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Ethnography under colonialism: what did Evans-Pritchard think of it all?

Published on September 14, 2007 by cicilie Posted in Anthropological notes, Cicilie among the Parisians, History, Politics

“When the Government of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan asked me to make a study of the Nuer I accepted after hesitation and with misgivings” (Evans-Pritchard 1940: 7).

“A Government force surrounded our camp one morning at sunrise, searched for two prophets who had been leaders in a recent revolt, took hostages, and threatened to take many more if the prophets were not handed over. … It would at any time have been difficult to do research among the Nuer, and at the period of my visit they were unusually hostile, for their recent defeat by Government forces and the measures taken to ensure their final submission had occasioned deep resentment. Nuer had often remarked to me, ‘You raid us, yet you say we cannot raid the Dinka’; ‘you overcame us with firearms and we had only spears. If we had had firearms we could have routed you’; and so forth. When I entered a cattle camp it was not only as a stranger but as an enemy, and they seldom tried to conceal their disgust at my presence, refusing to answer my greetings and even turning away when I addressed them” (ibid. p. 11).

There is no other anthropologist I’ve read so extensively and thoroughly as Evans-Pritchard. I love how he makes reference to his arguments over witchcraft with members of the Azande community. His ethnographic descriptions of situations and even individuals in Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande are so “thick”, that you are allowed judge by yourself whether you agree with his theoretical analysis or not. When I reread The Nuer a couple of weeks ago, my hero disappointed me.

The book is nothing but generalisations – there isn’t one event, one situation, one individual mentioned after the short introductory chapter. Not even his one “constant companion in Nuerland” Nhial (p.10), who must have been indispensable in acquiring knowledge of the fierce and hostile Nuers appears in the text proper. He leaves us with an image of Nuer society as a seamless, timeless whole* devoid of real human beings. But as we know from his own introduction, Nuerland is in full anti-colonial revolt at the moment of writing. And in Evans-Pritchard’s own tent, young and proud Nuer men “endlessly visit”, talking about nothing but cattle and girls (which “led inevitably to that of cattle” :D ) and asking for tobacco without bothering to answer his questions.

Like anyone who’s been through a graduate course in social anthropology, I was of course familiar with the critique. However, my recent interest in colonial encounters gives an extra edge to reading 70 years old ethnographic descriptions by a white Brit in East Africa (Bourdieu among the Kabyle has certainly moved up on my reading list).

“I … never succeeded in training informants capable of dictating texts and giving detailed descriptions and commentaries. This failure was compensated for by the intimacy I was compelled to establish with the Nuer. As I could not use the easier and shorter method of working through regular informants I had to fall back on direct observation of, and participation in, the everyday life of the people. … Information was thus gathered in particles, each Nuer I met being used as a source of knowledge, and not, as it where, in chunks supplied by selected and trained informants. … Azande would not allow me to live as one of themselves ; Nuer would not allow me to live otherwise. … Azande treated me as a superior ; Nuer as an equal” (Ibid. p. 15).

Between the lines of this cold and “objective” ethnography, I read a lot of respect for the Nuers. But how on earth could this brilliantly alert and bright anthropologist not reflect on his own position as employed by the colonial – and so obviously repressive and violent – government. And equally puzzling: how can he treat the fact that he moves around with black servants (not Nuers, of course!) as such a matter of course? From the previous quote it even sounds like he usually treated his informants as servants… (This classical photo from Monica’s blog apparently gives a good indication of his relationship with the Azande).

A student alerted me to the fact that Evans-Pritchard lead African troops against the Italians in Eastern Africa during the WWII (Wikipedia). After seeing the French film Indigènes (see earlier blog post) on how the French colonial troops were treated during the war, I cannot but wonder how my predecessor treated his own soldiers.

*) This seamless whole is in fact what he wanted, as he writes that he wanted to write a new kind of monograph where the development of theory isn’t drowned in ethnographic detail.

“When the Government of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan asked me to make a study of the Nuer I accepted after hesitation and with misgivings” (Evans-Pritchard 1940: 7).

