A-1
THE RHETORIC AND STRATEGY FOR AFRICAN
ETHNOGRAPHIES:
STRUCTURES OF INTERPRETATION/TRANSLATION OF
‘CULTURE’ AND ‘SOCIETY’
Gaku Moriguchi
Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University, JAPAN
E-mail: gakumpola@gmail.com
Keywords: Cultural translation, E.E. Evans-Pritchard,
Ethnography, Rhetoric,
I. Introduction: The Rhetoric of ‘Culture’ and ‘Society’ in African Contexts
‘Culture’ and ‘Society’ are two giant terms in
anthropological knowledge. When someone asks an anthropologist what anthropology
does, the ordinary answer is always it is ‘an interpretation of culture and
society’. On the other hand, the concept of ‘culture’ and ‘society’ have been
criticised since the 1970’s, and especially in the late of 1980’s when the book
“Writing Culture” was published (Clifford and Marcus 1986). Although
this Writing Culture shock was the past moment of more than twenty years
ago, I would like to argue more on the rhetoric and structure of interpreting
culture by writing ethnography in English. There are some reasons why I
would dare to do so now, but the first of all, English language and the
rhetoric of ‘culture’ and ‘society’ are one of the most dominant factors when
people describe themselves in African contexts, especially in Uganda. The aim
of this paper is to analyse the rhetoric of the other ‘culture’ and ‘society’
and contextualise the self and the other in post-colonial African contexts. In
the next section, I will focus on the work of Evans-Pritchard and analyse his
rhetoric of comparison and contrast. Then, in the third section, I will point
out the structure of interpreting culture and society in African/English
ethnographies. In conclusion, the paper tries to discuss more on current
language situation and theoretically suggest alternative strategy of writing
ethnographies in Africa.
II. Works of Implicit Metaphor of Evans-Pritchard’s Ethnography
There are a lot of literary devices in the work of
Evans-Pritchard (E-P). He described Nuer, Azande and other ethnic groups as a
consistent and coherent social order in each text. But this order depends on
the “Western Obsession” of his contemporary British Anthropology
(Strathern 1988). The writing style of British Social Anthropology, which was
that of “Structural Functionalism”, had too much consistency and coherence to
conceptualise the real phenomena of “societies”. Moreover. this style was
formed within the British colonial administration system, which was “indirect
rule” in African and Indian countries (Leclerc 1972). In Writing Culture, Renato
Rosaldo also criticized E-P’s colonial attitude to Nuer and Azande
and his epistemology (Rosaldo 1986). E-P’s view was explored from his tent in
Nuerland, not from his neighbours’ hut. According to Marcus and Fischer (1986),
however, people in the Writing Culture School found much more interesting in, and reread, such classic
work as E-P’s Nuer and Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific
(Marcus and Fischer 1986). What the Writing Culture School has done is to
examine the quality of writing, but what I will do in this paper is to examine
the writing itself by questioning what E-P’s concept of culture constitutes in
his ethnography. I will focus on the E-P’s writing style and his ethnographic
comparison and contrast. He aimed at the translation of culture in his
ethnography and I try to point out some of its cultural and political bias.
III. Works of Translation and Interpretation of ‘Culture’
The reason why I pick up on E-P’s writing style is
neither to admire his excellent method of comparison and contrast nor to
illustrate the importance of his ethnographic rhetoric. This is because I
totally agree with Asad’s opinion, when he states: “Yet despite the general
agreement with which this notion (of ‘cultural translation’) has been
accepted as part of the self-definition of British social anthropology, it has
little systematic examination from within the profession” (1986: 143). In this
section I want to examine how E-P’s “cultural translation” contributed
to anthropological knowledge and where the politics is in this comparison and
contrast method between African society and English society. This is also an
examination of the process of “cultural translation” and of reproducing
“the inequality of languages”, which Asad points out. What does it mean
that E-P’s texts connote this context of the English writer for the English
readers? The point to which Asad tentatively criticised is not the procedure of
a fundamental mistranslation of culture. He located himself in a different
place from other members of Writing Culture, a place which is slightly outside
of anthropological discourse, and which critical to the action of Writing
Culture. At the Writing Culture School most of them focused on the way that
writing rhetoric could be the politics of anthropology (Clifford 1986, Fischer
1986, Marcus 1986, Crapanzano 1986, Tyler 1986, Rabinow 1986) or the way that
on the colonial power can hide in the deployment of rhetoric in ethnographic
descriptions (Pratt 1986, Rosaldo 1986). Whereas Asad, examined Gellner’s text,
“Concepts and Society”, and pointed out the problematic of the “one-way
street” translation from another culture into English. He called this
process “the Inequality of Language”.
We need to examine that process of translation and the
inequality that it brings. What Asad argued is at first that the English
Ethnographer recognises a cultural phenomenon in one certain society within
his/her cultural context. Secondly, the original meaning of the phenomenon is
differentiated through being written by an English Ethnographer, who
appropriates the English cultural context and produces the coherence and
consistency of the text. Finally, through the authenticity of British Social
Anthropology School (or American Cultural Anthropology/ French Ethnology), the
social phenomena of the whole world are put together and made one within
Euro-American anthropological discourse.
What I would like to explain on ethnography and “cultural
translation” is that, at first, the ethnography is considered as a simple
text which tells of the anthropologist’s cultural experiences in other
societies. As I show in Diagram 1., ethnography is an anthropologist’s
narrative, and one which is directly conveyed to readers. Nobody except a few
anthropologists realised that there are some devices of the metaphorical and
symbolic use of language in this process. This is what the Writing Culture
School (Clifford and Marcus 1986, Marcus and Fischer 1986) and Geertz (1988)
pointed out. As we see in Diagram 2., ethnography becomes metaphor to tell anthropologist’s
cultural experiences. By revealing the anthropologist’s experience as a text,
the other culture appears to become accessible to the readers. The translation
is possible when the experience is objectified and symbolised. Metaphor in the
text itself does not mean anything. With readers who are going to read and
understand them, the work of metaphor becomes valid.
Metaphor and symbol are devices for readers to understand
other cultures, so E-P’s ethnography is an intermediation between two cultures.
In this process of “cultural translation”, I cannot take the optimistic
position and claim that translations keep reproducing new texts as Clifford has
argued (1986). The process of translation itself includes power relations
between languages. In the context of Writing Culture, ethnography itself, which
is the English written “culture”, also retains a particular cultural
authenticity in anthropological discourse and other fields of discipline.
IV. Conclusion: Toward a Strategy for African Ethnographies
V.Y. Mudimbe’s “Invention of Africa” argued that
European discourses on Africa, such as anthropological knowledge, missionary
speech, and political movement, have established what the African knowledge is,
so-called African gnosis (Mudimbe 1988). He tried to focus on the
discourses on Africa, rather I tried to clarify the structure of the cultural
interpretation beneath the ethnographic descriptions. By analysing this
kind of structure, supposedly, we may be able to suggest alternative strategy
for African ethnographies. In conclusion, I would like to discuss more the term
of culture in Uganda, which is somehow essentialised in ‘tribal’
politics and identity, and therefore think of possibility of African ethnographic
literature.
PASTORAL POETICAL WORLD OF IMAGINATION: EMANCIPATION
OF THE SELF
Itsuhiro Hazama
JSPS, JAPAN
E-mail: hazama@jambo.africa.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Keywords:
Karimojong,
‘Figure’ and ‘Ground’, Existence, Salvation, Representation
In this presentation I’ll make analysis of
fieldnotes written in or composed since I visited a certain Ugandan pastoral
society such as the Dodoth and Karimojong in 1998. As is well-known, they are based on pastoral subsistence in
savanna woodland, dependent on the body of (domesticated) animals; milk, blood
and meat. I would like to focus on
how the poetical world of imagination is revolved, and what kind of “world”
they sing in each daily life. Their world is ceaselessly opening out and in illusion and
reality, negation of existence and its affirmation, toward unknown dimensions.
What are the self, consciousness, and the body latent in the depths of various
expression of pastoral poetry? From a viewpoint of a possibility and a limitation the “self”
in the modern society suggests, this presentation aims at constructing the
locus of the Karimojong’s poetical imagination and their lives as a
contemporary thought, and seeks for the cosmos of language echoed with a
symphony to foreign cultures.
What a man has seen, what he has lived, and what
he has created is by far more affluent than what he has thought consciously or
the thing which he has recorded as what he ought to be. Because of the fascinating anticipation
for this massive iceberg as expression, I choose to begin with the nomad living
in “natural society”, rather than “great thinkers”, as starting point for our
present task; measurement of the possibilities and limits of the self in the
modern world.
The modern world-system, especially its
classical idea type, has set up and invented the self as subjectivity having
identity inhabited each human body as something like a privileged independent
variable, or the primary cause for the social world to exist and change. Transcription of Descartes’ famous
statement is translated in English as “I think, therefore I am”. Truth is that it is fallacy of assuming
the point in debate. The social
anthropological importance is not the fallacy itself but that it is the
vanishing point of skepticism even for Descartes himself as a thorough skeptic.
In a structure of the world, the
phenomenon of “I” is primarily the more remarkably self-evident entity than any
entities such as “God”, “nature”, “the other” and others.
What I am to think about in this presentation is
‘the self’ of human being, or, what “I” as the phenomenon is like. What is “self” and what is “I” ? What is “individuality” like? What is “subjectivity” like? What is “identity”? Such mutually overlapped and different questions constitute
the basic question not only for academic thoughts but also for various fields
of thoughts, expressions and acts.
Even if not questioned as a subject matter, the particular way in which
these are answered (or the particular way how these are thought) forms the
foundation for the academe, the thought, the art and the institution. It is the premise such like the whole
fields of academe, art and institutions would be collapsed once it should be
negated. It is the premise such like the whole fields of academe, art and
institutions would be collapsed once it should be negated and overturned. A
certain way of the self, subjectivity and identity being is the premise for the
social system, whether it is mentioned or not.
In their pieces of the pastoral poetry, which
should be titled as ‘the black ox in the plateau’, the singer describes black
as one “absence” which is bored deeply in the scattering lights of space. In
usual way of ‘seeing’, we unconsciously concentrate on an individual which is
pulled out and abstracted from the whole. And a prerequisite to it is,
according to the terminology of Rubin or gestalt psychology, the
differentiation of “figure” and “ground”. If it were not for anything
particular in angle of Sight which can become figure (“a stark white snow-cover
mountain”, “white season in dry land” etc.), form perception cannot occur nor
distance perspective. Unless this figure appears, ground continues to remain
sea of ground. Since figure appears once, however small this figure might be,
it opens the corridors of reversing vision, like it might reverse the ground
into the figure vise versa. ‘The black ox in the plateau’ is based on this
reversing power, like existence is absence of absence or being is nothingness
of nothingness. Another poem sings not the ox’s voice itself, but sings how the
voice expands and after a while disappears into the “praying ground”. In other
words, it sings the quality of silence or “sound of silence”. The voice itself
is a sacrificed stone which opens silent space, only by which we can hear
silence, the ground of sound. This ‘Praying Ground song’, as well as the song
of ‘the black ox in the plateau’, is based on reversibility of sense.
How are the meaning of “my existence” and its
limits (‘death’, ‘the other’) are sensed and represented for the imagination in
the world in which existence is felt absence of absence or being is sensed
nothingness of nothingness? “A
life-time in this world is only a moment, and the status of death, however it
is, is eternal. That cannot be
doubted.”(1) This
horror does not belong only to Pascal, but also it fringes lots of modern
rationalism ultimately. Even if
the meaning of ‘my’ life can be felt in the course of the life of mankind, and
even if the meaning of ‘my’ life can be found for the future of mankind, it is
baseless that the life of mankind is eternal. The life-time of mankind is also only a moment, as far as we
stand the point of view that my life-time is only a flash, that is, the
viewpoint of “eternity”. “I do not
allow anyone to conclude that mankind will be extinct. We know that each being dies but
mankind should not die.”(2)
Beauvoir writes like this, absolutely without any proof. She held to this because she feels that
our meaning of daily life turns into vanity. Eternity of mankind is postulation for her. This reminds us of God and eternity of
soul for Immanuel Kant. Kant’s
‘eternity of soul’ is systematization of classic modern thought. Beauvoir’s ‘eternity of mankind’ is atheistic
existentialism. This resonance
seems to indicate the limitation of aporia which modern thought cannot
overcome.
Sensing the existence as one miracle can also be
observed, for example, in Calvin as well as in Karimojong. Calvin demanded to know the thought of
Hebrew Christianity to the utmost limit, and stood at the key point to prepare
European modernism. How is the
world sensed by him? Poulet writes
as to it in the context of considering Human time.(3)
Feeling anxious and undergoing torture of
looking at his existence suspended from the edge of one string, and looking at
the ground in which he lives being “above so the deep hell that its foothold
seems to fall upside down all the time”, the existence of downfall feels like
survive only through the miracle from moment to moment. For him, each moment is
inevitably the moment of tumbling down. God does not so much extend the string
of existence as stops the action of revenge and extinction at every moment and
suspends him.
However,
we will see in later that the meaning of miracle of existence is exactly
reversal to the case of the Karimojong.
