Hybridity, Vacuity, and Blockage: Visions of Chaos from Anthropological Theory, Island Melanesia, and Central Africa

Abstract

We all need histories, and their violent making and remaking is one consequence of the kind of postcolonial space we inhabit.---Moore 1997:143Marshall Sahlins (1996) argues that anthropology has been the bearer of a "bourgeoisified" Judeo-Christian cosmology according to which an original state of chaos, akin to the Hobbesian state of nature, gives way to the order of society or the state. The central conundrum that this anthropology has sought to explain is how fallen and needy individuals come together in cooperative organization. Sahlins furthermore contends that, by universalizing this problematic as the key to interpreting human societies and social action, anthropology has subverted its attempts at cross-cultural understanding. My aim in this paper is to draw attention to a growing commitment within anthropology to a dif- 190

"Xenophobia" in South Africa: Order, Chaos, and the Moral Economy of Witchcraft

“…My claim has been that the flux‐and‐anomie theory of xenophobia epitomized by Hobsbawm and Appadurai, and apparent in scholarly discourse within South Africa, may actually reflect the anxieties of social scientists more than those of the people on the ground. This point resonates with Michael Scott's () work on hybridity, as well as with recent work by Friedman () and Don Kalb (). Scott demonstrates that since the initial critique of the culture concept, anthropologists have been preoccupied with the notion of hybridity.…”

“…On the other hand, they also represent hybridity as dangerously conducive to “new forms of segmentation” and reactionary differentiation, as we see in much of the literature on globalization and violence. Scott (, 192) points out that these are two sides of the same coin in contemporary anthropological thought: “The relative moral values assigned to chaos and order may invert according to the point of view of the analyst . .…”

“…As I have shown, much of the literature on globalization operates on the underlying assumption that xenophobic violence represents the urge—assumed to be a human universal—to establish order against encroaching chaos. Scott (, 193) identifies this as a “meta‐cosmology” of anthropological theory, which posits that “all people seek to impose ordering distinctions on chaos.” There is good reason to believe that the terminology of order and chaos is too particular to Western cosmology, and too loaded with moral meaning, to be applied universally. But even if we accept that the impetus to impose order on chaos is a human universal, as Scott wants to do, we need to relativize the notions of order and chaos.…”

Islands, idylls and the detours of development

“…Claiming exclusive rights to land for oneself or one’s group would negate longstanding elements of reciprocity and effectively alienate people essential for the proper functioning of the local polity. Clarification of land tenure, necessary for the working of a capitalist economy, thus threatens the tenuous achievement of unity that Ranonggans see as the prerequisite to peace and prosperity (McDougall, 2005; also Scott, 2005). In other words, it is more effective and advantageous for local development that land tenure remain cloudy and flexible, rather than a finalized, fossilized source of overt contention.…”

“…Despite such change and evolving metaphors of mobility, it remains true that ‘culture sits in places’ (Escobar, 2001; cf. Scott, 2005: 194) and loyalties to place and people are vital. Whilst identities may be hybrid and hyphenated, they may also, as in the case of Samoans in New Zealand, represent successful cosmopolitans ‘at ease in multiple worlds, rather than natives of place torn by new and multiple allegiances’ (Connell, 1995: 276, quoting Yi‐Fu Tuan).…”