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Lecture 11

The impact of the West and the survival of tribal peoples

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Terminology: - tribal, indigenous, native or ‘first people’.

• Third world is a term which has come to describe -– those countries which are underdeveloped and whose people

suffer from various levels of economic and social deprivation. – these countries are in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and have

been through the experience of colonialism.

• Underdeveloped is a term preferred by some.• The fourth world is a term which has come to mean -

– those tribal peoples whose cultures are threatened by modern economic and social changes.

– these peoples can be found in the Third World but also in countries like Canada, USA, Australia, which are considered ‘first world’.

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The expansion of Europe

• The impact of the expansion of Europe from the 15th Century onward has changed global society. A qualitatively different change from previous rise and fall of agrarian empires.

• One way to summarise the impact is to use the categories used previously to look at political economy. - – Production, distribution of surplus, and the justification

of that distribution.

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A. New forms of production.

• New global division of labour– commodities and raw material v. manufactures– land, labour, and capital redistributed across the globe:

• a. Land acquisition - Land seized from tribal peoples. Treaties made and broken.– Land become private property, communal rights and use abrogated.

• b. Labour controlled by slavery, forced labour, indentured labour. People forced into wage labour e.g. by taxation. Massive labour migrations, e.g. Africans to the Americas, Indians to East Africa, Fiji, Guyana etc.

• c. Western capital and technology used to create, transport networks, plantations, mines, which enables the ‘development’ and the ‘exploitation’ of the Third World.

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B. New forms of distribution

• Accumulation becomes the dominant world system.

• Relationships mediated by money come to dominate.

• Example of the ‘Triangular trade’.– Britain - manufactures; guns, cloth, – West Africa - slaves – Americas - sugar, cotton,

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/Triangle_trade.png

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New ideologies

Justifications of the new order.

• Dehumanising the savage. Civilising role, the inevitability of progress, scientific racism.

• Nationalism; anti-colonial, ethnic nationalism, national elite claims to local resources.

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Crises

Eric Wolf in Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century suggests colonialism and the expansion of the West caused three kinds of crises– 1.Demographic crises– 2. Ecological crises – 3. Crises of authority

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1.Demographic crises

• death rates. decimation of populations be disease and genocide.

• birth rates. Sedentisation, labour demands, /cultural suicide

• migration. expulsion, forced labour, expansion of settlement frontier.

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2. Ecological crises

• Disruption by spread of some species, elimination of others.– Destruction of island ecologies, horse in Americas,

Potatoes in Europe, Maize in Africa.

• Production for global markets, shift balance between fallow and active production and thus sustainability. – Disruption of local ecological balance of people and

environment.

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3. Crises of authority.

• Traditional sources of authority challenged by: – colonists (legitimate use of power and

violence),– traders (dissolution of reciprocity and

commodification of relationships by money)– missionaries ( decry old gods, present new

ones, control education)

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Resistance

Resistance was military and cultural.• Military - colonial wars where chiefs/states

resisted. Co-option of local elites by indirect rule.

• Cultural by millenarian and revitalisation movements. Also link to violent resistance. Prophets [messianic] reinterpreting past unit and give magical powers of resistance.

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Geronimo 1829 - 1909

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Zapatistas

• Emiliano Zapata• Mexican revolutionary

1879 -1919

• Zapatista ‘liberation army’ Mexico 2006

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http://www.zealand.org.nz/history.htm

• Painting of Hone Heke chopping down the Union flag at the start of the first Maori war 1845.

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Burridge in New Heaven New Earth suggests four kinds of

millennium each introduced by an innovative prophet.

Aircraft situations. • Sudden arrival of unknown powers.• Cargo cults - trying to obtain the secret of white

mans wealth.• Doesn’t go those who work hard; a secret not of

production but distribution.

c.f. Harris, M. “Phantom Cargo” pp 97-111 in his Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches

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Jon Frum movement• The Jon Frum cargo cult considers

its allegiance to Jon Frum and consider themselves an army of Tanna. They exercise this allegiance periodically by objecting to governmental control by the officials in Port Vila. The followers of Jon Frum have over the years built warehouses, landing strips and bamboo radio towers in preparation of the arrival of air cargo from Jon Frum. The belief is that if the rituals and beliefs are adhered to tightly, that someday Jon Frum will return and bless the loyal followers with wealth in the form of various cargo items.

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Money situations

• Money becomes the measure of people and social relationships.– people can be bought and sold

• Revitalisation of moral values, redefinition of spheres of exchange.

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Social exclusion.• Sections of society are excluded from

higher spiritual achievement - salvation• Brahmin/Kshatriya situations e.g. Sikhism

universalistic re-interpretation of Hinduism; reinterpretations to allow all believers access to salvation. African “native” churches with syncretic beliefs and rituals and local clergy.

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Cultural collapse.

• The entire basis of society is undermined.

• magical salvation of a powerless people.– e.g. Plains American Indian Ghost dance

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Ghost dance: Ogalala Lakota at Pine Ridge

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Do tribal peoples’ have a future

• How to meet the challenges set out above– Population– Ecology– Legitimacy

• Survival International– http://www.survival-international.org/

• Human Zoo’s, Human Rights– International Labour Organisation (ILO) C169 Indigenous

and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989– http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/convde.pl?C169

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Sources

• Bodley, John H. Victims of progress Mountain View, Calif. : Mayfield, 1990.

• Wolf, Eric R. (Eric Robert) Europe and the people without history. London: University of California Press, 1982.

• Burridge, Kenelm. New heaven, new earth : a study of millenarian activities. Oxford : Blackwell, 1969.