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'Connections and transformations in Africa' : Ideological technologies of connection: religious linkages in the transformation of African societies |  |
| A workshop at the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands, Tuesday 21 November, 2006 |
return to: Index page 'Connections and transformations in Africa'
by Rijk van Dijk
Draft !
This component of the overall research focus of the themegroup on 'Connections and Transformations: linking technologies and society in Africa and beyond' will comprise two distinct yet related research themes in which the transformative capacity of religion will feature prominently. These research themes will largely be covered by and through the establishment of two separate international research networks for which Rijk van Dijk will act as one of the conveners, being based at the ASC. The research networks aim at the further development of their respective research themes and are open to the participation of those interested from the present ASC research group on connections as well as those from a wider national and international field of collaboration and exchange. The first research network deals with the issue of how religion connects to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa, whereas the second deals with the increasing 'marketability' of religion in Africa whereby religion is connecting to the fields of economic power in ever growing yet unprecedented ways. This perspective on the connection between religion and economy is not necessarily new, not even to the Botswana context (see the earlier work on the economic influence of the London Missionary Society on the Bamangwato (Landau 1995) or the work of the Comaroffs (1997) on the missionary socio-economic encounters around Mafeking in early colonial times), yet the current manifestation of this connection is particularly noteworthy in the way it is related to a neo-liberal project of society and nation-state formation.
Within these research networks Rijk van Dijk will formulate his own research projects, but part of his research activities are drawn towards the operationalisation of these networks and the kind of activities these aim to engender.
Here follows first of all a description of both research networks as have been formulated in status nascendi at this point in time.
The following texts are derived from the panel-proposals that each of these networks have submitted to the AEGIS-ECAS conference, Leiden, July 2007. These panels are meant to generate wider interest for the themes of these networks and are considered as starting-points for their coming into being.
Religion plays an important role in dealing with HIV/AIDS in Africa, yet systematic research is scarce on the relationships between religion and this contemporary pandemic. This network explores the ways religious organisations respond to the challenges of HIV/AIDS as well as to the opportunities that have emerged from the individual and societal consequences of the pandemic. The objective of the network is to understand how and why various forms of religion and religiosity reactively produce coping strategies, moral regimes of identity-formation, modes for the expression of concerns, anxieties, hopes and grief, at the same time as these reconfigure HIV/AIDS pro-actively as offering opportunities of a different nature. Religious organisations may supplement rituals and fellowship with activities funded through trans-national networks and international aid to prevent further spread of HIV, care for infected people, provide ART, and mitigate impact in the lives of affected people. These multi-stranded relationships between religion and HIV/AIDS may significantly alter the functioning and social positioning of religious groups, leaders and communities in everyday situations. The network invites scholars to explore the following four fields of this reconfiguration:
The historicity of religion and disease: How different is the relationship between religion and HIV/AIDS from earlier responses to particular diseases? Leprosy is an example, showing how Christianity as well as Islam impacted on the inclusion/exclusion of sufferers, the notion of suffering itself, morality and treatment. How can religious responses to HIV/AIDS be explored in view of historical links between religion and disease?
Political economy: The pandemic emerged across Africa during the years of SAP, its related reduction of state-based social services and constant, if not intensifying, poverty levels. While some of these factors may have been more or less important in actual situations of specific nation-states (Botswana for example never was targeted by SAP policies) most of these factors have created space for religious groups to provide services and added to the NGO-ization of religion in which international linkages are increasingly relevant. How can the pandemic be viewed as a context providing new opportunities for religious groups?
Social organization, local customs, and rights: The disease is used to reinforce religious stances on family and marriage practices including widow inheritance. Religious groups also serve as implementers of national laws such as those that ascribe property rights to individual wives and children rather than lineage kin. What are the implications of changes in the civic functioning of religion and how do they affect the social fabric of everyday life involving social security, kinship and authority?
