(1.

3) SPENCER: POST COLONIALISM AND THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION

This article considers the rise and fall of political anthropology in the context of the global shift from
colonial to post-colonial rule. Classical political anthropology peaked in the 1960s and has remained
obstinately out of fashion ever since, not least because of the narrow, a cultural view of politics
associated with it. Neither recent anthropological interest in power, nor more broad theoretical
attention to the issue of post-colonialism, seem to have helped bring the phenomenon of post-colonial
politics into clearer theoretical light. Taking its cue from Malinowski's late interest in questions of
transculturation, the article argues for the gains of a radically empirical approach to post-colonial
politics, an approach which would acknowledge the diversity of post-colonial experience and the
unpredictable contours of what different people take politics to be. The article uses recent
anthropological examples from South Asia, concentrating on issues of democracy and representation, to
illustrate what such an approach might look like.

1. One part of my argument concerns the way in which the political structure of the
colonial rule shaped the social imagination of both colonizer and colonized, leaving
behind a vocabulary of social types and political possibilities which continues to haunt
us 30/40/50 years later.

2. What was left behind after the flags were lowered and the new leaders sworn in was
not just a lingering nostalgia for the Royal family or a passionate commitment to the 19 th
century British team sports, all are features of the post colonial landscape. What was
left behind were a set of institutions – police, courts, legal codes, schools, clinics, a civil
service usually accompanied by a basic political vocabulary founded on a number of
linked ideas: these include the legitimacy of the post-colonial nation state as an ideal
framework for political life, a legitimacy usually justified by some appeal to the virtues
of representative democracy, thus involving the sovereignty of some collective entity
known as ‘the people’, whose political will is properly expressed by its chosen
representatives.

3. Interested in: cultural implications of democracy, in south Asia.

Anthropology and Political Imagination:

1. Traditional political sociology:

a. Absolute separation between political and the cultural.
b. Stress on observation rather than interpretation, behavior rather than values.

2. In the 1960s political philosopher like Charles Taylor launched an attack on this kind of
political science. They exposed the incoherence of the separation of political facts from
political values, of political behaviour from its interpretation, emphasizing the
embeddedness of all observers in particular political traditions and arguing that
 difference traditions or cultures will have difference senses of what might be construed
as political. In Britain too, in the 1970s, the richness and complexity of actually existing
politics had been reduced by anthropologists to the micro-study of instrumental
behaviour, as the discipline divided between what Cohen called the ‘action theorists’
and the ‘thought structuralists’.
3. However, there were some anthropologists who were an exception like Clifford Geertz
who took note of the cultural implications of nationalism, decolonization and
‘transcultural’ mass politics. On one hand, Geertz was unusual in acknowledging the
cultural implication of decolonization, the new states were going through a period of
‘disorientation’, searching for a new symbolic framework in terms of which to
formulate, think about and react to political problems. Or in his later essays, he refers to
the transition from colonial to post colonial as a ‘sort of social changing of the mind’ or
‘conceptual dislocation’ affecting the most familiar frames of moral and intellectual
perception.
4. The integrative revolution, Geertz analyses the politics of the post-colonial world in
terms of two opposing forces: the pull of ‘primordial attachments’ versus the virtue of
‘civil sentiments’ – on the one side the imperatives of blood and belonging, ethnicity,
language and race and on the other the sanitized attractions of a modern state. ‘Civil’ is
essentially defined as the absence of the primordial; as societies become properly
modern, ‘to an increasing degree national unity is maintained not by calls to blood and
land but by vague, intermittent and routine allegiance to a civil state.
5. Anthropologists have turned their attention to the politics of the post-colonial world,
they have continued to work within this framework, concentrating above all on the
peculiarities of what is presented as primordial.
6. Post 1960s and 1970s, with the emergence of Marxist, symbolic anthropology, feminist
anthropology and post-modernism. Between them they have contributed a much more
sophisticated approach to culture and cultural difference and a heightened awareness
of the quotidian workings of power. The notion of politics needs to be reworked along
the two axis of horizontal and vertical. The horizontal implies the uncertainty as politics
seeps through areas of life where theoretically it has no proper place and vertical
uncertainty induced by the cultural elasticity of the notion of ‘representation’ which is
central to the modern political projects.

IDENTIFYING THE POLITICAL:

(pg no 8 example)

Appropriation of the post-colonial state as a resource in local politics introduces a new element of
danger in the fabric of local argument. Mass politics, which were introduced in Sri Lanka with universal
suffrage in 1931 and enthusiastically embraced by the population in subsequent elections, presented
people such as these villagers with a new possibility; the creation of an apparently bounded and
structures social arena in which to work through all manner of purely local tensions and differences,
while nevertheless seeking more of the good things and social standing that follow from access to the
state.

