Boris Samuel, La production macroéconomique du réel. Formalités et pouvoir au Burkina Faso, en Mauritanie et en Guadeloupe

Abstract

La présente thèse étudie l’exercice du pouvoir et ses transformations à partir de l’observation d’opérations concrètes de la gestion macroéconomique dans deux pays d’Afrique, le Burkina Faso et la Mauritanie, et un territoire antillais, la Guadeloupe. Elle situe son approche à l’intersection de l’anthropologie, de la sociologie de la quantification et de la sociologie historique du politique.Dans les trois cas étudiés, l’observation fine du calcul macroéconomique montre que les ethos techniciens sont déterminants pour saisir l’exercice du pouvoir. Les luttes sociales et politiques autour de la vie chère ou de l’éducation, ou encore les débats sur les faux semblants du réformisme mettent les chiffres au centre des rapports sociaux et politiques. Sur les scènes politiques en ébullition de la Mauritanie, de la Guadeloupe et du Burkina Faso, les objets de la gestion économique opèrent, guident les actions des individus, suscitent la contestation. La macroéconomie n’est pas seulement dans les bureaux, elle constitue un répertoire populaire du politique. Elle est ancrée dans l’histoire propre de ces sociétés et dans les logiques autonomes de la technique et des procédures.

The power of price subsidies in Morocco

“…The technical formalities involved in managing subsidies demonstrate the importance of the ‘moral life of formulas’ (Yon and Mallard, 2012) – and their political life, too. These calculations also illustrate that each cell of a numerical table can incorporate a whole social and political world (Gardey, 2008; Riles, 2006; Samuel, 2013: Chapter 3).…”

“…The price policies therefore carry with them memories of the années de plomb , ‘years of lead’. In the case of Niger, Vincent Bonnecase has demonstrated that memories of the past subsidies influence citizens’ perceptions and judgements about prices levels and trends (Bonnecase, 2013; on memories of prices, see also (Berry, 2007; Samuel, 2013: Chapter 8; Boltanski and Esquerre, 2016); in Morocco, memories of the ‘bread riots’ have a noteworthy influence on the State’s everyday actions and its relationship with its citizens. Because the protests of 1980s were expressed through prices, but fought a repressive and violent State, there is a widespread feeling of anxiety among civil servants when issues about the cost of living are raised: ‘the mere idea [.…”

“…For the government, too, action in favour of the purchasing power is a means of expression, a way of displaying the State’s benevolence towards its citizens. The implementation of subsidies is a frequent counter-measure in the face of contestation, as demonstrated by the reactions of the North African governments in the face of the so-called ‘Arab Springs’ of 2011 (Samuel, 2013: Chapter 10).…”

“…Because they also permit an opaque, clientelistic, and even arbitrary management of compensation expenses (Samuel, 2015; on the use of ‘false numbers’, see Lampland, 2010), they have also been criticised by technocrats and protest movements, especially in the wake of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions in 2011. Prices are a privileged means of expressing protest (Bonnecase, 2019; Samuel, 2013).…”

Preliminary Material

“…Giving them a historical setting has led us to understand, always in a contextualised and localised way, what exactly development means, comprehending it as a multiplicity of combinations of consensus and conflictcombinations that are not necessarily tense and paradoxical. By shifting the focus to the link between development and conflict thus defined, this volume also aims to question the relevance of the mena region as a category of 22 These processes are highlighted and analysed, in other contexts, by Hibou (2015) and Samuel (2013;. 23 argue for this view, drawing on Weber and his confrontational conception of social relations (Weber, 1968).…”