Discourses Of Autochthony Research Articles

Ethnic associations in Katanga (DR Congo): dynamics of alliance and faction formation from a social capital perspective

ABSTRACT The complexity of ethnic associational life in Katanga, Democratic Republic of Congo, resulted from both the existence of associations representing ethnic groups, and alliances between related ethnic associations, and between communities originating from the same province. These organisations competed with one another in a bid to secure economic resources. Ethnic associations are characterised by bonding social capital, reinforcing intra-group solidarity, and employ sometimes autochthony discourses to reinforce their demands. Alliances between ethnic associations are based on bridging ties generating broader solidarities and identities, though these can become associated with the hardening of new boundaries: bridging social capital is thus converted into new forms of bonding social capital that defend common interests. This paper challenges the assumption that bridging social capital lowers the risk of inter-group conflicts. It also shows that combining “bridging” with “linking social capital” nevertheless contribute to mitigating inter-group conflicts.

“The Lore of the Place”: (In)Hospitalities in Michael Crummey’s Galore (2010)

In Michael Crummey’s Galore, whose narrative is driven by the arrivals of newcomers into a Newfoundland coastal community, the interplay between hospitality and hostility offers a lens through which the author’s concern with “the lore of the place” can be productively studied. Drawing on the contemporary reassessment of the notion of place, this paper examines how the novel’s representation of (in)hospitality evinces a critical engagement with the attachment to continuity, the search for origins and the need for emplacement, which ultimately disengages the text from discourses of autochthony.

Identity Politics and Conflict in Nigeria: A Criminological Focus on Oil and Oil Producing Communities in the Niger Delta

This study explored identity mobilization and conflict among oil producing communities in the Niger Delta in Nigeria with an analysis of conflict involving Eket and Ibeno people in Akwa Ibom State. Fashioned after the survey tradition, primary data were obtained from key informant interviews while published materials provided secondary data. Inspired by the social disorganization theory, findings show how increasing recognition of the accumulative potentials of oil engendered violent conflict between the two ethnic groups as they struggled for greater access to oil benefits. Youths carried out the violent clashes, while local elites fueled the conflict by providing political coverage and arms. Identity mobilization through discourses of autochthony and locality played a central role in the conflict, as each group was organized in order to enhance competitive efficiency. The conflict shows the centrality of oil in Nigeria's political economy, and how it shapes both national political discourse and the broad rhythms of accumulation, rent-seeking disposition and social conflict, including conflict among oil producing communities.

Against National Sovereignty: The Postcolonial New World Order and the Containment of Decolonization

In this paper, I examine the growing reliance on discourses of autochthony in nationalisms throughout the world. Native-ness (or indigeneity) is increasingly being made a key criterion for claiming national sovereignty over territory, as well as the more amorphous – but no less consequential – claim to national membership. By examining the crucial colonial genealogy of autochthonous discursive practices, I argue that claims to autochthony are metaphysical and, as such, deeply depoliticizing of the exclusions they produce. Drawing upon historical studies showing how imperial-states deployed autocthonous discourses to divide those they categorized as Natives and Migrants from one another in an effort to maintain their imperial rule, I show the continuities of such practices in the Postcolonial New World Order of nation-states. Despite their rhetoric, I argue that contemporary, nationalist discourses of autochthonies have not – and cannot – succeed in realizing decolonization, precisely because of their reliance on modes of political, economic, and social exclusion based on the separation of people categorized as either Native-Nationals or as Migrants. The material force of ideas of Native-Nationalism(s), because they are premised on territorial sovereignty and not on the end of practices of expropriation and exploitation across the planet, are part of the worldwide relations of ruling and not threats to it.

Territorial Découpage and Issues of ‘Autochthony’ in Former Katanga Province, the Democratic Republic of Congo: The Role of Urban Ethnic Associations

This study investigates how ethnic associations have tried to influence decision making in the decentralization process in the Democratic Republic of Congo, particularly in Katanga. Creating new provinces by splitting up Katanga induced the construction of new identities and fueled tensions between communities: ethnic associations either oppose(d) or advocate(d) this break-up for political and socio-economic reasons that concerned interests of the communities they represent. They employed autochthony discourses to reinforce their arguments and claims. In the context of a weak state and its economic uncertainty, decentralization that aimed to bring governors closer to the governed did not necessarily decrease ethnic conflict.

