Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. A never-ending conquest: settlement and the making of a Saharan town; 2. Fifty shades of Khaki: armed conflict and other entanglements; 3. Trouble in the Palm-Grove: labour, status, ownership; 4. Tricks of trade: production, protection and predation; 5. Great ploys and small expectations: accumulation and dispersal in a half-world; 6. The state encompassed: everyday disorder, the aesthetics of violence, and the political imagination; Conclusion.

Promotional Information

Based on long-term research in northern Chad, this book provides a unique account of mobility, wealth, and aspirations to political autonomy at the heart of the contemporary Sahara.

About the Author

Julien Brachet is a Research Fellow at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He is the author of Migrations transsahariennes: Vers un désert cosmopolite et morcelé (2009). Judith Scheele is Directrice d'études at the Écoles des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. She is the author of Village Matters: Politics, Knowledge and Community in Kabylia (2009), and Smugglers and Saints of the Sahara: Regional Connectivity in the Twentieth Century (2012).