Understanding a 'Broken World'
Islam, Ritual, and Climate Change in Mali, West Africa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v8i3.287Keywords:
Islam, climate change, ritual, MaliAbstract
In the early twenty-first century, an increasing number of Muslims in the West African state of Mali turned to religious rituals in an effort to stop the desertification of the Sahel and return to the temperate climate of the past. In order to better understand the relationship between Islam and climate change, I draw from ethnographic research to account for the perspectives and religious interpretations that civilians in southwestern Mali had for West Africa’s drying climate. In what follows, I show that Muslims in Mali commonly accounted for climate change in terms of social and political conflicts. My research, moreover, documents the ritual practices that Muslims used in their everyday lives to peacefully manage the negative consequences of their increasingly arid environment.
References
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Wagenaar, K.T., A. Diallo, and A.R. Sayers. 1986. Productivity of Transhumant Fulani Cattle in the Inner Niger Delta of Mali (Addis Ababa: International Livestock Center for Africa).
Wooten, Stephen. 2009. The Art of Livelihood: Creating Expressive Agri-Culture in Rural Mali (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press).
World Bank. 2013a. ‘Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience’. Online: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/06/17862361/turn-down-heat-climate-extremes-regional-impacts-caseresilience-full-report.
———. 2013b. ‘Country Data: Mali’. Online: http://data.worldbank.org/country/mali.
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Biasutti, Michela, and Alessandra Giannini. 2006. ‘Robust Sahel Drying in Response to Late 20th Century Forcings’, American Geophysical Union 33, L11706. Doi: 10.1029/2006GL026067.
Chérif, Sadia, and Joy H. Greenberg. 2014. ‘Religious Perspectives on Climate Change in the West Ivoirian Mountainous Region’, in Veldman et al. 2014: 126-38.
Clément, Jean A.P. 1996. Aftermath of the CFA Franc Devaluation (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund).
Clifford, James. 2012. ‘Feeling Historical’, Cultural Anthropology 27.3: 417-26. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2012.01151.x.
Csordas, Thomas J. 2001. ‘Notes for Cybernetics of the Holy’, in Messer and Lambek 2001: 227-43.
Englund, Harri, and James Leach. 2000. ‘Ethnography and the Meta-Narratives of Modernity’, Current Anthropology 41.2: 225-48. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/300126.
Fairhead, James, and Melissa Leach. 1996. Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139164023.
Follmer, Max. 2013. ‘Africa Will Starve and Asia Will Drown in 30 Years Due to Climate Change: Report’, Take Part. Online: http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/06/19/world-bank-climate-report.
Gillison, Gillian. 2001. ‘Reflections on Pigs for the Ancestors’, in Messer and Lambek 2001: 291-99.
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162: 1243-48. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.162.3859.1243.
Hoffman, Ulrich. 2011. ‘Assuring Food Security in Developing Countries under the Challenges of Climate Change: Key Trade and Development Issues of a Fundamental Transformation of Agriculture’, United Nations CTAD Discussion Papers. Online: http://unctad.org/en/Docs/osgdp20111_en.pdf.
Launay, Robert. 1992. Beyond the Stream: Islam and Society in a West African Town (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Masquelier, Adeline. 2009. Women and Islamic Revival in a West African Town (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
Messer, Ellen, and Michael Lambek (eds.). 2001. Ecology and the Sacred: Engaging the Anthropology of Roy A. Rappaport (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press).
Mommersteeg, Geert. 2012. In the City of the Marabouts: Islamic Culture in West Africa (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press).
Muehlebach, Andrea. 2013. ‘On Precariousness and the Ethical Imagination: The Year 2012 in Sociocultural Anthropology’, American Anthropologist 115.2: 297-311. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aman.12011.
Nelson, Gerald C. et al. 2006. ‘Anthropogenic Drivers of Ecosystem Change: An Overview’, Ecology and Society 11.2: 29.
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511807763.
Patz, Jonathan A., and R. Sari Kovats. 2002. ‘Hotspots in Climate Change and Human Health’, British Medical Journal 325.7372: 1094-98. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.325.7372.1094.
Rappaport, Roy A. 1979. Ecology, Meaning, and Religion (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books).
———. 1984. Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People (New Haven: Yale University Press).
Soares, Benjamin F. 2005. Islam and the Prayer Economy: History and Authority in a Malian Town (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748622856.001.0001.
———. 2013. ‘Islam in Mali since the 2012 Coup’, Fieldsights: Hot Spots, Cultural Anthropology. Online: http://culanth.org/fieldsights/321-islam-in-mali-sincethe-2012-coup.
Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity. 2012. ‘Promoting Origin-linked Quality Products in Four Countries (GFT/RAF/426/ITA)’. Online: http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/olq/documents/documents/Midtermreport3.pdf.
Taylor, Bron. 2013. ‘Kenya’s Green Belt Movement: Contributions, Conflict, Contradictions, and Complications in a Prominent ENGO’, in Nina Witoszek, Lars Tragardh, and Bron Taylor (eds.), Civil Society in the Age of Monitory Democracy (Oxford: Berghahn Books): 180-207.
Tucker, Compton J., Harold E. Dregne, and Wilbur W. Newcomb. 1991. ‘Expansion and Contraction of the Sahara Desert from 1980 to 1990’, Science New Series 253.5017: 299-301.
UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). 1991. Status of Desertification and Implementation of the United Nations Plan of Action to Control Desertification (Nairobi, KE: UNEP).
Veldman, Robin Globus, Andrew Szasz, and Randolph Haluza-DeLay. 2014. ‘Social Science, Religions, and Climate Change’, in Veldman et al. 2014: 5-19.
Veldman, Robin Globus et al. (eds.). 2014. How the World’s Religions Are Responding to Climate Change: Social Scientific Investigations (London: Routledge).
Wagenaar, K.T., A. Diallo, and A.R. Sayers. 1986. Productivity of Transhumant Fulani Cattle in the Inner Niger Delta of Mali (Addis Ababa: International Livestock Center for Africa).
Wooten, Stephen. 2009. The Art of Livelihood: Creating Expressive Agri-Culture in Rural Mali (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press).
World Bank. 2013a. ‘Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience’. Online: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/06/17862361/turn-down-heat-climate-extremes-regional-impacts-caseresilience-full-report.
———. 2013b. ‘Country Data: Mali’. Online: http://data.worldbank.org/country/mali.
———. 2013c. ‘Climate Change Knowledge Portal’. Online: http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/climateportal/index.cfm?page=country_historical_climate&ThisRegion=Africa&ThisCCode=MLI.
Zev, Levin, Noam Halfon, and Pinhas Alpert. 2010. ‘Reassessment of Rain Enhancement Experiments and Operations in Israel Including Synoptic Considerations’, Atmospheric Research 97.4: 513-25. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2010.06.011.
Published
2014-12-16
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Bell, D. (2014). Understanding a ’Broken World’: Islam, Ritual, and Climate Change in Mali, West Africa. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 8(3), 287-306. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v8i3.287
