Experiential Autochthony in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

This article was downloaded by: [UOV University of Oviedo]On: 28 October 2014, At: 11:11Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Anthropological Forum: A Journal ofSocial Anthropology and ComparativeSociologyPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/canf20

Experiential Autochthony in theOkavango Delta, BotswanaCatie GressierPublished online: 20 Sep 2013.

To cite this article: Catie Gressier (2014) Experiential Autochthony in the Okavango Delta,Botswana, Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology,24:1, 1-20, DOI: 10.1080/00664677.2013.836957

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00664677.2013.836957

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/canf20

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/00664677.2013.836957

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00664677.2013.836957

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Experiential Autochthony in theOkavango Delta, BotswanaCatie Gressier1

The white Batswana of the Okavango identify as African, are strongly nationalistic andexpress deep senses of belonging to the social and physical environments of their birthand upbringing. Yet, claims to belonging by white people to extra-European territoriesare often perceived as inauthentic at best and neocolonial at worst. This raises thequestion of how the empirical realities of such connections can be analytically renderedwithout threatening or appropriating indigenous identities. Through making a case forthe heuristic utility of the concept of experiential autochthony, I argue that emplacementand belonging can be fruitfully explored for migrant and settler groups.

Keywords: Autochthony; Indigeneity; Belonging; OkavangoDelta; Botswana; Anthropology

Jessie grew up in the wildlife-rich national parks of northern Botswana, where herfather worked as a game warden alongside running a crocodile farm. At age fiveJessie was sent to boarding school in South Africa, but returned to Botswana everyholiday where the family’s movements followed a seasonal cycle: the Christmas holi-days were devoted to catching crocodiles and collecting their eggs on the river in theOkavango panhandle for the croc farm. Easter entailed looking after the baby croco-diles, while the July holiday was spent hunting ‘for the pot’ (i.e. for food for the family)in the Linyanti area. After leaving school, Jessie obtained her professional guide’slicense and guided safaris in the Moremi Game Reserve. After a series of subsequentjobs in the tourism industry—from driving trucks delivering goods to remote bushcamps, to overseeing bungee jumps in neighbouring Zambia—she took up a positionas operations manager for an elite safari lodge in the Okavango; a position which shehad held for several years by the time I came to know her.Tony is a friend of Jessie’s and grew up in the same area. He was given his first pellet

gun at age five. His father was a professional hunter and taught him all about the local

Correspondence to: Catie Gressier, School of Social and Political Sciences, John Medley Building, The University of

Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

Anthropological Forum, 2014Vol. 24, No. 1, 1–20, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00664677.2013.836957

© 2013 Discipline of Anthropology and Sociology, The University of Western Australia

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

mailto:[email protected]

plants and animals and how to orientate himself in the bush and survive on bush foods.Every morning he would creep out of the house before sunrise—evading home-school-ing—and spend the day patrolling his traps, dodging the dangerous wildlife and huntingand fishing with his friends from the village. Most of his adult life has been spent workingas a professional hunter, wherein he spends more than six months of each year on foot inthe bush in the Okavango (on hunting, see Gressier 2012).

Jessie and Tony’s childhoods are not dissimilar to those of many of the region’swhite citizens, or white Batswana (meaning citizen of Botswana [plural]; Motswana[singular]), as they identify. Living in this sparsely-populated wildlife region, farfrom any substantial urban centres, and deriving incomes from the bush has stronglyaffected the cultural values and practices of this community. White Batswana identifystrongly as bush people and display many characteristics of so-called frontier culturesin their anti-materialism, resourcefulness, disdain for regulations and love of freedomand outdoor lifestyles. The majority of white citizens in the Okavango have a home-base in Maun and work in the thriving safari tourism industry in the surroundingwilderness areas. The Okavango is a much-coveted safari destination with the highdensities of iconic African wildlife attracting tourists to its camps and lodges. Manywhite Batswana own their own businesses and virtually all, men and women, workeither directly in tourism as safari guides and lodge managers, or indirectly insupport roles, such as office management, construction, wholesale/retail goods pro-vision, maintenance, and mechanics.

While many white Batswana deny any sense of insecurity regarding their place in thenation, they are certainly aware that they are not considered to be authentic Batswanaby all other citizens. Living among the numerous white Zimbabwean immigrants, whohave lost their farms and homes serves as a constant reminder that belonging is neverguaranteed. In his article proposing that autochthony is usefully understood as a formof capital, Hilgers (2011, 49) suggests that the ‘manipulation of belonging and the actof investing in this capital are ways, among others, of securitising the conditions of life’.The inherent insecurity of being a white minority in postcolonial southern Africa has, Ibelieve, led white citizens to make emphatic assertions of belonging, while developingcertain cultural values and practices, which serve to strengthen connections to theirhome. A dominant cultural trope of the white citizens, for example, is their constantarticulation of deep emotional ties to the natural environment. In addition, whiteBatswana tend to emphasise the difference of Botswana’s political history fromneighbouring South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, suggesting that inter-racialrelationships have been, and continue to be, for the most part positive. Throughtheir distancing from neighbouring nations and their constant reiteration of theirlove of their homeland, white Batswana serve to strengthen their senses of belonging.

Theorising Autochthony

While a cornerstone of anthropological research has been the study of indigenouspeoples’ connections to the environments of their birth and upbringing, analogous

2 Anthropological Forum

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

studies for white populations in postcolonial Africa and other settler contexts haveuntil recently been rare. This is certainly the case in Botswana where the variousBantu and San groups have been subject to extensive anthropological research.2

With the exceptions of Russell and Russell’s (1979) ethnography of Afrikaners inthe Ghanzi District and Isaac Mazonde’s (1991) work on white pastoralists in theTuli Block, Botswana’s white citizens have been largely ignored. This omission is, argu-ably, less an oversight than an indicator of the apprehensiveness within the socialsciences to emphasise the connections of settler-descendants to extra-European terri-tories. Yet, regardless of the complex politics, white citizens feel very strongly abouttheir links to their African homes. Like most white citizens living in the Okavango,Jessie and Tony are phenomenally knowledgeable and passionate about the bush.They are fluent in Setswana, identify as African, and are proud of their status as citizensof Botswana. They are deeply emplaced and express a strong sense of belonging to boththe social and physical environments of their birth and upbringing.The question arising, then, is how the empirical realities of white citizens’ connec-

tions to the places of their birth and upbringing in postcolonial Africa can be exploredwithout courting accusations of neocolonial intentions or the appropriation of indi-genous identities. For white Batswana, their sense of belonging is based less on histori-cal connectedness and politically-determined rights than on the much more prosaicexperiences of daily life. The development of a connection to the place of one’s forma-tive years is, to a significant extent, an inevitable aspect of living and being in the world.For many white citizens, Botswana is the only home they have ever known. Moreover,as discussed, far from deterring a sense of connection, the construction of individualsor groups as outsiders often stimulates even more emphatic articulations of belonging,while catalysing greater efforts to cement connections. These sentiments are importantto document and analyse.If a case can be made for looking at white citizen’s connections to African nations,

the question remains as to what analytical and discursive tools can best be used toexplore such connections. In its Athenian origins, autochthony evokes images ofpeople born of the earth of the homeland (Rosivach 1987). Translated literally, auto-chthony refers to the connection between self and soil (in the Greek ‘auto’ refers to selfand ‘khthon’ to land). It encapsulates notions of unique relationships to the homelandthat engender loyalty, high-levels of patriotism and a shared bond and sense of com-munity among citizens. Following Zenker (2011), I see autochthony as an overarchingconcept encompassing the ties of people to their homelands, within which the relatedterm, indigeneity, is a more narrowly defined special case:

