Armelle Choplin

Post-Politics and Subaltern (De)Mobilization in an African City Nouakchott (Mauritania):

Whereas some scholars have shown that urban contexts are the best place for mobilization, some others have argued that the contemporary complex governance transforms the city into a “post-political” space. Focusing on urban residents’ reactions to slum clearance in Nouakchott, the capital city of Mauritania, this paper seeks to explore these two opposite theses about politics in the Southern urban contexts – the quiet encroachment paradigm versus the post-political thought. Both dynamics are useful and complementary according to the scale of analysis: depoliticization on the level of urban governance and politicization on the level of popular politics.

On west African roads: everyday mobility and exchanges between Mauritania, Senegal and Mali

This paper sheds light on everyday mobility and exchange between Mauritania, Mali and Senegal. Far beyond the “pirogues episode” and sensationalist cases, our micro approach is useful for understanding social mutations, embedded networks and scales, the multiple figures of circulating people and the importance of transportation. Based on empirical and multi-situated fieldwork in the three countries, this research inquires into the reality of circulation, with its supposed fluidity and its frequent standstills. We will see that increasing controls, linked to security and migratory European issues, hinder these ordinary movements and exchanges. The Mali-Mauritania-Senegal space shows that mobility is more intense and complex than expected. It is impossible to reduce mobility in Africa to one-way flows with no logic other than fleeing from extreme poverty.

African Urban Subalternity: Hegemonic Planning, Subaltern Practices and Neoliberal Citizenship (Nouakchott-Mauritania)

Questo articolo propone di riflettere alla citta africana attraverso il concetto gramsciano di subalternita, prendendo certo in considerazione gruppi sociali propriamente ‘subalterni’, come gli abitanti delle bidonville, ma estendendo il concetto per avere uno sguardo critico sulla citta africana piu in generale, a partire da alcuni casi etnografici in Africa occidentale (Nouakchott, Accra). Tre sono le prospettive in cui la subalternita della citta africana sara analizzata: la citta subalterna, l’urbanismo subalterno e la cittadinanza subalterna. Queste riflessioni si fondano su un caso etnografici di programmi di slum-upgrading in quartieri precari a Nouakchott