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Modern Folklore, Identity, and Political Change in Burundi*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Rose M. Kadende-Kaiser  and
Paul J. Kaiser
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Extract

Political change in Burundi has been influenced by a number of factors that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, the impact of folklore on national unity and division is examined in the hope of shedding light on the cultural complexities—as expressed folkloristically—that have affected the formation of rigid ethnic identities and ultimately the violent political landscape of Burundi. This research builds on Liisa Malkki's work on identity construction among Burundian Hutu refugees in Tanzania (1989; 1990; 1995) and René Lemarchand's analysis of “political discourse as a system of possible definition of ethnic selves and on how, through such discursive techniques, ethnicity is transformed, mobilized and ultimately incorporated into the horrors and irrationality of genocide violence” (Lemarchand 1994, xxii).

The political and social manipulation of folklore has the potential to exacerbate conflict along ethnic and sub-ethnic lines while it can also facilitate national and sub-national unity. Both of these processes often occur simultaneously, thus complicating the academic quest for parsimonious explanation of complex social and political phenomena. We contend that the folkloric foundation of the long-term, transformative process of identity creation needs to be factored into analyses of political change in the multi-ethnic terrain of Burundi society.

Folklore is defined in this paper as a process of narration and interpretation, which serves as an “integrated framework that comprehends narrated event and narrative event within a unified frame of reference” (Bauman 1986, 6).

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , December 1997 , pp. 29 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1997

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the November 1995 meeting of the African Studies Association in Orlando, Florida. While we would like to thank panel participants for their insightful comments, we alone assume responsibility for the ideas expressed in this paper.

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