Theses defended
Entre os saberes locais e o saber universal: a modernização das comunidades manjaco e a mandjização do estado na guiné-bissau
May 15, 2015
Post-Colonialisms and Global Citizenship
Georg Klüte
e
Maria Paula Meneses
This thesis analyzes the forms how local knowledge and universal knowledge intersect in the attitudes and behaviors of both members of the Manjaco ethnic community and State actors in Guinea-Bissau, particularly in the domain of conflict resolution. It is also explored under which circumstances these actors draw on the practice of mandji in order to resolve conflicts and which concrete patterns of mandji may be identified. In order to accomplish this purpose, analysis is based on the 'Epistemologies of the South', a theoretical perspective that helps discuss the subject of this thesis, i.e. the forms of knowledge that emerge from spaces that don't have a voice because they were made invisible by the dominant socioeconomic, cultural paradigm.
The empirical data were collected in Guinea-Bissau's Cacheu region, namely in Cacheu sector (Bachil) and Canchungo sector (Utia-Côr). The main methods applied were participant observation, semi-structured interviews and djumbai (i.e. get together).
The analysis of the empirical data allows us to stress the importance of factors like the evangelization, colonization, slavery, migration and globalization for the transformation of the Manjaco communities, which is reflected in their progressing modernization. This transformation has required a new re-dimensioning of these communities and resulted in the progressing substitution of institutions (e.g. gerontocracy) by economic power and of communal networks by individualism, as well as the dispensability of traditional institutions of surveillance and hence the creation of vigilance groups. Migration plays a fundamental role in these communities; communal and individual development projects that are implemented with migrants' remittances contribute to the improvement of living conditions, to social mobility and to actors' social emancipation.
Despite of modernization in the communities of Tchur and Babok the practice of mandji is unwavering, entering the modern sector where it influences actors in the exercise of their bureaucratic functions, referred to in this thesis as mandjization of the Bissau-Guinean state system. Roughly speaking, the Bissau-Guinean post-colonial state is troubled with the paradox which explains its political elite's veneration for the practice of mandji, on the one hand, and its obsession with modernization, on the other.
The analyzed conflict cases bear witness of a symbiosis between local knowledge and universal knowledge in the attitudes and behaviors of actors in the communities of Thur and Babok and within the Bissau-Guinean state system. They also give evidence of plural legal orders because various institutions engage in the resolution of each conflict case.
Public Defence date
Doctoral Programme
Supervision
Abstract
The empirical data were collected in Guinea-Bissau's Cacheu region, namely in Cacheu sector (Bachil) and Canchungo sector (Utia-Côr). The main methods applied were participant observation, semi-structured interviews and djumbai (i.e. get together).
The analysis of the empirical data allows us to stress the importance of factors like the evangelization, colonization, slavery, migration and globalization for the transformation of the Manjaco communities, which is reflected in their progressing modernization. This transformation has required a new re-dimensioning of these communities and resulted in the progressing substitution of institutions (e.g. gerontocracy) by economic power and of communal networks by individualism, as well as the dispensability of traditional institutions of surveillance and hence the creation of vigilance groups. Migration plays a fundamental role in these communities; communal and individual development projects that are implemented with migrants' remittances contribute to the improvement of living conditions, to social mobility and to actors' social emancipation.
Despite of modernization in the communities of Tchur and Babok the practice of mandji is unwavering, entering the modern sector where it influences actors in the exercise of their bureaucratic functions, referred to in this thesis as mandjization of the Bissau-Guinean state system. Roughly speaking, the Bissau-Guinean post-colonial state is troubled with the paradox which explains its political elite's veneration for the practice of mandji, on the one hand, and its obsession with modernization, on the other.
The analyzed conflict cases bear witness of a symbiosis between local knowledge and universal knowledge in the attitudes and behaviors of actors in the communities of Thur and Babok and within the Bissau-Guinean state system. They also give evidence of plural legal orders because various institutions engage in the resolution of each conflict case.