Comentarios:

16 07 2009 Anna

You put too much emphasis on the "ethnic" thing. We Senegalese do not think of ourselves as Wolof, etc, because we are all mixed and we all speak Wolof as is it the most important language, most of us do not even speak another Senegalese language, Mbalax is Woloff, so what, Youssou Ndour, who took it wordwide once sung that he is not Woloff so give us a break and stop trying to understant Africa through the lens of ethnicity.

16 07 2009 lunatrix

Hi Anna, and thanks for your comment. I didn't mean to bother you and it seems I did, so I'm sorry. In any case, what I said was that mbalax "is said to be primarily Wolof, but it seems to me that it is now everyone's music". By this I meant that in its origins Mbalax was a wolof music style, but that is no longer the case, now that's history and everyone plays and dances it. Period.

However, I don't fully agree with your statement that Senegalese people don't see themselves across ethnic lines. It's true that sometimes it means little else than the language one speaks (in some places like Dakar maybe not even that). But everyone knows if they are Serer, Peuhl, Diola, Mandjac or whatever, and very often I've heard complaints about the dominance of the Wolof in the country. So I believe there are different interpretations on the role of ethnicity in Senegal depending on who you are and where you live. And I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing, because ethnic diversity means that there is a wealth in languages, cultures, etc. that most Europan(ized) countries have lost over time.

There's a lot written on the issue from a journalistic point of view, for example:

http://www.blogs-afrique.info/senegal-politique/index.php/2009/06/24/2089-parait-que-le-senegal-est-un-pays-de-tolerance

Also some other people have written about it in academic journals:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1771690

And do you really think that most Diola people in Casamance would agree that ethnicity is not important, and would not see themselves and Diola and not Wolof?

In any case, thanks for your comment and sorry if you found what I said offensive.

16 07 2009 Anna

Why is it that only the Dioulas in Casamance that want to separate ? I am old enough to remember when and why this conflict started and it has nothing to do with ethnicity.

Ethnicity was invented by the colonial powers and some are too happy to use it now for their own purpose or because they are unhappy with their lives.

You may read :

L'Éthnicité en Afrique

Par Oumar DIAGNE. Colloque d'Aircrige - Dictature et racisme d'Etat au Soudan et en Mauritanie : esclavage, répression, extermination (31 mai-1er mai 2002, Paris IV-Sorbonne).

http://www.destindelafrique.com/annagueye/L-Ethnicite-en-Afrique_a246.html

This is the kind of writings that will help Africa ...

I am not a Woloff and have no problem with their so called "dominance". I do not even know what people like you would call me as my father is from one ethnic group and my mum from two ! Like the vast majority of the Senegaleses.

So give us a break ! We do not need foreigners to fuel on ethnicity we are enough problems to deal with.

16 07 2009 lunatrix

Anna, I'm just trying to have a conversation and keep learning about this. I guess it would be safer for me to shut up, but if I did, I'd have nobody to tell me that I am wrong and to recommend specific readings, like you just did. I appreciate that you care enough to challenge what I am saying, but it's not necessary to be so aggressive.

I've talked with enough people to know that for some, ethnicity is important. So maybe what you are saying is an opinion that comes out of your own personal experience, not necessarily one shared by "all senegalese". Senegal is also a colonial invention, or isn't it? And I'm not talking about the political conflict in Casamance, but about ethnicity as an articulating point of Diola's collective identity. That's a whole different kettle of fish.

I'm VERY interested in what you have to say. I'ts my job, and getting to know Senegal has become a personal interest for me as well. I'd just appreciate if you could be a bit less judgemental, because I've never said I know everything, and still you're making a lot of assumptions here. This is a personal blog, not an enciclopaedia. And if I'm wrong I'm happy to accept it, but so far nothing of what you've said changes the fact that a good chunk of my interviewees (120 in Saint Louis, Rosso Senegal, Dakar, Bambey, Mbour, Kaolack, Bignona, Ziguinchor, Oussuye and Niambalang, plus the ones that are now in Spain) talked of themselves first as members of an ethnic group and then as Senegalese. My main interest is not ethnic identities in Senegal but migration networks, yet I find that very intriguing. I'm not saying that you are wrong, only that there may be different interpretations depending on who's talking.

16 07 2009 lunatrix

No offense, but wouldn't you also be some kind of a foreigner?

16 07 2009 Anna

It is true that it is not necessary to be so aggressive, I just think that too many lives have been lost in Africa because of this issue that I cannot keep my cool.

I am tired of Westerners trying to understand Africa through thid "ethnic thing".

No I am not a foreigner. I am a third cultural adult but very Senegalese in Senegal.

16 07 2009 Anna

I will stop coming to this blog.

Regards.

