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Struggles over water, Struggles over meaning: cattle, water and the state in Botswana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Pauline E. Peters
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Extract

In a recent paper on ‘The state and social processes in Africa’, Lonsdale (1981) convincingly demonstrates the poverty of assuming that any one ‘grand theory’ is able to explain the complex relations among state, social process and class struggle and other equally complex social phenomena. Images of the state as parasitic (as in formulations of the ‘Asiatic mode of production’), as an epiphenomenon of property relations or as a neutral mediator, individually fail to grasp the complexity of states' organization and action (Jessop, 1977), yet each clearly evokes an important dimension of that complexity. The fact of political and economic domination has to be dealt with but equally the often contradictory quality of state power reflects the fact that the mediating institutions and ideologies between dominating and dominated are the objects and arenas for competition and struggle among different social groups and categories. The recognition that one has to deal analytically not with a monolithic entity but a set of institutions that are subject to being ‘redefined, added to and patched’ (Lonsdale, 1981: 2) is important. The challenge, then, is to devise analytical means that capture such processes and allow us to unravel the dynamic of contradictions rather than merely note their pervasive character.

Résumé

Conflits sur la signification, conflits sur le pouvoir: bétail, eau et l'état du Botswana

Alors qu'il est important d'analyser la domination politique et économique des états, il est également important de reconnaître que le pouvoir de l'état implique des contradictions qui reflètent les conflits entre les différents groupes sociaux cherchant à contrôler les institutions et les idéologies qui arbitrent entre les dominateurs et les dominés.

Le but central de cet article est de démontrer que le contrôle politique sur les ressources vitales telles que l'eau et les pâturages, qui est l'objet de l'action de l'état tout au long de l'histoire du Botswana, peut être élucidé en conceptualisant les procédés impliqués en tant que conflits sur la signification en même temps que conflits sur les ressources, et comme une oscillation entre les besoins contradictoires nécéssaires à l'incorporation et à l'exclusion. Après avoir brèvement introduit les caractères significatifs de l'économie politique du Botswana pré-colonial, l'article se concentre sur l'époque coloniale. L'approche ‘minimaliste’ de l'autorité coloniale à l'égard du Protectorat appauvri s'allia aux intérêts de l'élite cheftaine Tswana et accorda des allocations gouvernementales à l'économie de betail. L'un des développements les plus importants fut l'introduction de puits sur les terres communales et le fait qu'ils furent classés sous forme de propriété privée. Les conditions particulières sous lesquelles les puits furent introduits et les modèles de privatisation subséquents de terre communale dans un district sont explorés au travers d'une analyse de ‘manoeuvres sur la signification’ et d'un emploi sélectif de ‘tradition’ pour justified de nouvelles déviations. Cette méthode interprétative facilite l'analyse de l'intéraction enter, les différents acteurs politiques, et l'analyse des changements politiques et économiques oû les traits incorporables des modèles de contröle de ressources sont déplacés vers l'exclusion et les droits d'allocation de la terre se déplacent vers les droits de propriété.

Type
Interventions of the state
Information
Africa , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , July 1984 , pp. 29 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1984

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