Widely accepted working definitions of the term “indigenous people” within theinternational discourse of politics, law and (at least partly) anthropology emphasizefour criteria, namely first-comer, non-dominance, cultural difference and selfascription (Saugestad 2001, 43). These definitions reveal ‘indigeneity’ to be avariant of collectivized-autochthonous ethnicity that has been marginalized bydominating later-comers aligning with, and often running, the state, in which thisdiscrimination has taken place. (Zenker 2011, 75)

Experiential Autochthony 3

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

White Batswana are clearly not indigenous, and yet the broader concept of auto-chthony is highly evocative and useful in an analytical rendering of the intense relation-ships of white citizens to their home in northern Botswana. Yet, any application of thenotion of autochthony to a European-descended community in Africa, considering thecontinent’s egregious colonial history, requires very careful treatment.

In grappling with the complex questions around discursive representation of thisgroup, I have considered removing the concept of autochthony altogether. In arecent special issue of Social Anthropology, Gausset, Kenrick, and Gibb (2011, 135)point out that both the concepts of autochthony and indigeneity are highly chargedpolitically and have been the cause of at times acrimonious debate within anthropol-ogy, with the passion reflecting anthropologists’ deep involvement as advocatesdefending or questioning the recognition and rights of indigenous peoples. A politi-cally less contentious means to explore white citizens’ relationships to their homelandwould perhaps be to focus on the meaning of ‘belonging’ for white Batswana. Whilethe term is nuanced and useful—and I rely on it heavily in my forthcoming book—belonging is a much broader term that can be applied for any people to any placeor community, while autochthony is more appropriate in that it evokes belongingto the homeland: a very particular form of belonging.

A further concept I considered utilising in lieu of autochthony is that of citizenship.Within days of being in the Okavango I knew the citizenship status of virtually everyindividual I had met, as it arose in conversation so frequently. The very small pro-portion of citizens to expatriates, the desirability of northern Botswana as a place tolive and work, the stringency of the nation’s immigration policies and the substantialbenefits accrued to citizens all render citizenship status highly significant. However,citizenship has been demonstrated by a number of scholars to be contentious andproblematic in African nations (see, for example, the volume edited by Dorman,Hammett, and Nugent 2007). These studies demonstrate that while citizenshippurports to confer ‘equal protection of the laws, guarantees of a right to belonging,entitlement to participation, and full access to the social provisions of the state’, inmany instances it privileges some citizens, while alienating others (Young 2007,254). Discourses of autochthony permeate those of citizenship, often ensuring thatthose deemed ‘native’ are benefited, while ‘strangers’ are denied (Hickey 2007, 83).Along with these complexities, the white Batswana with whom I worked are certainlyattached to Botswana as a whole, but their connectedness is first and foremost to thenorthern region. As a result, the nationalist connotations of citizenship fail to properlyencapsulate the empirical situation. By contrast, autochthony is a rich concept that hasat its core connections of a people to the land, which are such a fundamental com-ponent of white Batswana identities. For my informants, birth and upbringing inthe region are absolutely central to their identity, rendering autochthony a desirablediscursive tool through which to explore their position.

In reviewing de la Cadena and Starn’s edited volume, Indigenous Experience Today,Trigger and Dalley (2010, 57) suggest that research is required to address the questionof whether over time discourses and sentiments of indigeneity are established in those


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

groups considered to be ‘settlers, migrants, and visitors’. This question arises onaccount of the volume’s suggestion that indigeneity is best understood as fluid. It isconceived by the authors as: ‘a process; a series of encounters; a structure of power;a set of relationships; a matter of becoming, in short, and not a fixed state of being’(Cadena and Starn 2007, 11). Consequently, Trigger and Dalley (2010, 57) suggestthat there is theoretical value in testing the indigeneity concept in settler-descendantcontexts. My investigation attempts to contribute to this emergent area by theorisingautochthony in terms of relationships and processes of connection, rather than staticidentity categories. My conceptual apparatus has resonance with other scholars, whohave similarly found the concept useful in developing understandings of the positionsof European peoples. Zenker (2009) explores autochthony in Northern Ireland;Kenrick (2011) compares Scottish crofters with their deep connections and historicalties to land with indigenous peoples; while Ceuppens (2011) describes the mobilisationof the term by the Flemish majority in Belgium. While in popular representationnotions of indigeneity and autochthony have come to be associated with the GlobalSouth and non-European peoples, it is worth bearing in mind that the concept of auto-chthony is European (Greek) in origin.Nomatter how ripe for re-conceptualisation the concept of autochthonymay be, the

use of the term in relation to European descendants in Africa remains problematic. Thehistories of structural inequality, appropriation of land by settlers and the violent dom-ination of African people reached their zenith in South Africa under apartheid and havehad echoes in many parts of southern Africa during the colonial period, particularly inthe areas of present day Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Namibia. As ethnic minorities impli-cated in histories of colonialism, racism, and the attendant economic and social privi-leges, the various white populations’ senses of belonging to the African nations oftheir birth are often denied, and unsurprisingly so. On account of these histories, auto-chthony is not a neutral term in Africa and has been mobilised to differentiate betweenthe colonisers and colonised.While it is not often used in English-speaking nations, suchas Botswana, it is a highly politicised term in the Francophone countries of Africa (Ceup-pens and Geschiere 2005, 386). However, its appropriateness for the particular relation-ships to place among the white Batswanamakes it a desirable concept to employ.Withinthe context of my research, a pragmatic way around this problem is to clearly define myuse of the term ‘experiential autochthony’, which I use to refer broadly to the relation-ship of an individual to their homeland. While experiential autochthony certainlyencompasses the politics of belonging, it is distinguishable frommuch of the recent lit-erature on autochthony discourses that places its emphasis very much on political iden-tities. This latter application I refer to as ‘political autochthony’.

Political Autochthony

I use political autochthony to refer to the mobilisation of notions of insiders and out-siders, and natives and foreigners, within the politics of belonging. In the past fewdecades, as globalisation has increased the flows of people and goods across borders,


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

an increasing obsession with boundary maintenance has led to the politicisation ofautochthony and belonging throughout the world. Much of the anthropologicalwork on autochthony in the African context explores the political mobilisation ofthe concept, describing how identity politics and discourses of belonging and exclusionare invoked as a means of access or denial of rights to political power and economicresources (e.g. Adamczyk 2011; Dorman, Hammett, and Nugent 2007; Geschiere2009). In describing the politics of belonging in Cameroon, Geschiere and Nyamnjoh(2000, 448) suggest that:

autochthony can best be studied as a trope without a substance of its own. It can beused for defining the Self against the Other on all sorts of levels and in all sorts ofways. Autochthony discourses tend to be so supple that they can even accommodatea switch from one Other to another.

