Outside Timbuktu's divine cover: The negotiation of privacy among displaced Timbuktians

Abstract

During the armed conflict in northern Mali in 2012 and 2013, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees from the town of Timbuktu had to make sense of and negotiate the hardships of occupation and displacement. They did so through a social‐metaphysical ethic of privacy called sutura, which informs everyday attitudes and practices, particularly those relating to work and the built environment. Although sutura framed displacement, it made certain hardships more difficult to overcome, since it became almost impossible for people to maintain sutura outside the sacred space of Timbuktu. Privileging sutura as a local religio‐cultural framework within the context of crisis links broader structural issues with everyday lived experience. It also identifies existential limitations that displaced communities might encounter when attempting to navigate certain hardships. [crisis, displacement, ethics, lived space, sutura, privacy, Islam, Timbuktu, Mali] Pendant le conflit armé dans le nord du Mali en 2012 et 2013, les personnes déplacées et les réfugiés de la ville de Tombouctou ont dû subir et négocier les difficultés de l'occupation et du déplacement. Ils l'ont fait à travers une éthique sociale‐métaphysique de l'intimité appelée sutura, qui a informé les attitudes et les activités quotidiennes, en particulier celles relatives au travail et à l'environnement bâti. Bien que sutura a encadré l'expérience du déplacement, certaines obstacles (problèmes) ont devenus plus difficiles à surmonter, à cause de l'impossibilité pour les gens de maintenir sutura en dehors de l'espace sacré de Tombouctou. Privilégier la sutura en tant que cadre religio‐culturel local dans le contexte de la crise, peut relier les problèmes structurels plus larges avec l'expérience quotidienne vécue. Il identifie également les limites existentielles que les communautés déplacées pourraient rencontrer lorsqu'elles tentent de surmonter certaines difficultés. [crise, déplacement, éthique, espace habité, sutura, intimité, Islam, Tombouctou, Mali]

Time and Relational Possibility: Cultural Anthropology in 2017

“…This is especially clear in a body of work that looks at marginality: both that experienced by migrants and that experienced by minorities of various kinds within states that they can claim as home. In a series of articles on the experiences of migrants, we learn how they navigate kinship when families are transnational (Trémon ; see also Sandoval‐Cervantes ), privacy in the constrained conditions of displacement (Hernann ), indeterminacy as they await asylum decisions (Fassin, Wilhelm‐Solomon, and Segatti ), moral interdiscursivity (Dick ), and racism in their new homes (Amrute ).…”

Appearance and Origin

“…6 Analyzing the social contexts that differentiate between those actions that are considered acceptable and those that are not, and studying the social norms on which this distinction is based, is one of the tasks facing anthropologists. Privacy is one such norm in which they have therefore long been interested, looking particularly at how different societies protect secrets or access to certain rituals (Inhorn 2004;Kulick 2015;Hernann 2017;Manderson et al 2015;Murphy 1964). The ubiquity of privacy means that it has been studied in a broad range of areas in anthropology, especially in relation to religion, social networks, health, and the body (Engelke 2012;Everett 2007;Hortsmann 2020;Scorgie et al 2016.…”