Social Spaces at the Interface Between the Ocean and Inhabited Land in Guet Ndar
Discover the 2025 awarded project "Social Spaces at the Interface Between the Ocean and Inhabited Land in Guet Ndar, a Neighbourhood of Saint-Louis, Senegal", selected by the Louis Dumont Fund for Research in Social Anthropology.
The project
This research focuses on spaces at the interface between the ocean and inhabited land in Guet Ndar, a neighbourhood of Saint-Louis, Senegal. Located on a narrow strip of land between the Atlantic Ocean and the river island of Saint-Louis, this working-class neighbourhood was originally a Wolof and Lebou fishing village. It is now threatened by rising sea levels, caused by a combination of climate change and poorly designed hydraulic infrastructure.
The Atlantic Ocean is viewed ambivalently by Guet-ndarians: while fishing remains a vital resource and source of employment, the neighbourhood faces a major medium-term risk of flooding. The ocean also evokes migration to Europe via the Cayucos route—and the many deaths associated with it.
The land and maritime spaces of the neighbourhood intersect and intertwine in multiple ways: the western shoreline, where houses are battered by waves; the beach, shrinking visibly, where children play football; rooftops used for male sociability (mbar), originally positioned between the ocean and the houses, now relocated to the river side; and the port of Jamalaye and its fish traders, with the appearance of an improvised encampment.
Delphine Durand
Delphine Durand Sall is completing a PhD at the Laboratory of Ethnology and Comparative Sociology (LESC) in Nanterre. Her thesis, supervised by Michael Houseman and Ismaël Moya, is based on extended immersive fieldwork in Guet Ndar, a densely populated fishing district of Saint-Louis, Senegal. Her research offers a distinctive perspective on Wolof social organisation, kinship and gender, explored through their spatial dimensions, in an extreme urban and environmental context marked by the threat of marine submersion.
