This panel consists of two separate, yet complementary sessions. Session A examines the role of memory and retrieval of the past in the construction of social identity; Session B examines the presence of international bodies/influences in different areas of Madagascar and how Malagasy people negotiate between the foreign and the local.
Session A will include contributions on the following topics: how the ancestors learn from the recently dead (Astuti); the process of altering social identity through the suppression of local memory of actual origins on the east coast (Brown); the creation of free descent status in the Malagasy highlands through the manipulation of the memory of slavery (Evers); how popular historians in central Madagascar produce historical narratives for local audiences of descent group members (Larson); children’s reception of knowledge passed on to them by elders, school teachers and deceased royalty in western Madagascar (Sharp).
Session B will include contributions on the following topics: the negotiations between local royalty and a multinational shrimp company concerning the control of an area in the north (Berger); how local people in the central highlands become Great Ancestors through the learning of ‘foreign things’ (Freeman); the transnational kinship network of a royal family from western Madagascar (Gould); new uncertainties for Malagasy people created by their conversion to Seventh-day Adventism (Keller); the importance of modern African music in the creation of regional identity in the south (Mallet); ethical dilemmas faced by participants in the northern Malagasy sapphire trade (Walsh).
In my previous work on the Vezo of Madagascar, I have discussed the different temporal dimensions of Vezo kinship, in particular the transformation of bilateral kinship, experienced by the living, into unilineal descent, experienced by the dead. In my paper I will explore this issue further by looking at the way in which the ancestors are imagined to learn new "ways of doing things" (fomba), as more recently dead relatives join the tomb and carry with them their lived experience of the changing world. This will be discussed with reference to the performative nature of Vezo identity, and the unresolved contradiction (and resulting anxiety) between becoming a person of the present and remaining loyal to one's roots and one's past.
This paper explores the process of altering social identity from one that is stigmatized to one that is socially acceptable. The particular cases involve men in northeastern Madagascar who, contrary to local ideals of virilocal post-marital residence, move to their wives’ home after marriage. Many of these men have managed to suppress local memory of their actual origins and have developed identities as local natives by adopting local taboos, abandoning taboos that identify themselves as outsiders, purchasing land to create their own roots in the region, and marrying their children into prestigious local families. Men who have done this successfully are often contrasted in village talk with men who are “not one of us” with reference to the distant origins of the outsiders.
This paper is based on Evers’ study among Betsileo ex-slaves in the extreme Southern Highlands of Madagascar. Over a ten year period of research, she came to the conclusion that the memory of slavery constituted an ontological prism which the Betsileo first internalised, then subsequently resurrected to meet the harsh demands of a Malagasy frontier. By making themselves the sole guardians and interpreters of both the past and the hereafter, this group of Betsileo in fact reconstructed their history. Through a skilled and evolving use of components of their past, they succeeded in developing highly effective tools of power and exclusion.
For more than a century and a half, historical memory and history writing about highland Madagascar before French colonization has been deeply influenced by the Tantara ny Andriana, a set of historical narratives edited and published in successive volumes by François Callet. A rich and varied set of documents, the Tantara ny Andriana quickly emerged as a commonly recognized cannon of history and historical memory in highland Madagascar. The volumes of Callet’s work have twice been reprinted and are widely referenced by both professional and popular historians of Imerina, the area surrounding Madagascar’s capital of Antananarivo. This paper recontextualizes the Tantara ny Andriana by examining how popular historians in a peripheral district of Imerina, the Vakinankaratra, conduct the work of producing historical narratives for local audiences of descent group members. Their task is a demanding one, requiring them to bring together a variety of historical narratives known to them and to their audiences into a satisfying and meaningful history. The craft of popular historians in the Vakinankaratra and the requirements of their audiences offer a model of how historical memory is publicly constructed in the highland Malagasy countryside from disparate narratives brought into fusion. The work of Vakinankaratra’s popular historians suggests how the Tantara ny Andriana may have emerged as a cannon of history and memory and demonstrates that the art of history making is very much alive in contemporary highland Madagascar.
