Research Seminar in Cultural Anthropology with Delphine Manetta: Calling the ataya Work, Morality and Masculinities in Ibadan, Nigeria

Comparable to bases in Ghana, fada in Niger, grin in Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Mali and, finally, baraza in Kenya and Tanzania, ataya in Sabo district in Ibadan, Nigeria, are innocuous places in the urban landscape for those who move around town. Located in the "public" or "semi-private" space, ataya bring men together, whether young or elder, in front of a small shop or inside a courtyard where benches, chairs and a small charcoal stove are set up. Here, men prepare and drink tea, but also share food, laugh, debate, chat, work, pray or remain silent while watching videos on their phones.

This communication takes up an idea from Abdul Rashid, a Hausa muezzin in his forties living in Sabo, i.e. a Muslim official responsible for calling for prayer in his mosque. According to him, ataya are a "waste of time" that distract men from home, mosque and office. He therefore associated ataya with a kind of "exile" turning men away from virtuous and productive mobilities and places through which they fulfill and perform social expectations associated with their gender identity and religious morality: being a "provider", a "good" father, a "good" husband, or a "good" Muslim.

This communication seeks to understand the extent to which ataya might actually be epicenters of multiple mobilities, each endowed with different meanings. If ataya are seen by outsiders as "places of exile", can they be experienced by their members as "destinations" in their daily mobilities and "starting points" from which money and men get moving? Indeed, in ataya, men build relationships of solidarity, "fictive" kinship and work, as well as religious ties that enable them to acquire professional and Islamic knowledges, income, gifts and food, while some imagine, from the ataya, how to "japa" i.e. to emigrate in Canada, U.S. or Europe.

Dr Delphine Manetta is an anthropologist and Deputy Director of IFRA-Nigeria, also associate researcher at LaSIC, Félix Houphouët-Boigny University in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. She was previously a lecturer at Paris Descartes University and a postdoctoral researcher at EHESS (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) and University of Paris. Author of publications on her fieldwork researches, including a book published in 2024 (Pouvoir, espace et transformations au sud-ouest du Burkina Faso. Une élection africaine, Paris, L’Harmattan), and on reflexivity in humanities and social sciences (Du contrôle social en Afrique. Réflexivités autour du genre et de l’origine “locale” du chercheur, Paris-Brazzaville, PAARI Éditions), she is a member of the editorial boards of Journal des Africanistes, Sources. Materials & Fieldwork in African Studies and the books series Africae. Her researches are rooted in West-Africa, in Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria, and cross three major fields of interest: power and politics, masculinities, and mobilities, places and space.