Itiiiiiiititii

This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF HEALTH AND DISEASE
AMONG FOREST FARMERS OF SOUTHEASTERN MADAGASCAR

presented by

Janice Harper

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. Anthropology

degree in

 

 

 

 

Major professor

Date /7 «ﬁlm; #177

MSU is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunin Institution 0-12771

 

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DATE DUE DATE DUE [ DATE DUE

 

 

Autism i201m; JEL 3 1 2093?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11m c/CIRCIDmOinpes-DM

WE POLITIC
IVENGFORESTI ‘

 

 

an"’

THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF HEALTH AND DISEASE
AMONG FOREST FARMERS OF SOUTHEASTERN MADAGASCAR

By

Janice Harper

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Anthropology

1 999

THE POLlTlC -'
.IllO‘iG FOREST i

 

R.- i;., .
‘“'~‘ «Mason is an r

fr; . ..

. 3. usﬂD‘i‘dhda
1‘33

than access 1

Kin.
‘gv‘aﬂa

"“533 IIOm Cry,

2“ {high . .
”‘9‘ OfHealth D

7

.
a

‘ it”;

Piam a
‘1‘
"II-44::

‘.

M24; '
moh‘iet‘

1‘21. {.1
.“‘C‘At: . .
t t? LL]

5:“

“_‘
xii-w]

9“.

mange in in

ABSTRACT
THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF HEALTH AND DISEASE
AMONG FOREST FARMERS OF SOUTHEASTERN MADAGASCAR
By

Janice Harper

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of a group of people living in a forested
region in Madagascar, people who live alongside the forest's edges, but are buried deep
within it. The dissertation is based on archival and library research, followed by eighteen
months (January 1995 to June 1996) of participant observation in a village located on the
periphery of a USAID-funded national park. In this study, I examine the complex
relationship between access to health resources and environmental change. In so doing, I
integrate concepts from critical medical anthropology and political ecology to present a
political ecology of health perspective which challenges the prevalent ideas that
deforestation causes plant medicines to be lost and globalization leads to a loss of
indigenous medical knowledge. I suggest that such views are ﬁrst, ethnocentn'c, because
regardless of their intent, they position the research problem in terms of how

environmental change in tropical forests aﬁ‘ects the medical and commercial interests of

. -;I; v ..
amide 213%”

r ‘ ‘ ‘L‘
w; 54:31:an l ‘

urn: 335C meacnf'?

 

2:: At times: pets:
metal medmes us-

‘1-31 1-2 imp: the use of

31' r: feeder upon 1h 2'

 

lien-dude that local.

9:; a temps be: A r

2.3m ,ahcies mimic

f‘ﬁ‘n‘n

we I, declim eco

tit“: .9!"- c ‘
N he or some
:45. ‘12‘
"N5 w... ’

at with 81:”:

7531* Equal \L a.

Esx,‘ r
‘ Mean hast

Westerners, while failing to evaluate critically the medical needs of indigenous people.
Second, such views tend to be simplistic, because they do not situate medical knowledge
of plant and other medicines in the broader social, ecological, historical and political
context. An alternative perspective, which I present, is that tropical plants and
pharmaceutical medicines used for healing are related to the social, political, and economic
factors that shape the use of medicines in forest societies, and they beneﬁt or harm those
who are dependent upon them in different ways.

I conclude that local, national, and international policies have contributed to
changing relationships between the forest, land and body. I suggest that conservation and
development policies intended to protect the biodiversity of the Malagasy forest have
contributed to declining economic and health status through political agendas which
substitute policy for science and view resident people as cultural byproducts. By
conﬂating culture with ethnicity and conceptualizing this ethnicity in terms of ethnic
stereotypes, the actual ways that people live and farm in the forest, and how they negotiate
their quest for health, has not been appreciated by those policy-makers implementing
social change. More relevant to the ways that people access and interact with the land,
forest, and strategic resources, and how this interaction shapes health and healthcare, is

one’s lineage and social caste, rather than one’s ethnic heritage.

COPyright by
JANICE HARPER
1999

 

l c.

(”Lian Harper I l» I
n: gilt me the 0p;
and :0 my

“be be

I! it! that static.