As Eliade, a theologist who compares religion of
India and Europe states, for the Hebrew Christian sense of the world, there is
brightness of meaning only inside of cosmos blessed and ordered by God. But things outside of this cosmos or
something just as naked as nature are sinful or, at least, meaningless. That is the very reason why Calvin had
to have horrors of downfall into this ubiquitous darkness and had to seek for
God blessing for miracle of existence at every moment. In modern rationalism
which has lost God as a light source of meaning or has absorbed it into the
self, where there is lonely light source such as the self or human beings,
desert of sense of the world remains, and all sources of meaning exist in vast
space of meaninglessness for an instant and before long they vanish into
vanity. Witness that “Americans
make it a rule not to think of his or her own death” simply expresses the lack
of salvation in modern sense of the world.(4)
The Karimojong’s self in their poetry seems also
dark at a glance because it is concentrated into the image of shadow. However,
what surprises us is that the world surrounding this shadow or something like
the ground of existence is full of the sparkling brightness. Thus Calvin’s self, that is to say, prototype
of the modern self deprived from Hebrew Christianity is the self which is
lonely light going in the ubiquitous darkness. On the contrary, this shadow is the self which is lonely
darkness going in the ubiquitous lights. Clearly, only by this sensibility of
the world, such thought can sustain, as grasps that we go beyond the self as
one kind of emancipation.
Notes
(1)
Pascal, B. Pensées et Opuscules, 1897
(2) Beauvoir, S. de. Pyrrhus et Cinéas, 1944
(3) Poulet, Georges. Etudes sur temps humain, Plon, 1950
(4) Moore, W. E. Man, Time and Society, 1950
SOCIAL
CHANGES, MODERNITY AND COMMUNALITY AMONG AGRARIAN SOCIETIES IN EAST AFRICA
Soichiro Shiraishi
Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University, JAPAN
E-mail: shiraish@jambo.africa.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Keywords: Anthropology,
Subjectivity, Discourse, Social norms, Inconsistency
Introduction: The dichotomy
of modern/primitive and the discourse of modernization
The aim of this study is to discuss on the potential
of anthropological thought, which is not necessarily popular in African academics,
setting theme that how we can describe and analyse social changes of rural
societies in Africa.
In social sciences, there is the master
narrative of modernity on social changes in African societies. Those are designed on social evolution
theory of 19th century, desired to domesticate ‘primitive Africa’
just as propagation or enlightenment by missionaries in pre-colonial
history. In the basis of that
idea, they have the dichotomy of ‘We West/They Africa’, which views Africa as
the mirrored or negative image of the West for defining them reflectively
[Mudimbe 1988]. Even some aspects
of Negritude movement and pan-Africanism shared such view as its shadow in the
reverse way.
Anthropology is no exception though it has ‘cultural
relativism’ which refuses Europe-centric view as one of its central
dogmas. In the past, many studies described
the changes of African societies as the transition from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’,
from ‘tribal’ to ‘civil’ society, or in conflict of both. In recent years, a number of works of
African studies have summarized social changes of agrarian societies as
cultural homogenisation under spreading globalisation, meaning the great
influence of ‘free market’ or neoliberal economic policy typified by Structural
Adjustment Programme. Those scopes
are appropriate in macro-level currents, but they often surreptitiously slip stereotyped
assumptions of ‘modernization’, ‘loss of community’ and so on. If we saw
each society through such scopes, only monolithic forms of social changes will
remain and subjectivity of individuals in each society would have been veiled. Again, in the theoretical background of
those scopes is dichotomy of ‘free will/determinism’ since the time of
Descartes. They define western subject
as choosing action or making decision by free will on the one hand, while
African as objects who are subject to their ‘tradition’ or ‘social norms’
on the other hand.
In short, to seek the theme ‘how we can describe
and analyse the social changes of rural societies in Africa’, we should carefully
think ‘how we can keep appropriate distance to the master narrative of
modernity.’ In what follows, I
describe social changes of a rural society in Eastern Uganda with reference to
people’s discourse on social relationships and social norms.(1)
Outline of the research area
I carried out field research in Sabiny society
situated in Kapchorwa District, Mt. Elgon. Until the first half of 20th century, people were agro-pastoralists,
keeping cattle and goats, and growing crops like sorghum, millet and yam only
for family consumption. Many
elders say the landscape of the area at that time was covered by bush and most
of the land was uncultivated, used for grazing their livestock. They also brewed beer from their
harvest and had beer parties.
In the research area, people introduced ox-plough and maize around
1950. Maize cultivation emerged gradually
afterwards. In the last decades of
the 20th century they began to grow hybrid maize and nowadays fields of maize
and bananas cover the landscape.
In recent years, maize has become the main crop. 60% of the households
sell their maize in 100-kilo bags.
Since the Ugandan government began encouraging production of maize as a
non-traditional commercial crop, the national production rose sharply after
1990. Today the research area is
one of the main producing centres in eastern Uganda. My research purpose is to clarify the qualitative change of
social relationships, social norms, and the role of people’s practice to those
changes in the area.
Two ethnographic cases are illustrated to
support this argument. The first
is on reformation of co-operative relationships among people, taking the
changes of labour organization as example. The second is on dispute over land tenure, analysing how
people justify one’s access to land referring to their social
relationships. In both cases, I
take notice of people’s discourse to clarify the complexity and inconsistency
of social norms.
Case 1: Changes in
labour organization
Earlier studies summarize that, in the process
of penetration of market economy in rural Africa, channels of access to labour
were disembedded from social context and individuated [e.g. Berry 1993]. This is parallel to classical view of
modernization in social sciences, for instance, Simmel says that personal
face-to-face relationships dispersonalize and become anonymous once money
mediates between people. This kind
of explanation, however, showing the shift of labour formation from A to B is
just unilateral and evolutionary and failed to grasp the meaning of people’s
daily practice which motivate social changes. We need to explore more detail of those changes and
experiences.
The types of weeding labour have been researched
on 58 households in 2002. They
organized their weeding labour either (a) their own household labour, (b)
various size of labour exchange, (c) wage labour among people in the area, or
they combined them. Large-sized
co-operative labour that used to come with beer party after work was very
common at least until 1970s [see also Goldschmidt 1967, 1976], but it declined
today partly because of spread of Islamic religion. Instead of former beer party, rotating credit associations
are common festive gatherings among neighbours, and not a few women made their
labour exchange group among the members of the same association. This result shows that the reaction to
cash economy is not always fragmentization of social relationships. [Shiraishi 2006-a]
However, there is the common discourse on the
change among people, especially among elders, that is something like ‘loss of communality’. Some of them have retrospective view on
former co-operative labour saying that ‘the only way to organize
neighbours were moyket (co-operative labour with beer) in those years,
it was very easy to gather people whenever we prepare beer for labour, and everybody
did that’. But in the process
of the research, I found the fact that there were other minor ways of
organizing labour, middle-sized co-operative labour without beer, small-scale
labour exchange, and they often combined them with the major one. At the same time, some of them told me
the negative accounts of former co-operative labour saying that ‘some other
people out of workers used to join beer parties, so moyket did not pay’,
other said ‘money is the best thing to gather neighbours today―providing, if
I had the one’. In short, though
people’s evaluation of former and present labour organization is various and sometimes
ambivalent, the dominant discourse of change is ‘from
beer to money’. As Pottier
pointed, generally there are plural ways of organizing labour [Pottier 1985],
only this dominant discourse cover the existence of minor
labour organizations.
This case indicates that the state of labour
organization in the area, coexistence of plural ways, is not mere transit
period of unilateral individualization under ‘modernization’. Social norms are always multilayered
and contain ambivalent evaluation of customs at present. Thus, though a custom took a dominant position
as the normal way in the society at a certain historical point, there is other
potential ways and people knew them.
In the phase of practices, people can take ‘other ways’ than normal one,
and this makes indeterminacy of social norms, as well as the driving force of social
changes. To clarify the
relationships between this multilayerness or indeterminacy of social norms and
people’s practices, I introduce the second case.
Case 2: Dispute over
land tenure
The classical studies of anthropology had
premise of ‘customary law’, which was different from written positive law, but
kind of unwritten traditional natural law. Those studies suppose that people act or make decision
socially always by referring traditional norm, the customary law. In later years, anthropologists began
to pay attention to multilayerness or indeterminacy of social norms, they
gradually changed their approach to ‘processual’ ones, which stresses that there
are negotiations at any scene of decision making [Comaroff & Simon
1981].
In 2002, a
dispute arose concerning the land tenure of a man who had moved from the area
40 years ago.
K, a son of the man, visited the
area and sued villager B who currently occupied the land to Local Council,
saying he had inherited the land from his father. This was never-before-seen case in the area. I analyzed discourse taken from the minute of the
local council and the records of my open-ended interviews to the neighbors and
relatives of both K and B.
One of the focuses of people’s comments to this
dispute is whether K (and his father) was ‘stranger’ for them or not. People refer their knowledge of customs
and historical memory to evaluate one’s access to the land. By ‘customs’ here, I mean, for
instance, cultivate one’s own land after he got it from his father or just
bought, bury the dead of family members at their land, or migrate somewhere
over the river when he/she lost more than two children at that place, and so
on. ‘Historical memory’ means, for
example, the memory of experience of working together in co-operative labour
group, attending funeral of the neighbour, insecurity under the frequent cattle
raiding from Karimojong, and so on.
Not a few neighbours knew the profile of K’s
family. Once father of K came from
other area and married with a girl in the area, he lived on the land, he lost
three children and his wife and buried at the land, and then he went to other
area where he was born. But other
neighbours said that father of K had had just come several times as a visitor
to care his relative’s cattle herds or to have negotiation over bride-price of
his wife, he had borrowed the land from his relatives, and he had gone back to
his home place. ‘Forty years’
absence’, ‘migrated after family members died’, and ‘returning back to where he
was born’ were the persuasive elements of the people who took B’s part. On the other side, a man who is the
affine (in-law) of K remarked in interview that in the years their grandparents
had came and lived in this area, anybody ‘grasp’ their land by free because
there had been frontier, then his generation inherited those lands, sometimes
they should migrate temporarily to escape insecurity or other reasons, so K is
just the same as anybody in the area.
At the same time, this man emphasized that B ‘grasp’ the land just recently
but since then B has kept lending the land to townsman every year, that shows B
knows that land did not belong to B.
[Shiraishi 2006-b]
This case shows us the eligible example of indeterminacy
of social norms and its relation to subjectivities of the people. As we see, we cannot know which is
ultimately ‘right’; these are a kind of so-called barren controversy, whereas
each statement based on idioms of customs. Manipulating those idioms, which are in paradigmatic
relations each other, people describe or evaluate B or K, and they construct
their assertions [see also Matsuda 1989].
In the process of this ‘negotiation’, each of them voiced their stance
on this never-before-seen issue variously. They are different from ‘tribal selves’ which are subjected
to ‘traditional system’ or ‘customary law’, likewise different from ‘modern
selves’ which are perfectly free from any customary bias―of course, there is no such person even in modern societies.
Discussion and Conclusions
But when we see the details of everyday life in
societies, we can find people’s practices, which generate moments of social
changes. In the process of that, customs
are not always the yoke of social changes, sometimes they become the media for changes,
and it would be the same as any local societies in ‘developed countries’ in
changing times. The frame of the
discourse of social/human development does not capture that. Finding various patterns of social
changes through observation in field research, and making dominating
development discourse to be interlocutor for the thought on ‘possible societies’,
I think that should be the practical significance of doing anthropology in
Africa today.
Notes
(1) In general, ‘social
norm’ is expectations which serve as common guidelines for social action. But it is a complex rather than a
system, here I technically define it as complex of myriad customs and
values. In Sabiny vocaburary, ‘ndarastit’
is the one, which usually translate traditional belief, custom, or
culture. Moore [1975] suggested
that to analyse social changes, we must take into account inter-relationships
of process of regularization or situational adjustment, and the factor of
indeterminaicy of social norms.
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Simmel, G. 1990 [1900] The Philosophy of Money [2nd ed.]. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
INDIGENOUS PRACTICES FOR PEACE AMONG ‘VIOLENT’
PASTORALISTS IN EAST AFRICA
Toru Sagawa
Graduate
School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University, JAPAN
E-mail:
sagawa@jambo.africa.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Keywords:
Peace construction, Cross-cutting ties, Conflict transformation,
Ethiopia-Daasanetch
Introduction
Pastoralists in East
Africa have been represented as typical ‘violent’ and ‘warlike’ people not only
by neighbouring agriculturalists and urban inhabitants but also by
anthropologists. A lot of researches focused on their ‘violent custom’ and
analyzed the cause of war. Some researchers attributed its cause to the pastoral
way of life itself [e.g., Ferguson, 1990] and have taken a part in reproducing
the negative image on pastoralists.
As I have conducted
field research in the Daasanetch, who are agro-pastoralist in the border area
among Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan, since 2001, I have come to recognize such
representation is one-sided view. I know that they have fought with
neighbouring pastoral peoples who are classified as ‘enemy’ (kiz), for more than 50 years. 48% of
Daasanetch adult men (n＝163)
have gun, mainly Kalashnikovs. 67% of adult men (n＝174) raided the livestock
of kiz and 18% of them killed the
member of kiz in previous wars.
Nevertheless, many
Daasanetch have kept various friendly cross-cutting ties with the member of kiz. When a war ends, they come and go
to each land, live together, and make friendships and kinship relations with
each other. People have recovered peace by themselves after a war ended.
Anthropologists have not shed proper light on such indigenous practices for peace
[Fry, 2006: xiii].
Today, external actors
have intervened in ‘local’ areas, where anthropological researches have
traditionally been conducted, to construct peace. However, intervention without
an understanding of the indigenous logic of war and peace will bring only
confusion to the area. Richards [2005: 19] recently pointed out that it is
important for the anthropological research to emphasize the “local potential
for spontaneous peace.” Researchers need to make discreet efforts to examine it
not only to criticize the biased representation on pastoralists, but also to make
outside interventions exert positive influences to local communities.
