Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-45l2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T12:35:33.973Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Doubting Modernity for Madagascar's Cactus Pastoralists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Jeffrey C. Kaufmann
Jeffrey C. Kaufmann*
Affiliation:
University of Southern Mississippi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Doubt persists in pastoralist studies, but not the kind that David Henige champions in his explorations of historical methods. Nostalgia for past glories, when pastoral nomads were mighty and fierce or healthy and wise, throws doubt on today's mobile livestock herders surviving for much longer in modern times. Scholars of this sort direct their skepticism not at how they came to such a conclusion, which Henige would urge them to do, but at how “traditional” herding ways of life can possibly survive vis-à-vis “modernity.” In such a “disappearing worlds” approach to change, where students of pastoralist cultures confront their subjects through their approaching demise, documenting the ways of life of pastoralist peoples before they disappear has deeply romantic overtones.

Henige's pyrrhonist skepticism aids in exposing the assumptions behind such a romantic scholarly endeavor. “Pyrrhonists demand,” Henige reminds us, “that, to be successful, all inquiry must be characterized by rhythms of searching, examining, and doubting, with each sequence generating and influencing the next in a continuously dialectical fashion.” In his Montaigne-like essayistic book, Historical Evidence and Argument, doubting does not end inquiry like a one-man scorched-earth policy, but sets David on a journey with many twists and turns and no end in sight. Along the way, the implicit has a chance to become more explicit. Methods – the ways that we search for, examine, and doubt our evidence and eventual arguments – are thus revealed more effectively when made a subject of critical reasoning and their revelatory powers questioned.

Type
Literacy, Feedback, and the Imagination of History
Information
History in Africa , Volume 38 , 2011 , pp. 123 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andriamampianina, J., “Traditional Land-use and Nature Conservation in Madagascar,” in: McNeely, J.A., and Pitt, D. (eds.), Culture and Conservation: the Human Dimension in Environmental Planning (London, 1985), 81–89.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, 1996).Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun (ed.), Globalization (Durham, 2001).Google Scholar
Astuti, Rita, People of the Sea: Identity and Descent among the Veto of Madagascar (Cambridge, 1995).Google Scholar
Bastard, Eugène, “Mission chez les Mahafalys,” Revue de Madagascar 2 (1900), 697–711.Google Scholar
Behrend, Heike, and Luig, Ute (eds.), Spirit Possession, Modernity, and Power in Africa (Madison, 1999).Google Scholar
Berman, Marshall, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York, 1982).Google Scholar
Bernard, H. Russell, Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (Lanham MD, 2011).Google Scholar
Charles, I.H., Rakotoaritsima, B., Randriamanarina, J.F.R., Rasija, A., and Romain, G., “L'organisation territoriale Tevondroñe-Temahaleotse du littoral nord-Mahafale,” Aombe 3 (1991), 79–95.Google Scholar
Cole, Jennifer, Forget Colonialism? Sacrifice and the Art of Memory in Madagascar (Berkeley, 2001).Google Scholar
Decary, Raymond, “L'utilisation des Opuntias en Androy (extrême sud de Madagascar),” Revue de botanique appliquée et d'agriculture coloniale 5 (1925), 769–71.Google Scholar
Decary, Raymond, “La question des raiketa dans l'extrême sud de Madagascar,” Bulletin économique de Madagascar et dépendances 24 (1927), 92–96.Google Scholar
Decary, Raymond, “La destruction des cactus par une cochenille à Madagascar: ses conséquences économiques et sociales,” Annales de société Linnéenne de Lyon 75 (1930), 101–17.Google Scholar
Decary, Raymond, L'Androy (extrême sud de Madagascar). Essai de monographie régionale. I. Géographie physique et humaine (Paris, 1930).Google Scholar
Decary, Raymond, L'Androy (extrême sud de Madagascar). Essai de monographie régionale. II. Histoire. Civilisation. Colonisation (Paris, 1933).Google Scholar
Decary, Raymond, “La conquête économique de l'extrême-sud de Madagascar,” La Géographie 64 (1935), 365–76.Google Scholar
Decary, Raymond, “Epoques d'introduction des Opuntias monacantha dans le sud de Madagascar,” Revue de botanique appliquée et d'agriculture tropicale 27 (1947), 455–57.Google Scholar
Decary, Raymond, Contes et légendes du sud-ouest de Madagascar (Paris, 1964).Google Scholar
