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Introduction to Special Issue: Central Peripheries and Sliding
Contexts: Absence and Marginality as Spaces of Emergence

Cristiana
Panella

From: Africa Today
Volume 58,
Number 3, Spring 2012
pp. v-xvi | 10.1353/at.2012.0005

In lieu of an abstract,
here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The social-anthropology approach to rural space has undergone major changes
over the last twenty years, spurred by an agency-oriented approach to the
landscape (Soja 1989; Ashmore 2002; Mather 2003). These
changes have affected not only the conceptualization of space, but also interest
in the cohabitation of a broad range of actors engaged in highly mobile
activities, both internal and international (Amin 1995; de Bruijn, Van
Dijk, and Foeken 2001; de Haan and Rogaly 2002). This new turn has
led to a more comparative perspective on both local practices and their
transnational effects. In particular, this trend toward increased mobility,
conflict, and accommodation to change has included reexamination of the concept
of limes (van Wolputte 2010), removed from both Frederick
Jackson Turner's center-versus-periphery model (Turner 1893) and Igor
Kopytoff's multipolar centers-versus-periphery model (Kopytoff 1987).
Here, the limes is perceived and managed in a space increasingly
marked by sharing and disputes, punctuated by dwindling resources and the
accelerated monetarization of rural economies. Noteworthy studies include
focuses on political war economies (Lawson 2003; Raeymaekers 2010;
Renton, Seddon and Zeilig 2006), informal and illegal economies (Aning
2003; Ellis 2009; Ellis and MacGaffey 1996; Meagher
2003; Roitman 2003; Shaw 2002; Titeca and De Herdt
2010; Van Schendel and Abraham 2006), and the dynamics of
indigenousness (Chauveau, Jacob, and Le Meur 2004) resulting from "
'bottom-up' regionalism" (Söderbaum and Taylor 2010), to mention only a
few. The microhistory perspective in social history has furthered a view of the
socially shaped African landscape as a shared commodified space (Flynn
1997; Chalfin 2001; Niger-Thomas 2001; Fold and Nylandsted
Larsen 2008; Agergaard, Fold, and Gough 2010), as well as an arena
for politics of authenticity (Schultz 2008).

In connection with these recent approaches to the dimensions of time and
space, the present special issue offers an array of views on the
limes, through center-and-periphery dynamics first approached by
panels held at the triennial MANSA (Mande Studies Association) conference and
the [End Page v] third biennial ECAS (European Conference on
African Studies) conference. The aim of this cross fertilization was to qualify
the vision of a structural urban-rural split by showing that the social dynamics
of marginal contexts are not refracted reverberations of national policies, but
rather, centers of change in their own right (Hanchard 1999; Leach
2003; Agegaard, Fold, and Gough 2010). A second aim is to show the
exclusionary effects of national and international governance policies, as well
as the new arenas of social production in marginal contexts and groups, along
with the ensuing dynamics of belonging connected with those effects.

Searching for Gold on the Sankaran Border (Wasulu, Mali):Mingled Memories
and Territoriality

The territorialization of the memory of gold in the Sankaran region on the
Mali-Guinea border is revealing of the spatial and social memory stakes involved
in negotiations around belonging in a context of political control of mobility
and monetarization of the land. This region reflects the paradox of a buffer
space both socially open and politically closed in notwithstanding which the
limes dimension and its center-periphery variations are constantly
reworked, between local perceptions and subregional relations, through the
differential of management of the memory of gold. The history of settlement of
the Wasulu region shows a continuous intermingling of populations, which can be
pieced together, only partially, when traced back to the fourteenth-century
Mande migration to the Sangha region (Bedaux 2003; Bedaux and van der Waals
2003). The political organization of Wasulu was based on hereditary chiefdoms,
the kafow, subject to lineage-group conflicts, which broke them
down regularly until the Fulani came to dominate in the nineteenth century and
Samori's troops invaded the area (1881-1883). The proximity of such strong
entities as the Segu kingdom, the Kabadugu, and the Futa Jalon considerably
impeded the development of a centralized political power, while encouraging
internal strife (Amselle 1985). Around 1800, the Diallo, Sidibé, Diakité, and
Sangaré Fulani, chased by the slave-hunting jihad led by Omar...

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