Individualization strategies among city dwellers in contemporary Africa: Balancing the shortcomings of community solidarity and the individualism of the struggle for survival

International Review of Social History

Volumn 45, Issue SUPPL.8, 2000, Pages 137-157

  Marie, Alain ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0034341006     PISSN: 00208590     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0020859000115329     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. The expressions in italics are from the French African vernacular in the major cities of West Africa.
2. These activities are occasional, irregular, temporary, isolated and very poorly paid jobs. The trick is to discover them by expanding one's network and increasing the interactions, offers and applications.
3. A detailed description of the implicit and explicit socialization procedures that give rise to individual habits driven by a natural inclination toward solidarity appears in the study by Jacqueline Rabain, L'enfant du lignage. Du sevrage à la classe d'âge (Paris, 1979), on informal education among the Ouolof in Dakar.
4. This tradition remains significant in Louis Dumont, Essais sur l'individualisme. Une perspective anthropologique sur l'idéologie moderne (Paris, 1983).
5. Greater mobilization of the workforce for tasks exceeding the capacities of domestic units; gifts of food, various services and prized commodities that sustain support networks and offer entitlement to various gifts in return to cope with daily needs, such as social obligations or production hazards; recurring gestures of hospitality and commensality; reciprocal participation in wedding or funeral expenses; sets of services to the eldest and the chiefs in return for guaranteed return disbursements on their part, etc.
6. Cf. Claude Meillassoux, Femmes, greniers et capitaux (Paris, 1975).
7. Marcel Mauss, "Essai sur le don", in Marcel Mauss (ed.), Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris, 1960).
8. For a critique of the culturalist orientation of Maussian theory, from a materialistic point of view, cf. Alain Marie, "L'échange: sous le don, la dette", Sciences humaines, 23 (1998), pp. 18-31.
9. This is why among the Dan from Ivory Coast, for example, regardless of the amount of matrimonial compensation initially paid for the wife, the husband's debt toward his in-laws is infinite: it is said that "the dowry never ends", in that the husband has a never ending obligation to give gifts, to accommodate, and to help his in-laws (personal observation).
10. E.g. land clearing and work in the fields of others, joining collective hunts, mutual aid in house building, reciprocal guarding of part of the herds.
11. The relation between parents and children, between older and younger generations, between chiefs and subjects.
12. The relation between givers of a wife and recipients, between patron and client, between protector and protégé, between benefactor and beneficiary.
13. Emile Durkheim, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (Paris, 1912).
14. A more detailed analysis appears in Alain Marie, "Du sujet communautaire au sujet individuel. ne lecture anthropologique de la réalité africaine contemporaine", in Alain Marie (ed.) L'Afrique des individus. Itinéraires citadins dans la société contemporaine (Abidjan, Bamako, Dakar, Nyamey) (Paris, 1997), pp. 53-110.
15. Business failures, poor harvests, accidents, deaths of young children, infertility, impotence, stillborn babies, successive illnesses, decline, madness, epidemics, death in the family, death of the victim etc.; in today's world, also traffic accidents, losing one's job, dropping out of school, bankruptcy, etc.
16. Ideas about witchcraft help exonerate society from any semblance of a cause for criticism or subversion (in addition to sanctifying the social order in the stories of the world's creation by the gods and the divine heroes and society's establishment by our forebears). The community order is thus sanctified according to Durkheim's definition of the term: the profane shall not affect it; individuals have no alternative but to submit. For an analysis related to this perspective, cf. Max Gluckman, "Crises morales et solutions magiques", Economies et sociétés, Cahiers de l'I.S.E.A., 2 February 1967, pp. 5-48.
17. Norbert Elias, La société des individus (Paris, 1991, fourth French edition).
18. Chiefs, distinguished individuals, exorcists, religious officials, great warriors, political entrepreneurs, rich merchants; in today's world, political officials, successful businessmen, outstanding pupils or students etc.
