|
Momodou
Denmark
11828 Posts |
 Posted - 08 Jan 2008 : 18:43:24
|
Africa: Talking about "Tribe"
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Jan 8, 2008 (080108)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
The Kenyan election, wrote Jeffrey Gettleman for the New York Times in his December 31 dispatch from Nairobi, "seems to have tapped into an atavistic vein of tribal tension that always lay beneath the surface in Kenya but until now had not provoked widespread mayhem." Gettleman was not exceptional among those covering the post-election violence in his stress on "tribe." But his terminology was unusually explicit in revealing the assumption that such divisions are rooted in unchanging and presumably primitive identities.
In his blog the same day (http://www.zeleza.com), African historian P. T. Zeleza countered that such divisions are neither peculiar to Africa nor rooted in "ancient hatreds." Rather, he noted, they are based on uneven regional development in both the colonial and post-
colonial periods, followed, at intervals, by the political mobilization by elites of ethnic divisions,
Another AfricaFocus Bulletin sent out today contains excerpts from Zeleza's commentary and other reflections and calls for action to avert further violence in Kenya. But the pattern of oversimplifying
African conflicts to "tribe" is pervasive and long-standing. Of course, changing the terminology will not solve conflicts, whatever
their roots. But many analysts have long argued that "tribe" is particularly pernicious in diverting attention from the structural
and immediate causes of violence by attributing it to supposedly immutable and irrational divisions.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a paper from the Africa Policy Information Center, written ten years ago, called "Talking about 'Tribe.' It is sobering to note how little the discourse has changed since then, as similar stereotypes dominate the coverage of yet another African crisis.
In the e-mail version of this paper, several case studies are omitted for reason of length. They are available in the web version at http://www.africafocus.org/docs08/ethn0801.php
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Many thanks to those subscribers who have recently sent in a voluntary subscription payment to support AfricaFocus Bulletin. If you haven't recently sent in such a payment and are able to do so, please help AfricaFocus reach more people with reliable information on Africa. Send in a check or pay on-line through Google checkout or paypal. See http://www.africafocus.org/support.php for details.
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
Talking about "Tribe"
Moving from Stereotypes to Analysis
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC)
Background Paper
Published November, 1997
[Excerpts. APIC is now Africa Action. The full original of this
paper, including additional references, is available at
http://www.africaaction.org//bp/ethall.htm]
For most people in Western countries, Africa immediately calls up
the word "tribe." The idea of tribe is ingrained, powerful, and
expected. Few readers question a news story describing an African
individual as a tribesman or tribeswoman, or the depiction of an
African's motives as tribal. Many Africans themselves use the word
"tribe" when speaking or writing in English about community,
ethnicity or identity in African states.
Yet today most scholars who study African states and
societies--both African and non-African--agree that the idea of
tribe promotes misleading stereotypes. The term "tribe" has no
consistent meaning. It carries misleading historical and cultural
assumptions. It blocks accurate views of African realities. At
best, any interpretation of African events that relies on the idea
of tribe contributes no understanding of specific issues in
specific countries. At worst, it perpetuates the idea that African
identities and conflicts are in some way more "primitive" than
those in other parts of the world. Such misunderstanding may lead
to disastrously inappropriate policies.
In this paper we argue that anyone concerned with truth and
accuracy should avoid the term "tribe" in characterizing African
ethnic groups or cultures. This is not a matter of political
correctness. Nor is it an attempt to deny that cultural identities
throughout Africa are powerful, significant and sometimes linked to
deadly conflicts. It is simply to say that using the term "tribe"
does not contribute to understanding these identities or the
conflicts sometimes tied to them. There are, moreover, many less
loaded and more helpful alternative words to use. Depending on
context, people, ethnic group, nationality, community, village,
chiefdom, or kin-group might be appropriate. Whatever the term one
uses, it is essential to understand that identities in Africa are
as diverse, ambiguous, complex, modern, and changing as anywhere
else in the world.
Most scholars already prefer other terms to "tribe." So, among the
media, does the British Broadcasting Corporation. But "tribal" and
"African" are still virtually synonyms in most media, among
policy-makers and among Western publics. Clearing away this
stereotype, this paper argues, is an essential step for beginning
to understand the diversity and richness of African realities.
The main text of this paper was drafted by Chris Lowe (Boston
University). The final version also reflects contributions from
Tunde Brimah (University of Denver), Pearl-Alice Marsh (APIC),
William Minter (APIC), and Monde Muyangwa (National Summit on
Africa).
Section 1: What's Wrong with "Tribe?"
* Tribe has no coherent meaning.
