Sahelian studies without blinkers: critical and multidisciplinary perspectives

The Sahel, referred to as the "arc of crisis" in the French Republic's 2008 White Paper (Foucher, 2012), is a region whose complexity tends to elude the term "crisis", which, precisely, according to Morin (2012) "instead of awakening, contributes to lulling to sleep". Indeed, applied to all aspects of life (political, economic, religious, migratory, food and demographic crises), media and political discourse, as well as scientific research and, consequently, representations of the Sahel, are today polarized around crises, a polarization that inevitably obscures the realities on the ground. For example, when we look at the theses being defended on the Sahel issue in 2023 in France, with a few exceptions, they concern economic, political and environmental sciences, with crisis as the predominant theme. Thus, we are witnessing a kind of amplification, by political, media and scientific players, of the pensée unique.

For Bonnecase and Brachet (2013), this paradigm is linked to the context of inaccessibility of the field decreed by many scientific and diplomatic institutions, the result being an "increasing production of expert reports based on distant viewpoints on the Sahel, and a rarefaction of work based on an empirical foundation". Yet, as these two authors point out, "even the most obvious manifestations of crisis cannot be understood in their complexity if they are apprehended in isolation, as if they made sense in themselves or marked a clear break necessarily in relation to their ordinary, social and historical environment". Hence the need not only for a plurality of places of enunciation, which, in decolonial and postcolonial terms, correspond to the places from which knowledge is produced, but also for a diversity of disciplinary approaches.

For example, Lefebvre (2015) has demonstrated by studying scarification practices in the central Sahel in the 19th century that, contrary to colonial discourses in which these practices appear as fixed and immutable usages by which one would always, and in the same way, have figured the ethnicity on the skin, scarifications are in reality the reflection of life courses inscribed in processes of individual identification.

Without excluding the above-mentioned mainstream disciplines, which are essential to a deep understanding of the Sahel, what critical and complementary perspectives do disciplines such as anthropology, history and linguistics offer to balance the dominant discourse? What alternative discourses can help us move away from univocal and often reductive readings? And what is the role of digital humanities (notably humanities and social science research data platforms such as HAL, LaCAS, Isidore, etc.) in the management, interpretation and reinterpretation of data on the Sahel? These non-exhaustive questions will be the focus of this day devoted to Sahelian studies.

ORGANIZATION

Liliane Hodieb, Inalco-PLIDAM-LACAS

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Sandra Bornand, CNRS-LLACAN

Peter Stockinger, INALCO-PLIDAM

Cécile Van den Avenne, EHESS-IMAF

Leonardo Villalón, University of Florida-Sahel Research Group

PROGRAMME

9am : Opening

Liliane Hodieb, scientific manager of the day; Delphine Allès, Vice-President of Inalco; Peter Stockinger, CNRS-CIS, INALCO-PLIDAM, LaCAS project manager

09:30-10:30: Session 1

Chair: Damien Simonneau, INALCO-CESSMA

Jean Schmitz, CNRS-IMAF, Djihads in the Sahel (Mali, Nigeria) and agro-pastoral crises with regard to two centuries of Muslim states (19th-19th centuries): a reflexive look back

Emilie Laffiteau, IRIS, What economic resilience in the Sahel in the face of recent shocks? Comparative analysis based on three indicators

Coffee break (20 min)

10:50-11:50am: Session 2

Chair: Liliane Hodieb, INALCO-PLIDAM

Sandra Bornand and Ide Hamani, CNRS-LLACAN, "C'est l'affaire de la patrie": penser la crise au Niger à partir d'une fresque épique

Yaëlle Biro, INHA: Collecting the Sahelian past: Myth construction and primary sources

Lunch break

2:00-3:50 pm: Session 3

Chair: Shahzaman Haque, INALCO-PLIDAM

Alice Degorce, IRD-IMAF and Pietro Fornasetti, IMAF, Refugee in his own country. Retours sur une enquête collective sur les déplacés internes à Ouagadougou

Emmanuel Garnier, Université Paris-Saclay, Predation, domination and risk management in the Sahelian belt 1880s-1960s

Leonardo Villalón, University of Florida, Sahel Research Group, Collaboration and interdisciplinarity in the study of the contemporary Sahel: challenges and rewards

Coffee break (20 min)

16:10-16:50: Session 4

Liliane Hodieb, INALCO-PLIDAM-LaCAS, Sahelian studies and the crisis: une analyse textométrique des données de la recherche

Bastien Sepulveda, INALCO-LaCAS, LaCAS platform for areal studies

16h50 - 17h15: Perspectives

17h15: Conclusion by Marianne Fauchereau, Director of DIRVED