Articles by Valerio Colosio
Journal of Ankara Studies, 2024
This study analyses the networks of grassroots associations which constitute the solidarity econo... more This study analyses the networks of grassroots associations which constitute the solidarity economy food chains in Ankara. It is based on a one-year ethnographic study that considered the activities of these networks and connected the ethnographic findings to broader global dynamics related to food chains. The association and networks involved are first described, with a focus on their practices and purposes, and similar cases in other cities in the literature are determined to reach a general conclusion. The main findings of the research are that grassroots associations in Ankara, as with ones triangulated with the existing literature, have a significant impact on the connections between the city and its citizens, as well as between urban and rural areas, by developing alternative practices of food production and exchange. These practices originate from the perceived impoverishment of urban spaces in relation to the loss of both green and farming areas, in addition to local traditional knowledge related to food. Although the social networks of these associations are relatively limited, there is significant potential in terms of advocacy and sensibilization. Moreover, there was growth in critical approaches to urban food and environmental policies during the period of our research due to crises over food prices and COVID-19. The resilience shown by these networks during such times of crisis, as well as their capacity to focus on structural weakness of the food chains in general, and of Ankara urban development model in particular, emphasise the contemporary political relevance of these practices and ideas.
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Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 2022
Histories of othering through race, ethnicity, or other forms of belonging follow context-specifi... more Histories of othering through race, ethnicity, or other forms of belonging follow context-specific trajectories. Building on nine months’ fieldwork in Chad, this article engages with discussions about othering in postcolonial Africa. The article moves from the description of micro-divisions in the Guéra province, in the Chadian Sahel, to discuss theoretical paradigms connecting African discourses on race and ethnicity to precolonial cleavages or colonial divisions, and theories that connect emerging ideas of autochthony with neoliberal reforms of governance. It shows that both precolonial cleavages and colonial shaping of identities were contradictory and remain important because of their use by French colonial and Chad postcolonial governments to divide and rule local people. This has fostered forms of political competition based on othering further reinforced by neoliberal reforms of local governance. The increasing dynamics of othering are not therefore specific to Guéra’s cleavages but connected to divisive forms of governance.
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Africa Today, 2022
In Chad, 1990s decentralization reforms increased the number and importance of customary authorit... more In Chad, 1990s decentralization reforms increased the number and importance of customary authorities. The official purpose of these reforms was to decentralize power, but among customary authorities and local elites they triggered political competitions that ended up reasserting the role and legitimacy of the central state. Examining the renaming of a canton in central Chad, this article analyzes the reasons that make state recognition important for customary authorities and the people they represent. It shows how customary authorities need constantly to reassert their legitimacy to secure access to rights and resources for their inhabitants; this need creates a local political arena where customary actors mainly compete among themselves for recognition, rather than critically challenging the authoritarian modalities of state governance.
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Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines, 2021
In the Sahel, labels related to slavery are often tools used to marginalize specific social group... more In the Sahel, labels related to slavery are often tools used to marginalize specific social groups. Scholars and activists for decades underestimated this issue, which was also underemphasized by theories describing slavery in Africa and among Muslim communities as mild. Exploring two specific labels related to slavery – Yalnas and Kamaya – in Chad, the article argues that the status of slave descendants is deeply connected to the colonial encounter, when most slave descendants’ labels were created; and that if slave ancestry matters today it is mainly because of forms of governance that facilitated the reproduction and political use of these labels. The focus should therefore move on from the debate about African or Muslim slavery and explore contemporary struggles around the meanings of labels used to stigmatize slave descendants.
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Book Sections by Valerio Colosio
Humanitarianism: Keywords, 2020
I wrote three chapters of this dictionary about humanitarianism, edited by Antonio De Lauri. I am... more I wrote three chapters of this dictionary about humanitarianism, edited by Antonio De Lauri. I am enclosing the link for the free download of the book: https://brill.com/view/title/57214
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Slavery: past, present and future, 2016
Legacies of slavery are a relevant social issue in Sahel, a region in continent of Africa. Exclus... more Legacies of slavery are a relevant social issue in Sahel, a region in continent of Africa. Exclusion from land ownership and marriage, as well as social stigma, are the more common modalities of slave-descendants’ marginalisation and are widespread all over the region. During the last thirty years, many civil society organisations based within slave descendant groups have been established to fight against these discriminations. However, these movements did not spread to the Guéra region, in central Chad, which is the focus of my work. This chapter investigates the strategies used by local people to deal with the legacies of slavery in the Guéra region, analysing the reasons that make this context different from other similar cases in Sahel. It argues that the Guéra region has traditionally been a slave-reservoir for the Wadai sultanate (the main pre-colonial political power) and presents the evolution of the region from pre-colonial to colonial times, focusing on the local land tenure system and colonial administrative arrangements as clues to explain the context. The French conquered the Guéra region at the beginning of the 20th century and put people locally labelled as slave-descendants, called Yalnas, in cantons, awarding them with the same rights they gave to the other groups of the region, including those over land. Thus, despite the social stigma, the Yalnas avoided the main form of discrimination, which is the exclusion from land ownership. They were, then, progressively integrated in the region through mixed marriages with the other groups; at the same time, their stigma did not fully disappear, and their rights have sometimes been challenged. Today, the Yalnas have intense interactions with other Guéra ethnic groups, both collaborative and conflictive. The social and ethnic landscape in Guera is complex as in many Sahel contexts, and the legacies of slavery are an important key in order to understand this complexity.
