living at the margins. youth and modernity in the bijagó islands

275 Pages·2007·2.21 MB·English

University Institute for Social Sciences, Business Studies and Technologies

Department of Anthropology

LIVING AT THE MARGINS.
YOUTH AND MODERNITY IN THE BIJAGÓ ISLANDS
(GUINEA-BISSAU)

by

Lorenzo Ibrahim Bordonaro

Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree
of

Doctor in Anthropology
(Anthropology of Culture and Symbolism)

Supervisor:

Robert Lewis Rowland

September, 2006
Resumo

Este é um trabalho sobre um grupo de jovens e sobre o seu ‘desejo de modernidade’.
Por um lado, exploram-se as estratégias criativas utilizadas para superar a sua condição
de subalternidade, apropriando e utilizando as narrativas do ‘desenvolvimento’ e as
instituições da ‘modernidade’ para encontrar o seu caminho entre as dificuldades da
Guiné Bissau contemporânea. Por outro lado no entanto, serão sublinhadas as suas
incertezas e frustrações frente ao facto do que o próprio projecto de modernidade por
eles adoptado os confina numa posição de marginalidade e subalternidade na geografia
global do ‘desenvolvimento’, com poucas oportunidades para escapar.

Palavras Chave: Juventude, Modernidade, Marginalidade, Guiné Bissau

Abstract

This is a study about a group of young men and about their ‘will to be modern’. On
the one hand, I am concerned with their creative strategies for overcoming a subaltern
condition, appropriating and using the narratives of ‘development’ and the institutions
of ‘modernity’ to find their way among the predicaments of post-independence Guinea-
Bissau. On the other hand, however, I will highlight their uncertainties and frustration
as they realise that the very project of modernity they strive to embrace confines them to
a position of marginality and subalternity in the global geography of ‘development’,
with few opportunities to escape.

Keywords: Youth, Modernity, Marginality, Guinea-Bissau
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Contents

Aknowledgments 7
Introduction 9
The island of Bubaque and the Praça 9
Fieldwork in the Praça 14
Focusing on youth 23
The predicaments of youth in Africa 24
The wider context: the state, ‘development’, and ‘globalisation’ 27
The crisis of the state 27
Development 29
Globalisation: old wine in new botles? 32
The undersides of modernity 35
Multiple modernities? 36
An ideology of aspiration 37
Modernity/Coloniality 40
1. In the vilage: an overview 4
Age grades and age clases 46
The n’ubir kusina 46
Nea, ongbá and kadene: the informal age-grades 48
Kanhokam 49
Karo 50
Manras: the male initiation ceremony 51
Kamabi 53
Kasuká 54
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Okotó 54
Transformation 54
2. ‘Who cares for Bijagó culture anymore?’ 57
Four dialogues 57
Agostinho 57
Who cares for Bijagó culture anymore? 58
Domingo Carlos da Silva 59
Xarifo 62
Modern binary opositions 63
The town and the vilages: bluring the lines 69
Conclusion 74
3. How the Bijagó became primitives 76
From trading centres to the periphery of the empire 77
Raiders and slave traders 7
Micro-independence 79
The ‘pacification’ of the Archipelago 81
The civilizing mision 8
After WWI: anthropology and exoticization 93
Producing diference 9
Sex and work 9
Civilize yourself or perish 104
Conclusion 107
4. ‘Development’ and the rural/urban divide 109
Cabral, the PAIGC and the local communities 110
Cabral, development, mobilization 110
After the war: a brief political history 116
Political and economic changes 119
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State modernism and rural communities 123
The ‘underdevelopment’ of the Archipelago 127
Conclusion 132
5. Appropriation and resistance 135
Appropriating modernity 135
Resistance 141
Emotion, discourse and complexity 144
Amor, discourse and cultural style 150
6. Education and modernity 156
Education in Guinea-Bissau 156
Late colonial policies 156
Independence and after: the breakdown 159
Importance of education, difficulties, and contrast with the elders 162
A sign of modernity 170
7. Dress, style and fascination 177
Saturday night: a sketch 177
Dressing, consumption, identity 180
The creolization paradigm 184
Distinctions 186
Cultural style 188
Modern is who modern does 190
Imagination and fascination on the global scene 193
A criticism of Sperber 195
Fascination and adventure 199
8. Criticism of the state, marginality, and the desire to migrate 205
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Guinea-Bissau in dire straits 206
The young men and the state 211
Feeling marginal 216
Out of here: the desire to migrate 220
Conclusion: South 227
Epilogue 236
References 238

