Fellow Dr. Lamine Doumbia and Prof. Dr. Andrea Behrends
Media records
Abstract
- Abstract
- Fellow Dr. Lamine Doumbia talks with his host Prof. Dr. Andrea Behrends about his research surrounding urban land governance in West Africa (Dakar, Bamako and Ouagadougou) from a socio-anthropological perspective.
People & roles
Origins & context
- Title
- Fellow Dr. Lamine Doumbia and Prof. Dr. Andrea Behrends
- Language
- English
- Podcast series
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Cluster Conversations
- Date
- December 15, 2022
Rights & access
- Extent
- 17 minutes, 32 seconds
Identifiers & sources
Further details
- Episode number
- 1
Full text
- Transcript
-
[music]
Speaker 1: Cluster Conversations, a podcast by Africa Multiple.
Speaker 2: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for tuning in. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to present my research here in a conversation with Andrea Behrends. My name is Lamin Dumbia. I am a social anthropologist and alumni of the University of Bayreuth, alumni of the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies also. And I am basically working on land governance from anthropological perspective. So I am currently a fellow of the cluster Africa Multiple at the University of Bayreuth. I was invited by the research section Mobilities. And it's a pleasure for me to introduce Professor Doctor Andrea Behrends who holds the professorship of anthropology with focus on Africa at the University of Bayreuth. I am really grateful to you, Andrea, for mentoring my work since two thousand nineteen and for being also my host in the framework of the cluster. And I also have the privilege to participate regularly in your department colloquium Life Worlds in Crisis also since two thousand nineteen, I think. And this is where our work, our research connects. Life Worlds in Crisis is a project you are leading here. And my concern is land governance and I see urban land governance also as a source of conflict and as a crisis that different actors in their everyday life practices try to overcome. So what also inspires me is the concept that you have worked on which is travelling models. That inspires me a lot in our collaboration.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you, Lamin. I think I would really, I am very happy that you are here, that you are in my colloquium and also now as a fellow with the cluster. You are right. I think this concept of travelling models is something that really connects to our idea of mobility, which is not just in the research section of the cluster, which is not just about mobility of people or restrictions of mobility, but also about the mobility of ideas. So maybe just to say briefly, the idea of travelling models is that certain forms of intervention, certain bureaucratic measures, whatever you might call a model, that has been developed in one context and then moves from that context, let's say a development strategy of the German Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau or maybe something like GIZ or the World Bank travels to another place and is translated by certain actors, right? And then it becomes adapted or maybe resisted or mixed with other ideas, which was the basis of this concept of travelling models. Let's say a different way of seeing globalization, not from top-down global arena to local arena, but travelling between different arenas with people carrying ideas. And I think when I look at your concept of mimicry that you are developing for your research on land governance, I think that you are taking the travelling models as some kind of starting point, but you are developing it further. So I think our listeners might want to hear more about that. And I would pass the word back to you about your concept.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, I use the concept of mimicry from the perspective of James Ferguson who defined it as culture of resistance of colonized people that, I mean, who tried to appropriate or imitate colonized models on the ground to resist or to make their actions of resilience against state policies or whatever. But in this specific context of my research, mimicry is something that I think is being appropriated by the people of the grassroots.
Speaker 1: who are trying to imitate the state in order to respond to respond to actions that they feel is uh in lack of social justice. For instance, people currently in Bamako, in Ouagadougou and Dakar, they sometimes get evicted because of urban renewal actions, urban development programs, infrastructure buildings and so on. And the state orchestrate these actions, these plans mostly. And those people who have to be evicted, they often don't get compensated, compensated because uh the state actors go from the principle that uh uh state belongs to, I mean the land belongs to the state. So those evictees, if they don't have a title deed, then they are not eligible for any compensation. So, um, then um if if it happens like this, then the evictees they get together to create associations and organizations trying to use bureaucratic practices to respond to the state and to participate in the governance. So this is how I would describe mimicry in my work.
Speaker 2: Right. So it's actually something where a model that traveled, you could say, from colonial times into current governments which is used basically against the people who are thought to be helpless. But then they take up exactly these forms of the state, of the bureaucracy to try to counter these measures. So do you have a concrete example of one of these appeals or something like that which happened maybe?