In this interpretation autochthony is seen as a political tool, as a relational trope withshifting criteria, rather than something definable with substance (see also Adamczyk2011). This is where my use of the term differs. Beyond the politics, it is the concep-tualisations of connections to home held by individuals that I wish to explore. Studiesof political autochthony focus on processes of inclusion and exclusion, while givingless attention to the processes whereby individuals or groups connect to the placesof their birth and upbringing despite, or indeed because of, the politics of belonging.This is particularly pertinent for minority groups, including settler-descendents, whoare not the ‘natives of choice’, as Handler (1990, 8) puts it, and yet claim strong sensesof belonging, often precisely because they are in a position of precarity.

Experiential Autochthony

While the complex politics surrounding political autochthony are critical to documentand analyse, autochthony can be analytically useful in additional ways. Beyond theexclusionary politics encapsulated in political autochthony, I use experiential auto-chthony to refer to the primary and practical experiences of individuals or groups inrelation to the social and physical worlds in which they are born and raised. Experien-tial autochthony encompasses the kinds of connections forged between people andtheir homelands that are in many cases inevitable and occur both despite, and in dia-lectic with, the politics of belonging. These include familiarity with the natural andsocial environments, the knowledge and skills developed within these contexts, andthe emotional and, at times, spiritual connections to place and the community. It isimportant to note that I am not suggesting that my mobilisation of experiential auto-chthony is unique in exploring these subjective connections encompassed within theconcept, rather I am proposing terms that clearly define which aspects of autochthonyare under consideration in any particular analytical moment.

This usage of autochthony by no means excludes the politics of belonging. As soci-ologist Nira Yuval-Davis (2004, 216) argues, ‘[c]onstructing boundaries and borders


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

that differentiate between those who belong, and those who do not, determines andcolours the meaning of the particular belonging’. Inherent to experiential autochthonyfor a community are their particular experiences of the forms of identity politics playedout within the nation of their residence. However, experiential autochthony’s utility isin that it allows a conceptual space to provide another dimension to the politicaldomain. The distinction has allowed me to move into the politics of white belonging,rather than being stuck at the outset, frozen by the notion that describing white con-nections to an African territory is a political act in itself. It allows for both an explora-tion of the subjective experiences of white Batswana and for a shift from a focus on thecollective to the individual. In her research into a sense of belonging among settler-descendant Australians, Miller (2003, 415–416) suggests we need to look beyond thepolitics to the personal. Belonging, she argues,

is not something that is given as a right or bestowed as a privilege. Nor is belongingsomething that is tied in any way to land ownership or length of residency. It is notinherited or accumulated. Nor is it something that simply happens to us. Rather, it isan existential opportunity—an opportunity that presents itself, not merely to achosen few, but to all Australians, whether they are non-Aboriginal or Aboriginal,native-born, refugee or visitor. The responsibility for actualising the possibility ofbelonging remains the task of each and every one of us.

Experiential autochthony encapsulates such opportunities.Informing my use of the autochthony concept is the debate in recent years sur-

rounding the closely related term, indigeneity. Adam Kuper (2003) triggered muchheated discussion through his critique of the category ‘indigenous peoples’ on thebasis of its mobilisation in essentialist terms. Kuper (2003, 389) suggests indigeneityhas a detrimental impact through its utilisation as a euphemism for ideas of the primi-tive, while Solway (2006, 8) has warned of the risk of its conflation with notions ofmarginalisation and powerlessness. Moreover, both Kuper (2003, 391) and JamesClifford (2001) critique the term’s definitional validity through pointing out that his-torical evidence suggests that many of the world’s so-called indigenous peoples havedistant histories of migration. To this end, and in regard to concerns about the divisiveand exclusionary potentials of the concept, Clifford (2001, 482) asserts the following:

An absolutist indigenism, where each distinct “people” strives to occupy an originalbit of ground, is a frightening utopia. For it imagines relocation and ethnic cleansingon an unimaginable scale: a denial of all the deep histories of movement, urbaniz-ation, habitation, reindigenization, sinking roots, moving on, invading, mixing—thevery stuff of human history. There must be, and in practice there are, many ways toconceive of “nativeness” in less absolute terms.

In light of these critiques, I use the term experiential autochthony in the sense of theprocesses and relationships within individuals’ connections to the places of their birthand upbringing, rather than looking for stable identity categories. My use cuts acrossethnic specificity to describe an ontological set of processes and relationships. This


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

opens up the applicability of the concept on an analytical level to those, such asmigrants and minorities, who would not otherwise be considered under its banner.This challenges the correlation of autochthony with essential cultural or ethnic fea-tures, or with notions of marginalisation and primitiveness. It also displaces thelinks of autochthony with the deterministic criterion of descent, as individual experi-ences of birth and upbringing are given credence beyond genealogy.

The Politics of Belonging among White Batswana

I now return to the case of the white Batswana, where I begin with a discussion of thepolitics of belonging, before fleshing out experiential autochthony for this group morebroadly. White Batswana constitute a tiny minority within the nation. While Botswanais commonly described as ethnically homogenous—due to the political dominance ofthe majority Tswana3 people, who are in fact internally divided into eight discretegroups—there are at least 23 ethnolinguistic groups (Batibo 2002, 89; Chebanne2002, 47). The North-West District, where I conducted thirteen months of ethno-graphic research between 2006 and 2008, is one of the most culturally diverseregions of Botswana (Bolaane 2002, 87). It is politically dominated by the Tswanasub-group the BaTawana, although it is numerically dominated by the BaYeyi, andthere are several other groups of Bantu-language speakers, including the Hambukushu,BaKgalagadi, and BaHerero. In addition, there are several groups of San, including theBugakhwe, Xanekwe, and Ju/hoansi among others. Added to the mix are citizens ofIndian and European ancestry and a significant number of expatriates. White citizensare very few in number. In accordance with the emphasis on civic rather than ethniccitizenship, the Botswana census does not include ethnic data. While exact figures areconsequently unavailable, at the time of my research in 2007 it was estimated by com-munity members that there were a maximum of 5000 white residents living in thegreater Okavango region, which was home to roughly 130,000 citizens in total.4 Thevast majority of whites—most believe around 90% —are expatriates who have cometo the Okavango to work in the tourism industry. By these estimates, at the timethe Okavango was home to no more than 500 white citizens. These demographicfactors are important to bear in mind as they, along with the relationships betweenvarious ethnic groups, determine to a considerable extent constructions of belonging.

