fredag 10 april 2009
A few photos
Some photos from Western Province in Zambia by Rose-Marie Westling. Would have published more, but the connection is just too slow...
onsdag 8 april 2009
Are you ready for the Cockpit country?
Although anthropological fieldwork often has been portrayed as a journey to an external world, its inhabitants and social relations, for me it has always also been a highly introspective affair. I know this sounds pretentious. But everytime I have left the familiar and comfortable for the unfamiliar and uncomfortable it has put the spot light on the strange and exotic aspects of my own life. Family, friends, work place, society, emotions, relations, memories. All of it usually locked up and sealed in my mind. Now placed in a light in which I seem to discern structures, patterns, contours. Rarely do I get as strong impulses to look into myself in my suburban, academic middle-class, commuter life between Uppsala and Stockholm.
There are many reasons why these psychological processes intensify during my absences from Sweden. One is the occasional boredom of fieldwork (I have mostly lived and worked in rural areas of Africa and as much as I love these remote places...sometimes nothing happens there), a second is the loneliness one sometimes feels in a foreign envirionment far away from your family and without the social and language skills to function smoothly in the everyday or to express exactly what you're feeling and experiencing. Third, is good old evasion - trying your level best not to concentrate on the difficult task at hand, your research.
More important, however, is another key aspect of anthropological fieldwork and the ethnographic method: the constant swing between the familiar and unfamiliar in social life. Ethnographers enter social and cultural worlds unknown to them in order to gain an understanding of how people live and communicate through these worlds. The research and writing process means both to get closer to (to understand) and to distance oneself from (to analyze) social life. It is inevitable that this defamiliarization works both ways and that, as you gain familiarity with (for you) new ways of being in the world, accepted behaviour may be questioned.
This time round, I am distracted by my family history. A cousin in Jamaica, Karen, who was previously unknown to me, contacted me via e-mail. It turns out that she was doing some research into her own family history and, when googling her maternal grandmother's name (Josephine Minto), she found an entry which I had posted several years ago at a genealogical site. I was looking for information about the background of my now deceased father Clarence, who had been extremely vague or even secretive about his life history. Josephine Minto is also my (paternal) grandmother, mother to my father and to Karen's mother Daphne, although they have different fathers.
My cousin Karen, a Minto relative, and my Aunt Daphne in Martha Brae, N. Jamaica
Through my father's birth certificate and through a brief conversation with his older brother Eric, I knew that Josephine was probably working as a domestic servant in my grandfather's household in the village of Martha Brae, Trelawny Parish, but that she eventually left to live in St Mary Parish. Judging by the little I know about my grandfather Edward Goodwin Barrett, I imagine him to have belonged to the type of men we often find in novels about late 19th and early 20th century colonial society: self-centered, cruel but complex patriarchs ruling their little universe of subordinates - slaves, workers, women, children - through exploitative economic relations and oppressive political institutions. Allegedly, Edward had more than ten children with different women in the vicinity and none were with his legal wife (is it a coincidence that her name is unknown to me?). His nickname was "Busha", the local term for an overseer derived from the time of slavery but apparently living on through emancipation, apprenticeship and independence.
Beginning to understand my family history, my enigmatic father (whose life history spans continents, World Wars and social and racial boundaries) and in the end myself, means starting at this place and this time: the village of Martha Brae at the time of Busha Barretts courting of Josephine Minto - a mere 80 years after the abolition of slavery in the West Indian colonies.
It might be a story of great interest to me right now. But it is far from the whole story about me. As one of my close friends like to ask, does my dark skin and black hair prevent questions about my maternal descent, my equally formative family background in rural southern Sweden, dying fishing communities, domestic servitude, and the urban industrial proletariat of Malmo?
