Blanchy Sophie
Ethnology
Laboratory of Ethnology and Comparative Sociology (LESC)
France
Biography
Sophie Blanchy has been working on the Comoros Islands since 1980 and in Madagascar since 1990. After an ethnological PhD thesis on day-to-day life in Mayotte (a French island of the Comoros archipelago), she studied the marriage ritual and age groups in Ngazidja (Grande Comore). By exploring the diverse age system variants that exist in each city, she was able to analyse the complexity of a social and political organisation that connects matriliny, age, Islam and now migration. These apparently very formal frameworks of belonging are reproduced and renewed through the personal development of each individual, according to their circumstances and choices.
Research Interest
kinship, policy, religion, ritual, language, experience and intersubjectivity
Publications
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2014, Intégrations et exclusions. La production différenciée des hiérarchies sociales aux Comores, Études rurales, 194: 47-62 [special issue: La fabrique des mondes insulaires: altérités, inégalités, et mobilités dans l’océan Indien occidental].
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2015, Anjouan (Comores), un nœud dans les réseaux de l’océan Indien. Émergence et rôle d’une société urbaine lettrée et marchande (XVIIe-XXe siècle), Afriques, 06 http://afriques.revues.org/1817/.
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2016 ed. (with M.-P. Ballarin), Revalorisation patrimoniale des sites naturels sacrés (Kenya, Ouganda, Madagascar): enjeux locaux, nationaux et internationaux [special issue], Journal des Africanistes, 86 (1).
