Lecture 11
The impact of the West and the
survival of tribal peoples
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Terminology: - tribal, indigenous,
native or ‘first people’.
• Third world is a term which has come to describe – those countries which are underdeveloped and whose people
suffer from various levels of economic and social deprivation.
– these countries are in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and have
been through the experience of colonialism.
• Underdeveloped is a term preferred by some.
• The fourth world is a term which has come to mean – those tribal peoples whose cultures are threatened by modern
economic and social changes.
– these peoples can be found in the Third World but also in
countries like Canada, USA, Australia, which are considered ‘first
world’.
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The expansion of Europe
• The impact of the expansion of Europe from the
15th Century onward has changed global
society. A qualitatively different change from
previous rise and fall of agrarian empires.
• One way to summarise the impact is to use the
categories used previously to look at political
economy. – Production, distribution of surplus, and the justification
of that distribution.
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A. New forms of production.
• New global division of labour
– commodities and raw material v. manufactures
– land, labour, and capital redistributed across the globe:
• a. Land acquisition - Land seized from tribal peoples. Treaties made
and broken.
– Land become private property, communal rights and use abrogated.
• b. Labour controlled by slavery, forced labour, indentured labour.
People forced into wage labour e.g. by taxation. Massive labour
migrations, e.g. Africans to the Americas, Indians to East Africa, Fiji,
Guyana etc.
• c. Western capital and technology used to create, transport
networks, plantations, mines, which enables the ‘development’ and
the ‘exploitation’ of the Third World.
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B. New forms of distribution
• Accumulation becomes the dominant
world system.
• Relationships mediated by money come to
dominate.
• Example of the ‘Triangular trade’.
– Britain - manufactures; guns, cloth,
– West Africa - slaves
– Americas - sugar, cotton,
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/Triangle_trade.png
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New ideologies
Justifications of the new order.
• Dehumanising the savage. Civilising role,
the inevitability of progress, scientific
racism.
• Nationalism; anti-colonial, ethnic
nationalism, national elite claims to local
resources.
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Crises
Eric Wolf in Peasant Wars of the Twentieth
Century suggests colonialism and the
expansion of the West caused three kinds
of crises
– 1.Demographic crises
– 2. Ecological crises
– 3. Crises of authority
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1.Demographic crises
•
death rates. decimation of populations
be disease and genocide.
•
birth rates. Sedentisation, labour
demands, /cultural suicide
•
migration. expulsion, forced labour,
expansion of settlement frontier.
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2. Ecological crises
• Disruption by spread of some species,
elimination of others.
– Destruction of island ecologies, horse in Americas,
Potatoes in Europe, Maize in Africa.
• Production for global markets, shift balance
between fallow and active production and thus
sustainability.
– Disruption of local ecological balance of people and
environment.
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3. Crises of authority.
• Traditional sources of authority challenged
by:
– colonists (legitimate use of power and
violence),
– traders (dissolution of reciprocity and
commodification of relationships by money)
– missionaries ( decry old gods, present new
ones, control education)
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Resistance
Resistance was military and cultural.
• Military - colonial wars where chiefs/states
resisted. Co-option of local elites by
indirect rule.
• Cultural by millenarian and revitalisation
movements. Also link to violent
resistance. Prophets [messianic]
reinterpreting past unit and give magical
powers of resistance.
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Geronimo 1829 - 1909
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Zapatistas
• Zapatista ‘liberation
army’ Mexico 2006
• Emiliano Zapata
• Mexican revolutionary
1879 -1919
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http://www.zealand.org.nz/history.htm
• Painting of Hone
Heke chopping down
the Union flag at the
start of the first Maori
war 1845.
15
Burridge in New Heaven New Earth suggests four kinds of
millennium each introduced by an innovative prophet
.
Aircraft situations.
• Sudden arrival of unknown powers.
• Cargo cults - trying to obtain the secret of white
mans wealth.
• Doesn’t go those who work hard; a secret not of
production but distribution.
c.f. Harris, M. “Phantom Cargo” pp 97-111 in
his Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches
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Jon Frum movement
•
The Jon Frum cargo cult
considers its allegiance to Jon
Frum and consider themselves an
army of Tanna. They exercise this
allegiance periodically by
objecting to governmental control
by the officials in Port Vila. The
followers of Jon Frum have over
the years built warehouses,
landing strips and bamboo radio
towers in preparation of the arrival
of air cargo from Jon Frum. The
belief is that if the rituals and
beliefs are adhered to tightly, that
someday Jon Frum will return and
bless the loyal followers with
wealth in the form of various cargo
items.
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Money situations
• Money becomes the measure of people
and social relationships.
– people can be bought and sold
• Revitalisation of moral values, redefinition
of spheres of exchange.
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Social exclusion.
• Sections of society are excluded from
higher spiritual achievement - salvation
• Brahmin/Kshatriya situations e.g. Sikhism
universalistic re-interpretation of Hinduism;
reinterpretations to allow all believers
access to salvation. African “native”
churches with syncretic beliefs and rituals
and local clergy.
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Cultural collapse.
• The entire basis of society is undermined.
• magical salvation of a powerless people.
– e.g. Plains American Indian Ghost dance
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Ghost dance: Ogalala Lakota at Pine Ridge
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Do tribal peoples’ have a future
• How to meet the challenges set out above
– Population
– Ecology
– Legitimacy
• Survival International
– http://www.survival-international.org/
• Human Zoo’s, Human Rights
– International Labour Organisation (ILO) C169 Indigenous
and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989
– http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/convde.pl?C169
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Sources
• Bodley, John H. Victims of progress
Mountain View, Calif. : Mayfield, 1990.
• Wolf, Eric R. (Eric Robert) Europe and
the people without history. London:
University of California Press, 1982.
• Burridge, Kenelm. New heaven, new
earth : a study of millenarian activities.
Oxford : Blackwell, 1969.
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