The state tends to be the most powerful player in shaping discourses of politicalautochthony, having the resources to promote its version of history (Marshall-Fratani 2007, 32). In Africa, where politics often run along ethnic lines, the patternhas been that state-forming ethnic groups have been able to stake claims to politicalautochthony and its attendant rights, while non-state-forming groups are deniedthese opportunities (Hickey 2007, 83). This is precisely the case in Botswana wherebelonging based on state-formation has unequivocally superseded claims based onlength of residency. The Botswana state justifies such a position through its fore-grounding of the individual within a civic citizenship model. Consequently, the Bots-wana state mobilises the classic rhetoric of individualised autochthony in terms of Olaf


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

Zenker’s (2011) insightful and useful typology, which marries nationalism theory andautochthony discourses. He suggests that autochthony is best understood as eitherindividualised or collectivised; the former being appropriate for contexts wherebythe individual is understood as born to a territory, which, consequently, attachesthem to a group/nation, much as in the schema of civic citizenship. This Zenker(2011) contrasts with collectivised autochthony, which reverses the causal logicthrough a strong sense of group identity and shared descent legitimising claims to aterritory, which in turn provide the (somewhat backgrounded) individual theirrights, as is the case in ethnic models of citizenship.While Botswana’s discourse of individualised political autochthony has been ben-

eficial to white Batswana through endorsing their sense of belonging based on livedexperience in the present, it has been greatly detrimental to Botswana’s first people,the San, through effectively erasing the significance of their long history in theregion. The San have lived continuously in the area for tens of thousands of years,while the politically dominant Tswana settled only in the late eighteenth century.The San are the most disenfranchised group in Botswana today, and through thestate’s individualised autochthony model, even the San’s claims to a unique indigenousstatus are denied, as the Tswana-dominated government maintains the position that allcitizens are indigenous (Mazonde 2002, 58). In 1993, the United Nations ‘Year of Indi-genous Peoples’, Butale, then Minister of Local Government, Lands and Housing,stated in the Parliament that no plans for the event had been made: ‘This isbecause, as far as we are concerned, all Batswana are indigenous to the country,except those who may have acquired citizenship by registration’ (cited in Saugestad2001, 52). This mode of thinking was still current at the time of my fieldwork, withPresident Festus Mogae making similar assertions to the Botswana Press Agency in2007 (cited in Barnard 2010, 75).Botswana’s nationalist discourse emphasises the recent past of the post-Indepen-

dence period from 1966 onward; a period which has proved triumphant for the fledg-ling nation with its rapid economic growth based on the discovery of a vast wealth ofdiamond resources, supported by a thriving political democracy. This emphasis againbenefits white Batswana through effectively erasing the history of inequality and whiteprivilege of Protectorate times. As the transition to Independence was peaceful, and nomajor past atrocities of scale are memorialised, the colonial period rarely features inpublic discourse. Reflecting on her position as a liberal white South African, Gordimer(1988b, 32) writes: ‘We want merely to be ordinary members of a multi-coloured, any-coloured society, freed both of the privileges and the guilt of the white sins of ourfathers.’ While the white Batswana do not associate their history with colonial ‘sins’as such, there is a conscious distancing from the histories of white privilege that per-vaded southern Africa. Thus, unlike most minorities in Botswana that are engaged in apolitics of recognition, the white community embrace the opportunity to understatetheir ethno-histories to be citizens as any other.The emphasis on the recent history of the nation is also salient for white Batswana

belonging in the sense of downplaying any notion of their being newcomers. As


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

mentioned, the San inhabited the Okavango for tens of thousands of years prior to thearrival of the BaYeyi, the first Bantu settlers, around the middle of the eighteenthcentury (Spinage 1998, 29). The politically-dominant BaTawana settled in theregion around 1800, and Europeans began to enter the area just fifty years later(Tlou 1985, 28). With the exception of the San minority, all the various ethnicgroups have, therefore, been relatively recent settlers. This has a significant impacton white Batswana belonging, as they do not feel they were temporally far behind.There are a number of white Batswana families that trace their family trees back toa time before Maun was established as the regional capital. One elderly white Mots-wana describes his grandfather’s arrival in Botswana in the late 1800s for thepurpose of trade. Both sides of his family lived in the former Tawana centre in Tsaubefore moving across to Maun when it was declared the capital. He describes hisfamily history from the period:

About 1924-5 they were looking at coming to establish the capital in Maun. It was avillage; it wasn’t what it is. From Tsau they moved across to Maun. My late Dad wasvery influential in establishing the kgotla5 where it is now. It’s never moved…

So anyway they settled here and then my Dad built a house, where I’m staying here atthe moment, about 500 metres from here, along the river. Built in 1927, we’ve stayedin the same house. We haven’t changed. We’ve kept it as, like a sort of a heritageplace. And I was born in 1929. Right there, just across there [pointing], and we’vebeen here ever since. So our family are fifth generation.

The length of his family’s history in the area, in conjunction with his family’s role inthe establishment of the kgotla, clearly provides a deep sense of emplacement in theregion.

Miller (2003, 218) argues that belonging requires ‘standing in correct relation toone’s community, one’s history, and one’s locality’. Much of the interracial tensionin other postcolonial southern African nations has stemmed from inequities surround-ing injustice in the appropriation of land and its distribution to white settlers. In thecolonial paradigm, six per cent of Botswana’s most fertile lands were allocated towhite settlers in Ghanzi, Tati and the Tuli, Lobatse, and Gaborone Blocks. Unlikethe southeast regions of Botswana and neighbouring nations, no land was allocatedto white families in the Okavango. Rather, land remained under tribal adminis-tration—as it does to this day—and white citizens, like all Batswana, lease landfrom tribal authorities that are today represented by the Tawana Land Board. Thusthe term settler, ‘an overtly politicized identity’,6 with its connotations of appropria-tion of land is seen by the Okavango’s white Batswana as an inaccurate descriptionof their position. On the politics around land in Botswana, one white Motswanaman in his thirties commented:

No one fought for it. No one fought to defend it, and no one fought to take it over. Itwas more just a sort of coming together, you know. Black people were here, theycame from up there. Bushmen were already here, white people arrived. No whitepeople came here and claimed the land.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

I challenged this version of history through mention of the disenfranchised San, towhich he responded:

That’s probably the only group that’s been left out of the whole program. Botswana’scompletely different from anywhere. This is a totally pacifist culture, people wouldrather sit down and drink and talk about problems than fight over them… Botswa-na’s barely, there are tribes, but there’s good inter-tribal relationships… It’s differenthey.

While there is a distinct sanitisation of some aspects of the nation’s history in thisaccount, Botswana—or Bechuanaland as it was named during the Protectorate years—has suffered far less violent contestation over land than surrounding nations.7

There is a tendency to conflate the experiences of southern African countries,despite the very different histories and cultures within each country. Botswana’shistory has been characterised by relatively minimal colonial intervention along withconsiderably more positive inter-racial relations than neighbouring nations. TheBritish saw little economic value in the area and so made no moves to colonise thecountry during the imperial heyday. The Tswana Chiefs, however, were nervousabout Afrikaner incursions from South Africa, as well as Cecil Rhodes’ plans forland acquisition in their region, and so travelled to London where they requestedand attained Protectorate status under Britain in 1885. ‘Administering the Bechuana-land Protectorate was, therefore, from a British point of view, an obligation with fewrewards,’ (Bennett 2002, 7). Bennett (2002, 7) describes Botswana’s colonial powers asa ‘tiny, poorly-funded and lethargic administration’ with only a skeleton colonial staffand a small budget. Consequently, British influence was relatively minimal and theTswana paramount chiefs maintained and augmented their powers through adminis-tering the Protectorate on behalf of the British. With the British presence, Afrikanerattempts at invasion into the region were stifled peaceably without a single shotbeing fired, and Botswana has managed ever since to remain free of the warfare thathas been so detrimental to other African nations.Despite the minimal colonial impact relative to neighbouring nations, administra-

tors of the British Protectorate exercised certain controls reminiscent of wide-ranging colonialism. These included the imposition of taxation, regulation of thepowers of the chiefs, along with some appropriation of land in the southeast andwest of the country (Campbell 1980, 231). While not as pervasive as in neighbouringnations, the sense of white superiority was also present in Bechuanaland. According tohistorian Kenneth Hall (1973, 197):

African welfare was subordinated to European interests in British Bechuanaland, notbecause of shortage of funds or fear of European opposition, but rather because theofficials shared local white attitudes on such issues as white supremacy, the status ofAfricans in local society, and the future development of South Africa. For this reasonimperial rule in British Bechuanaland fell short of the expectations of those whoadvocated imperial rule in order to protect Africans from the consequences of Euro-pean expansion.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

While such accounts indicate that Bechuanaland was not immune to the arroganceand racism that characterised British colonial administrations, the most significantdifference was that Europeans were very few in number, resulting in the majority ofBechuanaland’s African population having little contact with Europeans and thusremaining for the most part minimally affected by the Protectorate.

