Bruce Whitehouse
Biographic Data
| ID | 101952 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bruce Whitehouse |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bruce |
| FAMILY NAME | Whitehouse |
| SIGNATURE | WHITEHOUSE B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lehigh University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0966-2003 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 138 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Sovereigntism and the emerging politics of eternity in Mali
This paper examines the political imaginaries underpinning Mali’s dramatic rejection of liberalism in the wake of Mali’s most recent military coups in August 2020 and May 2021. Mali’s post-democratic leaders have skilfully employed these imaginaries to gain public support and shore up their power against real and perceived threats at home and abroad. Applying Timothy Snyder’s concept of ‘the politics of eternity’, the paper examines the discourse…
Enduring Polygamy: Plural Marriage and Social Change in an African Metropolis
Why hasn’t polygamous marriage died out in African cities, as experts once expected it would? Enduring Polygamy considers this question in one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities: Bamako, the capital of Mali, where one in four wives is in a polygamous marriage. Using polygamy as a lens through which to survey sweeping changes in urban life, it offers ethnographic and demographic insights into the customs, gender norms and hierarchies, kinship stru…
Embodied Engineering: Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali
Throughout the twentieth century, massive development projects promised to improve living standards in communities all over the globe through scientific knowledge and modern technology. Most scholars who study such projects focus on their many failures and unintended consequences. Historian Laura Ann Twagira offers a novel twist by showing how the labor and agency of West African women sustained one struggling French colonial agriculture scheme, …
When a Father Speaks, the Child Cannot Answer Back: Patriarchal Anxiety, Gender Equality, and Malian State Authority
In long intertwined constructions of political and household authority, the figure of the domestic patriarch has served as an analogy for the centralized postcolonial state of Mali, even as it clashes with discourses of natural rights stemming from the European Enlightenment. In early twentyfirst-century Mali, anxieties ran rampant among senior men who feared losing their status and privileges. These anxieties came to a head during efforts by the…
Of Masks and Masculinities in Africa
Contemporary forms of precarity, migration, connectivity, and sociality have transformed what it means to be a man in many African communities. Responding with agency and creativity to various incentives and constraints, Africans have adapted practices pertaining to labour, marriage, and sexuality to the exigencies of modern life amid the impacts of European colonialism, rapid urban growth, economic hardship, and political conflict. Drawing upon …
Patriarchal Anxieties and Masculine Sexual Privilege in Contemporary Urban Mali
The neoliberal transformation of Mali's burgeoning capital city, Bamako, has undermined men's capacity to provide for their households and dependents even as it has boosted women's economic participation, leading senior males to express mounting anxieties over their declining economic power. As more men find themselves unable to assure economic stability for the women and children under their charge, many double down in their bid to exercise auth…
Male Dominance Versus Female Hidden Power: Patriarchy, Marriage, and Gender in Bamako, Mali
Comme plusieurs pays sahéliens, le Mali est classé dans les derniers rangs des indices mondiaux des inégalités hommes-femmes. Les Maliennes font face à plusieurs coutumes et institutions patriarcales qui limitent leurs pouvoirs et opportunités. Pourtant, de nombreuses personnes au Mali pensent que les analyses fondées sur l’universalité supposée des droits humains perçoivent mal le rôle des femmes dans leur société, et qu’elles ignorent notamment…
Left in the Cold: The Mirage of Marriage and Family Law Reform in Post-Colonial Mali
Located in Africa’s Sahel region, the Republic of Mali enjoyed various fruits of its transition to political pluralism and liberal economic restructuring from the 1990s to the early 2000s. When the Malian government sought to amend civil laws governing marriage and family life, and eliminate legal discrimination against women, however, it faced considerable political opposition. Islamic civil society groups capitalised on men’s heightened anxieti…
A Festival of Brigands: In Search of Democracy and Political Legitimacy in Mali
