Hybridity and boundary-making: exploring the politics of hybridisation

Abstract

Hybridity conveys the idea of the interweaving of practices, norms and identities that defy any compartmentalisation into fundamentally bounded entities. This results from processes of hybridisation whereby actors cross boundaries that are prominent at a given time, like state vs. traditional. Boundaries help consolidate power, hierarchies, and orders. This article discusses the politics of hybridisation in the constitution of authority in post-colonies, using the example of chiefs and state officials in Mozambique. It argues that hybrid acts also form part of individual actors’ efforts to consolidate power and constitute authority and that this coexists in a productive tension with boundary-making.

Keywords:

• Hybridity
• boundary-making
• chiefs
• state formation
• sovereignty

Notes

1. Lund, “Twilight Institutions: An Introduction,” 678.

2. Viewing authority as a relation means that it does not reside solely in the particular attributes of a person, in legal categories or in claims to authority: authority is constituted when ‘a directive communication is accepted by one to whom it is addressed’ (Mandeville, “The Nature of Authority,” 117). Authority therefore ‘does not exist unless it is effectively executed’ (ibid.): it depends on the willingness of others to grant recognition and legitimacy. This definition means that authority should be confused neither with pure coercion, nor with mere persuasion. Simple persuasion is different from authority because it presupposes equality and works through a process of argumentation. On the other hand, authority has failed when the demands of obedience rely exclusively on violent coercion (Arendt, Between Past and Future, 92–3).

3. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork on the topic of the state’s recognition of traditional authority in Manica province, central Mozambique, in 2002, 2004 and 2005, with subsequent follow-up visits in 2009 and 2010. A total of twenty-one months of fieldwork was conducted in two parts of the same rural district. I focused in particular on justice provision and policing as two areas of collaboration between traditional leaders or chiefs and state officials. See also Kyed, “State Recognition of Traditional Authority”; Kyed, “State Policing and Invisible Forces”; Kyed, “The Politics of Legal Pluralism”; and Kyed, “Traditional Authority and Localization of State Law”.

4. Albrecht and Wiuff Moe, “The Simultaneity of Authority”; van Nieuwaal and van Dijk, African Chieftaincy; and Boege et al., “Hybrid Political Orders”.

5. Albrecht and Wiuff Moe, “The Simultaneity of Authority,” 2.

6. Lund, “Twilight Institutions: An Introduction,” 673.

7. Lund, “Precarious Democratization”; and Kyed, “State Recognition of Traditional Authority”.

8. Pieterse, “Hybridity, So What?” 228.

9. Lentz, “The Chief, the Mine Captain and the Politician”; and Albrecht, “Hybridisation in the Case of Diamond Theft”.

10. Pieterse, “Hybridity, So What?” 213.

11. Moore, Law as Process, 48.

12. Hansen and Stepputat, States of Imagination; Hansen and Stepputat, Sovereign Bodies; Lund, “Twilight Institutions: Public Authority”; Comaroff and Comaroff, Law and Disorder.

13. de Sardan and Bierschenk, States at Work, 19; and Benda-Beckman, Benda-Beckmann, and Eckert, Rules of Law and Laws of Ruling.

14. Comaroff and Comaroff, Law and Disorder; and Lund, “Twilight Institutions: An Introduction”.

15. de Sardan and Bierschenk, States at Work.

16. Stepputat, “Contemporary Governscapes”.

17. Randaria, “The State of Globalisation”.

18. Benda-Beckman, Benda-Beckmann, and Eckert, Rules of Law and Laws of Ruling.

19. de Sardan, “The Eight Modes of Governance”.

20. Boege et al., “Hybrid Political Orders,” 24.

21. Albrecht, “Hybridisation in a Case of Diamont Theft,” 1.

22. Ray and van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal, “The New Relevance of Traditional Authorities in Africa”; von Trotha, “From Administrative to Civil Chieftaincy”; van Nieuwaal and van Dijk, African Chieftaincy; Sklar, “The Significance of Mixed Government”; and Spear, “Neo-traditionalism”.

23. Bayart, The State in Africa; Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works.

24. This reversion to essentialism and dichotomies resonates with a much wider critique of the use of the hybridity concept. See, for instance, Pieterse, “Hybridity, So What?”; Albrecht and Wiuff Moe, “The Simultaneity of Authority”.

25. Ray and van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal, “The New Relevance of Traditional Authorities in Africa,” 22.

26. Ray and van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal, “The New Relevance of Traditional Authorities in Africa”.

27. van Dijk and van Nieuwaal, “Introduction. The Domestication of Chieftaincy,” 5.

28. van Nieuwaal, “Chiftaincy in Africa,” 21; see also Pels, “The Pidgninization of Luguru Politics”.

29. van Nieuwaal, “Chiftaincy in Africa”.

