Sociolingo’s Mali

Source: https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstream/1974/862/1/Sears_Jonathan_M_200709_PhD.pdf

DEEPENING DEMOCRACY AND CULTURAL CONTEXT
IN THE REPUBLIC OF MALI, 1992-2002
by
JONATHAN MICHAEL SEARS

This thesis challenges the view that the Republic of Mali is a model of democratization in
Africa with the aim of opening the conceptual framework of democratic citizenship inherent in
the democratization discourse to greater critical scrutiny. The ‘enthusiastic’ view is held and set forth by various segments of the unity-seeking ruling class (local and foreign, State and NGO) of bringing to Mali a Western-oriented, procedurally minimal democracy, and citizen identity commensurate with international financial institutions’ and donor countries’ vision of
democratization as political and economic liberalization. Consequently, this hegemonic project co-opts selected indigenous and Islamic idioms of political and social identity, to reinvent democratization as ‘moral governance.’ Cosmopolitan upper and upper-middle class actors thus apologize for highly personalized politics at the national and local levels, and articulate these more broadly with idioms of recovering rectitude and social cohesion that preserve and reproduce hierarchical social norms.

In Malian political culture and in the scholarship of Malian political change, the hegemonic project of citizen identity formation becomes more evident as a construction, as discourses, norms, and practices produced and reproduced by privileged actors. Moreover, the contested character of these constructions becomes evident only as we address the development and deployment of selectively synthesized indigenous, Islamic, and Western-democratic norms, practices, and institutions of citizenship in contemporary Mali. Without a more embedded sense of political membership and identity, the merely procedural democratic project remains vulnerable to challenges from multiple, alternative sites of moral, social, and political authority.

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Source:http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~anth/arch/niger/broch-eng.html

Susan Keech McIntosh and Roderick J. McIntosh

Roderick and Susan McIntosh excavated at Jenne-jeno and neighboring sites in 1977 and 1981 and returned in 1994 for coring and more survey, with funding from the National Science Foundation of the United States, the American Association of University Women, and the National Geographic Society (1994). This research formed the basis of their Ph.D. dissertations at Cambridge University and the University of California at Santa Barbara, respectively. The McIntoshes have published two monographs and numerous articles on their archaeological research in the Middle Niger. They are professors of anthropology at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and they continue to collaborate with Malian colleagues from the Institut des Sciences Humaines on research along the Middle Niger.

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For centuries, the upper Inland Niger Delta of the Middle Niger between modern Mopti and Segou has been a vital crossroads for trade. Historical sources, such as the 1828 account of the French explorer Rene Caillié, as well as local Tarikhs (histories written in Arabic) detail for us the central role that Jenne played in the commercial activities of the Western Sudan during the last 500 years. The seventeenth century author of the Tarikh es-Sudan, al-Sadi, wrote that “it is because of this blessed town that camel caravans come to Timbuktu from all points of the horizon”. In the famous “Golden Trade of the Moors”, gold from mines far to the south was transported overland to Jenne, then trans-shipped on broad-bottom canoes (pirogues) to Timbuktu, and thence by camel to markets in North Africa and Europe. Leo Africanus reported in 1512 that the extensive boat trade on the Middle Niger involved massive amounts of cereals and dried fish shipped from Jenne to provision arid Timbuktu. Today, the stunning mud architecture of Jenne in distinctive Sudanic style is a legacy of its early trade ties with North Africa. Three kilometers to the southeast, the large mound called Jenne-jeno (ancient Jenne) or Djoboro is claimed by oral traditions as the original settlement of Jenne. Barren and carpeted by a thick layer of broken pottery, Jenne-jeno lay mute for decades, its history and significance totally unknown. Scientific excavations in the 1970’s and 1980’s revealed that the mound is composed of over five meters of debris accumulated during sixteen centuries of occupation that began c. 200 B.C.E. These excavations, in addition to more than doubling the period of known history for this region, provided some surprises regarding the local development of society. The results indicated that earlier assumptions about the emergence of complex social organization in urban settlements and the development of long-distance trade as innovations appearing only after the arrival of the Arabs in North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries were incorrect. The archaeology of Jenne- jeno and the surrounding area clearly showed an early, indigenous growth of trade and social complexity. The importance of this discovery has resulted in the entry of Jenne- jeno, along with Jenne, on the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites.