In this paper, I
describe the amicable trans-ethnic cross-cutting ties among the Daasanetch and neighbouring
ethnic groups. I then clarify how they relate to the process of inter-ethnic
war and peace, and argue the potential for peace construction which
cross-cutting ties have.
Trans-Ethnic
Cross-Cutting Ties with ‘Enemy’
Amicable trans-ethnic
cross-cutting ties are classified into co-residence, trade, friendships, and
kinships [Sagawa, in press]. I only write on co-residence and friendships.
According to the
Daasanetch, there is no clear-cut territorial boundary with neighbouring ethnic
groups. In their language, the word that corresponds to boundary is gaar. For example, when they divide the
cultivation land among each household, they draw a line, or gaar, with a stick. Gaar
can also refer to a certain wood or a dip that marks the border between
villages and to stones that mark the national border. In short, gaar refers to physical objects used to
mark a territorial and social boundary.
There are no such gaar with neighbouring ethnic groups. Of
course, they said “A is our land, B is Turkana’s land,” with referring place
names. The land between ‘our land’ and ‘their land’ is called dieto and is mainly used for grazing. In
dieto, members who belong to
different ethnic groups make livestock camps and use natural resources together,
so I refer to dieto as co-resident land.
Through co-residence
and trade, a person forms a friendship (beel)
with someone, who is compatible with him, to make their relation continual. I
asked 169 adult men whether they have friend(s) belonging to other ethnic
groups. 71％ of
them had and an average of 2.3 per capita. People across all age groups had
them. When they form a friendship, they ordinary make a gift.
An important
characteristic of gift between friends is that it is not a one-time-only
transaction. Initial gift is often not reciprocated immediately, so the gift
recipient will visit the gift giver’s village to offer a counter gift. Even if
the counter gift had been done, most of transactions are not the ‘equivalent
exchange,’ compared with the exchange rate of trade, so that a newer gift will
be leaded. Asymmetrical relations resulted from the transactions mediated by
the time and/or the non-equivalent exchange ensure the continual mutual
visiting.
One Daasanetch told me
that both of the Daasanetch and neighbouring peoples are peoples who ‘give
cattle skin (rokode siis)’ to others.
In the evening, people spread cattle skin in front of the house, and they drink
coffee, enjoy talking, and sleep on it. ‘Peoples who give cattle skin’ means
peoples who have good hospitality and entertain others without asking immediate
return. The person who is entertained would say to the host, “You should come
to my village with your wife to eat my livestock’s meat.” Fraternity created
from hospitality and mutual-visiting enable them to form equal and continual
relation.
How
Cross-Cutting Ties Relate to War and Peace
How does the amicable
relation change the antagonistic relation and war happens? Problems that stem
from co-residence and mutual visiting trigger war. When the Daasanetch lived
together with members of other ethnic groups or visited to other ethnic groups’
lands for peaceful purposes, they were killed by kiz or vice versa. The killers were often youths who hungered for
praise from community members as ‘a brave man who killed enemy.’ After such
small conflict, both groups moved to each ‘our land’ from dieto, and made a symbolic boundary by sorcery (muor), and war occurred. Co-residence
and mutual visiting gave youths opportunities to kill kiz, and the slain member’s group started large-scale wars for
revenge.
On the other hand,
there are cases in which cross-cutting ties contributed to the alleviation of
conflicts. In the Terle War (circa 1950), Nyangatom youths tried to attack the
Daasanetch who lived together soon after they had heard that Terle, a Daasanetch youth,
had killed a Nyangatom woman. Then, Lugute, a Nyangatom elder, persuaded the
youth not to immediately attack the Daasanetch, saying, “I have a good
Daasanetch friend. I gave his baby my name, Lugute, and they live here now. You
should not kill my people.” The youths accepted his word and postponed their
attack until the next day. In the meantime, the Daasanetch moved to the south
with their livestock, and only one herd was raided in the next day’s attack.
Because one elder had an intimate friendship with a Daasanetch, the war
remained on a minimal scale.
Cross-cutting ties are
also necessary to form peace in the post-war situation. Battle would finish for
one or two days. However, antagonistic relation continues and mutual visiting remains
absent. Under such ‘cold war’ situation, individuals who have cross-cutting
ties with kiz visit to enemy’s land for
peace speech meeting or co-residence.
Peace speech meeting is
held when one group visits the other group after a war ends. At the meeting,
people frequently referenced the names of co-resident places or other groups’
members: “We lived and herded the livestock together in X place” or “I ate the
livestock meat with Y’s father many times.” These testaments reminded people of
the friendly relations before the war and persuaded both groups that
recapturing the friendly relations would be mutually beneficial. Their orations
were persuasive because, as a matter of fact, they have recovered co-residence
and mutual visiting every time after a war ended.
For the Daasanetch,
peace (simiti) does not exist without
amicable trans-ethnic interactions. One elder talked about simiti: “When the rain comes and the land becomes cool, we move
with livestock and live together with the Turkana. Elders talk on many issues
under the shade of a tree all the day. Youths herd together under the sun and
take a rest together under the shade of a tree. If the Daasanetch’s herd starts
to move when a Daasanetch herd boy is sleeping, a Turkana boy shakes away him
and says, ‘Your herd is moving.’ This is simiti” [Merikile, 26th March 2006].
This notion of peace does
not imply a passive condition of ‘no war’ which is the dominant notion of peace
in modern Western world. Simiti is a
dynamic process in which people recover mutual visiting, renew old friendships,
and form new social relations. In short, simiti
means that individuals actively engage in amicable face-to-face interactions
with others irrespective of each ethnic attribute. ‘No war’ is just one requirement
for simiti. Because individuals who
have cross-cutting ties with kiz take
the initiative in recovering mutual visiting against antagonistic relation in
group-level, the inter-ethnic relation shifts from “no war” to simiti or from ‘negative peace’ to ‘positive
peace’ [Davues-Vengoechea, 2004].
Conclusion
Trans-ethnic
cross-cutting ties have taken necessary roles
to mitigate conflict and recover peace in the border area. At the same time, I pointed out that co-residence
and mutual visiting between members of different ethnic groups sometimes
resulted in conflicts and they escalated to large scale war.
The matter for peace
construction is not to negate trans-ethnic amicable interactions as “a cause of
war.” We should be cautious about
such idea, because we know the consequences brought by indirect rule of the
British colonial government in Kenya. The colonial government established
tribal zones to curtail mutual visiting among ethnic groups, partly because they
regarded such relations as potential sources of conflict. A divide-and-rule
policy might achieve a temporary state of “no war,” but it has also aggravated
a sense of exclusivity or ‘tribalism’ and antagonism among ethnic groups from
a long-term perspective [Matusda, 2000]. In Ethiopia, ethnic federalism policy since 1991 seems to
bring about similar consequences, the escalation of ethnic nationalism [Turton
(eds.), 2006].
In the field of
conflict theory and peace studies, some scholars recently use the term
‘conflict transformation,’ instead of ‘conflict resolution.’ Galtung [1996]
discussed that conflict itself cannot resolve, but the process of conflict can
transform to the direction of peace. Igriss [2005: 195] described that conflict
is “the unavoidable friction resulting from differences in human affairs” and,
at the same time, “is as much at the root of progress and innovation as it is
of polarization and violence, depending on how those engaged in conflict
understand and deal with it.” They seem to appreciate Simmel [1955: 13] who
recognized that conflict is “one of the most vivid interactions” and contains
both of positive and negative aspects.
Considering
conflict transformation approach, we need
to examine how to prevent the escalation from first small conflict in
individual level to collective violent exercise in ethnic group level. It will
be the important task in the peace construction process to transform individual
cross-cutting ties to more positive powers which prevent or mitigate
collectivization of violence. Current and future interventions need to respect
the indigenous cross-cutting ties as “local potential for spontaneous peace”
and, at least, should be careful not to exact negative influences to these
ties.
References
Davues-Vengoechea, X.
2004. A positive concept of peace. In G. Kemp & D.P. Fry (eds.). Keeping the Peace: Conflict Resolution and
Peaceful Societies around the World, pp. 11-18. New York, Routledge
Ferguson, B.R. 1990.
Explaining war. In J. Haas (ed.). The
Anthropology of War, pp. 26-55.Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Fry, D.P. 2006. The Human Potential for Peace: An
Anthropological Challenge to Assumptions about War and Peace. New York,
Oxford University Press.
Galtung, J. 1996. Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict,
Development and Civilization. Oslo, PRIO.
Idriss,
S. 2005. Principles for conflict transformation: Practitioners in Africa. In P.
Chabal, U. Engel & A, Gentili (eds.). Is
Violence Inevitable in Africa?: Theories of Conflict and Approaches to Conflict
Prevention, pp. 193-212. Leiden, Brill.
Matsuda,
M. 2000. Everyday forms of ethnic conflict and super-ethnicisation in Kenya.
Takeuchi, S (ed.). Conflict in Africa,
pp. 55-100. Chiba, Institute of Developing Economies (in Japanese).
Richards,
P. 2005. New war: An ethnographic approach. In P. Richards (ed.). No Peace, No War: An
Anthropology of Contemporary Armed Conflicts, pp.
1-21. Oxford, James Currey.
Sagawa, T. in press. Persistence of trans-ethnic
cross-cutting ties and its potential for peace construction in the Daasanetch.
In E Gabbert & S. Thubauville (eds.). Modalities
of Cultural Neighbourhood in Southern Ethiopia. Köln, Verlag.
Simmel, G. 1955. Conflicts and the Web of Group-Affiliations.
New York, Free Press.
Turton, D (ed.). 2006.
Ethnic Federalism. Oxford, James
Currey.
IDENTITY, GENDER AND REPRESENTATION: REFLECTING
ON THE SCULPTURE ‘MOTHER UGANDA’
Rose Namubiru Kirumira
Department of
Sculpture, School of Industrial and Fine Arts, Makerere University, UGANDA
E-mail: kirumira@starcom.co.ug
Keywords:
Uganda,
Sculpture, Identity, Gender, Representation
Introduction:
Art making performs a function in life, it
allows one to balance out their creative side with the critical side. Art is a
tool to understanding oneself better and the roles one is playing in life and
as a result understanding other people better. As one understands of themselves
they get better their work will become more honest and there is some thing in
that honesty that people respond to. It is also a personal believe that one can
earn a living through art and at the same time make art concerned with everyday
issues that take place in our society freezing them in material and shape,
becoming a mirror of our sociological challenges. I try to fulfill my creative
aspirations through artistic excellence and depiction of subject matter that is
emotional and spiritually uplifting. My work is concerned with the notion that
the artists and viewer is able to put parts of information together during the
act of art making/viewing, resulting in what is perceived as a whole – or as
art – but this wholeness is temporary and dependent on either, location,
association or recognition.
This paper will seek to discuss the dynamics
underlying the place of individual artistic practice in Ugandan public spaces
and how this in turn relates to public reception and criticism. So as to be
able to construct a presentation about personal visual artistic practice within
the broader given area, an effort has been made to approach the subject by
using personal experience and trying as much as possible to reflect on the
circumstances surrounding the location of a personal artwork and the ensuing
public reception of it. In deciding to make use of the artwork, I put my
understanding of how a female artist living in a transitory situation deals with
challenges of representation and reception by reflecting on the conflicts
between the three elements of artist/student and public being ‘self’ and, the
said artwork and the public being the ‘other’. The person of the public takes
on two roles. Other artworks will be explored in relationship to the issues
arising in this conflict.
‘MOTHER UGANDA’, was made in 1990 in partial
fulfillment of an M.A.F.A (Muk). As UNDP set up its offices in 1888 it
commissioned the sculpture as a way of concretizing its presence in Uganda and
also as part of institutional policy. The sculpture is 15 feet high made in
white concrete, formed of symbols of a female, UNDP and its development areas
(health, education, agriculture and construction). It was made to symbolize
strength, purity and growth, qualities that needed to be encouraged in Uganda’s
1990. A lot of energy was invested in fulfilling the task of making a personal
and public transitive representation. And as already mentioned it was made with
deepest belief in artistic excellence and depiction of subject matter. The
artwork later became a source of emotional and spiritual growth as two
constructs, the personal and the public were challenged as the piece was being
completed. Three occurrences happened surrounding this work that now maybe seen
as reflecting a conflict that was not apparent then between the artist and
student, the artist and authority, the artwork and the public.
Illustration
A: Mother Uganda, UNDP Headquarters Kampala
The period of concern here is 1986 to 2000, and
focuses on public sculpture found in and around Kampala. By public sculpture I will refer to
those two or three-dimensional artworks erected in public spaces and are
accessible to the public physically for reception and criticism. I confine
myself to the evolutionary stages of sculpture making and how it affects
personal artistic presentation and production. I will also examine the
academic, social-cultural and economic factors influencing the making of public
sculpture in Uganda. Palmberg, (2005) observes that there is a divide between
the artist’s expectations and the nature of support that the artist’s community
can give including the fears of ‘negative interference’. An examination of the
confrontations between public interests in sculpture and the pressures of
making and exhibiting a public nude female sculpture will be given.
By 1990, Uganda was finally accepting the end of
a bitter civil war and not only looked forward to the coming in of a new
political system but was still experiencing a degree of insecurity as it
examined the extent of national destruction. In most public spaces, a lot of
structural damage had been done through bombing, looting or by simple neglect.
