The Value of Disorder (African Studies)
Cambridge University Press, 5/9/2019
EAN 9781108428330, ISBN10: 1108428339
Hardcover, 373 pages, 23.5 x 15.7 x 2.2 cm
Language: English
Despite being central to the development of Saharan regional connectivity, northern Chad has been closed to researchers since the late 1960s and thus remains virtually unknown to scholarship. Based on long-term fieldwork, The Value of Disorder is an original and in-depth account of the area and its Tubu majority inhabitants. Julien Brachet and Judith Scheele examine trans-border connectivity and trade; civil war and rebellion; wealth creation and dispersal; labour and gender relations; and aspirations to moral autonomy in northern Chad from an internal point of view - a point of view that in turn participates in a dynamic process of regional interdependence. Vividly ethnographic, the book gives precedence to local categories of value, while asking broader questions about the nature of non-state regional political organisation. Questions that inform current political developments in the Sahara more widely, and have the potential to challenge key concepts in Saharan studies and the social sciences.
Introduction
1. A never-ending conquest
settlement and the making of a Saharan town
2. Fifty shades of Khaki
armed conflict and other entanglements
3. Trouble in the Palm-Grove
labour, status, ownership
4. Tricks of trade
production, protection and predation
5. Great ploys and small expectations
accumulation and dispersal in a half-world
6. The state encompassed
everyday disorder, the aesthetics of violence, and the political imagination
Conclusion.