Mali's coup d'état in March 2012 and the subsequent occupation of northern Mali by Islamist and separatist rebels took many observers by surprise. How could an erstwhile model of peaceful democratic transition collapse so swiftly? Why did so few ordinary Malians stand up in defence of their 20-year-old democracy? Combining accounts from Malian and foreign journalists with observations made in Bamako leading up to and during the dramatic events of…
Political Participation and Mobilization after Mali's 2012 Coup
If the sudden downfall of Mali's officially democratic system in early 2012 surprised many observers, the failings of the Malian state-including public disaffection with the political process, weak rule of law, and inadequate delivery of basic services-were widely known both at home and abroad. Focusing on activists based in Bamako, this article assesses Malian civil society's response to these challenges since the March 2012 military coup and co…
Introduction: Rethinking Challenges to State Sovereignty in Mali and Northwest Africa
In framing its analysis around the concept of northwest Africa, this article examines not only the challenges for regional security and state authority in that region but also the processes through which regions are constructed by both local and international actors. It focuses especially on northern Mali and the various types of separatist, jihadist, and criminal networks that operate in this territory. The goal of this article, and of the speci…
Definitions and the Experience of Fertility Problems: Infertile and Sub-fertile Women, Childless Mothers, and Honorary Mothers in Two Southern Nigerian Communities
Although infertility causes women considerable grief, social stigma, and economic deprivation, scholars have paid little attention to infertility's definitions that may depart from the standard Western usage and how such definitions influence the way women experience the condition. This article, by listening to individual women's experiences of infertility in two Nigerian communities, examines these definitions and differentiates between cultural…
The Stranger's Code: Explaining the Persistence of Distinct Identity among West African Traders in Brazzaville, Congo
TSEG (Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis) - The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, is het Nederlands-Vlaamse vaktijdschrift op het gebied van de sociale en economische geschiedenis
One hippopotamus and eight blind analysts: A multivocal analysis of the 2012 political crisis in the divided Republic of Mali
This is an exercise in contemporary history that aims to give a comprehensive background and analysis to the current (2012) political crisis in Mali, generated by the start of a new Tuareg nationalist uprising against the state, complemented by a coordinated attack on the state by both international (AQIM) and local Jihadi-Salafi movements, leading to a coup d'état against the incumbent President Touré, and finallly a political stalemate of great…
Migrants and Strangers in an African City: Exile, Dignity, Belonging
Finding place and identity in a globalized world
The Force of Action: Legitimizing the Coup in Bamako, Mali
The coup d'état that occurred in Bamako in March 2012 brought a previously unknown army captain named Amadou Sanogo to power. This paper analyses Malian media reports to explore how Sanogo and his associates sought to legitimize their takeover with reference to local conceptions of heroism, power and destiny, and how Sanogo's public image resonated with time-honoured narratives about heroic figures in Malian culture. This case demonstrates that u…
Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War by Charles Piot
Approche comparative des familles dispersées (Mali-Congo): Éducation et espaces nationaux
La littérature sur la « famille transnationale » présuppose souvent que la dispersion spatiale des familles au-delà des frontières nationales diffère de la dispersion spatiale des familles à l’intérieur d’un même État-nation. Mais en quoi ces deux formes de dispersion se distinguent-elles ? Pour répondre à cette question, l’article se base sur l’analyse de données ethnographiques portant sur trois communautés : une communauté rurale dans la régio…
Suffering Infertility: The Impact of Infertility on Women's Life Experiences in Two Nigerian Communities
This paper examines the experiences of women with infertility in two Nigerian communities with different systems of descent and historically different levels of infertility. First, the paper focuses on the life experiences of individual women across the two communities and second, it compares these experiences with those of their fertile counterparts, in each community. In doing this, women who are childless are distinguished from those with subf…
Transnational childrearing and the preservation of transnational identity in Brazzaville, Congo
Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at two ends of an intra-Africa migration flow (Mali and the Republic of Congo), in this article I examine the role of childrearing practices in the maintenance of transnationalism. I consider different approaches to transnational childrearing by migrant parents and their reasons for adopting them, and delineate three common modes. The most widespread and socially validated approach is to send children ho…
The problem of infertility in high fertility populations: Meanings, consequences and coping mechanisms in two Nigerian communities
Migrants et insécurité existentielle: Le cas de Brazzaville
Un peu partout sur le continent africain, les immigrés originaires d’Afrique de l’Ouest sont victimes de violences et de discriminations. En Afrique du Sud, en Côte d’Ivoire ou en République du Congo, le ressentiment monte parmi les populations autochtones. Dans un contexte de crise économique, elles reprochent aux migrants d’accaparer les emplois. C’est le cas à Brazzaville, où il est difficile pour les Ouest-Africains de s’intégrer. Plongés dan…
Discrimination, Despoliation and Irreconcilable Difference: Host-Immigrant Tensions in Brazzaville, Congo
For generations, immigrants from other African countries have comprised a significant minority of residents in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo. These immigrants constitute several distinct 'stranger' populations within Congolese society. While they play a significant role in the Congolese economy, they also encounter discrimination in their daily lives and face hostility from indigenous Congolese. Popular discourses in Brazzaville w…
One hippopotamus and eight blind analysts: A multivocal analysis of the 2012 political crisis in the divided Republic of Mali
This is an exercise in contemporary history that aims to give a comprehensive background and analysis to the current (2012) political crisis in Mali, generated by the start of a new Tuareg nationalist uprising against the state, complemented by a coordinated attack on the state by both international (AQIM) and local Jihadi-Salafi movements, leading to a coup d'état against the incumbent President Touré, and finallly a political stalemate of great…
The Force of Action: Legitimizing the Coup in Bamako, Mali
The coup d'état that occurred in Bamako in March 2012 brought a previously unknown army captain named Amadou Sanogo to power. This paper analyses Malian media reports to explore how Sanogo and his associates sought to legitimize their takeover with reference to local conceptions of heroism, power and destiny, and how Sanogo's public image resonated with time-honoured narratives about heroic figures in Malian culture. This case demonstrates that u…
Transnational childrearing and the preservation of transnational identity in Brazzaville, Congo
Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at two ends of an intra-Africa migration flow (Mali and the Republic of Congo), in this article I examine the role of childrearing practices in the maintenance of transnationalism. I consider different approaches to transnational childrearing by migrant parents and their reasons for adopting them, and delineate three common modes. The most widespread and socially validated approach is to send children ho…
Introduction: Rethinking Challenges to State Sovereignty in Mali and Northwest Africa
In framing its analysis around the concept of northwest Africa, this article examines not only the challenges for regional security and state authority in that region but also the processes through which regions are constructed by both local and international actors. It focuses especially on northern Mali and the various types of separatist, jihadist, and criminal networks that operate in this territory. The goal of this article, and of the speci…
The problem of infertility in high fertility populations: Meanings, consequences and coping mechanisms in two Nigerian communities
Political Participation and Mobilization after Mali's 2012 Coup
If the sudden downfall of Mali's officially democratic system in early 2012 surprised many observers, the failings of the Malian state-including public disaffection with the political process, weak rule of law, and inadequate delivery of basic services-were widely known both at home and abroad. Focusing on activists based in Bamako, this article assesses Malian civil society's response to these challenges since the March 2012 military coup and co…
Definitions and the Experience of Fertility Problems: Infertile and Sub-fertile Women, Childless Mothers, and Honorary Mothers in Two Southern Nigerian Communities
Although infertility causes women considerable grief, social stigma, and economic deprivation, scholars have paid little attention to infertility's definitions that may depart from the standard Western usage and how such definitions influence the way women experience the condition. This article, by listening to individual women's experiences of infertility in two Nigerian communities, examines these definitions and differentiates between cultural…
