The Oxford Handbook of the African Sahel (Oxford Handbooks)

Long on the margins of both scholarly and policy concerns, the countries of the West African Sahel have recently attracted world attention, primarily as a key battleground in the global 'war on terror'. This book moves beyond this narrow focus, providing a multidimensional and interdisciplinary assessment of the region in all of its complexity. The focus is on the six countries at the heart of the Sahelian geographic space: Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad. Collectively, the chapters explore the commonalities and interconnections that link these countries and their fates, while also underscoring their diversity and the variations in their current realities. The Sahel today is at an important crossroads, under multiple pressures of diverse kinds: environmental, political, demographic, and economic, as well as rapidly changing social and religious dynamics. It is also marked by striking dynamism and experimentation, drawing on a long history of innovation and cultural transfer. In many ways the Sahel is today on the cutting edge of grand natural experiments exploring how humans will adapt to climate change, to technological innovation, to the global movement of populations and the restructuring of world politics, to urbanization, social change, and rapid demographic growth, and to inter-religious contact. The region is a weathervane on the front lines of the forces of global change. In nine thematic sections, the chapters in this book offer holistic analyses of the key forces shaping the region. Including scholars based in Africa, Europe, and the United States, the authors represent an exceptional breadth and depth of expertise on the Sahel. Table of Contents Acknowledgments List of Maps, Figures and Tables Contributors Editor’s Introduction: Framing the Sahel: Spaces, Challenges, Encounters • Leonardo A. Villalón SECTION I: THE SAHEL AS REGION 1. Mapping the Sahelian Space • Olivier J. Walther and Denis Retaillé 2. French Colonialism and the Making of the Modern Sahel • Gregory Mann 3. The Construction of States and Societies in the Sahel • Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan 4. Civil Society and Political Order in the Sahel • Augustin Loada SECTION II: NATIONAL TRAJECTORIES 5. Senegal: A Success Story and a Patrimonial Democracy • Marie Brossier 6. Mauritania: Exceptionalism and Vulnerability • Boubacar N’Diaye 7. Mali: Collapse and Instability • Bruce Whitehouse 8. Burkina Faso: Beyond Autocracy, New Roads Open • Ernest Harsch 9. Niger: Precarious Stability • Lisa Mueller 10. Chad: Realpolitik and Aspirational Deprivation • Ketil Fred Hansen SECTION III: THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE CHALLENGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE Introduction • Sarah McKune 11. Land Use Change and Climate-Smart Agriculture in the Sahel • Suzanne Cotillon, Gray Tappan, and Chris Reij 12. The Challenge of Food and Nutritional Security • Sarah McKune 13. Demography and Health in the Context of Climate Change • Alisha Graves, Nouhou Abdoul Moumouni, and Malcolm Potts 14. Climate Change and Human Conflict in the Sahel • Tor A. Benjaminsen 15. Drivers of Growth and Decline in Sahelian Livestock Sectors • Marjatta Eilittä SECTION IV: THE CHALLENGES OF DEVELOPMENT Introduction • Renata Serra 16. Informal Economies of the Sahel • Fatou Guèye and Ahmadou Aly Mbaye 17. Agricultural Policies and Development in the Sahel • Renata Serra 18. The Political Economy of Aid in the Sahel • Isaline Bergamaschi 19. Corruption and the State in the Sahel • Giorgio Blundo SECTION V: THE CHALLENGE OF GOVERNING Introduction • Sebastian Elischer 20. The Democratic Struggle in the Sahel • Mamadou Bodian and Leonardo A. Villalón 21. Political Parties and Elite Resilience in Sahelian Politics • Daniel Eizenga 22. Militaries in Sahelian Politics • Sebastian Elischer 23. Security Provision and Counterterrorism in the Sahel • Cristina Barrios 24. French Interventions in the Sahel • Roland Marchal SECTION VI: THE INTELLECTUAL LANDSCAPE AND HISTORY OF IDEAS Introduction • Alioune Sow 25. Toward a History of Ideas in the Sahel • Felwine Sarr 26. Yesterday Meets Tomorrow in Sahelian Intellectual Currents • Rahmane