Changing continuities : experiencing and interpreting history, population movement and material differentiation in Matatiele, Transkei
Doctoral Thesis
1990
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University of Cape Town
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Abstract
Cultural continuities through time and space have long concerned anthropologists. Recent work has increasingly concentrated on understanding these as social structural responses to both broad and local political-economic structures and processes. The aim of this thesis is to build on that approach. I argue that while some persistences of social form are best explained in functionalist and instrumentalist terms, to explain others one needs to look to the momentum of common practices that do not change without good cause. I thus attempt to wed a materialist analysis of political-economic determinants with one focused on social practice. I do this first by the application of a political-economic analysis and then by examining social practices for their apparent continuities of form and analysing why these occur. The approach taken thus reveals the influence of a paradigm shift in contemporary anthropology. The thesis focuses on the Matatiele District in South Africa's Transkei bantustan. The evidence I present was obtained primarily from ethnographic field-research conducted between 1982 and 1985 and concentrated in two settlements there. This is augmented by material both from further fieldwork undertaken elsewhere in the district, and from various documentary and archival sources. A primary concern is the nature of material and social differentation in the district and its relationship to both large- and small-scale population movement there since the mid-nineteenth century. By examining these through the prism of a political-economic approach, I indicate the extent to which they are functions of broad regional processes, including the development of capitalism in southern Africa. I thus show that local-level material differentiation is the product of population movements, themselves traceable to both capital's demand for labour and state interventions in rural land-use practices. In addition I show that local circumstance modifies the impact of these broader processes at the local level: there is great variety in the ways in which regional political-economic processes impact locally. Another primary concern is the appearance of cultural continuity in observed social behavioural forms, and people's claims that their present practices represent such continuities. A number of examples are identified. I examine these in order to establish the extent to which they are the functions of political-economic structures, the products of instrumental manipulation for local political purposes, or just the outcome of people pragmatically going on in ways with which they are familiar. While I acknowledge the merit of the first two types of explanation, I argue that there are many instances when the primary reason that people behave as they do is that they have no reason not to, and that their actions reflect a practical consciousness (or knowledgeability) that has its roots in experience. I conclude the thesis by discussing some of the methodological implications of a greater focus on practice and practical consciousness in southern African anthropology. I suggest that there is need for reinvestment in the method of intensive participant-observation, refined to accommodate concerns with the commonplace activities of everyday life in particular. This approach, I argue, is necessary in order to represent the diversity of cultural practice to be found in the region, but without recourse to structuralist analyses that have tended to reinforce notions of a mosaic of cultures in the region and given strength to pluralist perceptions of the region's population.
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Bibliography : pages 314-348.
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Reference:
Spiegel, A. 1990. Changing continuities : experiencing and interpreting history, population movement and material differentiation in Matatiele, Transkei. University of Cape Town.