At a professional level, this gives me the opportunity to address some of the criticism (often fair, sometimes rather one-eyed) of social and cultural anthropology and humbly introduce my own vision of the discipline's quest for knowledge about human relations. The fair critique concerns anthropology's obsessions with the exotic others of the world, an obsession that should have been abandoned on both empirical and theoretical grounds (Shatanawi). It also concerns anthropology's alignement with colonialism and imperialism and its continued preference for "studying down" and avoiding "studying up" and "sideways" (Erikson). Here's where current theoretical developments within the discipline and my own Martha Brae case fuses together. An increasing number of dissertations in anthropology are about "our own" society, its institutions and social relations. Many of them are still focussing on the "others", the disempowered or exotic within. Very few are actually about the ethnographer him- or herself.
Very few anthropologists have taken the step to write, what Swedish anthropologist Shahram Khosravi in a recent article calls, an auto-ethnography. Shahram uses his own migratory history and that of his family to present a poignant and uncanny image of Fortress Europe and to analyse the paranoid security and identity politics which in effect lead to the harassment and systematic discrimination against people that look non-European/dark-skinned/muslim etc. My view is that anthropology can only become a truly universal endeavour when we as ethnographers abandon the high ground of being observers and allow ourselves to be the objects as well as subjects of ethnography.
My own story has a twist in this general direction. In the course of my cousin's research into her family history, she came across (like I did) the wonderful book Martha Brae's Two Histories: European Expansion and Caribbean Culture-Building in Jamaica (2002, The University of North Carolina Press) by Jamaican-born anthropologist Jean Besson (now at Goldsmith's College, London). One of the many merits of this book is the chronicles of some of the historically influential families of the village of Martha Brae (among them the Mintos and the Barretts). Karen believes (and I'm prone to agree with her) that it was no coincidence that Jean happened to be visiting Martha Brae last week, when she was taking my Aunt Daphne to see the village and the grave of our common ancestress, the African slave, Marrie. When Jean heard the story of my father and the continuation of the Barrett and Minto lines in Sweden, she, like any contemporary anthropologist would, asked Karen for my contact details. And I'm looking forward to her call and to becoming, finally, an informant.
Anthropologist Jean Besson on the left
There are many reasons why these psychological processes intensify during my absences from Sweden. One is the occasional boredom of fieldwork (I have mostly lived and worked in rural areas of Africa and as much as I love these remote places...sometimes nothing happens there), a second is the loneliness one sometimes feels in a foreign envirionment far away from your family and without the social and language skills to function smoothly in the everyday or to express exactly what you're feeling and experiencing. Third, is good old evasion - trying your level best not to concentrate on the difficult task at hand, your research.
More important, however, is another key aspect of anthropological fieldwork and the ethnographic method: the constant swing between the familiar and unfamiliar in social life. Ethnographers enter social and cultural worlds unknown to them in order to gain an understanding of how people live and communicate through these worlds. The research and writing process means both to get closer to (to understand) and to distance oneself from (to analyze) social life. It is inevitable that this defamiliarization works both ways and that, as you gain familiarity with (for you) new ways of being in the world, accepted behaviour may be questioned.
This time round, I am distracted by my family history. A cousin in Jamaica, Karen, who was previously unknown to me, contacted me via e-mail. It turns out that she was doing some research into her own family history and, when googling her maternal grandmother's name (Josephine Minto), she found an entry which I had posted several years ago at a genealogical site. I was looking for information about the background of my now deceased father Clarence, who had been extremely vague or even secretive about his life history. Josephine Minto is also my (paternal) grandmother, mother to my father and to Karen's mother Daphne, although they have different fathers.