16 07 2009 elia

Anna, one of the reasons why I love reading blogs is to be exposed to points of view & opinions that I don't necessarily agree with and that make me think about my own perspective.

What is the point of only reading what already agrees with your very way of thinking? Falling into an echo-chamber of like-minded people doesn't really advance anything.

IMHO

16 07 2009 Anna

Sorry, I do not see how and where reading the same things over and over again on Africa and ethnicity challanges me ! It makes me mad that all.

I wll be challenged when I read something clever...

16 07 2009 elia

What is great about blogs is the comments section, a space for discussion where you can challenge the author and engage in a debate if you don't agree with her points of view instead of just tearing your hair in frustration. That's what I meant.

17 07 2009 lunatrix

Anna: I wrote an entry about mbalax. As I said, I'm very interested in what you have to say because I know I have a lot to learn about Senegal (and Africa more generally). But so far all you've done has been to accuse me of inciting genocide, call me stupid ("when I read something clever"), and basically say that I am just doing what "all Westerners" do. I think it's a bit too much. If you want to engage in a conversation, do -- I'm in. I you just want to vent, don't pretend you are engaging in a conversation.

17 07 2009 Anna

I did not want to vent. I have been following your blog for some time as I was happy to read what a "foreigner" could think of my country. And I was so happy when I saw that the subject was Mbalax, but when I saw a complete list of all the ethnic groups that drove me mad. As I just read on the front page of this blog : C’est là que j’ai compris pour quoi les pratiques sont presque les mêmes partout.

Like we say in French CQFD ...

24 07 2009 Anna

Madame Toubab,

I found another paper :

The political manipulation of ethnicity in Africa

Alexis Rawlinson

January 2003 Tel +33 (0)6 74 63 10 93 info@insolens.org www.insolens.org

Today’s bounded and mutually antagonistic ethnic groups are largely the creation of elites and colonial masters.

As John Lonsdale’s distinction between “political tribalism” and “moral ethnicity” reveals, ethnic mobilisation is not only an instrument for the control and distribution of the state’s resources; it is successful because it carries a powerful emotive appeal. Differentiation through ethnicity has always existed in Africa and humans have a universal propensity to form collective identities, to distinguish outsiders from insiders, along ethnic lines. For example, some African ethnic groups in equatorial Africa willingly cooperated with the pre-colonial slave trade, capturing individuals deemed to belong to other ethnic groups and exchanging them for goods. There were, moreover, some notable pre-colonial kingdoms and nations, such as the Kongo, Zulu or Baganda, whose members had a strong collective consciousness.

Nevertheless, as has been confirmed by countless studies, in much of pre-colonial Africa ethnic identity was fluid and ill-defined, and the largest collective unit conceived of by most Africans was rather parochial, for instance at the level of the lineage group or clan. Aidan Southall notes that pre-colonial African societies were characterised by “interlocking, overlapping, multiple identities” based on ethnic, cultural and geographical communities that were smaller than any “tribe”. In most cases Africans had only a very weak allegiance, if at all, to what might now be classed as a “tribe” according to objective criteria of genetic, linguistic or cultural homogeneity within a geographical region. These objective criteria, in any case, were rarely clearly demarcated, as much of the African continent was marked by a gradual change in customs and ways of life from one village or community to the next, depending on local geographic, agricultural and climatic conditions. Indeed, the process of consolidation of dialects into a single tribal vernacular was often not begun until the arrival of Christian missionaries intent on spreading the (printed) Word. Jean-Loup Amselle goes so far as to claim that “there was nothing that resembled a bounded ethnic group during the pre-colonial period.”

Far from being primordial units with defined boundaries, ethnic groups are largely a colonial legacy, which emerged as instruments for the control and distribution of people and resources. European colonists encouraged the assimilation of Africans into groups, via the creation of administrative units which were subsequently labelled in ethnic terms, as occurred in British-run Uganda, and the compulsory classification of local people according to “tribe”, as occurred in Belgian-run Rwanda. In British-run Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), an astonishing catalogue of stereotypes was drawn up: the Ngoni were “strong” and “warlike”, the Lamba were “lazy and indolent”, and so on for the 70-odd “tribes”.

Whereas pre-colonial African societies had tended to operate on the basis of limited horizons which did not require a large degree of social organisation, the efficient administration of vast swathes of colonised territory by an external coercive power required categorisation and order, rigid boundaries and parameters. As Mahmood Mamdani comments, the scarcity of colonists in most parts of Africa (though not southern Africa, or, to a lesser extent, parts of East Africa) demanded the creation of a system of “indirect rule”. Colonial administrators, too stretched to sort out matters at the village level, wanted to be able to negotiate with a few “big men”, the supposed traditional chiefs. These chiefs were to be responsible for the execution of colonial policy in their allocated region. Where existing ethnic communities were fragmented (i.e. in most places), these communities were amalgamated or assigned to other groups, and a single chief was chosen to represent them all. Ethnic groups such as the Yoruba in Nigeria (containing at least 12 important sub-groups within the collective “tribe”), Akan in Ghana or Xhosa in South Africa were largely artificial amalgams of linguistically similar cultural groups. Cultural symbols and ancient customs were identified, and where necessary created, to give ballast to the idea of a unitary and timeless “tribe”. It was, to use Terence Ranger and Eric Hobsbawm’s idea, the “invention of tradition”.

