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Making Kin of Historians and Anthropologists: Fictive Kinship in Fieldwork Methodology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2014
Extract
- In a way which is in no sense adventitious,
- the relationship between an anthropologist and his
- informant rests on a set of partial fictions half scen-through.
- [I]deally, communication between a fieldworker
- and the communities he worked with should continue for long
- time spans, so that it is possible to return for further information.
Bebe (Malagasy for grandmother) arrived home in the late afternoon, holding a rope tied around the neck of a male goat. She had come from a market ten miles down the coast, away from the market at Androka Vaovao where the ethnographer had located his ethnographic research. Buying the goat at a different market was worth the effort to Bebe. She had avoided paying the white foreigners' price: the tripling or quadrupling of the locals' price charged to vazaba (white foreigner). The ethnographer was asked not to come along, not to make pointless the buying trip. Before she had left for market, he had given her money for the estimated price of a young mature goat. People in Androka would hear, eventually, of her purchase, which was fine to her. Going to a distant market indicated to her neighbors that she was not in the mood to be extorted with higher prices every time she bought something for her foreigner dependent “offspring.” Several months earlier, she had first referred to the ethnographer as her offspring, zanako, when he had given her a lump sum, a two-month advance, for room and board.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © African Studies Association 2003
References
1 This is a companion piece to Kaufmann, Jeffrey, “The Informant as Resolute Overseer” History in Africa 29(2002), 231–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kaufmann was the ethnographer for this paper.
2 Rabodoarimiadana provided substantial information on Malagasy kinship and a variety of subtleties in Malagasy thought. That she and Kaufmann are married is of some methodological significance for this paper, a point which will be brought out following the middle sections of this paper.
3 Geertz, Clifford, “Thinking as a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of Anthropological Fieldwork in the New States” Antioch Review 28(1968), 139–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985), 136Google Scholar; idem, Living with Africa (Madison, 1994).
5 Bebe was of the Vezo ethnic group, a mainly fishing people who live along the lower west and southwest coast of Madagascar. They number in the hundreds of thousands, well short of Merina, Betsileo, Sakalava, Betsimitsaraka, and Tandroy populations. Vezo have been in contact with foreigners since the 15th century, when Portuguese ships resupplied at coastal villages. Bebe's father was both Vezo and Mahafale, and when he was younger, he herded cattle with Mahafale rather than fish or garden, the latter being his main occupation in his later years. The climate along the coast is arid, yet most families invest in cattle and try to maintain some cropped land or gardens. This mixed economy may be less precarious than a “pure” fishing economy subject to inclimate weather and overfishing in the Channel by shrimp boats with Asian flags, but droughts, locusts, inflation and devaluation of the Malagasy franc further complicate making a living in the region. A severe killing famine has struck the region in 2003 (Personal communication with Mde Odette Raholiarisoa).
6 This offer made Bebe very happy. She said, “thank you my child” (mahavelo bevata zanako). “There surely is a God,” she continued, “and thank you God” (tena misy Andriamanitra ary misaotra betsaka Andriamanitra).
7 Oral historians (mpitaliho), those who are versed in local history (mahay mitaliho reke, izany ny fahaisany), are generally of the elder age-group, mainly male, who are often referred to as “bald men” (Roandria tsy misy volo) to signify, in a respectful non-direct way, old age.
8 Malagasy host families do not appear to see any contradictions in combining the terms vazaha zanaka. Malagasy have a long history of turning foreign visitors into Malagasy. For this happening to the early European shipwrecked (les naufragés) see Deschamps, Hubert, Histoire de Madagascar (Paris, 1965), 53–54Google Scholar.
9 The participants included three from Bebe's father's house, two of her brothers, and seven from her house in Androka Vaovao.
10 In the recent past, the ritual of fatidra, bloodbrotherhood, was common. See, for example, Bastard, Eugène, “Ianapaka, chef Bara” Revue de Madagascar, 9(1907), 269-81, 317–27Google Scholar; Callet, R.P., Tantaran'ny Andriana elo Madagascar (Antananarivo, 1974 [1908])Google Scholar; Dandouau, André, “Le Fatidra dans la Région d'Analalava” Bulletin et Mémoires de l'Académie malgache (1908), 73Google Scholar; Sibree, James, “The Malagasy Custom of Brotherhood by Blood” Antananarivo Annual (1897), 1–6Google Scholar. Cf. precolonial accounts of Europeans being enslaved, such as the case of Robert Everard who was captured in the northwest (Nosy Be) after the village had been raided by an earlier English ship and the case of Robert Drury who was enslaved in the southwest during the height of slave trading. Everard, Robert, “A Relation of Three Years Suffering of Robert Everard, upon the Coast of Assada near Madagascar, in a Voyage to India, in the Year 1686. And of his wonderful preservation and deliverance, and arrival at London, anno 1693” A Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. VI, Churchill, Awnsham, ed. (London, 1732), 257–82Google Scholar; Drury, Robert, The Pleasant and Surprising Adventures of Robert Drury, During His Fifteen Years' Captivity on the Island of Madagascar (London, 1831)Google Scholar.
