«Dieu d'eau», eau du barrage. Les populations du Plateau Dogon face aux contraintes: pluviométrie, terre et démographie

Abstract

AbstractDogon society, readily described as traditional by a certain ethnology, holds within it the seeds of an extraordinary flexibility which enables it to retain the essentials: its apparent conservatism and its underlying internal dynamism. Thus, the relative individualisation of the market gardening system makes up for the shortcomings of a cereal economy that is chronically in deficit; integration into the market is essential to improving the food situation.Dogon social structure is still withstanding the hammer blows of out-migration, monetisation, Islam and Christianity. Is it not the case that some who had left for good do sometimes return? Such is the case with some of the numerous peasants who were transferred by the Church during the drought years to southern Mali where the land was more fertile and the climate wetter. Conversely, the loss of population suffered by the highlands, the accelerated rate of Islamisation (or re-Islamisation) and Christianisation, together with the economic importance of dams are surely speeding up the break-up of the family as a farming unit. This process would be irreversible if the speculative and sometimes individual market-gardening promoted by themanandid not exist. The family as it is today will of course succumb by transforming itself but it still has some future which depends on a number of conditions: the control of grain and cattle by the chief, the deepening of urban poverty which makes emigrants return home, the solving of the problems of the conservation and marketing of shallots, the opening-up of the plain, an outlet for younger sons who have left themananand send back the cereal surplus from their new villages to the highlands. The fragile equilibrium established by the Dogon will survive so long as the dams continue to water these green islands lost in a sea of sandstone.