Review of Brachet J., Scheele J. (Eds.) The value of disorder: autonomy, prosperity, and plunder in the Chadian Sahara. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019

Abstract

The Value of Disorder: Autonomy, Prosperity, and Plunder in the Chadian Sahara strives not just to draw up an anthropological, socioeconomic, and political landscape of the Borkou-Enned ti-Tibesti (BET) region in northern Chad, but in doing so follows the newest trend in African studies appropriate to the field: it looks into the past, present and future of Africa through an African-centered lens. The authors, perhaps, even take this approach a step further, with a focus on this micro-region of marginal global importance in the continent’s backwater as a subject rather than an object of history; they have brilliantly demonstrated how geography, natural conditions and cultural traditions of its people – mostly the Tubu but also some cohabiting groups – have made the region a “half-world” – disconnected and aloof yet critical to the stability of neighboring areas, Chad and even the Sahara as a whole.