New land, old claims and the politics of belonging during a changing agrarian situation in central Zimbabwe

This article examines the way discourses of autochthony and belonging were deployed by various groups of people to make claims over land during the implementation of Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) in 2000. Although the FTLRP was not officially restitutive, people who occupied farms in Mhondoro Ngezi in central Zimbabwe claimed they were recovering their ancestral lands lost during colonial-era forced removals. As a result, discourses of autochthony and belonging became salient during land occupations. The paper concludes by arguing that claims of autochthony and belonging remain hugely contested and that such claims have underpinned the way various groups of people who occupied a former white-owned conservancy made claims over land and how they sought to legitimise such claims.

Autochthony and insecure land tenure: the spatiality of ethnicized hybridity in the periphery of post-conflict Bukavu, DRC

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the interaction of the traces of war with institutional hybridity in shaping the use of space in the periphery of Bukavu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. In peri-urban Bukavu, the urbanization of previously rural areas has created an uncertain mixture of land allocation mechanisms that are not adequately explained by representation in terms of a clash or mixture of statutory and customary law. This hybridity has created uncertainty for both newcomers and early settlers in which the othering and violence required to justify both encroachment on, and the protection of, land are supported by discourses of autochthony. Large parts of peri-urban Bukavu, in particular the area of Kasha, are gradually being balkanized by quasi-voluntary socio-spatial practices of segregation by ethnicities whose existence and salience are constantly, and at times forcibly, re-negotiated. While initially perceived as a safe haven, the city’s periphery is becoming an area of acute insecurity.

Land and exile: revisiting the case of Burundian refugees in Tanzania

In 2007, the Government of Tanzania and the Government of Burundi in partnership with the UNHCR adopted the Tanzania Comprehensive Solutions Strategy (TANCOSS). TANCOSS offered a choice between repatriation and naturalization to 220,000 Burundian refugees who had been living in three rural settlements in Western Tanzania (Ulyankulu, Katumba and Mishamo) since 1972. It was an unprecedented intervention and it garnered international attention and support (Milner 2014). Initially, obtaining citizenship was meant to be conditional on relocation away from the refugee settlements. This plan, however, was renounced, and ultimately those who opted for citizenship were permitted to remain on the land of the settlements. Following naturalization, new citizens’ relationship with the land they occupy in Tanzania has changed – both in legal and symbolic terms. This article explores how former Burundian refugees were able to access land in exile and how, following naturalization, they seek recognition of their land rights. In the existing literature, scholars have highlighted the prominence of discourses of autochthony in the ways that both citizenship and land rights have come to be defined and asserted in contexts of migration. There is a risk that this emphasis hides other instances, in which autochthony is not the dominant trope through which citizenship or land rights are claimed, as this article demonstrates in the case of Burundian refugees in Tanzania.

From Autochthony to Violence? Discursive and Coercive Social Practices of the Mai-Mai in Fizi, Eastern DR Congo

Abstract:This article explores the links between autochthony discourses and physical violence through a case study of a Mai-Mai group in the eastern DR Congo. While this group garners support by employing such discourses and related tropes ofautodéfense(self-defense), there are clear limits to the capacity of these narratives to mobilize for and legitimize violent action. Furthermore, much of the violence committed by the Mai-Mai is not informed directly by notions of autochthony, but is rather geared toward the consolidation of power. This observation should act as a caution against the a priori coding of violence according to the ways it is discursively framed by its protagonists.

“If you are with ten, only two will be Batswana”: nation-making and the public discourse of paranoia in Botswana

A recurrent anxiety in contemporary Botswana is the perception of an immediate threat from external forces: strangers, livestock, and disease. How do the state and its citizens react under these conditions? The following article explores this question in the context of globalization, discourses of autochthony, and the blood-based politics of population management in Botswana. In recent years, Batswana increasingly see themselves as a nation under siege from foreigners, and in particular, newly arrived migrants from Zimbabwe. Under pressure from outside, Botswana citizens fear the loss of their physical homeland and the denigration of their collective identity and sense of morality. Through a reading of publications in the print media, I examine the articulation of the rhetoric of invasion and national paranoia that has taken root in Botswana. Although the presumption of assault by outsiders is said to threaten the existence of the Batswana nation through the erosion of the supposedly distinct boundaries between citizen and stranger, these apprehensions also carry a potent creative potential. I argue that, in an environment of economic uncertainty and ethnic instability, the specter of the stranger/Zimbabwean is used to reconfigure the content and emphasis of citizenship in Botswana.