Throughout all this destruction many public sculptures, within and around
Kampala made before the war and the period between 1970 and 1980 had survived,
those that had been at near completion still stood while no significant public
sculpture was being made. Experiencing the new political stability from 1986
and moving in tandem with the liberalization of education, economy and
socio-cultural freedom, a new energy of artistic expression emerged as spaces
of cultural production witnessed new talent in the performing, literal arts
and, painting and graphic genres of the visual arts. However very few artists
ventured into making sculpture and those who did only managed within
institutional environments for economic reasons. Sculpture and public sculpture
in particular has not been a popular genre on Ugandan artic scene.
Between 1990 and 2000, after almost fifteen
years a slight change was seen as several free standing public sculptures were
made mostly in Kampala; the War Victim, Makerere University Library; Hatching
the Golden Eggs, Makerere University; King Ronald Mutebi, Buganda
Parliament; Kampala monument,
Kampala City Council grounds and the UNDP monuments, UNDP, headquarters. It is important to note that these
sculptures had been made by artists attached to the School of Fine Art,
Makerere University. They were at the same time commissioned by an institution,
therefore responsibility towards their reception and criticism lay with the
institution and almost none of them used the female figure.
Illustrations
B, C, D: Five contemporary sculptures
Chronologically Art in Uganda between 1935 and
2001 more than twenty six monumental sculptures by 30 artists are listed. Of
those listed 4 artists were actively engaged in making public sculpture between
1986 and 2001, (Kyeyune, 2003). These figures reflect only the artists who went
through the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Art, almost no
sculpture was being made by artists outside this institution. The progressive
formation of artists in Uganda specializing in sculpture making during these
years was mostly a result of the School and a few as teachers from Kyambogo
Teacher Training College. Thus the trend and transformation of art in Uganda
between 1986 and 2001, with particular reference to public sculpture
significantly rotated around the history of teaching at Makerere School of Fine
Art. The shifts between ideologies of indigenization and modernization,
social-political references and technical excellence were in turn a reflection
of the political instability, economic challenges and social uncertainness in
the country. The challenges that Uganda was going through helped artists to
discover new [and alternative] approaches to subject, form and content that
have significantly affected the instruction and [art] production of recent
years, (Sunanda, 2000).
In 1986 the only significant open public
sculpture that the artist and his/her audience could make a reference to,
though many were being made by graduate students and well established sculptors
in surrounding offices, schools and colleges, was the Independence Monument
made among others before 1970. The presence of most of these sculptures had
been overtaken by social-political challenges over the years such that their
significance was not so much due to their aesthetic or representational meaning
but physical being. It had been several years since artists had had the
opportunity to make a public sculpture let alone be commissioned and allocated
a space for one.
Illustration
E: Independence Monument
The first reaction following the inauguration of
‘Mother Uganda’ was by a gentleman then working at the UNDP Headquarters as a
driver who made a comment that if he had the power [especially in an unstable
environment] he would grenade it. This was a direct attack on the female person
of the artist, with a reminder of the violent nature of retaliation typical of
those times. The second reaction, formal in nature was by the then director of
the National Gallery the late Buluma disassociating him and the institution he
was representing from the offending nude artwork with raised a serious debate
on wrapping the figure in a loin cloth. These responses can be construed as the
reception of the sculpture being foreign therefore the ‘other’, a nude female
figure shown in public, intruding on the moral of society by an individual
during a time when reconstruction of what had been a degenerating society was
taking place.
In response the Head, School of Fine art
responded to the Director explaining the place of nude sculpture in the Ugandan
context. The work though depicted as one is three parts one growing out of the
other and has two distinct styles to it. The lower part is geometrically
designed to serve as a pillar to the upper almost realistic female figure. The
making of the sculpture reflects the relationship between freedom of expression
by the artist/student and the influence of the supervisor and mentor. The
original idea ended midsection of the current piece, though later it was
advised that the upper piece, a different study be added to it.
Later works show continuous engagement with
subjects that have been personally and socially challenging. There is anxiety
and apprehensiveness in making public works of art where the experience of the
activity is new. Public sculpture in Kampala and other districts of Uganda is
on the increase reflecting several characteristics that point towards changes
in reception of visual arts. A lot of images are culturally representative but
few using the female figure in complete nude. The boom in the commercial
building industry has given a new dimension to the meaning of artistic
reception and commissioning of sculptures including road side sculpture sold as
part of building materials. The format of the genre is including
two-dimensional work made both in concrete and metal, sculpture has moved from
institutional to commercial public spaces and artists making it are not all
from Makerere University. The overriding factor now is that artists need to
survive, and to live as an artist you must get an income from your work. Some
genres are more sensitive to the failing market than others, in [Uganda]
particularly sculpture, and, of course, also crafts, (Palmberg, 2004). In the
area of public sculpture the need to express one self in an artwork is in some
cases overtaken by the lack of resources for the basic inputs. The line between art (non-commercial)
and commodity (commercial) is drawn here and this method of categorization
within the local Ugandan context is apparent.(1)
Illustration
F: Popular sculpture in Kampala
Notes
(1) Kasfir gives a relevant version of this stand
so long as is seen from the relationship between the Western categorization of
African art and not African about contemporary African art.
References
Appiah, K.A. 1991. Is the Post-in Postmodernism
the Post-in Postcolonial? Critical
Inquiry 17, 336-357.
Communication 3, 1-21.
Eriksson M. Palmberg M; SAME AND OTHER, Negotiating African Identity in cultural Production,
Nordiska Africainstitutet 2001
Fabian, J. 1978. Popular Culture in Africa:
Findings and Conjectures. To the Memory of Placide Tempels (1906-1977). Africa: Journal of the International African
Institute 48, 315-334.
Kyeyune George, 2003 Art in Uganda in the 20th Century, Unpublished Doctoral Thesis.
La Duke, Betty (1991). AFRICA Through the eyes of Women Artists. Africa World Press.
La Duke, Betty (1997). AFRICA Women’s Art Women’s Lives. Africa World Press.
Palmberg M and Kirkegaard A; Playing with identities in contemporary
music in Africa, Nordiska Africainstitutet 2003
Sidney Littlefield Kasfir (1999) Contemporary African Art. Thames &
Hudson.
Sunanda, Sanyal (2002). Imaging Art, Making History: Two generations of Makerere artists.
PhD Thesis, Emory University, USA.
Szombati-Fabian, I. & J. Fabian. 1976. Art,
History, and Society: Popular Painting in Shaba, Zaire. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 3, 1-21.
LIVELIHOOD AND CREATIVITY: A CULTURAL IMPLICATION OF INDIGENOUS BANANA
CULTIVATION IN BUGANDA
Yasuaki Sato
Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University, JAPAN
Bioversity International, UGANDA
E-mail: y-sato@jambo.africa.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Keywords: Banana,
Creativity, Landrace, Homegarden, Buganda
Introduction
Banana (Musa
spp.) has been a centre of the livelihood system in parts of the Great Lakes
region of East Africa, including Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and
the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. This crop is fundamental to
subsistence economy, local custom and agricultural landscape. This study argues
both cultural and biological aspects of the unique livelihood system in
Buganda, central Uganda. They are well known as the people who maintain their
identity as banana farmers. Through illustrating two topics, landrace and
homegarden from the viewpoint of human-plant interrelation, I discuss how creativity
is embedded in their banana cultivation.
Creation, the act which makes new things from
raw materials, can be understood as a changing process of relation between the
subject and the object. This idea can be applied to relation between a farmer
and banana plants, although we should take into account differences of two
phenomena, fine arts and agriculture.
One of the differences is producer’s sense of
purpose. A work of sophisticated fine art clearly reflects producer’s intention
and approach. When people appreciate it, they feel his/her aim. On the other
hand, crops do not necessarily reflect farmers’ intention directly. It is
unclear who appreciate it, except the cultivator themselves. Agricultural
practices are casual works for their subsistence, and are the process of
approaching plants, which is formed in relation with their social lives and
natural environment. It includes customs that farmers have no clear objectives.
And more importantly, the crop’s mode of life has much effect on the variation of
farmers’ act and recognition.
Another difference is about the representation.
In the case of fine arts, material bodies, such as sculptures, paintings etc.
are the outcome of the works, and are his/her expressions. In contrast, the outcomes
of agriculture are more complex, and not result but process. It appears at many
levels. Agriculture brings not only harvest, but also landraces, gardens and even
livelihood systems. These kinds of creation are always on the way of
continuing.
Between January to October 2005 and September
2006, I carried out participant observation and semi-structured interviews in K
village, northern part of Rakai District. A married couple and children is the
basic unit for management of garden and for diet. A banana garden encloses each
house. Most of them subsist on agriculture and animal husbandry. Main crops are
banana, sweet potato and maize. Main cash crop is coffee, and some sell several
bunches of bananas in a month. The climate is warm throughout the year and it
has two rainy seasons in a year.
Landraces
Botanically, there are three categories of
banana found in Uganda today; (1) the cultivars of East African coast and
nearby islands, (2) the plantains, and (3) the East African Highland bananas
(EAHB) which I mention. Since their introduction to East African great lakes
region several thousand years ago, EAHB have diversified
through mutation in this area and acquired names in various languages (Karamura
1998; Tushemereirwe et. al. 2001). In addition to the mutations, peoples’ recognition,
cultivation and utilization are indispensable prerequisites of the creation and
maintenance of the landraces. Some evidences can be observed in Buganda.
Their classification has
flexibility and personal variations. People classify the plants of EAHB (s.g. kitooke kiganda, pl. bitooke biganda) to various landraces (s.g.
ekika, pl. ebika) by their appearances. Key parts for
their classification is bunches (female inflorescence) and leaves. While
the scientific approach of morphological taxonomy identifies five groups (clone
sets) in EAHB (Karamura1998), folk taxonomy does not
set the names of the category between kitooke
kiganda and ekika. They tend to
make fine recognitions to continuous characteristics such as length and size, and
distinguish landraces as a complex of many characteristics. They possess even
wide acquaintance with subclassification under common landraces, or changes of
landraces. It depends on each experience in their own field, and this kind of
knowledge is shared with only few people. Many of the villagers say that they
learned from parents or by observing real plants in their own garden. It
indicates that farmers get their knowledge informally, and take careful
attention to the difference of the forms of individual plant.
Each house has many
landraces in a garden. The interview reveals that each household has about
twenty landraces on the average. With regard
to the introduction of new landraces, there are two major cases which farmers
explain. The first common case is when a son becomes independent. He receives a
sucker (baby plant) from his parents or relatives. The second case is when they
visit his friends. They find an unknown banana plant with a big bunch, and
received a sucker as a gift. The banana diversity is maintained through
inheritance from parents, through chance to encounter with unknown landraces,
and through building of friendships with people who can exchange suckers. These
findings mean that they collect landraces in their informal social context.
This argument is supported by the fact that they do not share a rigid sense of
value to the diversity itself.
Homegarden
Banana gardens have some unique features. Their
creation and management are combined with their socio-cultural traits.
Traditional banana garden in Buganda is managed
continuously for a long time. The cycle of the garden management begins from
the inheritance or purchase of the land. When a son becomes independent, his father
allows him to use a part of the land. They can take over even banana gardens.
There is a report that gardens as old as 50-60 years used to be known in Uganda
(Tothill 1940).
Banana gardens are clearly differentiated from
gardens of other crops verbally and in utility. They call a banana garden lusuku (pl. ensuku) in spite of enimiro (pl.
enimiro), the general term for a
garden or a field of crops. People make fences at the boundaries of their
banana gardens. A garden surrounds each dwelling, and covers the space for
daily activities such as bathing, washing clothes, making backcloths, having a
rest, etc.. In most cases women frequently go back and forth between the dwelling,
the kitchen, the yard and the banana garden.
The garden is like as a pocket of diversity. A
banana garden allows various landraces and species to be planted together. It can
accept both landraces in large number of plant and those in small number. It
takes a long time to accumulate the landraces in household. People recognize the
landrace name and the spatial position of each individual plant with knowledge
of soil condition, appearance of the plants and the genealogy. In addition to
it, the garden evokes various emotions and memories. They
associate their experience with the specific plant or position in the garden.
It is common that they make graves in the garden. They make rituals on
death of head of a household, avoidance of curse, and a good harvest. Cognitive
maps of their garden show that they associate the garden with their life designs.
Banana gardens can be expression of farmers’ lives.
Conclusion
In two topics, I find
that creativity belongs to two domains in their agriculture. The first is the aesthetic
sensibility of farmers toward banana plants and banana gardens. The second is
peculiar interrelation between human and the plants, or social exchange between
relatives or friends.
This study showed that
people perceive minute differences of the plants’ appearances, and take a keen
interest in differentiating them. Their sensitivity and tendency are cultural
bases to embrace the mutation and the diversity in their gardens. Their landrace
and homegarden also stimulate various imaginations.
Banana plant has large
herbaceous stem, is perennial, requires a long maturation period, and demands
extended and continuous management. However it is quite tough to classify the
plants and control the growth in the garden, it is attractive material for them
to observe continuously. I also contend that creation and management of
landraces and homegardens are profoundly social and mental. The homegarden in
Buganda has ensured both accumulation of landrace and farmers’ knowledge in
their span of life. Both cultural and biological factors contribute creative
aspects of the agriculture.
Because of current
problem including population pressure, shortage of labour, declining soil fertility
and pest outbreaks, Uganda witnessed drastic yield decline during 1970s and
1980s (Karamura 1998). The period of management in a garden has become shorter.
These changes imply that the mode of their attitude to the crop has also been
converted. This process is not visible, and is difficult to be recognized. I
suggest that we should pay more attention to creative aspects in their
agriculture. That understanding can also encourage the contemporary banana
farmers.
