Transcript CULTURE CHANGE

CULTURE
CHANGE
& CULTURAL SURVIVAL
The Cultures Studied
in this Course
• Have all been re-shaped by
colonialism & capitalism
• There is no un-touched, “pristine”
society
• People we have studied have been
changed by 4 major processes:
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Genocide (Mayan peasants)
Ethnocide (!Kung, Yanomami)
Assimilation (Native Americans, Bakairí)
Resistance (Mayans, Kayapó)
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Some History…
• 1519: Conquest & territorial domination of
Western Hemisphere
– Complete by 1600
– Native populations
reorganized
by Spanish,
Portuguese
– Indigenous labor used in mines (Tío),
plantations (Menchú), haciendas (Mexican
peasants)
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Rapid Population Decimation
• 1519: 25 ML
1600: 1 ML
• Yanomami: 1980—10,000;
1988—1/4 died
• 16-19th C. African Slave Trade
– Colonial powers turned to Africa for labor
– 10 ML slaves shipped to America
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In Africa
• Congo: 8 ML died in 25 years
result of genocide & slavery
• German settlers in SW Africa
as
– War of extinction vs. Herero if they did not surrender
their lands
– Resistance: 1500 troops with machine guns
surrounded & massacred 500 Herero (genocide)
– Poisoned water holes
• !Kung San: Boers, British,
South Africa, reservations
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Colonization
• Europe assumed military,
& economic
dominance
• 1885: Imperialist powers
Africa into colonies
political,
partitioned
– “To bring the benefits of civilization to primitive
peoples & end their barbarous customs”
• This constituted an internationally approved
mandate for ETHNOCIDE
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German Colonial Administrator:
“The native tribes must withdraw from the
lands on which they have pastured their
cattle & so let the white man pasture his
cattle on these lands…for people of the
culture standard of the South African
natives, the loss of their barbarism &
development of a class of workers in the
service of the whites is primarily a law of
existence in the highest degree…this
existence is justified in the degree that it
is useful in the progress of development”
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Customs seen as
Backward, Primitive
• “Customs of native groups, in so far as
they threaten European control or offend
western notions of morality must be
abandoned”
• “Colonial authorities have the right in virtue
of their relatively civilized position to
savages to enforce abstinence from
immoral & degrading practices”
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“Primitive” Customs seen as
Obstacles to Progress:
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Infanticide (!Kung)
Bride price (Tiv)
Polygyny (Bakairí)
Polyandry (Nepal)
Kinship obligations (Bedouin)
Extended families (India, Taiwan)
“a drag on economic development & a
serious obstacle of economic progress”
• Initiation rites (Masaai)
• Shamanism (Jívaro)
• Tribal warfare (Yanomami)
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Genocide in Australia
• 1803-76: Tasmanians were extinct within
73 years of contact
• British wanted land for sheep grazing
• Tasmanians were shot down like animals
for sport
• Skulls were exhibited
in
museums
• Truganini—the last Tasmanian
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Native Americans
• 1830s: Trail of Tears
– 4000 Cherokee died
– (1/4 population)
• Villages burned, given blankets infected
with smallpox
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Education as Assimilation
• 1889-1909: UMM Boarding School
• Hopi
– Taught language of the dominant culture
– Imposed western dress, English names
– Forbidden to speak native language
• African textbook:
“It is an advantage for a native to work for a
white man, because the whites are better
educated, more advanced in civilization than the
natives and thanks to white men, the natives will
make more rapid progress”
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Industrial Revolution
• Required raw materials & markets
The destruction of indigenous peoples was
unparalleled in its scope
• 1780-1930: Tribal populations declined by
30 ML as a direct result of the spread of
industrial civilization
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Neo-Colonialism
• By the 20th C.: major dislocations, population
decline, reorganization
• World War II was a watershed
• Shift from political to economic domination
• People everywhere are integrated into the world
economic system
• Autonomous people within state boundaries are
seen as a threat (pastoralists)
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Huarani, Ecuador
• Progress Brings death to Amazon
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Slain bishop & nun victims of
Indians’ bitter struggle to survive
“civilization”
• Oil companies & pacification
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Friday: “Trinkets & Beads”
• “The latest victim of a brutal cultural
struggle that has pitted a dwindling band
of primitive warriors against civilization’s
formidable army of oil companies, settlers,
& christian missionaries”
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Ecologist:
• “The people who keep taking stuff out of th
forest are like shoppers at a closeout sale,
rushing in & taking what they can, as fast
as they can, before somebody else gets
the last piece of goods”
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Genocide in Rwanda:
Ancient Tribal Hatreds?
