Peter Geschiere

Bio: Peter Geschiere is an academic researcher from University of Amsterdam. The author has contributed to research in topics: Citizenship & Democratization. The author has an hindex of 27, co-authored 96 publications receiving 3816 citations. Previous affiliations of Peter Geschiere include Arizona State University.

The Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Africa and Europe

Abstract: Despite being told that we now live in a cosmopolitan world, more and more people have begun to assert their identities in ways that are deeply rooted in the local. These claims of autochthony - meaning 'born from the soil' - seek to establish an irrefutable, primordial right to belong and are often employed in politically charged attempts to exclude outsiders. In "The Perils of Belonging", Peter Geschiere traces the concept of autochthony back to the classical period and incisively explores the idea in two very different contexts: Cameroon and the Netherlands. In both countries, the momentous economic and political changes following the end of the cold war fostered anxiety over migration. For Cameroonians, the question of who belongs where rises to the fore in political struggles between different tribes, while the Dutch invoke autochthony in fierce debates over the integration of immigrants. This fascinating comparative perspective allows Geschiere to examine the emotional appeal of autochthony - as well as its dubious historical basis - and to shed light on a range of important issues, such as multiculturalism, national citizenship, and migration.

Capitalism and Autochthony: The Seesaw of Mobility and Belonging

Abstract: �� striking aspect of recent developments in Africa is that democratization seems to trigger a general obsession with autochthony and ethnic citizenship invariably defined against “strangers”— that is, against all those who “do not really belong.” Thus political liberalization leads, somewhat paradoxically, to an intensification of the politics of belonging: fierce debates on who belongs where, violent exclusion of “strangers” (even if this refers to people with the same nationality who have lived for generations in the area), and a general affirmation of roots and origins as the basic criteria of citizenship and belonging. Such obsessions are all the more striking since historians and anthropologists used to qualify African societies as highly inclusive, marked by an emphasis on “wealth-in-people” (in contrast to Europe’s “wealth-in-things”) and a wide array of institutional mechanisms for including people (adoption, fosterage, the broad range of classificatory kinship terminology). In many African political formations, prior to liberalization there was an important social distinction between autochthons and allochthons, but its implications were strikingly different from today. Often rulers came from allochthon clans who emphasized their origin from elsewhere, yet had privileged access to political positions. Since the late 1980s, in contrast, autochthony has become a powerful slogan to exclude the Other, the allogene, the stranger. Political liberalization seems to have strengthened a decidedly nonliberal tendency towards closure and exclusion (cf. Bayart 1996).

AUTOCHTHONY: Local or Global? New Modes in the Struggle over Citizenship and Belonging in Africa and Europe

Abstract: The past 15 years have brought an upsurge of “autochthony.” It has become an incendiary political slogan in many parts of the African continent as an unexpected corollary of democratization and the new style of development policies (“by-passing the state” and decentralization). The main agenda of the new autochthony movements is the exclusion of supposed “strangers” and the unmasking of “fake” autochthons, who are often citizens of the same nation-state. However, Africa is no exception in this respect. Intensified processes of globalization worldwide seem to go together with a true “conjuncture of belonging” (T.M. Li 2000) and increasingly violent attempts to exclude “allochthons.” This article compares studies of the upsurge of autochthony in Africa with interpretations of the rallying power of a similar discourse in Western Europe. How can the same discourse appear “natural” in such disparate circumstances? Recent studies highlight the extreme malleability of the apparently self-evident claims o...

