Containment
In my last post, I described the
disconnect between development and growth, and how that is reflected in the
world's economic order between the developed, or 'growing' world, and the
'developing' world.
Though I take a critical view, 'sustainable
development' per se is not a bad thing, but the picture that emerges from this
disconnect is that, often, development becomes a strategy of containment or
mitigation. In practice, what we call 'development' in a charity context is often to mitigate the
negative effects of economic development.
When tribes have been dispossessed of
their truly sustainable lives, and pulled into developed urban chaos where
poverty and wealth exist in ways that never did before, they need this form of ‘sustainable’
development. There is little reason why, having lived the same kind of life for
countless centuries, they might need anything else.
Let me be clear that I am not trying to
romanticise tribal life. These are hard people, living hard lives. I do not at
all begrudge them access to facilities and institutions if they want them. My
issue is with the practised belief that they must want these things, whether
they realise it or not.
Post tribal
I’ve seen streets of typical post-tribal African
towns. Empty sachets of sugar cane spirits flake and crumble in the red dust.
Old men, still in their traditional shuka cloaks sit beneath a
tree drinking all day, receiving handouts from the local NGO. Meanwhile a group
of well-intentioned young people build a water pipeline for them – a great way
to fix a formerly itinerant community. I’ve seen it. I’ve done it(1).
 |
| Hard folks, hard lives. |
The tribe in this example, the Hadzabe,
are one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes in Africa. Since the end of
traditional empire-based colonialism, when Africa coalesced (more or less) into
nation states, the government of Tanzania has been trying to 'fix' these
communities, with fairly minimal success. In 1961, a town was built for one of
the communities. They moved in and, following their custom, moved on with the
game. The government made several more fruitless attempts and gave up until
2007, when they tried an opposite approach, attempting to lease massive tracts
of their traditional hunting grounds as a safari reserve for a company
based in the UAE(2).
After a huge international outcry, the Tanzanians reneged on the deal(3).
Education is an informative example
when we look at the interaction of the modern with the traditional. Within
Hadza hunter gatherer communities, many young people elect not to go to school,
despite it being in some way available. Many young people in these communities
are aware of school and what they can get from it, but do not see the ‘gain’
that we presume. Most development workers, myself included, have harnessed huge
gains from education – usually up to post-graduate level. We are not even faintly
comparing like with like. Exercises of power like formal education are normally
viewed as benign at worst, but can play a part in erasing distinctive
identities by forcing people to operate within a larger culture than their own.
To attempt to join a global modernised
society would severely disempower members of this kind of community, according
to their cultural views of power. The ability to track game, to survive for
days on end in the wilderness, to navigate, to fletch arrows, to make and use a
bow. This is their empowerment. The only empowerment that we can hope to
provide is a strange, warped kind that operates within our metropolitan,
modernised sphere of experience and this form of empowerment can only become
relevant when this kind of world begins to encroach upon the social and
physical environment of these tribes. That is fine in theory, except that this
kind of progress works at a different rate than a human life. In the social
spaces in which tribal communities live, the difference between the wealthiest
and the poorest members is negligible. In a town, a fat man without the first
idea of how to catch a Dikdik*, but
who knows how to sell a car, might be immeasurably wealthier than the average
Hadza*. It is no wonder that when faced with rapid social and physical alienation, that rates of alcoholism, drug-addiction and
suicide in post-tribal communities are staggeringly higher than in metropolitan
communities.
(*a small, incredibly fast antelope.
Slightly bigger than a hare.)
(*I mean immeasurably – they don’t use
money for day-to-day activities)
Another thing to make clear, these folk
aren't afraid of the wider world, they welcome strangers, sharing food and
fire. The Hadzabe don't even mind if you break their cultural norms (within
reason - I would often run around the countryside tops off. They thought it was strange, but didn't much care). They want to enact their lives in a manner of their
choosing. Instead, global society seeks to put them into the prison we have built for ourselves.
As I had a lot of trouble last night
starting a fire - with matches and charcoal - I remembered seeing a man
starting a fire in less than a minute using two sticks, a handful of grass and
a piece of cow dung.
Tbc.
Sources
1. My old blog
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