CTA 16: complexity & change Flashcards
Indigenisation of modernity
‘Encounters with the transnational forces of modernity occur almost everywhere; they are in some respects irreversible. […] Doubtless, contact between traditional peoples and industrial society has often entailed some dramatic and tragic outcome […] On the other hand, one would seriously underestimate the abilities of “traditional peoples” if they were to be regarded merely as helpless victims of the avalanche of modernity’ (Eriksen 2023: 363).
Cargo cults:
‘millenarian political or religious cults […] Indigenous peoples may wish to retain important aspects of their tradition, but they also tend to want modern commodities’ (Eriksen 2023: 364).
Dounle aim: re-establish traditional authority and acquire some of the immense wealth of the foreigners
But: people don’t know how the cargo is produced, they only saw planes spewing out crating of goods
Relative deprivation:
‘many people actually had shorter life expectations and suffered greater material hardship before colonialism, […] but on the other hand the perception of scarcity is greater today’ (Eriksen 2023: 365).
- Poverty becomes a greater problem the moment wealth is perceived as a definite possibility.
- The perception of scarcity has increased, because indigenous people now compare themselves with Europe and North-America.
Three ways of conceptualizing encounters between traditional societies and modernity
- Walt Rostow, modernisation (grand theory)
- Lenin, imperialism (grand theory)
- Olivia Harris, cultural encounters
Walt Rostow, modernisation
(grand theory)
- All societies go trough the same stages of modernity, at some point poor countries would ‘catch up’ with the ‘developed world’
- At first there is some growth, but not enough. Crucial phase of sustained growth, requires investment in economies to ‘take off’.
- Not enough investments won’t lead to ‘take off’
Lenin, imperialism
(grand theory)
- Not about how some societies are lagging behind, but it is a matter of exploitation by the north of the south.
- Economic and political contact does not lead to development, but to underdevelopment and surpression
Olivia Harris, cultural encounters
Look at everyday encounters and how people cope with this, not using grand theories. These encounters below can be mixed and overlap
Six modes of conceptualizing the social encounters between knowledge systems:
- Mixing or creolisation (Mestizaje): new meaning are generated from the mixing of diverse influences
- Colonisation: dominance, exploitation and violence towards indigenous groups
- Borrowing -> bible as a mythical object, gives more agency towards the colonized
- Juxtaposition: two systems are accepted without a direct attempt at integration
- Imitation, assimilation, direct identification: self-conciously rejecting the past and adopting an identity and knowledge system they perceive as better or more beneficial
- Innovation and creativity: attention is removed from contrasted knowledge system and pointed towards autonomy and independent agency. Looks to the future
But: this assumes there are two monogenic bounded cultures that ‘mix’
Perspectives on cultural mixing:
Needs to be understood as a multidirectional, many-pronged and complex process. There is no such thing as a ‘pure’ culture. Main forms of cultural mixing:
- Cultural pluralism: Close relative of multiculturalism, directs attention towards the relative boundedness of the constituent groups or categories that make up a society
- Hybridity: Directs attention towards individuals or cultural forms which are reflexively - self-consciously- mixed. Syntheses of cultural forms or fragments of diverse origins
- Syncretism: Directs attention towards an amalgation of formerly discrete world-views, cultural meaning and, in particular, religion
- Diasporic identity: Directs attention towards a social category consisting of people whose primary subjective beloninge is in another country
- Transnationalism: Directs attention towards a social existence attaching individuals and groups not primarily to one particular place, but to several or none
- Diffusion: Directs attention towards the flow of substances and meanings between societies whether it is accompanied by actual social encounters or nto
- Creolisation: Directs attention towards cultural phenomena which result from enforced displacement and the ensuing social encounter and mutual influence between two or several groups. Creating an ongoing dynamic interchange of symbols and practices
Godfrey Wilson, de-tribalisation:
- De-tribalisation is ‘the qualitative change in social integration entailed by urbanisation. From being kinship-based subsistence producers, the workers become individual participants in the world economy’ (Eriksen 359).
