Born in Diourbel on October 5, 1957, Kalidou Kasse is a Senegalese artist, painter, weaver and sculptor whose perspective for the legitimization of African contemporary art has given birth to several prize-winning work and exhibitions all over the world. His unique style of threadlike characters in a background of lively and brilliant colours describes a poetic and charming world painted with a constant concern for forms, details and colours. From a historic point of view, he is the artist who has delicately blended and balanced the art of western pictorial with African aesthetics inherited from his family of weavers. By refusing the representation imposed by western art, he reaffirms an individual form that is original in heralding the art of an emerging dominant force unabashed and unfettered by its past. This groundbreaking book explores the foundations of Kasse's aesthetics and subtly traces the individual trajectory of the painter within the wider collective and historic movement of art on the continent and beyond.Jean-Bernard Ouedraogo is a professor of Sociology is currently the Director of Research at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and at the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France. He has taught in several universities in Africa, Europe and in North America. He is the author of several works in the field of art in Africa, including Art photographique en Afrique (Harmattan, 2002), Identite visuelle en Afrique (Amalthee, 2008), and Norbert Elias, Ecrits sur l'art africain, (Kime, 2002). From 2002 to 2008, he was Deputy-Executive Secretary of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) in Dakar, Senegal.

Penser l'Afrique, la reflechir aux yeux de ses enfants et de sa diaspora, la questionner pour la remettre au coeur du debat identitaire. Panser l'Afrique de ses souverains de naguere et de leurs successeurs parce que les chants des griots n'apaisent plus les cauchemars de ses peuples. Ce livre explore sans ambages ces themes qui nourrissent En attendant le bonheur, Une Saison a Rihata, Segou de Maryse Conde et Les Soleils des independances, Le diseur de verite, Monne, outrages et defis et En attendant le vote des betes sauvages d'Ahmadou Kourouma. Le Manding du temps de l'esclavage a celui de la guerre froide, les defis et derapages des independances, les personnages pivots dans la rencontre Afrique-Occident, la technique discursive du griot traditionnel Manding, la demythification de l'Histoire sont autant de themes developpes dans Griots de l'indicible. Genereusement coiffe de deux entretiens avec Conde et Kourouma, le livre contribue un indispensable supplement d'eclairage sur leurs ecrits qui participent de la tradition d'echanges Afrique-Caraibe sans tomber dans l'orbite de l'antique Negritude.

The global perspectives adopted in this volume by the authors, from different academic disciplines and social experiences, ought not to be locked in sterile linearity which within process of globalisation would fail to perceive, the irreversible opening up of the worlds of the south. There is the need within the framework of the analyses presented here, to quite cogently define the sense of the notion of the market. The market here does not refer to saving or the localised exchange of goods, a perspective which is imposed by normative perceptions. In fact, a strictly materialistic reading of exchange would be included, since every social practice and interaction implies a communitarian transaction; meanwhile the exchange system under study here broadens to root out the obligation of the maximisation of mercantile profit from the cycle of exchange. Trade here would have a meaning closer to those of old, one of human interaction, in a way that one could also refer to 'bon commerce' between humans. In one way, trade places itself at the heart of social exchanges, included the power of money, and is carried along by a multitude of social interactions. The reader is called upon to take into account the major mercantile formations of the social trade system, the market society, without forgetting the diversity of exchange routes as well as the varying modalities of social construction, at the margins and within market logics - those of implicit value in trade between humans - which the texts herein also seek to review. The age-old project of restructuring the domestic economy, the market society as it has developed in the West, - whence it has set out to conquer the whole wide world - places at the very centre of the current capitalist expansion the challenge of imperatively reshaping gender identity, inter alia, in market relations.