Counseling: Practices of counseling connect religion to HIV/AIDS as a practice of identity-making. Counseling by clerics or co-religionists offers religion access to the individual's intimate social, emotional and moral situation. It produces linkages between the public and the private and it can create new public domains (testimonies, radio-programmes, brochures) and new forms of 'civilizing projects' as people are made to understand what to disclose and how to speak and act. What kinds of theological and moral interpretations of AIDS, sexuality, the body, and social responsibility are being produced, and how do these compete for truth-claims about such matters in the social domain?
Conveners; Catrine Christiansen (Anthropology Copenhagen), Dr. Rijk van Dijk (ASC), Prof. Susan Reynolds Whyte (Anthropology Copenhagen), Prof. Niels Kastfelt (Centre of African Studies, Copenhagen).
The ways in which the growth of the neo-liberal economy is affecting societies in southern Africa is often described in anthropology as either giving rise to a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety, or to new forms of exploitation and new levels of inequality. In this literature religion is perceived as the domain where the whimsical nature of the liberal order is symbolically and morally reflected in fearful fantasies related to witchcraft and zombie-economies, or in the rise of millennial movements and prosperity churches that promise unimaginable wealth to the believer. As the economy and morality have become so deeply intertwined, (successful) business communities increasingly also tend to instrumentalize religion so as to socially legitimize their profits and to create the kind of ideological framework that will provide them with moral support for their activities.
Much less attention is however paid to the ways in which religion, and the moral legitimation and inspiration it provides, produces as well as places itself on a market of some sort. On the one hand we note that religious leaders, churches and other religious groups increasingly appear to become active in all kinds of entrepreneurial and business activities or become competitive on a market of NGO initiatives where groups vie for international aid & development money. On the other hand we also witness that business communities, captains of industry or other important entrepreneurs increasingly turn to religious moralities, often involving notions of charity and philanthropy in the way they engage with similar markets in a pursuit of their interests.
The role and functioning of such newly emerging religious(ly inspired) markets should particularly be studied from the perspective of the moralities, theologies and business ideologies that inform such entrepreneurial styles as well as the notions that legitimize and render acceptable to the general public their specific interests. This network explores the broad ranging relationship between the market and (Christian) religion (or religious moralities) in this particular region. Hence, in so doing the network moves away from an anthropology that basically perceives of the neo-liberal order and the market as a disruptive onslaught on the social fabric towards an anthropology that seeks to understand the ways in which the market appears as an opportunity vis-à-vis the religious domain, perhaps in unexpected ways.
Conveners:
Dr. Rijk van Dijk (African Studies Centre, Leiden), Dr. Marja
Spierenburg (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Dr. Harry Wels (Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam)
The
research-project defined by Marja Spierenburg & Harry Wels in
the context of this network is:
H.
Wels & M. Spierenburg
In
the process of Afrikaner social identity construction and
Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa, mythology about the
relationship of the Afrikaner with nature and nature conservation
plays an important role (Carruthers 1995). One of the major myths
in this respect is the story of the Voortrekkers. They were seen
as rugged individuals who lived close and of the land (Sparks
1991). The Great Trek in 1836 and especially the ox-wagon
symbolises this intimate relationship, as it also symbolises the
covenant of Afrikanerdom with the Christian God. In 1938 the same
symbol of the ox-wagon was taken by Verwoerd to announce the
Second Great Trek which was aimed to Afrikanise the cities, and
take a legitimate place in commerce and industry’ (Verwoerd
in Bloomberg 1989: 121). ‘The Trek … from the
platteland to the cities’ as Conradie, the Cape
Administrator at the time, formulated it (ibid: 122). This Second
Trek was explicitly placed in the context of a divinely-willed
destiny. The ‘Afrikaans Handelsinstituut
(Afrikaans Chamber of Commerce) was set up o encourage and direct
the development of Afrikaner business undertakings’(ibid:
128). An economic and political powerhouse of Afrikaner
Nationalism, also labelled Christian Nationalism, was the result
from 1948 onward when the Nasionale Partij
came to power. But the mythological relationship between
Afrikaner social identity and nature remained a powerful impetus
for even the most sturdy Afrikaner capitalist businessmen. No
wonder that many Afrikaner entrepreneurs and businessmen became
involved, one way or the other, in nature conservation and / or
wildlife utilisation. Probably the most well-known example of
this type of Afrikaner businessmen in nature conservation is the
late Anton Rupert of the Rembrandt Group (tobacco and luxury
articles) who sponsored and lobbied intensively for the formation
of cross border conservation areas in southern Africa through the
Peace Park Foundation, an organisation dominated by Afrikaners.
