NOMADS AND GLOBALIZATION IN THE SAHARA
Nomads of the Sahara like the Imuhar (Tuareg), are certainly not victims but instead play a role in the globalization process.
Some 100 years ago the Sahara region was a centre of globalization in which the Imuhar (Tuareg) obtained information about world affairs at strategically important points and made use of it,(32) and today the Imuhar are considered politically and economically marginalized.(33) Urban nomads of the Sahara like the ishumar, in particular, are well integrated into worldwide events.(34) The old trade routes the Imuhar created are still used today for a subversive international economy. On the other hand, African migrant streams move through the Sahara, using the routes frequented and completed by the Imuhar. Thus, the Sahara is still a hub in globalized space.
The analysis of nomadic life and its inherent adaptation can no longer be restricted to small territorially limited areas; instead, worldwide cause and effect chains should also be analysed.(35)
For example, the Imuhar are known worldwide under the foreign designation ‘Tuareg’.
This word has now become a ‘brand’ in globalized space. You can buy party tents, off-road vehicles, air conditioners and even motorcycle trousers with the designation ‘Tuareg’ all over the world. The brand name has already lost its proper meaning and in Europe ‘Tuareg’ is more likely to be associated with an off-road vehicle than with an African society.(36) The positive image of the brand ‘Tuareg’ is also used in worldwide tourism. Guided tours across the Sahara in off-road vehicles are offered on all continents and are very popular. Thus, numerous ‘leisure nomads’ frequent the North African desert in the winter months.
In the same way that tourists inappropriately call the Imuhar ‘Tuareg’, an improper designation for all tourists exists among the Imuhar. They call a tourist akafar (from the Arabic: non-believer). When Imuhar are asked for an explanation of the word akafar, they usually mention ‘white person’.(37)
However, by now this has gone so far that the children of Imuhar nomads also call Arab people who visit an Algerian nomad camp ikufar. Here, the original meaning of the word, which refers to religious belief, is also removed, and children call every stranger akafar, even though they are Arabs who have the same religion. Similarly, global commodities are appropriated and provided with new meanings much like these designations.
PRAXIS/ RURAL MODERN NOMADS IN THE SAHARA:
Suda, a modern rural nomad woman
Suda is the manager of a goat herd in the Algerian Sahara. Her clothes are produced in various parts of the world. The traditional headdress, the aleshu, made of woven panels, comes from Kura in Nigeria. The material of her wraparound garment, tesirnest, is manufactured either in Europe or India. Her plastic sandals are ‘made in Italy’. Suda’s little son wears a ‘Pokemon’ T-shirt and her daughter a T-shirt with the label ‘I love Paris’. She owns a watch from Japan, an electric torch from Korea and a radio from Taiwan. Suda bakes her bread with Algerian flour and flavours her sauce with a ‘Maggie’ stock cube. In summer, when her goats give little milk, she mixes powdered milk from Argentina for her children. During her work breaks she drinks green tea from China with her female friends. Her favourite brand is ‘A tee de sable’ (the tea of the sand), which shows on its package a traditionally dressed AmahaÅ sitting in the sand and filling a glass of tea. Suda is unaware of the colonial demarcation in the Sahara and the subsequent nation-state building.
That her territory is located in a country named Algeria is of no significance to her.
Rural nomads use global commodities. Thus, women regard a digital watch from Japan as a desirable object, even though they are unable to read it and time measurements in minutes have no relevance to their everyday lives. However, the watch grants its wearer respectability and prestige. Imuhar selectively imbue certain global commodities with local cultural meaning.(38) Appropriation, taking something into one’s possession, means that others previously possessed the commodity. Hence, appropriation always implies an interaction with another person and is not limited to the reinterpretation of things.(39) This affects not only the commodity, but also its designation. The manufacture of the traditional bowl, tamennast, which the men use during trips for baking bread or for drinking, requires the use of complicated techniques. Lately, poorly made bowls have been called tamennast Taiwan and recently the Imuhar began to call all shoddily-made goods ‘Taiwan’. They do not know that Taiwan is a country in Asia. They give all commodities they regard as cheap this designation, including traditional products like the tamennast.
Commodity preferences are very selective. Children often wear European clothes, whereas nomad women and nomad men continue to wear ‘traditional’ clothes, although they can buy European clothes from local markets. However, particularly with respect to clothes, local links become apparent. For instance, female rural Imuhar nomads in the southern part of the Sahara have begun to wear the colourful wraparound skirts of the Hausa women.(40)
Tourism also leaves its traces. Down jackets or sturdy mountain boots that Sahara travellers from Europe left as gifts can be found among nomads. For example, a bright yellow, thick down jacket is used as a baby pad in a nomad tent because neither a male nor female nomad wanted to wear such a European jacket, despite the frosty temperatures.