 

I dedicate this dissertation to my father,

Clifton Harper (1916-1996) who taught me about books and knowledge
and gave me the opportunity for an education that he never had for himself,
and to my mother Neela Anderson Harper (1917-1997)
who began her college education at the age of ﬁfty,
an act that startled the family and has inspired me throughout my life.

Ia...

‘ .- -.
”an rm 323%ch
Q

—d 0‘ gator-9M” 4.4.
~ LLqu-d. SL--ir..iw\5e U»

E 1‘29: ’33: the ‘A 3.711.".

 

 

 

{£22 at "rrrvledge "‘
Eff-33kg» despite egg;-
:‘E not: 1: fr‘. fr '
L‘Al $0315.66. g't‘é
3C? mittens. dexel;

\l}

v'
‘v ‘3 comﬁ‘ 0..

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank my dissertation advisor, Bill Derman, ﬁrst, for having agreed to serve on
my graduate committee despite warnings from his colleagues that I was “difﬁcult.” He
has learned that the warnings were all too true. His patience has been exceptional, his
guidance and knowledge profoundly beneﬁcial in shaping the way I approach research and
anthropology (despite equally profound disagreements), and his memory for names, dates
and trivia more useful than my computer at times (and oﬁen more troubling). His visits to
Madagascar provided great support during trying times and helped me to focus my
research questions, develop my ideas, and maintain my sense of humor.

My other committee members have also provided considerable support and
guidance in the direction of this research. Dr. Anne Ferguson has supported me
throughout my research process, editing numerous draﬁs of research proposals, writing
letters of reference at a moment’s notice, and providing support and research guidance in
countless ways. Professors Barbara Rylko-Bauer and Laurie Medina have further
improved this dissertation through their insightful comments and suggestions,
strengthening my analysis in both substance and in style.

Dr. Rita Gallin agreed to read this dissertation on behalf of the College of Social

Science, spending a good portion of her summer reading these tedious pages. I thank her

b 'V >

. ‘ sac-0a -0vq~ 5,1-
”! f1”)? £x1.L.I:“uua-L l \
‘.... -.~ ‘

r: 7213' was of rm 5-

st: 2:1: lamatzcrra It

 

..‘f . l. .
T? .K Tit 3031?? mac's

me 3: m to unit “6'

 

not only for contributing her time and insights, but also for providing support to me
through many years of my early graduate studies, ﬁrst, in her role as Director of the
Women and International Development Program at Michigan State University, where she
provided me secure employment, but also by providing me publication opportunities,
advice on how to write well, and many lively discussions.

Among my colleagues in the PhD. program at Michigan State University, Michael
Ennis-McMillan proved to be a wizard with ideas, and his enthusiasm for anthropology
has motivated me time and time again. David Perusek guided my thinking in many ways
as I began my academic career, corrected my mispronunciations and misunderstandings,
and has been a great working-class comrade amidst the middle-class environs of academia.

Many of my social science colleagues who have worked, and continue to work, in
Madagascar, have provided me with personal and professional support in a number of
ways. In some cases, though we have barely met, if at all, they have shared their data and
insights in order that the social issues of Madagascar become as important to researchers
as the biological research. In other cases, they have shared not only their data and
insights, but many rich conversations and social support. These many colleagues, whose
work has enriched my own and, I hope, the lives of the Malagasy, include Lisa Gezon,
Lesley Sharp, Paul Hanson, Sabrina Hardenbergh, Sarah Fee, Paul Ferraro, Pier Larson,
Nan'velo Rajaonarimanana, and Linda Sussman.

Special thanks go to Joe and Dai Peters and Dan and Elizabeth Turk, for sharing
their homes, research, and friendship amidst the turbulence of Ranomafana, and in the

years since then.

vii

,1. IT-
Iroﬁd are its to

‘1 " " I" rpﬂtr
"1.2"8 enter. stem:

331‘ L‘l-Z EKM‘GOEOG

:Iym of As: hr

. .
”at
I

.-...::.' $1.11 of 'A arr:
2:: Chair ofthe \l .\

kisser here Vc1

:I Q.» t 4' hi 3;!
.. 2.2. .Is tie and pr:
‘52: be 1235 proxide

I’M B-VOPCT‘IIDQ hi

I” "
" rh‘

“f"- f '.
Jm\ haxe 2‘

~z- 1133' of the 1m r:

P

 

251 Si.

"or: and assisr

I would also like to thank Dr. David Campbell and Dr. Conrad Kottak for
providing me encouragement and guidance, and helping me to reﬁne my research
questions and methodology. Jan Cornelius and Gail Barricklow, administrative assistants
in the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State were very helpful, and Gail offered
a wonderful spirit of warmth and encouragement over the years. I thank also Dr. Lynne
Goldstein, Chair of the M.S.U. Department of Anthropology for her support.

