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History of the social transformations into Africa
organised by A. Hugon, D. Juhé-Beaulaton, H. Médard
The representatives for this seminar chose to think about a history of the social transformations of the Africain continent in long length, beyond the chronological or space caesuras.
Monthly seminar on Mondays from 14 h till 16 h 30 in Donatecarcenter.com - Paris, room Y. Person, 2nd floor
Why a seminar of social history of Africa ?
To fight worn-down plates but always transported up to the summit of the State : « The Africain peasant, who since millenniums, lived with seasons, the ideal of life of which is to be in harmony with nature, knows only the eternal resumption of time regulated by the endless repetition of the same gestures and of the same words. »Nicolas Sarkozy, Dakar, 7/26/2007.
By social history, we hear the study of the dynamics which conditions relations in environment in the broad sense (natural, economic, social, legal and political) in local, national and international contexts. Different but in reality inseparable topics will be approached : especially the changes of modes of working and of management of circles, the organisation of job, structures and social hierarchies, self-defining buildings, systems of thoughts and of beliefs, processes of management of bodies, pronunciations of relations between individual body and society, between intimate and collective. These themes certainly broad, will be approached according to privileged angles of approaches : the accent will be put on the history of the social groups, of their fluidity, their relations (of power, job, as well as reports of type or of generation, reports of production, relations of dependency or of domination, modes of negotiation, etc.).. This holistic approach, which is deliberately unaware of classical cleavage between social history and cultural history, intègrera a history of techniques, practices and of knowledges which are still too often dissociated and studied for themselves.
This seminar of history calls a multidisciplinary approach, linking social sciences and sciences of nature, to include social transformations better facing the changes of environments, crossed and ongoing. It will be a question of studying human reconstructions and space and institutional reorganisations in ecological, political, economic and social contexts in permanent mutation.
This year, sessions will articulate around idea of transgression, in the broad sense around term : the violation discussed laws, rules, proscriptions and moral or social obligations in strategies of siding of norms and established habits, by way of the individual trajectories of overtaking of its own borders, fan of transgressions is very broad – a fortiori if the question of impossible or unthinkable transgressions is also tackled. Intervenant-e-s is invité-e-s to organise their presentation around this idea, which allows to approach social transformations under the angle of borders, margins and of breaks.
Projected calendar
November 24th, 2008
A. Hugon, D. Juhé-Beaulaton and H. Médard : Social History of Africa, a first balance sheet.
Marianne Lemaire : The Africain farmers in the colonial imagination.
December 8th, 2008
Sandra Fancello : Conversion pentecôtiste in Western Africa : of transgression in understanding.
Mary Miran : On the Africain conversion to Islam
March 9th, 2009 CANCELLATION BECAUSE OF ONGOING STRIKE HAS The UNIVERSITY
Easter Barthélémy : Schooling as transgression : the girls at the colonial school in AOF of the twenties in independence.
April 6th, 2009
Séverine Awenengo : Misappropriation of worship and demand of the men : the readjustment of a worship of fertility in stakes of struggle counters conscript in Casamance (1930s).
May 11th, 2009
Agnès Lainé : Transformations of the social management of chronic diseases : example of the sickle cell anaemia in Mali
June 8th, 2009
Ophélie Rillon : Lynching in Mali in 1990s
Summaries
Marianne Lemaire : The Africain farmers in the colonial imagination
From the first time of the colonisation, some Africain populations, among whom Sénoufo (Ivory Coast), was characterised as populations of diligent farmers, entirely absorbed by the task. In the writings of the administrators, Sénoufo indeed appears as farmers whom their vocation for farm work makes certainly méritants, but condemns for passivity. Sénoufo example in the support, I offer so to brush the colonial portrait of the Africain farmer, to analyse his designs, his sources of inspiration and his evolution, notably across the « doctrine of the paysannat » advocated in 1930s.
Sandra Fancello : Conversion pentecôtiste in Western Africa : of transgression in understanding.
The pentecôtiste conversion, heard as an individual change, of heart and mind, passes by the diabolisation of other one, representing usual laws and traditional practices. New religion offers to the faithful to act by themselves by the invention of individual trajectories. The conversion to the pentecôtisme comes therefore at the same time as a shelter where from the faithful try to outdistance from socioeconomic lignagères rules and as the first individual act which comes to oppose to the village communautarisme. So, religious membership is coupled with a conversion to a form of modernity which cannot be conceivable without a conversion which protects transgression, so much the persécutive conception of attack by magic remains undamaged.
Mary Miran : On the Africain conversion to Islam
My presentation will visit again debates on the religious conversion into Africa and beyond from the animated history of the entrance in the Islam of Béninois El Hadj Akan Charif Vissoh, today imam of Allada. This presentation will sketch some comparisons in parallel on social change as much as religious crossed by other converted individuals and communities "autochthonous" along the coast of Guinea, of colonial epoch at the age of current globalisation.
Agnès Lainé : Transformations of the social management of chronic diseases : example of the sickle cell anaemia in Mali
In any society the symptoms of an illness, chronic suffering and its disabling consequences mobilise representations, knowledges and courses of remédiation in misfortune, so therapeutic as religious. In Western Africa, even if drépanocytaire illness does not have real equivalent in the traditional medical nosologies, some of its symptoms register in it, in different ways according to their demonstration and to specialities of tradithérapeutes. And since illness makes the object of research and of taken care therapeutics, biomedical knowledges spread in the society, first very slowly then of a way amplified by social mobilities and new media. Between an illness principally known under the register of a « trouble of bones » and its biomedical definition of a « hereditary illness of the blood », junction is progressively made, producing a syncretism of knowledges, mobilising other representations and implicating the individuals in strategies of siding of misfortune which integrate with the total transformations of the contemporary society. : reports of type in middle classes, prostitution, urban migrations or towards the foreigner On the one hand biomedical knowledges liberate the individuals of incomprehensible fate and of intricate or magico-religious interpretations, of other one they announce an incurable illness the treatment of which in long course proves to be often inaccessible and put the individuals in front of their responsibility of healthy transmitters regarding their derivation. This communication offers to explore, in the context of Mali while making incursions in other Africain contexts, resources and rooms for manoeuvre which have the persons concerned in the interspace left, between freedom and fate, by the various interpretations of illness.
In the same rubric :
- The transmission of the colonial State in Africa
- Local declensions of heritage
- Societies and kingdoms of the regions of the Nile in the Horn of Africa. New fields, new questions (ANR « Horn of Africa »)
- Not Africain and Africain diasporas in Africa
- War and society in the contemporary Arab world : the faces of the combatant
- Populations, territories and powers in Niger
- Portugal in touch with Africa. Between Europe and Asia in modern Epoch, multiplicity of experiments and put in writing of stories