- Urbanisation led to workers becoming individual participants in the world economy, instead of kinship-based subsistence producers. People forget they were part of tribes.
- Changes in values as well: clothing became important
- Kalela dance: performed every sunday by labour migrants belonging to the Bisa people […] the dance did not form part of their traditional repertoire. However, the dance and songs were definitely markers of “tribal” group identity’
Only in coppertowns they invented and performed this dance
Methodological challenges of complexities and scale in urban societies:
- ‘In urban anthropology and, more generally, anthropology in complex, fast-changing societies, it is impossible to find out everything about everybody, due to the complexity and size of the societies concerned; that is, their scale’ (Eriksen 2023: 361).
- Classical idea is hanging out with a group of people, getting to know almost everybody is simply impossible. In cities, people don’t know eachother
Methodological solutions
- Multi-sited ethnography: not in one place, but multiple locations which together form a coherent social whole.
- Network studies: sometimes certain kinship systems don’t exist anymore. Instead of that, explore the network of persons.
- Case study: not studying whole societies, but just a case.
- Extended case study
- Focus on strictly delineated topic (and a delineated field)
- Single out a small group in a complex society
- Study of websites and media; use of social media
Development (by NGO’s etc.)
- Has been a major catalyst of cultural change
- ‘Because of the cultural relativism […], it is difficult for anthropologists to see much intellectual value in a concept of “development”, which defines it, for example, as GDP per capita’ (Eriksen 2023: 369).
- Who are we to say that the development is positive? And that their society is ‘wrong’?
Are anthropologists conservative?
- ‘Regarding questions of development and cultural change, anthropology may from one point of view be regarded as an inherently conservative discipline. [… to them] it seems only natural that changes instigated from the outside are potentially destructive’ (Eriksen 2023: 370).
- But: traditional societies don’t always have coherent ideas: ‘what […] are the “own terms” of a society if women and men, young and old, urbanites and farmers in the same community disagree about the direction of change?’ (Eriksen 2023: 370-371)
- Therefore: ‘it becomes absolutely necessary to admit that societies or cultures are neither tightly integrated, nor unchanging and closed systems’ (Eriksen 2023: 371).
Anti politics machine (Ferguson)
- Looks at the development plans for Lesotho
Stereotypes of a less-developed country (World Bank): Untouched by modernisation, Subsistence agriculture, National economy, Non-performing government - World bank has developed a policy which leads to a stimulus to breed cattle for export. Too many cattle at this moment, cattle breeding needs to be transformed. But the world bank then argues: the people are so stupid that they refuse to do this
- Ferguson sees it differently: isn’t a problem of overpopulation of cattle, but because of the Dutch farmers taking the good land in the mid 19th century. The economy also isn’t isolated, lots of export and migration toward South Africa.
- Indeed, people keep too many cows. But: cows are a form of capital. Cash is converted into livestock in case of an emergency.
- Males coming back from africa their cash gets claimed by kin, therefore they convert it to cattle because it can’t be taken away so easily
- Central government also didn’t have control in every region. World bank is therefore a chance to gain control
- Title: world bank, although it is highly political, sought interference in the lives of people on behalf of the government. But was sold as a very a-political program
Decolonising anthropology
- ‘anthropological research is increasingly becoming available to its interlocutors as they acquire literacy and an educated middle class interested in reading anthropological studies develops’ (Eriksen 2023: 373).
- Development organization target specific groups for ‘development’. Development programs again raise the question of decolonizing anthropology
- Some countries are very negative about anthropological studies: There are […] several governments in the Global south which are unenthusiastic about allowing foreigners to do ethnographic research, not only because the anthropological emphasis on cultural variation may be at odds with their development strategies but also because they see it as their right to write their own contemporary history’ (Eriksen 2023: 373).
- Therefore anthropologists have to think about what is in it for the interlocutors: ‘anthropologists enter into contractual relationships with their interlocutors to ensure that they do not act as extractive parasites, but actually give something in return’ (Eriksen 2023: 373)
