-
Recent Posts
Archives
- December 2023
- January 2023
- August 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- October 2021
- June 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- November 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- December 2018
- July 2018
- August 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- September 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- November 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- October 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
Meta
Follow me on Twitter
My Tweets
Tag Archives: books
How France lost Mali… and the Sahel
“The French military, suffused with colonial ideology and stuck in obsolete schemas of the ‘War on Terror,’ is incapable of correctly analyzing the situation. Caught between French decision-makers unwilling to lose face and African leaders shirking their responsibilities, it is … Continue reading
The mirage of Malian democracy
Today marks 33 years since Mali embarked on its transition from single-party authoritarian rule to multiparty democracy. Many of us observing events in the country have presumed that throughout its two decades of multiparty, democratic rule beginning in the early … Continue reading
Exploring risk and resilience in rural Mali
The year’s most notable book of Mali-focused research is, to my mind, Camilla Toulmin’s Land, Investment, and Migration: Thirty-Five Years of Village Life in Mali. Based on the author’s fieldwork in the community of Dlonguebougou (central Segou region, north of … Continue reading
Getting a read on Serval
From January 2013 through July 2014, the French military carried out on Malian territory a vast intervention codenamed Opération Serval. It has been reputed to be the largest unilateral overseas deployment of France’s armed forces since the Algerian war ended … Continue reading
Writing the Afropolis
Ryan Skinner’s Bamako Sounds is undoubtedly the most intelligent book I’ve read about contemporary Bamako in general, and its music scene in particular. It’s an important work, less for what it says about a given set of musical styles than … Continue reading
What Mali’s recent past reveals about its present woes, Part 2: Of chiefs, slaves, and “paranoid nationalism”
In his recent book From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel, historian Gregory Mann describes how state sovereignty was fashioned in the Sahel following the end of colonial rule. In the previous post, we discussed his concept of … Continue reading
What Mali’s recent past reveals about its present woes, Part 1: The road to nongovernmentality
These days the sovereignty of the Malian state looks more hypothetical than ever. The government’s control over its northern regions ranges from tenuous to nonexistent. Kidal has been firmly under the rule of Tuareg separatists for two years, while only … Continue reading
Book review: Can Judd Ryker save Malian democracy?
There are not a great many novels set in Mali. The country has had its own small literary scene since the 1950s, featuring writers like Amadou Hampâté Bâ, Massa Makan Diabaté, Moussa Konaté, and Yambo Ouologuem. Maryse Condé’s Segu (1987) and … Continue reading
What threat from Mali’s Islamist groups?
Last month British Prime Minister David Cameron said Islamist terrorist groups in North Africa pose a significant threat to global stability. The Islamist presence in Algeria and Mali, he said, is “linked to al-Qaeda, it wants to destroy our way … Continue reading
Bridges from Bamako 