Idrissa 27. The Literary History of the Sahel • Alioune Sow SECTION VII: THE RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE IN FLUX Introduction • Benjamin Soares 28. Islamic Intellectual Traditions in the Sahel • Rüdiger Seesemann 29. Islam and Muslim Societies in the Contemporary Sahel • Benjamin Soares 30. Jihadist Insurgencies in the Sahel • Ibrahim Yahaya Ibrahim 31. Muslim Women’s Social Movements in the Sahel • Ousseina Alidou 32. Negotiating Secularism in the Sahel • Alexander Thurston SECTION VIII: THE CHANGING SOCIAL MOSAIC Introduction • Fiona Mc Laughlin 33. Social Stratification in the Sahel • Cédric Jourde 34. The Linguistic Ecology of the Sahel • Fiona Mc Laughlin 35. Pastoralist Societies in the Sahel • Wendy Wilson-Fall 36. Education, Citizenship, and National Identity in the Sahel • Leonardo A. Villalón and Mamadou Bodian SECTION IX: ON THE MOVE: URBANIZATION, MIGRATION, TRANSNATIONALISM Introduction • Abdoulaye Kane 37. Urbanization and the Dynamics of Change in the Sahel • Florence Boyer and David Lessault 38. Sahelian Migrations within Africa • Sylvie Bredeloup 39. Trans-Saharan Migration through and from the Sahel • Harouna Mounkaila 40. Sahelian Transnational Networks and Diasporas • Abdoulaye Kane Index "Bringing together a wide diversity of authors based on three continents and from different disciplinary backgrounds, this book offers analyses of a wide range of factors that characterize and that are shaping the future of the African Sahel. In forty chapters, organized in nine sections, the book examines this complex and rapidly changing region on multiple dimensions. Collectively, the book attempts to offer an understanding of the specificity of the Sahel, and to examine its core characteristics as shaped by the geographic, cultural, and political parameters that define it. Following a series of chapters focused on the shaping of the Sahelian space as a region, six chapters explore the distinct national trajectories of the countries of the political Sahel: Senegal, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Chad. The extraordinary combination of environmental, economic and political challenges, and the ways in which Sahelian states and societies have responded, are the primary focus of the three subsequent sections, while the various parameters of the lived realities of these societies in motion are explored in the four final sections of the book. Transversally throughout, the chapters aim to offer an interdisciplinary and holistic view of the challenges and the dynamics that are shaping a region at an historical crossroads, and an understanding of the many factors that feed and perpetuate its vulnerabilities and fragilities, as well as its sources of resilience"-- Provided by publisher Bringing together a wide diversity of authors based on three continents and from different disciplinary backgrounds, this book offers analyses of a wide range of factors that characterize and that are shaping the future of the African Sahel. In forty chapters, organized in nine sections, the book examines this complex and rapidly changing region on multiple dimensions. Collectively, the book attempts to offer an understanding of the specificity of the Sahel, and to examine its core characteristics as shaped by the geographic, cultural, and political parameters that define it. Following a series of chapters focused on the shaping of the Sahelian space as a region, six chapters explore the distinct national trajectories of the countries of the political Sahel: Senegal, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Chad. The extraordinary combination of environmental, economic, and political challenges, and the ways in which Sahelian states and societies have responded, are the primary focus of the three subsequent sections, while the various parameters of the lived realities of these societies in motion are explored in the four final sections of the book. Transversally throughout, the chapters aim to offer an interdisciplinary and holistic view of the challenges and the dynamics that are shaping a region at a historical crossroads, and an understanding of the many factors that feed and perpetuate its vulnerabilities and fragilities, as well as its sources of resilience