My cousin Karen, a Minto relative, and my Aunt Daphne in Martha Brae, N. Jamaica
Through my father's birth certificate and through a brief conversation with his older brother Eric, I knew that Josephine was probably working as a domestic servant in my grandfather's household in the village of Martha Brae, Trelawny Parish, but that she eventually left to live in St Mary Parish. Judging by the little I know about my grandfather Edward Goodwin Barrett, I imagine him to have belonged to the type of men we often find in novels about late 19th and early 20th century colonial society: self-centered, cruel but complex patriarchs ruling their little universe of subordinates - slaves, workers, women, children - through exploitative economic relations and oppressive political institutions. Allegedly, Edward had more than ten children with different women in the vicinity and none were with his legal wife (is it a coincidence that her name is unknown to me?). His nickname was "Busha", the local term for an overseer derived from the time of slavery but apparently living on through emancipation, apprenticeship and independence.
Beginning to understand my family history, my enigmatic father (whose life history spans continents, World Wars and social and racial boundaries) and in the end myself, means starting at this place and this time: the village of Martha Brae at the time of Busha Barretts courting of Josephine Minto - a mere 80 years after the abolition of slavery in the West Indian colonies.
It might be a story of great interest to me right now. But it is far from the whole story about me. As one of my close friends like to ask, does my dark skin and black hair prevent questions about my maternal descent, my equally formative family background in rural southern Sweden, dying fishing communities, domestic servitude, and the urban industrial proletariat of Malmo?
At a professional level, this gives me the opportunity to address some of the criticism (often fair, sometimes rather one-eyed) of social and cultural anthropology and humbly introduce my own vision of the discipline's quest for knowledge about human relations. The fair critique concerns anthropology's obsessions with the exotic others of the world, an obsession that should have been abandoned on both empirical and theoretical grounds (Shatanawi). It also concerns anthropology's alignement with colonialism and imperialism and its continued preference for "studying down" and avoiding "studying up" and "sideways" (Erikson). Here's where current theoretical developments within the discipline and my own Martha Brae case fuses together. An increasing number of dissertations in anthropology are about "our own" society, its institutions and social relations. Many of them are still focussing on the "others", the disempowered or exotic within. Very few are actually about the ethnographer him- or herself.
Very few anthropologists have taken the step to write, what Swedish anthropologist Shahram Khosravi in a recent article calls, an auto-ethnography. Shahram uses his own migratory history and that of his family to present a poignant and uncanny image of Fortress Europe and to analyse the paranoid security and identity politics which in effect lead to the harassment and systematic discrimination against people that look non-European/dark-skinned/muslim etc. My view is that anthropology can only become a truly universal endeavour when we as ethnographers abandon the high ground of being observers and allow ourselves to be the objects as well as subjects of ethnography.
My own story has a twist in this general direction. In the course of my cousin's research into her family history, she came across (like I did) the wonderful book Martha Brae's Two Histories: European Expansion and Caribbean Culture-Building in Jamaica (2002, The University of North Carolina Press) by Jamaican-born anthropologist Jean Besson (now at Goldsmith's College, London). One of the many merits of this book is the chronicles of some of the historically influential families of the village of Martha Brae (among them the Mintos and the Barretts). Karen believes (and I'm prone to agree with her) that it was no coincidence that Jean happened to be visiting Martha Brae last week, when she was taking my Aunt Daphne to see the village and the grave of our common ancestress, the African slave, Marrie. When Jean heard the story of my father and the continuation of the Barrett and Minto lines in Sweden, she, like any contemporary anthropologist would, asked Karen for my contact details. And I'm looking forward to her call and to becoming, finally, an informant.
Anthropologist Jean Besson on the left
onsdag 11 mars 2009
A chance meeting with Enock Ilunga
On Monday, I went with my colleague, photographer Rose-Marie Westling - who is here to do a photo documentation of my research - for a belated visit to the new art exhibition "Living Memory" at Henry Tayali Gallery at the Agricultural Showgrounds in Lusaka. We enjoyed the variety of themes and techniques from the represented artists, all of whom have passed away but whose influence and stature in the Zambian art scen seems constant. In particular, I enjoyed the soft colours and sensitive capturing of movement in Godfrey Seti's work, as well as the tongue-in-cheek and highly critical rendering of colonial history in Stephen Kappata's paintings (I am not a collector of anything, but I still kick myself for not buying a few paintings by Kappata in 2000, as I thought of doing, when they were still available and at ridiculuously low prices).
