At a time of crisis in the globalization of trade, the fiction of commodity labor promoted by industrialized countries since the 19th century needs to be questioned by hitherto disqualified knowledges and cultures. Such is the case in Africa, where multinational corporations and neoliberal legislation are tending to standardize labor law. In his latest book, Pr Ousmane O. Sidibé calls for a rethinking of the status of labor in the light of the societies in which it is embedded. Without idealizing the normative systems inherited from tradition, his research helps us to see the " informal work ", empirical knowledge and traditional solidarities in a way that is different from the Western model, which has long reduced them to archaism. By inviting a better understanding of the specificities of African legal culture, the author opens the way to a status of effective work, towards greater social justice.
Organized in partnership with theInternational Labour Organization (ILO) and theAssociation française de droit du travail, a conference on this book will be held at the Collège de France on October 18 at 4 pm in the Guillaume Budé amphitheatre, under the auspices of the International Law of Institutions chair held by Prof. Samantha Besson.
Entitled Perspectives africaines sur le travail (African perspectives on labor), it will bring together around a round table :
- Ousmane Sidibé,
- Cyril Cosme (Director of the ILO office in France),
- Danouta Liberski-Bagnoud (ethnologist, director of research at CNRS, author of " La Souveraineté de la Terre. Une leçon africaine de l'habiter ", Seuil, 2023),
- Pascal Lokiec (Professor at the Sorbonne Law School and President of the French Association of Labor and Social Security Law),
- Jean-Pierre Le Crom (legal historian, director of research at CNRS, co-author of " Les Travailleurs à l'épreuve du droit colonial français (XIXe-XXe siècles ", PUR , 2021),
- Linxin He (lecturer at the Sorbonne Law School),
- Corinne Vargha (Director of the ILO Bureau of Standards),
- Alain Supiot (Professor Emeritus, Collège de France).
This conference is open to all, subject to availability.
A Doctor of Law from the University of Bordeaux (1983), Pr OusmaneSidibé is one of Mali's most respected intellectual figures, having served as Minister of Labor, then Commissioner for Institutional Reform, and Chairman of the " Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission " after the atrocities committed by jihadists in the Sahel. In 2016, he took part in the Collège de France's opening symposium Une crise européenne ?Societies faced with migrants. His latest book is Repenser le statut du travail.Une contribution africaine, co-edited byEditions de l'Atelier (Paris) and Jimsaan (Dakar), 2023, 254 p.
