Call for papers for the journal L’Ouest saharien
Thematic issue (2022)
“Women’s conditions in the Sahara-Sahel”

Issue coordinators:
Camille Evrard, historian, associate researcher at the FRAMESPA laboratory (UMR 5136 –
Toulouse Jean Jaurès University) and at the CITERES laboratory (UMR 7324 – University of
Tours)
Erin Pettigrew, historian, Assistant Professor, History and Arab Crossroads Studies, New York
University Abu Dhabi

Argument:
This thematic issue of the journal L’Ouest saharien aims to highlight recent research in human and social sciences focusing on the status of women in the vast Sahelosaharan region inhabited by Mauritanian, Sahrawi, Moroccan, Algerian, Malian populations and Nigerian. It aims to question the apparent historical and socio-cultural homogeneity of these last by initiating a discussion on the exceptionality of women’s conditions in the Sahel-Saharan world. The societies at the heart of this call have often been described as unique within the Muslim world regarding female independence, both in terms of family organization and of marriage than of recourse to Muslim law, or even of presence in public space. This joins, moreover, the underlined common features of these societies which have shared, in history, a desert-related lifestyle, socio-economic characteristics, religious practices marked by the Maliki legal school and the presence of Sufi orders, non-centralized political organizations, etc. However, they also have many differences. They are crossed by deep statutory and identity divides that push to tighten the focus and take a closer look at the varied conditions of the history of female emancipation within them. Above all, these societies experienced, during the colonial period and, even more so, during the processes of decolonization and the building of postcolonial states, very different realities which today make up a contrasting landscape.

Read the rest of the call : Appel à contributions L’ouest saharien – Les conditions féminines au Sahara-Sahel – Evrard&Pettigrew