Africans themselves participated in this creation of “tribes” because not to do so would exclude or marginalise them from the bargaining process for state-allocated resources. Ethnicity was promoted and defined “in the pursuit of material advantage”, to use Crawford Young’s description. Robert Bates argues that communities amalgamated not because of an emerging common ethnic consciousness but to profit from the comparative advantages of size: the larger the “tribe”, the more influence it could wield in negotiations with the colonial administration. Ethnic elites in particular, as the state’s agents in the distribution of the resources allocated to their “tribe”, had a great deal to gain from larger ethno-regional groups, and as opinion-leaders they were able to influence the acceptance of a tribal consciousness among ordinary Africans. An excellent example of this process was the creation of a Tiv “paramount chief” in central Nigeria to represent central Nigerian interests in the face of an increasingly hegemonic tripartite structure, North (Hausa-Fulani), South-East (Igbo) and South-West (Yoruba). Conversely, the colonial administrators and, in those parts of Africa in which Europeans settled, neo-colonial white minority governments, manipulated ethnic rivalries as a form of “divide and rule”. Long after the end of colonial domination elsewhere, apartheid South Africa deliberately fomented sectarianism, both within its own borders (encouraging Zulu differentiation from the main black consciousness movement) and among its neighbours (in Angola for example), in order to prevent the growth of African nationalist sentiment. Both coloniser and colonised participated in defining and encouraging the emergence of bounded and mutually antagonistic ethnic identities. J. Iliffe summarises the situation as one in which “Europeans believed Africans belonged to tribes; Africans built tribes to belong to.”

*

Ethnic mobilization may be reduced through responsible conduct by elites.

Far from being primordial and a largely uncontrollable source of instability, then, modern ethnic sectarianism is political and, to a large degree, artificial. By encouraging a clientelist attitude towards the state, whose resources are perceived as a pie from which each group must try to carve out as large a slice as possible, and by hampering any efforts at cooperative nation-building, the politicization of ethnicity is also one of the major barriers to human and economic development in African societies. Devising methods to discourage the political calculations that lie at the root of ethnic appeals has exercised nationalist African leaders since independence. President Milton Obote of Uganda (1962-71, 80-85) complained that Ugandan politicians always seemed to be playing some curious game of “Tribal Development Monopoly”.

Far from being primordial units with defined boundaries, ethnic groups are largely a colonial legacy, which emerged as instruments for the control and distribution of people and resources. European colonists encouraged the assimilation of Africans into groups, via the creation of administrative units which were subsequently labelled in ethnic terms, as occurred in British-run Uganda, and the compulsory classification of local people according to “tribe”, as occurred in Belgian-run Rwanda. In British-run Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), an astonishing catalogue of stereotypes was drawn up: the Ngoni were “strong” and “warlike”, the Lamba were “lazy and indolent”, and so on for the 70-odd “tribes”.

Whereas pre-colonial African societies had tended to operate on the basis of limited horizons which did not require a large degree of social organisation, the efficient administration of vast swathes of colonised territory by an external coercive power required categorisation and order, rigid boundaries and parameters. As Mahmood Mamdani comments, the scarcity of colonists in most parts of Africa (though not southern Africa, or, to a lesser extent, parts of East Africa) demanded the creation of a system of “indirect rule”. Colonial administrators, too stretched to sort out matters at the village level, wanted to be able to negotiate with a few “big men”, the supposed traditional chiefs. These chiefs were to be responsible for the execution of colonial policy in their allocated region. Where existing ethnic communities were fragmented (i.e. in most places), these communities were amalgamated or assigned to other groups, and a single chief was chosen to represent them all. Ethnic groups such as the Yoruba in Nigeria (containing at least 12 important sub-groups within the collective “tribe”), Akan in Ghana or Xhosa in South Africa were largely artificial amalgams of linguistically similar cultural groups. Cultural symbols and ancient customs were identified, and where necessary created, to give ballast to the idea of a unitary and timeless “tribe”. It was, to use Terence Ranger and Eric Hobsbawm’s idea, the “invention of tradition”.