What is a tribe? The Zulu in South Africa, whose name and common
identity was forged by the creation of a powerful state less than
two centuries ago, and who are a bigger group than French
Canadians, are called a tribe. So are the !Kung hunter-gatherers of
Botswana and Namibia, who number in the hundreds. The term is
applied to Kenya's Maasai herders and Kikuyu farmers, and to
members of these groups in cities and towns when they go there to
live and work. Tribe is used for millions of Yoruba in Nigeria and
Benin, who share a language but have an eight-hundred year history
of multiple and sometimes warring city-states, and of religious
diversity even within the same extended families. Tribe is used for
Hutu and Tutsi in the central African countries of Rwanda and
Burundi. Yet the two societies (and regions within them) have
different histories. And in each one, Hutu and Tutsi lived
interspersed in the same territory. They spoke the same language,
married each other, and shared virtually all aspects of culture. At
no point in history could the distinction be defined by distinct
territories, one of the key assumptions built into "tribe."
Tribe is used for groups who trace their heritage to great
kingdoms. It is applied to Nigeria's Igbo and other peoples who
organized orderly societies composed of hundreds of local
communities and highly developed trade networks without recourse to
elaborate states. Tribe is also used for all sorts of smaller units
of such larger nations, peoples or ethnic groups. The followers of
a particular local leader may be called a tribe. Members of an
extended kin-group may be called a tribe. People who live in a
particular area may be called a tribe. We find tribes within
tribes, and cutting across other tribes. Offering no useful
distinctions, tribe obscures many. As a description of a group,
tribe means almost anything, so it really means nothing.
If by tribe we mean a social group that shares a single territory,
a single language, a single political unit, a shared religious
tradition, a similar economic system, and common cultural
practices, such a group is rarely found in the real world. These
characteristics almost never correspond precisely with each other
today, nor did they at any time in the past.
* Tribe promotes a myth of primitive African timelessness,
obscuring history and change.
The general sense of tribe as most people understand it is
associated with primitiveness. To be in a tribal state is to live
in a uncomplicated, traditional condition. It is assumed there is
little change. Most African countries are economically poor and
often described as less developed or underdeveloped. Westerners
often conclude that they have not changed much over the centuries,
and that African poverty mainly reflects cultural and social
conservatism. Interpreting present day Africa through the lens of
tribes reinforces the image of timelessness. Yet the truth is that
Africa has as much history as anywhere else in the world. It has
undergone momentous changes time and again, especially in the
twentieth century. While African poverty is partly a product of
internal dynamics of African societies, it has also been caused by
the histories of external slave trades and colonial rule.
* In the modern West, tribe often implies primitive savagery.
When the general image of tribal timelessness is applied to
situations of social conflict between Africans, a particularly
destructive myth is created. Stereotypes of primitiveness and
conservative backwardness are also linked to images of
irrationality and superstition. The combination leads to portrayal
of violence and conflict in Africa as primordial, irrational and
unchanging. This image resonates with traditional Western racialist
ideas and can suggest that irrational violence is inherent and
natural to Africans. Yet violence anywhere has both rational and
irrational components. Just as particular conflicts have reasons
and causes elsewhere, they also have them in Africa. The idea of
timeless tribal violence is not an explanation. Instead it
disguises ignorance of real causes by filling the vacuum of real
knowledge with a popular stereotype.
Images of timelessness and savagery hide the modern character of
African ethnicity, including ethnic conflict.
The idea of tribe particularly shapes Western views of ethnicity
and ethnic conflict in Africa, which has been highly visible in
recent years. Over and over again, conflicts are interpreted as
"ancient tribal rivalries," atavistic eruptions of irrational
violence which have always characterized Africa. In fact they are
nothing of the sort. The vast majority of such conflicts could not
have happened a century ago in the ways that they do now. Pick
almost any place where ethnic conflict occurs in modern Africa.
Investigate carefully the issues over which it occurs, the forms it
takes, and the means by which it is organized and carried out.
Recent economic developments and political rivalries will loom much
larger than allegedly ancient and traditional hostilities.
Ironically, some African ethnic identities and divisions now
portrayed as ancient and unchanging actually were created in the
colonial period. In other cases earlier distinctions took new, more
rigid and conflictual forms over the last century. The changes came
out of communities' interactions within a colonial or post-colonial
context, as well as movement of people to cities to work and live.
The identities thus created resemble modern ethnicities in other
countries, which are also shaped by cities, markets and national
states.
* Tribe substitutes a generalized illusion for detailed analysis of
particular situations.