6
Aknowledgments

During the researches and the writing of this dissertation, a number of people helped
me in my work. My debts are numerous and it is a pleasure to acknowledge at least
some of them. My first thanks go to all the people in Guinea Bissau and in Bubaque
who either supported me or were patient enough to talk to an initially stubborn
anthropologist.
I am particularly grateful to the young men in Bubaque who wanted to share their
dreams and their pains with me: among many others, I would like to thank Agostinho,
Beto, Domingo Carlos da Silva, and Xarifo. A special thank goes to Delito Mario
Gomes.
I am also grateful to all the people that helped me in Bissau and in Bubaque: Pedro
and Tcharte Banca and the whole Banca family, Martina, Mam and Raoul, Mamadú Jao
(director of INEP, Bissau), father Renzo (CIFAP, Bissau), Cuban (Medicus Mundi),
Eduarda Coutinho, the whole personnel of UICN (Bubaque), father Luigi Scantamburlo
(PIME and FASPEBI), sister Norma, father Marco (Bubaque).
Many colleagues and scholars also contributed with their insights to this work. I
would like to thank my supervisor, professor Robert Rowland; Paolo Favero, Luigi
Urru, Ivo Quaranta, Chiara Pussetti (who, as my wife, I will thank again later), Ramon
Sarró, Elsa Lechner, Bruno Riccio, Alice Bellagamba, professor Wilson Trajano Filho.
Professor Francesco Remotti and professor Paolo Viazzo invited me to present a paper
at the anthropology seminar at the University of Torino (Italy), allowing me to discuss
my work at an early phase.
This research would not have been possible without the generous help of the
Gulbenkian foundation of Lisbon (who supported archive researches in Lisbon in 2000)
and of the Fundação Ciência e Tecnologia of the Portuguese Ministry for Science and
Technology, that awarded me a full Ph.D. grant (2000-2004).
Finally, I would like to thank my parents (Walter Bordonaro and Eralda Piretto) and
my parents in law (Giuseppe Pussetti and Ila Ricci) for their support and patience. My
wife and colleague Chiara Pussetti, shared with me the intense fieldwork in Guinea-
Bissau, and we helped each other to overcome the shock for the attempted coup (in
November, 2000) and the numerous malaria attacks. A special thank goes to my
daughter, Sole Maria, who was conceived and born during the writing of this thesis, for
continually and obstinately distracting me from my work, and for reminding me what I
should really care about.
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Introduction

This is a study about a group of young men and about their ‘will to be modern’. On
the one hand, I am concerned with their creative strategies for overcoming a subaltern
condition, appropriating and using the narratives of ‘development’ and the institutions
of ‘modernity’ to find their way among the predicaments of post-independence Guinea-
Bissau. On the other hand, however, I will highlight their uncertainties and frustration
as they realise that the very project of modernity they strive to embrace confines them to
a position of marginality and subalternity in the global geography of ‘development’,
with few opportunities to escape. Marginality will be here acknowledged in this sense,
not only as the arena for the elaboration and display of agency and for local cultural
production, but as a ‘conceptual site, an analytic placement that makes evident both the
constraining, oppressive quality of cultural exclusion and the creative potential of
rearticulating, enlivening, and rearranging the very social categories that peripheralize a
group’s existence’ (Tsing 1994: 279).

1
The island of Bubaque and the Praça

Situated at the estuary of the river Geba, about twenty kilometres from Bissau, the
capital city of Guinea-Bissau, the Bijagó Archipelago includes about fifty islands,
2
although only eighteen are permanently inhabited .

1
For the recent history of the Archipelago, see infra chapters 3 and 4.
2
Administratively, the Archipelago constitutes the Bolama-Bijagós region, which is subdivided into
four sectors (Bolama, Bubaque, Caravela and Uno).
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Guinea-Bissau and the Archipelago of the Bijagó

The island of Bubaque, where I carried out my research, was the seat of the colonial
administration, and preserved its regional centrality after independence. On the northern
coast of the island is the only ‘urban centre’ of the Archipelago, simply called the
3
Praça , built at the beginning of the XX century by the Portuguese. Except for Bolama,
which has, however, an eccentric position in the region, Bubaque is the only island
regularly connected to Bissau by small and often unsafe boats and canoes.

3
In Guinea-Bissau, the term praça means nowadays ‘urban centre’. In Portuguese, this word has
several meanings: square, marketplace, but also garrison, fortress and stronghold. It is probably with this
latter meaning that the Portuguese called their first garrisons along the coasts of Africa praças, and since
it is mainly around these outposts that the urban centres grew along the centuries, the term has in Guinea
Bissau the meaning of ‘town’. In the Archipelago, the term is locally used to identify the urban centre of
Bubaque as opposed to the villages (tabanka). The complete denomination should be therefore Praça de
Bubaque, but this name is only used when one is outside the Archipelago.
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