19. For example by making their "invisible" doubles work as slaves on their "invisible" plantations.
20. This account presumes a view of the social world as a "closed society" devoted to simple reproduction, excluding expanded reproduction that indefinitely increases the resources and diversifies the positions to be conquered. In a closed society, individualism therefore automatically has a detrimental effect on others. Generally, a "materialist" explanation prevails for this symbolic representation. Following a case study on witchcraft in France today, Jeanne Favret-Saada noted that faith presumed a closed conception of the social universe and its economic resources: each individual is in charge of a domain; once all domains have been appropriated, sorcerers need to remove resources magically from other domains to expand their own. See Jeanne Favret-Saada, Les mots, la mort, les sorts. La sorcellerie dans le Bocage (Paris, 1979).
21. On political aspects of witchcraft in societies based on lineage, see Marc Augé, Théorie des pouvoir, et idéologie (Paris, 1975), and idem, Pouvoirs de vie, pouvoirs de mort (Pans,1977). Regarding the phenomenon's context with respect to "modern" political stakes in contemporary Africa, see Peter Geschiere, Sorcellerie et politique en Afrique. La viande des autres (Paris, 1995).
22. On political aspects of witchcraft in societies based on lineage, see Marc Augé, Théorie des pouvoir, et idéologie (Paris, 1975), and idem, Pouvoirs de vie, pouvoirs de mort (Paris, 1977). Regarding the phenomenon's context with respect to "modern" political stakes in contemporary Africa, see Peter Geschiere, Sorcellerie et politique en Afrique. La viande des autres (Paris, 1995).
23. On political aspects of witchcraft in societies based on lineage, see Marc Augé, Théorie des pouvoir, et idéologie (Paris, 1975), and idem, Pouvoirs de vie, pouvoirs de mort (Pans,1977). Regarding the phenomenon's context with respect to "modern" political stakes in contemporary Africa, see Peter Geschiere, Sorcellerie et politique en Afrique. La viande des autres (Paris, 1995).
24. For an especially demonstrative case study, see Pierre Bonnafé, Nzo Lipfu, le lignage de la mort. La sorcellerie, idéologie de la lutte sociale sur le plateau Kukuya (Nanterre, 1979).
25. Rumour itself is fraught with danger: it activates the magic forces of powerful men and exorcists.
26. Representations depict persons as consisting of several psychological components: a vital force, defensive and aggressive powers, shadow, mirror images. Thus, the idea of the individual's essential duplicity appears rational ("I am another" and even several others). We understand why an individual accused of witchcraft accepts this accusation: he knows that his double may have acted maliciously and beyond any conscious control of his, and that it is very believable if his double has been captured or manipulated without his knowledge by a sorcerer's double. See La notion de personne en Afrique noire. Colloques du CNRS (Paris, 1973).
27. Jean-François Bayart, L'Etat en Afrique. La politique du ventre (Paris, 1989).
28. Reciprocity is intrinsically an extremely rigorous and effective constraint: if an individual abstains from attending large funeral gatherings, he risks being left alone to bury his loved ones in shame and, worse still, being buried all alone himself "like a dog". He will be doomed to wander eternally and to oblivion, which is tantamount to hell.
29. This expplains the sudden changes of fortune, the accidents, the diseases, death of a loved one, loss of a job, disaffection of one's patronage, professional failure, and persistent failures on examinations or recruitment tests. The suddenness, accumulation, or repetition of all such events reveals that they are far from fortuitous.
30. Though analytically distinct, they are in reality united in "a wealth of imaginary social meanings" that stick together and from a bond between the social actors, who think in their world and act strategically within it without needing to disassociate the one from the other. See Cornelius Castoriadis, L'institution imaginaire de la société (Paris, 1975).
31. These are ad hoc gatherings based on free individual accessions and released from the community framework: mutual aid and mutual savings groups - tontines - between neighbours and colleagues; sports associations, recreational groups, committees of parents of schoolchildren, neighbourhood associations, self-defence groups against crime, syndicates, political parties, churches, prayer groups, fundamentalist Islamic communities etc.
32. See Alain Marie, "'Y a pas l'argent': l'endetté insolvable et le créancier floué, deux figures complémentaires de la pauvreté abidjanaise", Revue Tiers-Monde, 36 (1995), no. 142, pp. 303-324.
