Dr Delphine Manetta

Dr Delphine Manetta

Researcher & Deputy Director

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My research in anthropology lies at the crossroads of three major fields of interest: masculinities, power and politics, and mobilities, places and space.

My doctoral thesis at Université Paris Descartes, France was based on an ethnography of the 2012 local elections in Jàana villages located in southwestern Burkina Faso. In describing how kinship, generations, gender, friendship, regional origin and gifts shaped eligibility, i.e. the political legitimacy of local elected officials, I discovered that eligibility illustrated long-term transformations of power and relations in the villages and the nation-state. These transformations were also apparent through the architectural changes in rural domestic spaces: they materially demonstrated the sexualization and monetization of martial virility as exemplified by local elected officials. However, these transformations can be explained by intertwined mobilities, such as mythical and contemporary migrations, pre-colonial and colonial conquests and rural exodus. These mobilities have acted as profound transformative dynamics, ultimately reminding that West African rurality is, like urban spaces, connected to time and the world.

From this rural context, I opened my research to cities. How can lessons on West African rurality shed light on social and political dynamics in urban spaces? As part of a first post-doctoral fellowship (Institut des Mondes Africains, EHESS, France), I studied how daily and ordinary mobilities in Ouagadougou, the Burkinabe capital, shaped kinship relations in Jàana families, introducing either solidarities or conflicts between relatives.

As part of a second post-doctoral fellowship (IDEX, University of Paris, France), I studied labor relations and unionism among dockworkers in the port of Abidjan (Côte d'Ivoire). The aim was to understand how the space of port embodied political and trade-union struggles: how these struggles involved, for the dockers, transforming the port through destruction and posters of deceased union leaders and, at the same time, how the port itself also provided a vocabulary translating conflictual labor relations, distinguishing between leaders “ahead” and “sitting” in offices and workers “on the move” in the city and on the docks.

My research in Nigeria, entitled Dwelling Nigeria. A Perspective from Male Tea Groups in the “Public Space” of Ibadan, is both an extension and a synthesis of my earlier work. Firstly, it aims to overcome the artificial separation between the former French and British colonies. Secondly, it focuses on the uses and representations of “public space” in Ibadan, in order to describe it, not only as “disputed” and “dangerous”, but also as a place for encounters, sharing and solidarities. Thirdly, by focusing on male tea groups in Sabo district, Ibadan, I seek to understand the extent to which the occupation of an urban “public space” enables men to build their masculinity. In this respect, male tea groups would be points of departure, destinations or places of exile from where men attempt to dwell a neighborhood, a city and a state.

Latest publications

(to be published), « Une représentation syndicale ambivalente. Syndicalisme docker et relations professionnelles sur le port d’Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) », Nouvelle revue du Travail.

2024, Une élection africaine. Pouvoir, espace et transformations au sud-ouest du Burkina Faso, Paris, L’Harmattan.

2022 Contribution to Petenque P. (ed.), Anthropologie de la Parenté. Le débat des avatars, Nanterre, Société d’Ethnologie.

2022 « Quelque chose de ‟pourri” dans le don. Richesse, ordures et sorcellerie au Burkina Faso » in Dianteill E., Bindi S. et Lamote T. (ed.), La violence insidieuse. Anthropologie et psychologie de la sorcellerie et du harcèlement moral, Paris, Éditions Archives Karéline : 65-94.

2021 avec Fabienne Samson (ed.), Du contrôle social en Afrique. Réflexivités autour du genre et de l’origine « locale » du chercheur, Paris-Brazzaville, PAARI Éditions.

2020 « Le don et la ‟foutaise”. Une analyse de chants dans la campagne électorale de novembre 2012 dans des villages jàana (Burkina Faso) », Cahiers d’études africaines, 237 : 7-30.