Paper short abstract:

I critically address efforts to depoliticise ethnic diversity in post-conflict Abidjan. I argue that the reconciliation discourse carried by radio stations problematically frames the local as the natural place for diversity management, and as a site of consensus outside of politics and the state.

Paper long abstract:

Following the post-electoral violence that rocked Côte d'Ivoire in 2011, radios de proximité in Abidjan engaged in re-building a positive sense of local, ethnic diversity. Their position in this process is complicated. Trust in media is eroded, and struggles over ethno-political territory undermined "the local" as a site of public participation. Furthermore, regulations prevent stations from producing accounts of the crisis that name political actors. Yet stations still have to promote a 'reconciled' local diversity. How? And to what effect?

I take the example of neighbourhood-based 'public shows' (émissions publiques) held in the municipal districts of Abobo and Yopougon between March and October 2015. These shows produced an account of the crisis that was abstract and consensual, emphasising not specific histories but a general narrative of disorder turned into order. They relegated the management of diversity to a timeless cosmopolitanism, symbolised in its most playful aspect by jeux d'alliance and games based around African languages.

In this discourse, the local is promoted as a primordial site of conviviality. Neighbourhoods are responsible for turning diversity into consensus, a pre-condition for electoral participation. Crucially, the local is an autonomous realm of diversity management, radically distinct from the state. I conclude by showing that this reading contradicts the history of ethnicity in Côte d'Ivoire and ordinary people's experience of the relations between locality, diversity and power. I point out the dangers in equating local diversity with consensus, and ask how the urban local might be implicated in an alternative process to depoliticisation.