This book looks at the evolution of the Western Sahara within the borders imposed on the local populations by the Spanish and French colonisers, an evolution marked by a late decolonisation process which, according to international organisations, is still incomplete. It examines the social and political identities of the formerly pastoral and nomadic populations currently living within this territory.
© 2017, Karthala
Pierre Bonte’s anthropological approach leads him to put forward comparative analyses of the development of these populations, which are divided between the Western Sahara, Morocco, Mauritania and the camps managed by the Polisario Front, but which belong to the same social and cultural order. It places these identity-related phenomena in the context of contemporary history, without neglecting the older events that accompanied the formation of Hassan-speaking Baydhân society in its northern parts and played a major role in the history of settlement in this region. Emeritus Director of Research at the CNRS and member of the Social Anthropology Laboratory at the Collège de France, Pierre Bonte (1942-2013) spent half a century researching the Tuaregs of Niger and then Mauritanian Baydhân society. He is the author of numerous publications on ancient and modern Saharan society (La montagne de fer, Karthala, 2001; L’émirat de l’Adrar mauritanien, Karthala, 2008; La Saqiya al Hamrâ, La Croisée des chemins, 2012; Récits d’origine. Contribution à la connaissance du passé ouest-saharien, Karthala, 2016) and on nomadism, tribes, kinship, sacrifice and oral literature in the Arab world. He is also co-editor of the Dictionnaire de l’ethnologie et de l’anthropologie (PUF, 1st ed. 1991), translated into several languages.
- Title : Identités et changement socioculturel dans l’Ouest saharien (Sahara occidental, Mauritanie, Maroc)
- Author : Pierre Bronte
- Editor : Karthala
- Date of publication : December 2017
- Number of pages : 558
- ISBN : 9782811112066
- Price : 35,00 €