The politics of recognition, and the manufacturing of citizenship and identity in Senegal?s decentralised charcoal market

This article shows how state politics of (re)allocation of rights and resources to social groups within a society (recognition) are constructive of distinct abilities to shape the fate of the political economy of natural resources (citizenship) and of specific images of self (identities). It departs from the politics of recognition applied by the Forest Service to private merchants and forest villagers in Eastern Senegal. Herein, I theorise citizenship and identity as effects of the politics of recognition and redistribution, emphasising that identities are culturally bounded categories, but are also products (through reclassification) of public institutions' discourses, legal ordinances and practices.