Governmentality through fear and community Awareness: an anthropological reading of the senufo Poro in ivory coast
Abstract
This contribution analyzes the social conditions of production, legitimation, and effectiveness of fear mobilization in risk communication policies, adopting a critical anthropological perspective on health communication policies. From foundational works on the perception and social amplification of risk to contemporary theories of health communication in epidemic contexts, fear occupies a central place in the strategies deployed by public health institutions. However, the effectiveness of this health-related mobilization of fear is far from guaranteed. Fear is mobilized not only by governments in their strategies of legitimation, control, and anticipation of protests, but also by populations in their practices of resistance, circumvention, or defiance. In epidemic contexts, health measures prohibiting certain funeral rites or imposing social distancing have often provoked protests, acts of vandalism, and even violence directed against public awareness workers. This tension produces a paradoxical situation in which both rulers and ruled appear simultaneously as producers and objects of fear. The analyzed corpus comes from an ethnographic study conducted in the Korhogo department between 2017 and 2018, based on participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and informal exchanges. The analysis shows that the effectiveness of governance through fear depends less on the intensity of the threat produced than on the social conditions of its legitimation. Thus, the "poro" (fear-based governance) appears effective not because the fear it mobilizes is more intense than that produced by public health campaigns, but because it is culturally embedded, institutionally framed, socially shared, and morally valued. The results show that the effectiveness of fear-based strategies rests on three main conditions: the credibility of the institutions and actors who convey the message, their integration into culturally relevant and socially shared universes of meaning, and the existence of solutions perceived as accessible and effective. In the absence of these conditions, fear tends to generate resistance rather than compliance, as demonstrated by the experiences of Ebola and Covid-19. The political anthropology of the Poro thus allows us to rethink the conditions for the effectiveness of contemporary health governance strategies based on fear and, more broadly, to examine the continuities of power structures across historical and cultural contexts.
Related
- Developing students’ reading competence in an EFL context through annotated reading: A blended instructional design
- Thesis presentation. Anorexia nervosa, deconstructing a concept to rethink care: A historical and anthropological approach
- The European Anthropological Association (EAA) position statement on anthropometry: education, competence, and scientific authority
- Policy awareness among community-dwelling older adults: The roles of cognitive status and digital access
- Acute neuromuscular and kinematic responses to a single Feldenkrais awareness through movement session.
BibTeX
@article{kra2026governmentality,
title = {{Governmentality through fear and community Awareness: an anthropological reading of the senufo Poro in ivory coast}},
author = {Firmin Kra},
journal = {Revue Sociétés, Éducation, Santé et Pathologies Sociales},
year = {2026},
month = jun,
url = {https://ird.hal.science/ird-05764334v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Governmentality through fear and community Awareness: an anthropological reading of the senufo Poro in ivory coast
AU - Firmin Kra
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/06/30
JO - Revue Sociétés, Éducation, Santé et Pathologies Sociales
UR - https://ird.hal.science/ird-05764334v1
AB - This contribution analyzes the social conditions of production, legitimation, and effectiveness of fear mobilization in risk communication policies, adopting a critical anthropological perspective on health communication policies. From foundational works on the perception and social amplification of risk to contemporary theories of health communication in epidemic contexts, fear occupies a central place in the strategies deployed by public health institutions. However, the effectiveness of this health-related mobilization of fear is far from guaranteed. Fear is mobilized not only by governments in their strategies of legitimation, control, and anticipation of protests, but also by populations in their practices of resistance, circumvention, or defiance. In epidemic contexts, health measures prohibiting certain funeral rites or imposing social distancing have often provoked protests, acts of vandalism, and even violence directed against public awareness workers. This tension produces a paradoxical situation in which both rulers and ruled appear simultaneously as producers and objects of fear. The analyzed corpus comes from an ethnographic study conducted in the Korhogo department between 2017 and 2018, based on participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and informal exchanges. The analysis shows that the effectiveness of governance through fear depends less on the intensity of the threat produced than on the social conditions of its legitimation. Thus, the "poro" (fear-based governance) appears effective not because the fear it mobilizes is more intense than that produced by public health campaigns, but because it is culturally embedded, institutionally framed, socially shared, and morally valued. The results show that the effectiveness of fear-based strategies rests on three main conditions: the credibility of the institutions and actors who convey the message, their integration into culturally relevant and socially shared universes of meaning, and the existence of solutions perceived as accessible and effective. In the absence of these conditions, fear tends to generate resistance rather than compliance, as demonstrated by the experiences of Ebola and Covid-19. The political anthropology of the Poro thus allows us to rethink the conditions for the effectiveness of contemporary health governance strategies based on fear and, more broadly, to examine the continuities of power structures across historical and cultural contexts.
SN - 3006-3779
ER -