Sohar: Culture and Society in an Omani Town

Frederik Barth's pioneering ethnography of the Omani town of Sohar was, along his wife Unni Wikan's book Beyond the Veil one of the first ethnographies of Oman ever published. He and his wife obtained rare (at that time) research permits and undertook several visits to Oman in the mid-1970s, where they based themselves in Sohar, which at that time had no electricity or running water.

Many things have changed since Barth and Wikan's study, not the least of which is that Oman is a much more technologically developed, not to mention open country than it used to be. There are paved roads all the way up into remote parts of the mountains and most places now have electricity and running water. Indeed the achievements of Sultan Qaboos in the last thirty years are quite impressive.

Because of these changes, some of the book's details feels a bit dated. I was also constantly annoyed by how much theory Barth uses to demonstrate a (now) obvious point--the fact of someone identifying as Baluchi or Arab does not explain who they are in some final sense. Barth is obviously keen to engage the larger mid-1970s theoretical debates about the role of culture and its relationship to economy, politics and society.

Nevertheless there are good sections in here on women and men, the role of the khaddam and the pattern of social relations. In particular Barth's description of Soharis' approach to conflict and explosive social situations is very insightful.

Ultimately the book is unsatisfying, despite its useful details, because of an almost complete failure to engage with Islam as a factor of analysis in any meaningful sense. There are discussions of capital and labor, of various ethnic groups and their relation to social status, and a general appreciation of Sohari social life. But Barth doesn't explore the obvious impact of Islam on the behavior and lives of the community, or doesn't seem to consider it relevant enough for any sustained discussion.

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Secularism, hegemony, and fullness (Talal Asad)

I've posted some stuff from Talal Asad before, from his book Geneaologies of Religion. The link below will take you to a link where he critiques secularism in a very trenchant and incisive way.

Secularism, hegemony, and fullness

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The Uses of History: Meditations on the Production of Historical and Anthropological Knowledge

"If colonial history has been written, the 'history of colonization' remains yet to be written along the lines of a new vision, one resolutely attentive to the local peoples for whom colonization constitutes an important aspect of their history,"
Ndaywel e Nziem

All philosophies and theories of history are in the end, also anthropologies. Now it is true, we cannot insert ourselves into the lives of the historical actors of the past, which is why history occurs at the intersection between current events and collective memory (both archived and oral). What are the "social loci of our knowledge production"? History is not merely done or told, it is done for someone or to someone.

This is why I think it important to examine the ontology of our historical knowledge, because I see that this is so much of what the colonial project developed into. I salute our desire to define our terms precisely, but I also believe that this desire to do so using language, in other words to try and abstract an idea of colonialism from its effects, it interrelationships, its lived experiences, is to push the Sisyphean boulder. At some point, we must, if our work is to have any relevance, leave the shoals of postmodern deconstruction and hesitation, and venture out into the ocean. Certainty is an unattainable goal, but uncertainty is not a refuge.

Indeed, to do as I have suggested is as much a project of personal ethnography as it is a historical project. It is to question the underlying foundations of our knowledge production, to examine the very grain of our categorizations, and to turn the lens of historical consciousness upon ourselves. While we are engaged in such a task, we also, MUST ask ourselves about our own social position. We have yet to truly consider ourselves as beneficiaries, in a sense, of colonialism, or how our position in this university shapes the discourse we present. To those fashioning their dissertation or engaged in the other grueling work of acheiving their Ph.D., such questions perhaps pose useless distractions from the pressing need to theorize and draw conclusions. But unless they are answered precisely, history becomes a game, a playing field on which to experiment with our personal tastes and interests. For one interesting, if revolting, example of this fascination with 'history' as object of distraction is the blogspot called Return to Darkest Africa

I wish to ask us: How can we hope to recover those histories of colonizer and colonized, the context in which they occur, and the 'life-worlds' of both sets of actors, if we have not turned an analytical lens on ourselves, our own categories of knowledge, the way in which we inhabit either (or perhaps both) category (colonizer/colonized) in ourselves. We have to interrogate what Foucault called our 'episteme'--the standards of acceptability that shape our discourse, the conventions of our representation.

This brings us back to another question I posed: Why study comparative colonialism? I suggest that the answer to this question will determine a great deal about the discourse we generate on the topic. I imagine some might say we are engaged in this work to sharpen our brain, to understand a particular historical field better and thus to deepen our analysis of it. But that still leaves the question open of why: What uses will it serve? Is history history for history's sake? My answer, which I share with Thucydides, is that history is useful to those in crisis as a guide for action.

This is where some of the distinction emerges between postcolonialism and postmodernism, though both share some of the same critiques of meta-history. While post-modernism and post-colonialism share the resistance to 'totalitizing narratives', post-colonialism asks us to remain committed to a struggle, a specific SITE of historical interpretation, while post-modernism has (in my view) not decided this question.

