Disorderly DevelopmentGlobalization and the idea of “culture” in the Kalahari

Presented by Daniel Alegrett, 1300822 CREOLEFor 240208 SE Cultural Diversity W2013, Ayşe Çağlar

Renée Sylvain

American Anthropologist 32 (3): 354-370, 2005

Renée Sylvain, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Trained in the University of Toronto under Richard B. Lee

Renée Sylvain and her husband Rockney Jacobsen (professor of philosophy at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) in Namibia.Photo taken by Richard B. Lee

Interested in the intersections of gender, race/ethnic and class inequalities, human rights, indigenous peoples, minorities, social justice, development, feminism, etc.

Some texts:- At the Intersections: San Women and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Africa- Structural Violence and Social Suffering among the San in Southern Africa- Class, Culture, and Recognition: San Farm Workers and Indigenous Identities- ‘Land, Water, and Truth’: San Identity and Global Indigenism- Bushmen, Boers and Baasskap: Patriarchy and Paternalism on Afrikaner Farms in the Omaheke Region, Namibia- ‘We work to have life’: Ju/’hoan women, work and survival in the Omaheke region

For comparison:Area of Austria: 83.871 km²Area of Omaheke: 84.732 km²Pop. of Austria: 8.334.825 inhab.Pop. Of Omaheke: 67.496 inhab.Density Austria: 99,37 hab./km²Density Omaheke: 0,80 hab/km²

Omaheke Region , Namibia, Southwestern Africa

1. Herero (Bantu)2. Nama-Damara (Khoi <- Khoisan)3. Ju/’hoansi, Nharo, !Xun (San <- Khoisan)4. Tswana (Bantu)5. Germans & Afrikaners

Interconnected processes

Intersectionality of [gender,] race, ethnicity and class

Local systems of class exploitation are shaped by racial and ethnic stereotypes

Cultural life is shaped by class

Promotion of primordial and essentialized expressions of identity by indigenous peoples’ rights activists, developmental NGOs, and ethnic entrepreneurs who instrumentalize “culture” in local contexts of disorder, corruption and conflict

Disorder and primordialism combine to sustain systems of inequality for an underclass of farm San in the Omaheke Region of Namibia

Convergence of rights-based activism cultural essentialization, ethnodevelopment and commodification of culture in the tourism industry

A “process by which political actors . . . seek to maximize their returns on the state of confusion, uncertainty and sometimes even chaos”

"instrumentalization of political disorder”Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz

Africa Works: Disorder as political instrument (1999)

Capitalization of ambiguity, conflict, corruption, institutional weakness, legal vacuums, misrepresentation, misrecognition, etc.

The instrumentalization of an essentialized concept of culture resurrects and further justifies the inequalities of colonial times, the “separate development” of Apartheid.(Rights-based activism, ethnodevelopment NGOs as forms of grassroots “transnational govermentality” / “globalization from below”. Commodification of culture by ethnic entrepreneurs and cultural / ethno- tourism)Self-representation as primordial, primitive: Opens path for instrumentalization of culture by power hierarchies and reproduction of inequalities

Globalization of a homogeneizing “form of representation” of what “culture” is.

“Places of recognition” established in the ambiguous intersection of race, ethnicity, and class in a politically disordered context

An essentialist and primordialist concept of (indigenous) “culture” results of the nationalistic “territorial trap” of the sovereign state (“state-centric epistemology” and “methodological territorialism”), the closed local community, a “sedentarist metaphysics”, a “blood and soil” imaginary.

Discrete, bounded, pristine, self-enclosed naturalized, essentialized “cultures”.

Primordialism, primitivism, authenticity, purity, facts of nature

Indigeneity is a naturalized relationship between identity and land.Cultural identity as an instrument, resource in the struggle for rights and claims

Tropes of culture, cultural difference, cultural diversity, informed by racial and ethnic stereotypes (forms of recognition) mask class inequalities and undermine social justice (redistribution)

Some of the main issues

Questions for discussionIs anthropology guilty of invisibilizing class with certain forms of cultural analysis or an emphasis on cultural diversity?

In which contexts (examples) could anthropologists perform better analyses and descriptions with a stronger or more conscious consideration of the intersectionality of gender, race, ethnicity, class, or cultural difference and social inequality?

How could we avoid putting ethnicity or cultural identity in a straight-jacket that forces them to perdure outside of history without change, transformation and “hybridity”, while advocating both cultural re-assertion for achieving recognition of claims and rights?

Which examples of social actors: peoples, communities, anthropologists, legislators, etc., could you see as having promoted or promoting the reproduction of social inequalities when they reassert certain cultural forms, performances, practices or representations?

How could, if possible, rights-based forms of social justice or redistribution avoid basing legal and political entitlements on identity politics or at least, on non-essentializing constructions of identities?

How could identities not be seen as discrete and closed, engendering spaces of exclusion? How could one give a ground, a foundation, to identities that allow places of recognition for openness and inclusion?