Embarassingly enough, I couldn't honour the kind invitation to the opening a week ago given to Chris and me by the curator of the exhibition, Zenzele … (people in Lusaka seem to take such invitations much more seriously than I am used to from Stockholm), since we were, finally, moving in to our house on that day. Nevertheless, I hope to return to this event (and hopefully an interview with the curator) further on.
Instead, I intend to write about a chance encounter that took place, while my friend and I were browsing through the beatiful, but quiet and empty, exhibition rooms. The only other visitor to the exhibition was a well-built man in his mid-fifties, who was watching us discreetely from the other side of the room. After some time, he approached us and asked where we were from. As we responded, he blurted out: "Ah, kalles kaviar, do you have any with you? "
This turned out to be distinguished artist, Enock Ilunga, a long standing member of the Henry Tayali Art Gallery, with several exhibitions in Sweden and other European countries on his cv. A fascinating conversation ensued. He talked about money, the difficulty of making a living as an artist in Zambia (and in Sweden, though he spoke admiringly about a Swedish, commercially succesful, artist…who has a personal gallery at Drottninggatan in Stockholm), of not getting paid for paintings sold to political dignitaries, about Swedish cheese, snaps, his frustration about the lack of interest from the (growing) Zambian middle-class to buy art instead of fancy cars or extravagant mansions. He also did a striking impersonation of a Swede entering systembolaget (the alcoholic beverages monopoly) on a cold, winter's day.
Finally, he took us out in the back where Mr Ilunga, together with a rasta assistant, had been busy mounting canvases for his upcoming exhibition at Alliance Francaise in Lusaka (12 March, 2009). He did try, acting the stereotypical poor artist, to mildly persuade us to buy a couple of works before the show, but when we politely explained our poor financial status (and that of our institution, the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm) he turned to displaying his art. Canvas after canvas was turned for our viewing pleasure (to me, this was a new experience and I couldn't help but to feel immensely privileged). "Women washing their dirty linnen" "the refugees are not traveling for pleasure, but by necessity", "makishi"
Enock Ilunga is obviously a strikingly competent and experienced painter. With a few brush strokes, he catches shapes, postures and attitudes in the repetitive human forms that appears to be his favourite subjects. Often these forms are not visible at a first glance, but eventually emerge from the seeming chaos of colour. He refused (thank god!) my interpretation of the painting "the woman" as in any way related to the mwana pwo masked character commonly danced in the area of his origin (North Western Province). You have to excuse me, but I am after all an anthropologist prone to making such silly connections between cultural heritage and contemporary expressions, and I suspect that his objection was based on a political rather than aesthetical level. He refuses, like many contemporary artists and I am wholly sympathetic to the idea, to be a representative of his "ancient african heritage", a heritage which we Europeans are constantly imposing on African art. Collectivizing individual expression in other words.
And this goes right at the heart of a problem we have frequently discussed at my Museum in the context of exhibiting (or not exhibiting) contemporary African/Asian/Aboriginal Australian/native American art. Can ethnographic museums when presenting art from Africa, for example, avoid framing art works in such collectivizing terms? Isn't the space tainted with these preconceptions at the outset?
On the other hand, can the powerful and expressive subjectivity of artists like Enock Ilunga really be held back by such forces? As they say in Zambia, I doubt.
Embarassingly enough, I couldn't honour the kind invitation to the opening a week ago given to Chris and me by the curator of the exhibition, Zenzele … (people in Lusaka seem to take such invitations much more seriously than I am used to from Stockholm), since we were, finally, moving in to our house on that day. Nevertheless, I hope to return to this event (and hopefully an interview with the curator) further on.