Another example is Noel de Villiers (AVIS SA), who with his plans
for Open Africa in the field of community-based eco-tourism seems
to be following the footsteps of his Afrikaner predecessors. In
the lucrative field of wildlife utilisation and private
conservation, which developed strongly in South Africa in the
1990s, many Afrikaners remind us of the myth about the
relationship between Afrikaners and nature. It reminds us of
their divinely given role in preserving and conserving God’s
creation on the African continent. This project will focus on the
Afrikaner entrepreneurs who are involved in the business of
nature (conservation) on tracing many of the historically
developed ideas about the God-given role of Afrikaners in (South)
Africa in today's wildlife business, i.e. conservation and
utilisation.
General aim of these networks, partly depending on their success at the ECAS-conference, is to generate:
1. first of all opportunities for exchange on the basis of empirical fieldwork material by the organisation of research workshops for which external funding will be sought
2. secondly, depending on the manner in which comparability of these exchanges leads to further insights that allow for discussion the organisation of a conference pertaining to a matter of common interest
3. thirdly, in addition the pursuit of additional research funding by submitting of joint research applications to external funders once the network has become truly operational and a shared research interest has been established. Applications of this sort are specifically meant to involve scholars from Africa as well as to be linked to research institutes/universities in Africa for mutual collaboration.
Whereas in the coming year the viability of these research networks is a matter for further development and 'testing', the focus of Van Dijk's own research will be related to both in such a way that his research activities can be placed within the context of these research networks and can benefit from the exchange these networks will provide. Hence Van Dijk's project is meant to be strategically located vis-à-vis both so as to be able to contribute to both networks from one and the same research project.
Project:
Nuptial connections: Pentecostalism, marriage and reproduction in Botswana in times of crisis.
In broad terms this project intends to address nuptiality as an ideology of connection of which its waxing and waning in Botswana over time should be explored in relation to societal crises and religious responses (see also Durham 2002). It is based on the premise that religion strongly influences if not produces nuptial ideologies of various sorts, which have a bearing on societal crises related to poverty and wealth, AIDS and sexualities, and migration and citizenship. The project intends to elaborate on research findings of van Dijk's earlier work on the immigration of Ghanaians in Botswana, the rise of transnational Pentecostalism and the complexities surrounding the integration of foreigners in this small-scaled society whereby marriage, among other social relations, has proven to be a factor of dwindling importance. An extensive literature has emerged in Botswana dealing with what can be called the 'fortune' of marriage as a technology of sociality in this society (Gulbrandsen 1986, Solway 1990, Molokomme 1991, Dow & Kidd 1994, Gaisie 1995, Gary & Townsend 1996, Townsend 1997, Mookodi 2000, Durham 2002, Livingston 2003, Mokomane 2005).
In formulating the major research question the following conceptual and paradigmatic points of departure are of importance:
a. connections are the social technology of relations and therefore should be analytically distinguished from relations; connections exist irrespective of relations, relations make use of connections, therefore if relations cease to exist connections can still be present. Connections thus form the 'hard side' of relations, the production of which relations can not ignore, mask, make disappear or sublimate.
