A Question of Movement: February 2011

(Lawrence, Jacob, The migration of the Negro: 1940-41)

Sedentarism vs. Anti-sedentarism

As the 21^st century cascades into its second decade, sweeping us along with all its valour, speed and interconnections, the movement and mobility of people is rapidly becoming one its distinct features.

Through our attempts to analyse and discuss human migration, questions regarding origins, nationality and identity hold some of the deepest and most complex characteristics to the phenomenon. Our perceptions of who are we? where we come from? and what does the place we originate from mean to us? are more often than not found to be some of the fundamental underlying compulsions in producing polar-opposite reactions such as the formation of extreme right-wing ideologies or family members immigrating to the other side of the world to send remittances back the country he/she holds so dear to their heart.

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This article is a philosophical analysis into the debates surrounding the belief that cultural identity derives from a specific country. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to provide an unbiased comparison between sedentarism and anti-sedentarism.

Sedentarism can be found to be based upon the philosophy that to be ‘sedentary’ or ‘rooted’ to a specific territory is a priori. For example, according to sedentarism a British man is never simply a man, he is always perceived, and always will be perceived as a British-man. Anti-sedentartism on the other hand argues that cultural identity is superfluous to the land from which a person or community originates. As such, through the process of unpacking the abstract notions of both theories my aim is to provide evidence that these arguments are not mutually exclusive.

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The structure of this paper will first introduce and critically assess the theoretical aspects introduced by to Lisa Malkki in her 1992 anti-sedentarist paper (National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity Among Scholars and Refugees) where she stated that socially constructed metaphors are the building blocks that territorialize identity. The second part will explore the philosophical aspects of anti-sedentarism space, place and identity. The following section will turn to David Turton (2005) and Laura Hammond’s (2004) case studies exploring how these theoretical approaches of ‘place-making’ relate to pragmatic experiences.

My aim through this article is to argue that moral and spiritual beliefs are based on sensationalised irrational values and subsequently fail to provide empirical evidence on which to ‘root’ cultural identity to a specific territory.

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Malkki’s analysis regarding a national perception of being ‘rooted’ to a particular place derives from the post-modern anti-sedentarist school of thought. Malkki’s argument lays in staunch opposition to that of the sedentarists. Sedentarism preaches, “that a culture is the property of a spatially localized people and that the world therefore can be mapped as a mosaic of separate, territorially distinct cultures” (Turton, 2005:260).

Malkki argues “the widely held commonsense assumptions linking people to place, nation to territory are not simply territorializing, but deeply metaphysical” (Malkki, 1992:27). In other words, the belief of being rooted to a particular place, land, country is due to socially constructed metaphysical connotations. Malkki asserts her premise by producing a series of persuasive examples in how, through the use of syntax and botanical metaphors (mythologies), our national identity is territorialized.

“Such commonsense ideas of soils, roots, and territory are built into everyday language…the phrase “the whole country” could denote all the citizens of the country or its entire territorial expanse. And “land” is a frequent suffix, not only in “homeland,” but also in the names of countries (Thailand, Switzerland, England) and in the old colonial designations of “people and cultures” (Nuerland, Basutoland, Nyasaland). (ibid:26)

According to this anti-sedentarist approach, the taking-for-granted of words such as culture (deriving from the Latin word for cultivation) or terms like “native,” “indigenous,” and “autochthonous” (ibid:29) not only distorts our perception of being rooted but territorializes our identity. In observing the debate between sedentarists and anti-sedentarists we therefore notice that the use of “language, then, is a way into larger questions of metaphysics, ontology, and what we might loosely call ‘philosophical anthropology’”(Smith, 2005:17).

Malkki, through her analysis of syntax, utilises deconstruction as a mechanism to claim that sedentarism is merely based upon linguistically construed mythologies. Deconstruction argues that “in the unity of the community of communication among several persons the repeatedly produced structure becomes an object of consciousness, not as a likeness, but as the one structure common to all” (ibid:22). Essentially sedentarism, according to Malkki, through the mythology of language (community of communication) transforms the concept of being rooted to specific land (object of consciousness) into a national belief (structure common to all).

Anti-sedentarism, through the prism of deconstruction, allows us to understand that for Malkki “the structure of reality is described in describing the structure of language” (Derrida, 2007:30). Malkki’s premise is based upon the assumption that language, in being the social construction that territorializes our identity, suffers from the ability of being deconstructed. Consequently cultural ties to a specific land become superfluous. To reword, deconstruction, as Derrida expressed, can be understood as the argument that, “des qu’il est saisi…le concept est cuit[1]”(Bennington & Derrida, 1991).

