Kiyoshi TAKEUCHI

Ethnic Identities and Changes among Central African Foragers

Faculty of Humanities, Toyama University

Prepared for Ninth International Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies (CHAGS9) Session 28: Recent advances in Central African hunter-gatherer research: a comparative perspective

Introduction

Ethnographical studies on so-called ‘Pygmy’ foragers in the central African forest have shown ambivalent aspects in their relationships with neighboring farmer societies. Symbiotic characteristics of interethnic relationship in economic or ritual domains have sharply emphasized (Hart & Hart, 1986; Ichikawa, 1986; Terashima, 1986), while antagonism in cultural or ideological domains has invariably been described (Trunbull, 1965; Grinker, 1994).

The purpose of this paper is to sublate these opposite views on forager-farmer relationships with reference to ethnic identity of forager[1] and to examine a generalized model on interethnic relationship between economically interdependent but culturally antagonistic societies. I am making the model using mainly material from my survey on Aka foragers, however, also employing cases of Mbuti and Efe to put the model in a broader context. Finally, I am surveying the recent situation of relationship between Aka foragers and their neighboring farmers and ethnic changes among Aka foragers under a variety of socio-economical influences from the outside world.

The Aka and neighboring Farmers

I have conducted research in the northeastern Congo Republic since 1988. Intensive development has not occurred in the area until quite recent penetration of commercial logging and population concentration in the local town is rather low with people scattered over the area. Population density is lower than 1 inhabitant/km².

The Aka (mo.aka, pl. ba.aka)[2] are distributed over this area, and speak a language in the Bantu C language group (Guthrie, 1967-71). There are several groups of farmers speaking vastly different languages, such as Bantu A, Bantu C and Oubanguian languages in the area. The Aka language is similar to the language of Bantu C speaking farmers but is entirely independent. The Aka are related to these various farming ethnic groups and their population is one and half to two times as great as that of the farmers. While Aka are called ‘ba.mbenga’ by Bantu C speaking farmers and ‘bo.gyeli’ by Bantu A speaking farmers, the Aka refer to farmers as ‘mi.lo’ (pl. bi.lo) in all areas. Most farming groups do not have self-appointed ethnic group names and refer to themselves as 'the inhabitants of the village' that they live in, for example "bato wa Moumpoutou" which means residents of Moumpoutou village.

Farmers are slash-and-burn cultivators that sometimes engage in fishing. Until the arrival of the French colonial powers at the beginning of this century who compelled the farmers to establish villages alongside the rivers, they had lived in the forest separated into small groups and cultivated gardens and hunted, gathered vegetable foods and fished. Like Aka, farmers have a long history of traditional exploitation of forest resources. Farmers presently cultivate cassava, plantain banana, sweet potato and water yam as staple crops and various other cultigens. Some farmers have cash crops such as coffee and cacao. However, there are no large plantations of cash crops in the area.

The Aka maintain a semi-nomadic life based on hunting, gathering and bail fishing in the surrounding forest. They capture more than one hundred wild animal species using nets, spears, a variety of traps and bailing. Unlike the foragers in the eastern part of the Congo Basin forest, the Aka put substantial energy into gathering more than two hundred wild vegetable species, especially tubers such as wild yams. The Aka are likely to stay near or in village at the beginning of the dry season when farmers clear new gardens and at the height of rainy season even though the yearly change and variety of each group is significant. Penetration of a cash economy into the life style of the Aka in the research site has been minimal until quite recently.

Economical reciprocity

First, I would like to consider forager-farmer economic interdependence. The Aka perform various types of labor for the farmers, such as clearing gardens, collecting oil palm nuts, squeezing oil from palm nuts, harvesting crops, household chores and so on, even without immediate return. Farmers also often request the Aka to hunt with their shotguns for meat. Thus, the the Aka labor contributes to every phase of the villagers' subsistence. They are a consistent source of labor.

On the other hand, villagers supply cultivated crops, such as cassava, plantain banana and meal to the Aka staying near or in the village even when the Aka have not provided labor for them. Villagers occasionally give the Aka a variety of 'bonuses' for their labor; stimulants such as cigarettes, palm wine and marijuana, worn-out market commodities such as second hand clothes and second-hand metal cooking utensils. However, the most substantial benefit towards Aka subsistence is a regular supply of carbohydrates. The exchange of bush meat for cultivated food crops has been reported among Mbuti or Efe foragers and their neighboring farmers (Ichikawa, 1983; Wæhle, 1986). However, unlike Mbuti or Efe, the Aka consume almost all the meat that they capture and seldom provide meat to farmers except when asked to hunt with a farmer’s shotgun. For example, 979kg of wild meat was captured by the Aka for 42days in 1989, however, only 3kg, namely one foreleg of a duiker was transmitted to the farmers.

