Bewitching Land: The Role of Land Disputes in Converting Kin to Strangers and in Class Formation in Malawi

Abstract

Multiple quarrels within and between families in rural southern Malawi mediate an invisible, subterranean process of social differentiation and class formation - a 'hidden history'. The paper argues that conflict over land underlies most of the disputes, is central to the division of matrilineal families and, in turn, to the process of social differentiation and class formation. The disputes have the effect of turning family members into 'strangers', or those who do not belong on the family land. Family oral histories suggest that the matrilineal groups split up ('break' in local metaphor) not only along the cleavages between sisters' daughters (that is, in the second generation of matrilineal segments) but between sisters. A final rupture of a matrilineal family occurs through increasingly bitter quarrels, often including accusations of witchcraft, and the move of a group of sisters to a different area, thereby ceding the matri-family's land to those who remain. The paper concentrates on this 'hidden' process, although it also provides a sketch of some of the key past and present patterns of differentiation in Malawi. The problem in discerning social differentiation and class formation as these take place (rather than post hoc from a long historical viewpoint) is precisely that one is observing things as they happen, the gradual'coming about' of restructured groups. The article argues that property in land is central to long-term processes of agrarian transformation and class formation; briefly outlines significant historical precedents to the contemporary situation in Malawi; and presents detailed family histories to support the argument.