The non-modern constitution of famines in Madagascar's spiny forests: “water-food” plants, cattle and Mahafale landscape praxis

Abstract

This essay draws on Bruno Latour's exegesis of modernity to explore modern and non-modern conceptions of famines and prickly pear cacti in the African island of Madagascar. Using Latour's concept of the “non-modern constitution,” I argue that Mahafale famine history highlights “cactus pastoralism” as a model of non-equilibrium landscapes and nature-society hybrids, adding to the shift away from the paradigm of “nature-tending-toward-equilibrium.” When considered not as occurrences of nature out of balance, famines serve to complicate and nuance recent discussions of human induced change to Madagascar's environments. Latour's framework assists in excavating various conceptions of famines and cacti, which in turn furthers the discussion on modernity by suggesting that cactus pastoralists make their own kind of modernity – an alternative modernity.

Keywords:

• Pastoralism
• cactus
• modernity
• hybridity
• Mahafale
• Madagascar

Acknowledgements

My first thanks, as always, must go to the people along the lower Linta river, who made me first think of how they viewed famines. Special thanks to Dedidé, Ependa, Etikovohatse, Etsiatorake, Etoemare, Evarinane, Evelomatsimaito, Ezoepanana, Heremasy, Imene, Injarasoa, Izoene, Mampanadesamake, Raboba, Tatienne, Todisoa and Tosiny. The essay was improved by the insights and critiques of the journal's three anonymous reviewers. Any errors remaining are my own. Adrian Martin was gracious, encouraging and patient throughout the process. An early draft of this paper was given at the session “Malagasy Culture and the Environment”, 30 – 31 March 2007 International Symposium “Society, Natural Resources and Development in Madagascar, Recent Contributions by the Research Community” hosted by the Sainsbury Research Unit and the School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. I thank Barry Ferguson for his efforts in organizing the symposium and bringing many scholars together. This essay would not have been written if not for the financial support from the University of Southern Mississippi, in particular the College of Arts and Letters, the British Studies program, the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, and the Provost's Office.

Notes

1. “Raketa” is a Malagasy rendering of the French “raquette,” which refers to the racket shaped flat water storing pads of the various prickly pear species that the French introduced to the island.

2. I prefer “coactive species” over “invasive species” to emphasize a synergetic landscape, a coalescence, a cultural grafting of a plant to make an enriched landscape, and to avoid the subversive agency implied in the notion of “invasive.”

3. My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for helping to summarize the argument in this way.

4. For a summary of Madagascar's environmental crisis in terms of “explicit” and “implicit” purity, see Kaufmann 2006:185 – 188.

5. Once, while gathering firewood, I stumbled upon a “killing field” of hundreds of radiated tortoise carcasses. My companions explained that while radiated tortoise (sokatse) was indeed taboo to Mahafale, some of the local gendarmes of the Betsileo ethnic group stopped there on their regular rounds every month to feast on tortoise they had picked up on their rounds.

6. The taxonomic status of the prickly pear species and varieties currently in Madagascar has yet to be completed.

7. The cattle may have changed too, though I lack the blood tests and can only speculate at this time. I observed pampered steers refusing to eat grass with the herd in the quasi-pastures. They quietly broke off from the herd and ran back home, where we found them waiting next to a cactus plantation for their next feeding. I suspect an enzyme change has occurred in their stomachs that breaks down cactus but makes digesting grass more difficult. This suspicion may be supported with evidence from related cases elsewhere, as an anonymous reviewer pointed out.

8. Another consequence was the reduction in mobility among the cattle raisers. Cactus has become a condition affecting both increased sedentarisation and the timing of transhumance migration (Kaufmann 2004).

9. The cochineal insect is monophagous: it feeds on one particular cactus species, but dies on a different host species.

10. Some authors claimed that the wind was the responsible agent. But it was not; the prevailing winds blew in the opposite direction of the movement of the desiccating cacti and, more importantly, the female cochineal, which lays the larvae that consumes the cactus, are sedentary and require some form of transportation to spread, in just five years, throughout the cactus region that spanned several hundred kilomtres south-eastward from Toliara.

11. A Malagasy filmmaker, Hery Rasolo, produced a 52 min documentary on the effects of raketa mena (red cactus) on famine in southern Madagascar (Rasolo 2007). He took a modernist perspective, reminiscent of Perrier de la Bâthie's arguments, equating the pastoralists' state of suffering with insipid cactus pears that cause constipation. I thank Barry Ferguson for e-mailing me the film review of this documentary that appeared in Madagascar Express, (see Drouot 2007).

12. Rice went for 1000 – 1500 fmg/kapoake (Nestlè condensed milk can), cassava or manioc (balahazo) fetched 1000/kg and so on.

13. “Cactus pastoralism” is something of an anomaly in the pastoralist literature. Western scholars of pastoralist societies rely on a typology or terminology that defines the form of pastoralism in relation to whether they are close or far from pure nomadism. Pastoralist studies have flirted with the modern constitution. As Latour (1993) wrote, “hybrids are indeed accepted, but solely as mixtures of pure forms in equal proportion.”