Introduction: The Urban-Rural Connection: Changing Issues of Belonging and Identification

Abstract: A special characteristic of urbanisation in Africa is the continuing commitment of many urbanites to 'the village'.1 In the 1960s researchers were already emphasising that life in the cities could hardly be understood without reference to the continuing involvement of urban residents with their rural area of origin. Nor is it possible to understand village life without due attention to the role of the 'sons'-and 'daughters'-in the city.2 It is clear, moreover, that such links remain of great importance. In his 1971 piece on south-eastern Nigeria, Gugler characterised the involvement of Igbo resident in the cities with their home village as 'living in a dual system'. In a re-study in the same area, at the end of the 1980s, he found that the involvement had increased rather than decreased (Gugler, 1997). However, it is also clear that, underneath this apparent continuity, important changes and reorientations are taking place. The general disappointment, not only among social scientists but also (and more important) among the population, with models of modernisation and their promises affects the village as well-certainly not weakening its importance, yet profoundly changing its meaning.3 The vision of the state and the city as self-evident intermediaries in a victorious spread of modernisation over the 'traditional' countryside is less and less tenable. Structural adjustment seems to impose a retour a la terre-even if it mostly remains a slogan rather than a reality. The impact of recent political changes is even more confusing. In many parts of the continent democratisation seems to encourage the emergence of a particular form of politics, centred on regional elite associations, as some sort of alternative to multi-partyism. The increasing obsession with 'autochthony' throughout the continent-as elsewhere in the world-triggers a politics of belonging in which the village and the region assume new importance as a crucial source of power at the national level. Thus the articles by Nyamnjoh and Rowlands and by Dickson Eyoh in this issue highlight a trend towards what one might call the 'villagisation' of national politics.4 The other contributions also raise questions as to how the changing meaning of the village and the region affect the continuing urban-rural connection as a pivotal relation in developments in Africa.

The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge

Abstract: What is the meaning of Africa and of being African? What is and what is not African philosophy? Is philosophy part of Africanism ? These are the kind of fundamental questions which this book addresses. North America: Indiana U Press

Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: notes from the South African postcolony

Abstract: Postcolonial South Africa, like other postrevolutionary societies, appears to have witnessed a dramatic rise in occult economies: in the deployment, real or imagined, of magical means for material ends. These embrace a wide range of phenomena, from "ritual murder," the sale of body parts, and the putative production of zombies to pyramid schemes and other financial scams. And they have led, in many places, to violent reactions against people accused of illicit accumulation. In the struggles that have ensued, the major lines of opposition have been not race or class but generation—mediated by gender. Why is all this occurring with such intensity, right now? An answer to the question, and to the more general problem of making sense of the enchantments of modernity, is sought in the encounter of rural South Africa with the contradictory effects of millennial capitalism and the culture of neoliberalism. This encounter, goes the argument, brings "the global" and "the local"— treated here as analytic constructs rather than explanatory terms or empirical realities—into a dialectical interplay. It also has implications for the practice of anthropology, challenging us to do ethnography on an "awkward" scale, on planes that transect the here and now, then and there,

Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa

Abstract: 1. Twilight Institutions - An Introduction: Christian Lund (International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 2. Twilight Institutions. Public Authority And Local Politics In Africa: Christian Lund (International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 3. The Politics Of Vigilance In South-Eastern Nigeria: David Pratten (Oxford University). 4. Reordering Society. Vigilantism And Sovereign Expressions In Port Elizabeth's Townships: Lars Buur (Danish Institute for International Studies and Research Associate, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, Johannesburg South Africa). 5. Negotiating Authority - Between Unhcr And 'The People': Simon Turner (Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen). 6. "It Was Satan That Took The People": The Making Of Public Authority In Burkina Faso: Sten Hagberg (Uppsala University). 7. Dealing With The Local State. The Informal Privatization Of Street-Level Bureaucracies In Senegal: Giorgio Blundo (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Marseille). 8. Decentralization, Local Taxation And Citizenship In Senegal: Kristine Juul (Institute of Geography and International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 9. Contested Sources Of Authority. Re-Claiming State Sovereignty By Formalizing Traditional Authority In Mozambique: Lars Buur (Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen) and Helene Maria Kyed (Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen and International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 10. Statemaking And The Politics Of The Frontier In Central Benin: Pierre-Yves Le Meur (Groupe de recherche et d'echanges technologiques, Paris and IRD, Montpellier). 11. Decentralization, the state and conflicts over local boundaries in North-Western Ghana: Carola Lentz (Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz). 12. Strong Bar, Weak State? Lawyers, Liberalism And State Formation In Zambia: Jeremy Gould (University of Helsinki).