New Book - 'Sovereignty in Exile: A Saharan Liberation Movement Governs,' by Alice Wilson

[Jacob Mundy]

"Based upon a diverse and well-developed social network in a context usually closed to foreign researchers, Sovereignty in Exile is an extraordinary work of ethnographic research. Through detailed empirical analysis and a fresh and informed analytical sensibility, Alice Wilson reopens an important, yet often all too narrow, discussion of what counts as democracy in Africa and other so-called developing regions and states."—Brenda Chalfin, University of Florida

 "This deeply researched ethnography takes the case of Western Sahara and the fusing of a liberation movement (Polisario) and a partially recognized Sahrawi state to make a major contribution to the anthropology of the state. Looking particularly at transformations in the social relations of sovereignty, Wilson offers a fascinating account of control, compromises, and the sometimes uneasy coexistence of revolutionary politics and tribal affinities."—Ilana Feldman, George Washington University

 "Sovereignty in Exile is a rich and intriguing ethnography that makes a significant contribution not only to refugee studies but also to the anthropology of sovereignty, state power, and tribal identities."—Dawn Chatty, University of Oxford

 Sovereignty in Exile explores sovereignty and state power through the case of a liberation movement that set out to make itself into a state. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was founded by the Polisario Front in the wake of Spain's abandonment of its former colony, the disputed Western Sahara. Morocco laid claim to the same territory, and the conflict has locked Polisario and Morocco in a political stalemate that has lasted forty years. Complicating the situation is the fact that Polisario conducts its day-to-day operations in refugee camps near Tindouf, in Algeria, which house most of the Sahrawi exile community. SADR (a partially recognized state) and Polisario (Western Sahara's liberation movement) together form an unusual governing authority, originally premised on the dismantling of a perceived threat to national (Sahrawi) unity: tribes. Drawing on unprecedented long-term research gained by living with Sahrawi refugee families, Alice Wilson examines how tribal social relations are undermined, recycled, and have reemerged as the refugee community negotiates governance, resolves disputes, manages social inequalities, and improvises alternatives to taxation. Wilson trains an ethnographic lens on the creation of administrative categories, legal reforms, aid distribution, marriage practices, local markets, and contested elections within the camps. Tracing social, political, and economic changes among Sahrawi refugees, Sovereignty in Exile reveals the dynamics of a postcolonial liberation movement that has endured for decades in the deserts of North Africa while trying to bring about the revolutionary transformation of a society which identifies with a Bedouin past.

 

Alice Wilson is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex.

 

http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15606.html

University of Pennsylvania Press

312 pages 

Oct 2016 ISBN 978-0-8122-4849-4 | $59.95s | £39.00 

Ebook Oct 2016 | ISBN 978-0-8122-9315-9 | $59.95s | £39.00 

A volume in the series Ethnography of Political Violence