References
Karamura, D.A. 1998. Numerical Taxonomic Studies of the East
African highland Bananas (Musa AAA-East Africa) in Uganda. Ph. D Thesis,
University of Reading.
Tothill, J. D. 1940. Agriculture in Uganda. Oxford University
Press, Oxford.
Tushemereirwe, W,
Karamura, D.A, Ssali, H, Bwamiki, D, Kashaija, I., Nankinga C., Bagamba, F,
Kangire, A, and Sebuliba, R. 2001. Bananas (Musa Spp). In Mikiibi J. (ed.) Agriculture in Uganda. Vol. II. Crops. Fountain Publishers/ CTA/
NARO.
MUTHUNGUCI:
DANCING THROUGH A CULTURAL LANDMINE AMONG THE KIKUYU
Mike Kuria
Department
of Humanities, Faulty of Arts, Daystar University, Kenya.
E-mail:
mkuria@daystar.ac.ke
Keywords:
Literature, Oral poetry, Kikuyu, Traditional music,
Music/poetry
was the means through which the Kikuyu expressed their consciousness. It was
through music/poetry that they expressed their societal values whether
religious or secular. There would hardly be any event that was not accompanied
by music and dancing. The words of
Osadebey et.al as quoted by Miruka
(1994, 87) saying: “we sing when we fight, we sing when we work, we sing when
we love, we sing when we hate, we sing when a child is born, we sing when death
takes a toll” definitely ring true for the Kikuyu. Music was the means through
which they were and had their being to paraphrase St Paul. In the words of
Cagnolo (2006, 47) the “[t]he Agĩkŭyŭ community was one of singers par
excellence”. When colonialism came and begun its attempt to depersonalize the
Kikuyu or to redefine them using western values, the Kikuyu used music as a
vehicle of resistance. Naturally the colonialists reacted by banning the songs.
The Kikuyus counter reacted by inserting subversive messages in the Christian
tunes approved by colonialists. This is how they resisted being defined by the
other and asserted their selves.
Kikuyu
music is classified into genres and which are age specific and sometimes gender
specific. My research findings suggest that nearly every age group had its own
kind of music. Young uncircumcised boys had Muthuu,
middle aged married men and women did Muthunguci,
young men danced to Kibata, old women had Gitiiro,
and old men had Gichandi. From a very
early age the Kikuyus learnt to express themselves through music. Learning
through music started early and the children learnt through observation,
participation and then graduated into teachers. The content of the music was
determined by the genre and therefore was age specific.
The
genre being examined in this paper is a prime example of how form and content
are interlinked in Kikuyu music. Muthunguci’s main preoccupation was wooing or
what the kikuyu call “nyimbo cia umbani”.
Inevitably, the subject of sex is inseparable from such a genre. Through this
genre the Kikuyu expressed themselves as sexual beings. In this paper I examine
how muthunguci was used to navigate around what I am calling a cultural land
mine: sex. I call it a cultural land mine because even though it was central to
the Kikuyu, yet a mishandling of the rules of engagement drew very serious and
far reaching consequences. This
was not only so if you breached the rules of engagement in practice but also in
speech. Individuals had to balance between liberty and control. We have to
remember also that adult rated content could hardly be censored for the
children because the singing and dancing took place in the open and in most
cases during the day. Adult content therefore, rather than being rated as is
done with adult movies and TV programs these days was censored by levels of
language. This paper demonstrates how, by employing different levels of
language, performers of Muthunguci were able to liberally discuss sexuality
within a very culturally restrictive environment. It also demonstrates how the
Kikuyu defied being defined by colonialists and used music to assert and
preserve their independence and identity.
Muthunguci
needs to be understood in the context of two practices that appear
contradictory in reference to sexuality among the Kikuyu. First it was taboo
for an unmarried woman to have a baby outside wedlock. This was considered so
irresponsible that if such a thing happened the woman had very slim chances of
finding someone to marry her. She was derogatorily referred to as a “gichokio” meaning a reject. It meant
that such a person was shunned by contemporaries and could not participate in
social functions of her age mates. Songs were composed to warn others against
making the same mistake that such a person had done.
The
paradox of the situation is that the youth were encouraged to socialize, fondle
and engage in foreplay without ever engaging in sex. This practice has been
captured by Jomo Kenyatta in his classic Facing
Mt Kenya. It is known as “ngweko”. It involved young unmarried men being
allowed to spend nights together with women they liked and who were potential
wives but only engage in fondling. The women would wear a special garment known
as “mwengu” that would be tied
tightly around the waist and which the young men were never to undo. If any man
ever tried to undo mwengo in the
process of performing ngweko and was
reported to his peers, the man would be ostracized and derided by his peers,
both men and women, and he too would have slim chances of finding a marriage
suitor. Sexual self control was therefore central to the Kikuyu way of life.
The
second context in which Muthunguci should be understood relates to a practice
among the Kikuyu where a woman was legally allowed and even expected to have
one child outside wedlock. This would not be done in secret or behind the
husband’s back, otherwise this would, paradoxically, be understood as adultery (utharia) which was not approved. The husband would be fully aware and
had to approve his wife having a baby with another man, usually his best friend
and agemate. It has been argued that this practice was done to ensure that
should a disease that members of one family were genetically prone to sweep
away a homestead; then there would at least be one child whose genetic
composition would be different and therefore would survive and ensure that the
family lineage was not completely wiped out. This means that the child was
reared as a legitimate family member and would never be made to feel like an
outsider, indeed it was unlikely such a child would ever find out that he was
not a biological product of his “father”. This practice is, as is obvious, in
sharp contrast in its sexual liberalism to the previous case of pre-marital
sex.
If
the reader is aware of the duality of liberalism versus restriction in matters
of sexuality, s/he will find it easier to understand Muthunguci. Muthunguci was
danced by two people of the opposite sex who, though married, were not man and
wife. In the words of one of the most famous Kikuyu folk song singers, Joseph
Kamaru, when it came to Muthunguci, the scene was completely liberalized. There was no such thing as man and wife
in terms of who danced with whom? However, although a woman could dance with
anyone she liked, she was not obliged to accept an invitation to dance if she
did not want to. Men who were able to convince as many women as possible to
dance with them were held in high esteem and referred to as “ciumbani” meaning they were experts at
wooing women. The words of Muthunguci, like many other Kikuyu songs, involved
linguistic parrying with a process of coding and decoding information. The two singers would dance and
converse in riddles, parables, and metaphors related to sex and in so doing
also pass some of the Kikuyu values.
Some
of the values I have able to isolate from the songs collected include a sense
of responsibility where women were warned against going to dance without
fulfilling their domestic roles such as taking care of animals; and men were
encouraged to work hard and to accumulate wealth otherwise they would be seen
as irresponsible and therefore not worth dancing with. In other words a work
ethic was inculcated in the people through the words of Muthunguci. It is
interesting that even now the Kikuyus are known for being hard working,
business minded and given to the pursuit of wealth. Poverty was looked down upon
among the Kikuyu. Muthunguci also encourages people to practice responsible
parenthood. Women would be warned against being too close to men who were given
to leaving their “seeds” every where. It is also clear that the Kikuyu loved
knowledge and wisdom. Messages were coded using metaphors and to be a good
dancer/singer/poet, one also had to be able to grasp and interpret the coded
messages as well as respond in coded messages too. This was also the way in
which the matter of sex was discussed in front of children without being
offensive or vulga. They borrowed from their immediate environment and cultural
practice such that a woman could be seen as a garden or a farm and the man as a farmer.
Children in their role as hindrances against their parents’ romantic and
“unholy” escapades would be metaphorically referred to as known plants in the
community that were difficult to deal with.
In
short then, this paper deals with genre of Muthunguci and its role in the
identity construction of a Kikuyu as a sexual self operating in a society that
was both restrictive and liberal in handling matters of sexuality. Special attention is given to the
language of Muthunguci and the ways in which this borrowed from the environment
to come up with metaphors that ensured only those well versed in the language
and mores of the people could understand and participate in the creation and
performance of the genre. In the process the Kikuyu not only chronicled their
history and culture but also transmitted the same through well known
participatory teaching and learning methodologies such as question and answer;
testing, monitoring and evaluation; reward and motivation amongst others.
KARIOKI SHOW: THE NEW POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT IN KAMPALA
Midori Daimon
Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University, JAPAN
E-mail: daimon@jambo.africa.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Keywords: Urban culture, Stage,
Performance, Interaction, Sympathy
1. Introduction:Karioki show in Kampala
‘Karioki
show’ is the popular entertainment in Kampala. It is often performed at the
stage of restaurants, bars, or clubs. You can say karioki show is one of club culture, but usually clubs in Africa is
for rich people, because you have to pay much money for the entrance fee.
However, the entrance fee of karioki show
is free or ranges 1000~2000Ush (Ugandan Shilings). Karioki show is open for everyone, and actually people who watch it
are men and women of all ages, its performers are young people in their teens
or twenties though. Therefore, you can call it one of popular culture in
Kampala.
This show has started in Kampala at the end of
1990’s. Currently, it becomes the very favorite in Kampala. When we try to
understand the reason why this show is so popular, it is not enough to say that
‘because the entrance fee is cheap’. I think it is important to consider
interactions with people which karioki
show has. So this time I will try to describe those interactions and in
conclusion I would like to suggest the situation of karioki show where who is watching / being watched is not settled
makes people enjoy themselves.
2. The Space of Karioki show
Karioki show is a kind of
performing arts, which is played at a stage. It is usually done at night time
for about three hours. At the show around 50 songs are played(each song is
around 4 minutes) and they do various actions to those songs, for example,
‘miming’ (moving lips to the song to imitate real singing), dance, and ‘comedy’
(moving lips to the song and representing the meaning of the lyrics humorously
according to a performer’s interpretation). There is always a big sound of
songs and MC talking from speakers. People come to the space where there is
karioki show with their friends, partner, and children, and they can enter and
go away freely anytime. After finishing karioki show or at around the end of
karioki show, workers at a performance place start to clear away chairs, and
clean up for closing.
In the space of karioki show, there are other entertaining facilities not only karioki show. There are usually TVs or
big screens on the right and left side, above, 90 degrees side, or the opposite
of a stage. Generally those TVs and screens show soccer games of Europe,
Nigerian or American drama, movie, or ‘Big Brother’ which is a popular program,
you can not hear any sounds from TVs or screens because of big sounds from karioki show though. Besides the space
also has a pool table at the side or opposite of a stage. Seats are plastic
chairs, most of which are arranged facing the stage, but some of which facing
tables, or TVs and Screens. People can turn the direction of chairs according
to what they want to watch. And of course, this place is a restaurant, bar or
club, you can eat and drink. So there are many choices at this space in
addition to watching karioki show, like playing pool tables (1 game costs
500~1000Ush), watching pool tables or TVs, making conversations, eating
something, and drinking alcohol. People choose what they want and enjoy it.
Mostly they select not only one thing but more than two things at the same
time.
3. The Interaction
between Karioki show and People
As stated above, in this space where there is karioki show people can do other things.
Therefore you can not say all people concentrate on the show. It looks at first
people enjoy pool tables, TVs, beer, dishes, and conversation, and ignore the
performance on the stage or consider it as one of TV programs. However, through
observing how karioki show and people are related, we can see their way of
enjoying it, which is supposed to be one of the reasons why karioki show is now very common in
Kampala. Then, concretely I try to watch interactions between performance /
performers and people who are in the space.
The reaction of people is not the same. Each
person has a different response. For example, after each performance which
changes each song, usually they don’t clap performers. According to each
performance, one, five, or twenty people clap them. There is, however, a rare
case when all people clap. Then sometimes people give some money (100 ~
1000Ush) to performers. There are different ways of giving; e.g. throwing money
from where people sit, stretching out their hands and then waiting the
performer’s coming, asking a worker of the place, going near a stage, or going
on a stage. Sometimes if they go on a stage, they give money while dancing with
a performer. And people give performers not only money but also beer, ground
nuts which they can buy at that place or candies. Performers continue their
performance while taking things which are given.
At times performers go down from a stage and
invite people to come to a stage. Not often but sometimes performers succeed in
taking people to a stage. And people who go on a stage and dance with
performers are given money by other people who are watching the show. Even when
performers don’t invite, people may go on a stage and start to dance. Then
performers immediately make performance with them.
As above, although people don’t have the same
reaction, but each person watches or takes part in a show according to what
they feel like. From their behavior you can get people enjoy a show not only by
performance but also by themselves. It seems that clapping and giving money to
performers show not only people praise performance but people are happy needless
to say about going to dance with performers. And you can see performers who
flexibly deal with those reactions from people and creating performance, and at
the same time people who enjoy other people’s reactions and its performers’
responses.
4. The Interaction
between the Space of Karioki show and
people
People can also react to something which is not
related with performance and performers. For example, the moment a certain song
for karioki show starts, sometimes
one or some people shout for joy and wave their hands. Some of them go and give
money to a performer immediately when he/she has just started his/her
performance. It seems that money is not for performance or performers, but for
that song or the original artist who sings it. There are also people who stand
and start to dance in the place they sit. These dancing people mostly don’t
watch a show but start to do miming performance for other people. Besides
people react to the program of TVs. Especially to soccer games, they raise and
clap their hands, and shout. Joy of getting goals by the team which they
support and cheer makes them dance with songs used by karioki show.
