Beautiful Modern Nomads: Bordercrossing Tuareg Between Niger, Algeria and Libya

by Ines Kohl

How do modern nomads cross the Sahara? What kinds of challenges and difficulties are they confronted with, which opportunities do they find in Libya and how does their life in the newly created Saharan borderland look like? These and other questions are raised in this book and are answered surprisingly on the basis of beauty and aesthetics. Ideals of beauty, body characteristics, dress codes and sexual tabus, correlate with morals, norms and values and can be interpreted as an indicator of sociocultural changes in the Sahara. The bordercrossing Tuareg have thus formed a veritable youth culture . New ideals of beauty, refashioned aesthetics of music, changing traditions and newly acquired values of money and material things show this nomadic society from a striking new angle.

142 pages, Perfect Paperback

Published January 5, 2009