Historical sources attest to the fact that both prior to and during the Protectorateperiod, Europeans living in the Okavango were subject to the control of the BaTawanaChiefs regarding many issues, including access to land and hunting rights (Dziewiecka1996, 71; Gulbrandson 1993; Tlou 1985, 77). Northern Botswana is described inseveral accounts as one of the few places on the continent where genuine inter-racial integration occurred during the colonial heyday (Dziewiecka 1996, 131;Gordimer 1988a, 204; Vendall Clark 1990, 229). Bolaane (2005, 244) suggests that‘Maun’s social life was not typical of southern Africa’ and describes Riley’s, thetown’s only hotel/bar at the time, as one of the few multi-racial bars in southernAfrica. Similarly, renowned ‘coloured’8 author Bessie Head (1981, 70) fled apartheidSouth Africa for refuge in Botswana. She describes the sense of dignity and self-respect amongst even those lowest in the social strata in Botswana, which she attributesto an absence of demoralising colonialism. Historian Terence Ranger (1998) points outthat the full complexity of relationships between black and white in colonial Africashould be recognised, including the many positive connections between different indi-viduals and groups, and he critiques the simplistic categorisations that prevail in somepostcolonial writings. Similarly, the Okavango’s white citizens are quick to describetheir perception of their community’s history, which most see as innocuous. Thisendows them with a sense of legitimacy that in turn opens up the existential opportu-nity for a sense of belonging that focuses on day-to-day living beyond the politics ofrace and colonialism.

Experiential Autochthony among White Batswana

Belonging to the place of their birth and residence is constructed most emphaticallythrough white Batswana’s relationships to nature. One hot afternoon in Maun inearly 2007, I accompanied Tony’s brother Richard to Tony’s house for a braai(BBQ), where Tony pulled out a shoe box of old slides he had recently been givenby his father. They were both excited to revisit their childhood through the photos,which showed the boys hunting antelope, sitting in an outdoor bath, playing withSan children in the Kalahari, posing with crocodiles and pythons, and working oncars with their Dad: a collection of experiences archetypal of the Okavango. The sig-nificance of place in determining cultural identities and influencing social relationshipsis long established in the social sciences.9 In arguing that human cognition is funda-mentally constituted in and through place, philosopher Jeff Malpas (1999, 15–16)goes so far as to suggest ‘there is no possibility of understanding human existence—and especially human thought and experience—other than through an understandingof place and locality.’ For Tony and Richard, the world depicted in the photographs of


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

their youth has had a great impact on who they are today. They identify as bush people,who derive not only their identity, spirituality and ways of knowing from the bush, butalso their livelihoods (one as a hunter, one as a photographic guide). The experiencesof youth and the values, knowledge, and skills developed in place are at the core of whothey have become. In this way, growing up in the wildlife-rich and remote Okavangoprovides the framework for how the world is constructed and perceived for whiteBatswana.Collective identities are premised in shared values, experiences, histories, and mem-

ories. This is not to say they are stagnant, homogenous, and come pre-formed out ofthe past. Rather, collective identities develop both organically, as a result of influencesin the natural and social environments, and through a substantial degree of consciousconstruction. As John and Jean Comaroff (2004, 190) point out, in the postmodernand postcolonial world, identities—like lifestyles, consumer items, religion, andmany other aspects of life—are, to a significant extent, subject to choice. Ratherthan emphasising their global ties through the tourist economy, or their genealogicallinks with Europe, white Batswana firmly embrace the local through identifying asbush people. This identification enhances belonging through placing high value onthose cultural practices, skills, and knowledge that render white Batswana inseparablefrom the Okavango environment.This plays out in multiple ways. The central role of the bush within white Batswana

identities is patently obvious through the simple fact that they talk about the bushincessantly. They discuss the weather, the possibility of rain, the heat and the dust,often giving impassioned, and at times poetic, descriptions of various aspects ofnature. They enthuse over animal sightings and are particularly animated when dis-cussing unusual animal behaviour. They talk about fires, storms, and changes to theenvironment, and they discuss the Okavango’s annual flood, continually. As one visit-ing hunter records: ‘The flood, as it is known to the locals, is the subject of more saloonchatter than the rugby scores, if you can imagine, and its progress is chartered like theNasdaq in Times Square,’ (Wieland 2002, 29). Much of this bush talk takes the form ofstories recounted about incidents occurring in the bush. Stories are delivered in ahighly expressive manner, rich with local metaphor, imagery and colloquialisms,with sentences punctuated with smatterings of Setswana, animal calls, and impersona-tions. Narrative recreations of place serve to authenticate claims to belonging throughevidencing familiarity with and mastery of the environment. In this context, stories area powerful means through which people develop and assert emplacement andbelonging.White Batswana language is peppered with metaphors referring to the land. Many

people have nicknames that link them to a certain place or natural event. Sephai,for example, was born on the day of the first rains of the year after a particularlylong, hot, and dry summer. The Tswana midwife declared that, like the rain (pula),she was a gift from God and told her parents they should name her Sephai, whichmeans ‘the first rain’ in Setswana. Another well-liked young man is affectionatelyreferred to as ‘Gironkey’, as people joke he is tall like a giraffe, but dumb like a


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

donkey. People describe getting abjectly drunk as getting ‘babooned’ in mockery of theprimate, which is typecast as foolish. A joke I heard retold endlessly was one about thefour stages of drunkenness in a bottle of brandy. The first quarter turns a person into apeacock strutting about, the second transforms them into a lion full of aggression andbravado, the third sees them behaving like a baboon, hanging from their friends andtalking nonsense, while the last quarter turns them into a pig rolling around in theirown excrement. Dominy (2003, 64) rightly argues that through this kind of linguisticevocation of the environment, ‘landscape becomes encoded in character’. Shedescribes how ‘naturalising conventions and discourses prevail as humans culturalisenature and naturalise culture, in ways that script them physically, sensually, emotion-ally, cognitively and socially as part of a habitat’, (Dominy 2003, 64).

