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Ivory Coast
Index
Through the 1980s, Côte d'Ivoire shared the concerns
over
poverty, unemployment, and crime that plagued developing
and
industrial countries alike. Human resource management was
complicated by the large urban-rural ratio, however, and
by
population growth and economic recession. The cultural
expectation
of assistance through the extended family helped offset
problems of
unemployment, but high mobility within the work force
resulted in
more dispersed families, and this dispersal, in turn,
contributed
to rising problems of poverty and unemployment.
Poverty, population mobility, and ethnic and cultural
diversity
contributed to rising crime rates during the first two
decades of
independence. During the 1980s, statistics on white-collar
crime--embezzlement, fraud, and misappropriation of
funds--rose at
a faster rate, and urban crimes such as robbery and theft
generated
widespread concern. In 1987 the president declared
dishonesty and
fraud a public disgrace and proclaimed his intention to
wage a
vigorous war against them. Drug abuse--primarily involving
cocaine,
marijuana, and heroin--was also declared a scourge against
society,
but the appropriate public response to these problems was
not
defined.
* *
*
Ethnographic background reading on Akan, Mandé, and
Voltaic
societies is available in a variety of works by Meyer
Fortes,
Elliott Skinner, Kenneth Little, Helga Diallo, and
Germaine
Dieterlen. Alexander Alland, Jr.'s When the Spider
Danced
presents a personal account of ethnographic research among
the
Abron during the 1960s.
Michael A. Cohen's, Urban Policy and Political
Conflict in
Africa focuses on urbanization and formation of the
elite in
the 1960s and early 1970s. Bastiaan A. den Tuinder, in
Ivory
Coast: The Challenge of Success, assesses data on
sectoral
progress during the 1970s. Jeanne Maddox Toungara's "The
Changing
Status of Women in Côte d'Ivoire" summarizes the history
of changes
in legislation regarding women in Ivoirian society.
Much of the more recent literature on Côte d'Ivoire
describes
the role of the president in crafting this complex
nation-state and
controlling the direction of social and political change.
The years
leading up to independence and the context of the
evolution of the
president's status as "Le Vieux" are analyzed in Aristide
Zolberg's
One-Party Government in the Ivory Coast. Claude E.
Welch,
Jr., in "Côte d'Ivoire: Personal Rule and Civilian
Control,"
assesses the president's role in maintaining the region's
only
long-standing civilian government.
Robert J. Mundt's Historical Dictionary of the Ivory
Coast compiles a wide range of historical, political,
and
sociological data, presented in concise entries with an
extensive
bibliography. Philippe David's La Côte d'Ivoire,
presents an
overview of Ivoirian society, including historical,
economic, and
sociological background reading. (For further information
and
complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of November 1988
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