11 Since this is a widespread practice, at least when authors reflect on fieldwork encounters, we expressly do not cite any published accounts. They are easy to find.
12 There are of course some unique particularities to each fieldwork context. For example, the episode above took place four months after Kaufmann first arrived at Bebe's home and had settled into her family's routines. Soon after he arrived, Bebe brought up her father and the need for him to be fêted. But she had to wait for the right time: for goats to go on sale; for her father's agreement; tor sufficient family present; and for the most auspicious day (through divination).
13 Shipton, Parker, “Fictive Kinship,” The Dictionary of Anthropology (1997), 186–88Google Scholar. In functional terms, fictive relatedness takes the place of kinship and performs some of its functions (Graburn, Nelson, ed., Readings in Kinship and Social Structure [New York, 1971], 381)Google Scholar. Fictive kinship may also apply to non-human kinds, for example natural kind totems that stand for a group of humans (bear clan, eagle clan, etc.), to adopting a person into a different bloodline. Rituals, many involving sacrifices of some kind, are often operative.
14 This practice occurs also in the United States, for example, in which fictive kin terms such as “soul sister,” “brother,” and “Father” are used in certain contexts. Likewise, the use of ritual or fictive kinship is widespread in Latin America, especially compadrazgo (co-parenthood). See, for example, Bloch, M. and Guggenheim, S., “Compadrazgo, Baptism and the Symbolism of a Second Birth” Man (n.s.) 16(1981), 376–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dàvila, Mario, “Compadrazgo: Fictive Kinship in Latin America” in Readings in Kinship and Social Structure (New York, 1971), 396–406Google Scholar; Wolf, Eric, “Kinship, Friendship and Patron-Client Relations in Complex Societies” The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (London, 1965), 1–18Google Scholar.
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16 It is worth pointing out that unlike many of Geertz's essays, he did not publish this essay on morals and fieldwork in any of his collections of essays.
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18 Postmodernist critics of ethnography have capitalized on this point of guilt. For a different view of the politics of ethnography, one that emphasizes the informant's decision-making and overseeing the fieldwork situation, see Kaufmann, , “Informant,” 231–55Google Scholar.
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25 Geertz docs not discuss fictive kinship in his 1968 paper.
26 Cf. Kottak, Conrad Phillip, “Kinship Modeling: Adaptation, Fosterage, and Fictive Kinship among the Betsileo” in Madagascar: Society and History, Kottak, Conrad P., Rakotoarisoa, Jean-Aimé, Southall, Aidan, and Vérin, Pierre, eds, (Durham, 1986), 277–98Google Scholar; Sharp, Leslie A., The Possessed and the Dispossessed (Berkeley, 1993), 100–05Google Scholar.
27 See, for example, Baré, J.F., “L'organisation socialc Sakalava du Nord: unc récapitulation” Madagascar: Society and History (Durham, 1986), 353–92Google Scholar; Bloch, Maurice, Placing the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages, and Kinship Organisation in Madagascar (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Dina, Jeanne, “The Hazomanga among the Masikoro of Southwest Madagascar: Identity and History” Ethnohistory 48(2001), 13–30CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Faublée, Jacques, La cohésion des Sociétés bara (Paris, 1954)Google Scholar; Feeley-Harnik, Gillian, A Green Estate: Restoring Independence in Madagascar (Washington, 1991), 231–301Google Scholar; Lavondès, Henri, Bekoropoka: Quelques Aspects de la Vie Familiale et Sociale d'un Village malgache (Paris, 1967)Google Scholar; Southall, Aidan, “Ideology and Group Composition in Madagascar” American Anthropologist 73(1971), 144–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Faliarivo and the Model of Malagasy Kinship,” Madagascar: Society and History (Durham, 1986), 263-77; Wilson, Peter J., Freedom by a Hair's Breadth: Tsimihety in Madagascar (Ann Arbor, 1992), 97–123Google Scholar; cf. Gezon, Lisa L., “Marriage, Kin, and Compensation: A Socio-Political Ecology of Gender in Ankarana, Madagascar” Anthropological Quarterly 75(2002), 675–706CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Larson, Pier M., History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement (Oxford, 2000), 176–83Google Scholar.
