Pottery is a women’s craft practiced by women of the blacksmith caste in Burkina Faso. The objects produced serve multiple functions in people’s daily lives. Based on the way internally displaced people (IDPs) and their hosts perceive the world — a perception that goes beyond mere survival and includes non-existential dimensions such as cultural heritage — it becomes clear that the articulation of needs by international humanitarian organizations (IHOs) is onesided. This paper examines the importance of pottery in traditional society in Kongoussi prior to the security crisis and analyzes the survival or resilience activities proposed by IHOs to IDPs and to local populations. Documentary research and an ethnographic approach were employed. The results reveal long-standing foundations of social organization that have been disrupted by insecurity, as well as humanitarian aid that does not sufficiently take into account social realities or the diverse worldviews of its beneficiaries. More specifically, practices that confer cultural identity (pottery) on displaced populations and their hosts are not considered in the emergency or resilience activities proposed by IHOs to their beneficiaries. The logic of humanitarian aid reveals a form of neocolonialism that must be decolonized.
Jacqueline Sawadogo (Wed,) studied this question.
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