“…Whatever these performative tendencies may have been in this region previously, they were undoubtedly exacerbated in Abidjan by the structural insecurity resulting from the economic crisis of the eighties, compounded by the disastrous structural adjustment policies of the nineties (Comaroff and Comaroff ; Roitman ; Guyer ), and ultimately followed by ten years of political instability when the country was divided between two presidents, each with armies and each claiming their opponent to be an imposter (McGovern ; Cutolo and Banégas ). Julien Bonhomme (, 226) writes of contemporary West and Central Africa: This condition of insecurity brings about a climate of generalized suspicion, which is a hotbed for witchcraft accusations and violence, since no one trusts anyone anymore.…”
Section: Deception Ivoirian Stylementioning
confidence: 99%
“…Yet the bluffeur wished to deceive only from a superficial perspective—pragmatically it was about showing off performative skill and about living, if only temporarily, within the frame produced through illusions. Mike McGovern (, 124) describes such conduct among Ivoirian youth as falling within Bateson's frame of play: “These actions in which we now engage do not denote what those actions for which they stand would denote.” In this sense, the art of the bluff also reveals a positive social appreciation of mimesis as craft.…”
This essay considers ethnography in a social world rife with quotidian duplicity, where the pretense of ongoing sociality must continue even when betrayers have been unmasked and deceptions unraveled. The article follows my unintentional entanglement in a series of confidence schemes in Abidjan to explore the ways in which such scams develop their own agentive force beyond the control of their participants. Driven by the performative efficacy of its own narrative and role-play structure, the frame of duplicity sometimes exceeds the control of its authors. My own participation involved a spectrum of roles progressing from 1) innocent passerby, 2) an unwitting set piece meant to convey legitimacy, 3) an ethically compromised ethnographer, and 4) the target of the scam, all the way through to 5) an active participant in deception—with several of the roles converging at times. Ethnography inside a scam allows for reflection into the role of deception in everyday social interaction, as well as within the engagements of fieldwork itself.
Résumé
Cet essai considère les enjeux d’ethnographie dans un monde social truffé de duplicité quotidienne, où la performance des relations sociales doit continuer même lorsque les menteurs ont été démasquées et les tromperies révélées au grand jour. Mon article revient sur mon engagement involontaire dans une succession d’arnaques à Abidjan afin d’explorer les manières dont de telles escroqueries développent leur selon les logiques qui leur sont propres, échappent parfois même au contrôle de ceux qui les ont mises en place. Ma propre position a impliqué un éventail de rôles qui m’ont fait passer de 1) un témoin accidentel, 2) la pièce innocente d’un mécanisme destiné à inspirer confiance, puis à 3) un ethnographe compromis sur le plan éthique, et à 4) la cible de l’arnaque et 5) un participant actif à l’affaire. Ces différents rôles se sont parfois entremêlés. Faire de l’ethnographie de l’intérieur d’une telle arnaque permet de réfléchir au rôle de la duplicité dans les interactions quotidiennes, comme dans le travail de terrain.
“…Whatever these performative tendencies may have been in this region previously, they were undoubtedly exacerbated in Abidjan by the structural insecurity resulting from the economic crisis of the eighties, compounded by the disastrous structural adjustment policies of the nineties (Comaroff and Comaroff ; Roitman ; Guyer ), and ultimately followed by ten years of political instability when the country was divided between two presidents, each with armies and each claiming their opponent to be an imposter (McGovern ; Cutolo and Banégas ). Julien Bonhomme (, 226) writes of contemporary West and Central Africa: This condition of insecurity brings about a climate of generalized suspicion, which is a hotbed for witchcraft accusations and violence, since no one trusts anyone anymore.…”
Section: Deception Ivoirian Stylementioning
confidence: 99%
“…Yet the bluffeur wished to deceive only from a superficial perspective—pragmatically it was about showing off performative skill and about living, if only temporarily, within the frame produced through illusions. Mike McGovern (, 124) describes such conduct among Ivoirian youth as falling within Bateson's frame of play: “These actions in which we now engage do not denote what those actions for which they stand would denote.” In this sense, the art of the bluff also reveals a positive social appreciation of mimesis as craft.…”
This essay considers ethnography in a social world rife with quotidian duplicity, where the pretense of ongoing sociality must continue even when betrayers have been unmasked and deceptions unraveled. The article follows my unintentional entanglement in a series of confidence schemes in Abidjan to explore the ways in which such scams develop their own agentive force beyond the control of their participants. Driven by the performative efficacy of its own narrative and role-play structure, the frame of duplicity sometimes exceeds the control of its authors. My own participation involved a spectrum of roles progressing from 1) innocent passerby, 2) an unwitting set piece meant to convey legitimacy, 3) an ethically compromised ethnographer, and 4) the target of the scam, all the way through to 5) an active participant in deception—with several of the roles converging at times. Ethnography inside a scam allows for reflection into the role of deception in everyday social interaction, as well as within the engagements of fieldwork itself.