In terms of a society's basic relations we find 'marriage' as a most common social relation of which its connection is lodged in a nuptial ideology or nuptial ideologies. While nuptiality commonly is treated in anthropological literature as a concept and a phenomenon, in terms of connections it makes sense of treating it as an ideology. Nuptiality exists irrespective of marriage relations; in Botswana at present a true fact in the context of a rapidly dwindling situation of 'marriage' as a social relation, irrespective of the fact that nuptiality remains important as a social technology of connectivity (i.e. a technique in the sense of organising resources, identifying opportunities, regulating/managing power and hierarchies, prescribing social action and so forth). Nation-states and religious bodies, such as the Pentecostals co-opt, appropriate, instrumentalize, or negotiate nuptial ideologies for their own purposes, for instance by presenting certain marriage relations as relevant in the context of citizenship, morality, membership, reproduction or mobility.
b. connections are ideologically enshrined in connotations of advantage, opportunity, gain, surplus and profit; or at least in the perception, hope, aspiration and desire of such. Think of it as the rail- or the bus line; without such a perspective of advantage there is no sense/reason/idea/legitimation of establishing a connection. Also in Dutch parlance to 'have connections' carries the element of benefit, of net gain from a transactional perspective. In this sense connections stand opposed to relations in that relations do not a priori require or presuppose a notion of gain but instead may include reciprocities or even altruism. However, in whatever way we may want to consider connections (the phone, the road, the railway line, the migrant overseas contacts) the paradigmatic and ideological understanding of gain or eventual benefit is present in its underpinning connotations. Hence the basic form of nuptial connections as ideology exemplify this rudimentary fact in the sense that the ways in which nuptial ideologies direct marriage relations, a cultural understanding of how, who and what gains are to be expected is deeply relevant (in the Botswana case this not only relates to such issues as bogadi and lobola (bridewealth), but also in view of in whose direction the benefits of the patlo (marriage arrangements) should flow to).
Related to this notion is the concept of disconnection as shrouded in disadvantage, loss, exclusion and want. Yet similarly to connection, the extend to which connection or disconnection leads to either gain or to loss depends on the actual manner in which relations make use of these aspects of social life. Hence a disconnection may in the end turn out very beneficial to the person, group, institute that has become disconnected, or which has decided to become disconnected; likewise a connection may turn out very disadvantageous to some people, groups, institutes involved in their actual relations, despite the reasons and intentions of advantage, gain, profit for which a connection was established. Contrary to what ideologies may promise, in actual praxis connections or disconnections are not automatically advantageous or disadvantageous to the people concerned.
c. connection not only stands opposed to disconnection but also, and most importantly so, to indifference. In a situation of indifference no connections exist. On the level of emotions, affections, emotional needs, satisfaction and gratification connections are established in the pursuit of counteracting indifference. In addition to point b. where we spoke of the context of advantage as being fundamental to connections there is a second register of the human experience of, as well as an existential need for, connections that shape the social technology of relations. In this regard nuptial ideologies can be examined on the basis of how they present notions of how society should or is capable of dealing with forms of indifference in specific and culturally informed ways. Basing insights here on the work of Herzfeld (1992) on the social construction of indifference, the notion is that the importance of nuptial ideologies may reflect the functionality of connections in addressing a society's, a group's or a person's indifference to connectivities of various sorts; i.e. it is for example only understandable from the perspective of a nuptial ideology of connection how and why the current disinterest of Botswana men for engaging in marriage relations surfaces, appears, acquires the connotation of indifference in the first place; without the nuptial ideology no indifference, without the black no white so to speak. Or to reason the other way round, whatever is signaled as indifference in society conjures up the imagery or ideology of connectivity and/or its lack thereof.
The fate of nuptial ideologies in Botswana has become deeply intertwined with the AIDS-crisis in the country and with the way in which religious ideologies appear to respond. While for many years statistics have shown a declining importance of marriage-relations in Botswana, whereby cohabitation with several partners in the course of one's life has become much more important, this has increasingly become identified as a crucial factor in the spread of AIDS in the country (by now the second highest rate of infection in the world) (see for instance Ntseane & Preece (2005) and Pitso (2003). Without much success religious bodies and faith-based organizations emphasize a largely conservative A & B ideology, i.e. stressing only Abstinence and Being faithful to one partner where this in other places of the ideological spectrum is defined as A, B & C (Abstinence, Being faithful and using a Condom). While nuptiality as a phenomenon has been dwindling over the past decades, its ideological importance therefore has not. Many studies demonstrate that despite a waning of the marriage practice the perception of engaging in a marriage as a desired end-state of affairs has not; neither on the side of women as on the side of men. The importance of nuptiality as ideology has remained engrained and indicated by the perseverance of various social technologies of connectivity between person's, groups and societies along the lines of nuptial relations.