(pg 9 third Para)

The persistence of kingship has reinterpreted parliamentary system in a different light. Richard Bughart
studied Nepali polity. the kings were forced to accept the idea of the nation state as a coherent,
bounded entity whose sovereignty could in some sense be represented as an expression of the will of
some other entity called ‘the people’. Due to continued presence of the king, the Nepali political culture
was ‘lordly’, the public domain was personally represented by the sovereign whose will was executed by
his state agents for the common good of an indivisible body politic. The case of ‘representative
democracy’ coexisted with ‘divine monarchy’.

The idea of ‘representation’ was crucial to the colonial political project in South Asia. The colonial
government too had to make a choice between either accepting the ‘feudal’ or ‘representational’ modes
of colonial government. Broadly, the colonial modernizers were more inclined to allow some elements
of choice in people’s relation to their representatives. Colonial traditionalists were not and proposed
that there could only one natural representative. There has always been a tension between represented
and the representative. Especially in the modern political sense when one symbolizes the interest of the
others.

Spencer is more interested in the ‘cultural emptiness’ of the idea of political representation. The link
between the represented and representative maybe a link of common substance. Fathers or kings may
think of themselves as embodying those they are said to represent. Or it may be a contractual link like in
case of elected leaders. But in the process of representation the culture is what intermediates the
conversation and construed the meaning of the ‘people’ or ‘representation’ itself. Otherwise all politics
would appear the same from a distance since all deal with categories of states, government and people.

Vertical uncertainty is inherent in the idea of political representation because the representative will
pick up causes and language as per his discretion but it would symbolize the interest of all he is
representing.

Conclusion:

Classical political anthropology started with an impoverished idea of the political, rendered yet weaker
by the infusion of bad ideas from post war political science.

The neo-weberians recognized the cultural complexity of the emerging post-colonial world but greatly
exaggerated the transparency of ‘modern’ values and institutions and therefore didn’t question these
categories.

But the post colonial world needs to be understood differently and three broad trends in anthropology
may contribute to this:

Politics-poetics of everything, post-colonial theory and the anthropology of the institutional structure of
modernity. Spencer argues for a kind of anthropology that would dissolve the certainties of some kinds
of modern social inquiry in the unexpectedness of actually existing politics. Ethnographers will have
travel on foot, replying on the natives for directions.
Critique of Existing Political Anthropology
Refers to Malinowski’s transculturation theory that asserts that when ideas or
institutions of one culture travel to another, they are adapted and changed.
Spencer argues that despite his theory, Malinowski sees Africa as containing
three geographical zones – zones which are untouched or unchanged (purely
African), areas which had colonial impact and composite areas which saw
fusion of past/traditional and colonial traits. Spencer critiques him for these
three divisions, for trying to find “genuinely African” culture and thinking that
there are zones which remain completely untouched/unchanged by colonial
experience.
In his work, Spencer focuses on the post-colonial state (state that developed
after independence from colonial rule) and sees the ways in which ideas
around the state and politics developed and how they relate to (are shaped
by) the colonial experience. The people had fought for independence and in
their political struggle, they had accepted, rejected and re-shaped some
political ideas and institutions that they got from colonial rule. When they
achieved independence, they shaped the new state and society that draws on
their colonial experience (so we have western political ideals of democracy,
secularism and equality) and which also included their anti-colonial struggle.
e.g. India’s policy of secularism is different from western secularism. Our policy
and practice of secularism is shaped by our nationalist struggle and leaders like
Gandhi who were religious and recognised India as a religious society. So our
secularism is not anti-religion, it is about state promoting all religions.
Spencer argues that political anthropology (PA) has not focused on this. They,
in general, have not focused adequately on power. Currently, PA sees power
as only about political parties or state. It misses the cultural and social element
of it. The political is seen as opposed to the “cultural” whereas political and
cultural are intertwining.
PA also tends to see a dichotomy between modernity and tradition, like
Malinowski talked about genuine Africa and the processes of change. Further,
there was a bias in these studies as modern political institutions were assumed
to be rational.
Geertz’s article (titled “The Integrative revolution” is seen as an exception but
he also focuses more on pull of “primordial attachment”. Geertz analyses the
politics of the post-colonial world in terms of two opposing forces: the pull of
'primordial attachments' versus the virtue of 'civil sentiments' - on the one side
the imperatives of blood and belonging, ethnicity, language and race, and on
the other the sanitized attractions of a modern state. Yet, his focus is more on
the primordial attachment than on civil society and civic sentiments which are
linked with modern society.
Spencer argues that anthropological studies of nationalism have also
concentrated more on the rituals and symbols of the nation, and less on the
broader political framework of the post-colonial nation-state, which is the
necessary context for their very existence.
Spencer’s reflection on post-colonial societies

