Identities, Histories, and Challenges of (Re)Naming

I joined MANSA in late 1987 after two extended periods of research in Mali focused respectively on work and social transformation in Bamana communities of the Segou region, and on handwoven cloth production by weavers from different parts of Mali and Upper Guinea. Like many others, I have found the Association to be a congenial and open intellectual community, even as my interests expanded to include research in Senegal. Yet I have asked myself for a while if the name’s singular emphasis on Mande is still apposite today, knowing full well that members understand it to mean the far-flung “Mande World” rather than the Mande as an ethno-linguistic group. To pursue this question, I reflect on the name by returning to earlier studies of history, ethnicity, and identity, and by raising questions prompted by the exigencies of the present. I do so against the background of a brief history of Mande Studies since associations, too, have identities which evolve out of epistemologies in specific historical contexts.

Mande Studies

The Association was founded at the November 1986 African Studies Association (ASA) annual meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, during an informal gathering of a multi-disciplinary group of scholars who were interested in forming an association around the topic of Mande Studies. Historian Nehemia Levtzion proposed the name Mande Studies Association with MANSA as its acronym, and all present agreed. David Conrad, named president at the meeting, recounts this historic moment in the first Newsletter (Conrad 1986, 1) and in an overview of the association’s history, written at the end of his presidency in 2008 (Conrad 2008).

Three of those present at the founding meeting—Lansiné Kaba, Robert Launay, and Nehemia Levtzion—had already participated in the 1972 “Manding Studies Conference” at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. The report by conference chair David Dalby shows that it was a major event, with 108 presentations by scholars from Britain, France, the U.S., and West Africa (especially Senegal, Mali, and Gambia).¹ The number of Senegalese participants was greater than that of participants from Mali and Gambia combined and included President Léopold Sédar Senghor. President Senghor also presided over the conference and made a presentation on “Le mandingue dans la civilisation soudano-sahélienne.”² The closing session was chaired by the High Commissioner of Sierra Leone.

Conference participants concurred that “knowledge of the Manding world should be advanced by all possible means through the collaboration of the many individual specialists and institutions concerned” (Manding Conference 1972, 7). How this might happen was outlined in a series of specific recommendations. These ranged from various academic initiatives, including the organization of another conference in Dakar in 1975, to the promotion of cultural tourism and the development of materials for teaching about Africa at the primary and secondary levels.

Apart from its scholarly significance, the conference gained high public visibility through an art exhibition at the Museum of Mankind and by performances—live, on radio, and on television—of musicians and singers from Gambia, Mali, and Senegal.³ It was also recognized at the highest British political levels with a dinner and a luncheon in honor of President Senghor, hosted respectively by Prime Minister Heath and by Queen Elizabeth.

The impressive London conference demonstrated the scholarly interest in Manding history, culture, and arts that had developed by that time. It also inspired the founders of MANSA some fourteen years later. The new association aimed to exchange “ideas and information among its members via a Newsletter,” to interest others in joining, to communicate its existence to research institutions in “countries of the Mande culture zone and interested areas,” and to share the newsletters with them (Conrad 1986). The organization of MANSA panels for the 1987 ASA meeting was also discussed, and four were subsequently organized. Interestingly, the Association’s scope was not specified but seemed to be taken for granted, as the newsletters and activities of the first decade show. Forty-one scholars from North America, Europe, Mali, Guinea, and Israel had officially joined by the time the second...