Although Malkki’s anti-sedentarist theoretical deconstruction is logically conclusive, it arguably skirts around several issues regarding the origins of space, place and identity. As Camus stated so astutely a “sense of place…is not just something that people know and feel, it is something people do” (Camus, 1955:88). Anti-sedentarists don’t seem to take seriously that just as ‘homelessness’ entails a precondition of a home, the “notion of displacement implies emplacement, ‘a proper place’ of belonging”(Malkki, 2002:353).

Foucault expressed that “space was treated as the dead, the fixed, the undialectical, the immobile. Time on the other hand, was richness, fecundity, life, dialectic.” (Foucault,1980:70). The question therefore arises, how is one to position time (life) within the context of space (the dead)? According to Archytasian philosophy “to be is to be in place” (Casey,1993:14). In other words “space is absolute and infinite as well as empty and a priori in status, place becomes the mere apportionings of space, its compartmentizations” (Field&Basso,1996:14).

The fundamental distinction between place and space, is that the former is appropriated not only by physical restrictions but by “relations between…pasts (or possible pasts) and futures” (Munn, 1990:13). Places are therefore understood that, unlike spaces, they are “not inert containers…they are politicized, culturally relative, historically specific”(Rodman, 1992:641). It is through the exploration and familiarization of these ‘inert containers’ that alien environments (spaces) become socially constructed places.

Anthony Appiah describes that “familiarity with culture determines the boundaries of the imaginable”(Appiah, 2005:121). To simplify, the more familiar a place or culture is, the more one feels stable within the boundaries of that place or culture. Through the creation and familiarization of a place the boundaries of a specific culture are determined. Familiarity leads individuals to name places. This territorializes people’s moral and spiritual attachments to a specific place. Concurrently, “Individuals…[become]…strongly attached to particular named places … and can speak of those places (and their pasts) with the most authority” (Rodman, 1992:651).

With the “integration of international markets for goods, services, technology, finance and to some extent labour mobility” scholars have argued that borders have lost their significance (Goulbourne, 2001:432). Furthermore, this has led anti-sedentarists to claim “that people are becoming citizens of a global world in which we are all refugees or tourists” (Stepputat, 1999:416) devoid of moral and spiritual attributions to a specific land.

Through this analysis, it is feasible to assume that the post-modernist approach dismisses the process of familiarization as an emphasis of rootedness. Cultural identity is removed from ‘a place of familiarity’ and rather claimed to be “matter out of place”, a ‘matter’ which exists beyond the borders of a place (Malkki, 1992:34). Put differently, this can be understood within the framework of Heidegger’s philosophy of the ‘dwelling’, “these buildings house man. He inhabits them and yet does not dwell in them” (Heidegger, 1999:348).[2]

In defence of the anti-sedentarist, cultural identities arguably can be found within the context of ‘universal communities’. In other words, culturally ‘universal communities’ enable the possibility to embrace and ground cultural identity through transcendent, mobile individuals. Although this is a convincing theory, ‘universal communities’ suffer from further criticism due to their inherent paradox. For “a “universal community” excluding no one is a contradiction in terms; communities always have to have an inside and an outside” (Caputo, 2004:108). Heather Timmins, in her 2009 article for the New York Times, tackles some of the major issues regarding labour migrants and the concept of culturally ‘universal communities’.

“In recent years, Mother India has welcomed back tens of thousands of former emigrants and their offspring. But many Indians are…finding they can’t go home again. For many returnees the cultural ties and chance to do good that drew them back are overshadowed by…cultures that feel foreign to them. Sometimes returnees discover that they share more in their attitudes and perspectives with other Americans or with British than with other Indians…People expect them to know the country…but they may not be familiar with way things are run.”(Timmons,2009:3)

These complicated and multi-layered issues are further exuberated when contextualized within the ‘refugees cycle’. Hannah Arendt in her study of post World War II refugees, eloquently outlines theses feelings of being culturally disconnected. “The abstract nakedness of being nothing but human was their greatest danger”. The refugees in being stateless, and therefore “naked and not clothed in culture”(Arendt, 1973:300-sourced from Malkki, 1992:33) were assumed to be lost and divorced from the culturally territorialized world.

