Smugglers and saints of the Sahara
Subtitle: regional connectivity in the twentieth century
By: Judith Scheele
Series: African studies series -- 120
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Cambridge
Language: eng
Number of pages: 270
ISBN-13: 9781107022126
Subjects: Commerce; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Government / General; Relations; Borderlands
Description: "Smugglers and Saints of the Sahara describes life on and around the contemporary border between Algeria and Mali, exploring current developments in a broad historical and socioeconomic context. Basing her findings on long-term fieldwork with trading families, truckers, smugglers and scholars, Judith Scheele investigates the history of contemporary patterns of mobility from the late nineteenth century to the present. Through a careful analysis of family ties and local economic records, this book shows how long-standing mobility and interdependence have shaped not only local economies, but also notions of social hierarchy, morality and political legitimacy, creating patterns that endure today and that need to be taken into account in any empirically-grounded study of the region"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: 1. Founding saints and moneylenders: regional ecologies and oasis settlement; 2. Saints on trucks: Algerian traders and settlement in the biblād al-sūdān; 3. Dates, cocaine, and AK 47s: moral conundrums on the Algero-Malian border; 4. Struggles over encompassment: hierarchy, genealogies, and their contemporary use; 5. Universal law and local containment: assemblies, qudāh and the quest for civilisation; 6. Settlement, mobility, and the daily pitfalls of Saharan cosmopolitanism; Conclusion: 7. Saharan connectivity and the 'swamp of terror'.