Recharting Atlantic encounters. Object trajectories and histories of value in the Siin (Senegal) and Senegambia

Abstract

The Atlantic era marks a turbulent period in the history of Senegambia, defined by dramatic reconfigurations in local socio-economic conditions. These 'global encounters' have often been equated with the subjection of African societies to the whims of an expanding capitalist economy. While the long-term effects of the Atlantic economy cannot be denied, conventional histories have often prioritized macrotrends and generalized process, thus glossing the complex mosaic of experiences that constituted the African Atlantic. By contrast, a closer look at how different categories of objects were consumed and circulated over time may provide more nuanced assessments of the impact of global forces on coastal societies. This article examines how these material entanglements took place in the Siin (Senegal), by following the social trajectories of several classes of objects in space and time, and charting their enmeshment in regimes of value, patterns of action, forms of power and historical experience. Combining these empirical insights with a broader theoretical reflection, the paper attempts to draw out the implications of rethinking the historical space of the African Atlantic through a more intimate engagement with the historicities, contingencies and materialities that fashioned African historical experiences. While this shift in conceptual priorities inevitably creates new silences, I suggest that it also re-establishes Africans as cultural and historical subjects, firmly grounded in world history, and that this perspective can provide a point of departure for the production of alternative historical imaginations and subjectivities.

Comparing Craft and Culinary Practice in Africa: Themes and Perspectives

“…In Africa, this object-based approach has proven particularly useful for the study of exchange goods such as beads and metals that circulated within the cultural conjunctures and global entanglements of the past several centuries (e.g., Gijanto 2011;Ogundiran 2002;Richard 2010;Stahl 2002). Nevertheless, the biographies of pottery vessels, ground stone implements, and other craft goods may highlight associated practices of food production and consumption, particularly where specialized studies of use wear, phytoliths, and other microscopic data can point to patterns of everyday use (see discussions in papers by Arthur and Grillo, this issue).…”

“…In West Africa, research in this vein has tended to focus on the circulation of objects deployed in practices of destruction and social distinction-weapons, slaves, textiles, jewelry, alcohol, and so forth (Ogundiran 2002;Richard 2010;Stahl 2002)-whereas the intermingling and diffusion of locally made goods like food, pottery, and iron has long been a focus in eastern and southern Africa (e.g., Kusimba and Kusimba 2003;LaViolette and Fleisher 2005;see Stahl 2001;Stahl et al 2008 for West African examples). The exchange of goods, and associated practical knowledge, is often critical to understanding how people within local communities experienced processes of contact and entanglement according to gender, age, kinship, and status (e.g., Lightfoot et al 1998;Silliman 2001).…”

Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism

“…Within Africa, research has massively focused on the West (e.g. DeCorse 2001; Ogundiran and Falola 2007;Richard 2010;Monroe and Ogundiran 2012), whereas Central Africa is virtually unexplored. In addition, compared to the early modern period, the predatory practices of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries (the Age of Empire) have been much less studied in general (but see .…”

Global Goods

“…But there is nothing inevitable about the adoption of particular commodities. Increasing numbers of studies show the complexities of the subtle cultural choices that underlie the manner in which commodities come to be used widely, selectively, or rejected within specific contexts (for African examples, Burke 1996a, b;Hansen 2000;Holtzman 2003;Richard 2010;Stahl 2002;Thornton 1998, p. 52). There is no pattern that can predict the desirability of particular commodities, nor whether they will be adopted in commodity form, "domesticated" into particular local uses, or modified into alternative spheres of exchange (Prestholdt 2008;Thomas 1991).…”