Meist wird der Staat in Afrika, wie auch anderswo, als Träger von Ordnung, Fortschritt und Disziplin gesehen, da er über die Autorität verfügt, Gesetze zu erlassen und deren Einhaltung zum Wohl der Gesellschaft zu sanktionieren. Dieser Band untersucht die Bedeutung der staatlichen Gesetzgebung für die Bevölkerungen im subsaharischen Afrika und setzt diese in Beziehung zu bereits existierenden lokalen Normen, mit denen die neuen Gesetze konkurrieren müssen.

Mamadou Diawara ist Professor für die Ethnologie Afrikas an der Universität Frankfurt am Main. Ute Röschenthaler ist Professorin am Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien der Universität Mainz.

Preface The idea for this volume emerged in the context of the project "Western norms and local media in Africa" within the Cluster of Excellence "The Formation of Normative Orders", Goethe University Frankfurt. This topic inspired a good number of master's and doctoral students to write their theses on related subjects, some of which are assembled in this volume. The projects selected for this volume have in common the study of the question of how state norms influence local actors in sub-Saharan Africa and how local actors confronted with these norms deal with them in their daily lives. The contributions here examine these questions in the context of media, land, development, health, and the environment. All contributors to this volume participated in a workshop organized by Mamadou Diawara, Ute Röschenthaler and Moussa Sissoko (the co-director of Point Sud), at the Goethe University Frankfurt in July 2014. Their participation provided the African participants with access to the libraries of the Goethe University for a period of three weeks in order to complete the literature research necessary for their research projects. This workshop and the subsequent phase of exploration were generously supported by the Cluster of Excellence "The Formation of Normative Orders". The volume contains contributions of young researchers from Germany and Africa. The African contributors were able to carry out the research for their theses with the help of fellowships from the Cluster of Excellence "The Formation of Normative Orders" at the Goethe University Frankfurt in collaboration with their home universities where they have submitted and defended their PhD theses or will do so in the near future. The editors are grateful to the managing board of the Cluster of Excellence, namely Rebecca Schmidt, for their moral support throughout the project and to the German Research Council and The Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt for the financial support. This volume has been completed during the stay of Mamadou Diawara as fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies of Nantes (2015-2016) who expresses his sincere gratitude to its director and its entire staff for their generous support. We also wish to thank Maria Way and especially Patricia Phillips-Batoma for their help in translating some of the contributions from French and making the manuscripts publishable. Frankfurt/Main, March 2016, Mamadou Diawara and Ute Röschenthaler Introduction: What do people do when states are working? Mamadou Diawara and Ute Röschenthaler What is a farmer from Ekondo Kondo living in the middle of a forest in Cameroon supposed to say and do when the government, or someone more powerful than he, such as the manager of a development project, orders him to start living according to norms that are dictated to him instead of norms that have been built up throughout history? What is a journalist or radio presenter supposed to say and do when the government begins to make laws that impose on them a code that is not their own? These cases allow us to ask questions about the relationships that governments and their agents have with local actors, whoever they may be. This question should immediately bring to mind two works, specifically Seeing Like a State (1998) and States at Work in West Africa (2014). In the first, James C. Scott questions in vivid terms how it is that a state, by imposing its schemes on local actors, ends up failing, which makes the human quagmire even worse. He illustrates this by drawing on examples from both Europe (real socialism), and from Africa (the ujama of Tanzania). The second is a fascinating collection of essays edited by Thomas Bierschenk and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan which deals accurately with the way in which the state operates on a daily basis. The different authors place a lot of emphasis on the workings of the African administrative machine, whether we call this p