RGP Cycle Four Grantees and Projects

Amina El-Mekaoui: New Environmental Policies in Morocco between Ecological Justice, New Forms of Poverty, and Social Marginalization: Ethnographies in Weekly Popular Markets in Rabat in the Wake of the “Zero Mika” or “Zero Plastic Bags” Project

 

This research project aims at studying the implications of the decision to ban the sale of plastic bags in weekly popular markets in Morocco, through a comparative approach that combines urban and rural sectors in Rabat, by understanding and analyzing the mechanisms of resistance and alternative strategies for the users, promoters, and producers of plastic bags. The project’s general problematic pushes us to consider anthropologic frameworks to analyze these new phenomena, which requires us to activate the ecological approach in its aforementioned dimensions in order to understand the project’s background, structure and obstacles on multiple levels, particularly in the absence of objective conditions that are in line with the social structure. We also have to rethink new concepts related to sectors, rights, energy, and conflicts, and which revolve around central concepts, such as alternatives, justice, ecological governance, and sustainability. This study relies on various methodologies and techniques to understand the practices, dynamics, and cross-sectorial interactions related to its subject, including the ethnographic museum, multi-sited ethnography, and case studies in order to understand the problematic, which we’re trying to construct by raising questions about the implications of enacting an ecological approach locally and nationally, as well as the social and socioeconomic dynamics created by the “Zero Mika” project, which can be summarized as follows:

- What were the dynamics that resulted from banning the sale of plastic bags? How did this ban affect social and sectorial practices? How did it lead to the emergence of new intermediaries, who can work covertly under these conditions, and in the absence of a complete ban? And how to deal with the arising confusion and uncertainty?
- What is the fate of the producers, promoters, and users of plastic in the absence of clear and rationed alternatives?
- What is the role that border cities play in supplying local markets with plastic and ingraining the culture of smuggling?
- What are the implications of conflating the official discourse on the alternative economy with the plastic-based socioeconomic practices?

Thus, we question the new concepts that are related to sectors, rights, energy, and conflicts, and that revolve around central concepts, such as alternatives, justice, ecological governance, and sustainability. We question how clear their frameworks are to all the actors involved in the materials, energies and alternative fields, or vice versa; and how different the meanings are, particularly in understanding the general meaning of these concepts. We question how these differences could be a way to understand the ecological dilemma within the researched community, and subsequently map the ambiguous areas, which could provide a fertile ground for pathological behaviors, or offer an opportunity for the vulnerable class to interpret public policies by taking their immediate interests into account, and developing adaptation and resistance strategies. We question how the flaws of the ecological approach could be transformed into more sector-oriented practices that support the precarious economy and illicit activities. All these phenomena fall under the concept of “alternativeness,” which we considered the central concept that relies on sub-concepts related to justice in its wider meaning, governance, sustainability, and accessibility.

 

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Amina El-Mekaoui is a research professor in sociology and anthropology at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco. She holds a PhD and a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico. She also holds a Higher Diploma of Advanced Studies in Family Sociology from Mohammed V University in Rabat.
El-Mekaoui is mostly interested in international migration, which she studies by using theoretical approaches from American and Latin academia, particularly transnational theories, and the anthropology of emotions, to conduct a comparative research of migration in North Africa and Europe, and Mexican migration to the US. El-Mekaoui's latest project focuses on environmental policies and new forms of poverty in Morocco in the wake of the “Zero Mika” Project, through which she attempts to explore the ecological dimensions of social vulnerability, poverty, and migration.
El-Mekaoui has published two articles in Spanish about legal anthropology and ethnic minorities in Mexico. She has also written several articles and a chapter of a book that includes the findings of her dissertation on tribalism as a transnational pattern, anti-racism strategies and marginalization in Spain, the body as a mechanism and tool of ethnographic research, the anthropology of emotions and gender in border towns, and nostalgia among Moroccan immigrants in Spain.