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- Convenors:
-
Nathalie Bonini
(University of Tours)
Ester Botta Sompare (Université Kofi Annan de Guinée)
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- Stream:
- Sociology
- Location:
- Chrystal McMillan, Seminar Room 6
- Sessions:
- Thursday 13 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel deals with education in African pastoral societies. We are interested in pastoral education as a way to preserve or adapt pastoralists' lifestyle, to representations of school and to the implementation and local reception of national and international educational policies.
Long Abstract:
Formal education in pastoral societies has always been considered as a way of introducing change, either by pushing nomadic cattle-breeders towards settlement, or by introducing modernization, scientific knowledge and new techniques in order to improve livestock production. (Krätli 2011) Among African herders, often living in remote zones suffering from a lack of public services, selective schooling for some children can be accepted as an opportunity to work in the modern sector and to establish connections with the urban context. It may correspond to internal dynamics, either depending on family choices to diversify children's paths, or on young people's desire to live a different life and to detach themselves from cattle-breeding. However, despite being often depreciated by national governments and public opinions, pastoral people often show a deep commitment towards the preservation of their lifestyle and especially care about the transmission of pastoral knowledge and know-how at least to some children. This panel welcomes reflections on the way pastoral people use education to cope with mutations resulting from a process of opening up to national societies and to a globalized world. We are interested both in traditional pastoral education as a way to preserve or to adapt their identities and lifestyle and in representations of formal or informal education, aimed to introduce literacy and knowledge of an official language. The panel will also consider papers offering critical reflections on the local reception and implementation of international and national educational policies, that are often reinterpreted or circumvented
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 13 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
East African pastoralists like Turkana, Karamojong, etc., have not only their own system of education. It is also crucial for an efficient and sustainable use of dryland resources that their right to use it is recognised in its legitimacy and its importance for the present and future of this region.
Paper long abstract:
The success of the human species is based on its ability to accumulate, transmit and adapt knowledge and capacities through individual and collective learning. Cultures are bodies of such knowledge. In the drylands of Northeastern Africa, two contrasting meta-cultures interact: an indigenous (agro-) pastoralist culture based on the sustainable use of local resources and the grass-roots democracy of ethnic communities like Turkana, Karamojong, and many others; and a culture based on global economies, formal institutions and informal networks understanding itself as 'modern', "learned" and 'superior' to "the uneducated". These notions evolved from colonial ideologies, disregard for the pastoralist world and its achievements, and an extremely ethnocentric concept of education. Yet while formal education has undeniable merits, educative systems of pastoralist cultures outperform conventional schools in a wide range of regards of crucial importance for productivity and quality of life in this region. While pastoralist cultures still inform, not least through informal pastoralist education, the social and economic practices of productive rural majorities, an increasing portion of the rapidly growing regional population is socialised into globalising knowledge economies through national education systems. Unfortunately, these systems neither incorporate the knowledge of indigenous cultures, nor do they recognise their unique importance for the efficient and sustainable use of the region's resources, the democratic regulation of local societies, the formation of proactive attitudes, etc.
This paper discusses implications, reasons and effects of this problem, how indigenous and international knowledge can be better integrated, knowledge transfer and exchange, role of technologies and cross-sector cooperation.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the choices of ways to educate Fulani's herders children and how their choices contribute in managing uncertainties they face daily.
Paper long abstract:
In the department of Ouangolodougou in northern Côte d'Ivoire, Fulani herders have been settled since the 1970s. Because of their pastoral activities, they live in hamlet far from the city and / or villages where there are primary and secondary schools of the government education system. They practice oral learning with which they associate the Koranic teaching provided by the Fulani ethnic marabouts who live with them. Yet, more and more families of Fulani herders send their children to study in town or village. Why such a change? How do these choices help them to manage uncertain situations they face every day? Through an ethnographic study I will describe the uncertainties faced by Fulani herders and analyze their Agency through the educational choices they make for their children.
Paper short abstract:
My contribution aims to analyze the schooling of Maasai girls from the point of view of teachers, parents and students themselves. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a private secondary school in Tanzania that educates young girls from the pastoral population.
Paper long abstract:
The schooling of nomadic pastoralist children is an important issue for the Tanzanian government who wish to achieve universal basic education. The inclusion of these categories of marginalized populations and / or considered to be refractory to school and among them, girls - if possible up to the secondary cycle - has lead to the increase of the school supply in the remote areas where pastoralists live. The rhetoric of the equal right to education as welle as the idea that education is a factor of empowerment and development are widely mobilized by the various actors working in the field of actions and policies of education for girls. « Until all girls and women exercise their right to education and literacy, progress in achieving EFA will be stymied, and a dynamic source of development and empowerment will be squandered » [Unesco, 2015, p. 1] Based on ethnographic fieldwork within a private lutheran secondary school for pastoralist girls in Tanzania, this paper will explore the various representations of the schooling of pastoralist girls by educational actors (members of the Lutheran organization, representatives of the State, teachers and students) and massai themselves, which reflect divergent apprehensions of the right to education, social relations of gender and, more generally, the issues of girls' secondary schooling.