Based on a study of the International Women’s Day (8 March), a truly popular event in Cameroon, this article attempts to understand the dynamics of state mobilization in this long-lasting regime. By observing the production and use of one... more
Based on a study of the International Women’s Day (8 March), a truly popular event in Cameroon, this article attempts to understand the dynamics of state mobilization in this long-lasting regime. By observing the production and use of one of its symbolic objects, the pagne du 8 mars (a dedicated wax print), it sheds significant light on the social fabric of loyalty and the articulation of loyalist and disruptive popular mobilizations and allows us to move beyond readymade, state-centred explanations. As an object of exchange and social distinction, the pagne provides women with a variety of ways of interacting (or not interacting) with the state and with men. Although, on the face of it, the act of dressing in the day’s cloth may be seen as an expression of collective loyalty to the regime, one cannot assume that it represents a single, undifferentiated approach to authority. Licentious behaviour while wearing this pagne may even represent a real condemnation of moral and political power imposed on women. For the moment, however, this ritual and its popular mobilization are sufficient for the government’s purposes: it is able to point to the event as an example of its capacity to mobilize its female citizens, thereby showing that its claims to legitimacy are well-founded.
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Depuis 2013, la région de l’Extrême-Nord du Cameroun, frontalière du Nigeria et du Tchad, connaît des violences inédites. Bien que beaucoup d’entre elles aient été expressément revendiquées par Boko Haram, elles suscitent néanmoins de... more
Depuis 2013, la région de l’Extrême-Nord du Cameroun, frontalière du Nigeria et du Tchad, connaît des violences inédites. Bien que beaucoup d’entre elles aient été expressément revendiquées par Boko Haram, elles suscitent néanmoins de nombreuses interrogations. Des médias camerounais très populaires comme des intellectuels reconnus évoquent, souvent sous la forme interrogative ou par allusions, la complicité d’élites de la région ainsi que celle de « la France » dans cette «déstabilisation » du régime. La distance géographique, le manque d’informations et de connaissances sur les événements et leur contexte n’expliquent pas, à eux seuls, la prospérité de cette théorie du complot.
L’article prend au sérieux ces rumeurs et ces théories complotistes en tentant de comprendre leur articulation aux imaginaires politiques disponibles, leurs canaux de diffusion et leur signification dans une période d’incertitude politique généralisée. Produit de luttes politiques, ces interprétations peuvent également être vues comme un moyen de faire l’économie d’une véritable réflexion sur les causes sociales et politiques de cette violence.
L’article prend au sérieux ces rumeurs et ces théories complotistes en tentant de comprendre leur articulation aux imaginaires politiques disponibles, leurs canaux de diffusion et leur signification dans une période d’incertitude politique généralisée. Produit de luttes politiques, ces interprétations peuvent également être vues comme un moyen de faire l’économie d’une véritable réflexion sur les causes sociales et politiques de cette violence.
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« Activist Encounters at the World Social Forum: Nationalism and Sovereignty in an Internationalized Event », in J. Siméant, M-E Pommerolle & I. Sommier (eds), Observing an International Mobilization: the World Social Forum in Dakar (2011), Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam Press, 2015, p. 41-58more
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« Adjusting to Donors and State’s Constraints: the Paradoxical Institutionalisation of a Kenyan Human Rights NGO », in P. Opuku-Mensah et al. (eds), Reconceptualising NGOs and their Roles in Development. NGOs, Civil Society and the International Aid System, Aalborg University Press, 2007, p. 219-246more
This book uses empirical research to bring together a broad range of protest contexts in twelve chapters. From the formation of Maroon societies in the early colonial period, to female mobilisation in authoritarian contexts, via urban... more
This book uses empirical research to bring together a broad range of protest contexts in twelve chapters. From the formation of Maroon societies in the early colonial period, to female mobilisation in authoritarian contexts, via urban youth culture, women or mineworkers in trade unionism, as well as pro- and anti- gay rights activists, the protagonists here all insist upon their rights to protest in a variety of ways. Sometimes popular protest is expressed through religion, often (and sometimes violently) by young people, exasperated by their long wait for social achievement. Electoral wars and the formation of militias reveal a geography of violence in urban areas, which, in some sectarian excesses, can be displaced to rural areas, as described in the study on Boko Haram
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Based on a collective survey done at the World Social Forum in Dakar in 2011, the book includes a quantitative survey on more than 1000 participants and more ethnographic approaches. It addresses in particular methodological issues and... more
Based on a collective survey done at the World Social Forum in Dakar in 2011, the book includes a quantitative survey on more than 1000 participants and more ethnographic approaches. It addresses in particular methodological issues and what is at stake on studying transnational activism in Africa, and the effects of the development world on it .