updated: 28. May 2011

Sahara Connected: Tuareg Transnationalism

Shiftings in Space Perceptions, Mobility Strategies, and Conceptions of Kinship

Funding: FWF
Project Number: P23573-G17
Project-coordination: Mag. Dr. Ines Kohl
Project-realisation: mag. Dr. Ines Kohl & Akidima Effad
Duration: 01.09.2011 - 31.08.2013

In Cooperation with the Institute for Social Anthropology (ISA) of the
Centre for Studies in Asian Cultures and Social Anthropology (CSACSA),
Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW).

Abstract

The Sahara Connected project deals with the Tuareg´s modern mobility in the Central Sahara
and its deeply interweavements with transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and globalization.
The objectives of the project are investigations about changing space perceptions, strategies
and tactics of mobility and conceptions of kinship and new developed social and spatial networks among the contemporary Tuareg society.

Political marginalisation, economic exploitation and ecological crisis in the Sahara and the Sahel
posed the life of the originally pastoral Tuareg nomads into a rather challenging situation.
A large part of the Tuareg society therefore is increasingly forced to switch to urban lifestyles,
or is pushed into making transnational border crossings in order to gain new life strategies.
In the last decade the Tuareg have developed a space of agency between Libya, Algeria, Niger and Mali. Thereby the boundaries between legal and illegal merge, and the differences between trade, smuggling and migration become blurred. The Tuareg organize transportation, they provide the transport facilities, and deliver passengers and goods through the Sahara. This
illegal transnational border business is called afrod.

Those Tuareg who are the agents in this business are transnational cosmopolitans, who embody a new elite of their society: They give directions to new ideas and developments and shape the modern Tuareg society. These transnational cosmopolitans are in the spotlight of the Sahara Connected project. On their example crucial shiftings in the modern Tuareg society will be identified:

We will deal with characteristics of the trans-Saharan tracks as well as strategies and tactics of
mobility and shall grant a comprehensive study and analyses of the Tuareg´s unique form of
transnational movements (afrod). The fact, that a large part of the Tuareg society is getting
increasingly attached to displacement, deterritorialization and consequently also to hybridization,
allows us to examine the implications of the transnational movements in terms of changing space
perceptions, and the interpretation and appraisal of the imagined community (temust). Finally
we shall illuminate critically traditional conceptions of kinship, articulate how the transnational movements affect change in groups, and investigate in new social and spatial networks, beyond sticking on social origin and group membership.

Methodologically the Sahara Connected project is founded on a pluralism: Multi-sited ethnography, participant observation and travelling along with mobile subjects (following the people and following the plots), together with a collection of life stories, comparative analyses, and visual anthropology.