Dr. Valerie Nur talks about Tuareg artisans in Niger

Dr. Valerie Nur received a doctorate degree from BIGSAS in 2022 and joined the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellece again 2023 as a fellow of the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies. In her thesis and during her fellowship she scrutinized artisanal knowledge/skill from a mobile perspective invesitgating the Tuareg artisans in Niger. In this interview as well as the podcast below, she talks about details of her research.

Dr. Nur, what is your thesis about?

Tuareg artisans are called inadan in Tamashek, the language of the Tuareg, and form a descent- based occupational group in which both men and women can be active in the craft. My endeavor is to consider their craft as a professional embodied knowledge, as a specific approach to the world of things, and as technology. In my thesis I explore the artisans’ perception of things, tools, materiality, the production and circulation of knowledge and technology.

I understand craft as a physical, tactile and material practice. However, craft, learning and working are also linked to social relationships: For the Inadan, this is the family. For the Inadan, marriage within the family goes hand in hand with the fact that crafts are often practiced at home. So, the family stays together in a double sense. And this is what binds the craft so strongly to the family. Certainly not all inadan work as artisans, but for those who do, the making of camel saddles, the sewing of leather bags, the forging of silver jewelry, swords, axes and hoes, are part of family life.

Under a shed the women sew leather bags of various sizes, which they embroider with delicate patterns. The men carve mortars and beds and forge garden tools, knives and silver jewelry. Remarkable is that the workshops are open to all family members, women, men and children, as well as neighbors and customers. Travelers and guests often drop in to pass the time. This creates a heterogeneous workshop society, which is actually exceptional in Tuareg social life.

In any case, handicrafts are part of everyday family life and children learn to forge, carve and work leather as a matter of course. In my research, I initially focused on what happened in the workshops, trying to capture the embodied craftsmanship of the artisans. I looked at how they examined, felt, shaped, cut and filed the materials with their hands and engage with the whole body, and as a shared practice.

I watched them examine the materials with their hands, feeling, shaping, cutting and filing, using their whole bodies. But the artisan is not alone. Craftsmanship is a shared experience. At work, they constantly refer to other artisans with whom they have learned and worked. Craftsmanship is not individual, and thus I understand craft as a social practice.

How did you methodologically approach the embodied knowledge of artisans?

At the beginning, I did not know how to approach craft. I was puzzled about what craft is and how can I write about it. All I knew was that it is more than technical descriptions of how to make a camel saddle or a leather traveling bag. Technology has no inherent logic of its own. Pierre Lemonnier, a French scholar of material culture, speaks of “Technological choices” (2002). Tracing these choice gives insights into cultural values and social relations. Yet, I started out that way. My diaries are full with detailed descriptions on how to make different artefacts. After all, it was a good way to learn Tamashek, especially the craft-related vocabulary. I asked for the names of things, patterns, tools, colors, materials and techniques such as hammering, splitting, cutting, dyeing, embroidering, sewing, polishing, grinding, filing, sharpening.

But I wanted to explore what the artisans do, and thus, turned my gaze from the materials in the hands to the craftsmen: Craft is a specific knowledge about things, the feeling for things, how they handle and shape materials. What happens in the workshop is an embodied, implicit, unspoken knowledge, or how Tuareg artisans put it: “afus əyasan” (the hand knows).

Making things involves a certain perception of the world. To make it methodically graspable, approachable, I understand craft as a certain “skilled vision” (Graseni 2007) and grip onto the world of things. So, I explore in my book how artisans do understand the materials, things and tools informed by their skills, what possibilities do they see and how do they deal with materials and things.

In order to experience the sensory perception, I worked with them. I took the knife in my hand, cut the leather and spread the sticky millet paste with my fingers: And only then did I realize, for example, why women always used their middle finger to put the glue on, even though you get a much better feel with your index finger. However, the index finger is needed for all other activities such as holding, turning, embroidering, etc. If you spread the glue with your index finger, everything you touch afterwards will be sticky.

It was only when I worked with them that I understood what was really going on, I was able to understand the technical processes and noticed a special way of handling tools. Inadan blacksmiths forged continuously tools as they worked, as if it were a matter of course. Sometimes they would use a tool they didn't need at the time: A file became a knife or a scraper, an awl or a screwdriver became an engraving needle, and so on. Their toolboxes may seem simple and sparse at first glance to those who have no idea about their work. However, tool making is not a sign of a lack of order or resources. Inadan smiths did not forge tools because markets were too far away or too expensive. They forged their tools because they could not do better for their work. Making tools is a sign of competence and certainty. It involves a certain way of organizing one's work and one's tools, and it involves a certain understanding of things and the material from which they are made. Unlike consumers, craftspeople do not see things simply as finished and durable objects. Precisely because things are material, they are not permanent and can be dismantled, repaired, and rebuilt. Anthropology has paid surprisingly little attention to tool making. Yet tool making is a particular and professional way of accessing the material world and involves a certain way of dealing with the environment – Aspects that are currently very much the focus of studies.

