Connecting-Africa | Find publications

Advanced search

Find:


Title Navigations of a globalizing Chad: Nomadic Walad Djifir grounded in connectivity
Full text http://hdl.handle.net/1887/123198
Date 2020
Author(s) Butter, I.C.
Abstract A focus on the everyday has produced this ethnography, which hopes to give a nuanced voice to an extended family of semi-sedentary nomads, living at the centre of a country and region known for its political turmoil, ecological insecurities, and socio-economic hardship. Based in central Chad, the Walad Djifir are part of extensive socio-economic networks, ranging from very local cattle markets, to Western Unions in Libya, and selling merchandise in the Central African Republic. The fer@kh (nomadic camp) is where all of the Walad Djifir's networks meet, and often also begin' providing the departure point of this research. This analytical and methodological approach embraces the intricate relationships between sedentary and mobility, the mundane and the extreme, flexibility and expectations to explore how regional trends can be understood in light of the Walad Djifir's daily lives. Over time, the Walad Djifir have developed ways of coping and dealing with insecurities, interacting with infrastructural, technological, and socio-political developments in specific ways. In exploring how such insecurities and crises become anchored into the everyday, the fer@kh provides answers. It is precisely the mundane elements of daily life which anchor disruption.
Subject(s) Globalizing Africa; Chad; Family networks; Nomadic networks; Sedentarism and mobility; Insecurity and flexibility; Modern nomads; Belonging in crisis; Remittances; Monetary transfers
Coverage Leiden University
Type of publication Doctoral Thesis; Dissertation
Repository Leiden - University of Leiden
Added to C-A: 2020-07-06;09:09:57