Africans themselves participated in this creation of “tribes” because not to do so would exclude or marginalise them from the bargaining process for state-allocated resources. Ethnicity was promoted and defined “in the pursuit of material advantage”, to use Crawford Young’s description. Robert Bates argues that communities amalgamated not because of an emerging common ethnic consciousness but to profit from the comparative advantages of size: the larger the “tribe”, the more influence it could wield in negotiations with the colonial administration. Ethnic elites in particular, as the state’s agents in the distribution of the resources allocated to their “tribe”, had a great deal to gain from larger ethno-regional groups, and as opinion-leaders they were able to influence the acceptance of a tribal consciousness among ordinary Africans. An excellent example of this process was the creation of a Tiv “paramount chief” in central Nigeria to represent central Nigerian interests in the face of an increasingly hegemonic tripartite structure, North (Hausa-Fulani), South-East (Igbo) and South-West (Yoruba). Conversely, the colonial administrators and, in those parts of Africa in which Europeans settled, neo-colonial white minority governments, manipulated ethnic rivalries as a form of “divide and rule”. Long after the end of colonial domination elsewhere, apartheid South Africa deliberately fomented sectarianism, both within its own borders (encouraging Zulu differentiation from the main black consciousness movement) and among its neighbours (in Angola for example), in order to prevent the growth of African nationalist sentiment. Both coloniser and colonised participated in defining and encouraging the emergence of bounded and mutually antagonistic ethnic identities. J. Iliffe summarises the situation as one in which “Europeans believed Africans belonged to tribes; Africans built tribes to belong to.”

*

Ethnic mobilization may be reduced through responsible conduct by elites.

Far from being primordial and a largely uncontrollable source of instability, then, modern ethnic sectarianism is political and, to a large degree, artificial. By encouraging a clientelist attitude towards the state, whose resources are perceived as a pie from which each group must try to carve out as large a slice as possible, and by hampering any efforts at cooperative nation-building, the politicization of ethnicity is also one of the major barriers to human and economic development in African societies. Devising methods to discourage the political calculations that lie at the root of ethnic appeals has exercised nationalist African leaders since independence. President Milton Obote of Uganda (1962-71, 80-85) complained that Ugandan politicians always seemed to be playing some curious game of “Tribal Development Monopoly”.

Bibliography

Amselle, Jean-Loup (1998), Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere, Stanford University Press.

Anderson, Benedict (1991) [1983], Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso.

Bayart, Jean-François (1993), The State in Africa: the Politics of the Belly, Longman.

Berman, Bruce (1998), “Politics of Uncivil Nationalism: Ethnicity, Patronage and the African State”, African Affairs, No. 97.

Fanon, Franz (1967) [1961], The Wretched of the Earth, Penguin.

Freund, Bill (1998), The Making of Contemporary Africa: the Development of African Society since 1800, 2nd. ed., Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Hobsbawm, Eric (1990), Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, Cambridge University Press.

Hobsbawm, Eric & Terence Ranger, eds. (1992) [1983], The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge University Press.

Hodgkin, Thomas (1956), Nationalism in Colonial Africa, Frederick Muller.

Iliffe, J. (1979), A Modern History of Tanganyika, Cambridge University Press.

Lasswell, Harold (1990) [1936], Politics: Who Gets What, When, How, Peter Smith Publishers.

Lemarchand, René (1972), “Political Clientelism and Ethnicity in Tropical Africa: Competing Solidarities in Nation-Building”, American Political Science Review, Vol. 64 No.1.

Lonsdale, John (1994), “Moral Ethnicity and Political Tribalism”, in P. Kaarsholm and J. Hultin, eds., Inventions and Boundaries: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, Institute for Development Studies, Roskilde University.

Mamdani, Mahmood (1996), Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Princeton University Press.

Marks, Shula & Stan Trapido, eds. (1987), The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth Century South Africa, .

Nnoli, Okwudiba, ed. (1998), Ethnic Conflicts in Africa, CODESRIA.

Nolutshungu, Sam (1990), “Fragments of a Democracy: Reflections on Class and Politics in Nigeria”, Third World Quarterly, Vol.12 No.1.

Rothchild, Donald & Victor Olorunsola, eds. (1983), State Versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas, Westview.

Southall, Aidan (1970), “The Illusion of Tribe”, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol.5 No.1.

Vail, Leroy, ed. (1989), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa, University of California Press.

Young, Crawford (1986), “Nationalism, Class and Ethnicity in Africa: a Restrospective”, Cahiers d’études africaines, Vol. 26 No. 3.

25 07 2009 lunatrix

Thanks a lot, Anna. I've read a few of those, it's good stuff. Fanon in particular is one of my all-time favourites. If you come across anything about Senegal specifically (apart from "Sénégal. Les ethnies et la Nation" de M. Diouf) ... would you mind? I'd love to read it :o)