The bottom-line problem with the idea of tribe is that it is
intellectually lazy. It substitutes the illusion of understanding
for analysis of particular circumstances. Africa is far away from
North America. Accurate information about particular African states
and societies takes more work to find than some other sorts of
information. Yet both of those situations are changing rapidly.
Africa is increasingly tied into the global economy and
international politics. Using the idea of tribe instead of real,
specific information and analysis of African events has never
served the truth well. It also serves the public interest badly.
Section 2: If "Tribe" Is So Useless, Why Is it So Common?
* Tribe reflects once widespread but outdated 19th century social
theory.
As Europeans expanded their trade, settlement and military
domination around the world, they began trying to understand the
different forms of society and culture they met. In the 19th
century, ideas that societies followed a path of evolution through
definite stages became prominent. One widespread theory saw a
progression from hunting to herding to agriculture to mechanical
industry. City-focused civilization and related forms of government
were associated with agriculture. Forms of government and social
organization said to precede civilization among pastoralists and
simple agriculturalists were called tribal. It was also believed
that cosmopolitan industrial civilization would gradually break
down older localized identities.
Over the course of the 20th century scholars have learned that such
images tried to make messy reality neater than it really is. While
markets and technology may be said to develop, they have no neat
correspondence with specific forms of politics, social
organization, or culture. Moreover, human beings have proven
remarkably capable of changing older identities to fit new
conditions, or inventing new identities (often stoutly insisting
that the changed or new identities are eternal). Examples close to
home include new hyphenated American identities, new social
identities (for example, gay/lesbian), and new religious identities
(for example, New Age).
* Social theories of tribes resonated with classical and biblical
education.
Of course, most ordinary Western people were not social theorists.
But theories of social evolution spread through schools,
newspapers, sermons and other media. The term tribe was tied with
classical and biblical images. The word itself comes from Latin. It
appears in Roman literature describing early Roman society itself.
The Romans also used it for Celtic and Germanic societies with
which many 19th and early 20th century Europeans and Americans
identified. Likewise the term was used in Latin and English bibles
to characterize the twelve tribes of Israel. This link of tribes to
prestigious earlier periods of Western culture contributed to the
view that tribe had universal validity in social evolution.
* Tribe became a cornerstone idea for European colonial rule in
Africa.
This background of belief, while mistaken in many respects, might
have been relatively benign. However, emerging during the age of
scientific rationalism, the theories of social evolution became
intertwined with racial theories. These were used to justify first
the latter stages of the Atlantic slave trade (originally justified
on religious grounds), and later European colonial rule. The idea
that Africans were a more primitive, lower order of humanity was
sometimes held to be a permanent condition which justified
Europeans in enslaving and dominating them. Other versions of the
theory held that Africans could develop but needed to be civilized
by Europeans. This was also held to justify dominating them and
taking their labor, land and resources in return for civilization.
These justifying beliefs were used to support the colonization of
the whole continent of Africa after 1880, which otherwise might
more accurately have been seen as a naked exercise of power. It is
in the need to justify colonizing everyone in Africa that we
finally find the reason why all Africans are said to live in
tribes, whether their ancestors built large trading empires and
Muslim universities on the Niger river, densely settled and
cultivated kingdoms around the great lakes in east-central Africa,
or lived in much smaller-scale communities between the larger
political units of the continent.
Calling nearly all African social groups tribes and African
identities tribal in the era of scientific racism turned the idea
of tribe from a social science category into a racial stereotype.
By definition Africans were supposed to live in tribes, preferably
with chiefs. The colonizers proposed to govern cheaply by adapting
tribal and chiefship institutions into European-style bureaucratic
states. If they didn't find tribes and chiefs, they encouraged
people to identify as tribes, and appointed chiefs. In some places,
like Rwanda or Nigeria, colonial racial theory led to favoring one
ethnic group over another because of supposed racial superiority
(meaning white ancestry). In other places, emphasis on tribes was
simply a tool of divide and rule strategies. The idea of tribe we
have today cannot escape these roots.
Section 3: But Why Not Use "Tribe?"
Answers to Common Arguments
* In the United States no one objects to referring to Indian
tribes.
Under US law, tribe is a bureaucratic term. For a community of
Native Americans to gain access to programs, and to enforce rights
due to them under treaties and laws, they must be recognized as a
tribe. This is comparable to unincorporated areas applying for
municipal status under state laws. Away from the law, Native
Americans often prefer the words nation or people over tribe.
