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- Convenors:
-
Samantha Balaton-Chrimes
(Deakin University)
Fred Nasubo (British Institute in Eastern Africa)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Streams:
- Politics and International Relations (x) Inequality (y)
- Location:
- Philosophikum, S55
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 31 May, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
Rises in identity politics are accompanied by increasing formalisation of categories of identification, including 'minority', 'marginalised', and 'Indigenous'. This panel explores practices of naming and categorisation for 'special' status, including self-identification, and in law and bureaucracy.
Long Abstract:
Identity politics is on the rise around the world, including across Africa. One consequence of this is the increasing formalisation of categories of identification, categories such as 'minority', 'marginalised', 'Indigenous' and other terms designed to capture the special rights and/or status of particular groups. Outside of studies of Indigeneity and its shifting meanings and uses, little scholarship has emerged in the past fifteen or so years that interrogates the nature and implications of these practices. How has Indigenous identification changed over the past decade, and with what implications for Indigenous people and other kinds of ethnic minorities? How are terms 'minority' and 'marginalised' being used, why and with what effects? How is race featuring in contemporary practices of identification as a special group? What other changes are taking place in the meaning and function of these and other related terms, categories and practices? And what do these transformations tell us about the natures and futures of political communities, nations, states and societies?
This panel seeks papers that explore emerging and transforming practices of naming, labelling, categorisation and classification of identity groups in all forms. These might include, but are not limited to: self-naming and self-identification by communities; use of categories by social movements and in advocacy; legal categories (national, regional and international); and bureaucratic categories (e.g. on censuses or through civil or identity registration). We are broadly interested in all work that is thinking through the implications of 'special' forms of status for identity groups across the continent.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 31 May, 2023, -Keren Weitzberg (Queen Mary University of London)
Paper short abstract:
Contrary to the claims of proponents, digital identity systems often reinforce, rather than sweep away the slow violence of bureaucratic procedures. This paper explores how new digital idenity systems in Kenya have bolstered the logic of vetting, part of Kenya’s discriminatory identification regime.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the relationship between digital identity systems and the vetting process in Kenya. Though widely condemned as discriminatory by many human rights groups in Kenya, vetting exercises are a routine part of registering for a national ID for certain ethnic and religious groups, contributing to their racialization and minoritization (Balaton-Chrimes, 2014). Contrary to the claims of many of their proponents, digital identity systems can often reinforce, rather than sweep away the slow violence of onerous, paper-based bureaucratic procedures (Sriraman, 2018; Dalberto and Banégas, 2021). Digitization can also increase the role of bureaucratic discretion, rather than reducing its impact (Vrăbiescu, 2022). As this paper argues, the introduction of new digital idenity systems in Kenya has largely ended up bolstering the logic of vetting, a centerpiece of Kenya’s discriminatory identification regime. This paper also explores why it is so difficult for stakeholders, including civil society groups, to operate outside the logic of vetting.
Samantha Balaton-Chrimes (Deakin University)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I offer a genealogy of efforts to define and use the constitutional categories ‘minority’ and ‘marginalised community’ in Kenya. I show the impossibility of fixing consistent definitions or list of people(s) to whom they can be applied ,and reflect on implications.
Paper long abstract:
In Kenya over recent years several ethnic groups have begun to claim the status of ‘minority’ or ‘marginalised community’, both classifications that would entitle such a group to several beneficial provisions under the 2010 constitution. Though the implementation of these provisions has been so slow as to be almost non-existent, the term is nonetheless gaining significant political traction. In this paper, I offer a genealogy of efforts to code for ethnic minority and/or marginalised status in Kenya. I explore the work of government, legal and civil society bodies to operationalise this code, and show how impossible it is to fix a consistent definition of the terms or list of people(s) to whom they can be applied. I analyse the content, form and logic of the coding efforts and demonstrate a strong consistency with colonial logics of ethnic classification. At the same time, however, as in other studies of the production of knowledge about populations and individuals in Africa, I explore how these efforts defy and in some ways depart from the desire behind that logic. That is, I show how legibility and governability are not necessarily the driving force behind classification work. Reflecting on the implications of this analysis, I argue for a vigilance in the use of these classifications, for they can serve multiple political projects, not all desirable, including for the groups who use them.
Lorraine Towers (University of Sydney)
Paper short abstract:
The 'politics of identity' are not a recent phenomenon but have been historically articulated through 'modern' schooling that has created a difference of political interest out of diversity with unstable and competing claims for varying types of minority and majority status.
Paper long abstract:
The 'politics of identity' have become increasingly explicit in Ethiopia in the past two and half decades. Some have argued that this is a totally new phenomenon prompted by the advent of federalism in the mid-1990s based on ethno-linguistic difference. This paper will contest the recency of this development and consider its origin in the changing manifestations of modern citizen subjectivities and their relationship to national belonging as an effect of power of successive regimes produced through state schooling.
Oromo people in Ethiopia were defined as a political minority subordinated to the state, despite their numerical majority, by Hamdesa Tuso in 1982. He explained this as an effect in part of imperial and subsequently, socialist government schooling that discriminated against Oromo peoples and subjectivities. It is contended that the experience of alienation from schooling and the struggles to oppose this have left a legacy of contesting identification.
Oromo school experience will be explored to consider how it named and positioned Oromo, their language and culture as antithetical to modern, urban, and educated subjectivities. Schooling has been deployed in a manner that has reified certain cultural capital and over time, articulated socio-cultural diversity as a difference of political interest.
Consideration will be given to how the status of being Oromo - as both a political minority and a numerical majority - and more discursively Indigenous - has been exploited to drive the momentum and justification for contemporary change to bring Oromo in closer proximity to the state and normative belonging in the nation.