The deep love for and connection to the natural environment operates for this Euro-pean-descended community as a relatively unproblematic means of enhancing belong-ing in light of the histories of colonialism and race-based privilege, which render sensesof belonging vis-à-vis the majority population far more complex and fraught. Whilethe reasons for the intensity of white citizens’ attachment to land may be underpinnedto an extent by a politics of avoidance vis-à-vis the majority population, this does notalter the fact of such attachments. A number of writers have posited that the relation-ship of whites to the African landscapes in which they live is one of disconnect, alien-ation, and ongoing struggle (e.g. Hughes 2005; MacKenzie 1988; Nuttall 1996).Particularly in the early colonial period, the prevailing notion was that the southernAfrican environment was too harsh for European sensibilities. The climate, dangerouswildlife, and landscapes of the various colonies were seen as brutal, difficult, andtesting environments that had negative effects on the health of white bodies andemotional states in the long term. Hughes (2005, 159), for example, writes of the‘sense of cultural displacement and spatial disorientation’ of whites in Zimbabweand South Africa; while in a subsequent article he endorses novelist Doris Lessing’ssuggestion that ‘[a]ll white African literature is the literature of exile, not fromEurope but from Africa (1958, 700)’, (cited in Hughes 2006, 271). Despite the factthat some of his informants are ninth-generation African, and fifth-generationZimbabwean, Hughes (2006, 280) contends that white Zimbabweans persist intrying to recreate British landscapes and, in particular, suggests they build dams inattempts to recreate the aesthetics of British lakes. I have found, however, that wateris valued as much, if not more, among white communities in southern Africa asEngland, and aesthetic tastes reflect this.

These kinds of descriptions of alienation from the landscape are very different fromthat which I witnessed in the Okavango. White Batswana scathingly refer to England as‘mud island’ and have no desire to emulate the British environment and climate, whichthey see as vastly inferior to their own. Hughes’s (2006) approach is premised in a post-colonial critique of whiteness in Zimbabwe that mobilises ideas of disconnection toland in part to make a broader, and an important, political argument. Yet, caremust be taken not to conflate or confuse the political and experiential aspects of con-nections to land in this regard. In my experience the authenticity of settlers’ love of the


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

African landscape is difficult to dispute, even though on a political level it is certainlyopen for debate as to whether they have any political right to such feelings. As Draper,Spierenburg, and Wels (2004, 345) argue—and as Hughes (2010) posits elsewhere—‘nationalizing through nature’ is a common feature of white settler-descendant cul-tures (see also Ranger 1999; Rutherford 2004).White Batswana love of the land is mobilised and reinforced through their work in

the safari tourism industry. Among tourists they engage in a daily performance ofhighly localised identities, where their expertise in the natural and social environmentsserves to reinforce their Batswana identities (see Gressier 2011). Their comfort in thesearing heat, their competence in Setswana language, their knowledge of the vastOkavango floodplains, islands, and channels, their sense of a shared communityhistory, and their embrace of the nation’s zeitgeist are but some of the foundationsof white Batswana senses of home. As one white Motswana put it: ‘I was born here,and I live here, and I grew up here. I speak the language, and I know the people,and they all know me, and I have a home here.’ Through this construction of auto-chthony as fundamentally revolving around lived experience, white Batswana havedeveloped strong senses of belonging.

Conclusion

Changing cultural patterns require flexible use of conceptual tools. Just as scholars ofremote and marginalised communities are increasingly finding the need to utilise con-cepts such as globalisation and urbanisation to comprehend the experiences of theirinterlocutors, white Batswana’s orientation towards localised belonging and deepties to land have led me to experiment with the application of autochthony. I havedone so, as to my mind it makes more sense to utilise existing concepts in a clearlydefined fashion than to endlessly create new terms to describe empirical phenomena.It is, however, a contentious application, and I undertake it with considerable hesita-tion and in the spirit of inviting further discussion. I wish to emphasise that myexploration of white Batswana experiential autochthony involves the use of a heuristictool that is intended to remain solely in the realm of analysis. White Batswana are notengaged in a ‘politics of recognition’ in Charles Taylor’s (1994) sense—namely,advocating for greater rights to collective identity and cultural expression in thepublic sphere—and they do not seek any rights or privileges beyond those theyreceive as citizens. Nor are they involved in the kinds of disputes that have led to articu-lations of settler connections to place within competing claims to land of indigenouspeople and settlers in Zimbabwe (Rutherford 2004), Australia (Trigger 2003), NewZealand (Dominy 1995), and elsewhere. Yet, they feel very strongly about theirstatus as born and bred in the Okavango, and experiential autochthony is a highlyrich and suggestive concept through which to explore these sentiments.Studies of political autochthony focus on processes of inclusion and exclusion where

claims to autochthonous identities are subject to political manoeuvring, and, as such,political autochthony can, as Geschiere and Nyamnjoh (2000, 448) argue, usefully be


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

conceptualised as relational, dynamic, historically contingent, and lacking substance. Bycontrast, it is precisely the substance of connections to the homeland with which experi-ential autochthony aims to come to grips. The relationships of individuals or groupswith the local community, the state, the local environment, and to history are thestuff of experiential autochthony. Experiential autochthony highlights the processeswhereby individuals or groups connect to the places of their birth and upbringingdespite or, indeed, because of the politics of belonging. This conceptualisation is particu-larly useful for analysing the place of settler-descendents, as well as the descendents ofrefugees, minorities, and immigrants, who persist in developing strong connectionsto their homelands despite not being the first come or having claims to autochthonyrecognised within politics of belonging. The concept can also be usefully applied tothose considered indigenous in the political sense, to indicate a focus on the fleshingout of the nature and means of their connections beyond political mobilisation of theidentity category. For this reason, the conceptual distinction I have proposed shouldnot in any way detract from the unique subject position of indigenous peoples, butaims rather to provide further analytical clarity to these complex social phenomena.

Notes

[1] Acknowledgements: the fieldwork was conducted as part of my doctoral research at the Universityof Western Australia. Thanks to the editors and anonymous reviewers for insightful commentson earlier drafts.

[2] These studies have been conducted by some of the discipline’s most renowned scholars, rangingfrom the extensive works on the Tswana by Isaac Schapera (1970, 1947, 1938), to more recentwork by John and Jean Comaroff on the Tswana in both South Africa and Botswana (e.g. 1985,1991), Richard Werbner (e.g. 2004), Francis Nyamnjoh (2007, 2006), and Deborah Durham(2004) to name a few. The Kalahari has hosted an endless stream of anthropologists, includingRichard Lee (1979; with Irven Devore 1968), Lorna Marshall (1976), Edwin Wilmsen (1989),Alan Barnard (2007), Jacqueline Solway (2006, 2003, 2002), Sidsel Saugestad (2001), RobertHitchcock (1996), and many others. Solway (2006, 9), in fact, suggests that ‘the San are arguablythe most thoroughly documented group in Africa.’

[3] That the Tswana even constitute a numerical majority is contested, with some academicssuggesting that the combined minority communities may in fact constitute a higher percentageof the population (see Parsons 1985).

[4] From the projection of numbers for 2007 based on the Botswana Census (2001).[5] The kgotla is the central institution in Tswana political life. It refers to the political unit of the

tribal council and court, as well as the physical meeting area of the council. It is a forumwhere all manner of grievances are aired, political issues debated, ceremonial activities con-ducted, laws promulgated, and judgments brought down by the Chief and tribal council. It isa relatively democratic forum where, along with the Chief exercising his authority, villagersare given the opportunity to express their concerns directly. See Peters (1994) and Schapera(1938) for detailed explications of Tswana customary laws and traditional social structures.

[6] Rutherford (2004, 545); see also Mamdani (2001, 657) for a full discussion of the term.[7] For detailed accounts of Botswana’s fascinating past, see Parsons (1997) Bennett (2002) and Hall

(1973); on the Okavango area, see Tlou (1985) and Dziewiecka (1996).[8] In Botswana and South Africa, the term coloured continues to be used to describe a person of

inter-racial descent. While this term is seen as contentious in the West, it is used by people of


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

mixed ancestry to self-identify in the Okavango and, like the terms black and white, is seen as afairly unproblematic descriptor.