Résumé
Cet essai considère les enjeux d’ethnographie dans un monde social truffé de duplicité quotidienne, où la performance des relations sociales doit continuer même lorsque les menteurs ont été démasquées et les tromperies révélées au grand jour. Mon article revient sur mon engagement involontaire dans une succession d’arnaques à Abidjan afin d’explorer les manières dont de telles escroqueries développent leur selon les logiques qui leur sont propres, échappent parfois même au contrôle de ceux qui les ont mises en place. Ma propre position a impliqué un éventail de rôles qui m’ont fait passer de 1) un témoin accidentel, 2) la pièce innocente d’un mécanisme destiné à inspirer confiance, puis à 3) un ethnographe compromis sur le plan éthique, et à 4) la cible de l’arnaque et 5) un participant actif à l’affaire. Ces différents rôles se sont parfois entremêlés. Faire de l’ethnographie de l’intérieur d’une telle arnaque permet de réfléchir au rôle de la duplicité dans les interactions quotidiennes, comme dans le travail de terrain.
“…However, as Hickel (:104) emphasized, while xenophobia is often catalyzed by a struggle over resources, the ways in which “otherness” is constituted is “experienced in a specific cultural idiom” which must be equally explained to comprehend the expressions that xenophobia takes. McGovern (:88) makes a similar point when he argues that resentment is “not a sentiment”, but rather a “social idiom” that mobilizes shared local tropes, narratives and understandings of behavior to explain the past, present, and hopes for the future via a hostility to those classified as foreign.…”
Section: A World City For Foreigners By Foreigners?mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In their rejection of “foreign” buildings, they reject the current political regime. The city's buildings have become the terrain through which “everyday” autochthony has taken root (McGovern :69), expressed, as I show in the following section, in moments of what I call “aesthetic dissent”.…”
Section: A World City For Foreigners By Foreigners?mentioning
Over the previous decade, African cities experienced a wave of frenzied construction driven by imaginations of world-city status. While these projects provoked new discussions about African urbanism, the literature on them has focused more on the paperwork of planning than actual urban experiences. This article addresses this lacuna by investigating residents' reactions to the post-conflict building boom in Luanda, Angola. I show that Luandans' held highly ambivalent orientations towards the emerging city. Their views were shaped by suspicions about pacts between Angolan elites and international capital that recapitulated longstanding tensions over national belonging. These concerns were voiced via discussions of the very aesthetics of the new city. Buildings became catalysts for expressions of dissent that put into question the very project of statedriven worlding. The paper therefore argues that the politics of aesthetics are central to grasping the contested understandings of urbanism currently emerging in various African cities.
“…His nationalist anti-colonial stance, and his use of powerful images of 'second decolonization', of liberation and of freedom from injustice, proved effective to neutralize international meddling, until conflict reignited during the 2010 -11 post-election crisis. 28 In Cô te d'Ivoire, local agents defining themselves vis-à -vis international actors played a key role in setting the limits and the conditions of possibilities for the peace operation by working with, against or in spite of the limitations imposed by the specific context of peace interventionism. 29 As Katariina Simonen shows in her contribution, the French government, aware of its paradoxical role, worked hard to legitimize its presence and military intervention in April 2011.…”
Section: Peace Operations In Evolving Francophone Contextsmentioning
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