A 'Despicable Shambles

Labour, Property and Status in Faya-Largeau, Northern Chad

Bibliographic Data

ID2103109
AuthorsJ Brachet (0000-0001-9041-0836, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, corresponding author), J Scheele (0000-0001-7224-7668)
Year2016
Volume86
Issue1
Pages122-141
Publication date2016-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0001972015000819
OpenAlexW2315685649
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited30

Faya-Largeau, the largest oasis in northern Chad, seems to present a classic picture of Saharan labour relations and status groups. Colonial officers spoke of nomadic 'overlords' who used to exploit sedentary 'serfs' of slave descent, but indirectly favoured the latter; today, former status relations are renegotiated, at times violently so. Access to vital resources, and especially agricultural land, is the focus of much contemporary conflict. Yet, on a closer look, this picture becomes less familiar: local agriculture requires little labour, property rights are uncertain, bilateral descent, exogamy and a high degree of mobility blur boundaries, while state involvement remains limited and ambiguous, and education little valued. Status, property and labour hence emerge as contextual categories that depend on as much as they constitute a historically specific and inherently unstable mode of production

Colonialism · Economics · Exogamy · Exploit · Geography · Mode of production · Political economy · Political science · Production (economics · Property (philosophy · Property rights · Sociology · African Studies and Ethnography · African Studies and Geopolitics · Agriculture and Rural Development Research · Law