Overall, the Aka have an economically reciprocal relationship with the neighboring farmers through a regular exchange of labor for foodstuffs.

Inequality and opposition

Let's turn now to the cultural or ideological domains of relationship. In stark contrast to their reciprocal economic relationship, their social interactions are asymmetrical. Discriminating and pejorative behaviors are common. Farmers act dominant over the Aka in all their daily direct interactions. Villagers often speak to the Aka using directive speech, ordering them instead of requesting. It is the villager who initiates a conversation or exchange of greetings and when passing each other, the Aka make room for the villagers. The reverse never happens. Social segregation and separation is also found among the interactions between Aka and villagers; no sexual contact is allowed between them and they never intermarry. They seldom interact in social gatherings. They never eat meals together or sleep under the same roof. Aka children and village children seldom play together.

Social segregation is accompanied by stereotypical depiction of each other's ethnicity. According to the villagers, Aka are dirty, smell bad, are unreliable, break promises, steal crops, are highly prolific and are not capable of reasonable or rational thinking. The Aka are not granted the same respect or humanity as villagers and are regarded as being associated with the wild animal world in the forest rather than the civilized human world of the village. The notion of pollution resulting from the non-human world is applied to stigmatize Aka ethnicity and the farmers claim that if the Aka pass by their freshly planted seedlings, they will rot. Others have reported that the foragers in the Congo Basin forest, such as Efe, Tua, and Baka, are depicted as being subhuman and of the natural world by adjacent farmers, while they acknowledge themselves as being 'cultural' (Kazadi, 1981; Bahuchet & Guillaume, 1982; Dodd, 1986; Grinker 1994),.

The Aka, on the other hand, despise the villagers, considering them to be arrogant, egotistical and lazy, and usually get angry with how farmers restrain their activities without reason. Aka also regard the villagers as being forest animals because they are brutal and coarse. To the Aka, village men are gorillas, women are chimpanzees and their children bush babies. When a villager dies it is believed that he or she reappears in the form of their respective primate after being buried. The Aka and their neighboring farmers exclude each other from the human realm in their cosmology, and both use the same term 'savage' (ba.kunye) for disdaining each other.

Thus I have shown that Aka and farmers views of each other are discriminating pejorative and maintain ethnic boundaries in their daily interactions. Several questions emerge from the two parts of Aka-farmer relations just described: 1) How does a highly interdependent economic relationship like theirs arise in such a climate of cultural opposition?; 2) how does one explain farmers' dominance over the Aka?; and, 3) what logic is adopted to legitimatize the hierarchical relation between Aka and farmers?

Hierarchical relationship and legitimatization

Let us start by looking at the opposite side of the coin… the formal or institutional side of their social relationship. I'd like to start this with a brief overview of the social structure of Aka and farmers. The basic residential unit of the Aka is an extended family composed of the nuclear family of one elder man, called kombeti, the families of his siblings, and families of his married children. One extended family constitutes the core of a camp accompanied by some other kin members. The kombeti is relatively influential in the decision-making of a camp, however, he has no authority or control over the behavior of the others. As Hewlett points out, ascribing prestige to an individual is carefully avoided and even intergenerational inequality is minimal in Aka society (Hewlett, 1991). Farmers, on the other hand, have a patrilineal kin group which is formed by several families under the authority of a head elder making up their basic social unit. The group structure is rather similar to the Aka unit, however, the head of the farmer group holds authority and prestige over the others. The intergeneration relationship among farmers is also characterized by patriarchal authoritarianism.

Now, I would like to return to the subject of formal inter-ethnic relationships. A kombeti is related to an elder head of a farmer kin group as his fictive son and the relationship, in principle, will be inherited patlilineally in both group unless farmer has no son and only daughters---in this case an elder woman takes over the relationship with the particular Aka. Through this fictive parent-child relationship, every Aka has a 'patron' , called nkuma. Among the Aka the term, 'a farmer of mine’ or milo wa mu for men, or moato milo wa mu in the case of a woman patron is used. Simultaneously every Aka group is respectively related to a particular ‘patron’ farmer group, which supplies cultivated foods. I counted the frequency of foods cooked for the evening meals of an Aka group while they worked clearing farmers’ gardens in the dry season. Over 80% of their dinner contains cultivated crops supplied by their ‘patron’ farmer group.