According to post-modernists, the debate between place, displacement and identity has been heavily overshadowed by sedentarist policies. Refugees “outside of that physical context [home]…are treated as strangers or as non-members of the host society with conditions that attend ‘otherness’”(Kibreab,1999:387). These perceptions of ‘otherness’ have had a great influence in the deployment of the UNHCR’s refugee policies. The UNHCR proposed three primary durable solutions in terminating the ‘refugee cycle’ have been that of either “voluntary repatriation, local integration in the country of first asylum or resettlement in a third country”(UNHCR, 2006). The accusation of anti-sedentarists, is that due to the sedentarist bias, “repatriation…[has become]…the preferred durable solution at the end of the refugee crisis”(Koser & Black, 1999:4).

As globalization has increased forced and voluntary migration, it has also unleashed huge waves of intra-state wars. Since the 1980’s complex conflicts have been “fought amongst previously ‘cohesive’ groups who now define themselves on the basis of ethnicity, tribe, clan, religion, language or other forms of cultural legacy.” (Kibreab, 1999:386). As a result this has led scholars to argue that the territorialization of cultural identity has never been more important, for above all else it “still remains a major repository of rights and membership” to a specific spatial origin (ibid:385).

Furthermore, globalization continues to be “characterized by polarization, with some people and regions at the cutting edge of globalization, while others are marginalized”(Kiely, 2008:185–sourced from Desai & Potter, 2008). Consequently, developing countries have begun to suffer from “diminishing resources, income-generating opportunities, and problems of unemployment, host population are [therefore] becoming increasingly hostile to refugees”(Kibreab, 1999:389).

With the reduction of resources, governments, communities and families are increasingly aware of the importance of land. For most developing countries the ability for families to directly access land is essential in their sustainability. For example in Rwanda, where land is passed down through the generations, 80% of the population subsists on family farming (Shariatmadari, 2009). The inheritance of land not only insures the sustainability of Rwanda’s families and communities but also offers them a potent moral and spiritual feeling of being ‘rooted’. The tradition of land inheritance in turn assumes connotations of territorializing an ethnic identity.

Among the many other causes of 1994 Rwandan genocide, land played a major role in exuberating the confrontations between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Dr Richard Sezibera (Ministry of Heath, Rwanda) explains;

“Rwandan’s consider land a vital resource, a resource for their own security…the poor and unemployed youth, some of them were encouraged to kill their neighbours, with the hope that they would either inherit their piece of land, their house” (ibid).

Consequently anti-sedentarists seem to ignore that the “rights of access to, and of, sources of livelihood are still apportioned on the basis of territorially anchored identity.”(Kibreab,1999:387).

Anti-sedentarist rebuttals to these accusations are found in understanding that cultural identity can be territorialized within any land, not only a specified ‘homeland’. “The specificity of the territory becomes secondary to the activity/actualizing actions that take place within it”(Warner, 1999:414).

David Turton’s study of the Ethiopian ethnic group, Mursi, further illustrates this point. Turton began his research with sedentarist assumptions of the Mursi. As his studies developed, he came to realize that the Mursi were constantly moving. “The Mursi did not have a territory in the sense at all: they had a place. And they did not have a boundary: they had a frontier. They were moving, not standing still” (Turton,256:2005).

Turton explains that the Mursi’s initial motive to migrate was to find a ‘cool place’; “a place blessed with riverside forest for cultivation and well-watered grass land for cattle herding”(ibid, 266). As his research progressed, he observed, “the Mursi were engaged in an ongoing ‘project’ of place-making and self-reproduction”(ibid, 267). In other words, through their nomadic practices they came to culturally identify themselves with the process of migration rather than with a particular place. The Mursi saw “themselves as following in the footsteps of their pioneering ancestors and therefore as ‘more Mursi’ than those who chose not to join the migration”(Turton, 420,1999). What becomes acutely evident from Turton’s case study is the extent to which community building is based upon the exchange and socialization of ideas.

Laura Hammond’s case study into the repatriation process of the Ethiopian, Tingray community, offers further depth to the examination of ‘place-making’. Through her research she examined the primary concept how “people transformed an unfamiliar physical space into a personalized, socialized place”(Hammond, 2004:3).

Hammond’s research into the Tingray’s construction of Ada Bai describes the physical development of “something being constructed from virtually nothing: village from field, place from space, home from settlement”(ibid:14). Hammond’s observations of ‘place-making’ can be grounded in Locke’s labour-mixing argument. The premise of Locke’s labour-mixing theory is that in considering that our bodies are our own property, any form of labour endured by our bodies’ results in our ownership(Locke, 1980:19). In other words, through the labour of the Ada Bain community, in building “a proper house, a single round room made from grass and wood poles, with mud walls inside and a thatched roof” (Hammond,2004:5) they become inertly linked with the ownership of the newly built houses. However, these houses where not territorialized, they where not ‘homes’, they where ‘houses’.