In this article, Spencer presents three case studies that on reflects on the
complex nature of politics in post-colonial societies. The case studies are of Sri
Lanka, Nepal and India.
Case Study 1: Sri Lanka – Spencer argues that during his stay in a village in Sri
Lanka, he notices how talks and understanding of politics entered and mixed
with the local and everyday life in a rural setting. People in the village were
friendly towards each other but during election time, he notices how they turn
hostile, see each other not as residents of the same village and so similar but
as people with different and opposing political affiliations. Political
affiliations/ideologies mattered at a village level. In the village, there were
people who affiliated to different political parties. There was competition
between them. But they expressed this competition through public discussions
and elections.
So opposed to the popular understanding that paints villages and villagers as
simple and apolitical, Spencer’s study recognised them to be political, as active
citizens. They were engaging with the idea of democracy which was introduced
during the colonial rule. In 1931, mass politics with universal suffrage
(everyone can vote, participate in decision-making) was introduced. Post-
independence, this was continued. People believed in and practiced electoral
representative democracy. There were different political parties. People
belonging to different political parties competed with each other through
elections.
There were also, however, incidents of violence or violation of this principle of
democracy. In 1990s, there was a major political violence. Spencer refers to
the Sri Lankan Civil War. Opponents of the ruling party violently attacked those
whom they saw as representatives of the corrupt and ethnically discriminatory
government. This led to the government brutally suppressing these political
opponents with violence. There was a civil war situation.
From Sri Lankan experience, Spencer shows that how people had not just
adapted the western idea and practice of democracy. There have been local
challenges.
Spencer also argues that anthropological works need to focus on how politics
play out at a local level and also permeate matters of everyday life. Spencer
talks about how villagers would find politics playing out in everyday disputes
about stray buffaloes and marital break-up. So it was not limited to just
elections or concerning the state. Also, in the village, there was once a ritual
where a local god is invoked to bring peace between people affiliated to
opposing political parties. So we see the mixing of rational and irrational, and
of political and cultural. Spencer argues that we need to focus on these
differences and nuances that describe democracy in the post-colonial Sri
Lanka.
Case Study II: Nepal – Co-existence of Divine Monarchy and Representative
Democracy
Spencer is referring to Nepal when it had a monarchy. Nepal had monarchy
until 2007.
In Nepal, kings have clung on despite constant pressure from the outside. But,
as Richard Burghart made clear in a fascinating series of articles on the Nepali
polity, a combination of external and internal pressures forced the kings to
come to terms with the idea of the nation-state as a coherent, bounded entity
whose sovereignty could in some sense be represented as an expression of the
will of the people.
The fact that divisions were unthinkable does not mean that they did not exist.
But even these divisions expressed themselves in a way that they did not
suggest that different political parties or groups should be established.
Burghart’s work talks about this. He talks about a rising tide of dissent within
the polity, looking for some medium in which to express itself. This in turn
involved imagining a space for legitimate criticism. Burghart analyses the way
in which a teacher's strike was organized as an expression of dismay within the
body of the state, rather than a protest directed at the state. So the monarchy
was not being challenges even though the strike was an expression of dissent
and so was a claim for democracy and can be seen as a pressure on Nepali
kings.
Case study 3: India and the God-like image of politician MGR

The dominant political personality of the post-Independence period was M.G.

Ramachandram, or MGR as he was usually known. After playing the hero in
hundreds of popular Tamil films, he became chief minister of the state in 1977,
and retained power until his death in 1987. When he died, his grief-stricken
followers rioted in some places and committed suicide in others. It is
estimated that between 2 and 3 million people attended his funeral. MGR
seems to have inhabited an extraordinary cultural space midway between the
fantasies of the movie industry and the fantasies of the political arena.
Both his caste identity, and even his linguistic or ethnic origins, were
surprisingly hazy for a region and a political order in which these are usually
thought to matter a great deal.
Spencer quotes Dickey’s work that presents a convincing account of the ways
in which MGR used the institutional structure of his fan clubs as a political
base, as well as of the ways in which his political persona grew out of deep
Tamil preoccupations with heroes, kings, and the proper relation between
leaders and followers.
Conclusion
Spencer argues that the anthropological study of actually existing politics has
been hindered by an excess of certainty.
The neo-Weberians of 1960s Chicago successfully recognized the cultural
complexity of the emerging post-colonial world, but greatly exaggerated the
transparency of 'modern' values and institutions.
Spencer’s three examples have been intended to demonstrate that the politics
of the post-colonial world deserve better than this.
Through the three examples, we see how post-colonial nations have interacted
with modern and western ideals like democracy. They have been shaped by
local circumstances and ideas. We saw that there has also been a mixing of the
pre-existing and modern ideas and social phenomenon.