[ Le travail en Afrique noire peut-il être un objet d'étude scientifique ? ]
Volume 34, Issue 4, November 2021, Pages 711–720
Raoul Nkuitchou Nkouatchet1
1 Equipe DIM – Maghtech – Axe 3, Labo. Clersé UMR 8019 CNRS, Bâtiment SH2, Cité scientifique, Université de Lille, 59650 Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France
Original language: French
Copyright © 2021 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
For a long time, work appeared to be unthinkable in sub-Saharan Africa, mainly because of the long exploitation of natural resources by the colonial powers, which made it something alien to human life. This is partly what justifies the questioning by an author who, some twenty years ago, wondered whether work could be an object of scientific study in the sub-Saharan context. The aim of this article is to answer this question. Through a review of the literature and a reasoning by analogy, we probe the situation in France at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, in order to feed a prospective reflection about work in sub-Saharan Africa today. Our main conclusion is that it is quite possible to isolate work from the daily experience of sub-Saharan Africans, and to make explicit the concepts with which one operates such an approach. This constitutes a scientific investigation of work.
Author Keywords: work science, black africa, epistemology, institutions, policies.
Volume 34, Issue 4, November 2021, Pages 711–720
Raoul Nkuitchou Nkouatchet1
1 Equipe DIM – Maghtech – Axe 3, Labo. Clersé UMR 8019 CNRS, Bâtiment SH2, Cité scientifique, Université de Lille, 59650 Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France
Original language: French
Copyright © 2021 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
For a long time, work appeared to be unthinkable in sub-Saharan Africa, mainly because of the long exploitation of natural resources by the colonial powers, which made it something alien to human life. This is partly what justifies the questioning by an author who, some twenty years ago, wondered whether work could be an object of scientific study in the sub-Saharan context. The aim of this article is to answer this question. Through a review of the literature and a reasoning by analogy, we probe the situation in France at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, in order to feed a prospective reflection about work in sub-Saharan Africa today. Our main conclusion is that it is quite possible to isolate work from the daily experience of sub-Saharan Africans, and to make explicit the concepts with which one operates such an approach. This constitutes a scientific investigation of work.
Author Keywords: work science, black africa, epistemology, institutions, policies.
Abstract: (french)
Le travail est longtemps apparu comme impensable en Afrique subsaharienne, en raison notamment de la longue exploitation des ressources naturelles par les puissances coloniales, qui en faisait quelque chose d'étranger à la vie des hommes. C'est en partie ce qui justifie l’interrogation d’une auteure qui se demandait, il y a une vingtaine d’années, si le travail peut être un objet d'étude scientifique dans le contexte subsaharien. L'objectif de cet article est de répondre à cette question. Grâce à une revue de la littérature et un raisonnement par analogie, nous sondons la situation de la France de la fin du XIXe-début XXe siècle, pour nourrir une réflexion prospective sur la situation du travail dans l’Afrique subsaharienne d'aujourd'hui. Notre principale conclusion est qu’il est tout à fait possible d’isoler le travail de l’expérience quotidienne des Subsahariens, et d’expliciter les concepts avec lesquels on opère une telle approche. Cette démarche constitue une investigation scientifique du travail.
Author Keywords: science du travail, afrique noire, épistémologie, institutions, politiques.
How to Cite this Article
Raoul Nkuitchou Nkouatchet, “Can work in Black Africa be an object of scientific study ?,” International Journal of Innovation and Applied Studies, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 711–720, November 2021.