In examining the Tingray’s community formation what becomes apparent is that “it is the sharing of a common view…that makes a household”(Aristotle, 1982:60). In fact the debate between the post-modernists and the sedentarists is not one of the territorialisation of a house or a land but rather that of the territorialisation of a home or a country. For a house/land and a home/country represent distinct differences. “The concept of ‘home’…[is]..the place where people live, to which we return, or where they dream of returning if they are obliged to leave” (Hammond,2004:10). ‘Home’ unlike ‘house’, is a place of deep spiritual and moral attachment. It is due to these emotional attachments that such events as “civil war forces one to call into question assumptions about identity and home” (Warner,1999:412). This therefore begs the question when does a ‘house’ become a ‘home’? Or does a ‘house’ ever truly become a ‘home’?

The concept of ‘time’ as discussed above has been a key in explaining people’s attachment to places of origin, places of home. As Anthony Appiah describes “time consists in the transmission, through the generations, of distinctive institutions and values and practices”(Appiah,2005:133). This is also recognized in Laura Hammonds research; “On my return visits, I have observed ever-increasing and deepening connection between people and place”(Hammond,2004:14).

The attachment individuals or communities attribute to places are never more apparent than in birth and death. With the beginning and celebration of life people are attributed to place-of-birth while on the other hand, with the passing away of an individual or a community they too are associated to a burial ground. The process of birth and death are human developments that bear deep moral and spiritual inter-relations.

To die in a place that you conceive of belonging to, is generally accepted to be important. For it is a place where “your family, relatives, and friends can participate at that time in the funeral and everyone knows who you are”(ibid:171). Death in these terms can be associated to the concept of a house. Death, just like the destruction of a house, bears the memories of a person, a community or a building. All of which can be embellished through memorial statues and/or funeral ceremonies.

‘Home’, on the other hand can be related to the ‘body’, it internalizes the activity of life. “Once we understand that territory [just as the body] is a site of activity, then analyses of the activities on the site are more compelling than the importance of the territory of the site itself”(Warner, 1999:414).

The postmodernist thought, although violently detached from emotions, is based on rational logically conclusive thought. As Malkki explained, our perception of being rooted is based upon the activity of up-keeping social mythologies. Consequently these mythological beliefs, in being communicated through language, have rooted themselves within moral and spiritual values. This has therefore arguably led the ‘national order of things’ to be entrenched within irrational thought. For moral and spiritual ideals, in being emotions entail irrationality. In other words, because emotional attachments are based on intangible evidence, due to being socially constructed, they do not allow for logical origins.

To perceive one’s faith of being rooted to a specific country entails (to borrow Kierkegaard’s theory) a ‘leap-of-faith’. Kierkegaard explained that in order to have faith in the concepts, such as for example religion (an institution vehemently debated of being grounded upon irrational, unempirical evidence) we must “abandon the laws of logic” and under go a ‘leap-of-faith’ (Evans,1989:348). The same applies to our moral and spiritual perceptions of being nationally rooted to a specific land.

As we have examined through this paper, the debates surrounding the origins and habitat of cultural identity are not mutually exclusive. Concepts of ‘rootedness’ derive from abstract intellectual theories right through to emotional irrational arguments. What becomes self-evident through this critical analysis is the extent of the feeling of 'belonging’, whether to a cultural historical identity that is either mobile or sedentary, is the overarching issue in understanding what it is to be rooted. Sedentarism and Anti-sedentarism, although both suffering from contradictions have both been ‘motivated by a [convincing] desire to ‘get a handle’ on populations and their environments” (Turton, 2005:264).

AQM

(bibliography available on demand)

[1] “As soon as it is grasped …the concept is fried”

[2] Heidegger’s theory of ‘dwelling’ is based upon the premise that although actions, such as work, occur in buildings, they are not the places with which we identify with. “Bridges and hangers, stadiums and power stations are buildings but not dwellings; railway stations and high-ways, dams and markets halls are built, but they are not dwelling places. Even so, these buildings are in the domain of our dwelling. That domain extends over these buildings are so are not limited to the dwelling places. The truck driver is at home on the highway, but he does not have his lodging there; the working woman is at home in the spinning mill, but does not have her dwelling place there”(Heidegger,1999:347).

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