Periodic Reporting for period 3 - CAPSAHARA (CRITICAL APPROACHES TO POLITICS, SOCIAL ACTIVISM, AND ISLAMIC MILITANCY IN THE WESTERN SAHARAN REGION)
Période du rapport: 2020-04-01 au 2021-12-31
The CAPSAHARA project explores social transformations in the western regions of the Sahara. The project is interdisciplinary, drawing from the social sciences, including anthropology, history, and political science. It foregrounds ethnographically situated analyses of the articulations of globalized processes and local knowledge and practice. Bringing together a dynamic, international group of researchers, CAPSAHARA interrogates existing bodies of knowledge about the Sahara and explores the complex interplay between precolonial and colonial sociopolitical traditions and contemporary political expression and activism. The project seeks to analyze how Islamic culture and religious practice are understood in different western Saharan locations that are subject to different (and often opposed) statehood projects. More than simply an historical overview of the region, CAPSAHARA explores contemporary social and cultural trends of this fast-changing region bordering Europe’s southern frontiers. More technically, CAPSAHARA also contributes to the strengthening of the work developed by Saharan scholars, encouraging academic exchanges between researchers based on both sides of the Mediterranean and improving their publishing expertise.
The project is built on the logic of the historical and social interconnectedness of this region, yet in the past century it has also been geopolitically subdivided and socially transformed in many ways by factors both internal and external. Extensive fieldwork was carried out among the Hassaniyya-speaking populations residing in Mauritania and in Sahrawi camps in Tindouf. The impossibility of conducting independent academic research on Sahrawi populations living in the territories governed by Morocco could serve as a warning of an impending gap in our knowledge of social developments in the region. Crowning the list of the research team's publications, a forthcoming edited volume (August 2022) will present the project’s results to both academic and broader audiences, offering detailed discussions on such topics as the formation of a haratin identity among the Hassanyyia-speaking populations of the western Saharan regions, artisanal gold mining and its social impacts in Mauritania, as well as the importance of legal pluralism in the Sahrawi nation-building, among others. A photo-album aimed at the general public, with highlights of the field research, is also expected in spring 2022.
Comprehensive research by one team in different western Saharan locations, crossing national boundaries, constitutes a serious academic challenge. The findings of the lines of research concerning migration and artisanal gold mining, social transformations, and legal pluralism in the Saharan context are examples of fields whose results have significantly advanced and even challenged current academic debates.
The research on artisanal gold mining in Mauritania, although anticipated, produced much more significant results due to facilitated access to the field and the excellent work by a local team member. It was possible to confirm the presence of clear patterns of discord regarding land use that seem likely to exacerbate tensions, with serious implications for social stability, public health and the environment (e.g. the unregulated use of mercury and soil and water contamination). The role of the state also came into question because the government appears to be struggling to regulate artisanal mining sites, and an increasing number of newcomers (often arriving from abroad) continue to gather alongside historically nomadic groups in remote desert locations.
Another potentially groundbreaking result is the work carried out on the emancipation of a lower-status social group, the haratin (of slave-descent), here considered as a form of “ethnogensis”. If further data supports this proposal, when sufficiently developed it could challenge the traditional interpretation of the ethnic charters acknowledged in the western regions of the Sahara.
Another team member has identified the co-existence of traditional and modern legal practices among the Saharawi administration based in Tindouf, highlighting the pervasiveness of Islamic culturalized aspects that have often been disregarded when working in this particular context. This study of Islam and legal pluralism among the Saharawi constitutes a significant advance in the research devoted to this particularly sensitive area of research.
Adding to the above, the PI’s research on the inscription of more rigid Maliki legal norms into amended Mauritania’s penal code may signal the strengthening of “traditional” Islamic readings as a reaction to the recent social unrest that risks reconfiguring the overall social landscape of the region.
The research on artisanal gold mining in Mauritania, although anticipated, produced much more significant results due to facilitated access to the field and the excellent work by a local team member. It was possible to confirm the presence of clear patterns of discord regarding land use that seem likely to exacerbate tensions, with serious implications for social stability, public health and the environment (e.g. the unregulated use of mercury and soil and water contamination). The role of the state also came into question because the government appears to be struggling to regulate artisanal mining sites, and an increasing number of newcomers (often arriving from abroad) continue to gather alongside historically nomadic groups in remote desert locations.
Another potentially groundbreaking result is the work carried out on the emancipation of a lower-status social group, the haratin (of slave-descent), here considered as a form of “ethnogensis”. If further data supports this proposal, when sufficiently developed it could challenge the traditional interpretation of the ethnic charters acknowledged in the western regions of the Sahara.
Another team member has identified the co-existence of traditional and modern legal practices among the Saharawi administration based in Tindouf, highlighting the pervasiveness of Islamic culturalized aspects that have often been disregarded when working in this particular context. This study of Islam and legal pluralism among the Saharawi constitutes a significant advance in the research devoted to this particularly sensitive area of research.
Adding to the above, the PI’s research on the inscription of more rigid Maliki legal norms into amended Mauritania’s penal code may signal the strengthening of “traditional” Islamic readings as a reaction to the recent social unrest that risks reconfiguring the overall social landscape of the region.