33. Statements recorded in Abidjan between 1992 and 1997 in several working-class neighbourhoods. See François Leimdorfer and Alain Marie (eds), Individualisations citadines et développement d'une société civile: Abidjan et Dakar, Research report commissioned by the ministry's representative for cooperation and French language, I.E.D.E.S. (Université de Paris I), June 1998; Alain Marie (ed.), Paradoxes de l'individualisation dans la société abidjaaise. Etudes de cas en milieu social précarisé; final report, GIDIS-CI, ORSTOM, Centre ORSTOM de Petit Bassam, Abidjan, December 1994; Marie, "'Y a pas l'argent'", idem, L'Afrique des individus; idem, "La ruse de l'histoire. Comment, au nom du libéralisme, l'ajustement structurel accouche l'Afrique de ses classes sociales", in M. Haubert et al. (eds), Les sociétés civiles face au marché. Le chargement social dans le monde post-colonial (Paris, 2000, forthcoming).
34. Statements recorded in Abidjan between 1992 and 1997 in several working-class neighbourhoods. See François Leimdorfer and Alain Marie (eds), Individualisations citadines et développement d'une société civile: Abidjan et Dakar, Research report commissioned by the ministry's representative for cooperation and French language, I.E.D.E.S. (Université de Paris I), June 1998; Alain Marie (ed.), Paradoxes de l'individualisation dans la société abidjaaise. Etudes de cas en milieu social précarisé; final report, GIDIS-CI, ORSTOM, Centre ORSTOM de Petit Bassam, Abidjan, December 1994; Marie, "'Y a pas l'argent'", idem, L'Afrique des individus; idem, "La ruse de l'histoire. Comment, au nom du libéralisme, l'ajustement structurel accouche l'Afrique de ses classes sociales", in M. Haubert et al. (eds), Les sociétés civiles face au marché. Le chargement social dans le monde post-colonial (Paris, 2000, forthcoming).
35. Statements recorded in Abidjan between 1992 and 1997 in several working-class neighbourhoods. See François Leimdorfer and Alain Marie (eds), Individualisations citadines et développement d'une société civile: Abidjan et Dakar, Research report commissioned by the ministry's representative for cooperation and French language, I.E.D.E.S. (Université de Paris I), June 1998; Alain Marie (ed.), Paradoxes de l'individualisation dans la société abidjaaise. Etudes de cas en milieu social précarisé; final report, GIDIS-CI, ORSTOM, Centre ORSTOM de Petit Bassam, Abidjan, December 1994; Marie, "'Y a pas l'argent'", idem, L'Afrique des individus; idem, "La ruse de l'histoire. Comment, au nom du libéralisme, l'ajustement structurel accouche l'Afrique de ses classes sociales", in M. Haubert et al. (eds), Les sociétés civiles face au marché. Le chargement social dans le monde post-colonial (Paris, 2000, forthcoming).
36. Statements recorded in Abidjan between 1992 and 1997 in several working-class neighbourhoods. See François Leimdorfer and Alain Marie (eds), Individualisations citadines et développement d'une société civile: Abidjan et Dakar, Research report commissioned by the ministry's representative for cooperation and French language, I.E.D.E.S. (Université de Paris I), June 1998; Alain Marie (ed.), Paradoxes de l'individualisation dans la société abidjaaise. Etudes de cas en milieu social précarisé; final report, GIDIS-CI, ORSTOM, Centre ORSTOM de Petit Bassam, Abidjan, December 1994; Marie, "'Y a pas l'argent'", idem, L'Afrique des individus; idem, "La ruse de l'histoire. Comment, au nom du libéralisme, l'ajustement structurel accouche l'Afrique de ses classes sociales", in M. Haubert et al. (eds), Les sociétés civiles face au marché. Le chargement social dans le monde post-colonial (Paris, 2000, forthcoming).
37. Statements recorded in Abidjan between 1992 and 1997 in several working-class neighbourhoods. See François Leimdorfer and Alain Marie (eds), Individualisations citadines et développement d'une société civile: Abidjan et Dakar, Research report commissioned by the ministry's representative for cooperation and French language, I.E.D.E.S. (Université de Paris I), June 1998; Alain Marie (ed.), Paradoxes de l'individualisation dans la société abidjaaise. Etudes de cas en milieu social précarisé; final report, GIDIS-CI, ORSTOM, Centre ORSTOM de Petit Bassam, Abidjan, December 1994; Marie, "'Y a pas l'argent'", idem, L'Afrique des individus; idem, "La ruse de l'histoire. Comment, au nom du libéralisme, l'ajustement structurel accouche l'Afrique de ses classes sociales", in M. Haubert et al. (eds), Les sociétés civiles face au marché. Le chargement social dans le monde post-colonial (Paris, 2000, forthcoming).
