Nikolas Sweet

The rationale of this workshop is to convene a group of interdisciplinary scholars working in the region of K’dougou, Senegal for two workshops: one virtual and one held in-person in Dakar, Senegal. K’dougou occupies a unique place in the history of Senegal and in ‘four-field’ anthropological research in West Africa. K’dougou became an inland maroon geography during the trans-Atlantic slave trade as people sought refuge from enslavement in the region’s mountains, which also contained deposits of gold and iron. After Senegal’s independence from France in the 1960s, a group of French anthropologists undertook long-term research on the region’s demographic heterogeneity, generating a scholarly corpus that is one of the only attempts at sustained ‘four-field’ anthropological research in West Africa. Today, K’dougou is once again the site of intensive social scientific research as it has emerged at the epicenter of S’negal’s gold mining boom. By convening K’dougou’s current social and natural scientists, this workshop aims to chart a new ethnographic legacy for Kedougou’s 21st century, one centered on the work of Senegalese scholars. Together we will revisit K’dougou’s historic ethnographic record as a source of data and as a crucial window into the history of anthropology in West Africa.