Space, Place and Identity: Wodaabe of Niger in the 21st Century

by Florian Köhler

Overview

Known as highly mobile cattle nomads, the Wodaabe in Niger are today increasingly engaged in a transformation process towards a more diversified livelihood based primarily on agro-pastoralism and urban work migration. This book examines recent transformations in spatial patterns, notably in the context of urban migration and in processes of sedentarization in rural proto-villages. The book analyses the consequences that the recent change entails for social group formation and collective identification, and how this impacts integration into wider society amid the structures of the modern nation state.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789206371
Publisher:	Berghahn Books, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/20/2020
Series:	Integration and Conflict Studies , #21
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	246
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Florian Köhler is currently a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He is also trained as a practitioner in peace-building and conflict-resolution and worked for the German Development Service (DED) in Haiti and for the Civil Peace Service (ZFD) in Niger, Benin and Burkina Faso.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on Language and Transcriptions

Introduction

Part I: Taariihi: Mobility and Group Formation in Historical Perspective

Chapter 1. The Wodaabe in Niger: Structure as Historical Process
Chapter 2. A History of Migrations: Placemaking Processes in Diachronic Perspective

Part II: Duuniyaaru: Spaces of Social Interaction

Chapter 3. Inter-ethnic Relations: The Balance of Integration and Conflict
Chapter 4. A Meta-ethnic Social Space: The Continuum of Identity and Difference

Part III: Ladde: Transformations in the Pastoral Realm

Chapter 5. From Nomadic Pastoralism to Sedentarization and Economic Diversification
Chapter 6. Consequences of the New Spatial Strategies

Part IV: Si’ire: Appropriating the City

Chapter 7. New Resources in the Urban Space
Chapter 8. Social Interaction in the City
Chapter 9. The Translocal Dimension of Urban Migration

Part V: Gassungol Wodaabe: The Translocal Network of the Ethnic Group

Chapter 10. The Translocal Community and Social Reproduction
Chapter 11. Cultural Change and the Reproduction of Difference

Conclusion

References
Index

Editorial Reviews

“Köhler’s work can be recommended to all those who are interested in pastoral nomadism and the societies of the West African Sahel region. It is also an inspiring congtribution to recent debates in social science mobility research.” • JRAI (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute)

“…a substantial addition to the body of literature that examines ongoing transformations in the lifestyles of contemporary nomadic Fulɓe societies. Its central thesis, which stresses the translocal networking ability of nomadic peoples, sheds valuable light on the adaptive strategies required to cope with increasing global resource scarcity.” • Nomadic Peoples

“A highly welcome contribution to research on mobility in West Africa and more particularly in the West-African Sahel region in as far as it focusses on the complexity of mobility phenomena in a pastoral nomadic group.” • Elisabeth Boesen, Universityé du Luxembourg

“This is a wonderful and deeply detailed study of a group of Wodaabe in Niger. The author’s descriptions of a sub-group of Gojanko’en and their various strategies of mobility, dispersion, and cohesion is absorbing and clearly based on solid fieldwork.” • Wendy Wilson-Fall, Oeschle Center for Global Education

From the Publisher