[9] See, for example, Escobar (2001); Dominy (2001); Altman and Low (1992); Low (2003).

References

Adamczyk, C. 2011. ‘Today, I am no Mutwa anymore’: Facets of national unity discourse in present-day Rwanda. Social Anthropology 19 (2): 175–88.

Altman, I., and S. Low. 1992. Place attachment: A conceptual inquiry. In Place attachment: Humanbehavior and the environment, edited by I. Altman and S. Low, 1–12. New York and London:Plenum Press.

Barnard, A. 2007. Anthropology and the Bushmen. Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers.Barnard, A. 2010. Culture: The Indigenous account. In Culture wars: Context, models and anthropol-

ogists‘ Accounts, edited by D. James, E. Place and C. Toren, 73–85. New York and Oxford:Berghahn Books.

Batibo, H. 2002. Integration and ethnic identity: A critical dilemma for the minority language speak-ers in Botswana. In Minorities in the new Millennium: Perspectives from Botswana, edited by I.Mazonde, 89–96. Gaborone: Lightbooks.

Bennett, B. 2002. Some historical background on minorities in Botswana. In Minorities in the newmillennium: Perspectives from Botswana, edited by I. Mazonde, 5–15. Gaborone: Lightbooks.

Bolaane, M. 2002. Bugakhwe San community of Khwai: Mapping its own territory. Pula: BotswanaJournal of African Studies 16 (2): 86–97.

Bolaane, Maitseo. 2005. Chiefs, hunters and adventurers: The foundation of the Okavango/MoremiNational Park, Botswana. Journal of Historical Geography 31 (2): 241–59.

Botswana Census. 2001. http://www.cso.gov.bw/demographics/Web-Population_Projection-2001-2031.pdf (accessed 23/1/09).

de la Cadena, M., and O. Starn. 2007. Introduction. In Indigenous experience today, edited by M. de laCadena and O. Starn, 1–30. Oxford and New York: Berg.

Campbell, A. 1980 {1968}. The guide to Botswana. Johannesburg: Winchester Press.Ceuppens, B. 2011. From ‘the Europe of the regions’ to ‘the EuropeanChampion League’: The electoral

appeal of populist autochthony discourses in Flanders. Social Anthropology 19 (2): 159–74.Ceuppens, B., and P. Geschiere. 2005. Autochthony: Local or global? New modes in the struggle over

citizenship and belonging in Africa and Europe. Annual Review of Anthropology 34 (1): 385–407.

Chebanne, A. 2002. Minority languages and minority people: Issues on linguistic, cultural and ethnicdeath in Botswana. InMinorities in the new millennium: Perspectives from Botswana, edited by I.Mazonde, 47–56. Gaborone: Lightbooks.

Clifford, J. 2001. Indigenous articulations. The Contemporary Pacific 13 (2): 468–90.Comaroff, J. 1985. Body of power, spirit of resistance: The culture and history of a South African people.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Comaroff, J., and J. L. Comaroff. 1991. Of revelation and revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.Comaroff, J. L., and J. Comaroff. 2004. Criminal justice, cultural justice: The limits of liberalism and

the pragmatics of difference in the new South Africa. American Ethnologist 31 (2): 188–204.Dominy, M. 1995. White settler assertions of native status. American Ethnologist 22 (2): 358–74.Dominy, M. 2001. Calling the station home: Place and identity in New Zealand‘s high country. Lanham,

Boulder, New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.Dominy, M. 2003. Hearing grass, thinking grass: Postcolonialism and ecology in Aotearoa- New

Zealand. In Disputed territories: Land, culture and identity in settler societies, edited by D.Trigger and G. Griffiths, 53–80. Aberdeen: Hong Kong University Press.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

http://www.cso.gov.bw/demographics/Web-Population_Projection-2001-2031.pdf

http://www.cso.gov.bw/demographics/Web-Population_Projection-2001-2031.pdf

Dorman, S., D. Hammett, and P. Nugent, eds. 2007. Making nations, creating strangers: States andcitizenship in Africa. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

Draper, M., M. Spierenburg, and H. Wels. 2004. African dreams of cohesion: Elite pacting and com-munity development in Transfrontier Conservation Areas in Southern Africa. Culture andOrganisation 10 (4): 341–53.

Durham, D. 2004. Disappearing youth: Youth as a social shifter in Botswana. American Ethnologist 31(4): 589–605.

Dziewiecka, C. 1996. The history of Maun and Ngamiland, unpublished thesis.Escobar, A. 2001. Culture sits in places: Reflections on globalism and subaltern strategies of localiz-

ation. Political Geography 20 (2): 139–74.Gausset, Q., J. Kenrick, and R. Gibb. 2011. Indigeneity and autochthony: A couple of false twins?

Social Anthropology 19 (2): 135–42.Geschiere, P. 2009. The perils of belonging: Autochthony, citizenship and exclusion in Africa and Europe.

Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Geschiere, P., and F. Nyamnjoh. 2000. Capitalism and autochthony: The seesaw of mobility and

belonging. Public Culture 12 (2): 423–52.Gordimer, Nadine (1988a) {1970}. Pula! In The essential gesture: Writing, politics and place, edited by

S. Clingman, 167–75. London: Jonathon Cape.Gordimer, N. 1988b {1959}. Where do whites fit in? In The essential gesture: Writing, politics and place,

edited by S. Clingman, 31–7. London: Jonathon Cape.Gressier, C. 2011. Safaris into subjectivity: White locals, black tourists, and the politics of belonging in

the Okavango Delta, Botswana. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 18 (4): 352–76.Gressier, C. 2012. An elephant in the room: Okavango safari hunting as ecotourism? Ethnos: Journal

of Anthropology. doi:10.1080/00141844.2012.723016.Gulbrandson, O. 1993. Missionaries and the Northern Tswana Rulers: Who used whom? Journal of

Religion in Africa 23 (1): 44–83.Hall, K. 1973. British Bechuanaland: The price of protection. The International Journal of African

Historical Studies 6 (2): 183–97.Handler, R. 1990. Cultural Politics in New Zealand: Responses to Michelle Dominy. Anthropology

Today 6 (3): 8–9.Head, B. 1981. Serowe: Village of the rain wind. London, Ibadan and Nairobi: Heinemann.Hickey, S. 2007. Caught at the crossroads: Citizenship, marginality and the Mbororo Fulani in

Northwest Cameroon. In Making nations, creating strangers: States and citizenship in Africa,edited by S. Dorman, D. Hammett and P. Nugent, 83–104. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

Hilgers, M. 2011. Autochthony as capital in a global age. Theory, Culture and Society 28 (1): 34–54.Hitchcock, R. K. 1996. Kalahari communities: Bushmen and the politics of the environment in Southern

Africa. Copenhagen, Denmark: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA).Hughes, D. M. 2005. Third nature: Making space and time in the Great Limpopo Conservation Area.

Cultural Anthropology 20 (2): 157–84.Hughes, D. M. 2006. Hydrology of hope: Farm dams, conservation, and whiteness in Zimbabwe.