“A Government force surrounded our camp one morning at sunrise, searched for two prophets who…

Indigènes

Published on October 7, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, History, Music, literature, arts..., Places

I’ve just been to see the film Indigènes. I don’t cry very often at the cinema, but I must admit that I had problems stopping weeping during the last part. I, and probably the rest of the audience, knew just too well how the film would end and how the story it self would go on for decades afterwards. I saw it on a cinema nearby, with pensioners (white) and local lycéens (of all colours). It shows on 31 cinemas in Paris, with 4-8 screenings each + two in the weekends.
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Indigene is the shameful juridical assignation used for Muslims in French North Africa. Muslims, being indigenes and not citizens like the Christians and Jews, didn’t enjoy equal rights until 1945. It’s incredible, isn’t it, in the country priding itself with the slogan libérté, égalité, fraternité? The entire story of the combatants from the colonies is an incredible account of the failure of this beautiful idea… – Just for instance, this example of France in a nutshell: the soldiers get to view a classical ballet show at the casern, while teaching them to read and write, however, is not a concern.

The film starts with recruitment of soldiers in North Africa. A mother doesn’t want her son to go, as his father had died in the First World War, – for France, probably, and we later learn that the family has been left in misery). But he leaves to fight for La mère Patrie, together with fellow villagers as they shout Vive la France. (I probably got a tear in my eye already at this point, as one is to understand the disappointments that are to come…).

All the four protagonists represent various versions of the failure of France the idea: the petty criminal recollects with his brother how the village was killed by the French, to “pacify” them.

The handsome one falling in love with a white girl at the liberation of Marseille never gets her letters – nor she his – as they are being “censured”. As she is about to unbutton his shirt someone enters the room and he jumps up, in North Africa they’re not allowed to have anything to do with French women. But it’s different here in the mother country, at least for the men coming to liberate her…?

The last disappointment – or treason – is the saddest of them all, and it echoes somehow the disillusionment of all the non-whites with “non-French” surnames in the banlieues who have taken an education as the French dream says, but still see very little of the égalité they’ve been promised: The intelligent, but hèlas so naïve colonel decides to continue on an impossible mission into Alsace, because then, finally, “we will get what we merit” – as they over and over of course not has got until then. His troop gets killed. Another French regiment who enters when the German battalion has been beaten gets all the glory (except from a few of the villagers who thank the only surviving Tunisian), and then we jump 60 years in time and the film ends with the never-more-than-a-colonel sitting on the bed in his little, sparsely furnished room; living-conditions which most French probably recognise from TV reportages on the ancient combatants and migrant workers…

The captain also represents an interesting angle: He passes as a pied noir (a French born in Algeria), but we learn that he is in fact an Arab. That’s an aspect of his identity he keeps close to heart – literally, as a photo of his North African mother he keeps in his breast pocket, and as a secret, that would have kept him from advancing in the army hierarchy had it been known.

Last week, when the film opened, President Chirac decided that the pensions of the ancient combatants finally should be equal to that of the French veterans. Since 1959 their pensions have been “frozen”, as some kind of revenge for the independence…

The four protagonists, Sami Bouajila, Roschdy Zem, Samy Naceri and Jamel Debbouze are all French descendants of North Africans. At Cannes this year the four of them won the prize for the best male protagonist.

The film is not only important it is also very good, and as it concerns the liberation of the whole of Europe from Nazism, I suppose it will be screened in Norway as well. I wasn’t really aware of the important contribution of the soldiers form the colonies before I saw The English Patient, which perhaps not coincidentally, is written by a Sri Lankan author.

The film has created a discussion of course (read some of it in English in The Guardian) – for instance with L’Express devoting their frontpage to the headlines “Should we be ashamed of being French?”