You said that craft is linked to social relationships. What do you mean by that? Can you explain that?

During the 21 months I spent with families of craftsmen in Niger, I learned that the conversations, the tea-making, the jokes, the child-rearing, the afternoon naps between the anvil and the toolbox are all part of the craftsmanship. I have thus included all these events and conversations in my descriptions and analyses.

After all, this is how children and young people learn the craft. The craft is part of the family's everyday life. They learn while making tea, playing with the tools and listening to the seemingly random conversations of the adults. The children experience the craft practices as a matter of course. At an age when they are not yet questioning – and thinking that everything their parents do is good and worth imitating.

Craftsmanship, physical skills are shared practices, and as such I want to convey them. Etienne Wenger aptly explains in “Communities of Practice” (1997) that just because practices are implicit and embodied, they are by no means individual. This is also true for craft practices. Craft practices go beyond the individual with the tool in their hand, focused on a workpiece, but are shared within an entire community of makers, which is among inadan the family.

For me it was crucial to consider the whole community, or family, and explore, how they are involved in the practices. This was how I could see beyond the workshops and learn how the Inadan exchange practices and knowledge over long distances. Especially the young men traveled a lot. One man who made silver jewelry in Niamey once told me that he was going to the village the next day to grow onions. When he returned months later, he told me that in addition to growing onions, he had helped his father forge ax blades and knives in the village. Other blacksmiths also told me that they had learned different techniques from relatives in different places. Mobility is thus fundamental to the exchange and development of this group's craftsmanship.

What is the state of the art on Tuareg artisans and what is your contribution?

My goal is more than to give an anthropological account of Tuareg artisans in Niger. In oral discourse among anthropologists, endogamous artisans, respectively hereditary status groups are regularly referred to as castes. Current research on these groups is scarce (for an exception see Susanne Epple (2018) The state of status groups in Ethiopia). The concept of caste, in turn, evokes ideas of predetermination, oppression, restriction, unfreedom and inbreeding. But descent-based occupational groups, respectively endogamous occupational group only means that people marry within a defined group and that an occupation is passed on within this group. This can happen in very different ways. However, no group of artisans in Africa is forced to practice their craft. And craftsmanship is not always associated with the contempt that the everyday use of the word “caste” implies. Even among the Inadan, not all family members earn their living from handicrafts. Some learn it and go on to other jobs, while others never learn it at all. And as a side remark, endogamy, may sound surprising at first, but in fact we are dealing here with cousin marriage, which is a common practice in large parts of West Africa and beyond.

Most research on Inadan and other West African artisans (which peaked in the 1990s) examines the supernatural powers and magic attributed to them and the special social status that results from this. However, my study revealed that much more important issues for the artisans, apart from the family, were manual skills and work, which is always connected with mobility. I agree, magic is exciting but artisans, in particular blacksmiths all over the world are shrouded in legend. I would like to remind you of Wieland, the blacksmith from Germanic mythology who defied the king. Craftsmanship always brings with it an ambivalence. There are stories about blacksmith kings around the world. In for example, King David was also a blacksmith.

Anyways, in my research I recognized that instead of magic, skills are much more relevant issues to the inadan artisans. Anyone can have supernatural powers, not just us, a blacksmith told me with a shrug. Rather, his manual skills are what set him apart from others. So, instead of seeing endogamy as a prison, we learn much more by understanding the inadan as a community of makers and experts, and by following the production and circulation of knowledge and tracing its wide network, and their understanding of things and materials.

Cluster Conversations: Dr. Valerie Nur and Prof. Dr. Joël Glasman

In addition to the written interview above Dr. Valerie Nur recorded a podcast episode with her fellowship host Prof. Dr. Joël Glasman (Chair of African History at the University of Bayreuth) about her research.

Tune in!

• Download the episode here
• Listen to it on Spotify
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About Dr. Valerie Nur

Dr. Valerie Nur (née Hänisch) wrote her doctoral thesis on artisanal skills, mobility and family among Tuareg artisans in Niger at the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS). She was awarded the Frobenius Research Promotion Prize 2022 and the first prize of the German Society for Social and Cultural Anthropology (DGSKA) 2023 in Munich for her dissertation. Nur has been working as a research assistant at the Chair of Flight, Migration and Social Mobility at the University of the Bundeswehr München since December 2023. She studied social and cultural anthropology, sociology, history and religions of Africa in Bayreuth, Basel, Aix-en-Provence and Berlin. Her research focuses on technical knowledge and skills as shared practices, crafts, technology and mobility, work and family, gold and gender in West Africa and the Sahel region. In autumn 2023 she was a fellow of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth in the research section “mobilities”.