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Yount-Andre Dissertation NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY & ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES Giving, Taking, and Sharing: Reproducing Economic Moralities and Social Hierarchies in Transnational Senegal A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of Anthropology By Chelsie Yount-André EVANSTON, ILLINOIS June 2017 ABSTRACT 2 Giving, Taking, and Sharing: Reproducing Economic Moralities and Social Hierarchies in Transnational Senegal Chelsie Yount-André This dissertation asks how deepening global inequalities reshape the ways families negotiate “economic moralities,” normative expectations of material obligation and entitlement. It focuses on the families of middle class migrants: French-educated Senegalese urbanites whose diplomas no longer protect them from discrimination in Paris but who, among Africans, are still construed as high-status, potential patrons. Heightened tensions surrounding Islam and immigration have reconfigured the stakes of belonging in the French Republic. Faced with economic decline and escalating French xenophobia, educated Dakarois provide a striking example of the ways migrants reinforce transnational hierarchies as they cling to (post)colonial privilege. I examine the ways transnational families manage diverse moral priorities in their struggle to maintain status in multiple communities, each of which places demands on their limited resources. Drawing on 18 months (2014-2015) of linguistic and ethnographic data from Senegalese households in Paris and Dakar, I analyze how talk about exchange serves to categorize and rank people and their rights to resources in kinship networks and state systems alike. This dissertation approaches the values that shape material exchange in a novel way: through examination of everyday acts of storytelling and food sharing. It foregrounds the role of children in negotiating economic moralities, attending to the moral stances family members voice in household talk. I theorize how people respond to multiple, sometimes contradictory economic moralities in their daily lives, examining values as located in explicit 3 pronouncements of virtue and tacitly communicated through talk evaluating and explaining acts of giving, taking, and sharing. I argue that economic moralities are inherently political, demonstrating how family discussions reproduce social distinction and selective solidarity, creating nested hierarchies of belonging in France and transnational kinship networks alike. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 4 I am grateful to the Senegalese families who welcomed me into their homes and shared their meals with me in both France and Senegal. To these gracious hosts and patient teachers (of all ages), I have incurred debts that I will never be able to repay. Senegal is truly the country of teranga, and this project would not have been possible without their hospitality. Indeed, my research topic was born from the desire to honor the kindness I received from the many families in Dakar who insisted that I stay to share their meal. I extend sincere thanks to the Anthropology Department at Northwestern University and the Institut interdisciplinaire d’anthropologie du contemporain (iiac) at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) for making this dual doctoral project (co-tutelle) possible. I would like to thank to the members of my committee at Northwestern, Caroline Bledsoe, Robert Launay, Helen Schwartzman, and Shalini Shankar. They have each contributed to this work through their encouragement, critical feedback, and intellectual rigor. I am especially grateful to my co-advisors Caroline Bledsoe and Claude Fischler whose academic support and practical guidance helped me navigate graduate studies in two countries with confidence and determination. I thank Claude Fischler for his strategically timed direction and his support of the project’s development as my investigation of commensality turned to examine questions of morality and economics. I am grateful to Caroline Bledsoe for her meticulous comments on numerous drafts, for sharing her wisdom of African contexts, and for her dogged persistence in repeating lessons that I was at first unable to grasp. At Northwestern, I am also grateful to the organizers and participants of the Program of African Studies Graduate Seminar (Afrisem) and the Buffett Center’s Graduate Student Colloquium for the opportunity to present earlier versions of chapters five and seven. At the 5 University of Chicago, I thank those who took part in the Semiotics Workshop for their constructive comments on chapter four. At the EHESS, I thank the organizers and participants of the seminars Appellatifs: Référence et Adresse dans les Relations de Parenté, Anthropologie Comparative du Sahel