Creating Modernities through Conversation Groups: The Everyday Worlds of Hausa Migrants in Niamey, Niger

African Studies Review, Dec 2004 by Youngstedt, Scott M

Recognizing the broader context of Hausa verbal art, this article views the public culture of hira groups as a highly strategic site for the investigation of the ways by which globalization and the media affect, and are interpreted by, Hausa migrants in their diaspora communities in Niamey. After communicating my goals as an ethnographer, I spent countless hours hanging out in conversation groups, listening, participating to the best of my ability, and then later reconstructing the highlights and central themes of hira sessions. I reasoned that tape recording would be too invasive to the flow of hira. Thus this paper does not engage in formal discourse analysis. However, it is grounded in the theoretical insights and empirical evidence found in the sociolinguistic literature on oral performance.

This literature highlights the "heterogeneous and dynamic character of language and the central place it occupies in the social construction of reality" (Bauman & Briggs 1990:60). Through the collective construction of the world around them, hira group participants demonstrate the power of "verbal art to transform, not simply reflect, social life" (Bauman & Briggs 1990:69). Social interaction in hira "requires an integrated analysis of action, mutual [and contested] knowledge, and social context" (Goodwin & Heritage 1990:284). This approach emphasizes that "intersubjective understandings are actively achieved as the outcome of concrete interactive processes" which create "mutual understandings [that] are highly contingent and revisable"(Goodwin & Heritage 1990:286). As focal arenas of public cultural debate, hira groups interactively interpret and evaluate the world to creatively produce unique understandings of modernity.

The Structure, Rhythm, and Purposes of Hira

I first sat in hira groups while conducting ethnographic research in small rural Hausa villages numbering three hundred to one thousand people in south-central Niger during the farming seasons of 1988 and 1989. Evenings were devoted to hira groups meeting in zauruka (compound entrance rooms) or on dirt paths in the center of town. Relaxed, informal discussions focused on local matters such as farming conditions, village gossip, and joking. Men also enjoyed telling stories of adventure and discovery, of their migrations to Niamey and beyond. They were asked many questions. How much does it cost to get to Niamey? How can I find people from our village once I get there? Who will help me find work and a place to stay?

Since 1991-92 (and in return visits in 1994, 1998, 2000, and 2003) my research has focused on the lives of Hausa migrants in Niamey, where roadside conversation groups meet all day throughout the city. They typically consist of about ten participants, with a core group of about six men around the same age and usually from the same hometown. However, the composition of groups fluctuates on an hourly, daily, and seasonal basis. As many as two dozen individuals may join in at the same time. Many groups in Niamey also include a small minority of Zarma, Fulani, Tuareg, or other men.