Post-Colonialism and the Political Imagination

Abstract

This article considers the rise and fall of political anthropology in the context of the global shift from colonial to post-colonial rule. Classical political anthropology peaked in the 1960s and has remained obstinately out of fashion ever since, not least because of the narrow, acultural view of politics associated with it. Neither recent anthropological interest in power, nor more broad theoretical attention to the issue of post-colonialism, seem to have helped bring the phenomenon of post-colonial politics into clearer theoretical light. Taking its cue from Malinowski's late interest in questions of transculturation, the article argues for the gains of a radically empirical approach to post-colonial politics, an approach which would acknowledge the diversity of post-colonial experience and the unpredictable contours of what different people take politics to be. The article uses recent anthropological examples from South Asia, concentrating on issues of democracy and representation, to illustrate what such an approach might look like. Drawing the line Imagine yourself high in the air over Africa. It is 1938 and you are 'a passenger flying over the inland route of the Imperial Airways', a route which our intellectual navigator assures us, can provide 'almost literally a bird's eye view of the cultural situation'. As you cross the Upper Nile the circular villages and unclothed natives give 'a surface effect of Old Africa'. But 'as the 'plane crosses the border between Nilotic and Bantu peoples, it becomes obvious that it is a transformed Africa over which we are moving. Among the Baganda the houses are new, square, built on the European pattern; even from above, the dress and equipment of the natives spell Manchester and Birmingham.' Then, moving on, 'In Nairobi we enter a world where natives and things African seem to play but the role of mutes and properties respectively ... The white inhabitants go about their European business and live in a world almost untouched, on its surface, by Africa.' And then, shifting the visual metaphor into full imperial gear, 'we can conclude that changing Africa is not a single subject-matter, but one composed of three phases. It would be almost possible to take a piece of chalk, and on the face of the continent to map out spatially the areas of each type: predominantly European, genuinely African, and those covered by the processes of change' (Malinowski 1938: vii-x). I have been quoting from Malinowski's 1938 introduction to Methods of study of culture contact in Africa. It is an essay full of surprises and required reading for