These relations have been the study of long-dating anthropological research starting from the work of Schapera ( ) on the cattle-exchanging relationships between the various Tswana speaking tribes in pre-colonial times down to the work of John Comaroff (1977, 1997) and others on the extension of these relations into postcolonial times. This work mainly dealt with marriage as a form of interconnectivity between these various groups and explored the kind of cultural roots that were specific to this connectivity in terms of a 'marriage-system', i.e. a cultural format that was thought of as highly prescriptive to social behaviour, a 'habitus'.
This study of the 'marriage-system' as an observable phenomenon has thereafter strongly been taken up by the kind of livelihood studies that perceived of the dominant emergence of the so-called female-headed household in Botswana. The postponement or even complete absence of marriage relationships gave way, in this livelihood perspective, to the rise of single-headed, female-headed households where men were only present as 'passers-by' in a system of seemingly unstable cohabitation. As far as I am aware of, only one study effectively disqualified this perspective by introducing the notion of connections to highlight the fact that the connections of men to children and households may extend over time and space in ways that escape the normal treatment of the concept of 'marriage'; i.e. nuptial ideology as a connection beyond the here and the now (N. Townsend (1997) "Men, Migration, and Households in Botswana: an exploration of connections over time and space" (Journal of Southern African Studies, 23, 3, pp. 405-420).
This perspective was only made possible by adopting a longitudinal perspective of connections and how they change systematically over time and space without loosing the essential features of connectivity (men as social, biological fathers, as sons, brothers, uncles, in-laws, cousins and nephews; i.e. all in preservation of connectivity). In contrast to "irresponsibility" and "indifference" of which many of these 'absent' men were accused, this study demonstrates the effectiveness of a nuptial ideology in countervailing that potentiality of social relations (indifference, after all, always emerges as potentiality).
In the current AIDS-dictated discourse in Botswana, however, the issue of female-headed households is related to issues of sexuality and fertility in the sense that women by the age of 25 can surpass marriage but cannot surpass the social pressure of becoming a woman by having a first child around that age. In AIDS-parlance, this is the source of unstable cohabitation and of engaging in a variety of relations with different men, perhaps also as a strategy to use the first-born child as a claim for a future marriage; i.e. the child becomes an asset vis-à-vis the perceived indifference of men.
In this context of rising fertility and declining nuptiality concomitant with an unprecedented AIDS-pandemic in a country where the economic, diamond-driven boom of the late 1970s yielded the population with one of the highest per capita incomes in Sub-Saharan Africa (i.e. a seemingly paradoxical combination of relative prosperity and AIDS) religion has become a dominant factor. This not only pertains to the emergence of a wide variety of new religious groups, such as the Pentecostals in particular, but also the rise of a plethora of so-called FBO’s; faith-based organizations that deal with the AIDS issue on the basis of NGO-activity. Botswana has become one of the main targets of President George Bush-inspired PEPFAR-funding, which directs millions of dollars into FBO’s that in most cases pursue a conservative ideology of male oriented marriage-relations. Abstinence and Being faithful to one partner in fact has turned marriage into an asset on a market of opportunities of some sort. The connections of the local groups and bodies with international donor money and international relations of all kinds runs via the paradigm of emphasizing most visibly in the local context the issue of marriage; this includes all sorts of ritual practices as well such as marriage-counseling, pre-marital vows (i.e. to abstain in the period before marriage), replacement of bogadi/lobola-like rituals within the context of church-life, but likely also extending into the ways in which churches, meetings and the like become marriage-markets where relations can become arranged. This ‘ function’ of marriage-marketing is also significant in a context of the absence of men where women in particular draw upon the transnational features of Pentecostal and other churches as these provide access to non-local partners and non-local marriage arrangements as well.
