Smugglers and Saints of the Sahara Regional Connectivity in the Twentieth Century African Studies Series

Smugglers and Saints of the Sahara describes life on and around the contemporary border between Algeria and Mali, exploring current developments in a broad historical and socioeconomic context. Basing her findings on long-term fieldwork with trading families, truckers, smugglers and scholars, Judith Scheele investigates the history of contemporary patterns of mobility from the late nineteenth century to the present. Through a careful analysis of family ties and local economic records, this book shows how long-standing mobility and interdependence have shaped not only local economies, but also notions of social hierarchy, morality and political legitimacy, creating patterns that endure today and that need to be taken into account in any empirically-grounded study of the region.

1. Founding saints and moneylenders: regional ecologies and oasis settlement; 2. Saints on trucks: Algerian traders and settlement in the biblād al-sūdān; 3. Dates, cocaine, and AK 47s: moral conundrums on the Algero–Malian border; 4. Struggles over encompassment: hierarchy, genealogies, and their contemporary use; 5. Universal law and local containment: assemblies, qudāh and the quest for civilisation; 6. Settlement, mobility, and the daily pitfalls of Saharan cosmopolitanism; Conclusion: Saharan connectivity and the 'swamp of terror'; Glossary; References; Index.

Judith Scheele is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University. She is a social anthropologist who has conducted extensive fieldwork in North Africa and the Sahel. She is the author of Village Matters: Knowledge, Politics and Community in Kabylia, Algeria (2009).