Transcript The Withins and Withouts in the City

The Ivorian Crisis
Jesper Bjarnesen
PhD candidate
Reflections on a Case Study of Everyday Life
in Post-Conflict Korhogo
The Ivorian Crisis – A Case Study from
Korhogo
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Introduction
Empirical setting
The Ivorian crisis
The elite exodus from Korhogo
Generational perspectives on the Ivorian crisis
Youth Mobility in Korhogo
Exploring Family Dynamics, Intergenerational
Relations, and Migration Trajectories in West
Africa
1. Introduction
1. Introduction
”... The explanations behind the mobilization of
youth and the social strain that it expresses,
particularly in terms of inclusive/exclusive
definition[s] of ’belonging’, are to be found in the
internal dynamics of the society. We need to ’resocialize’ and ’re-historicize’ the ’problem of youth”
(Chauveau & Richards 2008:527)
The problem of youth
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Fighting for the Rain Forest (Richards 1998)
Makers & Breakers (Honwana & De Boeck 2005)
Vanguard or Vandals (Abbink & Van Kessel 2005)
Navigating Youth – Generating Adulthood (Christiansen,
Utas & Vigh 2006)
Etc.
2. Empirical setting
Introducing Korhogo
Korhogo, Côte d’Ivoire
Overlooking Korhogo
Downtown Korhogo
Korhogo main street
Periurban agriculture
2. Empirical setting
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District capital
Last census from 1998: 170.000 inhabitants.
Current estimate 300.000
Close links with neighbouring countries, especially
Burkina and Mali; numerous bus companies to
those countries
Home region of Guillaume Soro, the Secretary
General of the Forces Nouvelles, and current Prime
Minister of Côte d’Ivoire
A crisis economy
3. The Ivorian crisis
A decade of uncertainty
Félix Houphouët-Boigny
Succession struggles
’Zone de confiance’, Bouaké
Guillaume Soro & Laurent Gbagbo
The Ivorian crisis
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Ethnicised politics of belonging
The rhetoric of Ivoirité
Zone de confiance
Ouagadougou Peace Accords, August 2007
Guillaume Soro named Prime Minister
Demilitarisation of Forces Nouvelles
Elections scheduled for 29 November
4. The Elite Exodus from
Korhogo
Conflict related mobility beyond conventional
’IDP’s
Retracting employment opportunities
Who leaves a conflict zone and who is left
behind?
Elite Exodus
Globalisation
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’The dimension along which those ’high up’ and
‘low down’ are plotted in a society of consumers, is
their degree of mobility – their freedom to choose
where to be’ (Bauman 1998)
5. No War No Peace
The Ouagadougou Accords and the
Admistrative Transition in Korhogo
The state administration returning from
exile
The state administration returning from
exile
The state administration returning from
exile
The State administration returning from
exile
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Préfécture officials returned in October 2007
Their presence still mainly symbolic;
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Under the protection of the Forces Nouvelles
No police force
Increasing insecurity because of armed excombatants (no DDR)
The crisis not over until elections
The Forces Nouvelles still in power
The Forces Nouvelles still in power
The Forces Nouvelles still in power
The Forces Nouvelles still in power
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Internal divisions within the ranks of the Forces
Nouvelles
Koné Zackaria and others did not want the crisis to
end
the Delegate of the Secretary General does not
consider the administrative transition an obligation
until the elections are “carried out in a satisfactory
manner”
Street-level reflections on the
administrative transition
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”I will believe in the elections the day I enter the
voting booth!”
Parallels to post-1999
Register to acquire ID-papers
Distrust in voter-registration process
Room for protest?
”Ill faut des changements!”
A call for state recognition
“The imagination of the rebellion as a new era of
political articulation draws on the changing
experience of the everyday social world. The
experience that another political and social order
was possible changed the expectations about future
institutionalisations of power. From the
northerners’ point of view, there is no way back to
the former post-colonial state and its practices of
statehood” (Förster 2009:21)
Challenges to the renewed political
process
« Le très faible renouvellement de l'élite n'est pas
banal en Côte d'Ivoire. Ce sont ceux-là même qui
ont plongé le pays dans la guerre qui prétendent lui
offrir les dividendes de la paix » (Toulou 2008:1314).
5. Generational perspectives
on the Ivorian crisis
The struggle for social becoming in West
Africa
Paths to adulthood
Social becoming
Family idioms/expectations
Intergenerational tensions
A ’Youth Revolution’?
”Re-generating the Nation” (Arnaut 2005)
”... at least since the December 1999 coup d’état –
sometimes called the coup d’état des jeunes ... – ...
youngsters have incessantly manifested themselves
as new political actors ... This became even more
apparent when the military insurgency of
September 2002 resulted in the formation of two
movements whose names strongly evoke
rejuvenation: the ’Young Patriotes’ (Jeunes
Patroites) [and the] ... ’New Forces’ (Forces
Nouvelles) ...” (p.111)
”Re-generating the Nation” (Arnaut 2005)
”... it is difficult to imagine at his point how any
alternative political leader will be able to formulate a
new future for Côte d’Ivoire without taking on
board the ’youth’ that over the last decade and more
have so thoroughly inscribed themselves in projects
for the regeneration of the Ivorian nation” (p.140)
A ’Youth Revolution’?
For better or worse, most of what is presently happening that is
new, provocative, and engaging in politics, education, the arts,
social relations … is the creation either of youth who are
profoundly, even fanatically, alienated from the parental
generation, or of those who address themselves primarily to
the young. (Theodore Rozack, The Making of a Counter
Culture, 1969)
A ’Youth Revolution’?
A ’Youth Revolution’?
A ’Youth Revolution’?
A ’Youth Revolution’?
A ’Youth Revolution’?
A ’Youth Revolution’?
Continuities in Social
Reproduction?
”West African Insurgencies in Agrarian
Perspective” (Chauveau & Richards 2008)
”... despite the growing tensions inside the families,
the customary moral economy still retains the
respect of youth. The claims staked by the young
rural ’patroits’ do not question the symbolic system
of a gerontocratic order from which all members
of the younger generation stabd eventually to
benefit ... It is the elders, not the institution, that
appear to have failed” (p.534)
Discussion
Reflections on a Case Study of Everyday Life
in Post-Conflict Korhogo