Browsing by Author "Quinlan, Tim"

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    Marena a Lesotho: chiefs, politics and culture in Lesotho
    (1995) Quinlan, Tim; Sharp, John
    'What is a chief?' and 'what do chiefs do?' are the two questions which begin this study of political authority in rural Lesotho. These questions are contained within a broader one, 'why do villagers often hold chiefs, individually and generally, in contempt but recoil at the suggestion of dissolution of the chieftainship?' The latter question arose from the author's initial field experiences to become the basis for a study which examines the history of the chieftainship in Lesotho. This history is seen as a dialectical process involving a struggle over, and a struggle for, the chieftainship. The former struggle refers to the interventions of elites in society, namely senior chiefs, colonial government officials and, in more recent times, post-independence governments and foreign aid agencies. The latter struggle refers to the interventions of chiefs and the rural populace. Having outlined different ethnographic descriptions of Lesotho's chieftainship, in order to illustrate the different criteria of authority which were applied in the making of the chieftainship, the study goes on to consider the efforts of different agencies to make the chieftainship in the image they desired. The contradictions within, and between, these interventions are explored as the study moves towards consideration of why rural Basotho still support the chieftainship. This analysis takes the discussion from the colonial context, during which Basutoland and the chieftainship were created, to contemporary regional and local rural contexts, in which the chieftainship exists. The discussion illustrates how chiefs have been personifications of family and society, and how this representation is being challenged amongst the rural populace today. The multiplicity of forces which have shaped the chieftainship are then drawn together in a conclusion which examines the pivotal role of the chieftainship in the creation of a national identity and in the crisis of legitimacy facing the contemporary state in Lesotho. The study is informed by a marxist theoretical perspective, but it is also influenced by the debate on postmodernism in Anthropology. This leads the study to acknowledge the current context of theoretical uncertainty for ethnographic research, and the opportunities this affords for exploration of new perspectives. One result is that the study examines tentatively the role of bio-physical phenomena in the way Basotho have constructed society and nature, and represented this construction in their collective understanding of political authority.
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    The transformation of land tenure in Lesotho
    (1983) Quinlan, Tim; Spiegel, Andrew David
    Using Lesotho as a case study, this dissertation examines the changing forms of land tenure in a rural Southern African population. Land tenure in Lesotho is seen to have undergone many transformations over the last 200 years. These transformations are illustrated through an historical analysis of political and of social relationships in rural Lesotho. For example, the chieftainship in Lesotho is analysed to illustrate how changes in its structure have led to a strengthening of commoners' usufruct land rights. In turn, by examining how commoners' land rights have been expressed over time, this study demonstrates the contemporary significance of kinship ties in a rural Lesotho community. The significance of kinship is seen to lie in the flexibility which its principles allow, for members of the rural community, to accommodate the demographic, ecological and economic pressures of living in a peripheral part of Southern Africa. In effect, such flexibility is seen to have enabled the rural community to allocate, as optimally as possible, the scarce resources it has and can utilise. By examining how those resources have been utilised, this study demonstrates how relations of production in the rural community have become defined by communal control over rather than individual ownership of resources. As a result, this study illustrates how groups of agnatically related households have been formed into units of production in which the permanent rural residents, rather than the wage earning migrant workers, have control over resources, including the latter's' cash incomes. The development of such a unit of production is seen to be based on a sustained and vital interest by Basotho in land. That interest, which has been defined by principles of kinship, has prevented the alienation o Basotho from land. In effect, that interest has been a response by Basotho to the many and diffuse threats to their material existence brought about by their incorporation into a Capitalist politico-economic system. Consequently, this dissertation argues for a reconsideration of kinship in anthropological history, in view of the historical rather than synchronic anthropological perspective adopted in this study.