Florian Köhler - Space, Place and Identity

Series Editor: Gnther Schlee, Director of the Department at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

Editorial Board: Brian Donahoe (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), John Eidson (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Peter Finke (University of Zurich), Jacqueline Knrr (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Bettina Mann (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Ursula Rao (Leipzig University), Stephen Reyna (University of Manchester), Olaf Zenker (Martin Luther University)

Assisted by: Viktoria Giehler-Zeng (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)

The objective of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology is to advance anthropological fieldwork and enhance theory building. Integration and conflict, the central themes of this series, are major concerns of the contemporary social sciences and of significant interest to the general public. They have also been among the main research areas of the institute since its foundation. Bringing together international experts, Integration and Conflict Studies includes both monographs and edited volumes, and offers a forum for studies that contribute to a better understanding of processes of identification and intergroup relations.

Volume 21
Space, Place and Identity: Woaae of Niger in the 21st Century
Florian Khler

Volume 20
Mobile Urbanity: Somali Presence in Urban East Africa
Edited by Neil Carrier and Tabea Scharrer

Volume 19
Playing the Marginality Game: Identity Politics in West Africa
Anita Schroven

Volume 18
The Wheel of Autonomy: Rhetoric and Ethnicity in the Omo Valley
Felix Girke

Volume 17
Bishkek Boys: Neighbourhood Youth and Urban Change in Kyrgyzstans Capital
Philipp Schrder

Volume 16
Difference and Sameness as Modes of Integration: Anthropological Perspectives on Ethnicity and Religion
Edited by Gnther Schlee and Alexander Horstmann

Volume 15
On Retaliation: Towards an Interdisciplinary Understanding of a Basic Human Condition
Edited by Bertram Turner and Gnther Schlee

Volume 14
City of the Future: Built Space, Modernity and Urban Change in Astana
Mateusz Laszczkowski

Volume 13
Staying at Home: Identities, Memories and Social Networks of Kazakhstani Germans
Rita Sanders

Volume 12
The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective
Edited by Jacqueline Knrr and Christoph Kohl

Woaae of Niger in the 21st Century

Florian Khler

First published in 2020 by

Berghahn Books

www.berghahnbooks.com

2020 Florian Khler

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages

for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book

may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or

mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information

storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,

without written permission of the publisher.

Names: Khler, Florian, author.

Title: Space, place and identity : Woaae of Niger in the 21st century / Florian Khler.

Other titles: Integration and conflict studies ; v. 21.

Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2020. | Series: Integration and conflict studies ; v. 21 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019051315 (print) | LCCN 2019051316 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789206364 (hardback) | ISBN 9781789206371 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Woaae (African people)--Niger--Social conditions--21st century. | Group identity--Niger. | Rural-urban migration--Niger. | Nomads--Sedentarization--Niger.

Classification: LCC DT547.45.B67 K64 2020 (print) | LCC DT547.45.B67 (ebook) | DDC 305.89632206626--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051315

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051316

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78920-636-4 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78920-637-1 ebook

I owe gratitude to the following persons and institutions who have contributed in some way or the other to the work that has resulted in this book. First, I want to thank my numerous Woaae-hosts in Niger for endless hours of conversation during which they shared their knowledge and their experiences, their stories and histories, their joys and sorrows, their milk and their tea with me. Many other people in Niger were also very welcoming and helpful in providing emotional, intellectual, logistic, administrative or other support during my fieldwork. In particular, I want to thank Amadou Siddo, Moussa Baouada, Abdou Issa, Mamane Ousseini, Anna Coendet, Mirco Gpfert, Eric and Halima van Sprundel, Karl-Heinz and Heidi Siekmann. I am grateful to the Max-Planck-Society for the financial and institutional support that made this work possible, and to the supporting members of the Max-Planck-Society for an additional language learning grant. I greatly profited from the generous working environment of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale), Germany that provided ideal working conditions with an excellent library service, cartographers and scientific assistants. My particular gratitude goes to Gnther Schlee, the director of this institutes department for Integration and Conflict, who trusted in my ability to do this scientific work after almost a decade outside academia, and to Nikolaus Schareika, who had helped me during that decade to hold on to the aim of developing an anthropological research project on the Woaae and to develop ideas for it. Numerous colleagues have commented on draft versions of chapters and contributed with their suggestions and critical remarks: Al-Amin Abu-Manga, Lucie Buffavand, James Carrier, Solange Guo-Chatelard, John Eidson, Joachim Grlich, Stephen P. Reyna, Tabea Scharrer and Timm Sureau and in particular Martine Guichard from whose complementary perspective I profited a lot for putting many phenomena into the wider context of Fule studies.

The greatest thanks, however, I owe to my family, both in Niger and in Germany, for their patience, trust, support and love. I therefore dedicate this work to them.

Interviews and narrating sessions took place mainly in Fulfulde and Hausa, the principle being to allow the interlocutors the choice of language. Most interlocutors spoke Hausa with more or less ease and especially in the initial phase of fieldwork, my Hausa was more developed than my Fulfulde. In the transcriptions, Fulfulde texts are not marked while Hausa texts are indicated by a (H) behind the text to facilitate differentiation for the non-familiar reader.