Economic Anthropology 2015; 2: 250–263 DOI:10.1002/sea2.

12029

Addressing global economic inequalities

in local ways in Senegal’s artisanal
workshops
Laura L. Cochrane

Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI
48859, USA
Corresponding author: Laura L. Cochrane; e-mail: cochr1ll@cmich.edu

Central Senegal was once a thriving agricultural area, but over the past century, it has struggled with repeated droughts, rising temperatures,
and land mismanagement. In addition, global inequalities, including colonialism, unequal energy use, and international trade inequities, have
escalated both climate change and economic insecurities worldwide. These inequalities in turn have affected local environments and economies.
Throughout these long-term crises, in central Senegal, communities have relied on religious networks. Leaders of local economic development
projects also work through these networks to rebuild their communities. This article focuses on the extent to which residents of two towns
have used these participatory networks to address environmental and economic challenges. Their varied experiences show the importance of
using a region’s social foundations in communities’ work toward financial viability. This article argues that local development projects that use
these existing strengths as organizing principles are able to adapt to persistent challenges more successfully than those that do not. Existing
networks that strengthen communities also strengthen their efforts to become sustainable.

Keywords Senegal; Sufism; Development; Environment; Sustainability

The Thiès and Diourbel administrative regions in central Senegal were once in a thriving agricultural
area, but over the past century they have struggled with repeated droughts, rising temperatures, and land
mismanagement. Global inequalities—including colonialism, unequal energy use, and international
trade inequities—that have escalated both climate change and economic insecurities worldwide have
also changed local environments and economies. Across the Sahel, the resulting long-term land
degradation has led to a decline in agriculture and thus a shift in rural livelihoods. Villages in central
Senegal that once relied on agriculture and skilled trades, including artisanal work, have lost food
sources and incomes. Rising ocean levels and urban pollution have likewise been detrimental for fishing
and tourism industries in Senegal’s coastal towns.
Throughout these long-term crises, many individuals and entire communities have relied on familial
and religious networks. Leaders of local economic development projects also work through these social
networks to rebuild their communities. This article focuses on the extent to which residents of two
towns have used these participatory networks to address environmental and economic challenges. Both
towns started artisanal workshops in the 1980s in the hopes of regenerating artisanal practices and
thus rebuilding their economies. Ndem, a village in the Diourbel region, runs Maam Samba, once a
small weaving cooperative that now produces high-end textiles for international clients. Poponguine, a
coastal village in the Thiès region, at one point hosted two weaving workshops specializing in floor rugs,
wall hangings, and household linens. Although these workshops had closed by 2008, other initiatives

250 © 2015 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved

 Addressing global economic inequalities

in Poponguine have been more successful. Along with these projects, this article discusses inequalities
of location—Ndem faces long-term drought, whereas Poponguine struggles with rising ocean levels,
both results of human and natural causes—and inequalities in global political relationships: a history
of global economic decisions has local effects. Because the two towns address differing problems in
differing ways, this is not a strict comparison. Ndem’s and Poponguine’s varied experiences, however,
show the importance of using a region’s social foundations in communities’ work toward financial
viability.
In this way, the two towns illuminate ways that social and economic sustainability are related. I
draw on Clay and Olson’s (2011:13–14) explanation of sustainability, which includes considerations of
a community’s vulnerability and its resiliency. Central Senegal’s vulnerabilities are environmental and
economic; these two broad categories encompass not only current crises but a history of environmental
damage and economic upheavals to which residents have learned to adapt in varying ways. Following
Baro and Deubel (2006:522), I describe these vulnerabilities not as isolated factors but as continuous
and interrelated processes with complex human causes and responses. The region’s strengths include
the familial and spiritual relationships that have shaped much of its recent history. I argue that local
development projects that use these existing strengths as organizing principles are able to adapt to
persistent environmental and economic challenges more successfully than those organizations that do
not. In addition, I build on Galvan’s (2007:63) argument that community sustainability relies not on
one particular organization’s success or failure but on a community’s environment of participation,
which can foster such organizations. Existing networks that strengthen communities also strengthen
their efforts to become sustainable.
These arguments about community sustainability focus on positive aspects of social institutions.
Established familial and religious networks can be tools through which communities organize them-
selves and find ways to alleviate economic inequalities. These networks can reach across class, gender,
and urban–rural distinctions, providing opportunities for broad participation. Social institutions, how-
ever, can foster inequalities that are a hindrance to this participation. A danger in using social networks
to address inequalities, then, is in the inequalities of the social institutions themselves. In Patterson’s dis-
cussions of Senegalese development organizations (Patterson 2003:37–39) and of citizenship (Patterson
1999:4–5), she describes social institutions, including kinship and Sufi networks, that can provide the
groundwork for sharing resources. They can also, she adds, promote unequal resource distribution and
power relationships based on gender and inherited status. By adhering to the limitations of these social
institutions, Patterson continues, organizations and social networks perpetuate and possibly intensify
those inequalities and limitations along with their strengths. The question of authority is pertinent in
kinship: one’s place in a family, along with earned reputation, often determines one’s place in a commu-
nity. Authority is equally as important within Sufi religious networks: disciples choose their religious
mentor carefully, to guide them on their spiritual journey. These religious leaders gain greater influence
as their networks of disciples grow.
After describing the importance of kinship and religion in Senegal, I turn to the ways that residents
of Ndem and Poponguine have sought to rebuild their local economies. Managers of the two towns’
artisanal workshops discussed in this article have chosen to use social institutions in different ways.
I argue that these decisions have been as important as their business plans in their work toward
community viability.

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L. L. Cochrane

Familial and spiritual lineages

Familial and spiritual lineages are intertwined with agricultural and artisanal trades in Senegal’s recent
history. The dual reliance that many West African artisans have had on their specialized trades and
agricultural economies has linked agriculture and the arts historically (see Dilley 2000:155; Dupire
1985:90). This dual reliance also has meant that when agricultural areas decline in productivity and
therefore population, artisans also find it more difficult to practice their trades. Local environments
and economies are closely intertwined. Families and religious networks have firsthand knowledge of
these hardships. Their challenge is to use the strengths they have to organize local efforts that can
revitalize communities. Other groups serve the same purposes, including women’s and men’s groups or
neighborhood cooperatives. Religious and kin groups’ prominent place in Senegal’s history make them
examples of how people have both maintained social networks and used them in rebuilding efforts.
A century of decreasing rainfall and changing governance over agricultural and economic policies
have left local communities struggling to adapt to changes with limited resources. In the mid- to late
19th century, through Senegal’s independence in 1960, the French colonial administration was attracted
to Senegal’s central regions because of their agricultural productivity, particularly peanuts as a cash
crop. Its control over agriculture, however, forced farmers to limit diversified crop rotations. Com-
bined with repeated droughts starting in 1905, colonial exports of soil nutrients in the form of cash
crops hastened the area’s land degradation (Clark 1995:198, 207; Labatut 1995:26; Rogers 1977:282).
On independence in 1960, the new nation continued this top-down land management, using agri-
cultural subsidies to maintain control over farmers’ decisions about land use. This, along with inter-
mittent droughts, increased the region’s environmental degradation (Adams and So 1996:107; Barker
1989:31–33; Commander 1988:A103; Diouf 1992:118; Roberts 2000:150). State subsidies, support for
agricultural extension services, and state land management ended with World Bank–imposed economic
structural adjustments in the 1980s. This left farmers and communities with more control over their land
but with degraded land, especially in the formerly lucrative Peanut Basin (Adams and So 1996:201; Diop
and Ndiaye 1998:461; Gadio and Rakowski 1999:738; O’Bannon 2006:80–85).
By the end of the 20th century, both globally created climate change and land mismanagement
had left Senegal’s economy and environment deteriorated. Senegal’s agricultural policies have shifted
over the past decades yet have struggled to effectively address continued droughts, rising temperatures,
decreased rainfall, rising food prices, and a global economic crisis. Since 1960, Senegal’s mean average
temperature has risen 0.9 degrees Celsius. Although rainfall has been erratic since 1960, the average
rainfall has decreased by 10–15 millimeters per decade (World Bank Group 2011). The current
administration, under President Macky Sall (March 2012 to present), has been more open than the
previous administration to admitting a hunger problem and the failure of past agricultural policies,
inviting global aid organizations to partner with his administration (IRIN 2012).
Local social networks seek ways to address the effects of these global inequalities that have created
or hastened environmental and economic crises. Throughout shifts in climate, rainfall, governance, and
policy, local organizations, including women’s, village, religious, and kinship groups, have addressed
community needs, including health (Foley 2009), nutrition, improved agriculture (Patterson 1999; Perry
2000), and education (Leichtman 2009; Ware 2009). Along with these groups, Sufi orders are organizing
forces of Senegalese society.
The two most populous Sufi orders in Senegal, the Muridiyya and the Tijaaniyya, grew in number
and influence at the turn of the 20th century, in part financed by peanut farming. Spiritual teachings of

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 Addressing global economic inequalities

these two orders emphasized a balance between religious studies to grow spiritually and physical labor
to support their growing communities (Babou 2003:312). The founder of the Muridiyya, Cheikh Amadu
Bamba (1853–1927), emphasized egalitarian ideals that ran counter to the caste-based hierarchies of the
Wolof kingdoms. In agricultural areas, studying under a Sufi leader, or marabout, also meant laboring on
a farm that would benefit a group of codisciples of the same marabout. Although this marabout–disciple
relationship was sometimes exploitative, depending on the marabout (Perry 2004:48; Ware 2004), in
many cases the system both built a sense of community and grew its financial resources (Buggenhagen
2001:380).
Sufi organizations have continued this heritage of community separate from the state. Patterson
(1999:15–20) notes that a Murid sense of obligation to support state policies and politicians has
shifted over time, in response to the state’s ability or inability to provide needed resources. Villalón
(1993:82, 88–96) describes how Sufi organizations have existed within yet apart from the state, using
the example of a prominent Tijaani group in Fatick in the late 20th century that both organized
itself apart from the state and influenced state political leadership. Renders (2002:78) explains that
Senegalese Muslim organizations have increasingly carved out a space for themselves apart from
secular notions of development, even while they “have some sort of working relationship with the
state,” which could include funding or participation in public health awareness campaigns. State and
international development projects have their place, but local organizations with their own participatory
networks and ideas of what their communities need to address poverty are a strong counterpoint
to top-down modernization projects. In other cases, local Sufi leaders are necessary advisors to
national and international development programs. The Muridiyya’s and Tijaaniyya’s history and place
in the Senegalese state gives their leaders particular authority and their networks of laypeople unique
autonomy. The strongest social networks in Senegal are Sufi networks; in other places, kin, ethnic, or
other established institutions have that role.
The dual purposes of strengthening communities while supporting financial growth have continued
over the past century, even in difficult times. As Sufi orders have grown in number, their extensive
networks now include both rural and urban populations. Marabouts and their representatives often
travel to visit their followers, reinforcing the sense of community despite physical distance. For example,
Fallou Gassama, one of the managers of Ndem’s artisanal campus, once represented an elderly marabout
who was not able to travel. Gassama traveled as his representative, praying with this marabout’s disciples
and delivering messages from the marabout. After this marabout’s death, Gassama was invited to work
at the Maam Samba campus but spends weekends with his family in Touba, the spiritual center of the
Muridiyya. While in Touba, he serves as a counselor to the marabout’s son, who has inherited his father’s
leadership (Fallou Gassama, interview with the author, June 20, 2011).
These contacts strengthen and expand faith-based networks. Disciples visit maraboutic families,
creating religious centers for pilgrimage throughout Senegal that are specific to a branch of a Sufi
order (Villalón 2004:63). These families trace their lineage to an influential marabout in the early 20th
century (Villalón 1993:80). Those charged with carrying on the leadership of the orders are, for example,
the grandchildren of Cheikh Amadu Bamba or the descendants of Malick Sy (1853/1855–1922), a
contemporary of Bamba recognized for establishing the Tijaaniyya in Senegal. Along with familial
maraboutic lineages, the generations of these leaders’ disciples also make up spiritual lineages. During
the growth of Islam in Senegal, these combined religious lineages did not replace social orders that
included kingdoms’ authorities and trades based on castes. Instead, Brenner (2000:146) and Ware

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L. L. Cochrane

(2009:22) emphasize, Sufi leaders integrated themselves into established structures of Senegalese society.
This tradition continues today, in that Sufi networks exist alongside and often overlap familial lineages.
Christian social networks have a different and shorter history in Senegal, yet they have a sim-
ilarly wide geographic reach. The annual Catholic pilgrimage to Poponguine, described later, con-
nects Catholic communities across Senegal. In addition, Protestant pastors regularly visit each others’
congregations, bringing news of one congregation to another. Financial support often flows between
these congregations. Familial lineages are important to Christian groups culturally, as many share in
ethnicity-based lineages, yet others have family histories of conversions that have severed them, at least
temporarily, from these lineages.
Whereas the influence and organizing capabilities of religious groups and their local branches rely
on combined familial and spiritual lineages, artisanal trades combine ethnic and familial affiliations.
Weaving is a historical trade in Senegal, associated with ethnicities, lineages, and castes based on
lineages. It has been classified in two ways: in the freeborn géer caste and in the occupational ñeeño caste,
which also includes, for example, blacksmiths (Diop 1981:35). This indefinite categorization shows the
flexibility of castes. Castes were and are recognized cultural categories rather than determining forces of
social life (Tamari 1991:223). In his discussion of Tukulor craftsmen, Dilley (2000) describes castes as
not fixed categories but “an indigenous discourse of difference” (149): people often use these categories
to assign characteristics of their own and others’ groups (154) or simply to recognize how one person fits
in with a larger social order (161). While castes function as discursive categories, practiced affiliations
with a trade often are organizing principles for families or lineages. The idea that castes are inherited
has meant that trades associated with castes also can be inherited, if a family so chooses.
The weaving workshops in Ndem and Poponguine have sought to create an economically sustainable
place to practice weaving. Their administrators started the workshops with the intention of supporting
their communities while maintaining a viable business. They have chosen to use, or not use, the strengths
of kinship and religious networks to organize their workshops. They have had varying success, I argue,
in part because of these decisions. To use Galvan’s (2007) argument, the workshops are not as crucial to
community sustainability as the environment people create to foster such institutions.

Ndem’s Maam Samba campus

After nearly a century of drought in central Senegal, Ndem was almost abandoned. In the 1980s, elders
in the community joined with the great grandson of the village’s founder, Sëriñ Babacar Mbow, and his
wife and with Soxna Aïssa Cissé1 to try to revive the community. They started a project with the goal of
revitalizing not only Ndem but the surrounding villages as well. They based their plan on the craft trades
and agriculture that had once sustained the region: both Ndem and nearby Ndoffnane had once been
weaving villages, and a number of families with weaving lineages still lived in the surrounding region.
Elders in the area remember cultivating cotton before severely degraded land and the lack of rainfall
prevented it. Today, Ndem’s artisanal campus produces high-end fashions, household linens, and other
artisanal products. The income from sales to its international clients helps to fund additional projects in
the area, including a health dispensary, local schools, experimental agriculture, a renewable fuel source,
and a deep well for clean water.
The campus’s leadership is consciously designed as an extension of the familial and spiritual kinship
networks that organize the region’s villages and Sufi communities. Mbow is a marabout within the Baay
Fall, a suborder of the Muridiyya. Baay Falls, along with Sufis from other orders, continuously visit

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him for advice, counsel, and spiritual blessing. Along with Mbow and Cissé, a number of people with
extended Murid ties, including Gassama, live and work in Ndem, contributing to Ndem’s collective
far-reaching network. Mbow and Cissé have established a part of Ndem as a daara, or learning center.
Residents of the daara live together, sharing meals, work, and income, and commit to spiritual learning
under the guidance of Mbow. The daara’s residents also are managers of and participants in Ndem’s
projects. They speak of their motivation for their work in terms of their faith: they interpret Islam’s pillar
of charity to mean development work that has the goal of reducing poverty and raising the standard of
living for entire communities. As Baay Falls, they talk about their labor as a form of prayer and a service
to both God and their community. These faith-based motivations for participation make development
work not just work but part of a spiritual journey (Cochrane 2012a, 2012b).
Kinship is also a foundation for Ndem’s work. The artisanal campus includes every step of textile
production. In the first step, spinners work with both locally grown and imported cotton. In addition
to spinners, weavers, dyers, tailors, clothing and textile designers, and warehouse, sales, and marketing
managers complete the cycle from raw cotton to client. Each of the workshops on the artisanal campus
has a manager who is selected based on skill and leadership capabilities but also prominence within his
extended family. Respect based on status within a kin network gives each manager the authority to make
sure each aspect of the workshop runs smoothly. For example, the manager of the weaving workshop is
Mbissane Diop, who has maternal and paternal family weaving lineages. He apprenticed under his uncle
and has trained several of a younger generation in his family (Mbissane Diop, interview with the author,
June 23, 2009). For Diop, and the other 117 weavers involved in the Maam Samba campus, weaving is not
only a way to make a living; it is also a way to practice and strengthen one’s familial identity (Cochrane
2012b:105–106).
Ndem has chosen to take advantage of the authority granted to those who already have status based
on kinship to run its artisanal campus smoothly. To guard against unequal power, however, its managers
have implemented checks on this authority, such as campus-wide shared beliefs in working toward a
common goal and administrators who also serve as conflict mediators. Fallou Gassama and Moussa
Diack serve as these two administrators and mediators. As devout Muslims within the Muridiyya and
Baay Fall suborder, and as leaders who have a reputation for building and maintaining relationships,
they have earned the widespread respect that is necessary for their work.
Spiritual and familial kinship are the foundations for Ndem’s work, but the organization’s managers
must balance these inward-looking relationships with external ties to international clients for their
high-end woven products. This balance of internal and external relationships is necessary for not only
social sustainability within the village, to maintain their community, but also economic sustainability of
their local development projects. Ndem’s administrators face steep challenges to turn their spiritually
and culturally informed work into high-end textiles with global clients. Their strategies include careful
and transparent accounting and finding new clients as the global financial crisis deepens.
The accounting manager, Moussa Diène, explained the accounting books to me. These records
include how much they have sold and how much each worker should earn depending on how many days,
or even half-days, she has worked. He said, “All of this, it’s for transparency.” I commented that this is
different than other, smaller workshops in the region that rely on unwritten verbal agreements between
employers and employees, and between clients and artisans. He responded, “It’s equitable commerce,
an alternative commerce. The point is to eradicate poverty. For transparence, you have to be clear with
everyone” (Moussa Diène, interview with the author, June 21, 2011).

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L. L. Cochrane

His database for weavers, for example, registers all the materials given to each weaver and the length
of woven textile a weaver returns. The guard at the front gate of the artisanal campus receives the work
and records and verifies everything to be entered in both the written and digital databases. In addition,
each weaver receives a receipt or pay stub that is recorded, noting how much he was paid and when.
The receipts are signed by two of the managers to double-check them. Careful accounting not only
maintains transparency; it also makes sure that even when artisans are not able to work for very many
hours because of other demands (e.g., planting their fields) or because of limited commissions for their
work, they are still compensated for the time they are able to work. This is an important matter in a region
where every dollar can make a difference to family finances. Ndem’s artisans have embraced this model
of record keeping down to the minute detail because of its transparency and also its way of ensuring
fairness: this is equitable commerce even before involving clients.
Their equitable working environment and careful accounts have won Ndem respect and trust from
its clients. Maintaining those clients, however, has been difficult during the global financial crisis.
Ndem’s primary clients in the past have been European galleries and boutiques. Because of the European
financial crisis, many of these clients are unable to keep up with their regular orders for Ndem’s fashions
and household goods. This makes Ndem’s local work of employing skilled artisans and funding their
education and health projects difficult. To address this, several people from Ndem are working to
establish relationships with potential clients in other areas of the world, including North America and
southern Africa.
The Maam Samba campus is a large enough operation to have artisans, accountants, and marketing
specialists. Ndem attracts these people because of its commitment to regionally held spiritual tenets
of laboring together to alleviate poverty. This common purpose creates an environment of total
participation, the element Galvan (2007) describes as even more necessary than a well-run development
project. By transferring relationships based on kinship and religious orders into the Maam Samba
campus, the organization is able to center itself on the strengths of the region, which Clay and Olson
(2011) argue is important to balance the challenges the community faces. Ndem has first laid a
foundation on kinship, spiritual beliefs, and religious networks, then used that foundation both to build
a successful working environment and to attract clients. The weaving workshops in Poponguine have
struggled to find ways to use their social networks in similar ways, which I argue has affected their
economic sustainability.

Poponguine’s workshops
Poponguine, a small town on the Petite Côte, the coast south of Dakar, has relied historically on fishing
and related industries. It is best known for its basilica: the Basilique Notre-Dame de la Déliverance
was built in 1846, and the annual Marial pilgrimage to the grottoes behind the basilica began in 1848.
The pilgrimage continues today, and the town’s population is nationally renowned for its harmonious
relationship between the Catholic and Muslim populations. It is also is a popular tourist destination.
The residential part of the town started as a vacation spot for French colonial officers, who built small
bungalows on the beach and hired people from the nearby village of Poponguine-Sereer as caretakers. As
colonialism ended, its administrators left, and Poponguine grew with its fishing and tourist industries.
The town became a highly frequented tourist town for both Senegalese beachgoers and international
visitors. The Petite Côte’s total tourist revenue in 2002 alone, split among numerous towns along the
coast, including Poponguine, was approximately US$210 million, with close to half a million visitors that

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year (Dehoorne and Diagne 2008). Poponguine’s quiet beaches, small inns, and relatively inexpensive
cafés attract potential clients for its small businesses.
Even with the tourist and fishing industries, men often need to commute to nearby cities for work,
and many women, who also manage households and are the primary caregivers for their families, have
limited employment options. To address this problem, a Belgian donor, after conferring with several
villagers, donated the start-up capital for two weaving workshops that would employ both men and
women and hired a weaver from France to train participants. At its peak in the 1990s and early 2000s,
twenty weavers trained in this program, worked at the two workshops, and sold their products—home
décor such as floor rugs and wall hangings—in both on-site galleries and occasional arts fairs in Dakar
(Cochrane 2009).
Both the foreign donor and the original participants intended that the workshops would support
families and therefore strengthen the community, with that many more people able to both live and
work in Poponguine. The workshops’ clients were wealthy Senegalese businesspeople and politicians:
because Poponguine was a popular getaway spot for government ministers, they used the workshops as
a way to publicize their patronage of the arts. These symbiotic relationships between patrons and tourists
with relative wealth and Poponguine’s businesses have started to rupture, though, as the environmental
health of the beach and ocean deteriorates.
Just south of Dakar, one of West Africa’s largest cities, the coastal waters of Poponguine today can
look brown, with bits of Dakar’s trash washing up on the once-clean beaches. Fishermen, who once
dominated the beaches in the morning preparing nets and boats, now must work farther south on
the coast, away from Dakar: fish are not able to live in these polluted waters. Along with pollution is
erosion: shifting shorelines and rising ocean tides are erasing Poponguine’s beaches. These changes are
the result of both regional building projects and global climate change. Because of the Petite Côte’s
popularity as a vacation spot, it was a desirable place for government ministers, particularly under
the Diouf (1980–2000) and Wade (2000–12) presidential administrations, to build secondary homes.
Vacation homes, international hotels, and other recreation facilities have occasionally violated urban and
environmental building codes and have used land once designated for agricultural purposes (Dehoorne
and Diagne 2008). As these high-end homes and hotels built seawalls to protect their properties, they
started to change the natural coastline. In addition to these human alterations to the coastline, a study of
the shoreline between Dakar and Rufisque, a city north of Poponguine, examined ocean levels between
1907 and 2008, finding that water heights increased in 1998, with a particular spike in 2007 (Ndiaye
et al. 2011:22). Because cities and villages tend to be located close to the coast along the Petite Côte,
even the current trend of ocean levels rising several millimeters a year will substantially affect these
towns (Ndiaye et al. 2011:26).
The rising sea levels, urban pollution, and building projects have combined to alter Poponguine’s
beaches. Over only ten years of frequent visits to the town, I have observed beaches that were once
wide shrink dramatically. Whereas I could once walk the length of the beach fronting Poponguine’s
market and inn district, now five feet of water stand in the way. Trying to visit once-familiar places has
forced me to turn around, scramble up a cliffside, or knock on someone’s door to find a way past an
eroded area. Vacation houses on concrete slabs that once were valuable beachfront rental properties
have been lifted and shoved forward by the rising ocean tides. They are now concrete ruins, sitting
beside homes that are more fortunate. With these changes, Poponguine remains a tourist destination

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L. L. Cochrane

with some sections of quiet beach and several frequented cafés and inns, yet small businesses struggle
more than they did in the past.
The two weaving workshops were moderately successful until a slow decline in production and sales
in the 2000s. They finally closed in 2008, with the exception of a handful of weavers who occasionally do
projects on commission. Poponguine’s community was not the instigator of this new workshop: though
met with village enthusiasm, the idea and the capital came from outside the village. External capital is
often necessary for new small-scale projects: Ndem, for example, has been successful in applying for
grants for specific projects, such as solar panels to power its water pumps. The idea and motivation for
Poponguine’s workshops, however, came not from the village but from elsewhere. In a town of 3,000,
only 20 people and their families became invested in the project, never growing in number.
Along with the limited number of people involved in the workshops, the weaving skills of the people
involved were not diverse. The weavers became skilled in basic techniques after their initial training, but
they were not from a weaving lineage and therefore did not seek out or have an extended network of
craftspeople to oversee their continued training and growth as artisans. In addition, the workshops did
not have accounting and marketing professionals who would help them adapt to changes in the market
and in their clientele. The leaders of both workshops kept careful accounts, were skilled managers of
people, and were savvy in conflict resolution within the workshop. They did not partner, however, with
community leaders or others who could be visionaries for their businesses. Though most of the weavers
are people of faith, either Muslim or Catholic, and their work time conversations often concerned
events that were specific to their religious communities, they did not involve their extended religious
networks in their work. Priests at the cathedral a short walk away from the workshops were clear that
they had nothing to do with the workshops when I asked about them in interviews. The Catholic
Church has sponsored several projects that benefit the entire region, including a health dispensary
near the edge of town. These projects, though, are instigated and primarily run by priests and nuns,
not laypeople. Kinship networks also were not a factor in electing the workshops’ internal leadership.
In other words, Poponguine’s workshops were businesses with employees, not community projects.
Without this participatory investment from the community, the workshops had little to sustain them
or help them adapt when sales faltered during an economic downturn.
Their marketing strategy intensified this limited community engagement. They relied on patrons
that came to Poponguine rather than involving more people from Poponguine to market their products
in Dakar or nearby coastal towns that have retained their beaches and thus tourism, such as Mbour
and Saly. The environmental crisis of eroding beaches has combined with this lack of marketing
outreach, intensifying the unequal relationship between relatively wealthy patrons (predominantly
national government ministers and foreign tourists) and local artisans. That is, patrons who are not from
the area and do not have an investment in the community can simply change their vacation locales,
while artisans who both rely on external patrons and are invested in their community must adapt to
environmental changes over which they have no control. Involving more people within Poponguine to
vary the workshops’ marketing, accounting, and leadership may have mitigated these inequalities based
on wealth and location.
Taking Galvan’s (2007) argument about total community participation and involvement in local
development projects, the institution’s success or failure is not as telling as the community’s ability to
create more such institutions. With the weaving workshops’ closing, Poponguine’s residents have not
created new workshops, developed new clientele, or repurposed the old workshop spaces or looms, and

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 Addressing global economic inequalities

most of the weavers are now unemployed to varied extents. I propose that the life span of these two
workshops is a result of the lack of community participation; it also did not use its foundations as a
community to build the workshops.
Other projects in Poponguine have been more successful. In 2009, a group of women and men
connected to the fishing and tourism industries formed a union. It involved fishermen and their families,
but also women who sell beads, cloth, and snacks to beach tourists and several café owners. With
increased pollution washing down from Dakar, they recognized the reduced amount of fish as a problem
for the entire community and therefore saw a need to control the amount of fishing and to manage sales
of fish. One woman in the union learned that the fishermen would appreciate a breakfast café. Her café
in the center of town, near the beachfront, became a viable small business and also served as a meeting
place to share information. Though the café continues, the union dissolved when the ocean around
Poponguine became so polluted that the fishing industry was suspended indefinitely and the fishermen
started working elsewhere.
This is an example of the town using its strengths in balance with its challenges and meeting its needs
through widespread participation. It is an example of residents changing the way their community is
organized, moving away from previous ways of doing things and previous models of who has authority
over, in this case, fishing to be able to sustain the entire community and its economic enterprises. Once
the town lost its fishing industry, though, the community suffered financially, and it has struggled to
create alternative businesses or development projects that have such involvement. Women who sell
small-scale items (such as bead necklaces, cloth, and snacks) take advantage of their available clientele:
the reduced number of tourists and those who participate in the annual Marial pilgrimage. Income from
these periodic events is not enough, however, for family expenses such as children’s school tuition.
In some ways, comparisons between Poponguine and Ndem are incongruous: Ndem is a small
community, with residents who moved there to start and participate in its projects because they were
motivated by a shared faith and philosophy of development. They were starting anew with nothing:
the droughts and land mismanagement had already devastated the area and therefore were known
challenges. Their goal is to rebuild the area to make it a viable place to live. Poponguine’s environmental
crisis is relatively new: even though the causes of it have been building for decades, the effects are
recent. The town and its small businesses already existed and now must find ways to adapt to these
challenges. In other ways, the comparisons are valid: Ndem’s residents seek ways to involve every person,
from educating children about picking up trash to involving women (who have never been employed
before), who are learning to spin cotton that they once again grow locally. Ndem’s leaders have set up a
system through which funding their work comes from involving and employing more people. Some of
the initiatives residents of Poponguine started have sought to involve the community, but others have
not. They have not consistently used their interfaith relationships or other strengths to form networks
that seek a common vision for the town. This lack of community engagement in development projects
has exacerbated inequalities based on wealth and location. Poponguine’s variable community-wide
participation in its development initiatives is in striking contrast to Ndem.

Conclusion
The challenges facing Ndem and Poponguine resonate globally: both environmental shifts and the
global financial crisis intensify global inequalities. Rising average temperatures, rising ocean levels,
and unpredictable rainfall affect localities worldwide. Regions such as the Sahel that historically have

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L. L. Cochrane

had limited natural resources and have been unequal partners in global economic decisions feel the
effects of such global changes acutely. This article emphasizes not the complex causes of such global
inequalities, however, but local responses to them that address and intend to alleviate inequalities.
What are the challenges of building economic sustainability via the foundations of social sustainability?
I follow arguments of scholars (e.g., Baro and Deubel 2006; Everett 1997; Labatut 1995; Nash 2003;
Renders 2002) who argue for a focus on the agency of local organizations in development efforts.
Organizing economic and environmental rebuilding efforts can be either in concert with or separate
from state and international development agencies. In either case, such projects need to be rooted in
the existing strengths of localities to sustain them in the long term.
Whether to examine such local concerns and responses has long been a part of debates within devel-
opment economics, as Nash (2003:61) explains. Many economists of the mid-20th century looked only
at gross national product, which includes marketable products (such as peanuts in Senegal), to evaluate
development projects’ success. They did not consider subsistence crops or locally produced goods
needed in communities, such as weavers’ and blacksmiths’ products. Other scholars, such as Tax (e.g.,
Tax 1951, 1957), debated this point, arguing that progress and modernization needed to be interpreted
and enacted locally, even if in dialogue with national and international institutions (Nash 2003:63).
These arguments for a focus on local interpretations and practices of economic success have continued
and narrowed in focus to types of organizations and their specific strategies. Villalón’s (1993) and Ren-
ders’s (2002) studies are two examples that describe Senegalese Muslim organizations and communities
that are integrated with the state and often influence state policies. At the same time, they have created
autonomous models of development separate from the state and its shifting strategies of development.
Similar to the communities in these studies, Ndem’s leaders have created a model of local economic
development that is purposefully tied to the region’s historical strengths of artisanal and agricultural
trades, while employing both Murid and Baay Fall networks and teachings. It does not, however, reify
some of the local inequalities inherent in kinship and religious groups, including gender imbalances that
would offer men employment over women. Although men and women in Ndem conform to regional
expectations of appropriate jobs—men weave and women spin, for example—Ndem’s administrators
seek to involve and employ all ages and genders in the work of the village and nongovernmental
organization. This shared work cultivates a collective purpose throughout the entire community and
surrounding villages. Their challenge is to balance these internal organizational principles with external
market demands. Transparent accounting, searching for new markets, regular communication with
clients, and attention to product quality are several strategies they use to work toward this balance.
Poponguine has employed mixed strategies to address its challenges, with mixed results and without
the cohesive set of goals that Ndem has created. Examining Poponguine’s weaving workshops alone gives
a bleak outlook on the town’s survival prospects: started and funded by a foreign donor, its managers
never involved the local community, and thus it was not able to adapt in local ways to local challenges.
Marketing or diversifying their products in different ways may have helped. The way they organized their
workshops and sales unintentionally reified existing unequal relationships based on wealth (between
wealthy patrons and local artisans) and location (between those who must deal with an environmental
crisis and those who can move away). More than this, however, the workshops lacked a strong network
of people grounded in the community that could, when they needed to do so, rethink the workshops
and repurpose the space, looms, and goals of the workshops. The union of fishermen and associated
tradespeople is an example of an organization that grew out of a community’s needs and strengths.

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 Addressing global economic inequalities

Through communal decision making, those in the union sought to change the town’s response to
circumstances that were unfavorable to its economic survival. Though the union did not last, at least one
small spin-off business (the café) and the relationships among those involved have persisted. Finding
more and diverse ways to do this is the union’s continuing work.
The challenges that residents of Ndem and Poponguine face go beyond long-term regional drought
and maintaining the balance of community-based leadership and careful accounting and marketing.
Several factors are beyond their control. First, the European economic crisis has limited the commissions
Ndem’s European clients are able to make and reduced the number of European tourists able to afford a
coastal vacation in Poponguine. Reaching out to other clients is a possibility, though even Ndem’s new
North American and southern African clients are limited in their financial resources after the global
financial crisis. Without bulk commissions, Ndem’s managers are sometimes not able to keep the artisans
working and their secondary projects, such as clinics and schools, growing. Similarly, without a large
number of tourists, Poponguine’s weaving workshops and other businesses that rely on external clients
are not as successful as they were in the past.
Second, environmental crises that result in rising average temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, and
rising ocean levels are factors that communities across West Africa and the Sahel are not able to
control. Even human-made additions to these crises, such as ocean pollution from nearby cities and
early-20th-century clear-cutting for agriculture, are not things that present-day local community leaders
can easily regulate or fix. Adapting to these challenges is necessarily reactive and always a continuous
process. Finding community strengths requires rethinking how to use common heritages and sometimes
means complete community reorganization, as Nelson et al. (2009:272) describe in their discussion of
global climate change and local responses to it. As Poponguine and Ndem show, pooling knowledge and
natural and financial resources as a community not only addresses local inequalities but also can be a
start in responding to globally created catastrophes and long-term global inequalities.
These circular challenges question the very idea of sustainability as a balance. How can a community
achieve this balance with factors that are beyond its control and the result of historical and contemporary
inequalities, including drought and global markets? The strategy of turning inward to find its strengths,
then finding a way to practice equitable and viable commerce with those strengths, has had cautious
success for Ndem and for the Senegalese Muslim organizations that Villalón (1993) and Renders (2002)
highlight. Poponguine’s example, however, shows the difficulties of doing so with a larger community,
existing institutions, and constantly changing variables with which to reckon.

Acknowledgments
This ethnographic research for this article was made possible by an internal grant from Central Michigan University. I thank the
residents of both Ndem and Poponguine, and also Carolyn Lesorogol, who organized the 2013 Society for Economic Anthropology
annual meeting, for which this article was originally written.

Note
1 Sëriñ and soxna are Wolof titles of respect for either elders or religious leaders.

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