The%20impact%20of%20the%20West%20and%20the%20survival%20of%20tribal%20peoples - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Title: The%20impact%20of%20the%20West%20and%20the%20survival%20of%20tribal%20peoples


1
Lecture 11
  • The impact of the West and the survival of tribal
    peoples

2
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.

3
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.

4
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.

5
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,

6
http//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/Tria
ngle_trade.png
7
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.

8
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

9
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.

10
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.

11
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)

12
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.

13
Geronimo 1829 - 1909
14
Zapatistas
  • Emiliano Zapata
  • Mexican revolutionary 1879 -1919
  • Zapatista liberation army Mexico 2006

15
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.

16
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.
  • Doesnt 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

17
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.

18
  • 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.

19
  • 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.

20
  • Cultural collapse.
  • The entire basis of society is undermined.
  • magical salvation of a powerless people.
  • e.g. Plains American Indian Ghost dance

21
Ghost dance Ogalala Lakota at Pine Ridge
22
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 Zoos, Human Rights
  • International Labour Organisation (ILO) C169
    Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989
  • http//www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/convde.pl?C169

23
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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