“It seemed like a punishment”: Teacher transfers, hollow nationalism, and the intimate state in Eritrea

Abstract

A B S T R A C TDiscourses of the punishing state that circulated in Eritrea at a time when the government had become increasingly coercive were articulated especially clearly in debates over teacher transfers. Teachers imagined the state on the basis of their intimate encounters with its bureaucrats, who were thought of as capable of punishing, manipulating, or being manipulated. In a country once noted for the effervescent, revolutionary celebration of the state's capacity to defend and develop the nation, thinking of the state as pernicious challenged the core tenets of Eritrean nationalism but left intact lingering fantasies of state fairness. By examining the complexity of debates about teacher transfers, I uncover a multifaceted commentary on government power, a dialogue over the nature and meaning of the notion of duty to the nation, and a reworked popular imaginary of the state. [nationalism, state, teachers, Eritrea, bureaucracy, intimacy, citizenship] I n the fall of 2004, in the town of Assab, Eritrea, teachers and students as well as their families and neighbors were anxiously awaiting news about teacher transfers to more remote towns and villages in the Southern Red Sea region, where Assab is located. For weeks, in every house, teashop, and bar I visited, this was the topic of conversation. That fall, several new schools were being opened in the sparsely populated region, and a much larger number of teachers than ever before were being transferred to remote posts. The transfers loomed large in everyone's minds, evoking the specter of a government capable of relocating citizen bodies at will without regard for their well-being or wishes. The transfers were personally troubling to teachers, who would be separated from family for six months at a time or longer and who would have to live without running water and electricity. But, in addition to this sense of individual loss, discussions of transfers among those affected, directly and otherwise, described an increasingly pernicious relationship between government actors and citizens in a way that depicted the state as autocratic and uncaring.One transfer case was particularly controversial. As soon as Abraham, a young university-aged, "national service" science teacher heard that he was to be transferred to the village of Tio, he immediately left Assab and headed for the Eritrean capital, Asmara. 1 Before leaving, he made it clear that he was protesting his transfer, claiming that it was a punishment for having upset local Ministry of Education officials. He believed this punishment to be highly personal. Abraham also stated that his highly placed relatives in Asmara would intervene on his behalf. In a country noted for a lack of what many would term "corruption," Abraham was willing to use his personal connections to counteract what he understood to be a very personal form of punishment. 2 In Eritrea, a country controlled by an authoritarian regime, it was rumored that the government would not hesitate to arrest its citizens for much lesser infract...

The Struggling State

“…Like the discourse of corruption in India, discourses of punishment enable an imaginative scaling of the state in Eritrea. Elsewhere, I have argued that this sense of being a punished subject in large part replaced notions that the government had the legitimate right to demand service and sacrifice from its subjects (Riggan 2013b). Here, I emphasize how Eritreans linked experiences of being coerced, or forced to do something, with a sense of "being punished" and, furthermore, extended this sense of being coerced and punished to the condition of being Eritrean more broadly.…”

“…Understanding the relationship between nation and state is essential to understanding Eritrean political and social life and is central to scholarship on Eritrea (Connell 2011;Dorman 2006;Hepner 2009b;Hirt and Mohammad 2013;Müller 2008Müller , 2012bRiggan 2013b). Indeed, much of the scholarship on Eritrea notes that it is difficult to distinguish between nation and state in large part because the ruling party has worked very hard to synthesize the two (Dorman 2006;Müller 2008Müller , 2012b.…”

“…Indeed, much of the scholarship on Eritrea notes that it is difficult to distinguish between nation and state in large part because the ruling party has worked very hard to synthesize the two (Dorman 2006;Müller 2008Müller , 2012b. Meanwhile, ethnographic work tends to emphasize often quiet, but widespread, grassroots discontent with these efforts at synthesizing the nation with the state (Hepner 2009b;Hirt and Mohammed 2013;Mahrt 2009;O'Kane 2012;Poole 2009;Riggan 2013b;Treiber 2009;Tronvoll 1996Tronvoll , 1998. The predominant version of Eritrean nationalism was carefully crafted and constructed by the ruling (and liberating) party, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), during the country's thirty-year war for independence from Ethiopia, which is referred to as "The Struggle."…”

“…Education in Eritrea is central to the PFDJ's militarized nation-building agenda and to the erosion of populist support for that agenda (Mül-ler 2012b;Riggan 2011). At the time of my longest period of fieldwork in Eritrea (2003Eritrea ( -2005, educational institutions were directly implicated in the making of soldiers through the auspices of a dramatic educational reform.…”

“…This phenomenon continues to be evident in the large numbers of Eritreans who flee the country despite the significant risks they face in doing so. Thus, state spatialization in Eritrea has bound Eritreans to the national territory by making them feel imprisoned by it, but the fact that such large numbers of Eritreans are fleeing the country suggests that this feeling of being made captive is at least in part responsible for producing the desire to escape (Poole 2013;Riggan 2013a).…”