Epistemic field of the research of geographers Paul Pélissier and Cheikh Ba: Between complementarities, intersecting and disciplinary overflows
This article examines the way an African geographer, Cheikh Ba, redefined the boundary drawn by the Africanist geography of Paul Pélissier, his mentor. It analyzes the contents of their theses, bibliographies, references included in texts, and correspondences in order to clearly define their epistemic field. It also characterizes the circulation of knowledge and studies their differentiated relationship to colonial and post-colonial political systems and geographical discipline. The findings show that Paul Pélissier and Cheikh Ba respectively spearheaded research for about half a century (from 1951 to 2000) in the two major areas of rural geography in Senegal: agriculture and livestock. Even if both researchers developed similar issues and topics, their approaches in dealing with them are different. Political geography, geopolitics and the difference in scale in terms of space and time are the tokens of rebirth that Cheikh Ba has exemplified as an exclusive African imprint.