I’ve just been to see the film Indigènes. I don’t cry very often at the cinema, but I must admit that I had problems stopping weeping during the last part. I, and probably the rest of the audience, knew just…

1st of May in Paris

Published on May 3, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, History, Places, Politics, Spaces

1st of May, in the morning, I cycled through the quiet streets to a bridge by the Louvre Museum. At the Pont du Carrousel, there is a commemorative plate for Brahim Bourram, who 11 years ago, on this day, drowned after he was thrown into the river Seine by skinheads coming from the annual Front National demonstration. Paris Major Delanoë had put down flowers, and every year MRAP – (Movement against racism and for the friendship between the peoples) – arrange a commemorative ceremony. General secretary Mouloud Aounit didn’t have a microphone, and I was too far away to hear what actually was said, but MRAP has posted a statement on their webpage, which I shall quote from as it speaks directly to the current situation in France:
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This crime should remind us tragically that the words always precede actions, that words – the discourses of hate, exclusion – can lead to the irreparable. Brahim Bouarram, Ibrahim Ali, Imed Bouhoud, Ilan Halimi and many others have paid their life for the freedom of racist speech.

At this 1st of May 2006, when the verbal violence of racist speech is given expression in a build-up between the president of the Front National, Philippe de Villiers [president of the right wing Movement pour la France] and Nicolas Sarkozy, it is the duty of all antiracists to remind that if this process is let to develop, it meanst to take the risk of making these individuals accomplices in putting words into action. [my translation, read the whole press release in French here]

The communiqué ends by an appeal for vigilance and civic resistance.

And from here this blog post could take many directions. I’d like to write about this typically French habit of appealing to the duty of the citoyens, MRAPs interesting – and in my opinion laudable – position and (lost) court case in the Mohammed caricature incident, the sombre and complicated issue of racially motivated murders, the recent media appearances of de Villiers (speaking of an islamisation of France and the need for a francisation) and of course this “build-up of violent speec” (violence des propos racistes s’exprime dans une surenchère). The latter issue I’ll expand on very soon in a post with the catchy title Liberté, Égalité, tes papiers! (stolen from an anti disposable immigration flyer). The present post shall however continue recounting 1st of May, as I experienced it.

Three years ago, at the moment the commemorative plate for the murdered Brahim Bouarram was inaugurated by Major Delanoë (see this article from 2003 on Paris Indymedia (in French)), Le Pen used (according to the media) the occasion to make an ironic remark on a nearby gathering: “That bridge will soon resemble our great religious sites, because it seems that every year a commemorative plaque will be put up to thank the little hoodlums petits voyous who every year allow themselves to slander the Front national.” (I’ve found other quotes as well from Front National concerning this event, which I don’t think should be forgotten).

This attempt by Front National to clean up their public image and to put the blame on others continues: A news report from this year’s 1st of May FN procession showed how an FN member (a representative to the European Parliament) told an aggressive man shouting “France for the French” to leave the cortege, remarking that he didn’t want this behaviour in front of the journalists and the “leftwing media” and suggesting – or even saying? – that this was a provocateur paid for by the Interior Ministry. The FN themselves had distributed blue posters shaped like France proclaiming: “Aimez-la où quittez-là!” for this annual procession in honour of Jeanne d’Arc
(I haven’t yet looked into the relationship between FN, Jeanne d’Arc and the 1st of May, see Wikipendia (in French)).
As I don’t look like an Arab (which was the unfortunate fate of Brahim Bourram), I thought it safe to go and have a look at this procession. However, I didn’t and as this is such a sombre subject, I’ll not make a joke about why it turned out that way.

This blog post was supposed to be about 1st of May, but I’ve already written almost two pages about the far right. For my part, the 1st of May celebration ended on a happier antiracist note with “rock against Sarko” by a classical French punk band at Place de la Nation. But before I wrap it all up with that story, I shall say a few words about the other processions I missed that day, just to give an idea of the things going on in Paris on mayday.