Occidental Musulman, and Familles, Migrations, et Classes Sociales for the opportunity to present earlier versions of chapters five, six, and seven. I would also like to acknowledge the contributions of those who read these chapters at various stages, especially Barbara Fawver, Romain André, William Murphy, Matilda Stubbs, Arturo Marquez, Jessica Pouchet, Meghanne Barker, Morgan Hoke, Erika Hollner, Hannah McElgunn, Beth Packer, Katherine Lorigan, Jesse Rafert, Marie Lachambre, and Guénolée André. In Dakar, I thank the team at the Baobab Center in Dakar for lessons in Wolof, for their insightful cross-cultural guidance, and for introducing me to many of the families with whom I carried out my research in Dakar and Paris. I thank Abdou Sarr for his self-reflexive observations of Senegalese, French, and American cultures. I thank Ismaila Massaly for his patience teaching me Wolof, may he rest in peace. And I would especially like to thank Oumoul Sow for her aid in Wolof transcription and translation, for her tactful guidance helping me to navigate and analyze Senegalese culture, and for sharing her reflections on life in France with me, following her own migration. I am also grateful to Abdou Salam Fall at the University Cheikh Anta Diop for meeting with me on each of my trips to Dakar and providing helpful comments as my project developed. In Paris, I thank the members of the Senegalese student group Sen’Efficience for inviting me to their gatherings and for sharing their reflections on growing up between Paris and Dakar. I am particularly thankful for the friendship and kindness extended by Ndeye Mann Sall who was always willing to spend hours teasing through the 6 cultural import of terms in Wolof. This research was carried out in Paris and Dakar supported by a dissertation fieldwork grant and Osmundsen Award from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Hans E. Panofsky and Morris Goodman awards from Northwestern University’s Program of African Studies, and research awards from Northwestern University’s Buffett Center, the Centre Edgar Morin and the Institut interdisciplinaire d’anthropologie du contemporain (iiac). Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Barbara Fawver and Kevin Yount, for their unconditional support of my travels and academic pursuits. My confidence and discipline is a result of your pride and care. I am especially grateful to my mom for all her last-minute copyediting. I would like to thank Marguerite, whose entry into this world provided me with determination and perspective during this writing process. I am also deeply grateful to my husband, Romain André, for his love, care, and patience. His partnership and consistent support throughout my years of study made this dissertation possible. TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS 7 . end of intonation unit; falling intonation , end of intonation unit; fall-rise intonation ? end of intonation unit; rising intonation - self interruption : sound immediately preceding has been noticeably lengthened (.) silences in seconds and tenths of seconds [ ] the beginning and end of talk that overlaps with that of another speaker = “latching” (no interval between the end of a prior turn and the start of the next piece of talk (( )) enclosed material is not part of the talk being transcribed, such as laughter italics emphatic stress TABLE OF CONTENTS 8 List of Transcripts and Figures……………………………………………………………..…..11 Chapter One: Introduction………………………………………………………...………....12 Moralities in Times of “Crisis” ………………………………………………………………..19 Life Between Two Capitals……………………………………………………………………..23 Fieldwork and Methods…………………………………………………………………….…..27 From Family Homes in Dakar to Parisian Apartments: Locating Transnational Senegalese…30 Outline of the Dissertation……………………………………………………………………..38 Chapter Two: Selective Solidarity and Nested Hierarchies: Theorizing the Moralities of Distinction …………………………………………………………………………...……41 Scales of Solidarity……………………………………………………………………………43 Economic Moralities………………………………………………………………….………49 Nested Hierarchies………………………………………………………………………..…..56 Chapter Three: From Évolué to Intégré: Republicanism and the Shared History of Paris and Dakar ………………………………………………………………………..........58 Republican Logic and Law in the French Colonial “Civilizing Mission”……………………60 Independently Reproducing Francophone Privilege………………………………………….67 Producing Integration and Illegality………….………………………………………...…….73 Conclusion…………………………………...………………………………………………..80 Chapter Four: Recursive Republican Racialization: The Language of Exclusion in State Discourses and Senegalese Households………….………………………………………...…83 A Republican Pact: State Discourses of Integration ……………………………………..……86 9 Nested Hierarchies of Belonging Among Senegalese in Paris……………...………………….92
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