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A SNAPSHOT OF HAPPINESS: PHOTO ALBUMS, RESPECTABILITY AND ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY IN DAKAR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2014

Beth Buggenhagen
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Abstract

Young women who live in the improvised urban spaces on the outskirts of Senegal's capital city, Dakar, extemporize their respectability in a time of fiscal uncertainty through personal photography. The neighbourhood of Khar Yalla is an improvised, interconnected and multilayered space settled by families removed from the city centre during clean-up campaigns from the 1960s to the 1970s, by families escaping conflict in Casamance and Guinea-Bissau, and by recent rural migrants. As much as Khar Yalla is an improvised neighbourhood, it is also a space of improvisation. When women pose for, display, and pass around portraits of themselves at key moments in their social life, whether in the medium of social networking sites or photo albums, they reveal as much as they conceal the elements of individual and social life. They index their social networks and constitute their urban space not as peripheral, but as central to the lives and imaginations of their siblings and spouses who live abroad. Photographs actively shape and construct urban spaces, which are often loud, unruly and fraught spaces with vast inequalities and incommensurabilities. How women deal with economic and social disparity, within their own families, communities, and globally, is the subject of this article.

Résumé

Les jeunes femmes qui vivent dans les espaces urbains improvisés de la périphérie de la capitale du Sénégal, Dakar, improvisent leur respectabilité à une époque d'incertitude fiscale à travers la photographie personnelle. Le quartier de Khar Yalla est un espace improvisé, interconnecté et multicouche peuplé par des familles expulsées du centre-ville lors de campagnes d'épuration dans les années 1960 et 1970, par des familles qui ont fui les conflits en Casamance et en Guinée-Bissau, et par des migrants ruraux récents. Khar Yalla est un quartier improvisé, mais aussi un espace d'improvisation. Lorsque les femmes posent pour des photos, affichent et font circuler des portraits d'elles-mêmes à des moments clés de leur vie sociale, que ce soit sur des sites de réseaux sociaux ou dans des albums photo, elles révèlent autant qu'elles dissimulent des éléments de vie personnelle et sociale. Elles répertorient leurs réseaux sociaux et constituent leur espace urbain non pas en périphérie mais au centre des existences et imaginations de leurs fratries et époux qui résident à l'étranger. Les photographies façonnent et construisent activement des espaces urbains où règnent souvent le bruit, le désordre et les tensions, ainsi que de vastes inégalités et incommensurabilités. Cet article traite de la manière dont les femmes gèrent les disparités économiques et sociales au sein de leurs propres familles et communautés, ainsi qu'à l'échelle mondiale.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 78 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2014 

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