Claudine Vidal (born 22 April 1937) is a French sociologist and a director emerita of the

French National Centre for Scientific Research The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 engi ...

(CNRS). She has conducted

fieldwork Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the collection of raw data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches and methods used in field research vary across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduct f ...

in Africa for more than 20 years, especially in

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...

and

Rwanda Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by ...

and has published extensively about her findings there.

Life and work

Vidal centers her research on two African countries: Rwanda (from its pre-colonial history to the genocide of Tutsi Rwandans in 1994) and Ivory Coast (the history and sociology of urbanization in its largest city

Abidjan Abidjan ( , ; N'Ko script, N'ko: ߊߓߌߖߊ߲߬) is the largest city and the former capital of Ivory Coast. As of the Demographics of Ivory Coast, 2021 census, Abidjan's population was 6.3 million, which is 21.5 percent of the overall population ...

). This research has been carried out in the framework of the Centre d'Études Africaines de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. She has been a leader and author with Doctors without Borders (MSF) since 1995 on many publications, and she is a member of MSF's CRASH endeavors.

Selected works

*Vidal, C. (1974). Économie de la société féodale rwandaise (The Economics of Rwanda Feudal Society). ''African Studies Notebooks'', 52–74. *Vidal, C. (1977). Gender war in Abidjan. Male, female, CFA (The Sex War in Abidjan. male, female$, ). ''African Studies Notebooks'', 121–153. *Vidal, C. (1986). Funerals and social conflict in Ivory Coast. ''African Politics'', (24), 9–19. *Le Pape, M., & Vidal, C. (1987). School at all costs. ''Proceedings of Social Science Research'', ''70'' (1), 64–73. *Claudine, V. I. D. A. L. (1991). ''Sociologie des passions:(Côte-d'Ivoire et Rwanda)''. KARTHALA Editions. *Vidal, C. (1994). African Solidarity: Reexamining a Myth. *Le Pape, M., & Vidal, C. (Eds.). (2002). ''Ivory Coast: the terrible year, 1999-2000''. KARTHALA Editions. *Vidal, C. (2003). The brutalization of the Ivorian political field, 1990–2003. ''African Sociological Review/Revue Africaine de Sociologie'', ''7'' (2), 45–57. *Vidal, C. (2004). ''The commemoration of the genocide in Rwanda. Symbolic Violence, Forced Memorization, and Official History'' (Vol. 44, No. 175, pp. 575–592). Editions of the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. *Ruzibiza, AJ, Vidal, C., & Guichaoua, A. (2005). ''Rwanda, the secret history'' (p. 494). Paris: Editions du Panama. *"France in Rwanda. Guilty neutrality" (2019). documentary."Claudine Vidal, Jean-Hervé Bradol, France in Rwanda. Guilty neutrality, 11 February 2019, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/conferences-debates/france-rwanda-guilty-neutrality

References

1937 births Living people French sociologists 20th-century French women scientists 20th-century French women 21st-century French women scientists 21st-century French scientists Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research {{France-sociologist-stub