30. Ibid., 31.

31. Ray, “Divided Sovereignty,” von Trotha, “From Administrative to Civil Chieftaincy”; van Dijk and van Nieuwaal, “Introduction. The Domestication of Chieftaincy,” 5.

32. Ray and van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal, “The New Relevance of Traditional Authorities in Africa,” 25.

33. Albrecht and Wiuff Moe, “The Simultaneity of Authority”.

34. van Nieuwaal, “Chiftaincy in Africa”; and von Trotha, “From Administrative to Civil Chieftaincy”.

35. Albrecht and Wiuff Moe, “The Simultaneity of Authority,” 2.

36. Albrecht and Wiuff Moe, “The Simultaneity of Authority,” 5 (emphasis in original).

37. Albrecht and Wiuff Moe, “The Simultaneity of Authority,” 6 (emphases in original).

38. Lund, “Twilight Institutions: An Introduction”; Lentz, “The Chief, the Mine Captain and the Politician”; and Stacey, “Political Structure and the Limits of Recognition”.

39. Kyed, “State Recognition of Traditional Authority”.

40. On the point that state recognition of traditional leaders and the incorporation of chiefs into the state bureaucracy and modes of governing reshapes not only the chieftaincy, but also local state officials’ way of acting, see Kyed and Buur, “Introduction: Traditional Authorities and Democratisation in Africa,” 22.

41. Bayart, The State in Africa.

42. Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works, 42–3.

43. Ibid., 36–41.

44. de Sardan and Bierschenk, States at Work, 54.

45. According to Stepputat, this has been reproduced in some of the more recent studies of ‘hybrid political orders’, which, despite moving away from a notion of hybridity ‘as a mix of pre-existing pure domains’, ‘still seem to be holding on to a rather pure conception of the (ideal) state institutions on the one side of the binaries’. Stepputat, “Contemporary Governscapes,” 32.

46. de Sardan and Bierschenk, States at Work, 54.

47. See de Sardan and Bierschenk, States at Work; Hansen and Stepputat, States of Imagination, Blundo and Le Meur, The Governance of Daily Life; Nuijten, Power, Community and the State.

48. Bierschenk, “Sedimentation, Fragmentation and Normative Double-binds,” 223; and Santos, “The Heterogeneous State”.

49. Stepputat, “Contemporary Governscapes,” 33.

50. Santos, “The Heterogeneous State,” 50.

51. Ibid., 54.

52. Bierschenk, “Sedimentation, Fragmentation and Normative Double-binds,” 223.

53. de Sardan and Bierschenk, States at Work, 52.

54. Ibid., 17; Hansen and Stepputat, States of Imagination; Lund, “Twilight Institutions: An Introduction”; and Nuijten, Power, Community and the State.

55. Abrams, “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State”.

56. Ibid., 76–7.

57. Hansen and Stepputat, States of Imagination; and Kyed, “State Recognition of Traditional Authority”.

58. Lund, “Precarious Democratization,” 863.

59. Albrecht and Wiuff Moe, “The Simultaneity of Authority,” 12–13.

60. On the notion of the indeterminacy of social life see Moore, Law as Process.

61. Kyed, “State Recognition of Traditional Authority”.

62. República de Moçambique, Decreto 15/2000.

63. Hansen and Stepputat, States of Imagination; Mitchell, “Society, Economy, and the State Effect”; and Abrams, “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State”.

64. Mitchell, “Society, Economy, and the State Effect”.

65. Mitchell, “The Limits of the State,” 78.

66. Lund, “Precarious Democratization,” 864.

67. Pieterse, “Hybridity So What?” 243.

68. Lund, “Precarious Democratization”.

69. Pieterse, “Hybridity So What?” 231.

70. Ibid., 238.

71. Bertelsen, Violent Becomings.

72. On a similar observation see Albrecht, “Hybridisation in the Case of Diamond Theft,” and Lentz, “The Chief, the Mine Captain and the Politician”.

73. Boege et al., “Hybrid Political Orders”.

74. Kyed, “State Policing and Invisible Forces”.

75. Comaroff and Comaroff, Law and Disorder, 35.

76. Hansen and Stepputat, Sovereign Bodies.

77. Stepputat, “Contemporary Governscapes,” 33.

78. On the co-existence of different sovereignties in Mozambique see also Bertelsen, “Multiple Sovereignties and Summary Justice”.

79. Pieterse, “Hybridity So What?” 226.

80. Ibid., 213.

81. Ibid., 230.

82. Albrecht and Wiuff Moe, “The Simultaneity of Authority”.

83. Lund, “Twilight Institutions: An Introduction,” 679.

84. Ibid., 678.

85. On this critique see Albrecht and Wiuff Moe, “The Simultaneity of Authority”.