Professor Pierre Verin, of the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales
in Paris, France, deserves more gratitude than I can express in these few lines. He has not
only devoted his life and profession to expanding the ethnographic knowledge of
Madagascar, he has provided ongoing and invaluable assistance to scholars of
Madagascar. By opening his home and library to me and to so many others, Professor
Verin and his family have given to scholarship and humanity a great giﬁ. I also thank the
Staff and faculty of the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales for their
patience, support and assistance during my residence in Paris and association with their
school.

In Antananarivo, as I initiated my study of the Malagasy language and conducted
archival research, I received considerable hospitality and assistance ﬁ'om more generous
people than I can even recall. Among them were J can-Aime Rakatoarisoa and the Musee
d ’Art et Archaeologie, the family Rarnanakasina, Rakoto Ratsimamanga, Etienne
Rakotobe and Corneille Rasolomananana of the Centre National de Recherches Appliques

Pharmacuﬁque, and the enigmatic and engaging Peter Robinson.

viii

It]: are}: have p

.. .l_. O, Y
1.25332 Bean 0-. .he h
I ' A.

2-: n: resent. a»: e, 5.

=53? Bards dedicate“

See‘s; people heir.
3: f :‘I‘i Chatteiie. u *
3;: these good cheer
Imam} see a C

52“» " '. - .
“Wm 3:36: in ace

 

 

 

I will always have profound appreciation and respect for Dr. Bezaka Jules Bosco
and Lorena Bezaka of the Ranomafana National Park Project. Lorena’s great warmth,
humor, and research assistance helped a great deal, both professionally and personally.
And Dr. Bosco’s dedication to healing and caring for his patients is an honor to his
profession.

Several people helped me with translations, research, and interviews. Among
them, I thank Chantelle, who I foolishly drove away with my madness, Razaﬁmandimby
Voangy, whose good cheer and sage advice helped temper me, Soandro whose English,
wit and versatility were a Godsend, and Rodin, whose chosen path should take him far. 1
also received helpful advice, translations, and historical information from F laurent, of the
Ranomafana Naitonal Park Project Museum, and from George. I apologize for not having
had the grace to take down your last names. Madame Lillia Rakotaelson and Jeannette
Razananirina Mohammed helped me to learn Malagasy and were both dedicated and
inspiring teachers. Monique Rodriguez of Cortez Travel helped me to get around the
world with minimal fuss and often with little notice, and the staff at the Station Thermal
became a family to me as I awaited my research clearance.

I would not have been able to carry out this research had it not been for the
generous support of private and public donors. Language and academic study was ﬁrnded'
by US. Department of Education Title VI Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS)
fellowships, awarded through the Michigan State University Center for Advanced Studies
in International Development (CASID). Predissertation training and research was

supported by the Social Science Research Council International Predissertation Fellowship

ix

5.3.: 2r: farting E"? "
mt: Streets The i"
2"} (03936 01.33,;
in: t " Increment 1:
3:2:-:2 Ire-Abroad F:
:32: Awd D15"
33:28:56:
If} mas. C1330!“
:2 mi} and time 2
13:32. hat 0an d" "
. “‘ m.
Limit and aiem'ahl}
71‘ 121202 process it
If: in MU remain a
E 1"- WWI} twat

dt

[th- ‘.
«it 3'1} bro-“her

 

Program, with funding provided by the Ford Foundation and the American Council of
Learned Societies. The dissertation ﬁeldwork was supported by Michigan State
University College of Social Science, M.S.U. International Studies and Programs, M.S.U.
Women and International Development Program, a Fulbright Institute for International
Education Year-Abroad Fellowship, and a National Science Foundation Dissertation
Improvement Award. Dissertation write—up was supported by the M.S.U. College of
Social Science.