Historically, the US government treats all Native American groups
as tribes because of the same outdated cultural evolutionary
theories and colonial viewpoints that led European colonialists to
treat all African groups as tribes. As in Africa, the term obscures
wide historical differences in way of life, political and social
organization, and culture among Native Americans. When we see that
the same term is applied indiscriminately to Native American groups
and African groups, the problem of primitive savagery as the
implied common denominator only becomes more pronounced.
* Africans themselves talk about tribes.
Commonly when Africans learn English they are taught that tribe is
the term that English-speakers will recognize. But what underlying
meaning in their own languages are Africans translating when they
say tribe? Take the word isizwe in Zulu. In English, writers often
refer to the Zulu tribe, whereas in Zulu the word for the Zulu as
a group would be isizwe. Often Zulu-speakers will use the English
word tribe because that's what they think English speakers expect,
or what they were taught in school. Yet Zulu linguists say that a
better translation of isizwe is nation or people. The African
National Congress called its guerrilla army Umkhonto weSizwe,
"Spear of the Nation" not "Spear of the Tribe." Isizwe refers both
to the multi-ethnic South African nation and to ethno-national
peoples that form a part of the multi-ethnic nation. When Africans
use the word tribe in general conversation, they do not mean the
negative connotations of primitivism the word has in Western
countries.
* African leaders see tribalism as a major problem in their
countries.
This is true. But what they mean by this is ethnic divisiveness, as
intensified by colonial divide and rule tactics. Colonial
governments told Africans they came in tribes, and rewarded people
who acted in terms of ethnic competition. Thus for leaders trying
to build multi-ethnic nations, tribalism is an outlook of pursuing
political advantage through ethnic discrimination and chauvinism.
The association of nation-building problems with the term "tribe"
just reflects the colonial heritage and translation issue already
mentioned.
African ethnic divisions are quite real, but have little to do with
ancient or primitive forms of identity or conflict. Rather, ethnic
divisiveness in Africa takes intensely modern forms. It takes place
most often in urban settings, or in relations of rural communities
to national states. It relies on bureaucratic identity documents,
technologies like writing and radio, and modern techniques of
organization and mobilization.
Like ethnic divisions elsewhere, African ethnic divisions call on
images of heritage and ancestry. In this sense, when journalists
refer to the ethnic conflicts so prominent all across the modern
world -- as in Bosnia or Belgium -- as tribalism, the implied
resemblance to Africa is not wrong. The problem is that in all
these cases what is similar is very modern, not primitive or
atavistic. Calling it primitive will not help in understanding or
changing it.
* Avoiding the term tribe is just political correctness.
No, it isn't. Avoiding the term tribe is saying that ideas matter.
If the term tribe accurately conveyed and clarified truths better
than other words, even if they were hard and unpleasant truths, we
should use it. But the term tribe is vague, contradictory and
confusing, not clarifying. For the most part it does not convey
truths but myths, stereotypes and prejudices. When it does express
truths, there are other words which express the same truths more
clearly, without the additional distortions. Given a choice between
words that express truths clearly and precisely, and words which
convey partial truths murkily and distortedly, we should choose the
former over the latter. That means choosing nation, people,
community, chiefdom, kin-group, village or another appopriate word
over tribe, when writing or talking about Africa. The question is
not political correctness but empirical accuracy and intellectual
honesty.
* Rejecting tribe is just an attempt to deny the reality of ethnic
divisions.
On the contrary, it is an attempt to face the reality of ethnic
divisions by taking them seriously. It is using the word tribe and
its implications of primitive, ancient, timeless identities and
conflicts which tries to deny reality. Since "we" are modern,
saying ethnic divisions are primitive, ancient and timeless
(tribal) says "we are not like that, those people are different
from us, we do not need to be concerned." That is the real wishful
thinking, the real euphemism. It is taking the easy way out. It
fills in ignorance of what is happening and why with a familiar and
comfortable image. The image, moreover, happens to be false.
The harder, but more honest course, and the only course which will
allow good policy or the possibility of finding solutions (although
it guarantees neither) is to try to recognize, understand and deal
with the complexities. To say African groups are not tribes, and
African identities are not tribal, in the common-sense meanings of
those words, is not to deny that African ethnic divisions exist. It
is to open up questions: what is their true nature? How do they
work? How can they be prevented from taking destructive forms? It
is, moreover, to link the search for those answers in Africa to the
search for answers to the similar questions that press on humanity
everywhere in the world today.
[For case studies of Zambia, "Hutu/Tutsi," Zulu Identity in South Africa, and the Yoruba People, see the web version of this bulletin
at http://www.africafocus.org/docs08/ethn0801.php]
*************************************************************
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org
************************************************************
|
A clear conscience fears no accusation - proverb from Sierra Leone |
|
Topic Locked
