarity, both on plan thematic, theoretical and geographical. Each of plans will be able to draw so the best party of contributions which will give him the other plan as part of the collaboration. The modalities of collaboration include : the restitution of research results on the occasion of a round table which would unite in Leiden and/or in Aix-en-Provence of the researchers of both programmes. It will also be made by invitations of our Dutch colleagues to intervene in the seminar of Donatecarcenter.com ; finally it is possible to envisage a common publication in the form of a classical joint publication or in an online magazine.
Expected results
They aim above all at a renewal of question settings, theories and of categories of analysis of conflicts and of ordinary structural acts of violence. But these researches have to drive also to a renewal of the analyses of urban social link (solidarity, civisme, urbanity) and modes of social or public regulation. On the other hand, this plan could contribute to the establishment of a common cognitive frame of reference in the different disciplines of SHS on the notions of "conflicts" and of "violence" . An international symposium would be the format adapted to such plan. On the other hand by linking confirmed researchers (senior) and young Africain researchers (junior) in the different countries concerned, our programme will participate in the strengthening of the research capacities of our local partners (universities, institutes and Africain research departments). Finally, in an objective of application and of popularisation of the results of research, it is possible to hope that results are capitalised and used to implement policies of cooperation compatible with a lasting human development.
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