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Source: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~anth/arch/niger/ceramics.html

Summary Description of the Pottery of the Jenne-jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana Assemblages Copied and adapted from Mcintosh, Susan, ed. (1995). Excavations at Jenne-Jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana (Inland Niger Delta, Mali), the 1981 Season. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Phase I/II (c. 250 B.C. - A.D. 350). The pottery assemblage in the earliest levels consists primarily of simple rims from ovoid-shaped open bowls, restricted globular jars, and domed potlids. Together, these constitute 70-100% of the rim sherds in early occupation levels. Rims from more complex forms (everted rims, carinated forms) are rare. Many of the Phase I/II vessels must have had rounded bottoms as the ratio of base to rim sherds is 12.5/100. Ring bases predominate, but flat and pedestal bases are also found. Several fragments of cylindrical potlegs were also recovered. Rim diameters are generally small, and there are remarkably few sherds with demonstrable signs of use as cooking pots.
In general, Phase I/II pottery was very well made. Paste was predominantly medium textured, with grog tempering. Occurring in variable frequencies was a distinctive category of thin-walled, finely prepared pottery that produced the high-pitched clinking of fine china when two sherds were knocked together. Its fine fabric is responsible for its high-pitched sound and refined appearance: the paste includes clay, variable amounts of quartz sand, and a small quantity of finely ground grog. Sherds with medium-texture paste have larger amounts of coarser grog. This fineware was produced only in Phase I/II. The care with which it was produced is evident not only in the fineness of the paste and thin walls but also in the exceptionally smooth and even surface finish. From the fine surface lines, it is clear that a tournette was used to turn the pot slowly during manufacture, just as it is by Jenne potters today. The careful smoothing was probably done with a piece of leather. One fineware rim and several others in the Phase I/II study collection had the characteristic dimpled surface created by the hammer-and-anvil technique which would have thinned the walls, removed irregularities, and smoothed the surface of the piece.
The dominant decorative mode in Phase I/II is twine impression. Over 75% of the body sherds are decorated with twine alone (plain sherds = <5% of the body sherds; slipped = 10-15%). Impression with a plaited strip roulette accounts for 70% of the twine-decorated body sherds. Rim sherds have smaller relative frequency of plaited strip roulette and larger frequencies of twisted twine rouletting due to the popular practice in Phase I/II of placing a zone of twisted twine roulette impression near the rim, directly above the plaited strip roulette impression covering the greater part of the pot surface. In addition to these two roulette types on the same pot, other decorative modes unique to Phase I/II include rockering, fine horizontal incision superimposed on other roulette types, cord-wrapped stick roulette, and red paint applied in cross-hatching on an unslipped zone below the lip of simple open bowls. Black and white paint and channeling (multiple grooves) are virtually non-existent in the early part of this phase. They appear at the end of the phase, foreshadowing the explosion in popularity of paint-and-channeled pottery in the succeeding phase. With the exception of single grooves and incision (on twine), other plastic motifs are largely absent throughout Phase I/II, although two examples of raised applique were recovered, both on singular objects that may not have been used in a domestic context.

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It is with sadness that I report the death in Mali of the African languages expert Dr Stefan Elders of the University of Bayreuth. He died on Monday 19th February from a sudden illness whilst doing linguistic fieldwork on the Bangeri Me language in a remote Dogon village south of Douentza . He became sick on Friday 16th February but died before he could be evacuated to the capital city or elsewhere for suitable medical treatment.

Thanks to 34 cents for this item from BIO-IPR Docserver

Having met in Bamako between the 17th and 21st of February 2007, we farmers, pastoralists, representatives of civil society groups, social movements, and environmentalists from 17 countries, mainly from West Africa with representatives from Africa, Asia, South America and Europe have extensively discussed and exchanged on:

• the issues of privatisation of seeds and genetic engineering,
• the principles and practices of ecological farming, seed conservation and the food & cultural sovereignty of our countries, and
• the ability of traditional seeds to nurture and guide our food and farming future in ways that sustain nature and the livelihoods of the agrarian communities of our planet.

Our interaction has opened up new vistas on life-affirming agricultural practices based on seed and animal breed conservation, as well as on struggles for community food and seed sovereignty. It has reaffirmed our conviction in the strength of traditional knowledge systems and respectful intercultural dialogue.

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I really don’t know why solar energy is not used more in Mali. With almost 65% of the country being desert or semi-desert one thing Mali does have a lot of is - Sunshine.

A report from Caltech in 2003 seemed to show a good potential, but to be honest I haven’t really observed a general takeup of it apart from outside funded projects. There just isn’t the money in rural communities to pay for improved energy services themselves.
I’ve added the image below from the report simply because I like it and it reminds me of visiting Gao.