Patriarchal Anxieties and Masculine Sexual Privilege in Contemporary Urban Mali
The neoliberal transformation of Mali's burgeoning capital city, Bamako, has undermined men's capacity to provide for their households and dependents even as it has boosted women's economic participation, leading senior males to express mounting anxieties over their declining economic power. As more men find themselves unable to assure economic stability for the women and children under their charge, many double down in their bid to exercise auth…
A Festival of Brigands: In Search of Democracy and Political Legitimacy in Mali
Mali's coup d'état in March 2012 and the subsequent occupation of northern Mali by Islamist and separatist rebels took many observers by surprise. How could an erstwhile model of peaceful democratic transition collapse so swiftly? Why did so few ordinary Malians stand up in defence of their 20-year-old democracy? Combining accounts from Malian and foreign journalists with observations made in Bamako leading up to and during the dramatic events of…
Discrimination, Despoliation and Irreconcilable Difference: Host-Immigrant Tensions in Brazzaville, Congo
For generations, immigrants from other African countries have comprised a significant minority of residents in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo. These immigrants constitute several distinct 'stranger' populations within Congolese society. While they play a significant role in the Congolese economy, they also encounter discrimination in their daily lives and face hostility from indigenous Congolese. Popular discourses in Brazzaville w…
When a Father Speaks, the Child Cannot Answer Back: Patriarchal Anxiety, Gender Equality, and Malian State Authority
In long intertwined constructions of political and household authority, the figure of the domestic patriarch has served as an analogy for the centralized postcolonial state of Mali, even as it clashes with discourses of natural rights stemming from the European Enlightenment. In early twentyfirst-century Mali, anxieties ran rampant among senior men who feared losing their status and privileges. These anxieties came to a head during efforts by the…
Left in the Cold: The Mirage of Marriage and Family Law Reform in Post-Colonial Mali
Located in Africa’s Sahel region, the Republic of Mali enjoyed various fruits of its transition to political pluralism and liberal economic restructuring from the 1990s to the early 2000s. When the Malian government sought to amend civil laws governing marriage and family life, and eliminate legal discrimination against women, however, it faced considerable political opposition. Islamic civil society groups capitalised on men’s heightened anxieti…
Migrants et insécurité existentielle: Le cas de Brazzaville
Un peu partout sur le continent africain, les immigrés originaires d’Afrique de l’Ouest sont victimes de violences et de discriminations. En Afrique du Sud, en Côte d’Ivoire ou en République du Congo, le ressentiment monte parmi les populations autochtones. Dans un contexte de crise économique, elles reprochent aux migrants d’accaparer les emplois. C’est le cas à Brazzaville, où il est difficile pour les Ouest-Africains de s’intégrer. Plongés dan…
Transnational childrearing and the preservation of transnational identity in Brazzaville, Congo
Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at two ends of an intra-Africa migration flow (Mali and the Republic of Congo), in this article I examine the role of childrearing practices in the maintenance of transnationalism. I consider different approaches to transnational childrearing by migrant parents and their reasons for adopting them, and delineate three common modes. The most widespread and socially validated approach is to send children ho…
The problem of infertility in high fertility populations: Meanings, consequences and coping mechanisms in two Nigerian communities
Migrants et insécurité existentielle: Le cas de Brazzaville
Un peu partout sur le continent africain, les immigrés originaires d’Afrique de l’Ouest sont victimes de violences et de discriminations. En Afrique du Sud, en Côte d’Ivoire ou en République du Congo, le ressentiment monte parmi les populations autochtones. Dans un contexte de crise économique, elles reprochent aux migrants d’accaparer les emplois. C’est le cas à Brazzaville, où il est difficile pour les Ouest-Africains de s’intégrer. Plongés dan…
Discrimination, Despoliation and Irreconcilable Difference: Host-Immigrant Tensions in Brazzaville, Congo
