The Bush Is Sweet: Globalization, Identity and Power Among WoDaaBe Fulani in Niger

In this book, Kristín Loftsdóttir gives the reader a highly personal insight into the lives of the Wodaabe nomads of Niger, who are striving to make a living between the bush and the city. She spent nearly two years as a Wodaabe, living within a Wodaabe extended family and alternating between the nomadic setting of the bush and the urbanized life-style of the capital, Niamey. Loftsdóttir was thus in a unique position to observe the effects that increasing urbanization and globalization, together with the modern tourist industry’s preconceptions and demands, have had on the identity and power relations of the Wodaabe.

Interwoven with the abstract scientific observations are the more personal reflections and analyses of a young white woman on living within, and sharing all aspects of, the everyday lives of the Wodaabe with the broad spectrum of reactions which this entails. These sensitively written and honest descriptions, including details of what the author at times experiences as her own shortcomings within her project, give a most interesting dimension to the work not always found in anthropological studies.