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Shadows of slavery. Refractions of the past, challenges of the present., 2018
Precolonial elites used to enslave the farmers of rural Chad, now they hold them in debt bondage.... more Precolonial elites used to enslave the farmers of rural Chad, now they hold them in debt bondage. How much has changed, how much has not?
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Shadows of slavery. Refractions of the past, challenges of the present., 2018
Memories of slavery affect contemporary political life in many Sahelian countries, but how do sti... more Memories of slavery affect contemporary political life in many Sahelian countries, but how do stigmatised groups use those memories as a tool for integration?
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Doctoral Thesis by Valerio Colosio
Doctoral Thesis, 2018
The aim of this thesis is to explore the social legacies of slavery in the Guéra region, in centr... more The aim of this thesis is to explore the social legacies of slavery in the Guéra region, in central Chad. The topic of the legacy of slavery in the Sahel is receiving increasing attention from both local and global civil society, as well as from scholars. This thesis aims to contribute to these debates, connecting post-slavery issues with the new models of governance developed in the Sahel since the 1990s, and the increasing competition for resources through mobilising ethnic categories. It argues that as the recognition of citizenship rights tends to be related to specific identities, slave ancestry becomes a political tool that is used in different ways.
Based on nine months of fieldwork in Guéra, the thesis explores the complex interactions between a group that is widely seen as slave descendants, Yalnas, meaning “the sons of the people” in Chadian Arabic, and their neighbours. Until it came under French rule in 1911 the Guéra region acted as an effective “reservoir” of slaves for the neighbouring Wadai sultanate, whose warriors regularly took captives from among the scattered groups of local farmers. After the colonial regime’s abolition of slavery, the opportunities for former slaves and the social dynamics related to this were different from those in areas inhabited by former slave-holders. In this context, the ethnonym Yalnas initially facilitated the integration of former slaves locally, whereas today it used to criticize the rights of its members, to the point that people called Yalnas are trying to get rid of this label.
The thesis analyses the narratives of the past of both the Yalnas and other local groups. It brings together the stories recounted by elders and archival sources with contemporary political tensions, to explore the ongoing importance of the presumed past of the Yalnas as slaves. In Guéra, it was relatively easy for slave-descendants to be accepted among other local groups and intermarry with them. However, Yalnas’ integration has been built on contradictions that make their status ambiguous. This ambiguity is central to current contestations over land and citizenship. Since the reforms of the 1990s, a range of new local associations have formed in Guéra. These are used by local leaders to consolidate support and distribute resources on an ethnic basis. In this context, the past of the Yalnas as former slaves has been used as an argument to exclude them from the opportunities created by these associations. In these struggles, narratives about the past are used by all groups as political tools and are critical to secure citizenship rights. A focus on the label Yalnas and its changing uses over time provides important insights about the connection between slavery, identity and citizenship in a former slave reservoir.
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Working papers by Valerio Colosio
Working paper, 2015
Despite the recent decentralization reforms, citizenship and freedom are still problematic in man... more Despite the recent decentralization reforms, citizenship and freedom are still problematic in many Sahel countries. This paper focuses on the topic of citizenship in the Guéra region of central Chad. It opens with a brief history of the region, from its long days as a slave-reservoir for neighbouring Muslim sultanates until colonization by the French at the beginning of the 20th century. It then focuses on the way the French organised the area administratively, facilitating the creation of a local elite through the customary authority system. This arrangement led to the creation of a system in which people could fully enjoy their rights only under the protection of one of the customary authorities recognized by the state. In this process, people previously labelled as the descendants of slaves were able to gain in status and thus become part of the ruling elites. The post-colonial state suffered a long period of instability that preserved and reinforced this system of governance, which was then further strengthened by the recent policies of decentralization. Three cases are presented in order to explain this system of governance and its effects: the stories of David and Abdel, the case of the land around Kuju village and the resettlement of Ibis village. These cases show how local people’s ability to exert their rights depends on the protection of a recognized customary authority. Nowadays, if they are to fully enjoy their rights, Guéra people need to be “citizens of a chief”. The local elites that emerged during the colonial period are still in political control and individuals need to negotiate with them when building their own life projects
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Book Reviews by Valerio Colosio
Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society Volume 12, Issue 1, pages 95-99, 2024
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PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review
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Antropologia, Mar 16, 2015
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Master dissertations by Valerio Colosio
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Papers by Valerio Colosio
Ethnos, 2022
Histories of othering through race, ethnicity, or other forms of belonging follow context-specifi... more Histories of othering through race, ethnicity, or other forms of belonging follow context-specific trajectories. Building on nine months’ fieldwork in Chad, this article engages with discussions about othering in postcolonial Africa. The article moves from the description of micro-divisions in the Guéra province, in the Chadian Sahel, to discuss theoretical paradigms connecting African discourses on race and ethnicity to precolonial cleavages or colonial divisions, and theories that connect emerging ideas of autochthony with neoliberal reforms of governance. It shows that both precolonial cleavages and colonial shaping of identities were contradictory and remain important because of their use by French colonial and Chad postcolonial governments to divide and rule local people. This has fostered forms of political competition based on othering further reinforced by neoliberal reforms of local governance. The increasing dynamics of othering are not therefore specific to Guéra’s cleavages but connected to divisive forms of governance.