My parents, Clifton and Neela Harper, provided me more than I ever expected,
both personally and ﬁnancially, in their support of my undergraduate and graduate
education. Not only did they provide me a home of my own so that I could live
comfortably and aﬁ‘ordably through the many years it has taken me to reach the conclusion
of this education process, but the opportunity to have spent the last years of their lives
close to them will remain a lasting gift. I will be forever sorry that they could not live to
see their generosity rewarded by my completing the degree.

I thank my brother Alan “Zoky” Harper, and sister, Elizabeth Harper, for not
throwing me out of the house as the years have continued to drag by with my writing what
they must have surely thought was probably something that didn’t even exist and was just
some imaginary excuse for not getting a real job.

And while it goes without saying, it must be said, that I owe my greatest thanks to
those who hosted my stay. One of the most diﬁicult issues I have grappled with in writing
this dissertation has been how to present intimate details of people’s lives in a way that

will reveal important social, economic and political tensions regarding the use of land,

arm at mediates. h
2.: fr it: the resieats
2:; item. and tin: :h:
it: “9. me peopﬁe
III-i? 507? for at} ‘
i- 977? and We La:
EIm I do m he“

‘a

..r,-' ~~. 0 A5 --
.Liwlart chLFII ..

..,_.’,, 'u. I
m... liege. too. that t

122 at: for the 2632 r

Am; those Mill

‘23-.
h 4

«mt; ' .
.rwled pinata <.
It: in:

Lw 3‘} Water. DI

:‘K 0“. ’ .
4- We IIICOIT‘I‘,‘

:LEHQ- I" -

 

 

‘4

 

resources, and medicines, but to do so in a manner consistent with the warmth and respect
I have felt for the residents of Ranotsara. Unfortunately, I know that I will have failed in
many respects, and that there are statements and representations that I have made that
would disturb some people. For any distress or injustice this writing causes, I am
profoundly sorry. For any misunderstandings or inaccuracies I have presented, I am
equally sorry and hope that I or others will have the opportunity to correct such
distortions. I do trust, however, that this presentation of the village and its residents is a
true and accurate account of my research, observations, and interpretations of the research
problem. I hope, too, that my presentation reﬂects the complexity and vitality of the
residents who for the rest of the world will remain anonymous.

Among those with whom I lived, while all were very kind, some stand out for
having provided particular support and friendship. Pierety cooked my meals, washed my
dishes, hauled my water, pounded my coffee and managed the details of living in a
rainforest that were incomprehensibly time-consuming in my eyes. She ﬁ'eed me for the
mundane work of interviews, and in the process, she became a major conduit into the lives
of the farmers with whom I lived. She patiently explained the world in which I had
entered, translated complex Tanala speech into something I could comprehend, humored
me, and put up with me. Marie-Jacqueline and Seraphine likewise provided great
comradery and assistance. Benoit and I were continually at odds over such things as
ﬁrewood and cow heads, but he was a friendly and likeable nemesis just the same. Mira is
a comedic delight and I am proud to have named my daughter in her honor. Botovao and

Raymond provided much support and helpful insights into their world. Tonga, Vesa, and

rm MIjIO. V33.
1:; are leaﬂet she ca'
set: 1'2 writ-1r. aim-2'
.2; i. " Reels acre hr;
22225221: Add \lar,
Item are minted;
rimmed me Tc
W1}: 50 man he -.

e? 12-2: the error; a g

ﬁr "as
.‘1,
III 3“. . .

 

Lehavana patiently complied with my elementary interrogations into their professions as
ombiasa. iKafandro, Vaohita, Toandro, and Botokely and Kotolehibe were ﬁne mpanjaka
and village leaders who carried their roles with dignity and grace; their deaths were great
losses to the world in which they allowed me to enter. Kalapiso, Willy, Philomene, Jean-
Chris, and Reoly were brilliant and charming children who were a real joy to work with
and learn from. And Manga was so charming and funny that I miss him every day.

There are multitudes of others, too numerous to include here, who have assisted
me and supported me. To those whose contributions I have failed to include, I apologize.

While so many have contributed in small and large ways into the making of this
dissertation, the errors, weaknesses, judgements, and interpretations are mine alone.