Pharmaceuticals from European tourists leave a more dangerous legacy. In one case a mother wanted to give her four-year-old daughter, who had a slight cough, prescription medicine for serious pneumonia. She received the medicine from a relative who works as a driver on tourist trips. When I told her that the medicine was inappropriate for children, the mother told me that the problem was that she could not read the package insert.
Nomads are specialists at recycling and every type of commodity is reused. Old clothes are cut into strips and processed with a spezial technique into ropes for tying up goats. Broken manufactured goods are dismantled for their spare parts. Empty cans serve as storage containers or children’s toys. Thus, global commodities receive both a new meaning and a new use.
Nomads not only use commodities from global sources, but they also give incentives to local and supralocal manufacturers. For example, they buy cheap Italian plastic sandals at the local markets, but since these quickly fall apart they have developed a special technique for sewing the upper sole onto the lower sole to make them more robust. For this procedure they use solid threads from flour sacks. Sedentary men from the cities have recently adopted this technique, so now one can purchase these plastic sandals on the local market with the additional seams already in place. However, the process continues. Now nomads prefer stronger leather sandals, which they reinforce in the same manner. The sedentary traders in the cities will surely soon follow their example, so that in years to come the leather sandals with the sewing technique the nomads developed will become available at the local markets.
PRAXIS / URBAN MODERN NOMADS FROM THE SAHARA:
Bakai, a modern urban nomad man of the Sahara
Bakai, aged 57, is sitting in a Viennese café drinking a ‘Melange’ (coffee with frothy milk) and talking on the phone with his relative in Niger. He wears jeans with a Lacoste shirt and commutes during the year between Africa and Europe. He grew up as a ‘real’ nomad child in the Niger Sahara. At the age of eight he moved with his parents to the city of Agadez. He never had the opportunity to go to school and as a teenager started to work in tourism.
Initially, as a cook, he accompanied adventure-seeking European tourists on two-week round trips across the Sahara. Today he owns a travel agency and organizes a range of trips across the Niger desert in the winter months. In the summer months he comes to Europe and visits various European tour operators. He speaks five languages fluently. His office consists of the internet and his state-of-the-art mobile phone, with which he travels to Europe over the summer months in search of new clients. He keeps in touch with former clients and, in doing so, always has a place to stay. He uses a wide array of global commodities and frequents multicultural restaurants all over Europe. In summer he sells ‘traditional’ Imuhar jewellery to his clients and at various Africa festivals. He operates in the milieu of European leisure nomads and now belongs to the group of privileged people in his home country. He meets the description of a postmodern nomad for whom international airports rather than wells or local markets serve as the junction for nomadic movements. Unlike European urban nomads, he remains integrated into a close family network in Niger and constantly keeps in touch with his relatives there.
Silver necklaces with the Imuhar ‘cross’ are very popular among European women. Blacksmiths in the Sahara manufacture them especially for tourists because domestic sales are low. Bakai is not the only person to bring these necklaces to the European market. Several Imuhar (Tuareg Ishumar) who work in tourism make a partial living out of selling them in Europe in the summer months. Imuhar jewellery is now also available on the internet from homepages mostly set up by Imuhar people with the help of their European friends. While Berber blankets and water pipes are in especially high demand as souvenirs among tourists along the North African Mediterranean coast, in the Sahara the ‘typical’ silver jewellery of the Imuhar is the bestseller. Now one can even find Imuhar sales booths in the middle of the Sahara desert at locations tourist groups visit, such as the Mandara lakes. There the Imuhar try to sell their jewellery to tourists on site. Imuhar earnings in Europe are mostly invested in European commodities, from which relatives and friends in the Sahara benefit. The latest mobile phones, computers and televisions are transported back to the Sahara at the end of the summer months.
Global commodities are commodities that are not produced for a regionally limited clientele, but rather for the whole world.(41) The Imuhar’s silver jewellery has in the meantime become a global commodity. The Imuhar operate in globalized networks. Global commodities are used and imbued with local cultural meaning, but on the other hand global commodities are produced for the international market. Thus, the Imuhar play an active role in the globalization process.
- 1) Modern Nomads / Rural and urban Nomads
- 2) Nomadism / Pastoralism
- 3) Postmodern Nomadology
- 5) Nomadology - New Approach in the Anthropology of the Nomads
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Chapters from the article:
Anja Fischer
Research and Nomads in the Age of Globalization
in:
Anja Fischer / Ines Kohl (eds.)
Tuareg Society within a Globalized World