38. The clientele becomes poorer, the deadbeats increase, as competition rises as laid-off workers and jobless graduates join the ranks of the self-employed.
39. Dismissals after rehiring workers formerly paid monthly with part-time contracts or as day labourers, thus alternating periods of uncertain and poorly paid employment with periods of forced inactivity.
40. See Marie, L'Afrique des individus.
41. R. Vuarin, "Les entreprises de l'individu au Mali. Des chefs d'entreprise innovateurs dans le procès d'individualisation", in Marie, L'Afrique des individus, pp. 171-200.
42. F. Leimdorfer, "Individus entre familles et entreprises : patrons et patronnes de restaurants populaires àAbidjan", in Marie, L'Afrique des individus, pp. 113-169.
43. E. Gérard, "La lettre et l'individu : marginalisation et recherche d'intégration des 'jeunes Diplômés' bamakois au chômage", in Marie, L'Afrique des individus, pp. 203-248.
44. G. Kponhassia, "Reconversions professionelles, reconversions mentales. L'irruption des salariés ivoiriens au chômage dans le secteur des activités informelles autrefois abandonnées aux étrangers", in Leimdorfer and Marie, Individualisations citadines, pp. 149-158.
45. B. Ori, "Initiatives d'insertion socio-écononique et démarches d'individualisation chez les jeunes citains d'Abidjan", in Leimdorfer and Marie, Individualisations citadines, pp. 159-178.
46. Such help may have included support during their studies, help with finding a job, funds to get them started, gifts of money, accommodation etc.
47. Alain Marie, "L'insécurité urbaine: l'engrenage des violences", in G. Hérault (ed.), Jeunes, culture de la rue et violence urbaine en Afrique, Proceedings from the international symposium in Abidjan, 5-7 May 1997 (Ibadan, 1997).
48. Ouattara, S., "Freshnies et quinzanies: la prostitution juvénile au secours des familles", in Marie, Paradoxes de l'individualisation, pp. 269-309.
49. They have no word for the conjugal family.
50. On the evolution of views regarding conjugality and the procreative family, see Alain Marie, "Les structures familiales à l'épreuve de l'individualisation citadine", in M. Pilon et al. (eds), Ménages et familles en Afrique. Approches des dynamiques contemporaines, Les études du Ceped, 15 (Paris, 1997), pp. 279-299.
51. See Alain Marie, "Avatars de la dette communautaires. Crise des solidarités, sorcellerie et procès d'individualisation (itinéraires abidjanais)", in Marie, L'Afrique des individus, pp. 249-328.
52. On this subject, see Colette Piault (ed.), Prophétisme et thérapeutique (Paris, 1975); Jean-Pierre Dozon, La cause des prophètes. Politique et religion en Afrique contemporaine (Paris, 1995), for case studies of Ivory Coast.
53. On this subject, see Colette Piault (ed.), Prophétisme et thérapeutique (Paris, 1975); Jean-Pierre Dozon, La cause des prophètes. Politique et religion en Afrique contemporaine (Paris, 1995), for case studies of Ivory Coast.
54. For a case study of the role of these Pentecostal religions in Ghana, see Birgit Meyer, "Les églises pentecôtistes africaines, Satan et la dissociation de la 'tradition'", Anthropologie et sociétés, 22 (1998), pp. 63-84.
55. See Alain Marie, "Pas de société civile sans démocratie. Contre l'État et sa société, l'exigence démocratique des jeunes chômeurs abidjanais engagés dans l'opposition", in Leimdorfer and Marie, Individualisations citadines, pp. 63-III, "La ruse de l'histoire".
56. This crisis of the sociopolitical debt is highlighted, for example, in the following statement: "Among our ministers, there are many to whom we have given money [often the entire extended family, including all the heads of a village family, contributed toward their study costs]. And they do not help. There has been a break in contact."