For generations, immigrants from other African countries have comprised a significant minority of residents in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo. These immigrants constitute several distinct 'stranger' populations within Congolese society. While they play a significant role in the Congolese economy, they also encounter discrimination in their daily lives and face hostility from indigenous Congolese. Popular discourses in Brazzaville w…
Suffering Infertility: The Impact of Infertility on Women's Life Experiences in Two Nigerian Communities
This paper examines the experiences of women with infertility in two Nigerian communities with different systems of descent and historically different levels of infertility. First, the paper focuses on the life experiences of individual women across the two communities and second, it compares these experiences with those of their fertile counterparts, in each community. In doing this, women who are childless are distinguished from those with subf…
Approche comparative des familles dispersées (Mali-Congo): Éducation et espaces nationaux
La littérature sur la « famille transnationale » présuppose souvent que la dispersion spatiale des familles au-delà des frontières nationales diffère de la dispersion spatiale des familles à l’intérieur d’un même État-nation. Mais en quoi ces deux formes de dispersion se distinguent-elles ? Pour répondre à cette question, l’article se base sur l’analyse de données ethnographiques portant sur trois communautés : une communauté rurale dans la régio…
Migrants and Strangers in an African City: Exile, Dignity, Belonging
Finding place and identity in a globalized world
The Force of Action: Legitimizing the Coup in Bamako, Mali
The coup d'état that occurred in Bamako in March 2012 brought a previously unknown army captain named Amadou Sanogo to power. This paper analyses Malian media reports to explore how Sanogo and his associates sought to legitimize their takeover with reference to local conceptions of heroism, power and destiny, and how Sanogo's public image resonated with time-honoured narratives about heroic figures in Malian culture. This case demonstrates that u…
Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War by Charles Piot
The Stranger's Code: Explaining the Persistence of Distinct Identity among West African Traders in Brazzaville, Congo
TSEG (Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis) - The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, is het Nederlands-Vlaamse vaktijdschrift op het gebied van de sociale en economische geschiedenis
One hippopotamus and eight blind analysts: A multivocal analysis of the 2012 political crisis in the divided Republic of Mali
This is an exercise in contemporary history that aims to give a comprehensive background and analysis to the current (2012) political crisis in Mali, generated by the start of a new Tuareg nationalist uprising against the state, complemented by a coordinated attack on the state by both international (AQIM) and local Jihadi-Salafi movements, leading to a coup d'état against the incumbent President Touré, and finallly a political stalemate of great…
Definitions and the Experience of Fertility Problems: Infertile and Sub-fertile Women, Childless Mothers, and Honorary Mothers in Two Southern Nigerian Communities
Although infertility causes women considerable grief, social stigma, and economic deprivation, scholars have paid little attention to infertility's definitions that may depart from the standard Western usage and how such definitions influence the way women experience the condition. This article, by listening to individual women's experiences of infertility in two Nigerian communities, examines these definitions and differentiates between cultural…
Introduction: Rethinking Challenges to State Sovereignty in Mali and Northwest Africa
In framing its analysis around the concept of northwest Africa, this article examines not only the challenges for regional security and state authority in that region but also the processes through which regions are constructed by both local and international actors. It focuses especially on northern Mali and the various types of separatist, jihadist, and criminal networks that operate in this territory. The goal of this article, and of the speci…
Political Participation and Mobilization after Mali's 2012 Coup
If the sudden downfall of Mali's officially democratic system in early 2012 surprised many observers, the failings of the Malian state-including public disaffection with the political process, weak rule of law, and inadequate delivery of basic services-were widely known both at home and abroad. Focusing on activists based in Bamako, this article assesses Malian civil society's response to these challenges since the March 2012 military coup and co…
A Festival of Brigands: In Search of Democracy and Political Legitimacy in Mali