• Original Twa hunters & gatherers
• Hutu settle area 1000 AD,
monarchy dominated Twa
• 16th C. Tutsi herders enter
Hutu rebels
• 1884 Germans colonize, racist ideology vs.
Hutus
• After WW I Belgium took over colonial control,
racist doctrines
• Replace Hutu chiefs with Tutsis
– Ethnic Identity cards
– Allow Tutsis to take over Hutu lands
– Require peasants to grow export crops (coffee)
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• 1950s Tutsis struggle for independence
• Belgians switch support to Hutus
• 1962 independence; Hutu limit Tutsi access to
education, government jobs
• 1973 military coup
• 1974 World Bank project for cattle ranches
disadvantages Tutsi herders
Tutsi refugees
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• 1989 coffee prices collapsed (major export)
– Loss of income, famine
• 1990 IMF austerity program impoverished
farmers & workers
– Cuts to education, health care
– Malnutrition
• Tutsi refugees invade, French
provide military aid to
government
• Death squads emerge,
racial hatred toward Tutsis
• Hutu state formed, committed to genocide
the
– 50,000 Hutus & Tutsis killed
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• 1994 800,000 Tutsis
slaughtered by
Hutu-run state
• The causes were carefully obscured
– Based on Western stereotypes of savage Africans
– “Tribal warfare involving those without the veneer of
Western civilization”
– Genocide not recognized until months later
• As changes are instituted to accommodate
capital accumulation, lives are disrupted &
conditions created that fuel hatred & violence
• Colonial history, state genocide, global economic
integration
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• “World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, visiting a
Rwandan genocide memorial, apologized on
Thursday on behalf of the international
community for not trying to prevent the 1994
slaughter”
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Policies of Assimilation
• (!Kung, Bakairí, Kayapó, Bedouin)
• Community control of land –
replaced by private property
– 1887 Dawes Act
• Corporate kinship groups based on kinship
relations – incomprehensible to dominant
society
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Economic Development
• Incorporate indigenous people
into the capitalist economy-• Forced labor
• Requirement to pay taxes in cash
– Work on plantations, mines, cash crops
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Azande
• (Sudan, horticulturalists):
– Introduction of cotton as cash crop
– 1980s decline of cotton market left Azande in
economic ruin
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Guaraní (Paraguay)
• Egalitarian horticulturalists, hunting &
gathering, fishing, collection of forest
products for sale (agroforestry)
• Integrated into European markets since
contact, maintained sustainability
– Engaged global economic system without
becoming dependent
Mate Yerba
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Capitalist Expansion in Paraguay
• Dramatic expansion of agricultural cashcrop production
• Rainforest felled for intensive, industrial
agriculture
• Lumbering to extract hardwood for U.S.
market (parquet floors)
• 1970—6.8 ML has.
1984—2.1 ML has.
• Small-scale producers displaced
• Floral & faunal diversity destroyed
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• Guaraní Cash-crop disappeared,
they
enter market economy as
waged
laborers on cotton & tobacco plantations
• 1995: 3 suicides/month
(unknown before)
• Economic development spawned by the
needs of the global economy are
destroying Guaraní
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• A casualty of the expansion of the culture
of capitalism is cultural diversity
• With incorporation into the world market
economy “their standard of living is
lowered, not raised, by economic
progress… This is perhaps the most
outstanding & inescapable fact to emerge
from the years of research that
anthropologists have devoted to the study
of culture change”
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Resistance: Sioux Ghost Dance
• The Ghost Dance was a spiritual movement in
the late 1880s in reaction to the destruction of
Native American cultures
• Wovoka died, went to the spirit world, returned
as a prophet
• Nativistic Movement
• Told people to return to
the
old ways, continue
dancing & whites would
be
destroyed, the dead
& the
buffalo would return
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1890: Wounded Knee
• Wovoca had told people “You must not do
harm to anyone. You must not fight.”
