Camille Van Deputte

Camille Van Deputte is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Anthropology and Ethnography Museum (SAME) and works with Professor Ramon Sarró. She is a recipient of the Fyssen Foundation scholarship, which offers junior scholars the opportunity to conduct postdoctoral research in prestigious university as Oxford University.

She defended her PhD thesis in social anthropology at Paris Nanterre University (France) in December 2023 titled “Êtres obligés. Jeunes hommes, femmes âgées et devineresses dans la région de Korhogo (Côte d’Ivoire)1” as a member of Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative (LESC).

Based on ethnography conducted among young men, elderly women and diviners in the Korhogo region of Ivory Coast, her PhD thesis explores the everyday implementation of ties of interdependency and solidarities, which she calls relations of obligation. These relations contribute to the position of such persons in the social hierarchy. Young men remain as dependents despite their age and their aspirations to become heads of household. As a consequence of old age and widowhood, elderly women struggle for their livelihood. While attempting to uphold their responsibilities towards their offspring, especially their grand-children, they are increasingly dependent on the assistance of others. Insofar as diviners are concerned, they must constantly negotiate with both members of their human entourage and with the entities that have elected them (ancestors, spirits), whose interests are often opposed. Obligation, as a relational modality, opens up a new understanding of the everyday structuring of social relationships as much as of the personal experiences of youth, old age and the condition of being chosen by an invisible entity.