Disputed Boundaries: Tuareg Discourse on Class and Ethnicity

Rasmussen, Susan J.

doi:10.2307/3773426

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…As Rasmussen (1992; this issue) explains, while “Tuareg” refers to various clans that were loosely affiliated by language and culture, the term is rarely used by the people themselves. According to the French ethnographer Bourgeot (2013), Tuareg, which means “God forsaken,” is the name Arabs gave them during their initial contact; Morgan (2014) argues that it is a nineteenth-century invention by explorers and anthropologists that refers to a supratribal group including the Amazigh- and Berber-speaking peoples of the southern Sahara.…”

Section: Who Are the Tuareg?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This fictive kinship may have helped ease some of the tensions and contradictions in Tuareg society, although it had no legal status (Rasmussen 1999). And although former slaves, since the 1980s, have begun to reject and oppose the hierarchical and paternalistic relations of their former masters—to deny tribute to the nobles and to resist honoring the requests of former owners based on past privilege (see Rasmussen 1992 and this issue)—these tensions still exist. The system, based on one group’s producing goods and services for another, is decaying, but the ideology is still alive.…”

Section: Ethnicity and Racementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Her work sheds light on the nuances in the relationships between the various strata and the ways in which these subtleties make the stratification less than completely rigid. Joking and familiarity, fictive kinship, the progressive evolution of the status of the former slave in the master’s family, and the linguistic and cultural absorption of these groups contribute to the relaxation of clientage and tribute relationships (see Rasmussen 1992, 1999, and this issue; see also Nicolaisen 1997). Tuareg society is very complex, and the relation between color and rank in the strata is sometimes ambiguous.…”

Section: Ethnicity and Racementioning

confidence: 99%

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A Southern View on the Tuareg Rebellions in Mali

Koné¹

2017

Afr. stud. rev.

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Abstract:Since Mali’s independence in 1960, the Tuareg, a minority ethnic group, have staged successive rebellions, with the major ones occurring in 1963, 1990, 2006, and 2012. While discussions of “the Tuareg issue” have sometimes led both the Malian and the international press, as well as scholars, to make inaccurate generalizations, it is true that almost all the armed conflicts of the past fifty years in Mali were originated by people of the Tuareg group. Therefore, many of their Malian compatriots hold the Tuareg people responsible for the destruction of life and human rights violations that have taken place since the beginning of 2012. This article focuses on the events of 2012 and their aftermath and explores some social, cultural, and political differences between northern Tuareg and southern Bamana peoples in particular. It asks two specific questions: Is there something about Tuareg society, culture, and politics (i.e., Tuareg identity) that causes an incompatibility with the Mali Republic? And if not, where has the Malian government failed through the successive regimes since independence?

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Section: Who Are the Tuareg?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ethnicity and Racementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ethnicity and Racementioning

confidence: 99%

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A Southern View on the Tuareg Rebellions in Mali

Koné¹

2017

Afr. stud. rev.

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“…The majority of the southern Malian population is composed of different Mande ethnic groups, the largest of which is the Bambara. In northern Mali, the population is divided among the Songhay, Tuareg, Arab, and Fulbe ethnic groups, which are complicated by political‐economic stratification (Elhadje ; Rasmussen ) . After Mali's independence in 1960, ethnic divisions—rooted in (pre)colonial political and territorial claims—formalized into two competing nationalisms, that of the Mande in the south and the Tuareg in the north (Lecocq ; Scheele ).…”

Section: The Occupation Of Northern Malimentioning

confidence: 99%

Outside Timbuktu's divine cover: The negotiation of privacy among displaced Timbuktians

