Paper Short Abstract:

Despite much critique of Africanist anthropology, the work of Africans themselves in producing and interpreting anthropological knowledge has been neglected. This paper explores the resources offered by the anthropological writings of the major Senegalese intellectual and politician Mamadou Dia.

Paper Abstract:

While the role of anthropology in shaping Western representations of Africa has been a generative area of enquiry, the work of Africans themselves in producing and interpreting anthropological knowledge has received comparatively little attention. This paper explores the intellectual resources offered by the anthropological writings of the major Senegalese thinker, activist and politician Mamadou Dia (1910-2009). While best known for his economic thought, Dia also engaged extensively with anthropology. This paper revisits this engagement, arguing that it provides not only a key to understanding Dia’s wider anti-colonial project, but also valuable insights for the construction of future pluriversal anthropologies. I focus on three significant phases in Dia’s trajectory. I first consider his formative encounter with anthropology in the 1930s and early 1940s, when as a primary school teacher in colonial Senegal, Dia conducted ethnographic studies of religious practices and funerary rites. I next analyse how, between the 1950s and early 1960s, Dia drew decisively on anthropological writings to develop his concepts of “African socialism” and the “human economy”. Finally, I discuss the place of anthropology in a series of works published after his release from political imprisonment in 1974, notably Émancipation des économies captives (1975) and Socio-anthropologie de l’Islam (1979). Anthropology was for Dia’s thought in providing a picture of African societies as dynamic and creative rather than governed by timeless tradition. Secondly, it drew attention to the concrete local realities which must, for Dia, be the starting point in the construction of a “new humanism”.