Identity and Conflict in the Sahel

Adib Bencherif is an Associate Professor at the École de politique appliquée of the Université de Sherbrooke. He is the author of L'analyse du risque politique. Abdoulaye Kane is an Associate Professor at the Center for African Studies of the University of Florida. He is the author of African Migrations: Patterns and Perspectives.

• AcknowledgmentsPreface, by Leonardo A. VillalónIdentity and Conflict in the Sahel: Narratives on Tuareg and Fulani, by Adib Bencherif and Abdoulaye Kane1. Making Sense of Race and Violence in Mali, by Bruce Hall2. The Role of Diaspora and Social Media in Building a Transnational Fulani Identity in the Sahel, by Abdoulaye Kane3. Tuareg Nationalisms in Mali and Niger: Comparing Elite Narratives, by Adib Bencherif4. Competing Meanings of Ethnicity, Religion and Social Status Amongst Haalpulaaren (Senegal-Mauritania), by Cédric Jourde5. The Ambiguity of the Status of Women Activists within the Mnla: Overvalorization in Discourse and Gendered Reassignment in Practice, by Denia Chebli6. Who Decides Cultural "Authenticity"? Matrilineal Ancestral Heroism and Revival of the Anzad, a Tuareg Musical Instrument Re-Remembered, Appropriated, and Revitalized in Myth and Performance in Northern Niger, by Susan J. Rasmussen7. Social Media, Memory, and the Creation of Polarized Identities in Mali in Conflict, by Mirjam De Bruijn and Mamadou Togola8. "Bringing Our Children Back from the Bush": The Narrative About the Failure of Fulani Armed Self-Defense in Burkina Faso and Mali, by Tanguy Quidelleur9. In Menaka (Northern Mali), History Mobilized for Political Purposes: Stories and Storytellers on Social Media, by Charles GrémontConcluding Remarks: Narratives in the Sahel's Polycrisis, by Adib Bencherif and Abdoulaye KaneIndex

"This is certainly a commendable volume . . . the editors invite us to embrace the 'narrative turn' and look at how storytelling is mobilized to shape and/or transform the identities of 'the Tuareg' and 'the Fulani' taken in the turmoil of an enduring conflict. . . . All the chapters are sustained and enriched by the respective authors' extensive fieldwork: as a result, one of the main merits of the book arguably consists of providing the readers with large amounts of meaningful qualitative evidence coming from remote areas, difficult to access, that only a collection of experienced scholars such as this volume's contributing authors could deliver."—Luca Raineri, coauthor of Fringe Regionalism: When Peripheries Become Regions