This dissertation takes an ethnographic perspective on competing global discourses and contested nationalisms in a postcolonial, multicultural nation. Using the Festival au Desert, in Mali, West Africa as a case study, I investigate the complexities of using cultural productions and tourism to achieve political, economic, and social goals. I critically assess several projects of Tuareg Intangible Cultural Heritage preservation to show the contested nature of collective identities. Neoliberal development in the Global South necessitates niche markets such as tourism centered on culture; however these markets are inherently unstable due to historic and contemporary global economic practices. The Festival au Desert was opened to the world just a few years after an armed rebellion between Tuareg separatists and the state of Mali was suppressed. On the first full moon of 2001, the Festival brought Malian musicians and citizens together in celebration. It became a symbol of peace and reconciliation between formally opposed groups, most notably southern sedentary populations and northern nomadic groups, such as the Tuareg. It also became an important factor in income generation in Mali, and it was a space where international tourists and their Tuareg hosts came into contact and shared dialogue. Tuareg hoped that through the Festival the world could know who they were outside of the rebellion. But in 2012, a renewed rebellion was staged and subsequently co-opted by supporters of Al-Qaeda who instituted Shari'a law in Timbuktu sending the Festival into exile, and Mali's growing tourist economy came to a devastating halt. The Festival provides a rich case study of the benefits and perils of tourism in multicultural states and in wider globalizing frames. It highlights the contradictions in using tourism as a development strategy, as prescribed by international institutions such as the United Nations World Tourism Organization, as it is a fragile enterprise subject to the whims of the market, environment, and global and local politics. However, the research also shows the importance of the Festival for Tuareg identity and how it provided a space for nomads to continue a tradition of gathering after seasonal migrations to negotiate marriages, discuss politics, and celebrate together.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T19:30:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Mahfouz Ag Adnane.pdf: 8797860 bytes, checksum: f09e68a514715795f684ec9c17e16c7b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-25 / This work aims to offer a reflection on the history of the Kel Tamasheq through an analysis of the context and production of Malian and Nigerien Ichúmar youth musical groups and their experiences of migration andinsile, social and economic marginalization, and political exile. Techúmara is the movement of cultural resistance that arose around the mid-1980s. Nevertheless, such a movement needs to be understood in its roots in the political and economic histories that emerged. Tamasheq youth are undergoing a strong and accelerated process of change and of economic loss and loss of freedom. The main objective, therefore, is to analyze the production of Tamasheq music, articulated within the context of political action and the social and cultural developments that emerged from the conflict between society and the State to 1) establish a corpus from the discography of songs produced by the Ichúmar Movement (1980-2010) such as written poetry of resistance; 2 ) discuss the relationship between the corpus of musical text-literary production-of the Ichúmar generation, taking into consideration the historical events, and analyze the themes present in this form of cultural expression. The music is a hybrid expression and cultural form that is strongly open to influences, especially given the context of nomadism and exile. As a unique style, produced in confluence with Western, Arab, and Tamasheq music, Ichúmar music is an expression that is intensely inscribed in the present and in contemporary mobility. The text (musical poetry set to the lyrics of songs) that is produced within this literary form is the result of a complex process in which the imaginary and the real are profoundly interwoven in the effort to narrate the events (social, political, aesthetic, emotional, identity-related) that involve various dimensions of the human experience. The experience turns the guitar, the fundamental instrument of the rockers of Tenere (the desert), into a footbridge for communication that is at once internal and rooted (to raise awareness among young people and get them to join the struggle) and innovative and external, to raise awareness and make their causes known beyond the borders of this ancient Saharan society / Este trabalho visa oferecer uma reflexão sobre a história Tamacheque a partir da análise sobre o contexto e a produção de grupos musicais de jovens Ichúmar do Mali e do Níger. Considera-se a experiência de migração e de insílio e de marginalização social e econômica, bem como de exílio político. Techúmara é nome do movimento de resistência cultural que se concretizou em meados de 1980. Tal movimento precisa ser compreendido em sua ancoragem da história política e econômica em que emergiu. A juventude tamacheque exprime um forte e acelerado processo de mudança e de perda econômica e de liberdade. O objetivo central é, portanto, analisar a produção musical tamacheque articulada ao contexto da ação política e dos desdobramentos sociais e culturais que surgiram do conflito entre a sociedade e o Estado. Para tanto, procurou-se: 1) identificar os laços entre luta social, identidades comunitárias e coletivas com suas narrativas musicais; 2) compreender o papel do movimento dos Ichúmar para a construção da memória social de/sobre os Kel Tamacheque, tanto no Mali e no Níger como no exílio. De forma específica buscou-se estabelecer um corpus a partir dos textos das canções da discografia produzida pelo movimento dos Ichúmar (1980-2010) como escrita poética de resistência; discutir a relação entre o corpus de texto musical - produção literária , da geração Ichúmar, considerando os eventos históricos e analisando as temáticas presentes nessa forma de expressão cultural. A música é expressão híbrida e forma cultural fortemente aberta a influências, sobretudo nesses contextos de nomadismo e exílio. Com estilo único, produzido na confluência de músicas ocidentais, do norte do continente africano e tamacheque, a música Ichúmar é expressão intensamente inscrita no presente e na mobilidade contemporânea (incluindo sua diáspora). O texto - poesias musicadas das letras das canções -, produzido no bojo desta forma literária é resultado de processo complexo, em que o imaginário e o real estão profundamente entrelaçados no esforço de narrar os eventos, suas estéticas, sentimentos e afetos identitários desse mundo tamacheque, que comporta diversas dimensões da experiência humana. Fez da guitarra a passarela, o instrumento fundamental dos roqueiros do tenerê (deserto), para uma comunicação, por um lado, interna, dirigida para que os jovens tomassem consciência e aderissem à causa. Por outro lado, externa, destinada a dar visibilidade à luta política desta antiga sociedade do Saara