And ﬁnally, I need to acknowledge that a real price was paid by this research, and
it was paid by the Malagasy people. One hundred and eighty village residents and a staff
of Malagasy project employees were caught in the middle of an expatriate battle for
control - control over information and ideas. I wanted information to test my ideas, and
the Project administrators wanted to control what information I accessed, and what ideas I
expressed. In this struggle for control, we each put our own respective interests for
personal success ahead of the needs of the Malagasy farmers who hosted our stay on their
lands. Most perversely, we did so under the illusion that we were helping them.

It is not another “research project” that the people need. I hope, however, that for
all the shortcomings of this research project, that it will mark the ﬁrst step toward my own
efforts to repay my hosts for their kindness, generosity, and the lessons I learned ﬁorn

them.

xii

THE POLITI
.t‘lONG FOREST

;I“I~‘..
.le-\
' I
‘q
.- .‘d-r
“ "ch
s
u ,
-.,.
. ' ’
r9443...

‘1‘»... .3“.

_ a ”m t

“ ‘Vbhnyu’ss
.

 

THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF HEALTH AND DISEASE
AMONG FOREST FARMERS OF SOUTHEASTERN MADAGASCAR

Janice Harper

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ............................................................. ii
Copyright .......................................................... iv
Dedication .......................................................... v
Acknowledgments ................................................ vi-xii
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................. 1
From Fieldwork to Findings ............................................ 2
Political Ecology .................................................... 10
Critical Medical Anthropology .......................................... l3
Framing a Critical Synthesis ............................................ 16
The Anthropology of Forest Medicine Use ................................. 20
Clarifying the “Cultural” Context of Medicine Use ........................... 41
Use of Ethnicity by the Ranomafana National Park Project ..................... 44
Methodology ....................................................... 49
Organization of the Dissertation ........................................ 53
CHAPTER 2 RANOTSARA: THE RESEARCH SETTING ............ 60
A Biodiversity of People .............................................. 60
The Village and Villagers of Ranotsara ................................... 66
Living and Working in the Forest ....................................... 68
Daily Activities ..................................................... 77
The Forest and the Land .............................................. 80
The Agricultural System Of the Ranomafana Region ......................... 85
The Labor and Education of Children .................................... 89
Regional Links ..................................................... 90
In Hot Water: The Transformation of Ranomafana .......................... 94
The Ranomafana National Park Project ................................... 98

xiii

#13 ..'
I

23:23:13: or
2:3... “32.336 En}: .
2:22; fetus Men".
I: m: =: Z-OSiO.’

222.3" .313 323' Law I I

“-33- "4 :COnCt'pts o
:51; Shit Dmitr-
5‘31“ Of 0836' ,-
3‘1"“9 88151190 1:“

1’57 ”Jon 'Cul; |

ILRS Di} I
AM.

I“ 8 3 aim},

5352 Gas \m R3503:
7°“ 523:. Raw: I
Item 1nd H22
4“ M999311211:- _

 

CHAPTER 3 NO OTHER PLACE ON EARTH: THE HISTORICAL
CONTEXT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN

MADAGASCAR ................................. 104
The Rise of a Pre-colonial Autocracy ................................... 106
Land Reorganization ................................................. 108
Industrialization and Environmental Change ............................... 112
Nineteenth Century Merina Rule and Colonial Gestation ...................... 115
Laying the Foundation for Colonial Rule .................................. 121
Colonial Land and Labor Policies ........................................ 125
Conservation and Development: Post-Colonial Land and Economic Reforms ....... 132

Population Migration and Land Reorganization in the Ranomafana/Ifanadiana Region 137