First, I missed when one of the major labour unions (La Force Ouvrière) put flowers on the Communards’ Wall (Mur de Fédéres) at my local cemetery, the Père Lachaise. Then in the afternoon, I missed half of the major procession going from Place de la République to Place de la Nation. (I though the procession would pass by Bastille, but they went the straight axis République – Nation via Boulevard Voltaire (surely no unintentional symbolism here- I’ll come back to this symbolic axis of republicanism later, in which I think also Quilombo (the libertairian bookshop situated in rue Voltaire) has its place – I’ve just learnt that Quilombo was the name of antislavery settlements in Brazil, and Voltaire deserves a little reminder of the history of antislavery movements… I’ll maybe write why at a later occasion)).

The second half of this major 1st of May manif was dominated by transnational leftwing parties – Turks, Latin-Americans (going all together), Tamils (performing the Ramayana!) and Kurds…

The last event I missed, I skipped by my own choice, although I regret it a little now. 2nd of May the temperature returned to over 20°, but it was really chilly, grey and rainy on the 1st (and even worse the day before when I skipped two street parties; one for some sans-papiers families ejected from a squat and who now lives in a square, another just locally in Ménilmontant). The Euromayday organises Mayday parades all over Europe, and the phenomenon shows amongst other things the rapid dispersion of ideas, in this case counter movements, through the internet. Suddenly precarity has become a word in English (se a US-American blog post on this and the interesting recent Wikipendia entry), and even in Norway some left-wing radicals have adopted the notion of a génération précaire, stemming from the CPE-movement in France. (In January when I wrote the post on insecurity à la français this was not yet the case). But as I’m – and maybe eventual readers as well are – getting a bit fed up by this text now, I’ll end here. We’ll probably have the chance to delve into French punk concerts, the internet and protest movements and what else, later. I’m already preparing the part three of My blog, my project and I, – this time on… oh, yes, as always these days… politics and I.

1st of May, in the morning, I cycled through the quiet streets to a bridge by the Louvre Museum. At the Pont du Carrousel, there is a commemorative plate for Brahim Bourram, who 11 years ago, on this day, drowned…

Métro Charonne, 8 février 1962

Published on February 10, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, History

“Here, the 8th of February 1962, in the middle of a demonstration for peace in Algeria by the people of Paris, 9 male and female workers; communists and union activists, of whom the youngest was 16 years, were killed in the repression. CGT, PCF.”
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They were mainly pensioners at the commemoration Wednesday, more men than women, mostly white, but also quite a few Maghrebins. A Maghrebi father had brought his two sons in their early teens. Apart from them, there were no children and not many young people (11 o’clock being of course in the middle of work for most people). I spotted a couple of other students or researchers like me (white women), with their notebook and camera, and a handful of photographers or journalists (non-white men of varous ages – one from France 3 (who has a strong regional news coverage) asking an elderly woman in front of me for an interview. To my knowledge it hasn’t been shown yet. There was also a cameraman there, filming for a documentary, I heard later).

I arrived late, and the loudspeakers were of not very good quality. Thus as I stood in the back of the crowd of maybe some hundreds(?), I didn’t hear much of what was said. However, the member of the Communist Party concluding the event spoke in a loud voice and I heard him make reference to the ongoing realities of everyday discrimination and the deportations of sans papiers (see manif). But above all, he spoke of the commemoration as a travail de mémoire (memory work) to force awareness upon the nation and also an effort to make “the martyrs of Charonne” recognised by state.

“Where are the young Maghrebins?”, a white female pensioner asked at the meeting at the townhall afterwards. As I’m reading a book for the moment on the lack of collective memory of this generation (Abdellali Hajjat, 2005: Immigration Postcoloniale et mémoire), I think it’s a good question. But, it shouldn’t go for only the young French Maghrebins; it goes for all the young French. The participants were all but a very few of a certain age, and the memory of the events in 1961-2 is about to perish with them. The meeting took place at the hall of festivities at the town hall of the 11th arrondissement, an imposing place imbued with symbolic meaning that I haven’t got time to go into now. After two brief speeches by an historian (Alain Dewerpe at EHESS, 2006: Charonne, 8 février 1962, anthropologie d’un massacre d’État) and a journalist (Jean-Luc Einaudi: La bataille de Paris, on 17th of October 1961), numerous people in their 60s and 70s testified of their experiences of the time.

