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In the Global South since the 1980s, when economic downturns under pressure from the forces of neoliberalism eroded social relations, sport and athletes’ bodies have become major loci where masculinity is constituted and debated. Sport masculinity now fills a vacuum left by the evacuation of traditional forms of masculinity, which are no longer available to the new generations of men. For them, the possibility of employment in the sport industries in the Global North has had a transformative effect, despite the extremely limited probability of success. During the same period of time, the world of sport has become commoditized, mediatized, and corporatized, transformations that have been spearheaded by the growing importance of privatized media interests. Professional athletes have become neoliberal subjects responsible for their own destiny in an increasingly demanding and unpredictable labor market. In Cameroon, Fiji, and Senegal, athletic hopefuls prospectively embody this new gendered subjectivity by mobilizing locally available instruments that most closely resemble neoliberal subjectivity, such as Pentecostalism and maraboutism. Through the conduit of sport, the masculine self has been transformed into a neoliberal subject in locations where this is least expected. What emerges is a new approach to masculinity that eschews explanations based on the simple recognition of diverse and hierarchically organized masculinities, and instead recognizes masculinity in its different manifestations as embedded, scalar, relational, and temporally situated.

Agroecology has become an ideological foundation for social and environmental transformation in sub-Saharan Africa. In Senegal, agroecological advocacy coalitions, made up of farmers’ organizations, scientists, NGOs, and IOs, are using agroecology as an umbrella concept for proposing policy changes at multiple scales. We describe the history of the agroecological movement in Senegal in the context of the constitution of a national advocacy coalition. We then examine the “repertoires of collective action” mobilized by the coalition. Four repertoires are identified: technical support and knowledge co-production, territorial governance, alternative food networks, and national policy dialogue. Our analysis highlights the potential that these multi-level approaches have to sustainably transform the current food systems in sub-Saharan Africa. However, our research also reveals the limited agency of farmer organizations and the limitations of a movement that is strongly dependent on NGOs and international donors, leading to a “projectorate” situation in which contradictory policy actions can overlap. We further argue that, although the central government has formally welcomed some of the principles of agroecology into their policy discourse, financial and political interests in pursuing a Green Revolution and co-opting agroecology are pending. This leads to a lack of political and financial autonomy for grassroots farmers’ organizations, limiting the development of counter-hegemonic agroecology. We discuss the conditions under which territorial approaches, and the three other repertoires of collective action, can have significant potential to transform Sub-Saharan Africa in the coming years.

Women’s empowerment is a driving concept in gender and development scholarship. This scholarship often engages quantitative indices of evaluation that are unable to account for culturally specific meaning and nuance that shape local understandings of empowerment. Recent efforts within the field of international development are attempting to create methodological mechanisms for capturing this nuance. This study employs one such method, Community Concept Drawing (CCD), in rural villages within Kenya, Senegal, and Nepal. Findings indicate significant differences between the field sites in the local conceptualization of empowerment. Cross-examination of site-specific data yields an understanding of how cultural norms and values shape local perceptions of empowerment in ways that are critical for research that engages gendered understandings. Furthermore, such analysis is critical to a more accurate understanding of the locally specific context of gender inequity.

Environmental conservation has become a key climate mitigation strategy in the last two decades. Through the multiplication of 'conservation' projects, Africa is one of the main centres of this kind of intervention. While scholars have shown conservation to be a vehicle for the advancement of capitalist interests, scarce attention has been paid to agrarian labour and class dynamics in the African countryside sustaining this development. Drawing on the authors' research in West Senegal, this article develops a conceptual framework for integrating class and peasant labour in the study of capitalist conservation. It shows how conservation-related climate mitigation strategies in Africa nurture and are nurtured by neoliberal and imperialist processes of agrarian change, reinforcing the economic and political vulnerability of African peasants. Alternative, anti-imperial climate change mitigation strategies need to be centred around peasant environmentalisms and their liberation from labour oppression.

This article examines the cultural ambiguity of Senegalese wrestling. Certain discourses around this sport have constructed it as a nostalgic embodiment of traditional, national, or African values. At the same time, other discourses emphasize the sport’s commercialization, its embeddedness in the economics of precarity, and even its inventedness as a tradition. The case of Senegalese wrestling illustrates how traditionality is summoned and put to question in a context of socioeconomic fragmentation. Repinecz offers readings of Aminata Sow Fall’s novel L’Appel des arènes (1982), Cheikh Ndiaye’s film adaptation of the same name (2005), and Boubacar Boris Diop’s novel Doomi Golo (2003 and 2009) to illustrate this analysis.

Goorgoorlou is the eponymous character of a serialized comic strip that emerged in Senegal, in the midst of neoliberal reforms. As with thousands of Senegalese people, Goorgoorlou lost his job because of the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs). He resorted to odd jobs and other resourceful solutions to make ends meet therefore joining an economy of rupture, based on the informal sector. The social costs of the programmes, brought upon by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank gave birth to works of fiction and art that imparted the severity of the hardship. On the ground, everyday Senegalese people had to devise novel practices to cope with their new economic environment. As a result, journalist and caricaturist Alphonse Mendy started Goorgoorlou's adventures in a satirical newspaper. Senegalese people adopted Goorgoorlou and turned him into a national hero. This article analyses the figure of Goorgoorlou as national hero and economic archetype of the informal economy, therefore highlighting the concomitance of the emergence of this character with that of the informal economy in Senegalese society.