And sometimes performers also change programs
influenced by the situation made by people. For example, after the upsurge by a
soccer game, they try to put the support song for the soccer team on their
performance program. And then people rejoice at that performance with the
support song and start to give money. Like this, people react not only to karioki show, but also to all sounds and
all visual matters, so that the reaction has a possibility to change and make a
new performance. In short, people come to enjoy that place including karioki show, not karioki show itself.
5. Conclusion
The observation, which I have noted above, shows
that in the space of karioki show you
can not say performance/performers on a stage and people are independent or
unrelated. People can participate in performance, go on a stage, have
interactions with performers, and enjoy other things, all of which make that
place more amusing.
Considering these observations, that
space doesn’t give any power to someone (cf. performers) and some place (cf. a
stage). It means people can choose what to see, what to do and where to go. The
reason why karioki show is popular is
not because performers / performance or stages themselves attract people, but
because people can represent their joyfulness by themselves like dancing with
performers, and what they do also makes other people sympathized happily. You
can also say the position of watching / being watched can easily change at the
space of karioki show. Moreover,
people enjoy karioki show by being
seen by other people, both on the stage, performers and outside the stage,
audience.
In this observation, it was found out that
performers are also influenced by reactions from people and make some change
impromptu. So in future, considering the back grounds of performers, I would
try to think how performers challenge
karioki show and how they consider about being seen on a stage. I would
like to approach meanings and senses of watching humans or being watched
through this study. In my approach I will consider the details of karioki show performance, for example,
how to make ‘miming’ and ‘comedy’, and social situations where these
performances have been produced.
 |
TRADITIONAL AND MODERN MEDICINE IN THE FIGHT
AGAINST HIV/AIDS SCOURGE
Wotsuna Khamalwa
Faculty of
Art, Makerere University, UGANDA
E-mail: wotsukham@yahoo.co.uk
Keywords: Healing, HIV/AIDS, Medicine, Beliefs, Women
There has
traditionally existed mutual suspicion and latent hostility between traditional
healers and modern medicine practitioners. This is partly a result of the
colonial mentality where anything African was perceived with suspicion and
associated with backward ways, with demons, etc. Traditional healers were given
the general appellation of witchdoctors, implying, not so subtly, that they
were more associated with death than life, killing rather than healing. Given
the fact that in Africa healing and medicine are closely linked with religion
and rituals, these became targets of ridicule and attack, to be supplanted so
as to make way for the planting of the gospel. It is informative that even
today, many decades after political “independence”, there is still widespread
suspicion about traditional methods of healing. It is equally informative that
traditional medicine is referred to as “alternative medicine” in its own
homestead.
HIV/AIDS has
so far no cure and it is decimating the most productive sector of society,
namely between the ages of 15 and 49. Uganda has been credited with being the
first country to have brought down the infection rates from the upper twenties
to single digit levels, around 6%. This success can be traced to the concerted
efforts of many stakeholders, including inter
alia government, educational institutions, religious groups, civil society
groups, and artists, to mention but a few. But above all, the need to fight
this great enemy, however, seems to have provided the forum for traditional
healers and western medical practitioners to forge a united front against this
scourge. In Uganda, these two medical antagonists pooled their resources in an
organisation known as Traditional and Modern Health Practitioners Together
against AIDS (THETA).
HIV/AIDS
infection rate is highest in sub-saharan Africa, which also happens to be the
poorest part of the world. As if that is not bad enough, this part of the world
lacks sustainable ability to fight this war. The health sector in sub-saharan
Africa is not well developed and receives little attention from respective
governments, leaving the few and run down medical facilities gasping for air to
remain afloat, given the large numbers that inundate them. But worse still, the
“army” of medical personnel who would be required to fight this war are fast
breaking ranks to seek survival in the west. Pushed away by a “dying wage”,
poor health infra structure and huge numbers of patients, these medical
personnel are attracted to the west where they have better medical facilities,
invest more money on health facilities, and pay their medical personnel a
“living wage”.
Women are more
disadvantaged than their male counterparts since they do not own wealth
producing assets such as land and income generating activities. Due to
financial constraints, where both the husband and wife are infected, the man
will probably access the life prolonging ARVs while the wife does not, yet she
will continue to nurse the husband and do other domestic chores such as producing
food, fetching water and firewood etc.
Traditional healers command a lot of respect
from all and sundry, and even people who profess foreign religions such as
Christianity or Islam, will tend to consult them when in crisis, albeit in
secret. In Uganda, the modern doctor to patient ration is 1>20,000 patients
or more, while that of traditional healers to patient ratio stands at 1>100
patients. More and easier availability makes traditional healers the medical
practitioner of choice for a big sector of Ugandans. Consequently, traditional
healers are now playing an important role of filling the gap in the modern
doctor to patient ratio. What they need is to be empowered by government and
NGOs in their important service to community. There is need to train them in
methods of diagnosis and dosage, and to monitor their services to weed out
possible quacks among them.
A comparison of HIV/AIDS policies in Botswana
and Uganda highlights the kinds of policies necessary to come to terms with the
pandemic in Africa, where it is already a public health disaster. This
comparison also helps to focus attention on the question of whether condom use
or the ABC method is the more effective.
CULTURE, SEXUAL VALUES AND AIDS RISK AMONG THE
BATORO(1), WESTERN UGANDA(2)
Charles B. Rwabukwali
Department of
Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Makerere University, UGANDA
E-mail:
crwabukwali@ss.mak.ac.ug
Keywords: Culture,
Sexual values, HIV/AIDS, AIDS risk, Fidelity
Many sexual values, behaviors and attitudes of
sub-Saharan African cultures have implications for AIDS infection and
transmission (Caldwell, et al. 1989).
Among the Batoro traditionally, premarital virginity and postmarital
fidelity in females was highly prized, while males were given more sexual
leeway (Perlman, 1975; Taylor, 1962).
With this background in mind, a number of questions were asked regarding
sexual values of the women in this study.
Each of the 76 married women was asked if she had ever had sex with
anyone other than her husband. The
majority of the women, 71 (93.4), responded in the affirmative to this
question. However, for most of
them, this was before they had married. Seventy-four (97%), of the married
women in the sample denied currently having a boyfriend. When asked why they did not have a
boyfriend, most of the women reported that they feared that they husbands would
beat them up or leave them if they found out that they have a boyfriend.
Women in the study were asked how many different
men they would estimate that they had sex with in the last twelve months and in
the last five years. Overall, the
majority of the women, 64 (53.3%), reported having sex with only one man in the
last twelve months. Forty-six
(38.3%), reported that they did not engage in any sex at all in the previous twelve
months. Similar results were
obtained with regard to the women’s sex history during the previous five years,
with 65 (54.2%) of the sample reporting only one sexual partner and, 32
(26.7%), reporting on sexual activity in the past five years.
It should be pointed out that it is extremely
difficult to know whether this information is completely reliable. Women may fear to reveal complete
details of the number of their sexual partners for fear of being labeled
prostitutes (“malayas”) which is stigmatizing. If on the other had, they are telling the truth, this might
reflect behavior change in the face of the HIV epidemic. At the same time, it is important to
note that there were age differences among the women in the sample with respect
to behavior change in the face of HIV/AIDS. For example, the greatest proportion of women reporting on
sex in the last 12 months was among the old women than the younger ones. Of the 15 women aged less than 20,
three (20%), reported no sex in the last 12 months, while among the 15 women
aged between 31-35 years, 9 (60%), reported having no sex in the same
period. In sum, therefore, most
abstainers are older women. It
seems younger women have not modified their sexual behavior as much as the
older women, suggesting that this change may be related to life stage.
Published data demonstrate that a sexual double
standard exists in most East African societies, Toro inclusive, that permits
men to engage in extramarital liaisons and to practice polygamy, while
expecting women to refrain from extramarital relations, display patience,
respect, and obedience to their husbands despite their husbands infidelity
(Kilbride and Kilbride, 1990; Rwabukwali, et al. 1990; Kisekka, 1976; Southold,
1973). However, when asked if they
thought their husbands might be having sex with other women, only 22 (18.3%),
of the married women replied in the affirmative, which seem rather low. Often, these women learned of their
husband’s extramarital affairs from reports from friends and relatives. But in a few cases the women caught
their husbands in the act of having sex with other women. A few of these women divorced their
husbands, but most decide to stay.
Men were reported to have more sex partners than
their wives over the past 12 months and in the last five years. While most women reported having sex
with only one partner, both in the past 12 months and in the last five years,
11 (9%), of the women thought that their husbands had sex with at least two
women over the last 12 months and 15 (12.5%) of the women thought that their
husbands had sex wit at least two women in the last 5 years.
When asked how old they were when they first had
sex, 52 (43.3%) of the sample stated that they had their first sexual
experience before age 15. Since
marriage in Toro society is relatively early, this first sexual contact is most
likely to be within marriage. In
most cases women have their first sexual encounters with a man who is older,
with 32 (26.7%), of the sample reporting that their man was between sixteen and
twenty years of age.
At times there is discrepancy between cultural
ideals and reality. For example,
when asked how old should a girl be before she has sex, most women, 82 (68.3%),
said the girl should be between sixteen and twenty years before sex. When asked why this should be the case,
when many of the women had begun sex at earlier ages, it was pointed out that
times have changed. Both older and
younger women in the study agreed that these days a girl needs to complete
school before she can begin thinking of sex and marriage. Moreover, with the advent of deadly
diseases such as AIDS, a girl has to be careful who she has sex with. Most respondents, 81 (67.5%), thought
that a boy should be between sixteen and twenty years before he has sex. Most women pointed out that by this
age, a boy has completed school, and is old enough to have children, pay taxes,
and manage a family.
Further insight into the sexual values and
practice of the women in this sample was obtained by asking the women to
describe occasions when they might have sex with another man other than her
husband. Some of the
occasions/reasons why a woman may have sex with someone other than her husband
include: influence of alcohol, husband’s absence for long period, to avenge a
cheating husband, and if the husband is impotent. However, the most commonly mentioned reason was failure by a
husband or boyfriend to meet all the necessary material and economic needs of
his wife and family. In Toro
society, men are expected to provide proper housing for their families, buy
sufficient food, buy clothing for the wife and family, and meet medical
expenses. If a husband fails to
meet these obligations, then a wife may be justified in getting an outside
lover who is willing and able to meet her economic needs. Women in this sample also mention that
some women take on extra lovers because they are naturally sexy (“basihani”)
and cannot be satisfied by one man alone.
It was also reported that if a marriage is “shaky”, in that the man
shows no intention of regularizing the union by paying bride wealth, the woman
may seek additional sexual partners as a hedge should the current union
collapse.
Respondents were asked to name any occasion when
a woman is expected to have sex with someone, not her husband. Most women stated that currently in
Toro there are no occasions when a woman is expected to sleep with someone
other than her husband. However,
the women pointed out that in the past there were such occasions. For example, the paternal aunt of a
girl was expected to have sex with her niece’s new husband to “check” if the
man was able to “perform” his sexual duties properly. It was also pointed out that in the past, certain types of
persons, for example, the brother’s of one’s husband, were permitted to have
sex with the wife of their brother.
However, the majority of the women agreed that currently this is not
widely practiced.
When asked if there are times when it is wrong
for a woman to have sex with anyone, even her own husband, occasions mentioned
include: when the woman is in her menstrual period, when a close relative or
friend dies, when either the woman or the man is sick or tired, while the woman
is nursing a baby, and during pregnancy.
Violations of these prohibitions are thought to cause illness, but not
death, as in the case of the Baganda of Central Uganda (McGrath, et at.
1993). Most of the customs,
prohibitions, and injunctions described so far, were regarded by the women in
the study as no longer operable in current Toro society. They were perceived as old traditional
customs that are widely ignored by women, especially those in urban areas. However, this does not mean that these
traditional customs and practices are completely irrelevant to Toro
society. To the extent that these
cultural rules provide a range of conditions regarding what is appropriate and
inappropriate sexual behavior, they serve a guide to sexual conduct.
When asked if infidelity is a common reason for
a woman to leave her husband, and for a man to leave his wife, women reported
that infidelity is not a common reason for a woman to leave her husband. The woman may quarrel, but she will not
leave her husband. On the other
hand, women reported that infidelity can lead a man to leave his wife.
It is clear therefore that in Toro society,
infidelity by a woman is less tolerated than that of man. Reflecting a cultural value in many
Ugandan communities that put a premium on a wife’s docility and fidelity, while
accepting or even expecting a man to have more than one sexual partner McGrath,
et al. 1993; Obbo, 1980; Parkin, 1966).
Several reasons were given why a woman is likely to tolerate a cheating
husband. Women pointed out that,
if a woman chooses to leave her husband because of his infidelity, she would
have to leave her children behind, since by custom, children in Toro society
belong to the husband and his lineage.
Secondly, many women are poor and depend entirely on their husband’s
income. If they left, they would be denied this support and their welfare would
suffer. Moreover, as the women
pointed out, if a woman leaves, then she will be paving the way for the man to
bring in his lover as the new wife.
For these reasons, most women decide to remain with their husbands
despite their husband’s infidelity, although in this study I cam across some
women who did leave spouses who cheat.
As can be seen from the above presentation, the
cultural sanctions against a woman’s infidelity are more serious than that
against a man’s. These sanctions
can include severe beatings, and other forms of mistreatment. Nevertheless, despite these sanctions,
women do have affairs, and the respondents in this study gave me specific
instances where husbands caught their wives having extramarital sex. Some of the reasons why a woman may
have sex with someone other than her husband have been presented in the
previous section. But, mainly they
revolve around the failure of husband to meet the economic needs of his wife
and family. Those charged with
HIV/AIDS Control need to take this into account.