Decary, Raymond, and Castel, Rémy, Etudes démographiques. Modalités et conséquences des migrations intérieures récents des populations Malagaches (Tananarive, 1941).Google Scholar
Decorse, J., “Modification des pièces travaillantes dans les charrues indigènes,” Revue des cultures coloniales 9 (1901), 105–10.Google Scholar
Deschamps, Hubert, Les migrations intérieures passées et présentes à Madagascar (Paris, 1959).Google Scholar
Deschamps, Hubert, Histoire de Madagascar (Paris, 1965).Google Scholar
Dirks, Nicholas B., “History as a Sign of the Modern,” Public Culture 2 (1990), 25–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doortmont, Michel R., Hanson, John H., Jansen, Jan, and van den Bersselaar, Dmitri, “The Next Step for a Journal of Method,” History in Africa 37 (2010), 1–5.Google Scholar
Donham, Donald L., Marxist Modern: An Ethnographic History of the Ethiopian Revolution (Berkeley, 1999).Google Scholar
Donham, Donald L., “On Being Modern in a Capitalist World: Some Conceptual and Comparative Issues,” in: Knauft, Bruce M. (ed.), Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies (Bloomington, 2002), 241–57.Google Scholar
Drouot, Andry, “‘Raketa mena’ ou la misère du Sud,” L'Express de Madagascar 22 February (2007), www.lexpressmada.com/display.php?p=display&id=5493.Google Scholar
Eisenstadt, S.N. (ed.), Daedalus (Special issue on “Multiple Modernities”) 129 (2001).Google Scholar
Englund, Harri, and Leach, James, “Ethnography and the Meta-Narratives of Modernity,” Current Anthropology 41 (2000), 225–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferguson, James, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley, 1999).Google Scholar
Ferguson, James, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (Durham NC, 2006).Google Scholar
Frappa, C., “Sur Dactylopius tomentosus Lam. et son acclimatement à Madagascar,” Revue de pathologie végétale et d'entomologie agricole de France 19 (1932), 48–55.Google Scholar
Frappa, C., “Au sujet de la cochenille des opuntia à Madagascar,” L'agronomie coloniale 172(1932), 132.Google Scholar
Friedman, Jonathan, “Modernity and Other Traditions,” in: Knauft, Bruce M. (ed.), Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies (Bloomington, 2002), 287–313.Google Scholar
Gaonkar, Dilip Parameshwar (ed.), Alternative Modernities (Durham, 2001).Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford, “Distinguished Lecture: Anti Anti-Relativism,” American Anthropologist 86 (1984), 263–78.Google Scholar
Geschiere, Peter, The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa (Charlottesville, 1997).Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford, 1990).Google Scholar
Goody, Jack (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968).Google Scholar
Griffiths, David, Prickly Pear as Stock Feed, Farmers' Bulletin 1072 (Washington DC, 1928).Google Scholar
Helisoa, O., Mahavoatsy, G., “Kere: état des lieux les potentialités culturales du sud malgache—résumé 2003,” www.heli-s-madagascar.fr.st.Google Scholar
Henige, David, The Chronology of Oral Tradition: Quest for a Chimera (Oxford, 1974).Google Scholar
Henige, David, “Do African Historians Need to Fear the Slouching Beast of Skepticism?,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 8 (1975), 457–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henige, David, Oral Historiography (London, 1982).Google Scholar
Henige, David, Historical Evidence and Argument (Madison, 2005).Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael, Anthropology: Theory in Practice (New York, 2001).Google Scholar
Humbert, Henri, “Changements survenus dans la végétation du sud de Madagascar,” Revue de botanique appliquée et d'agriculture tropicale, 27 (1947), 441–44.Google Scholar
Karp, Ivan, “Development and Personhood: Tracing the Contours of a Moral Discourse,” in: Knauft, Bruce M. (ed.), Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies (Bloomington, 2002), 82–104.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Jeffrey C., “Faly aux vazaha: Eugène Bastard, Taboo, and Mahafale Autarky in Southwest Madagascar, 1899,” History in Africa 26(1999), 129–55.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Jeffrey C., “La question des raketa: Colonial Struggles with Prickly Pear Cactus in Southern Madagascar, 1900–1923,” Ethnohistory 48 (2001), 87–121.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Jeffrey C., “Prickly Pear Cactus and Pastoralism in Southwest Madagascar,” Ethnology 43 (2004), 345–61.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Jeffrey C., “Agency in a Mahafale Pastoralist Landscape,” in: Kaufmann, Jeffrey C. (ed.), Greening the Great Red Island: Madagascar in Nature and Culture (Pretoria, 2008), 197–217.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Jeffrey C., “The Non-Modern Constitution of Famines in Madagascar's Spiny Forests: ‘Water-Food’ Plants, Cattle and Mahafale Landscape Praxis,” Environmental Sciences 5 (2008), 73–89.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Jeffrey C., “The Sediment of Nomadism,” History in Africa 36 (2009), 235–64.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Jeffrey C., and Tsirahamba, Sylvestre, “Forests and Thorns: Conditions of Change Affecting Mahafale Pastoralists in Southwestern Madagascar,” Conservation and Society 4 (2006), 231–61 (also available at www.conservationandsociety.org).Google Scholar
