Contenu du sommaire : Varia

Arithmetic Education as Apprenticeships.? Geomancy in the Mande Mountains. This article describes a trajectory of formalized apprenticeship in divination.? This apprenticeship demonstrates, in contrast to what theories predict, that formalized arithmetic education can exist in a society that has not developed a system of mathematics, that has a low level of literacy, and in which writing is mostly a technology used for the reproduction of religious texts (and not for the organization of the society). At the same time, this article describes the hitherto never noticed divination system of the Mande Mountains, which is a system with twenty-two “houses”.? The numerology of this system may offer new perspectives on “classical” Mande texts of creation myths.

This contribution sheds light on one aspect of the history of alcohol in Africa by exploring the introduction of foreign drinks, the various systems through which they were delivered to consumers, and their impact upon patterns of consumption at Benguela and its hinterland, a major supply region of the Atlantic slave trade that has hitherto received little attention. ?Drawing upon a variety of quantitative and qualitative sources, it argues that a veritable “Atlantic creole” drinking culture did emerge in Benguela under the context of the commerce in human beings and that the alcohol consumptions patterns of Africans further inland were also thereby transformed.

Frameworks of Practice and Circulation of Knowledge between the Potters in Arewa (Niger). Pottery is an activity supposedly practiced alone: the potter possesses her own workshop in the village, makes her own pots and the sales are totally for her.? Nevertheless, the fields enquiries led in the area of Arewa (central-southern Niger) reveal that at each stage of the “operating chain” (or “chaîne opératoire”), the craftswoman is in more or less close contact with others practitioners (as apprentices; craftswomen from her locality and from others localities).? Whether these contacts are organized or informal, the gatherings take usually place in the context of some operating chain' s stage situated at different scales: village scale (as the cooking site) and microregional scale (as the clay source and the market).? The practice space' s sharing generates collective actions, knowledge exchanges and craftswoman' s collaboration.? When a potter makes a pot, she is not isolated but inscribes her practice in a known and lived world.? Her technique is as much marked by her apprenticeship than by her familial, linguistic and villager identity as well as her interactions with others practitioners from her village or from elsewhere.? If we admit that every practice is situated and that the situation gives meaning to practice, it becomes imperative to examine the situations of practice as far as the frameworks in which these situations take place.? This paper proposes a study of the contacts' points and degrees which link and interconnect the potters from different localities of this area, and the impact of the shared space of practice on the technical ceramics' distribution.? Analysing the “context of practice”, we would explain the technical configurations of this area.

Public Policies on Health, Actor' s Logics and Negociated Order in Burkina Faso. The relative failures of equity-promoting health policies in Africa are often attributed to shortcomings of content or implementation modalities, thereby sidestepping any in-depth understanding of the actors' roles in this process.? Yet any analysis of such failures cannot afford to neglect the social actors' behaviour logic.? Therefore, to this end, we conducted a study in a health district of Burkina Faso using a socio-anthropological field survey.? This article empirically documents the recurrence of specific logics that provide a better understanding of these relative failures.? The logics uncovered were: monopolizing, neutralization/domination, discourse construction, clientelism, opacity, connivance, avoidance, suspicion, substitution and disdain for public service.? The study emphasizes the need, when analyzing the interpretation and implementation of health reforms by social actors, to take into account the concept of power.

Religion in Common, Color and Ethnicity as Border. The Senegalese Migrants in Morocco.? — In the relation between Moroccans and Senegalese in the context of an immigration of transit and/or installation, islam expresses a sharing in both directions.? If there is truly a certain current events and a presence of Islam in the relation, we wonder how this religion is mobilized there.? Indeed, this religion is built as social stake.? In spite of a fine relationship showed between Morocco and Senegal, their relations and interactions remain soiled by the memory of slavery of the “Blacks” which influences the evaluation of their muslim religiosity.? In front of Moroccans who based their religious ascendancy on their ethnic and cultural belonging, the Senegalese try to challenge their hegemony and heighten in islam.

Actors, Victims and Witnesses of the Violence in History.? The Example Mau Mau Over the last five years, three books were published dealing with the history of violence during the Mau Mau war in Kenya (C. Elkins, Britain' s Gulag and D. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged in 2005 and then in 2009, D. Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya).? The three historians deliver radically different narratives of this historical period but all three deals with the issue of violence interpreted from its actors' point of view.? This kind of analyses opens up new historical perspectives. But at the same time it has awoken the memories of still very touchy events.? The history of colonial violence is likely to raise debates and controversies namely because it brings together opposite memories.? For instance the victims of colonial repression and violence as well as Mau Mau veterans are still awaiting official recognition.? It is precisely these history and memory interferences that this paper tries to explore.? How to tell the experience of violence?? To what extend witnesses, actors and victims memories of these violent processes should be part of the historical narrative?? The various analyses recently produced on the Mau Mau war offer some clues to answer these questions through different historical enquiries.? While being part of the larger debate on the history of massive violence launched twenty years ago, such questions also help understanding the contemporary debate generated by these historical interpretations and their political meaning.

Goffman in Africa: Frame Analysis and the Processions of the tabancas.
This article analyses the processions of the tabanca Creole associations in Santiago (Cape Verde) to their godfathers' houses in order to collect the gifts offered to the tabanca patron saints during their annual cycle of festivities. ? I freely use Goffman' s analytical tools applied to social interactions, especially in his Frame Analysis, to argue that the tabanca marches can be understood as a “keying” of two primary frameworks, namely, pilgrimages and military activities.