Short Abstract

This panel reflects on existing scholarship about the entangled histories in and across the Sahara and contemporary social and political reconfigurations in a multiplex world. The panel aims to promote new analytical approaches for making sense of this volatile, albeit poorly understood region.

Long Abstract

The time is ripe to reconsider how we conceptualize and analyze the Sahara, a volatile, albeit poorly understood region, which is arguably an ideal space for thinking about Africa in a rapidly changing, multiplex world. Considerable scholarship has focused on connectivity in and across the Sahara with attention to the social, political, economic, religious and geopolitical factors in the region’s entangled histories. However, problematic colonial legacies continue to cast a long shadow over approaches to the Sahara and apprehensions of transformations in the region. Since the 2010s, the reconfiguration of established political traditions and formation of new political orders have come in the wake of regime change (Chad, Libya, Mali, Niger, Tunisia) alongside relative regime stability elsewhere in the region (Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco). These developments have been in tandem with the rise of consequential nonstate actors, including migrants, secessionists, traffickers, smugglers, Islamists, etc., in a fluid context marked by the involvement of outside actors (former colonial powers, the EU, the Gulf states, Russia, China, the US, the UN, extractive industries, etc.) and competing diplomatic initiatives by aspiring regional powers (Algeria, Morocco) with the Sahara now a major global hotspot. The panel welcomes contributions that situate transformations in and across the Sahara within the context of the contemporary social and political reconfigurations and changing roles of regional, continental and global actors. The panel is open to a diversity of analytical perspectives to apprehend and think comparatively about entangled Saharan – and African – social and political landscapes in a multiplex world.

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