Notes
(1) “Mutoro: (Singular), “Batoro” (Plural) are
people who inhabit the Kingdom of Toro in Western Uganda. Their language is “Rutoro.”
(2) Data on which this chapter is based was
collected during 12 months of fieldwork is Kabarole district, Western Uganda,
during the 1996 – 97 period.
References
Caldwell, J. et al. 1989. The Social Context of
AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of
Population and Development Review. (15): 185 – 233.
Kilbride, P.L. and Kilbride, J.C. 1990. Changing Family Life in East Africa: Women
and Children at Risk. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania Sate University
Press.
Kisekka, M.N.1976. Sexual Attitudes and Behavior
Among Students in Uganda Journal of Sex
Research (12): 104 – 114.
McGrath, Janet W., Rwabukwali, C.B, Schumann,
D.A. et al. 1993. Anthropology and AIDS:
The Cultural Context of Sexual Risk Behavior Among Urban, Baganda Women
in Kampala. Social Science and Medicine. 36(4): 429 – 439.
Obbo, C. 1980. African Women. Their Struggle for Economic Independence. Zed Press.
London.
Parkin, D. 1966. Types of African Marriage in
Kampala Africa. (36): 269 – 285.
Perlman, Melvin L. 1975. Children Born out of
Wedlock and the Status of Women in Toro, Uganda. Rural Africa (29): 95 – 119.
Rwabukwali, Charles B. et al. 1990. International Cooperation on AIDS Research:
The Social Organization of Risk Behavior in Kampala, Uganda. Presented at
the Annual Meeting, National Council for International Health, Washington DC.
Southwold, M. 1973. The Baganda of Central
Uganda, In Cultural Source Materials for
Population Planning in East Africa, Vol.3. Nairobi: Molnos, A. (Ed.). East
African Publishing House.
Taylor, B.K. 1962. The Western Lacustrine Bantu. African Ethnographic Series.Oxford
University Press
THE WHEREABOUTS OF TRADITIONAL
CUSTOM "LEVIRATE" AMONG KENYA-LUO SOCIETY
SHIINO Wakana
Research
Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of
Foreign Studies
E-mail:
wakana@aa.tufs.ac.jp
Keywords:
Widow,
Levirate, Custom, Pro-husband, Gender, Initiative, HIV/AIDS, Kenya-LUO
I would like to discuss the custom called
"levirate" or "widow inheritance" in social anthropology.
This is the custom currently called "wife inheritance" by media, such
as the papers and radio and often seen in East African societies including
Kenya-Luo society which I have been doing anthropological field work.
In rural Luo communities of Kenya, a widow is
called ‘chi liel, or "a wife of
the grave", and is expected to begin a ter-relationship
with a jater, or "a man of ter", soon after her husband’s
death. Through this ter-relationship
the widow gets a new man as a pro-husband, and she is supposed to get any kinds
of supports by him. The offspring she conceived are understood to be the
children, not of the jater, but of
the widow’s deceased husband. The ter-relationship
is formed within the context of her prior marriage, because Luo do not regard
that union as ended with the husband’s death.
This ter-relationship had been referred as
"widow inheritance" or "levirate" by social
anthropologists. These two anthropological terms was defined by the
structural-functionalists as Radcliffe-Brown [1950: 64].
Since Modern-Anthropology began in the 1920s led
by Western people, it has been rare to treat the matter concerning widows. When
it became the center of attention, they mainly treated it in the context of the
method of continuation of the descent group, and called it "levirate"
or "widow inheritance".
Thus, this traditional custom on widows has been
considered that the left behind wife is expected and prepared to keep having
the child who inherits the deceased husband’s name in cooperation with his
brother when a marriage, which is an important social system for a human
group’s reproduction, is interrupted for a married male’s death. Also, in an
additional meaning, it has been thought to be the system to decide a certain
male who is supposed to support a life of a married woman in case she becomes a
widow. In this meaning, it seems that the life of a widow has been decided by
her husband’s relatives. However, I wonder if that is really true.
Most of them did not pay attention to widows in
the community because mostly their studies based on men’s view. Very few
studies have been concerned to widows themselves. But if widows were dealt
with, previous studies have tended not to view these relationships from the
widow’s perspective, preferring instead to see them from the vantage point of
men. Indeed, only a small number of studies have focused specifically on
widows.
In the village where I did fieldwork, as a
matter of fact, I witnessed widows chose the male partner on her initiative,
which made me have doubt about the way widows were treated in
modern-anthropology.
Surely, as for Luo society, it is strongly
believed that a married woman who lost her husband should have a fixed partner
rather than be alone, and consequently, Luo women could have difficulty to
choose their lives freely. However, in spite of being such determinate
circumstances in which there is "Luo-morals", a widow is not
necessarily allocated a certain male.
Although a new partner of a widow should be a
man who called "brother" by her deceased husband, it can not be
missed that there is surely the existence of widow’s independence, as a widow
has a right to choose her favorite man as her partner as long as we see it with
a broad interpretation of such an idea and a viewpoint which goes back into
their genealogy. Widows adhere to the traditional idea that they should have
partners instead of the deceased husband, at the same time, they make a choice
to start new phase of their lives by finding their favorite men as their new
partners. In such a meaning, though it is under the limited condition, it may
be able to be said one of the "emancipation" for Luo women.
Moreover, when the relationship with the man who
she chose goes bad, she decides to separate from him and find another man with
whom she can feel better. That is, a widow produces the tactics of life so that
she can have her initiative and independence with taking advantage of the idea
which she should have a substitute husband rather than be alone. It could be
said just "creation"-act.
Therefore, I can not approve of the viewpoint of
modern-anthropology in which Luo people’s "ter" was called "widow inheritance" on the
assumption that a widow’s passive nature. It is based on my experience that I
lived with widows and caught a glimpse of their tactics. I would rather claim
that naming it "pro-husband choice" having a widow as the subject, is
more suitable for Luo society.
However, the problem as a serious obstacle in
recent years is the existence of the AIDS which has been threatening widows’
initiative. What threatens the life of Luo people is not only HIV/AIDS but
malaria, amoebas, cancers, traffic accidents and so on, and it is also true
that the young lose their life easily. HIV/AIDS occurs much more often than
other places in the district near to the Lake Victoria as everyone knows.
In addition, it can be said as the current
matter that Luo men tend to have an irresponsible relationship with widows. In
many cases, they ignore the traditional role of them; as a new partner of a
widow, he is supposed to support her life instead of the deceased husband,
which is one of what Luo people expect the social system "levirate". Therefore,
it can be also said that "emancipation" for Luo women will be
completed when an environment that will enable Luo women to have initiative or
be independent, if they want to, is put in place.
However, as a matter of fact, in village
society, the surveillance and cultural pressure on behavior of widows are still
strong. This reality is pointed out as the so-called gender matter especially
of neglect of female initiative and, moreover, a cause of spread of the
HIV/AIDS caused by continuation of "levirate". As for the illness of
HIV/AIDS, it is needless to say that achieving moral consensus on the reality
of illness and how to treat the sick in the local level is necessary.
From now on, it is expected to create their
original new method to cope with the disease which suite the present situation
and also is in the advantage of traditional custom. In this presentation, I am
going to introduce some states of various "levirate" in Luo society
with using field data. Outsider for Luo people such as Media and some people
who do not belong to a village society have reported the "problem"
concerning "levirate" (ter-relationship)
with an institutional comprehension. I would like to show that there are
various aspects of the system including the advantage and disadvantage by
treating the concrete examples in the village.
The various aspects of the system indicates
complexity of the "problem" with which the present age Luo people
faces and, at the same time, it may be able to be expected that Luo people
themselves solve the "problem"; Luo produce the tactic from within
their society.
MASCULINE SELVES AND THE CIVILISING MISSION:
‘RACE’, EDUCATION AND SEXUALITY IN ZAMBIA
Anthony Simpson
The
International Centre for Contemporary Cultural Research, University of
Manchester, UK
E-mail: Anthony.Simpson@manchester.ac.uk
Keywords: Discourse,
‘Race’, Modernity, Masculinity, Christianity
This paper draws upon my ethnography of a
Catholic mission boarding school for boys in Zambia in the 1990s (Simpson 2003)
and upon my longitudinal study of a cohort of students whom I first taught in
the early 1980s and who came to adulthood in the shadow of AIDS. I call the school ‘St. Antony’s’;
students in the 1990s called the school ‘Half-London’ – a nickname that for
them encapsulated all their great expectations of what a mission education
should deliver. Their dream was
that education would transform them into new and ‘educated’ selves. Their desire for education was a desire
to become Other in all kinds of ways.
Their education became their own ‘voyage out’ from their childhood pasts
and towards a desired place of ‘reciprocal recognitions’ (See Fanon 1986:218)
in the order of the postcolonial state.
In their refashioning of selves, students revealed that they were
willingly caught within at least part of a contested discourse. In their ambivalence towards their
Africanness, they exposed the distance they desired to place between themselves
and their rural origins. Their
‘blackness’ was often read by them as a curse. Mudimbe (1988) has analysed the
manner in which the colonial project cast Africa and Africans as essentially
Different and Other. This
discursive formation, I argue, has indeed remained a powerful force in much
postcolonial education in Africa.
It could be witnessed in the way in which many students in the 1990s
were seduced by the narrative of education as a civilising process, a process
that inevitably entailed a profound sense of alienation and a pejorative
evaluation of themselves as ‘Africans’.
Sousa Jamba, who grew up and was educated in Zambia, speaks of this
self-denigration as ‘the African Disease’ (1989:9). An early edition of the American Catholic New Testament used
in teaching religious education at St. Antony’s was entitled Good News for Modern Man. As well as excluding women, the title
ironically points to the ways in which various expressions of Christianity are
often appropriated in Zambia as signs par
excellence of all that is considered to be ‘modern’ and ‘civilised’.
Like Mudimbe (1994a, 1994b, 1988), I find
Foucault ‘good to think with’ but also ‘good to think against’. Foucault ([1969] 1977) argues that
institutional spaces such as prisons and schools effectively create ‘docile
bodies’, constructed from discourses which inform the physical structure of the
institution and the practices within it.
The subject in Foucault’s discourse is produced by the gaze of
authority. I follow Foucault’s
fine insights into attempts by the institution of a Catholic mission school to
impinge and inscribe itself upon the body and thus to achieve an
interiorisation of control.
However, as has been noted by several commentators (see, for example,
McNay 1992, 1994; Giddens 1982), in Foucault’s early work there is a marked absence of a fully developed theory of subjectivity or agency. In his early denial of agency and
choice, Foucault often fails to allow sufficient space for revolts against the
gaze. In his last interview,
Foucault recognised that in his early work he had left aside the problem of the
subject (Kritzman 1988: 243; 252).
From a sociological perspective, Foucault rejected any notion of the
‘deep self’ or ‘nature’ that has to be deciphered (Taylor 1989: 488). However, the ethics and aesthetics of
the self that is faced with the challenge of reinvention are ideas that
dominate Foucault’s final period.
Recognising that individuals always retain a space in which to resist
the process of subjectification, the subject who was once conceived of as
simply an effect of discursive power relations now achieves an active
role. At St. Antony’s there were
myriad micro-practices, often conducted in ‘back regions’ (Goffman 1959), by
which power and authority were subverted and where spaces were created for
actors to try on other roles, not least in contests over Christianity. St. Antony’s was thus a space
characterised by both heteroglossia and disjunction. However, for St. Antony’s students in the 1990s, there were
limits to the space of re-creation.
The role of the political economy in subject
formation is highlighted in my discussion. Zambians in the 1990s often blamed themselves for Zambia’s
sharp economic decline (see also Ferguson 1997: 146; 1999). Many of the students of St. Antony’s,
surveying events in Zambia and elsewhere on the continent, compared themselves
to the ‘musungu’, the white man, and
found themselves and other Zambians sadly wanting. Many believed that their failure essentially lay with being
‘umuntu’, ‘African’. They longed for the good life that
education might still deliver but they were haunted by a discourse of failure
as the tangible effects of the collapse of the Zambian economy and the
consequences of the AIDS pandemic made themselves felt. Many students at St. Antony’s asked why
God had been so unfair as to curse Africans and yet show his favour to musungus (whites/ ‘Europeans’). Like Mudimbe’s students (see Mudimbe
1994a), students at St. Antony’s suspected that the curse of Ham remained
inescapable. Yet how far-reaching
has this process of alienation and self-denigration been and what resistance
have African students and former students offered? My paper demonstrates an unending contest at St. Antony’s
for the moral high ground, especially in religious matters, for the right to
discern God’s purpose, for the claim of ‘true’ conversion. Much of the work of conversion, as I
explain in the paper, was conducted, not
by the Spanish Catholic missionary Brothers who ran the school, but by
Born-Again and Seventh Day Adventist students who established schools within
the school and who who used the missionaries as exemplars of tepid, inauthentic
– and therefore false - Christians.
Students exhibited their desire to be ‘educated’
and ‘modern’ and, at least publicly accepted the discipline of the Catholic
mission school. They actively
assisted schooling their subjectivity within the process in which they, too,
wanted to find themselves – the civilising process. However, the informal education that newcomers received at
the hands of other students through the practice of ‘mockery’ revealed the
manner in which many students rejected the value of virginity and celibacy
promoted by their missionary educators dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Many students rejected being made into
the puerile image, and thus denied the power of the institution’s attempts to
objectify and subjectify. The
students acted on their own on the bodies of newcomers (in the student argot ‘kwiyos’). They worked their own transformations; in turn, they were
transformed, as they acted to socialise newcomers in ways which at times
reinforced the master narrative of the institution and, at times, expressed
values that were at variance with it.