Instead, I intend to write about a chance encounter that took place, while my friend and I were browsing through the beatiful, but quiet and empty, exhibition rooms. The only other visitor to the exhibition was a well-built man in his mid-fifties, who was watching us discreetely from the other side of the room. After some time, he approached us and asked where we were from. As we responded, he blurted out: "Ah, kalles kaviar, do you have any with you? "
This turned out to be distinguished artist, Enock Ilunga, a long standing member of the Henry Tayali Art Gallery, with several exhibitions in Sweden and other European countries on his cv. A fascinating conversation ensued. He talked about money, the difficulty of making a living as an artist in Zambia (and in Sweden, though he spoke admiringly about a Swedish, commercially succesful, artist…who has a personal gallery at Drottninggatan in Stockholm), of not getting paid for paintings sold to political dignitaries, about Swedish cheese, snaps, his frustration about the lack of interest from the (growing) Zambian middle-class to buy art instead of fancy cars or extravagant mansions. He also did a striking impersonation of a Swede entering systembolaget (the alcoholic beverages monopoly) on a cold, winter's day.
Finally, he took us out in the back where Mr Ilunga, together with a rasta assistant, had been busy mounting canvases for his upcoming exhibition at Alliance Francaise in Lusaka (12 March, 2009). He did try, acting the stereotypical poor artist, to mildly persuade us to buy a couple of works before the show, but when we politely explained our poor financial status (and that of our institution, the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm) he turned to displaying his art. Canvas after canvas was turned for our viewing pleasure (to me, this was a new experience and I couldn't help but to feel immensely privileged). "Women washing their dirty linnen" "the refugees are not traveling for pleasure, but by necessity", "makishi"
Enock Ilunga is obviously a strikingly competent and experienced painter. With a few brush strokes, he catches shapes, postures and attitudes in the repetitive human forms that appears to be his favourite subjects. Often these forms are not visible at a first glance, but eventually emerge from the seeming chaos of colour. He refused (thank god!) my interpretation of the painting "the woman" as in any way related to the mwana pwo masked character commonly danced in the area of his origin (North Western Province). You have to excuse me, but I am after all an anthropologist prone to making such silly connections between cultural heritage and contemporary expressions, and I suspect that his objection was based on a political rather than aesthetical level. He refuses, like many contemporary artists and I am wholly sympathetic to the idea, to be a representative of his "ancient african heritage", a heritage which we Europeans are constantly imposing on African art. Collectivizing individual expression in other words.
And this goes right at the heart of a problem we have frequently discussed at my Museum in the context of exhibiting (or not exhibiting) contemporary African/Asian/Aboriginal Australian/native American art. Can ethnographic museums when presenting art from Africa, for example, avoid framing art works in such collectivizing terms? Isn't the space tainted with these preconceptions at the outset?
On the other hand, can the powerful and expressive subjectivity of artists like Enock Ilunga really be held back by such forces? As they say in Zambia, I doubt.
tisdag 24 februari 2009
Istället för antropologi: förvirring
Ett års fältarbete i Zambia. Jag befinner mig här i södra centralafrika för att utföra en etnografisk studie om internmigration och har lyckats lura med mina döttrar Martha Brae och Stella och min fru Chris. Vi bor i huvudstaden Lusaka, där barnen går i skola, men mitt "fält" ligger egentligen 60 mil västerut i Western Province. Dit kommer jag åka med jämna mellanrum för att undersöka hur unga människor använder sig av migration, resande eller geografisk rörlighet för att tjäna sitt uppehåll.
Att flytta en familj på fyra personer - med tillhörande viljor, psyken och prioriteringar - är ganska ansträngande. Särskilt när flytten sker över både kontinentala och språkliga gränser. Det här är fjärde gången vi i vår familj väljer att bosätta oss i Afrika för en kortare eller längre period, men utan tvekan den mest krävande. Det var lättare förr när både Chris och jag var doktorander och barnen inte hade börjat skolan ännu. Färre saker som höll oss kvar i Sverige (bostadslån, anställningar, barnens kompisar, gymnastik, pianolektioner och scouter) och förmodligen mer lättanpassliga familjemedlemmar… Trots detta lyckades vi äntligen slita oss från Sverige och nu har vi varit här i drygt två veckor.