Hernann

2017

American Ethnologist

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During the armed conflict in northern Mali in 2012 and 2013, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees from the town of Timbuktu had to make sense of and negotiate the hardships of occupation and displacement. They did so through a social‐metaphysical ethic of privacy called sutura, which informs everyday attitudes and practices, particularly those relating to work and the built environment. Although sutura framed displacement, it made certain hardships more difficult to overcome, since it became almost impossible for people to maintain sutura outside the sacred space of Timbuktu. Privileging sutura as a local religio‐cultural framework within the context of crisis links broader structural issues with everyday lived experience. It also identifies existential limitations that displaced communities might encounter when attempting to navigate certain hardships. [crisis, displacement, ethics, lived space, sutura, privacy, Islam, Timbuktu, Mali] Pendant le conflit armé dans le nord du Mali en 2012 et 2013, les personnes déplacées et les réfugiés de la ville de Tombouctou ont dû subir et négocier les difficultés de l'occupation et du déplacement. Ils l'ont fait à travers une éthique sociale‐métaphysique de l'intimité appelée sutura, qui a informé les attitudes et les activités quotidiennes, en particulier celles relatives au travail et à l'environnement bâti. Bien que sutura a encadré l'expérience du déplacement, certaines obstacles (problèmes) ont devenus plus difficiles à surmonter, à cause de l'impossibilité pour les gens de maintenir sutura en dehors de l'espace sacré de Tombouctou. Privilégier la sutura en tant que cadre religio‐culturel local dans le contexte de la crise, peut relier les problèmes structurels plus larges avec l'expérience quotidienne vécue. Il identifie également les limites existentielles que les communautés déplacées pourraient rencontrer lorsqu'elles tentent de surmonter certaines difficultés. [crise, déplacement, éthique, espace habité, sutura, intimité, Islam, Tombouctou, Mali]

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“…4 An illuminating point of view on Niger's ethnic groups' alleged psychological traits and their usefulness for the colony is provided by the French colonial officer Maurice Abadie in 1927: "the Djermas are the most intelligent and the most active population in the whole Sudan [a colonial territory corresponding to today's Mali]; they provide very good tirailleurs, the best of the colony" (Abadie, 1927, p. 116-117). In sharp contrast, the Tuaregs are presented as a their children from noble casts to school (Rasmussen, 1992). It resulted, at the time of independence, in the early 60s, in an alienation of the Tuaregs from state positions (Grégoire, 2001), reinforced by a demographic disadvantage compared to other Niger ethnic groups following a design of state boundaries leaving them scattered over five national territories: Niger, Mali, Haute-Volta (now Burkina Faso), Algeria and Libya.…”

Section: The Background Of the Mnj: Tuaregs' Longstanding Multidimensmentioning

confidence: 99%

Circumstantial Alliances and Loose Loyalties in Rebellion Making: The Case of Tuareg Insurgency in Northern Niger (2007–2009)

Guichaoua¹

2012

Understanding Collective Political Violence

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The goal of this paper is to specify the nature of the Mouvement des Nigériens pour la Justice (MNJ) as a non-state armed organisation and to make sense of its shaky existence since its inception, almost three years ago, with a particular focus on the period that made the MNJ a serious political and military opponent to the government. Our argument is that circumstantial alliances and percolation of grievances provoked by local micro-political dynamics and long-standing disenfranchisement of some sections of the Tuareg youth permitted the movement to take off as a credible rebel group. Ultimately, we want to verify if existing analytical tools made available by the theoretical literature on non-state armed groups are adequate to make sense of the MNJ's organisational trajectory, particularly considering Jeremy Weinstein's seminal book "Inside Rebellion" (Weinstein, 2006). By putting too much emphasis on "initial conditions", Weinstein's model, we argue, fails to properly acknowledge the micro-social dynamics that shape armed groups and their erratic trajectory, and we stress the need to investigate what armed organizations are sociologically made of rather than bluntly postulating their existence.

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Disputed Boundaries: Tuareg Discourse on Class and Ethnicity

Cited by 10 publications

References 12 publications

A Southern View on the Tuareg Rebellions in Mali

A Southern View on the Tuareg Rebellions in Mali

Outside Timbuktu's divine cover: The negotiation of privacy among displaced Timbuktians

Circumstantial Alliances and Loose Loyalties in Rebellion Making: The Case of Tuareg Insurgency in Northern Niger (2007–2009)

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