[DEBATE] : (Fwd) African social movements conference (Paris, November)

[Patrick Bond]

Dear Patrick,

We are organising a symposium on african social movements in november 
(in Paris). Here attached the call for papers. Could you post it on the 
CCS' Website ?

Thank you very much

See you in July

Jérôme Tournadre-Plancq


Africa’s Struggles –
International Conference
Sorbonne – Paris
November, 26&27, 2009
Call For Papers

Armed rebellions, hunger riots, urban unrest, rural escapism, social 
movements, advocacy mobilizations, nationalist struggles and peasant 
movements, preachers, union activists and “African social movements”… 
Almost 50 years after independence, Africa is more than ever “indocile” 
. Nearly 30 years after the launch of the “politics from below” research 
trend, the question of the struggles and forms of resistance on the 
African continent – as well as the theoretical tools mobilized to study 
them – are of the utmost relevance, both scientifically and politically.
Theorizing struggles in the Africa-s, amounts to resisting the overused 
image of an Africa deemed to have stepped out of history, a continent of 
endless consent (that of the dominated) and of immutable authority (that 
of leaders), an Africa of consensus that one should leave to the gaze of 
an a-historical anthropology. Opting for such a focus also means 
questioning and assessing the specificity of the forms and repertoires 
of dissent enacted on the continent. In turn, this entails exploring in 
further depth the diversity of the modes of protest. What about, for 
instance, the ideological logics of protest, not studied so much today 
whereas they were central in, the years of the independences? Can 
professionalized forms of protest crystallized around NGOs and violent 
groups with insurrectionary aims be analyzed together? This involves, 
finally, accounting for specific cases of protest in light of current 
transformations pervading African societies, be they related to 
mutations pertaining to the division between the urbane and the rural, 
tensions over land, or to religious repertoires of enunciation of the 
political. This colloquium thus aims at studying both the forms of 
dissent and the strategies of challengers (e.g. modalities of 
involvement, extraversion, of accumulation of resources…), but also the 
management of protest by governments through the State apparatus 
(repression, cooptation…).
Such a focus on political and social struggles does not mean, however, 
that the latter encompass the whole gamut of situations of dissent and 
protest against the dominants. One of the headways of the “politics from 
below” approach is doubtlessly to have driven the focus out of the most 
obvious sites of observation of the political, and to have fostered 
research on the practices of enunciation of dissent: indeed, “silence 
does not always imply consent”, as demonstrated by songs, escapes and 
other threads of indocility.
What is the current state of theoretical work on such forms of dissent 
in Africa? One of the pioneer writings on protest was explicitly posited 
within nationalist historiography – to the extent that the second piece 
of work focusing on this question aimed precisely at opposing this 
positioning. While the “politics from below” approach has largely 
contributed to the vibrancy of African studies, what are the current 
usages of central concepts such as “popular modes of political action” 
or “moral economy”? While the critical historiography of resistances is 
now well engaged, one of the central aims of this colloquium is thus to 
open a conceptual discussion over theoretical renditions of the forms of 
dissent in Africa, so as to read them in light of other approaches on 
protest, by and large developed on Western objects of analysis. Does the 
opening up of African studies to other theoretical trends imply 
importing the tools developed by the sociology of social movements – 
even though the latter has entered a process of routinization, letting 
its key concepts calcify? This colloquium will pursue the theoretical 
aim of critically assessing the central paradigms mobilized to account 
for protest –and “non-consent”- on the African continent, with the hope, 
among others, that this will contribute to emphasizing the extremely 
dated and historically situated character of the concept of social 
movement. How have the analytical tools of the sociology of social 
movements circulated and been applied to the African continent? With 
what gains? What is to be made of intersections or, on the contrary, of 
the differences in the application, or not, of these theoretical 
frameworks? What is their (more or less) added value, compared to 
approaches on popular modes of political action – which provide a grid 
of analysis whose relevance should also be questioned? How should one 
articulate recent writings in social movement sociology that purport to 
take into account the transnationalization of mobilizations and the new 
perspectives opened by a historical sociology of extraversion (J.-F. 
Bayart)? Should one think at once the circulation and 
internationalization of modes of protest and that of the theoretical 
tools purporting to account for them?
On the basis of this theoretical interrogation, the colloquium aims at 
fostering innovative empirical work on the question of struggles in the 
Africa-s. Paradoxically, during the decades of dictatorships and then 
“liberalization”, research on mobilizations, including on processes of 
delegitimization of authorities, have been set aside. Writings exploring 
forms of circulation between diverse strata of society have first 
obscured forms of dissent – culminating with a focus on “civil society” 
that has “neutralized” research on this theme. As the notion has 
definitely been cast away as non-operative, work on diverse forms of 
struggles can anew venture on slippery fields (religious, militia, 
peasant groups) and sound out the most relevant theoretical tools to 
address these phenomena.

Focus of the colloquium:
This colloquium is open to all social sciences traditions: history, 
anthropology, sociology, political science, economy…
The historical focus is not limited to the period ranging from the 19th 
to the 21st centuries, and proposals can focus on more remote forms of 
protest.
Discussions will not be based on a prior typology of struggles to be 
analyzed (social movements, riots, mobilizations), but rather on forms 
of dissent or protest, be they head-on or indirect, collective or 
individual, against given forms of authority. However, papers should 
offer an in-depth historiographic, conceptual and theoretical analysis 
to explore given phenomena.
While empirical studies are encouraged, purely theoretical 
contributions, focusing for instance on key concepts used to study forms 
of protest on the African continent, are also accepted.
Papers focusing on Lusophone or Anglophone Africa are particularly welcome.
Practical modalities
Detailed schedule
Submission of abstracts: 31 May 2009
Notification of acceptance: 30 July 2009
Submission of final drafts of papers, via e-mail: 30 October 2009
Papers should not be longer than 50 000 characters.
Languages
Abstracts and papers can be submitted in French or in English. Oral 
communications can be performed in French or in English.
Application procedure
Applications should be sent via e-mail to the members of the organizing 
committee of the colloquium.
Application format: applications, in French or in English, should be 
drafted in the following manner :
Name, First name:
Institution:
Status:
Electronic address:
Postal address:
Telephone number(s):
Fax :
---------------------------------
Title of the paper:
Summary of the paper in 4 lines :
Abstract (between 3000 and 6000 characters, with spaces), outlining the 
approach adopted (empirical, theoretical):
Key words :

For further information on the focus of the colloquium, please contact:
jsimeant at univ-paris1.fr
mepommerolle at free.fr
richard.banegas at noos.fr

Scientific committee
Richard Banégas (Université Paris I, CEMAF)
Jean-François Bayart (CERI-CNRS)
Jean Copans (EHESS)
Miles Larmer (University of Sheffield)
John Lonsdale (Trinity College, Cambridge)
Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle (Université des Antilles Guyane - IESG - CRPLC)
Johanna Siméant (Université Paris I, CRPS)
Anne-Catherine Wagner (Université Paris I, CSE)
K. van Walraven (African Studies Centre, Leiden)