State, Society and Islam in the Western Regions of the Sahara - by Francisco Freire (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This open access book takes a deeper and broader perspective of the Hassaniya-speaking groups of the western region of the Sahara. There has been a surge of interest in this region, often centred around sensationalist news reports and policy briefs. But in-depth understanding and analysis remains neglected and little work has been undertaken on the diverse experiences of these groups and the contrasting political regimes under which they live. The contributors here focus on the complex and ambiguous relations between statehood, Islam, nation building and identity formation in hassanophone northwest Africa, ranging from southern Morocco, the Western Sahara and Mauritania to Algeria. The book uses up-to-date fieldwork to provide fresh analysis of and an insiders' perspective on these populations and their regional interactions, with contributions from the fields of law, Islamic studies, history, anthropology, politics, gender and media studies and the research of scholars from both the global North and global South. This interdisciplinary collection shows how urban ways of life are being adopted, with Hassaniya-speaking actors adjusting to state-administered social policies and new modes of settling disputes and legal claims. In doing so, the book sheds new light on the region's shifting social hierarchies, the new gendered power dynamics, and generational changes in the re-interpretation of 'tradition'.
As well as displaying that the Hassaniya-speaking groups are pivotal to the development of the region's political culture, the book also reveals their close association with Islam, both as a religious expression as well as a cultural marker. A much-needed contribution on the intersections of politics, Islam and identity in northwest Africa.

Review Quotes

"Overall, the collection constitutes a major contribution to the study of this part of the African continent. The authors are much more concerned with empirical richness and nuanced approaches to concepts than they are with extracting universalistic theoretical observations, and so readers looking for the latter will have to do much of that intellectual labor themselves. Nevertheless, the volume lends itself to such labor - this sub-region is far from the only corner of the world where pseudo-democratic states project power but also find their power has limits; where hierarchical societies are experiencing flux and contention; whether deeply rooted religiosities prove dynamic amid internal and external forces; and where all three of these trends interact in consequential ways." --Mediterranean Politics

"This splendidly interdisciplinary and engagingly written book is a powerful contribution to a new understanding of Saharan modes of cultural change and continuity. Its brilliantly researched case studies, and insightful Introduction and Postscript, dispel diehard stereotypes of "immemorial" patterns and abrupt ruptures, and disclose innovation and transformational reappropriations of tradition." --Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, Professor, University of Birmingham, UK

"This book will certainly be welcomed among scholars of the region and beyond ... This book almost reads as a template for what we might call 'region studies'." --Journal of Islamic Studies

About the Author

Francisco Freire is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities in Lisbon, Portugal, and Researcher at The Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA), Lisbon, Portugal. He is the author of many articles and book chapters on Islam and the Sahara, including contributions to the Journal of North African Studies, African Studies Review, History and Anthropology and Journal of Modern African Studies.