Kelly, John D., “Alternative Modernities or an Alternative to ‘Modernity:’ Getting Out of the Modernist Sublime,” in: Knauft, Bruce M. (ed.), Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies (Bloomington, 2002), 258–86.Google Scholar
Khazanov, Anatoly M., “Pastoralists in the ‘Age of Globalization:’ Challenges of the 21st Century,” in: Janzen, Jörg, and Enkhtuvshin, Batboldyn (eds.), Dialogue Between Cultures and Civilizations. Present State and Perspectives of Nomadism in a Globalizing World (Ulaanbaatar, 2004), 13–28.Google Scholar
Knauft, Bruce M., “Critically Modern: An Introduction,” in: Knauft, Bruce M. (ed.), Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies (Bloomington, 2002), 1–54.Google Scholar
Lyautey, Louis-Hubert, Dans le sud de Madagascar: pénétration militaire, situation politique et économique, 1900–1902 (Paris, 1903).Google Scholar
Middleton, Karen, “Who Killed ‘Malagasy Cactus’? Science, Environment and Colonialism in Southern Madagascar (1924–1930),” Journal of Southern African Studies 25 (1999), 215–48.Google Scholar
Monjauze, A., and le Houérou, H.N., “Le rôle des Opuntia dans l'économie agricole Nord Africaine,” Bulletin de l'Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Agriculture de Tunis 8–9 (1965), 85–164.Google Scholar
Montaigne, Michel de, Essais (Paris, 1937).Google Scholar
Perrier, Henri, “Les prairies malgaches,” Bulletin économique de Madagascar et dépendances 17 (1920), 1–16.Google Scholar
Perrier, Henri, “Introduction à Tananarive du “Coccus Cacti” ou cochenille du figuier d'Inde,” Bulletin économique de Madagascar et dépendances 21 (1924), 222.Google Scholar
Perrier, Henri, “Les pestes végétales à Madagascar,” Revue de botanique appliquée et d'agriculture coloniale 8 (1928), 36–43.Google Scholar
Perrier, Henri, “Les famines du sud-ouest de Madagascar: causes et remèdes,” Revue de botanique appliquée et d'agriculture tropicale 14 (1934), 173–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petit, Georges, “Introduction à Madagascar de la cochenille du figuier d'Inde (Dactylopius coccus Costa) et ses conséquences inattendues,” Revue d'histoire naturelle 10 (1929), 160–73.Google Scholar
Petit, Georges, “Sur l'introduction à Madagascar du ‘Dactylopius coccus Costa’ parasite de 1'‘Opuntia vulgaris Mill.’,” Comptes-rendus des séances de l'académie d'agriculture de France 15 (1929), 410–16.Google Scholar
Petit, Georges, “La disparition des Opuntia et les famines périodiques dans le sud de Madagascar,” Bulletin de l'association de géographes Français 75 (1934), 37–39.Google Scholar
Piot, Charles, Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa (Chicago, 1999).Google Scholar
Pollan, Michael, The Botany of Desire (New York, 2001).Google Scholar
Rabinow, Paul, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Chicago, 1989).Google Scholar
Rabesandratana, R.N., “Evaluation de la biomasse d'Euphorbia stenoclada Baili, (euphorbiacée) dans la région de Tuléar (sud-ouest de Madagascar),” Sécheresse 10 (1999), 55–61.Google Scholar
Rasolo, Hery, “Raketa mena (cactus rouge),” Documentary film, (Madagascar, 2007), 52 min.Google Scholar
Ratsimbazafy, Jonah, Rakotoniaina, Lala Jean, and Durbin, Joanna, “Cultural Anthropologists and Conservationists: Can We Learn from Each Other to Conserve the Diversity of Malagasy Species and Cultures?” in: Kaufmann, Jeffrey C. (ed.), Greening the Great Red Island: Madagascar in Nature and Culture (Pretoria, 2008), 301–15.Google Scholar
Ruud, J., Taboo: a Study of Malagasy Customs and Beliefs (Oslo, Norway, 1960).Google Scholar
Stratton, Arthur, The Great Red Island (New York, 1964).Google Scholar
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, “The Otherwise Modern: Caribbean Lessons from the Savage Slot,” in: Knauft, Bruce M. (ed.), Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies (Bloomington, 2002), 220–37.Google Scholar
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World (New York, 2003).Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World-System (New York, 1976).Google Scholar
Woodhouse, Philip, Bernstein, Henry, and Hulme, David, African Enclosures? The Social Dynamics of Wetlands in Drylands (Oxford, 2000).Google Scholar