For Jean-Pierre Chauveau: A Personal Take, by Henri-Michel Yéré

Abstract

The history of anthropology constituted itself at the interface of changing contexts, persons (academic and non-academic anthropologists) and institutions (research organizations, funding agencies, political and bureaucratic authorities). The recent publication of a Festschrift for Jean-Pierre Chauveau1 and the panel we organized around the book for the ECAS conference in Lisbon, June 2013, provided two ideal occasions for an in-depth discussion on these complex linkages. The long run of this articulation of the country’s history, the institutional commitment of ORSTOM/IRD and the personal involvement of Jean-Pierre Chauveau has allowed the latter to study in depth a wide range of topics, with ever more inspiration, thus building an ‘anthropology between power and history’ (the title of the Festschrift, published at the end of 2011, to honour his work). His deep involvement permitted Chauveau to bring out the interconnection between the region’s plantation economy, issues of land and migration, a longterm history of settlement and exchange, state formation, the dispositifs of development and state formation, colonial and post-colonial governmentality. The productivity of this articulation of context, researcher and institution is also borne out by the broad audience interested in this work: specialists of Ivory Coast but also colleagues and observers interested in politics and issues of development in general. Henri-Michel Yéré takes here the opportunity to pursue this conversation and links in this stimulating paper different strands of the reflection – on development, state making and belonging – by focusing on the Ivorian postcolonial trajectory and the intellectual and political debates its qualification nurtured.