This is why, in spite of his historical limitations, I would rather read Frantz Fanon than Fred Cooper. I believe colonialism is one aspect of what Cedric Robinson calls, "a dangerous power set loose in the world." In my view, even if there were notable exceptions-- interstices of opportunity for particular groups within the incomplete hegemony of the colonial project(s)--overall colonialism entailed a very dramatic lessening, something that has been stripped away or taken off balance.

The intellectual output of postcolonial scholars like Fanon, Cesaire, Dubois, C.L.R. James, Martin Delany, and Cabral (to name a few of the most prominent in the Atlantic world and Africa) emerges from crisis, and is marked by a concern to serve as a historical witness against totalizing projects, in doing so it provides the possibility of the consciousness to resist rather than simply serve the dominant powers of the age. Their theories, diverse as they are, do not invite uncritical acceptance, but rather passionate engagement, while their practice ought to inform the way we think about the uses of our historical knowledge. The practice of personal ethnography will inevitably change, or if not change, then clarify, the way we 'practice' history.

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Representing Africa: Spatial, Temporal, and Ideological Perspectives

NOTE: I am posting this from Dr. Mavhunga at MIT; its from the H-AFRICA listserv. Its an excellent statement for getting at the keys to African history as well as the importance of not privileging the archive in all cases. This is in response to Cyril Hromnik, another historian who claimed there was no precolonial state institutions in Africa to build on:


"I was thinking that the Hromnik's position is passe. There has been extensive discussion on this in Terence Osborne Ranger's "The Invention of Tradition" and the "The Invention of Tradition Revisited". Multiple trajectories span off from that discussion, notably Valentin Mudimbe's The Invention of Africa and The Idea of Africa. There have been countless other works, among the Pier Larson, Carolyn Hamilton, and many others.

For me, the question seems to be how to how to take that debate beyond cultural and political histories, beyond an Africa defined according to the temporal and spatial frames of political and other elites. Once we get to that extent of shifting the analysis beyond thematics and physicalities that privilege the elites to the experiences and imagineries of Africa from "the gallery" (ordinary people), my sense is that some of these high-end ideologies like "pan-Africanism", "patriotism", "sovereignty", "power" and so forth acquire new meanings or even lose them. The question then is: Seen from the rural village, from the household of a poor person, what exactly is "pan-Africanism", "colonialism", "institutions', etc.?

As I see it, we risk eulogizing the powerful of Africa and silencing the majority by focusing on "important people". The more you get to the villages, the more you see all this amazing innovation at play, with the relevance of the state being only so far as it provides specific individual needs. Otherwise it is dead to them. Upon examining further these grassroots modes of innovation, it turns out that they pre-date the colonial moment; in fact, they are the sociotechnical infrastructure with which people processed colonial rule into their existence and maneuvered their own existence under colonialism.

Instead of giving colonialism (un)godly powers, we need to go well beyond what Mudimbe called "the colonial library", viz. the record of the pre-colonial and colonial that was compiled after all by colonial writers (Europeans or Africans influenced by European systems of classification). I think going to Africa to examine not just "oral traditions or testimonies" but more-so the "practices" would be a very good preparation to then go into the "colonial library" that Mudimbe was talking about and which is written and stored in dusty boxes.

I would not end or worse yet start in the built archive but the archive of practice and spoken word.

Without belaboring the point further, I must insist that Hromnik was giving the "colonial library" (or a lukewarm reading of it) (un)godly powers. His approach is now in the rear view mirror of history and receding fast.

Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga
Assistant Professor of Science, Technology & Society Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
E-mail: clappertonm@yahoo.com

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Austrian Anthropologists Work on Arabic and Swahili Dialects

A set of books I would like to own, but probably never will...they cost over $1600.

Description: Volume I, " Die Somali-Sprache, Texte" , viii, 287 pp.; double column / Volume II: "Die Somali-Sprache", vii, 126 pp./ Volume III: "Der Mehri- und Soqotri-Sprache", ix, 168 pp./ Volume VII: "Die Mehri-Und Soqotri-Sprache" ix, 168 pp., index/ Volume VIII: "Der Vulgarabische Dialekt Im Dofar (Zfar)" ix, 144 pp., index/ Volume IX: "Mehri- Und Hadrami-Texte, Gesammelt Im Jahre 1902 In Gischin", xxviii, 200 pp., index, contemporary hard boards, titles printed on front cover. Set published between 1900 & 1911. Volumes in Very good condition. Over a period of eleven years these volumes were published by the Austrian Royal Academy. The work is a series of field studies by leading Austrian scholars of the local Arabic and Swahili dialects in Oman, Yemen and Somalia. Leo Reinisch (1832-1919), investigated the languages of the peoples of northeast Africa. This work here is a complete set of his investigation of the Somali language which is spoken by the people of Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti. Professor David Heinr Muller (1846-1912), studied Semitic languages at Sachau, and taught Semitic languages at the University of Vienna. He published and edited several Arabic manuscripts including Al-Hamadhani "Sifat Jazeerat Al-Arab". In this work he discusses the Mehri language of Southern Arabia. Wilhelm Hein (1861-1903), was educated as an orientalist - he was fluent in Arabic - he was not only interested in languages but also in ethnology. In 1901, he finished his postdoctoral thesis at Vienna University. He was forty years old when he was finally able to fulfill his childhood dream: to take part in the exploration of southern Arabia. On the suggestion of his mentor, David H. Müller, he and his wife, Marie Hein (1853-1943), spent 1901 and 1902 in Al Mukallah and Aden on an expedition organised under the auspices of the Imperial Academy of Sciences and the Imperial Museums. There, he undertook geographical and linguistic research and assembled zoological, botanical and ethnographical collections. Today, the zoological and botanical collections are still in the Natural History Museum, 142 prints from now-lost glass-negatives have survived in the photographic archive of the Ethnological Museum Vienna and the phonograme archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences still houses recordings of Yemeny-Arab songs by Wilhelm Hein‘s informant, Ali bin Amer (1902). Nikolaus Rhodokanakis (1876-1945), an Austrian orientalist who contributed several studies on Arabic poetry including translations into German of al-Khansa diwan, and Ibn Qutaiba poems. This work is a study of the Arabic local dialect of Dhofar. Bookseller Inventory # 006587