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Despite the recent decentralization reforms, citizenship and freedom are still problematic in man... more Despite the recent decentralization reforms, citizenship and freedom are still problematic in many Sahel countries. This paper focuses on the topic of citizenship in the Guera region of central Chad. It opens with a brief history of the region, from its long days as a slave-reservoir for neighbouring Muslim sultanates until colonization by the French at the beginning of the 20th century. It then focuses on the way the French organised the area administratively, facilitating the creation of a local elite through the customary authority system. This arrangement led to the creation of a system in which people could fully enjoy their rights only under the protection of one of the customary authorities recognized by the state. In this process, people previously labelled as the descendants of slaves were able to gain in status and thus become part of the ruling elites. The post-colonial state suffered a long period of instability that preserved and reinforced this system of governance, wh...
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Articles by Valerio Colosio
Book Sections by Valerio Colosio
Doctoral Thesis by Valerio Colosio
Based on nine months of fieldwork in Guéra, the thesis explores the complex interactions between a group that is widely seen as slave descendants, Yalnas, meaning “the sons of the people” in Chadian Arabic, and their neighbours. Until it came under French rule in 1911 the Guéra region acted as an effective “reservoir” of slaves for the neighbouring Wadai sultanate, whose warriors regularly took captives from among the scattered groups of local farmers. After the colonial regime’s abolition of slavery, the opportunities for former slaves and the social dynamics related to this were different from those in areas inhabited by former slave-holders. In this context, the ethnonym Yalnas initially facilitated the integration of former slaves locally, whereas today it used to criticize the rights of its members, to the point that people called Yalnas are trying to get rid of this label.
The thesis analyses the narratives of the past of both the Yalnas and other local groups. It brings together the stories recounted by elders and archival sources with contemporary political tensions, to explore the ongoing importance of the presumed past of the Yalnas as slaves. In Guéra, it was relatively easy for slave-descendants to be accepted among other local groups and intermarry with them. However, Yalnas’ integration has been built on contradictions that make their status ambiguous. This ambiguity is central to current contestations over land and citizenship. Since the reforms of the 1990s, a range of new local associations have formed in Guéra. These are used by local leaders to consolidate support and distribute resources on an ethnic basis. In this context, the past of the Yalnas as former slaves has been used as an argument to exclude them from the opportunities created by these associations. In these struggles, narratives about the past are used by all groups as political tools and are critical to secure citizenship rights. A focus on the label Yalnas and its changing uses over time provides important insights about the connection between slavery, identity and citizenship in a former slave reservoir.
Working papers by Valerio Colosio
Book Reviews by Valerio Colosio
Master dissertations by Valerio Colosio
Papers by Valerio Colosio
Based on nine months of fieldwork in Guéra, the thesis explores the complex interactions between a group that is widely seen as slave descendants, Yalnas, meaning “the sons of the people” in Chadian Arabic, and their neighbours. Until it came under French rule in 1911 the Guéra region acted as an effective “reservoir” of slaves for the neighbouring Wadai sultanate, whose warriors regularly took captives from among the scattered groups of local farmers. After the colonial regime’s abolition of slavery, the opportunities for former slaves and the social dynamics related to this were different from those in areas inhabited by former slave-holders. In this context, the ethnonym Yalnas initially facilitated the integration of former slaves locally, whereas today it used to criticize the rights of its members, to the point that people called Yalnas are trying to get rid of this label.
The thesis analyses the narratives of the past of both the Yalnas and other local groups. It brings together the stories recounted by elders and archival sources with contemporary political tensions, to explore the ongoing importance of the presumed past of the Yalnas as slaves. In Guéra, it was relatively easy for slave-descendants to be accepted among other local groups and intermarry with them. However, Yalnas’ integration has been built on contradictions that make their status ambiguous. This ambiguity is central to current contestations over land and citizenship. Since the reforms of the 1990s, a range of new local associations have formed in Guéra. These are used by local leaders to consolidate support and distribute resources on an ethnic basis. In this context, the past of the Yalnas as former slaves has been used as an argument to exclude them from the opportunities created by these associations. In these struggles, narratives about the past are used by all groups as political tools and are critical to secure citizenship rights. A focus on the label Yalnas and its changing uses over time provides important insights about the connection between slavery, identity and citizenship in a former slave reservoir.