Historical knowledge is imparted through an array of legitimate narrative forms in Madagascar. These include the tales told by elders, who draw on personal experience and oral tradition; the lessons offered by school teachers within the classroom; and the sacred actions and words of deceased royalty who communicate through the bodies of spirit mediums. In all three contexts children define an especially valued audience. It is through them, after all, that local knowledge of the past may survive through to the next generation. In this sense, children are nevertheless passive recipients of crucial knowledge, not the makers of history in their own right. What, then, of the child medium, who asserts a newfound prestige through the precocious embodiment of powerful (and knowledgeable) spirits? A key concern here is how children in this (and other) contexts might in fact make or reformulate history by responding to already established narrative forms.
This paper provides the description and analysis of trade negotiations recently carried out in Madagascar under the patronage of the Malagasy state, which involved the Antankaraña sovereign Tsimiaro III and the representatives of a Malagasy multinational company. The negotiations concerned the introduction of a shrimp-aquacultural plant in the very heart of a coastal area which the Antankaraña royalty claims as part of its cultural heritage. During the negotiations, the Antankaraña king's behaviour was both incomprehensible and irrational in the eyes of the international experts who had been commissioned by the company to obtain the king’s agreement and to ensure the active involvement of the local population in this ‘development project’. The aim of the paper is to reconstruct the rationality of the different actors.
Malagasy rhetoric often strongly opposes Madagascar with the 'outside', particularly Europe. Amongst the northern Betsileo, school knowledge is regarded as quintessentially foreign, non-local and therefore non-ancestral. Consequently, those who go furthest in school are seen to gain ever more attributes of foreignness (e.g., manners, technical know-how, prestige, and especially wealth). The paper examines local attitudes to this process of transformation and the ways that educated people - as quasi-foreigners - use their wealth and knowledge in mediating their relationship with the 'land of the ancestors'. It shows that despite its portrayal as antithetical to things ancestral, schooling is actually fundamental to the potency and fecundity of the ancestors themselves. Whilst Madagascar and the 'outside' are polarised in rhetoric, they are synthesised in practice.
It has often been noted that in Madagascar, ancestral land is pivotal to notions of identity, and ties to local places can be invoked both to incorporate kin and to exclude strangers. In the context of transnational kinship networks, not only are ties to kin and ancestors established through articulations of place, but so too is locality mediated through the discourses and practices of kinship. Focusing on the kinship connections of a royal family in Mitsinjo, this paper will explore child-fosterage and spirit possession among the practices that link kin ‘at home’ and ‘abroad’, and will illustrate the ways in which ‘ancestral lands’ and ‘descendants’ are negotiated across these fields.
When people in Madagascar convert to Seventh-day Adventism, they adopt a new ontology and a new morality both of which are largely incompatible with ‘traditional’ Malagasy notions. Moreover, in almost all cases, the Malagasy Adventists are but a small minority within their kin group. This situation leads to a number of uncertainties which are located both at the practical and the conceptual level. On a practical level, the Malagasy Adventists are uncertain as to how to lead their lives, in particular as they continue to live in a society which is not governed by Adventist rules. On the conceptual level, conversion to Adventism leads to uncertainties about who the Malagasy Adventists feel they are, and of what constitutes kinship. The paper examines these new uncertainties that Malagasy converts to Adventism are challenged to deal and live with.
Tsapiky is a type of music which has developped in the Toliara region of southern Madagascar since the 1970s. It combines local musical traditions with South African music which became popular via records and the radio. Tsapiky musicians play both for traditional ritual occasions and at paying concerts. They establish a link between rural and urban culture, and by revitalising traditions they play a key role in the building of regional identities. As a form of youth culture Tsapiky enables a variety of relatively autonomous social links to be created and articulates the past, the present and the future in rich and complex ways. Tsapiky has become a means for by-passing the various forms of domination which ordinarily structure social life.
This paper discusses some of the ethical dilemmas faced by participants in the northern Malagasy sapphire trade. Occupying a landscape riddled with places identified as taboo by a variety of religious and secular authorities, these people are faced with difficult choices regarding where they should and/or should not dig for sapphires. Despite the admonition of police, conservation agencies, and longtime residents of the community they inhabit, and the promised threat of reprisals from local ancestors and land spirits, many miners knowingly break these taboos in pursuit of their fortunes. The motivations behind and repercussions of such transgressions reveal a community in which the pursuit of prosperity and the preservation of morality, processes that are so often linked in Malagasy thought and practice, have come into seemingly irresolvable tension.