Erdmute Alber

Beside convening the IFG 14 on ageing in Africa, I follow two individual projects.

First, I work on changing widowhood in rural Northern Benin. In the republic of Benin, and especially in the northern regions, a process of finally privatizing the whole land is actually in a process of finishing. While in some rural areas, land has been, still in the first decade of the 21th century, been used and understood as being accessible for those who worked on it, and not fixed with land titles, and a large majority of kin groups worked collectively on it, these practices are actually coming to and end. In consequence, accelerated process of privatizing, not only the general ownership of the land, but also privatizing land within kin groups is taking place. This re-shapes kinship relations, as practices but also the normative understanding of kinship in different phases of the life course. After the death of a husband, women are re-lating anew in their networks of care, with their kin as well as the in-laws. Here, new practices and normativities emerge which I am describing in a paper that focusses on rural widows and their strategies to relate, with people, land and to build their and their children´s futures.

Second, I am conceptualizing during my time at the Miasa a book proposal: temporalities of relating in times of accumulation: changing life courses in the republic of Benin

In this monograph, I examine how normativities, moralities, and care relations in the Republic of Benin are changing under the pressure of ongoing processes of privatization and accumulation. These transformations affect all phases of the life course, shaping how childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age are lived, experienced, and imagined. Taking place under conditions of accelerated social differentiation, these shifts are reshaping social relations across all stages of life.

The book traces these transformations in childhood and youth as well as in adulthood and old age. It offers a theoretical lens that brings together reflections on the temporalities of kinship, the life course, and societal change with the pressing question of future‑making in a country where economic inequalities are steadily rising.