28 Except Maurice Bloch, Placing the Dead, especially in his discussions of havana (kin); idem, “The Moral and Tactical Meaning of Kinship Terms” Man (n.s.) 6(1971), 79-87; Graeber, David, “Painful Memories” Journal of Religion in Africa 27(1997), 374–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Dancing with Corpses Reconsidered: An Interpretation of Famadiliana (in Arivonimamo, Madagascar)” American Ethnologist 22(1995), 258-78.
29 An old synonym is fofodamosina (literally, “odor [fofona] on the back [lamosina]”), which Richardson defined as “a present given by grown up children to a parent or nurse (or having nursed them in infancy.” Richardson, J., A New Malagasy-English Dictionary (Antananarivo, 1885), 195Google Scholar.
30 It is not solely recompensation to the carrier, which would be: “answer for having carried an infant on the back,” which is how Graeber translated it in “Painful Memories,” 391. Rather than putting emphasis on the receiver (the indebted) only, the concept puts emphasis on the act of giving back to the indebted by the debtor. In other words, the idea involves both the giver and the receiver, linked together by what was done in the past, when the order of the giver and receiver was reversed, and what is being done in the present.
31 We do not consider the complexities surrounding when Malagasy recognize a baby as a human being, as an object of affection and investment. Concerns with “the Evil Eye,” of calling attention to a vulnerable baby, of high rates of infant mortality, and one's socio-economic level are at work here.
32 Aiza ny valim-babenako? The directness of this statement renders it crass. Malagasy pride themselves in indirect expressions. Their language (of the Australonesian family) reflects this, with its preference toward the passive voice and its use of the passive-relative voice, of which there is no grammatical equivalent in English. See Keenan, E.L., “Relative Clause Formation in Malagasy” The Chicago Which Hunt, Peranteau, P. ed. (Chicago, 1972), 169–89Google Scholar; Keenan, Edward Louis and Ochs, Elinor, “Becoming a Competent Speaker of Malagasy” Languages and Their Speakers, Shopen, T. ed. (Cambridge, MA, 1979), 113–58Google Scholar.
33 “Zanaka” is more formal; “anaka” is more familiar or signifies greater closeness.
34 Anaka, mba ataovy an'ilay tsara tsara re ity henako e! This example comes from the Merina dialect. The use of “anaka” here sends the message “I am not a stranger but a good customer, so do something nice for me.”
35 The names have been changed.
36 These included house help (cook and laundress) and grandkids whose parents had died, divorced, remarried, or had too many children to look after in their own household.
37 An additional complexity affecting many Malagasy families is polygyny, known as mampirafy in Malagasy which means “rivalry.” Many husbands have co-wives and children by them, which creates additional tension and demands on a husband's resources (even though this practice is not recognized in legal terms by the state).
38 If an offspring has moved away and lives in France or the United States, for example, this docs not necessarily lessen the expectations of valim-babena.
39 Narayan, Kirin, “How Native Is a ‘Native’ Anthropologist?” American Anthropologist 95(1993), 671–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 Vansina, Jan, “Historians, Are Archcologists Your Siblings?” History in Africa 22(1995), 369–408CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an archaeologist's point of view, see Robertshaw, Peter, “Sibling Rivalry?: The Intersection of Archeology and History” History in Africa 27(2000), 261–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 Bloch, Maurice, “The Ethnohistory of Madagascar” Ethnohistory 48(2001), 293–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Of course he does not equate the two disciplines; there are still plenty of differences. The research design of fieldwork as well as field methods are not identical across these two disciplines. Many historians still do want to understand primarily the past, especially how events illuminate processes, involving the people speaking to them. Many anthropologists care mainly about understanding the present lives of the people who arc speaking to them. Anthropologists continue to look to the work of historians to guide them in improving their use of the past in understanding the present.
42 This is not the place to consider fully the methodological borrowings between history and social-cultural anthropology, and their implications, which must be the subject of another paper.
43 See also, Cohen, David William and Odhiambo, E.S. Atieno, Siaya: The Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape (London, 1989), 124–27Google Scholar.