The Limits of the Paddy: Political Centralization, Banditry, and Sovereignty in Madagascar
<p>"The sea is the limit of my paddy"t. With this sentence, Andrianampoinimerina, a famous ruler of a<br />region on the highlands of Madagascar, expressed, at the turn of the XVIII and XIX century, the<br />desire to unify the island under his own political authority. Th...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Ledizioni
2016-10-01
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| Series: | Antropologia |
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| Online Access: | https://www.ledijournals.com/ojs/index.php/antropologia/article/view/752 |
| Summary: | <p>"The sea is the limit of my paddy"t. With this sentence, Andrianampoinimerina, a famous ruler of a<br />region on the highlands of Madagascar, expressed, at the turn of the XVIII and XIX century, the<br />desire to unify the island under his own political authority. The project was implemented only a<br />century later, with difficulty, by the French colonial conquest. Since then, the process of imposition<br />and extension of state sovereignty on the island has never stopped, emerging as a political field in<br />which different principles of legitimacy, old and new symbols of power and different forms of<br />political organization have been compared, overlapped and disputed. Even today the malagasy state<br />finds a number of difficulties in fully exercising its sovereignty on different areas of the country,<br />especially in some rural regions where armed groups of dahalo ( &#39;bandits&#39; in Malagasy) have added<br />to their &quot;classic&quot; cattle raids attacks on homes, trucks, taxi brousse and, in some cases, the extortion<br />of tributes from entire villages. Given the slowness and inefficiency of the government to take<br />charge of the matter, many feel that these armed groups are operating with the connivance of the<br />authorities or sectors of the army; an idea reinforced by the fact that the military tend not to leave<br />alive any of those who have been accused of being dahalo, as if they were getting rid of<br />inconvenient witnesses. This &quot;crisis of the dahalo&quot;, has driven the young people of some villages to<br />organize themselves, buy weapons and make their own justice at the risk of being confused with the<br />same bandits from whom they would like to defend themselves. Based on research conducted in<br />areas recently classified as &quot;red zones&quot; for the presence of dahalo, this article explores the<br />ambiguities and contradictions that emerge in the process of reconstitution of state sovereignty in<br />areas which have been economically and politically marginalized and it gives an account of how the<br />issue of security has entered on the political agenda and in the public debate of contemporary<br />Madagascar with increasing strength.</p> |
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| ISSN: | 2281-4043 2420-8469 |