Gregory Mann

WHAT WAS THE INDIGÉNAT ? THE ‘EMPIRE OF LAW’ IN FRENCH WEST AFRICA

What was the indigenat ? This article approaches this question via three arguments. First, a study of the indigenat (the regime of administrative sanctions applied to colonial subjects) challenges the idea that French West Africa formed part of an ‘empire of law’. Second, a dynamic spectrum of political statuses developed around the indigenat until its abolition in 1946. This spectrum is no less significant than one of its poles alone, that of colonial citizens. Third, the indigenat , its narrative of reform, and its relationship to law, bureaucracy, and authority illuminate the tensions between imperial rhetoric and colonial governance.

FETISHIZING RELIGION: ALLAH KOURA AND FRENCH ‘ISLAMIC POLICY’ IN LATE COLONIAL FRENCH SOUDAN (MALI)

The A. argues that an innovative religious movement in postwar French Soudan (Mali) led some French administrators and military officers to adopt a new and more open stance towards local religious practices even as they fought hard to limit conversion to Islam and to counteract Muslim reform. Meanwhile, although the founder of the movement advocated submission to local authorities, young men claiming to be his messengers attacked elders and sorcerers. The A. suggests that the religious sphere in the Western Sudan was broader than historians have recognized, and that religious identities were particularly important in the troubled transition from subjects to citizens.

Anti-Colonialism and Social Science: Georges Balandier, Madeira Keita, and “the Colonial Situation” in French Africa

Two young men met on a quay at the port in Conakry, Guinea in 1946. One, waiting dockside, was Mamadou Madeira Keita, a low-level civil servant and archivist. Years later, when he was a political prisoner in the Malian Sahara, some would argue that he was “the first francophone African ethnographer.” The other, descending the gangplank, was the Frenchman Keita had come to meet. Georges Balandier was unknown then, but would soon become a leading figure in the fields of sociology and anthropology. The encounter between Keita and Balandier was foundational for both men. Conakry incubated a canonical intervention—Balandiers 1951 article “La Situation Coloniale”—that some attribute an ancestral role in a particular francophone tradition of postcolonial thought. Conakry, and Guinea at large, was also the crucible in which a powerful anti-colonial politics were forged by Madeira Keita and his allies. In this particular corner of West Africa, anti-colonial politics and an emergent, politically engaged social science conditioned each other, like the two strands of a double helix, each a necessary yet ultimately contingent element of the others structure. Though these links did not last long, they had important effects. This article, by emphasizing the contingencies of the two mens intertwined biographies, seeks to carry out Balandiers dictate to emphasize the “concrete” nature of this particular situation in order to understand how and why anti-colonial politics and an innovative sociology converged and ultimately diverged.

Dust to Dust: A User's Guide to Local Archives in Mali

In recent years political changes in Mali have opened up new research opportunities for historians and other social scientists interested in the countrys colonial and post-colonial past. With the new government has come a change in administrative attitudes regarding access to local archives, in other words those held at the level of the cercle. Although these archives can be in terrible condition, they contain precious information unique to each cercle. In the course of my own research I have been able to gain access to two such archives in southern Mali, in the summer of 1996 and again in 1998. Using these two archives as an example and drawing on the anecdotal evidence of colleagues, the following comments offer a rough appraisal of the nature of cercle archives in Mali. The paper covers the type of documentation available, the condition of the collections, and my own experiences in using them. Although my experience is limited to southern Mali, local administrations across francophone West Africa are likely to have similar holdings, given the essential uniformity of French administrative structures in colonial West Africa.

From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: An Introduction

These pages, excerpted from Gregory Mann’s From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: the Road to Nongovernmentality, offer a succinct overview of its key points. Mann asks how it is that in the years following independence from French colonial rule, in a period when state sovereignty was highly valued, international NGOs took on some of the functions of government in the West African Sahel. He sketches the rise of ambitious and aggressive African governments, the effects of drought and famine, and the emergence of Human Rights campaigns that built on older anti-colonial and labor movements.

An Interview with Gregory Mann

For Humanity, Janet Roitman, and Ken Harrow interviewed Gregory Mann on some of the major themes of Mann’s book From Empire to NGOs in the West African Sahel: the Road to Nongovernmentality. Key points of debate include NGO activity and foreign Human Rights engagement in West Africa, the meaning of “government” in the region, the nature of African sovereignty in the neoliberal era, and the capacity of the discipline of history to contribute to an understanding of contemporary Africa.