Abstract:

This paper examines, from a social anthropological perspective, how bureaucratization transforms urban social experience and gives rise to new dynamic registers to address urban land governance. It shows that associations of displaced or evicted people are “struggling” against socio-spatial exclusion processes  as  well  as  showcase  the  organizational  aspects  of  such  associations in Dakar, Bamako and Ouagadougou. Rather than opposing the existing political regulations of land tenure, the city dwellers’ social movement organize themselves in associations in order to demand political recognition to participate in reshaping the dynamic of the tenure system. To do so, they align themselves with certain bureaucratic and neoliberal norms that create associations. As such the following question appears intriguing: To what extent do people of the grassroots, as social movement, engage with bureaucratic practices by participating to reconfiguration of state’s policies of urban planning and land tenure?

Lamine Doumbia is a postdoctoral researcher (individual fellow) at MIASA – University of Ghana, Legon. His current research project is about urban land governance and bureaucratisation in Bamako, Ouagadougou and Dakar, Senegal - Mimicry and Hybridisation of logics. As an alumni of the University of Bayreuth (Social anthropology and African Studies), Lamine has been a postdoctoral fellow at the German Historical Institute Paris (DHIP) within the framework of the transnational research group "Bureaucratisation of African Societies", based in Dakar at the Centre de Recherches sur les Politiques Sociales (CREPOS) – Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar.