Security in Niamey: an anthropological perspective on policing and an act of terrorism in Niger

The abduction of two Frenchmen in January  in Niamey’s supposedly most secure neighbourhood has led many to question the functioning of the city’s security apparatus. This paper analyses Niamey’s security landscape, initially from an historical and then from a spatial perspective. It argues that for a comprehensive analysis of security, we must first decentre our perspective on security construction, and thus take informal non-organised modes of policing just as seriously as policing by state and vigilante organisations; and second, take into account the inseparability of sociality and security, a fragile balance of trust and acceptable risk. In conclusion I argue that this focus may be one way of comprehending the kidnapping: how was it possible and what were its implications for Niamey’s security landscape? * Previous drafts of this paper were presented at the Centre de Recherches Sociologiques sur le Droit et les Institutions Pénales (CESDIP) in Guyancourt, France, in April , and in the panel ‘Spaces of (In)Security’ during the European Conference on African Studies, Leipzig, in June . The fieldwork it is based on was made possible by the financial support of the Volkswagen Foundation, the Sulzmann Foundation, the German National Academic Foundation, as well as by the support offered at the Laboratoire d’Études et de Recherches Sociologiques sur les Dynamiques Sociales et le Développement Local (LASDEL), Niamey. For constructive comments on earlier versions of this text, many thanks go to Carola Lentz, Thomas Bierschenk, Mahaman Tidjani-Alou, Jan Beek, Jan Budniok, Julia Dieckmann, Julia Eckert, Fabien Jobard, Thomas Kirsch, Julie Poppe, Chris Willott and three anonymous referees. J. of Modern African Studies, ,  (), pp. – © Cambridge University Press  doi:./SX Konstanzer Online-Publikations-System (KOPS) URL: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-0-260934 Ersch. in: The Journal of Modern African Studies ; 50 (2012), 1. S. 53-74