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Europe and the People Without History

Of course the title of Eric Wolf's 1982 masterpiece is meant to be ironic, for the whole book is about the history of those 'people' who at one time or another have been alleged not to have it (history). Specifically, Wolf charts how internal changes within European economies reverberated in the form of the 'mode of production' (defined by Wolf as forces which, by changing how 'labor' relates to 'nature', guide the alignment of social groups) Wolf charts the spread of colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism through a unique kind of economic anthropology which is rooted in structuralist thinking but does not succumb to the more teleologically crude varieties of that theory. In other words, Wolf is concerned with larger processes of economic change--specifically the spread of capitalism and its encounter with kin-ordered modes of production and tributary modes of production--and how they influenced what we would label as culture. Wolf sez that material conditions provide one of the main impetus for cultural change, a sort of stage that constrains the cultural choices open to a given society. He is strongly in debt to a certain interpretation of Marx, which I don't view as a bad thing, and he is trying to integrate Marx's ideas into the field of anthropology, which has frequently been criticized for studying cultures, tribes, and rituals as static entities, frozen in the eternal present due to the ancient unchanging nature of their traditions. Intuitively, we know this not to be true, but often anthropologists write as if each practice they observe has a lineage unaffected by the shock-therapy of 'invasion capitalism' (my term for Europe's conquest and integration of the world).

For me, this is a helpful insight. I have read an abundance of historical studies lately who, no doubt with the best of intentions, read into every action of the subaltern some rebellion against the established system, and tried to show how at every stage 'actors' resisted the 'hegemony' of (insert favored term here for invasive state policies).

Now, I am all for subaltern history, but let us be clear. As me and a friend once discoursed on this topic, she reminded me that the very definition of 'subaltern' involves the submersion of this history. There are some things, because of the nature of European erasure of pre-capitalist modes and traditions, that we will likely never know. Furthermore, I have noticed a tendency to overinvest moments in subaltern history with radical potential with the term 'resistance'. I have a problem with extending this term too far until resistance is virtually indistinguishable from accomodation. And often enough, the unstated goal behind these sorts of attempts is to 'rescue' a group from posterity by showing that they were not mere helpless victims of a given process.

Yet throughout the last 500 years, various social groups had a variety of strategies for dealing with the social and economic facts of their marginalization/ oppression--I would venture to say that most of them involve simply trying to cope and survive. This doesn't mean they were helpless or didn't try to shape the vast changes for their own benefit. Just because you attempt to make the best of a new, unfamiliar situation doesn't change the fundamental fact that most non-European societies were indeed victims of a relentlessly expansive European bourgeios. The changes this class set in motion were much more vast than anyone, including the boureious themselves, could comprehend at the time.

In short, just because people act in autonomous ways in an oppressive system does not mean they are resisting it. Indeed, what has often been neglected lately in the contemporary historical theory I read is a realization of the aforementioned point by Wolf about economic change and its impact on culture. Its no secret that questions of identity, autonomy, and more 'cultural' concerns have supplanted older questions of political economy, class, and labor. Now at this point, maybe you are asking: "so what, Nate? Why does it matter?"

This is why it matters: in going too far to stress the 'autonomy' of actors, historians can potentially neglect important questions about how profoundly capitalism has shaped the way we see the world. It literally has reordered livelihoods, families, cultures, ethnicities, set in motion huge movements of money and people, and basically altered the very structure of human existence on a previously unprecedented global scale. So I think it is necessary to ask ourselves, to what degree has capitalism shaped the alleged 'resistance' of the subaltern; i.e. the very nature and questions put forth by their discourse? Put another way, we need to appreciate the profoundly dislocating influence of capitalism and European expansion before we can look at modes of resistance/accomodation and the character they assume. Peace to Nat P for some insights on this discussion.

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