Vom Reichtum eines armen Landes

Nationalfeiern und Nationenbildung in Burkina Faso

Author: Svenja Haberecht. Photographs by: Svenja Haberecht. Series edited by: Thomas Bierschenk, Heike Drotbohm, Raimund Kastenholz, Matthias Krings, Carola Lentz, Anja Oed, Markus Verne.

Series: MBA Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrikaforschung Volume 40

In 2010 Burkina Faso celebrated his fiftieth independence jubilee – a milestone in the process of nation building. The anniversary celebration gave rise to memorize the country’s history and proudly to take stock of previous achievements. But it also raised a discussion about the status quo of independence, recent challenges and future development paths.

The present book examines the process of nation building in Burkina Faso along the history of its national days since 1960. Based on comprehensive archive material concerning past celebrations of national days, participatory observation and numerous interviews about the anniversary celebration of 2010, the author analyses the political staging as well as the social counterdrafts of nation.

The examined anniversary celebrations demonstrate that in between the five decades of independence a national consciousness emerged, which – in full consciousness of the country’s material poverty – imposes its cultural diversity as the nation's wealth.

About the author:

Svenja Haberecht studied Sociology at the University of Bielefeld. She received her PhD at the Institute for Anthropology and African Studies of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and was a member of the doctoral research group The poetics and politics of national commem­oration in Africa. Research areas are Asia (Sri Lanka, Laos) and West Africa (Burkina Faso); her research interests are development planning and development politics as well as political anthro­pology and nationalism.

Analyses of independence movements in several African countries are provided in the paper collection 50 Jahre Unabhängigkeit in Afrika; further studies on ethnicity and nation building in Central and West African countries have been published:

Accompanying material:

• 50 Jahre Unabhängigkeit in Afrika (ISBN 978-3-89645-829-2)
• Ein günstiger Augenblick (ISBN 978-3-89645-845-2)
• Nationalism and Politics in Post-Colonial Nigeria (ISBN 978-3-89645-894-0)
• The Lion and his Pride (ISBN 978-3-89645-838-4)

Cross-reference:

• Bitteres Gold (ISBN 978-3-89645-821-6)
• Fremde Nachbarn (ISBN 978-3-89645-818-6)
• Lokale Selbstverwaltung im Spannungsfeld von afrikanischer Tradition und europäischer Moderne (ISBN 978-3-89645-623-6)
• Yoruba Nationalism (ISBN 978-3-89645-900-8)
• Zugehörigkeiten (ISBN 978-3-89645-843-8)

© 2024 by Rüdiger Köppe Verlag – www.koeppe.de

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