Midwife Rokhaya Thiam joined the Fayḍa Tijāniyya Sufi Islamic movement in 2005 and soon became aware of her divine mission to found the Association Mame Astou Diankha. This organization provides free medical services to needy people and organizes economic development projects for women. Rokhaya Thiam exemplifies a broader trend of ‘hybrid’ religious subjects in the Fayḍa Tijāniyya movement who embed neoliberal notions such as ‘development’ and individual entrepreneurial initiative into mystical notions of selfhood, agency and moral order. Such charismatic disciples seem to approach discipleship in liberal fashion, pursuing an individualized mission in contrast to the classic Sufi disciple who passively follows instructions from the shaykh. However, these disciples defy reduction to individual, neoliberal subjectivity, subsuming their agency under a larger spiritual entity responsible for revealing and realizing their mission. This article asks whether such hybridities may be intrinsic to neoliberal subjecthood, which entails being shaped by neoliberal power and knowledge while domesticating them to other ends, rather than being exceptions that emerge on the still-enchanted edges of neoliberalism. Peu après qu'elle ait rejoint en 2005 le mouvement islamique soufi Fayḍa Tijāniyya, Rokhaya Thiam, une sage-femme, a pris rapidement conscience de sa mission divine de fonder l'Association Mame Astou Diankha. Cette organisation fournit des services médicaux gratuits aux nécessiteux et organise des projets de développement économique pour les femmes. Rokhaya Thiam exemplifie une tendance plus générale de sujets religieux « hybrides » au sein du mouvement Fayḍa Tijāniyya qui intègrent des notions néolibérales comme le « développement » et l'entrepreneuriat individuel dans des notions mystiques d'individualité, d'action et d'ordre moral. Ces disciples charismatiques semblent aborder leur statut de disciple de façon libérale, en poursuivant une mission individualisée en rupture avec le disciple soufi classique qui suit passivement les instructions du cheikh. En revanche, on ne peut pas réduire ces disciples à une subjectivité néolibérale individuelle car ils inscrivent leur action sous une entité spirituelle plus vaste qui a la charge de révéler et de réaliser leur mission. Cet article pose la question de savoir si ces hybridités peuvent être intrinsèques au statut de sujet néolibéral qui implique d’être façonné par un pouvoir et un savoir néolibéraux tout en les apprivoisant à d'autres fins, plutôt que de constituer des exceptions émergeant à la marge enchantée du néolibéralisme.

During his term as President, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal sought to make tangible and proximal his 'vision' for the country's future through the construction and rehabilitation of vital arteries in the capital, Dakar. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, this essay takes as its focus these ambitious road projects and their local interpretations and everyday effects. I argue that Dakar's infrastructural transformation made spectacularly visible not only distant and implausible futures but also a very particular vision of the present that rationalized, emphasized, and even celebrated the everyday hardships wrought by infrastructural change. Avowedly ahistorical and centred squarely on the individual, these discourses of hardship cast infrastructural change as a future-focused project brought about through 'temporary' inconveniences and disruptions endured for the sake of the nation. What emerges from this analysis is a more complex view of neo-liberal reform and urban change in contemporary Africa. Durant sa présidence, le Sénégalais Abdoulaye Wade a cherché à rendre tangible et proximale sa « vision » du futur du pays en construisant et en réaménageant de grandes artères dans la capitale, Dakar. S'inspirant de nombreuses recherches ethnographiques, cet essai porte sur ces projets routiers ambitieux, leurs interprétations locales et leur impact au quotidien. L'auteur soutient que la transformation infrastructurelle de Dakar a rendu spectaculairement visibles non seulement des futurs éloignés et invraisemblables, mais aussi une vision très particulière du présent qui a rationnalisé, souligné et même célébré les difficultés du quotidien provoquées par le changement infrastructurel. Manifestement anhistoriques et carrément centrés sur l'individu, ces discours de la difficulté présentent le changement infrastructurel comme un projet orienté vers le futur engendré au travers d'inconvénients et de perturbations « temporaires » endurés pour le bien de la nation. Il ressort de cette analyse une vue plus complexe de la réforme néolibérale et du changement urbain en Afrique contemporaine.

Amidst a \"crisis\" of clandestine migration in West Africa, tales about the exploits of \"missing men\" circulated through Dakar, Senegal. In this article, I explore how these myths enabled debate about the changing parameters of male social visibility, nation building, and social success in the city at the same time that they paradoxically recast as spectacularly present men who had failed to achieve by these standards. I argue that both public discourse about and scholarly analysis of the impact of transnational migration on those left behind recenter the activities of some men, rendering invisible other modes of being and belonging.