Men, ännu inget antropologiskt fältarbete. Däremot har vi hunnit med en genomgripande undersökning av Lusakas bostadsmarknad och begagnatmarknaden för bilar och genomgått ett kulturellt stålbad i samband med barnens inskolning. Dessutom har jag blivit lungröntgad, gripen av polisen och kört mer bil än jag vanligtvis gör under ett år. Kanske det mest förvirrande är alla goda och välvilliga råd från Zambiska och Europeiska bekanta: "Amerikanska skolan är bäst!", "köp en Honda - köp för guds skull inte en Honda!", "ni kan inte bo i Rhodes Park, där bor bara tjuvar!", "köp en bil med lågt miltal", "lita aldrig på bilars miltal!", "Homenet Hollywood (ett mäklarföretag) är skurkar!"
Att flytta en familj på fyra personer - med tillhörande viljor, psyken och prioriteringar - är ganska ansträngande. Särskilt när flytten sker över både kontinentala och språkliga gränser. Det här är fjärde gången vi i vår familj väljer att bosätta oss i Afrika för en kortare eller längre period, men utan tvekan den mest krävande. Det var lättare förr när både Chris och jag var doktorander och barnen inte hade börjat skolan ännu. Färre saker som höll oss kvar i Sverige (bostadslån, anställningar, barnens kompisar, gymnastik, pianolektioner och scouter) och förmodligen mer lättanpassliga familjemedlemmar… Trots detta lyckades vi äntligen slita oss från Sverige och nu har vi varit här i drygt två veckor.
Men, ännu inget antropologiskt fältarbete. Däremot har vi hunnit med en genomgripande undersökning av Lusakas bostadsmarknad och begagnatmarknaden för bilar och genomgått ett kulturellt stålbad i samband med barnens inskolning. Dessutom har jag blivit lungröntgad, gripen av polisen och kört mer bil än jag vanligtvis gör under ett år. Kanske det mest förvirrande är alla goda och välvilliga råd från Zambiska och Europeiska bekanta: "Amerikanska skolan är bäst!", "köp en Honda - köp för guds skull inte en Honda!", "ni kan inte bo i Rhodes Park, där bor bara tjuvar!", "köp en bil med lågt miltal", "lita aldrig på bilars miltal!", "Homenet Hollywood (ett mäklarföretag) är skurkar!"
Men vi har trots detta lyckats hitta ett hus som vi är nöjda med och som är relativt billigt (prisnivån på hyresmarknaden här påminner annars om Tokyo, Luanda eller New York) i stadsdelen Roma: nära barnens skola, universitetet, affärer och det administrativa centrat. Lusaka är en bilstad: utspridd, fragmenterad med nyckfull kollektivtrafik och fullkomligt livsfarlig för fotgängare och cyklister som måste nöja sig med smala vägrenar som plötsligt försvinner eller översvämmas av små smutsiga sjöar (det är slutet på regnperioden) och minibussar som girar för något hål i vägbanan eller helt enkelt kör förbi köer på trottoaren. Detta är vardagen för det stora flertalet invånare, samtidigt som privatbilismen ökar och de välbeställda har allt större och flottare bilar - något som jag tänker återkomma till i senare inlägg. 
Den här bloggen kommer att utgå från vårt liv i Lusaka men också handla om saker som migration, den globala ekonomins lokala uttryck i fattiga länder, resandets fysiska och existentiella villkor, ungdomar, maskulinitet/femininitet, ras och rasism, historia, kolonialism, antropologi, konst och museer i Zambia.
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