From the view of farmers, through their fictive kinship, each kin group has exclusive access to the labor of an Aka group. The ‘patron’ farmer usually use the phrase, ‘ I own Akas’, which means that he or she holds the right to exclusively exploit his or her ‘client’ Akas’ labor. Most of the labor power of the ‘client’ Aka group was exploited by households of the 'patron' farmer group. It follows from what has been said here that the exchange of labor for food between the Aka and the farmers is performed through these fictive kinship relations.

Now, I would like to address the most important aspect of the Aka - farmers relationship. Fictive parent-child relationships, to put it another way, are based on the fact that the Aka are constantly supported by food from the farmers. In the local context, the farmers support the Aka as their children and the Aka serve the farmers as their parents. This logic is used to legitimatize the hierarchical relationship between the farmers and the Aka. However, it should be noted that the logic results from the patriarchal ideology of the farmers. The Aka often can not submit to these orders or demands of the farmer against their own will and thus often escape or only half heartedly commit themselves to the work. Sanctions of the farmers against slacking Aka are frequently exercised. The farmers can take away an Aka’s subsistence gear, such as spears or hatchets, and may sometimes resort to the use of physical violence... These sanctions are justified by the farmers as punishment from 'parent' to ‘child’.

Discussion: Ambivalent relationship and ethnic identity

Mutual contempt and stigmatized view of mutual ethnicity results from this contradiction between the logic of the farmers’ construction of the relationship and the egalitarian ethos of the Aka. However, it is worth noting that since the ethnic logic simultaneously lays the foundation for economically reciprocal relationships for the two populations, they avoid crucial ethnic enmity. Conflicts above the individual or group level never happen between Aka and farmers.

Like the Aka, other forager groups in Central Africa such as Mbuti and Efe have fictive kinship with farmer ethnic groups. Egalitarian foragers can not submit the alternative logic to create or maintain coexistence without one’s absorption into another society, whereas farmers can. In this sense, foragers reluctantly have to situate inferior social status to farmers. This is why cultural or ideological antagonism arises between foragers and farmers.

However, unlike farmers contact with the Aka, neighboring farmers of Mbuti and Efe are new comer to the forest zone came from the open savanna in relatively recent times and it is assumed that Mbuti and Efe have less inferior relationship with farmers to Aka because they have some advantage to their neighboring farmers in ecological sense. Takeda and Sato have demonstrated that farmers in the central part of the Democratic Republic of Congo have developed multiple subsistence strategies to utilize a wide range of animal resources (Takeda and Sato, 1993). The farmers in my research area are also potentially self-sufficient with farming, hunting, gathering and fishing. This means the Aka do not provide an unknown subsistence strategy or niche to farmers. In addition, there are no large cash crop plantations in the area and no labor market for intensive farming. The Aka only provide an alternative and supplementary labor force. Unlike Mbuti foragers who are engaged in commercial hunting, there is no demand for game meat beyond what is locally consumed. As a consequence, the Aka may experience inferior status in both an ecological and economical sense.

But it has to be noted that egalitarian foragers without any concentrated organization can build broad and rigid ethnic identity only through the ambivalent relationship with farmers. In the forest zone of the Central African Republic, the forest logging has widely extended in the region and commercial economy has penetrated through the logging road. The fictive kinship between the Aka and farmers has almost extinguished or become nominal mainly because much farmer population from other regions have moved into the region and built villages by roadside for the coffee cultivation. The Aka there lost a close relationship with farmers and their society is separating in some stratums. Some stop hunting and gathering and move entirely to farming, and some have become low wage workers of the logging companies. They call themselves the civilized and local farmers do as well. They refer few remain in a foraging life as ‘Pygmy’ in local term. Modification or extinction of the ambivalent tie with farmers caused by devastating regional change, the society and identity of the Aka in Central Africa is differentiating.

In Congo research field, since the late 1980s a logging company has come into the area and extended their operations year by year. The radical change happened in 1995 when a big road was constructed through the forest to a town in the Central Republic. A laborer village with some hundreds people emerged at the base point of the road. It is assumed that the local relationship between the Aka and farmers in the area is also changing and the Aka are losing their ethnic identity.

References

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