Finally, before I go out and take a photo of the memorial plaque at the station, a few words on what took place that day in February, 44 years ago. It was state of emergency in France and 6 weeks later a ceasefire was to be signed. From what I have read, the outcome of the war was already given and acknowledged – except by the illegal OAS (Organisation de l’armée secrete, who in fact has been in the news again lately in relation to the law from February last year on colonialism… more on that later) who were fighting to keep Algeria French. The demonstration was held against the continuous attacks and assassinations carried out by the OAS at the time, and it was organised by a number of trade unions and the Communist Party.

“The martyrs of Charonne”

Published on February 9, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Fieldwork, History, Places

Yesterday, I had planned an academic expedition to L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales again, this time for a lecture on the sociological use of documentaries where they would also screen a “cinema verité” film on young Parisians’ vision on happiness from 1960 (Chronique d’un été). But chances wanted that I should stay in the neighbourhood and, in fact, be witnessing the making of a documentary on recent French history.
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Not long ago, I had included the communist newspaper L’humanité to my RSS desktop reader (that every morning kindly fills my laptop with hundreds of news in English and French). L’humanité appears for some reason high on that list of news, just under BBC and À toutes les victimes. In this instance that was luck, because about 20 minutes from the time I was turning on my computer and having my morning coffee there were to take place a commemoration ceremony for 9 people who died due to police brutality in a demonstration 8th of February 1962, during the Algerian war… It had happened at Métro Charonne, just 10 minutes from where I live. And I had no idea about it…

(The Internet was conspicuously silent on the ceremony to take place, but I found out that Indymedia had published a text the one day that I was unable to access the web (or even leaving the bed due to some stomach ailment anthropologists possibly are subjected to experience qua anthropologists in the field, wherever that field might be).)

What is the point of this long intro? Apart from making a (methodological) point of the importance of serendipity in fieldwork, I of course also want to make a claim about the invisibility of certain facts in the collective memory and history of this country.

In the autumn, I learnt that on 17th of October 1961 the Parisian police threw more than 200 (we will never know the exact number) peaceful Algerian demonstrators into the river. The recentness of such a brutality in a European capital is shocking to me. So is the lack of attention devoted to it. After the commemoration ceremony yesterday, I scrutinised the buildings around the metro entrance to see if there were a memorial plaque there. I found nothing that would remind the passer-byes of what had happened just some 40 years ago (but it seems there is one on the inside of the station, I’ll have to go and check…). However, at the open debate/meeting at the town hall afterwards I was to hear that the intersection between Boulevard Voltaire and Rue Charonne is to be named Place de 8 février 1962.

After the crushing of the demonstrators (150 wounded, in addition to the 9 deaths) the police tried to make up the most ridiculous lies, as they had after La nuit noire, 17th October 1961. However, between 500 000 and 1 million people participated in the funeral cortège to the cemetery Père Lachaise. But the chief of police, Maurice Papon continued in his job for years afterwards… (The same Papon – and this is something I must admit I don’t understand – had also had a high position during the Vichy Nazi collaborating government and taking part in sending more than 1500 French Jews to extinction…) These facts are known to the French today, but I must admit that they are so shocking to me that I don’t understand why they haven’t got more attention.

The French state has probably known better than most that l’oubli (forgetfulness, oblivion, omission, oversight) is fundamental for any nation (Ernest Renan, 1882: Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?) But over and over again the recent years, not to say months, it has become apparent that this long lasting and biased oblivion has to come to an end.

(As I write this, France 2 is broadcasting a critical American documentary on the laïque (secular) French state, at the moment focusing on the controversy around the Muslim headscarf. I hear a veiled girl say; “Integration, that’s finished. That was our parents’ generation. I am French. I’m born here”).

Yesterday, I had planned an academic expedition to L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales again, this time for a lecture on the sociological use of documentaries where they would also screen a “cinema verité” film on young Parisians’ vision…