Mali's coup d'état in March 2012 and the subsequent occupation of northern Mali by Islamist and separatist rebels took many observers by surprise. How could an erstwhile model of peaceful democratic transition collapse so swiftly? Why did so few ordinary Malians stand up in defence of their 20-year-old democracy? Combining accounts from Malian and foreign journalists with observations made in Bamako leading up to and during the dramatic events of…
Male Dominance Versus Female Hidden Power: Patriarchy, Marriage, and Gender in Bamako, Mali
Comme plusieurs pays sahéliens, le Mali est classé dans les derniers rangs des indices mondiaux des inégalités hommes-femmes. Les Maliennes font face à plusieurs coutumes et institutions patriarcales qui limitent leurs pouvoirs et opportunités. Pourtant, de nombreuses personnes au Mali pensent que les analyses fondées sur l’universalité supposée des droits humains perçoivent mal le rôle des femmes dans leur société, et qu’elles ignorent notamment…
Left in the Cold: The Mirage of Marriage and Family Law Reform in Post-Colonial Mali
Located in Africa’s Sahel region, the Republic of Mali enjoyed various fruits of its transition to political pluralism and liberal economic restructuring from the 1990s to the early 2000s. When the Malian government sought to amend civil laws governing marriage and family life, and eliminate legal discrimination against women, however, it faced considerable political opposition. Islamic civil society groups capitalised on men’s heightened anxieti…
Enduring Polygamy: Plural Marriage and Social Change in an African Metropolis
Why hasn’t polygamous marriage died out in African cities, as experts once expected it would? Enduring Polygamy considers this question in one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities: Bamako, the capital of Mali, where one in four wives is in a polygamous marriage. Using polygamy as a lens through which to survey sweeping changes in urban life, it offers ethnographic and demographic insights into the customs, gender norms and hierarchies, kinship stru…
Embodied Engineering: Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali
Throughout the twentieth century, massive development projects promised to improve living standards in communities all over the globe through scientific knowledge and modern technology. Most scholars who study such projects focus on their many failures and unintended consequences. Historian Laura Ann Twagira offers a novel twist by showing how the labor and agency of West African women sustained one struggling French colonial agriculture scheme, …
When a Father Speaks, the Child Cannot Answer Back: Patriarchal Anxiety, Gender Equality, and Malian State Authority
In long intertwined constructions of political and household authority, the figure of the domestic patriarch has served as an analogy for the centralized postcolonial state of Mali, even as it clashes with discourses of natural rights stemming from the European Enlightenment. In early twentyfirst-century Mali, anxieties ran rampant among senior men who feared losing their status and privileges. These anxieties came to a head during efforts by the…
Of Masks and Masculinities in Africa
Contemporary forms of precarity, migration, connectivity, and sociality have transformed what it means to be a man in many African communities. Responding with agency and creativity to various incentives and constraints, Africans have adapted practices pertaining to labour, marriage, and sexuality to the exigencies of modern life amid the impacts of European colonialism, rapid urban growth, economic hardship, and political conflict. Drawing upon …
Patriarchal Anxieties and Masculine Sexual Privilege in Contemporary Urban Mali
The neoliberal transformation of Mali's burgeoning capital city, Bamako, has undermined men's capacity to provide for their households and dependents even as it has boosted women's economic participation, leading senior males to express mounting anxieties over their declining economic power. As more men find themselves unable to assure economic stability for the women and children under their charge, many double down in their bid to exercise auth…
Sovereigntism and the emerging politics of eternity in Mali
This paper examines the political imaginaries underpinning Mali’s dramatic rejection of liberalism in the wake of Mali’s most recent military coups in August 2020 and May 2021. Mali’s post-democratic leaders have skilfully employed these imaginaries to gain public support and shore up their power against real and perceived threats at home and abroad. Applying Timothy Snyder’s concept of ‘the politics of eternity’, the paper examines the discourse…
Sociology (17 works) · Political science (16 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · African Studies and Ethnography (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender (8 works) · African Studies and Geopolitics (7 works) · African history and culture studies (6 works)