Hence, while the great availability of international donor-money in the context of FBO’s has turned AIDS from a disaster into an opportunity as well on a market of AIDS-donor money, state-support and social interest in relations, marriage has become pivotal in the way connections are established in various ways and of various sorts: between people, between local communities, between the local and the global/international, between religion and society, between the past of nuptiality and its present meaning and significance.
By putting central the ways in which in the current situation of religion, AIDS and crisis in Botswana ‘marriage’ becomes a particular and instrumentalized reflection of nuptialities this research establishes a bridge between the two research networks indicated above. While the one network draws attention to the relation between religion and the market the other draws attention to the changing and transformative meaning of religion in the context of AIDS. Religion connects the market with AIDS in peculiar ways and this can fruitfully be explored along the lines of one specific social technology of relations: marriage and its nuptial ideology.
1. how over time nuptial ideologies in Botswana have been formed, also in relation to processes of state formation and political ideological ‘use’ of nuptiality for its own means and ends; for example in contrast to cultural-ethnic ideologies of this sort, or in contrast to the ways in which nuptiality may have been an inclusive strategy in the past (vis-à-vis strangers for example) and over time has become an ideology of exclusion and disconnection
2. how over time, religion has been crucial in formulating and transforming nuptial ideologies, also in view of point 1. but also in view of formulating ideas concerning its direct opposite; the ones excluded, disconnected or declared ‘ indifferent’ or ‘ irresponsible’
3. how marriage has become a formative element of the ‘marketability’ and ‘ ‘marketization’ of religion in this specific society by exploring the specific position of Pentecostalism in this regard
4 how AIDS relates to connections in the ways in which via religion linkages are established between the local and the global, between the nation and the state, between the genders
Brown, B.
1983 'The Impact of Male Labour Migration on Women in Bostwana.' African Affairs, 28, 328, pp. 367-388.
Comaroff, J. & Roberts, S.
1977 'Marriage and Extra-marital sexuality; the dialectics of legal change among the Kgatla.' Journal of African Law, 21, 1, pp.
Dow, U., & Kidd, P.
1994 Women, Marriage and Inheritance. Gaborone, Women & Law in Southern Africa Trust.
Gaisie, S.K.
1995 Socio-economic Determinants of Fertility Decline etc.
Garey, A.I. & Townsend, N.W.
1996 'Kinship, Courtship, and Child Maintenance Law in Botswana.' Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 17, 2, pp. 189-203.
Gulbrandsen, O.
1986 'Marry or Not to Marry: Marital Strategies and Sexual Relations in a Tswana Society.' Ethnos, 15, 1 & 2, pp. 7-28.
Izzard,
W.
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Landau, P.S.
1995 The Realm of the Word; language, gender, and Christianity in a Southern African Kingdom. Portsmouth, Heinemann.
Larsson, A.
1989 Women Households and Housing Strategies; the case of Gaborone, Botswana. Stockholm, The National Swedish Institute for Building Research.
Livingston, J.
2003 'Pregnant Children and Hald-dead Adults. Modern Living and the Quickening Life Cycle in Botswana.' Bulletin of the History of Medicine , 77, 1, pp. 133-162.
Mokomane, Z.
2005 'Cohabitation in Botswana: an alternative or a prelude to marriage ?' African Population Studies, 20, 1, pp. 19-37.
Molokomme, A.
1991 Children of the Fence. The Maintenance of extra-marital children under law and practice in Botswana. Leiden, ASC.
Mookodi, G.
2000 'The complexities of female household headship in Botswana.' Pula, 14, 2, pp. 148-164.
Ntseane, P.G. & Preece, J.
2005 'Why HIV/AIDS prevention strategies fail in Botswana; considering discourses of sexuality.' Development Southern Africa, 22, 3, pp. 437-363.
Pitso, J.M.N.
2003
'Premarital childbearing in Thamaga Village, Botswana.' Journal
of Population Research
Schapera, I.
Solway, J.S.
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Townsend, N.W.
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return to: Index page 'Connections and transformations in Africa'
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