Muslim Child Disciples, Global Civil Society, and Children's Rights in Senegal: The Discourses of Strategic Structuralism

Abstract

This paper examines Muslim child-disciples (talibés) who beg on the streets in urban Senegal. It interprets, from the perspective of Wolof farmers, why parents send their sons to live with marabouts (Muslim sages). It then contrasts Wolof understandings of talibés with the discourses produced by children's rights advocates. It argues that while indigenous rights advocates employ "strategic essentialism" to promote minority groups' claims, advocates of women's and children's rights programs minimize discussion of "culture" and offer, instead, a meta-narrative of large-scale structural forces such as poverty, structural adjustment, and population growth—a discourse termed "strategic structuralism." Politically expedient, such rhetoric nevertheless forces narratives about controversial cultural practices into a generic form that is as reductionist as strategic essentialism.

On the Talibé Phenomenon: A Look into the Complex Nature of Forced Child Begging in Senegal

“…This sense of detachment was said to make the child much more resilient and independent. Perry (2004) further demonstrated through her interviews with Wolof farmers the spiritual motivation of parents fostering their children out to daaras through the sacrificing of the labour their sons could have provided them in the fields. These parents do so to 'demonstrate their membership in an emerging Islam' under expectations that the marabout's methods of discipline would mould their children's moral character, bringing them closer to God (Perry, 2004:59).…”

“…When children come out as survivors of circumstances they have endured during their time spent in fosterage, they are then perceived as being able to withstand and surpass any hardship that life will present them (Badjan, 2001, Diop, 1981. The concept of master and servant between marabouts and talibés, which essentially alludes to metaphors of slavery, is central to the Islamic concepts of the relationship between individuals and the god they serve (Perry, 2004). Therefore in this hierarchical system, it is no one's place to tell a marabout how to treat his talibés.…”

“…The term talibé is a French word derived from the Arab word talib meaning a person seeking knowledge (sdgi, 2008). It is used to describe boys, often between the ages of 4 and 18, who live under the tutelage of marabouts or religious leaders who concurrently take on the role of Islamic instructors (Perry, 2004). In setting out the background to my assessment of the talibé issue, I engage with and build on the works of historians and anthropologists such as Donna Perry and Cruise O'Brien.…”

Ordinary Violence and Social Change in Africa

“…For several years the practice of the begging taalibe, as it is called in West Africa or mahadjir as it is known in Central Africa, has been the subject of much discussion. The practice is defined as nonacceptable in the discourse of ngos whose ideas are part of the global discussion on children's rights (Perry 2004). In Chad, and more specifically in Mongo, this discussion was new in 2005.…”

7. Producing “educated persons”

“…Few authors explore in any depth the role of cultural values in sustaining the system or the attempts of sending communities to deal with the constraints they are subjected to. Those who do explore these factors perceive much continuity between rural and urban practice and explain the children's physical deprivation in the urban schools as a consciously chosen child-rearing strategy aimed at their moral and spiritual maturation and the acquisition of life skills (Last 2000;Perry 2004).…”