Migration, citizenship and autochthony: strategies and challenges for state-building in Côte d'Ivoire

Although migration has for some time been an important topic in African studies, the ‘politics of migration’ remain relatively under-examined. While there is a substantial body of literature on migration and economic development, we know much less about the impact of migration on other state-building processes. The upsurge of autochthony discourses throughout much of Africa is a recent phenomenon and an alarming trend that reveals the increased politicisation of migration and the challenge these discourses pose to state-building. This article uses Côte d'Ivoire as a case study to shed light on the complex relationship between migration and state-building. It also provides a fresh perspective on a new chapter in Ivoirian politics as it re-examines this relationship in light of the recent political developments following the 2010 elections. In so doing, it provides new insights into the enduring nature of autochthony, highlighting the contemporary challenges that these discourses pose for both migrants and state-building.

Polarising cultures, politics and communities and fracturing economies in Zimbabwean literature

Traditional postcolonial approaches have tended to read, imagine and construct Africa through an essentialising Manichaeism. Critical of what he describes as ‘nativism’ and ‘Afro-radicalism’ and the dangers they pose to a reinvention of Africa, Achille Mbembe (2002) suggests new ways of seeing the continent. Drawing on the search for this new grammar of reimagining the continent and the nations that constitute it, this article, with reference to selected texts in the Zimbabwean literary canon, historicises literature’s changing relationship with a traditional postcolonial imagining of the nation that produces discourses of autochthony, otherness and violence. Referencing texts by authors including Chikwava, Chinodya, Gappah, Hove, Lessing, Mungoshi, Mutswairo, Saidi, Tagwira and Vera, the article charts the connection between literature and the cultural aspect of nationalism; literature’s complicity in the production of polarising discourses through an early but unproblematised embrace of the Chimurenga discourse conceptualised as the ‘narrative of ordeal’ (Primorac 2007); the moment of celebration and recovery followed by moments of division, death and mourning and erasure and reinscription. It is the last moment that points to literature’s capacity to free itself of the stranglehold of Manichaeism in a search of reimagining the nation, especially in the context of Zimbabwe’s ever-expanding contemporary diaspora shaped by forces of polarisation.

From ‘the Europe of the regions’ to ‘the European Champion League’: the electoral appeal of populist autochthony discourses in Flanders

Keywords: Flanders; autochthony; nationalism; neo-liberalism; integrism This contribution traces three interconnected evolutions that characterise the transformation of Flemish nationalism into autochthony as Flemings obtained more cultural autonomy, the cultural influence of the Flemish Movement declined and Flemish nationalists started radicalising their political demands; as Flemings obtained more political autonomy, demands for greater economic autonomy started extending beyond the Flemish-nationalist fringe; and as Flanders became more autonomous in relation to the federal state, Flemings started identifying increasingly with a new Flemish culture. In the process, both allochtons and Francophone Belgians came to be construed as Flanders' ultimate others .

‘Sons of the Soil’ and Contemporary State Making: autochthony, uncertainty and political violence in Africa

The employment of autochthony discourses has become a prominent feature of contemporary politics around the world. Autochthony discourses link identity and space, enabling the speaker to establish a direct claim to territory by asserting that one is an original inhabitant, a ‘son of the soil’. Drawing from recent African examples, this contribution argues that the employment of autochthony discourses is an attractive response to the ontological uncertainty around political identities within the postmodern/postcolonial condition. Autochthony discourses can resonate deeply with populations longing for a sense of primal security in the face of uncertainty generated by a variety of sources, from the processes of contemporary globalisation to the collapse of neo-patrimonial structures. Yet this sense of security is inevitably fleeting, given the instability and plasticity of autochthony claims. The contribution examines why these discourses are often characterised by violence, and argues that autochthony is frequently linked to the desire for order inherent in contemporary state making, which invariably relies on multiple manifestations of violence.

Allochthons, Colonizers, and Scroungers: Exclusionary Populism in Belgium

Abstract:This article analyzes the growth of autochthony in Belgium as an example of the increasing popularity of autochthony discourses in Western Europe. Autochthony discourses, which try to reserve the benefits of the welfare state to those who are said to really belong, tend to thrive in prosperous Western European welfare states with a strong Social-Democratic tradition that refuse to accept that they have become immigrant countries. In federalized Belgium, however, autochthony has a much stronger appeal in Flanders, which historically was dominated by Christian-Democratic parties, than in Wallonia, which remains a Social-Democratic bulwark. Analyzing Western European autochthony in terms of welfare chauvinism helps explain the ways in which prosperous Flemings, unlike impoverished Walloons, can afford to buy into the neoliberal rhetoric of choice and thus create themselves as autochthons.