Global warming and global war: Tanzanian farmers' discourse on climate and political disorder

Abstract

Some Tanzanian farmers say that “the rain is different now” and that postcolonial leaders and development agency experts cannot “bring rain” the way that colonial chiefs once did. Government officers, expatriate administrators, and Pare farmers agree, however, that average annual rainfall has declined dramatically in recent decades – despite rainfall records that show no unambiguous trend. The impression that rainfall has declined is a consequence of a particular cultural interpretation of ecology. This ecocosmology links an orderly environment with orderly relationships among people, and especially orderly claims to resources. Given this linkage between politics and rainfall, the local narrative of declining rainfall over the twentieth century is a metaphor for changing terms of resource entitlement and the ambiguities of power, morality, and social relationships in the postcolonial state and a description of a geophysical process. Understanding this process requires a closer look at the historical course of social change, the cultural roots of environmental narratives, and the political relationships between powerful institutions (such as governments and development agencies) and the rural populations on the periphery of the global economic system. This article therefore draws on recent work on the intersections of culture and power to examine the history of contestation over the social organization of rainmaking, sacred forests, and ecocosmologies in North Pare. By showing how these shifting ideologies of power, legitimacy, and value shape social relations and land management, I argue that the politica ecology paradigm needs a more nuanced vision of “power” and “politics.”

Keywords:

• climate change
• rainmaking
• power
• political ecology
• Tanzania

Acknowledgements

The articles in this special section are based on research presented at a 2004 symposium on “Trees, Rain, and Politics in Africa: The dynamics and Politics of Climatic and Environmental Change” at St Antony's College, Oxford University. The symposium was sponsored by the British Academy, the British Institute in Eastern Africa, and St Antony's College. The symposium's hosts and organizers included David Anderson (University of Oxford), William Beinart (University of Oxford), Dan Brockington (University of Manchester), Wendy James (University of Oxford), Paul Lane (University of York), and Michael Sheridan (Middlebury College). The authors of this special issue are deeply grateful for David Anderson's insightful editing. Celia Nyamweru also provided heroic editorial assistance for several of these manuscripts.

Notes

1. Gewald, “El Negro”; “Niger Sinners Blamed for Drought,” BBC News, July 22, 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2144053.stm; G. Thompkins, “In Kenya, Obama Win Sparks Celebration,” National Public Radio, November 5, 2008, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId = 96670528.

2. Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, eds., African Political Systems, 21.

3. See, for examples, Schapera, Rainmaking Rites; Packard, Chiefship and Cosmology.

4. Krige and Krige, Realm of a Rain-Queen; Southall, Alur Society; McCann, “Climate and Causation.”

5. Lan, Guns and Rain; Vufhuizen, “Rain-making”; Ranger, Voices from the Rocks.

6. James, “Politics of Rain Control”; Jedrej, “Rain Makers”; Landau, “When Rain Falls”; Sanders, “Reflections on Two Sticks”; Fontein, “Languages of Land.”

7. Boko et al., “Africa”; Hulme et al., ”African Climate Change”; Magrath and Sukali, “Winds of Change”; Eisner et al., “Advancing Landscape”; Orlove et al., “Indigenous Climate Knowledge”; Crate and Nuttall, eds., Anthropology and Climate Change.

8. Hulme, Why We Disagree, 28.

9. McKibben, Eaarth.

10. Sheridan, “An Irrigation Intake”; Sheridan, “Development Dilemmas”; Gillson, Sheridan, and Brockington, “Representing Environments.”

11. See, for example, Cross and Barker, At the Desert's Edge, 76.

12. Magrath and Simms, “Africa – Up in Smoke 2,” 6.

13. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, 69; Whyte, Questioning Misfortune, 21.

14. Nicholson, “Long-term Changes”; Nicholson, “Climate and Environmental Change.”

15. The data on which Figures 2 and 3 are based are patchy at best. I gathered the data on monthly totals from rainfall records in the North Pare highlands (those kept at Kilomeni Mission (1931–94), Lomwe Secondary School (1952–2003), and Shigatini Primary School (1949–89)). The monthly data tables are full of blanks without any indication if this indicates zero rainfall or zero collection of data. I excluded these “blanks” from this data analysis.

16. Bryceson, Food Insecurity, 27–9.

17. A parallel situation of politicized rain discourse being at odds with biophysical rainfall data can be found in Sullivan, “‘How Can the Rain Fall?”

18. Kimambo, A Political History; Kimambo and Omari, “Development of Religious Thought.”

19. Sheridan, “An Irrigation Intake.”

20. Semvua, “The Wasangi”; Mbwana, personal diary.

21. Sheridan, “Cooling the Land.”

22. Rappaport, Pigs for the Ancestors.

23. Tanzania National Archives (hereafter TNA), 1733/28, “Usambara District Annual Report 1923,” Annexure ‘C’; Mbwana, personal diary; United Nations Trusteeship Council, Official Records of the 15th Session of the Trusteeship Council 1955, 7.

24. TNA, 517/A2/2/88, “Repoti ya Msitu Mbale Usangi 13 August 1956,” September 18, 1956.

25. Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals.

26. TNA, 517/A2/2/111, Bibi Sefiel Karingo to DC Same, March 20, 1961; TNA, 517/A2/2/112, DC Same to Bibi Sefiel Karingo, April 4, 1961.

27. Respectively, these acronyms stand for Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit and Tanzania Forestry Action Plan.

28. Tanzanian Forestry Action Plan – North Pare, “Opinion Survey.”

29. Sheridan, “Environmental Consequences.”

30. Foucault, “Subject and Power”; Sahlins, Waiting for Foucault, Still, 20; Wolf, Envisioning Power.

31. Wolf, Europe.

32. After Wolf, Envisioning Power.

33. Wolf, Envisioning Power, 284.

34. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 29.

35. Comaroff and Comaroff, eds., Modernity and its Malcontents; Geschiere, Modernity of Witchcraft; Sanders, “Reconsidering Witchcraft.”

36. Sheridan, “Environmental Consequences.”

37. Greenberg and Park, “Political Ecology”; Paulson, Gezon, and Watts, “Locating the Political.”

38. Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals, 251; Roncoli and Ingram, “Reading the Rains.”

39. Hulme, Why We Disagree, 334; Prins et al., “Hartwell Paper.”