I will outline some aspects of ‘mockery’. The kwiyo was
required to demonstrate, in Herzfeld’s phrase (1985:16), that he was ‘good at’
being a man and, in this context, this demanded an account of sexual knowledge
and experience.
My continuing longitudinal study of a cohort of
former students traces their education in masculinity, through life-histories
and interviews, from childhood and adolescence to their mid-forties. I explore constructions of masculinity
in contemporary Zambia and consider their consequences in the HIV/AIDS
pandemic. Many men identified sexuality as a site of difference between
‘Africans’ and ‘Europeans’.
‘African sexuality’ was variously evaluated as either superior to, or
inferior to, ‘European sexuality’.
The concept of ‘tradition’ was often employed to suggest what was
authentically African. Along with
‘tradition’, the Bible was invoked as the moral arbiter of sexual acts and as
evidence of men’s “superiority”. I
briefly map out men’s reported experience and discuss their sexual preferences
and their attitudes towards various forms of erotic behaviour in order to draw
attention to the relevance of their sexual practices for HIV/AIDS transmission.
Performance anxiety, readily apparent in youthful sexual activity, continued to
haunt many men well into their adult lives.
I briefly highlight the father-son relationship
in childhood and adolescence within the household, a relationship that most men
characterised as one of fear. Boys
witnessed often-troubled relationships between their parents. Violent discipline at home taught the
adolescent the importance of toughness, of hiding fear and pain in the presence
of others. This discipline did
little to foster communication and the development of relationships of trust
and care. For many men this would
have profound consequences, particularly in their relationships with wives and
other sexual partners; when they suspected that they might be HIV positive,
they were unable to share their fears.
The relationship with the mother, who often acted as a buffer between a
boy and his father, was a notable exception. He was sure that she would always care for him, whatever the circumstances. This closeness between mother and son
would endure. However, while
husbands would readily reiterate the phrase, ‘Your wife is your mother’, few of
the men appeared able to establish such a relationship of trust with their
wives or with other women who became their sexual partners. The spoken and unspoken lessons of
childhood and adolescence recalled by these Zambian men – and partially
witnessed by me during their teenage years – provoked for many a restless
anxiety to conform to an ideology of hegemonic masculinity. Among the consequences was sexual
activity that put both men and women at risk in the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Former students of St. Antony’s struggled, with
varying degrees of success, to perform their allotted role of “breadwinner” in
difficult economic circumstances and to demonstrate to peers and family members
that they, not their wives, made all the major decisions in the household. Most men received an extraordinary
degree of care from their wives.
While I witnessed the very real affection and friendship between
partners, the absence of trust in many marriages, particularly in sexual
matters, was palpable. Despite their expectations prior to marriage, almost all
the men in this study engaged in unprotected extramarital sex. The absence of communication between
husbands and wives, despite many wives’ fears that their husbands would give
them AIDS, was a familiar pattern.
Most wives felt they couldn’t speak, and few felt they could escape from
their marriages.
There is no space here to describe the manner in
which men and their wives, in their grief and loss, strove to understand the
HIV/AIDS pandemic in the context of their religious understandings of human
experience nor to discuss in any detail responses of former students and their
wives towards HIV prevention campaigns where ‘sex’ is constructed as a
particular kind of “moral object” (Pigg and Adams 2005).
My research reveals that many men’s sense of
their manhood is something that has constantly to be achieved and reclaimed in
the performance of masculinity in public and in intimate spheres. Indeed in both spheres, masculinity may
best be seen as a fragile entity, encompassed by a deep sense of insecurity most
acutely felt within, and indeed particularly produced by, life within the male
peer group. HIV/AIDS has brought
particular challenges to the hegemonic construction of heterosexual masculinity
in Zambia. My study demonstrates
that, even within a small group of former mission school students, men are
variously positioned in relation to this construction, some contesting it and
maintaining a greater distance from it than others. I argue that many more
might be ready to challenge dangerous ideologies of masculinity. This offers hope for continuing efforts
to combat the pandemic in Africa.
References
Fanon, F. [1970] 1986. Black Skin, White Masks, with an introduction by H.H. Bhabha.
London: Pluto.
Ferguson, J. 1997. ‘Country and City on the
Copperbelt’, in A. Gupta and J. Ferguson (eds.) Culture, Power, Place. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Ferguson,
J. 1999. Expectations of Modernity: myths
and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Foucault, M. [1969] 1977. Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon;
trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith of Surveillir
et Punir: naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard.
Giddens, A. 1982. Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory. London: Macmillan.
Goffman, E. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday Anchor.
Herzfeld, M. 1985. The Poetics of Manhood: contest and identity in a Cretan mountain
village. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Jamba, S. 1989. ‘The African Disease’, The Spectator, 9 September 1989.
Kritzman, L. D. (ed.) 1988. Michel Foucault: politics, philosophy, culture, interviews and other
writings, 1977-1984. London Routledge.
McNay, L. 1992. Foucault and Feminism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McNay,
L. 1994. Foucault: a critical
introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Mudimbe, V. Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mudimbe, V. Y. 1994a. Les Corps Glorieux des Mots et des Etres: esquisse d’un jardin africain
a la Bénédictine. Montreal: Humanitas; Paris: Presence Africaine.
Mudimbe,
V. Y. 1994b. The Idea of Africa.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Pigg, S. L. and V. Adams. 2005. ‘Introduction:
The Moral Object of Sex’. In Sex in
Development: Science, Sexuality, and Morality in Global Perspective, ed. V.
Adams and S. L. Pigg. pp.1-38. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Simpson, A. 2003. ‘Half-London’ in
Zambia: Contested Identities in a Catholic Mission School. Edinburgh
University Press for the International African Institute, London.
Taylor, C. 1989. Sources of the Self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
On
the Idea of Humanity IN THE NAME OF SIMILITUDE(1)
V.Y.
Mudimbe
Department of
Literature, Duke university, USA
E-mail: vmudimbe@duke.edu
Ideo iuravi in ira mea:
non introibunt in requie meam
—Ps.
94
I.
“I lie, I speak,” such is the beginning of an
article by Michel Foucault on “La pensée du dehors,” in an issue of Critique (229,1966). To apprehend the singularity of a
contemporary imaginary space, that of fiction, and to think this fiction in its
own right, instead of claiming to relate it to an absolute truth, or thinking
about the truth according to the expectations of paradigmatic hypotheses, the
French philosopher invokes the good old argument of Epimenides about a
liar. Facing an allegory, the
“exodus” of Africa as represented in the fifty years that separate us from the
1955 Nehru discourse in Bandung, and how this image has been reflecting the
unfolding, an outgrowing narrative of a destitution, looking at what it
symbolizes in our common history, I thought that I could emphasize its dramatic
significance by rephrasing Foucault’s astonishment for the modernity of the
Epimenides’ effect. From within
the limits of a series of margins, I heard, in effect, Charles Manson in the
interviews he gave to Neul Emmons about his life, and transcribed in Manson in His Own Words (Grove, 1988),
saying this: “the more I speak, the more I lie; the less I speak, the less I
lie.” Its rapport to the
pertinence of the Greek citation, Epimenides’ liar expressing a truthful
statement when stating it to be a lie, seems obvious, for sure manifest. Its submission to the well-known
classical decoding, on which elaborates the French philosopher, on the speaking
grammatical subject versus the object spoken about, goes also without
saying. What is less visible, at
least immediately, is the deviation that the statement actualizes: in
Epimenides as well as in Manson’s self-judgment, the acting subject who is also
the cognitive subject separates itself from the object of cognition, and makes
any observer wonder whether the whole exercise might not be sheer fiction. As a result, one does not know any
longer where to look for a credible well-trained moral subject, and demures at
the suggestion of any responsible performer bearing witness to the truthfulness
of an activity. One understands
then how, deducing a lesson from Epimenides’ paradox, Foucault could
hypothesize that the speech of a speech leads us through literature, but
perhaps through other paths, to this outside where the speaking subject
disappears.
It is in the 1950’s and 1960’s, contemporary
with the Bandung project, and often blinded by it, and judgmental of measures
from an international economy that, in the subsequent years, will marginalize
its alterity, and folklorize it in a more efficient manner than during the
colonial rule, that the discourse of an African difference surges, combative
and perplexing at the same time. From the outset, it is multiple, diversified
in competing theories. Heterodox, these theories are often framed by reflectors
and schools of thought which are generally mainstream, and whose intellectual
and spiritual genealogies are stable, good mirrors of humanist assumptions and
values; self-referential, these theories are conceptualized and expressed
frequently in foreign languages, and addressed primarily to a non-African
audience; insurrectionary, these theories are testimonies for the promotion of
a human condition and its particular interpretations, but within the
historicity they claim to challenge.
Thus, their outsidedness.
In fact, these theories for a difference are an exegesis on an organism
and its contrivances in a teleological history, its discursive procedures and
the variety of its postulations.
Their overall configuration could be qualified convincingly thanks to
the singularity of three entries.
There is, firstly, the process of temporalizing the organism as an
object of knowledge in a retrojecting parole
caught between an alienated present and its invented glorious antecedent
achievements, a technique well magnified in the fantastic myth building of the
work of Cheik Anta Diop, the Senegalese nuclear physicist who, in the 1950s,
turned cultural anthropologist and historian of pharaonic Egypt. There is, second, the demand of
expressing one’s own concrete existential experience and its humanity, and
translating it into the language of a “will to truth”, expecting it to be a
truthful discourse for-oneself; and discovering that, by the logic of its own
requirements, even in its own intemperance, such a discourse, true or false,
even in its most affective dimensions, is also and necessarily a discourse
for-others. The indigenization of
Marxism in the African socialisms of Léopold Sédar Senghor in Sénégal and
Julius Nyerere in Tanzania might stand as the best illustration of this
procession. In the same way,
linked to Anta Diop’s mythographies or not, expounding its recurrent otherness
pledges in Africa or in America, the Afrocentrist theory, in what it negates or
affirms about racial identity, automatically obligates its own validation or
rejection in the intermediation of an alter. Why on earth, American institutions,
immersed in the most consistent capitalist rationality for normalizing a global
world, would not support a school whose tenets might seem prone to bungling its
axiomatic cultural canons, if without doubt, the movement in what it values
accomodates efficiently a variety of possibly expedient discourses for-others?
In any case, from its relation to the abstraction of an inclusive order, it
could be compared analogically to a unit of connectionist networks with
learning abilities. The validity
of Afrocentrist propositions may seem controversial, and its postulates
criticized or disputed, what they stimulate does not necessarily take to
streets against capitalism.
Finally, there is a third extasis, a most telling allegory about the
subject and its potential multiplication.
In a critical self-detachment perception from herself or himself, the
subject cannot but identify with a tension between two polarities, the thinking
I and the I thought about, the subject ego and the direct object, a me; and
indeed, the veracity of this divided-self withstands the very limits of reason.
The best of contemporary African practices in philosophy bears witness to the
rigour of such an exercise. In its
proximity, one would readily integrate explorations in regional psychodynamics,
and the extraordinary patience of the work of a Frantz Fanon. Somewhere in a
gradually opposite direction, and concerned with the fate of the city, the
political discourse, faithful or treacherous, appears as a fold of something
else: of the mute estrangement of millions of people who cannot assume their
own subjugation as that which is firstly contained by their own polarities, a
self and a for-others, and then empirically submitted to external
determinations, how to comment about it without apprehending oneself as
imprisoned in bad faith?
A history of this outsideness can be traced back
as far as the imagination of anyone allows a reading. As students of a recent history of an unintentionally
engineered major economic imbalance and its manifestations, probably an effect
of a possibly widespread trained incapacity, we document it as a history of not
so rational procedures determining present conditions of the African presence
in the world. The journey through
the decolonization is not a negation of the Western journey through economic
time, as well suggested by John Kenneth Galbraith in his “first hand view,” A
Journey through Economic Time (Houghton Mifflin, 1984). Metaphorized
on a scholastic table of logical relations, summarized and, say, reduced to
what they might analogically express, as theses in mediate or immediate
inferences from standard categorical propositions, indeed the African theories
could stand, from the arrangement of the traditional square of opposed
propositions, as universal or particular, affirmative or negative; and
determined by their reference, as contrary or subcontrary, subaltern or
contradictory. Moreover, one could
find, frequently used as instruments in arguments for revising the nature of
interests in political economy, thematics of conversion or obversion,
contraposition or inversion.
Without doubt, the first set, with conversion and obversion, seems the
most popular. Conversion in
alterity theories is generally understood as a simple interchange of the first
concept, the West and her virtues as subject, with a new historical subject,
Africa; in this sense, it cannot be confused with its technical usage in logic.
And obversion, the most constant, administers the clearest operative value,
closer to its canon in logic, namely the counterpart of a proposition obtained
by exchanging its affirmative quality for the negative, or the negative for the
affirmative, and then negating the predicate. It is from this background that, situated vis-à-vis imperial
power and its justifications in the colonial library, Aimé Césaire’s Discours sur le colonialisme (1995),
Kwame Nkrumah’s I Speak of Freedom
(1961) and Towards Colonial Freedom
(1962), or Julius Nyerere’s Freedom and
Unity (1968) for example, are said to have obverted the colonial
ideology.
Notes
(1) I am
indebted to E. Corinne Blalock, my assistant, and want to express enormous
gratitude for her help and support.