Paper long abstract:

Depuis plus de deux décennies, la commune de Sanankoroba, de par sa proximité avec Bamako et son accessibilité, fait l’objet d’une compétition accrue autour de ses terres, à cause non seulement de l’étalement incontrôlé de Bamako, mais aussi de la prééminence des autorités communales et coutumière dans le jeu foncier local. La convoitise des terres de Sanankoroba se traduit par l’immatriculation d’une bonne partie de ses terres. On observe aussi, de plus en plus, des dépossessions illégales des terres. Face à ces pratiques, les communautés rurales anticipent sur les risques de perte de leur patrimoine foncier voire territoire en procédant aux lotissements des terrains agricoles qui sont mis sur le marché. Leur stratégie renvoie aussi à la construction des balises afin de sauvegarder le peu de terres qui reste pour les générations futures et la pérennité de leurs activités agricoles. Dans cette communication, nous nous intéressons à l’implantation des balises entre les villages Digato et Tourela dans la commune de Sanankoroba. Les balises ne sont pas seulement la ligne de démarcation entre deux terroirs villageois, ni une transformation du paysage agraire des terroirs, elles sont synonymes de dénégations des normes et règles de gestion foncière, de tensions foncières qui opposent communautés villageoises. Mieux, les balises deviennent des symboles des pratiques urbaines qui consacrent de nouveaux types de rapports de pouvoir. L’étude qui se base sur l’approche qualitative entend saisir le rôle des balises dans la transformation foncière et leurs effets sur les rapports inter-villageois dans le jeu foncier à Sanankoroba.

Paper short abstract:

The paper uses the case study of the new Diamniadio urban plan (Senegal) to examine the gendered impact of constructing a new urban space on lands owned by traditional communities. The redefinition of their culture is explored from a feminist political ecology and anti-colonial perspective.

Paper long abstract:

Building new urban areas from scratch with an administrative and innovative drive is a spreading practice in Africa. However, the construction of the new urban pole on previously traditionally managed and lived land transforms the living conditions and identities of local communities. Communities experience new forms of inequalities and marginalization due to land expropriation, termination of informal traditional land ownership, and professional or residential relocation. The impact of the new plan on local communities is also normative since Western planning and societal models enter previously traditional spaces creating a clash between ancestral customs and the imposed modernization (or Westernization) of the new city.

This paper uses the case study of the new Diamniadio urban plan (Senegal) to examine the gendered impact of new urban spaces over the new productive and reproductive roles of traditional community members, largely overlooked by the literature. A preliminary qualitative data collection showed an increased professional vulnerability for young men who, due to land expropriation, are now forced to emigrate to ensure an income. Women are more easily employed in the new city as housekeepers, which redefines domestic economic dynamics while keeping women within the care sector. The main data collection is expected to take place in 2024.

Paper short abstract:

How do the loose ends of colonialism intervene to shape privatization of rental housing on Uganda's urban peripheries? The study examines how potentialities from privatization are experimented with and given socio-material expression in house-plot transformation and new ways of imagining older age

Paper long abstract:

Neoliberal-like processes, including public housing privatisation, are shaping new geographies of cities in the South. Through a case-study of housing estate privatization in Jinja, Uganda, this study probes the neglected question of whether urban housing privatization provokes new geographies of ageing in contexts characterized by translocal idioms of relatedness cojoining ‘town’ and ‘home-village’ (translocal-assemblages). Conceiving translocal-assemblages to be stabilized by normed social and spatial transitions and markers around life-course stages (assemblage-script) raises the question of whether gaining urban property-title alters orthodox expectations of rural routedness in older age towards urban rootedness? Alternatively, do rights and securities conferred by conforming to orthodox assemblage-scripts limit freedom for novel age-inscription? Using qualitative methods to prioritise the often-neglected voices of older-adults, and building on two decades of research on these estates, the paper identifies how potentialities emergent from the novel addition of urban house-title to older-adult’s translocal-assemblages, are imagined, negotiated and actualized in housing and house-plot transformations and novel ways of living and spatializing older age. The translocal-assemblage lens, informed with insights from Bourdieu’s social ontology, problematizes ‘methodological cityism’ and ‘methodological individualism’ evident in Northern theorisation (e.g. planetary urbanization, ageing-in-place) by showing urban housing privatization to be neither a discretely urban affair nor chiefly enacted through possessive individualism. However, divergent reserves of historically accrued forms of assemblage-capital are shown to significantly influence strategies and capacities to act on housing potentialities. Indeed, the final ‘dis-inheritance’ of these colonial ‘African’ housing estates is, for many older adults, fractured with ambivalences and possible eventual displacement.