One of the weaknesses of research in Africa is the little consideration that is given to questions of epistemology and methodology. What we see is the trivialization of research protocols which, consequently, are reduced to fantasy prescriptions that detach social studies from universal debates over the validity of science rather than an interrogation of research procedures induced by the complexity of social dynamics. As a result, social sciences have become an imitative discourse and a recital of exotic anecdotes without perspectives. Knowledge production therefore loses any heuristic bearing. It is on the basis of this reality that attempts to correct this tendency have been made in this book by discussing the methodological foundation of social science knowledge. This volume is a collection of papers presented during methodological workshops organized by CODESRIA. Its objective is to revitalize theory and methodology in field work in Africa while contributing to the creation of a critical space hinged upon the mastery of epistemological bases which are indispensable to any scientific imagination. Far from being a collection of technical certainties and certified methods, this book interrogates the uncertain itinerary of the process of social logics discovery. In that sense, it is a decisive step towards a critical systemization of ongoing theories and practices within the African scientific community. The reader can, therefore, identify the philosophical, historical, sociological and anthropological foundations of object construction, field data exploitation and research results delivery. This book explains the importance of the philosophical and social modalities of scientific practice, the influence of local historical contexts, the different usages of new investigative tools, including the audiovisual tools. Finally, the book, backed by classical theories, serves as an invitation toward considering scientific commitment to African field research from a reflective perspective.

Le travail d'analyse sociale nous pose toujours la question de la transcription des donnees et des resultats obtenus. Les modeles canoniques privilegient l'usage de l'ecriture orthographique et releguent souvent les formes d'ecritures iconographiques dans la perception sensible, l'allusif et le flou symbolique, a l'extreme oppose de la rigueur demonstrative et argumentative de l'ecriture. Dans le processus de production et de diffusion des connaissances en sciences sociales, le moment de l'enquete, en particulier, est une situation de transcription ideale pour examiner le passage d'un ordre de fait a un autre, et pour retracer sa fonction dans le projet scientifique. Cet ouvrage interroge les modalites d'implication de l'image dans la fabrication, la transformation et la presentation des donnees issues de l'enquete de terrain. La premiere partie questionne la constitution des memoires et des identites individuelles et collectives. La photographie se tient au seuil de la memoire et perpetue une interrogation sur les conditions d'exercice de la memoire individuelle et collective. La contribution nous rappelle que l'image oblige les chercheurs plus que tout autre mode de presentation a s'interroger sur leur position. La deuxieme partie est consacree a l'epistemologie des images. Que les images soient produites par les chercheurs eux-memes ou recoltees lors du terrain ethnographique leur representation est d'une importance cruciale mais ne va pas de soi. La troisieme partie aborde la question de la restitution des donnees issues de l'enquete de terrain a travers l'analyse des photographies et plaide pour une analyse des rythmes, rare en sciences sociales, afin de saisir les complexites de l'urbanisation globale et de la restituer par les techniques de theatre grace a une approche du sensuous scholarship.

This book seeks to explain the events that have been taking place in Cte d'Ivoire since 1999 and which are commonly referred to as 'la crise ivoirienne' (the Ivorian crisis). It seems that the day to day interpretation of the events did not provide a satisfactory explanation of the deep fracture and that it was necessary to reconsider the essentialist theoretical categories that are striving to impose on us a false view, made cumbersome by ethnocentric prejudices. To avoid falling into the trap of the day to day interpretation of events will require an in-depth questioning of the causes of the foreseen collapse of the Ivorian model. Having a grasp on the historical meaning of facts is required in examining the sequence and interconnection of events which we always need to rule on the historical weight in order to gauge the tragic trend of the social dynamics. While looking for the causes of the social and political rift, the authors of this volume started by asking a central question: How does the weight of the modern Ivorian society formation intervene in the modalities of the actions of individuals and current collectivities? The brutal and violent fracture which the Ivorian social formation underwent brings forth, once again, the issue of collective identities and unveils, at the same time, the challenges related to the incomplete nature of the construction of 'Nation States' in Africa. In fact, it is a mistake to think that the crisis spontaneously started among partisan higher authorities and to ignore that behind the ostentatious declarations on National Unity, pre-colonial groups have not completely melted into the modern 'Nation'. Furthermore, in the process of 'national' social space formation, new social combinations emerge by continuously re-inventing themselves. It seems that the roots of current crises reside in the unprecedented transformation which contemporary African societies have been undergoing.