Paper short abstract:

Inspired by Gluckman's argument that Africans are rebels, never revolutionaries, this paper explores the role of the anthropologist-expert during periods of violent conflict and the political and intellectual challenges of marshaling ethnographic knowledge for future-oriented analysis.

Paper long abstract:

"Tell me, based on all your studies, do you think that revolution is possible?" The question, posed by one of my interlocutors in rural Central African Republic (CAR), contained a note of urgency as the person voicing it noted with despair the cycle of rebellion the country has fallen into over the past fifteen years, a cycle that all the peacebuilding initiatives mustered by the international community seem only to have bolstered. I thought of Max Gluckman's pessimistic answer: Africans are rebels, never revolutionaries. In other words, conflict preserves the social order rather than upending it. By our interlocutors, and also by journalists, diplomats, and policy-makers, anthropologists are called on to make prognoses about the outcomes of political upheaval. This task raises dilemmas at once personal, political (should one 'take a side'?), and intellectual. As critical as anthropologists have long been of functionalist analysis, our training includes little to help us engage in future-oriented analysis. Drawing on my experiences being interviewed during the rise of the Seleka rebel coalition and its assault on the CAR capital in December 2012, this paper will explore the ambivalence surrounding the anthropologist-expert's role in describing conflict patterns and their likely outcomes. I argue that the full implications of Gluckman's argument remain to be grappled with and that only then will rebellious ethnography have a chance of becoming revolutionary.