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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the opposition between social assistance and politics from the perspective of a small informal settlement in Dakar, Senegal to examine the way that claims are made and what counts as politics is potentially transformed.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the opposition made between social assistance (la sociale) and politics from the perspective of a small informal settlement in Dakar, Senegal. It is a distinction firmly insisted on by residents and those seeking to help them (politicians, development workers, other wealthy individuals) alike. Specifically, the paper examines the tension between 'la sociale' as a mode of giving rooted in values associated with kin, hospitality, and neighbourly mutual support, and politics (politig) which is characterised by vote-buying and dependence, calculation and falsehoods. An analogous ethnographic insistence on the distancing from, or denial of politics is found elsewhere. Matei Candea (2011) was told at his first meeting with administrators of bilingual teaching in Corsica not to ‘confuse education and politics,’ while the Arab Bedouins Andrew Shryock (2008) worked with took offence at his interest in studying ‘the politics of hospitality.’ Taking up arguments in these texts and others (Scheele 2019; Yarrow 2008) on the productive tension between politics, development and the state on the one hand and civil society, education and hospitality on the other, this paper argues that it is precisely within the tension between 'la sociale' and politics that claims are made and what counts as politics is negotiated and potentially transformed.