American Ethnologist 33 (2): 269–87.Hughes, D. M. 2010. Whiteness in Zimbabwe: Race, landscape, and the problem of belonging.

New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Kenrick, J. 2011. Scottish land reform and indigenous peoples’ rights: Self-determination and

historical reversibility. Social Anthropology 19 (2): 189–203.Kuper, A. 2003. The return of the Native. Current Anthropology 44 (3): 389–402.Lee, R. B. 1979. The !Kung San: Men, women and work in a foraging society. Cambridge and New York:

Cambridge University Press.Lee, R. B., and I. DeVore, eds. 1968. Man the hunter. Hawthorne and New York: Aldine.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

Low, S. 2003. Behind the gates: Life, security, and the pursuit of happiness in fortress America. New Yorkand London: Routledge.

MacKenzie, J. 1988. The empire of nature: Hunting, conservation and British imperialism. Manchesterand New York: Manchester University Press.

Malpas, J. 1999. Place and experience: A philosophical topography. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Mamdani, M. 2001. Beyond settler and native as political identities: Overcoming the political legacyof colonialism. Society for Comparative Studies of Society and History 43 (4): 651–64.

Marshall, L. 1976. The !Kung of Nyae Nyae. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: HarvardUniversity Press.

Marshall-Fratani, R. 2007. The war of “who is who”: Autochthony, nationalism and citizenship in theIvorian crisis. InMaking nations, creating strangers: States and citizenship in Africa, edited by S.Dorman, D. Hammett and P. Nugent, 29–68. Brill: Leiden and Boston.

Mazonde, I. 1991. Vorsters and clarks: Alternative models of European farmers in the Tuli Block ofBotswana. Journal of Southern African Studies 17 (3): 443–71.

Mazonde, I. 2002. The San in Botswana and the issue of subjectivities—national disintegration orcultural diversity. In Minorities in the new Millennium: Perspectives from Botswana, edited byI. Mazonde, 57–72. Gaborone: Lightbooks.

Miller, L. 2003. Longing for belonging: A critical essay on Peter Read’s belonging. The AustralianJournal of Anthropology 14 (3): 406–17.

Nuttall, S. 1996. Flatness and fantasy: Representations of the land in two recent South African novels.In Text, theory, space: Land, literature and history in South Africa and Australia, edited by K.Darian-Smith, L. Gunner and S. Nuttall, 219–30. London and New York: Routledge.

Nyamnjoh, F. 2006. Insiders and outsiders: Citizenship and xenophobia in contemporary southernAfrica. London and New York: Zed Books.

Nyamnjoh, F. 2007. “Ever diminishing circles”: The paradoxes of belonging in Botswana. InIndigenous experience today, edited by M. de la Cadena and O. Starn, 305–33. Oxford andNew York: Berg.

Parsons, N. 1985. The evolution of modern Botswana: Historical revisions. In The evolution ofmodern Botswana, edited by L. Picard, 26–40. London: Zed Books; Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press.

Parsons, N. 1997. Makgowa, Mahaletsela, and Maburu: Traders and travellers before c.1820. Pula:Botswana Journal of African Studies 11 (1): 30–42.

Peters, P. 1994. Dividing the commons: Politics, policy and culture in Botswana. Charlottesville:University Press of Virginia.

Ranger, T. 1998. Europeans in Black Africa. Journal of World History 9 (2): 255–68.Ranger, T. 1999. Voices from the rocks: Nature, culture and history in the Matopos Hills of Zimbabwe.

Harare, Baobab; Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press; Oxford: JamesCurrey.

Rosivach, V. 1987. Autochthony and the Athenians. The Classical Quarterly 37 (2): 294–306.Russell, M., and M. Russell. 1979. Afrikaners of the Kalahari: White minority in a black state.

Cambridge, London, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.Rutherford, B. 2004. “Settlers” and Zimbabwe: Politics, memory and the anthropology of com-

mercial farms during a time of crisis. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 11(4): 543–62.

Saugestad, S. 2001. The inconvenient Indigenous: Remote area development in Botswana, donor assist-ance, and the first people of the Kalahari. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute.

Schapera, I. 1938. A handbook of Tswana law and custom. London: Frank Cass.Schapera, I. 1947. Migrant labour and tribal life. London, New York and Cape Town: Oxford

University Press.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

Schapera, I. 1970. Tribal innovations: Tswana chiefs and social change 1795–1940. New York: TheAthlone Press, University of London and Humanities Press Inc.

Solway, J. 2002. Navigating the “neutral” state: “Minority” rights in Botswana. Journal of SouthernAfrican Studies 28 (4): 711–29.

Solway, J. 2003. In the eye of the storm: The state and non-violence in southern Africa (Botswana).Anthropological Quarterly 76 (3): 485–95.

Solway, J. 2006. Introduction: the politics of egalitarianism—essays in honour of Richard B. Lee. InThe politics of egalitarianism: Theory and practice, edited by J. Solway, 1–17. Oxford andNew York: Berghahn Books.

Spinage, C. 1998. Game of Botswana: A history of wildlife in a Southern African country. Unpublishedmanuscript.

Taylor, C. 1994. Examining the politics of recognition. In Multiculturalism, edited by A. Gutmann,75–106. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Tlou, T. 1985. A history of Ngamiland—1750 to 1906—The formation of an African state. Gaborone:Macmillan Botswana.

Trigger, D. 2003. Disputed territories: Land, culture and identity. In Disputed territories: Land, cultureand identity in settler societies, edited by D. Trigger and G. Griffiths, 1–28. Aberdeen: HongKong University Press.

Trigger, D., and C. Dalley. 2010. Negotiating indigeneity: Culture, identity, and politics. Reviews inAnthropology 39 (1): 46–65.

Vendall Clark, J. 1990. Starlings laughing: A memoir of Africa. London, New York, Toronto, Sydneyand Auckland: Doubleday.

Werbner, R. 2004. Reasonable radicals and citizenship in Botswana: The public anthropology of Kalangaelites. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Wieland, T. 2002. Time regained: An Okavango kudu at last. But that’s not the important part. Gray‘sSporting Journal 26 (7): 26–7, 29, cont’d 72, 74.

Wilmsen, E. N. 1989. Land filled with flies: A political economy of the Kalahari. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Young, C. 2007. Nation, ethnicity, and citizenship: Dilemma’s of democracy and civil order in Africa.In Making nations, creating strangers: States and citizenship in Africa, edited by S. Dorman, D.Hammett and P. Nugent, 241–64. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

Yuval-Davis, N. 2004. Borders, boundaries and the politics of belonging. In Ethnicity, nationalism andminority rights, edited by S. May, T. Modood and J. Squires, 214–30. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Zenker, O. 2009. Autochthony and activism among contemporary Irish nationalists in NorthernIreland, or: If ‘civic’ nationalists are ‘ethno’-cultural revivalists, what remains of the civic/ethnic divide? Nations and Nationalisms 15 (4): 696–715.

Zenker, O. 2011. Autochthony, ethnicity, indigeneity and nationalism: Time-honouring and state-oriented modes of rooting individual-territory-group-triads in a globalising world. Critiqueof Anthropology 31 (1): 63–81.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UO

V U

nive

rsity

of

Ovi

edo]

at 1

1:11

28

Oct

ober

201

4

Documents

Experiential Autochthony in the Okavango Delta, Botswana