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SUMMARY:The rifle\, the quill\, and the rosary\; competing sources of poli
 tical legitimacy in Mali  - Professor Dorothea Schulz (University of Colog
 ne)
DTSTART:20151102T170000Z
DTEND:20151102T180000Z
UID:TALK61750@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Victoria Jones
DESCRIPTION:The paper examines competing sources of political legitimacy i
 n contemporary Mali through a two-pronged analysis. It reconstructs region
 ally diverse responses to the slogan of 'national reconciliation' articula
 ted by the Malian after the 2012 coup d’État\, in response to Tuareg se
 paratist and Islamist attempts to slice off the country’s northern terri
 tories. Tracing the genealogy of the slogan back to the independence jubil
 ee celebrations in late 2011\, the paper demonstrates how and why the mean
 ings of “reconciliation” resonate differently with different segments 
 of the Malian national “community”. The paper pays particular attentio
 n to the key role of the national army in official invocations of national
  unity and in their contested reception\, arguing that the military\, as a
 n institution and as an actual source of political legitimacy\, competes w
 ith “intellectual power” as the default mode of political legitimacy. 
 In a second step\, the paper reconstructs how over the past decades\, an i
 diom of Islamic moral renewal has become an alternative source of politica
 l legitimacy. The paper concludes with a discussion of the “fault lines 
 of the nation” revealed in the regionally diverse engagements with the t
 hree competing sources of legitimacy.     \n\n\n
LOCATION:Seminar Room S1 Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge
  CB3 9DT
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