• People believed the ghost shirts they wore
made them impervious to bullets
• Army troops arrived, killed 200 Lakota &
Chief Big Foot
• Gen. Sheridan:
“The only good
Indian is a dead
Indian”
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Resistance: Cargo Cults
• Milenarian Movements (esp. Melanesia)
• Exposure to whites & material goods
during World War II
• Context of rapid social change, foreign
domination, relative deprivation
• Tribal people did all the work, whites
owned all the goods
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• Converted to Christianity, but cargo did not
arrive
• To acquire wealth through ritual
means
• Creation of a new world by
mimicking Europeans
– Whites knew the secret of cargo
– Whites had stolen cargo from ancestors
• Built airstrips, killed pigs, abandoned gardens,
destroyed native wealth
• Ancestors would arrive with cargo in ships &
planes
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• “John Frum (messiah) promised he’ll bring
planeloads and shiploads of cargo to us
from America if we pray to him: Radios,
TVs, trucks, boats, watches, iceboxes,
medicine, Coca-Cola and many other
wonderful things.”
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Total Incompatibility
• Tribal economies aimed at satisfaction of
subsistence needs
– Hunters & gatherers
– Horticulturalists
– Pastoralists
– Peasants
• And the culture of consumption
– (A Poor Man Shames Us All)
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How is the culture of indigenous
peoples incompatible with the
culture of capitalism?
• Communal ownership—land & valued resources
can not be purchased
• Distribution through sharing, gift-giving, labor
reciprocity reduce need to consume & work for
wages
• People are not naturally driven to accumulate
wealth
• Conservation strategies make lands less subject
to exploitation for profit
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Culture of Capitalism
• Capitalism seeks continual expansion,
growth to obtain new markets, to promote
consumption, increase profits
• Indigenous cultures are thus vulnerable to
destruction by capitalist expansion
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Walmart
• 3000+ U.S. Walmarts sell
at lowest cost
– $245 BL sales
– Largest private employer
in Mexico
• Acting as Adam Smith’s
“invisible hand”
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Polanyi’s Paradox
• Externalities:
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Forces companies to reduce production & labor costs
Loss of 1000s of jobs as companies shift to other countries
Imports 12% Chinese exports, workers earn $32/month
Environmental damage
Energy resources for transporting goods around world
• These costs do not appear on the price tag
• Buyers are not saving money; they pass the cost on to
someone else
• 1% of the profits of 5 Walmart owners could pay decent
wages & health insurance to all of its employees
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Consumerism
• We are all involved:
• Progress is synonymous with having
things--Macs, PCs, Cells, DVDs, IPODs
• Other cultures survived 1000s of years
without these luxuries; their lives were not
“nasty, brutish, & short” (Hobbes)
• But based on family ties, kinship relations,
sharing, cooperation
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Diseases of Industrial Society
– Hypertension, circulatory system, mental
stress, diabetes, obesity
– Malnutrition is a hazard of “progress”
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Is Sociocultural Diversity
Worth Preserving?
• Medicines: anthropologists have
catalogued indigenous knowledge
– Malaria: Peru—Quinine from the bark of the
cinchona tree (“Out of the Forest”)
– Diabetes, leukemia, Hodgkins disease—
Madagascar periwinkle
– Muscle relaxants—S. America (poison arrows
with poison from the chondodendron tree)
– Aspirin: Native Americans—willow bark
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Adaptive Wisdom
• Slash & burn horticulture (Bakairí, Kayapó)
• Technologies that do not destroy the
environment
• Crop varieties selected over 1000s of
years
– High protein content: amaranth
(Mesoamerica), Quinoa (Peru),
Bean (Papago)
Tepary
• Self-sufficiency
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What Is Progress?
• The reckless pursuit of “progress” has
brought the wholesale destruction of
indigenous peoples
• Racism, ethnocentrism, evolutionary ideas
about progress justified the atrocities
committed against tribal peoples
– AND CONTINUE TO DO SO !!!
Civilization
Barbarism
Savagery
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“Progress”
• Bt corn in Mexico
– GM foods
– Patents
– Pesticide poisonings
– Contamination of environment
• Progress has brought erosion, overgrazing, deforestation
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“Progress”
• From hunting & gathering to market
capitalism
– Increasing centralization of power
– Increasing concentration of access to wealth,
power, prestige
– Shift from egalitarian sharing of resources to
increasing gap between elite & poor
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PARADOX
• Hunting & gathering societies –
equality
• Industrial nations – poverty,
homelessness
(A Poor Man Shames Us All)
ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF BEING
HUMAN SHOULD BE VALUED &
ARE WORTH PRESERVING !
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