Speaker 1: Yes. One example is the Association des Habitants de Sabalibougou Est in Bamako whose member got evicted already in two thousand and two. Then they created the association, then they went to the supreme court and the association won the trial. With the explanation that not all of them should have been evicted, right? But they they they have been all of them have been evicted because the municipal government that orchestrated that eviction at that time wanted to sell the land to investors, right, who can afford it to build an image that the bureaucrats wants to promote, right? So in so doing, they still got evicted but they won the trial and they still did not, I mean they are not yet compensated because of this neoliberal changing everyday changing of of the value of land, you know. And this is one example and there are other examples in Burkina Faso, in Ouagadougou where the Mouvement de Solidarité pour le Droit au Logement, this movement is helping a community that is affected by the expansion of the industrial zone of Ouagadougou. So this community wants to be relocated but they are not yet relocated because the process is stuck in the is blocked in the municipal government. And all these comes together on the economic situation of of land value that is changing. So this is, these are few examples. Another example in Dakar, if I might, I may explain that the construction of the new airport of Dakar also affected three villages and the village people mostly had to to be displaced, right? But part of, I mean one village had to completely move.
Speaker 1: Manu military, it was very violent in two thousand and fourteen. And they also have this association fighting for their right to stay on the land because they have a strong tie with the land. They have like their cemetery there, they have their field, their grounds there, but they don't get compensated. So it's the fight for the compensation, but also the fight for participation in the governance as such, so that they don't get victimized by state actors.
Speaker 2: So basically, if I understand you correctly, it's like the associations know the laws, the rules, the rules of the game, you could say. And the mimicry is basically in, well, you play with these rules, we know the rules and we play back. So this is the resistance. And we know more. I think that's a fantastic and exciting project. And now you have mentioned the three places, Bamako in Mali, Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso and Dakar in Senegal. What does this comparison, what is the gain of the, because I know that comparative work is tedious, it's like three projects. But what do you gain from that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's like three projects, but actually the comparison is not like, I'm not trying to describe this is how it works in Dakar, this is how it works in Senegal or in Bamako or in Ouagadougou. But I try to see how the different civil society organizations are taking their actions, the temporality, when they engage in land reform, for instance, and when the association has been built, when they start to work together, because this is actually what is happening on the ground. The three cases, the actors are working together to find solutions on a supranational level. Not only on different levels, but they do together, they organize caravans to protest against abuses of the state, for instance. And of course, these movements, the gain is also that in the three countries, they started land tenure reforms. In all the three countries, in Mali, in Senegal and in Burkina Faso. And I think the benefit has to, I mean, it is because of the actions of those grassroots movements also. They make pressure to the state to change something for social change and for them also to participate as citizens of the state.
Speaker 2: So I could, we could say that these are traveling models in themselves. Maybe the grassroots organizations inspire each other and copy from each other. Interestingly, of course, you are just looking at the formerly French colonized background. So maybe it would also be interesting to look at places like Ghana or Nigeria, but this is maybe for the future. I think something that I would like to ask you is about your own position. I mean, you are looking at this from an academic angle. At the same time, it is resistance, it is activism, you could say. So do you think that your work can also contribute to that? And by that, I would also allude to the cluster's ideas. I don't know if you...
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. I can say that I am of course doing the work from an anthropological perspective, but it is also, as you said, activism. It may, I mean, yeah, the objective is of course to contribute to knowledge production on decolonization of land governance, trying to bring in more perspectives. This is also the reason why I focus on those grassroots organizations. They are in an urban setting, trying to play with rules of bureaucrats, modern rules of the states, but also they also include...
Speaker 1: endogenous sources, right? Endogenous knowledge, religious knowledge into it so to fight for their own rights and say, oh, here I am and this we have, we can play on different settings with different epistemologies and ontologies. And this is of course what brings together... I mean, that's also the connection of reconfiguring what the cluster is developing.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess it's really about reconfigurations from, you know, what is actually still very active from post-colonial times by first of all taking it up, but then bringing in new aspects and actually trying to weaken this kind of hierarchical, no compensation, no care for the people whose land is taken away.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm very fascinated by your project, as you know, and I think we've come to the end, but I'll leave you for the last word. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you also very much. It's a pleasure for me to be here. I'm learning a lot and I hope my work can also be a tiny contribution to the cluster and to this research section mobilities as well. Thank you very much.
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