Références (Niger)

Contenus

• Academic Article

  Un périodique islamiste au Niger : Iqra
• Academic Article

  Une occasion manquée : le Code de la famille dans l'orageuse transition nigérienne

  Revised and translated version of 'The moral and the political in African democratization: The Code de la Famille in Niger's troubled transition.
• Chapter

  Vernacular Media, Muslim Ethics, and “Conservative” Critiques of Power in the Niger Bend, Mali
• Chapter

  Walking to the Makaranta: Production, Circulation, and Transmission of Islamic Learning in Urban Niger
• Chapter

  Weddings, Wealth and Women's Value in an Islamic Town of Niger
• Academic Article

  When Spirits Start Veiling: The Case of the Veiled She-Devil in a Muslim Town of Niger

  In Niger, women have long been seen as embodiments of virtue (or wickedness). Of late, with the rise of reformist Islam, their role as upholders of purity has become key to the definition of moral community. Debates over the control of female sexuality and the ordering of social spaces have intensified. While such debates are characteristically framed in Islamic terms, one should not assume that pre-Islamic cosmologies—often denigrated by Islam—have become irrelevant to local moral concerns. In August 2003, rumors of a veiled she-devil haunting the streets of Zinder in search of seductive encounters provoked a moral panic, which eventually received a full account in a Nigérien newspaper. Muslim reformists argued the apparition was meant to discourage women from veiling, but others countered that it served as a warning to philandering husbands. It demonstrated that far from waning under the impact of Islamic revivals, figures of the pre-Islamic past are well entrenched in Islamic towns. Besides suggesting that non-Muslim others cannot be consigned to history, the rumors of spiritual intrusion discussed in this article highlight the centrality of the non-Muslim other in popular constructions of Muslimhood. In an age of renewed Muslim anxiety about forms of femininity perceived to conflict with the image of virtuous womanhood, the she-devil offered Nigérien Muslims a means of pondering the dangers of women's sexuality. At another level, her tale is about spirits parodying Islam so as to reveal the limits of morality. By subversively playing with notions of modesty and morality, the spirit presented a sobering critique of the hypocrisy of the veil in contemporary Niger.
• Academic Article

  Witchcraft, Blood-Sucking Spirits, and the Demonization of Islam in Dogondoutchi, Niger

  In this article, I discuss how the spread of Islam in the town of Dogondoutchi, Niger has profoundly transformed the local imaginary, helping fuel perceptions of witchcraft as a thoroughly Muslim practice. I suggest that it is because witchcraft is seen as a hallmark of tradition that Muslims, despite their claim to have embraced modernity, are accused of being witches. For a small minority unconvinced of the superiority of Islam over local religious traditions, witchcraft offers a convenient means of demonizing Muslims and a powerful commentary on the ways that the globalizing impact of Islam has supposedly transformed local modes of sociality and kinship as well as forms of wealth production and consumption.
• Book

  Women and Islamic Revival in a West African Town

  In the small town of Dogondoutchi, Niger, Malam Awal, a charismatic Sufi preacher, was recruited by local Muslim leaders to denounce the practices of reformist Muslims. Malam Awal's message has been viewed as a mixed blessing by Muslim women who have seen new definitions of Islam and Muslim practice impact their place and role in society. This study follows the career of Malam Awal and documents the engagement of women in the religious debates that are refashioning their everyday lives. Adeline Masquelier reveals how these women have had to define Islam on their own terms, especially as a practice that governs education, participation in prayer, domestic activities, wedding customs, and who wears the veil and how. Masquelier's richly detailed narrative presents new understandings of what it means to be a Muslim woman in Africa today.
• Thesis

  Women, ecology and Islam in the making of modern Hausa cultural history
• Academic Article

  Women, Religion, and the Discourses of Legal Ideology in Niger Republic

  There is an international movement that advocates the establishment of quotas for women, especially in political and governmental positions. Partly as a result of its initiatives and efforts, countries have introduced legislation that endorses its spirit. These efforts have been important in addressing the gender gap; however, the means of articulating these legislative measures and implementing them vary from country to another. This article focuses on the textual formulation of the Quota Bill (2001) in Niger and how secularist and Islamist political elite women responded to it during the debate that led to its legal adoption.
• 
  Book

  Women's Medicine: The Zar-Bori Cult in Africa and Beyond

  The largest indigenous cult in Africa concerned primarly with women's complaints, the zar-bori cult extends from West Africa to the Sudan and North Africa and has spread into the middle east. Combining historical, anthropological and psychiatric insights, Women's Medicine presents an integrated study of this spirit-healing cult. In this first, comprehensive account, zar-bori's origins, spread and persistence and its importance in the lives of women, even in such 'modernised' settings as Egypt, Tunisia and the Gulf States, throws new light on the environments in which such subversive cults thrive. Previous studies have treated zar and bori as separate phenomena. This is the first work which shows how they are related and how they have developed over time and space.