Seminar - The Crisis in Mali : Political Instability and Regional Radicalization

Over the past year, Mali has faced a series of unfolding crises - armed rebellion in the north, a military coup, the Islamist takeover of the north, political disarray, and a looming humanitarian crisis with many displaced persons, refugees, and the possibility of famine. For a long time Mali had also been experiencing staggering levels of corruption, and in the last decade the country has become an important transit node in the trafficking of cocaine from Latin America to European markets. Mali has long been heavily dependent upon foreign assistance, and most donors have subsequently suspended bilateral aid, including the training of its military. The alarm is being raised about Islamists, including Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), becoming further entrenched in the region. All of Mali’s neighbors - in North Africa and West Africa – have a stake in what happens in Mali, as do the country’s development partners. In this panel discussion, panelists will discuss the ongoing events in Mali, continuing instability and its consequences, and the regional implications of the crisis.

Panel members

Benjamin Soares, an anthropologist, is a senior researcher and the chair of the Researchers’ Assembly at the African Studies Centre in Leiden. He has taught at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Sussex, and held fellowships at the University of Chicago and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His publications include Islam and the Prayer Economy (University of Michigan Press & Edinburgh University Press, 2005) and the edited collections Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa (Brill, 2006) ; Islam, Politics, Anthropology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), with Filippo Osella ; Islam, Etat et société en Afrique (Karthala, 2008) and Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa (Palgrave, 2007) with René Otayek, which has just appeared in Arabic translation (al-Maktabah al-Ak ?d ?m ?yah, 2012).

Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem is Professor of Political Science at the University of Nouakchott in Mauritania. He took his PhD from the Université de Lyon in 1996. He is currently a Senior Fellow at The Institute of Advanced Study in Nantes in France, and from 2010 to 2011 he was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at The University of Florida’s Center for African Studies. His recent publications include : "Islam in Mauritania Between Political Expansion and Globalization," in B. Soares and R. Otayek, eds., Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa, Palgrave, 2007 ; “The Paradoxes of Islamic Radicalization in Mauritania,” in George Joffe (ed.) Islamist Radicalisation in North Africa, Routledge, 2011. He has also edited a volume in French on Mauritania as a frontier state that was published by CODESRIA. His book about Islam, Islamist movements, and social transformation in French will be published by Karthala in December 2012.

Mirjam de Bruijn is an anthropologist whose work has a clearly interdisciplinary character. She has done fieldwork in Cameroon, Chad and Mali and an important theme throughout is how people manage risk (drought, war, etc.) in both rural and urban areas. She focuses on the interrelationship between agency, marginality and mobility.Dr Mirjam de Bruijn has been appointed Professor of Contemporary History and Anthropology of West and Central Africa at the Faculty of Arts at Leiden University as of 15 June 2007. She pronounced her inaugural lecture "De telefoon heeft benen gekregen ; Mobiele communicatie en sociale veranderingen in de marges van Afrika" op 5 september 2008.

Martin van Vliet is a political anthropologist who has published on various aspects of Mali’s political life, the history of Malian political parties, the functioning of parliament, the decentralisation process, legal reform programs, the rise of transnational security threats and international development cooperation. He is currently finalising a phd on Mali’s de-democratisation process.

Paolo de Mas will be the moderator of the discussion. Paolo de Mas is the director of the Marokko Instituut.

You are kindly requested to register at lucis@hum.leidenuniv.nl

More inforrmations



Autres breves publiees dans cette rubrique