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Article Excerpt
LeMarchand, Rene (1995). Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide. Wilson/Cambridge University Press.
Malkki, Liisa (1995). Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology anmong Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sommers, Marc (2001). Fear in Bongoland: Burundi Refugees in Urban Tanzania. New York: Berghahn Books.
Clandestine Identities from Burundi
These three books are about people who share a description of themselves as "Burundians," or "Hutu," or "Tutsi," or any number of other identities from Burundi. But as each book makes clear, the ethnic designation an individual uses is only part of the story because what is also significant is who you consider "not Burundian," or "not Hutu" or "not Tutsi." Depending on the group of "Burundians" the question is asked of, you get different answers, often in the form of what Liisa Malkki calls "mythico-histories" about who are "we," and who are "they." In other words, there is a broad range of response to this question depending on where, of whom, and when the question is asked, despite the fact that each question is likely to be rooted in mythologized claims asserting a "pure" Burundian identity. For example, inside Burundi as described by Lemarchand, the social world has been divided (at different times and contexts) into Hutu, Tutsi, Twa and Ganwa, Rwandan and Burundian, Highlander and Lowlander, and northerner and southerner. Among the Burundian communities in Tanzania, divisions have emerged between Hutu and Ha, Burundian and Tanzaman, and a number of other permutations. For example, in the remote Tanzanian refugee camp where Malkki studied, the answer is that there are Tanzanians, Hutu, and a "remembered" Tutsi, while in Kigoma town nearer Burundi, the "we" is vaguely "Burundian," and the "they" is remarkably unclear. Finally, Marc Sommers, writing of clandestine Burundian communities in Dar Es Salaam, writes of divisions a putative origin in the Burundian highlands and lowlands.
An important element in all three books is that often there is an explicitly hidden or clandestine story, which Burundians relate to each other and interested outsiders. In three of the locations, (i.e., Dar Es Salaam, Mishamo refugee settlement in Tanzania, and in Burundi itself), the story is in fact "explicitly clandestine," in the sense that the oral accounts they give of themselves are different form the written public history. Indeed the pattern of the three mythico-histories, presented by LeMarchand, Malkki, and Sommers is consistent. The Hutu protagonists have stories emphasizing how they lead their lives in the context of Tutsi (or Ha, or Tanzanian) dominance. Only one group, described by Malkki, the Burundian refugees in Kigoma town, did not have such a story, and in fact identified with the Tanzanians. This paradox--clandestine identities everywhere except Kigoma--is important and a focus of what follows.
SHIFTING REFUGEE IDENTITIES AND BURUNDIAN REFUGEES
From the perspective of sociology, one way to tie together these meticulous ethnographies/histories is a broader theoretical context for understanding ethnic identity, and ethnic inequality. Since all three books explicitly emphasize the role that storytelling plays in defining group boundaries, I will use this opportunity to place the story of Burundi in the context of what Max Weber wrote about "ethnic communities believ[ing] in blood relationships, and exclud[ing] exogamous marriage and social intercourse. Such a caste situation is part of the phenomenon of 'pariah' peoples and is found all over the world." (1946:189-90)
Weber emphasized that stories define and re-enforce systems of ethnic stratification, particularly when focused by ascribed occupations such as those found in caste systems. Burundi provides a good example of this: Hutu are believed to be farmers, and the Tutsi are believed to be rulers and cattle-herders. In describing their relative positions, Weber says that...
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