CHAPTER 4 SOCIAL STATUS AND ACCESS TO LAND ............ 141
Tribalism and Concepts of Race in Madagascar ............................. 142
Forging Ethnicities ................................................... 147
Deepening Social Divisions and Castes ................................... 149
Transformation of Gender Relations ..................................... 153
Emergence of Betsileo and Tanala Ethnicities .............................. 157
Honoring Tradition: "Cultural Sensitivity" and the RNPP ...................... 161
CHAPTER 5 DIVIDING THAT WHICH CANNOT BE DIVIDED:
ANCESTRY AND ETHNICITY IN RANOTSARA ....... 174
The Founding of a Tanala Village ....................................... 176
Caste and Class in Ranotsara ........................................... 180
Accessing Health Resources ........................................... 192
Changes in Health and Health Care ...................................... 194
Conceptualizing Ethnicity and Health .................................... 201
CHAPTER 6 NATURALIZING SICKNESS ....................... 211
Medicine for the Dead ................................................ 21 1
A Quest for Diagnosis ............................................... 221
Under the Skin: Suffering with Scabies ................................... 231
Parasites and Rice Fields .............................................. 242
CHAPTER 7 LIFE AND DEATH IN RANOTSARA ................. 251
Treating, and Not Treating, Illness ...................................... 252
The Malagasy Medical System ......................................... 257
Explanatory Models for a Culture-Bound Diagnosis ......................... 272
Death that no Medicine Could Prevent ................................... 282
The Birth of a Tanala ................................................ 291

xiv

11‘s Sis-32:: -
2:: am. and \1 a
awn: H224": and E

2" w 1.;

- b‘JU‘u

1r: .a: bath

EBLCASWhW

 

CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION ................................... 294

Forest Medicines .................................................... 296
Culture, Ethnicity, and Medicine ........................................ 301
Historicizing Health and Environmental Practice ............................ 303
In Closing ......................................................... 306
EPILOGUE ....................................................... 31]
One Last Death .................................................... 31 1
BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................. 318

XV

 

his iissemzior. l
3:: Q3: Widen fem;
mark Eﬁons by 0.
1’1”" hm had ac“. arse
311‘ at}. mxironmen:
56ml ad treated H

3351101 mfonn L.
12.13.3335 and “a“ t.
in: W ‘0 Medicinaj

“film“ ‘ are inter

. ‘l‘m-E' . ‘
a... * ”than

 

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

In this dissertation I show how the forest residents of southeastern Madagascar
depend upon swidden farming of the forest in order to remain healthy, and to survive
economically. Efforts by outsiders to conserve the forest, and to promote a market
economy, have had adverse economic and social effects on forest farmers. These effects,
combined with environmental and social changes, shape how health and disease are
experienced and treated. How forest residents are affected by these social processes,
however, is not uniform. Local tensions, conﬂicts, and coalitions contribute to diﬁerent
health outcomes and ways that people are able to access medicines. The social variables
shaping access to medicinal resources also condition the ways in which medicines - and
the nwd for them — are interpreted by forest residents.

More speciﬁcally, for residents of the Tanala forest in which I resided,
conservation of the forest has had adverse economic effects, leading to less ability to
purchase pharmaceutical medicines and greater neglect of chronic illnesses, rather than
increasing reliance on plant medicines. These effects have not been uniform, however;
social inequality, religion, age, gender, and lineage all mediate how the relationship

between health and the forest environment is perceived and experienced.

 

 

 

ins {mark to Fmdir
Pram April 1995 to
:11“: 4populanon a;
.423: among peop'r
bounding the x :1.
:7: 722: m cloud fore.»
time? for suiciden a.
533 me have Cerf.
ﬁmm In 1990. aha:
"3’2- Pr‘t and this ~21.-
331:2 ”amnion an?
.2291 3561013;
.12 “1‘5 “'9?! to re:
if "3‘3 m 1}” PTOjecr

M agl'ICuhure

. aumelm‘gheah,’~

 

 

From Fieldwork to Findings

From April 1995 to June 1996, I conducted ethnographic research in Ranotsara, a
small village (population approximately 180) adjacent to a national park in southeastern
Madagascar, among people self-identiﬁed as ”Tanala," or people of the forest.‘

Surrounding the village are irrigated rice ﬁelds reaching to the ﬁinges of old
growth rain and cloud forest, as well as large tracts of previously forested land that have
been cleared for swidden agriculture. Historical processes of colonialism, migration, and
economic change have contributed to the changing ecology over the village's one hundred
year history. In 1990, what remained of the forest was enclosed as the Ranomafana
National Park, and this village was selected as one of twenty-six pilot villages for an
integrated conservation and development project ﬁmded by the United States Agency for
International Development (U SAID). In exchange for “economic development,” residents
of these villages were to relinquish what they considered to be their ancestral forest lands.
Pilot villages in the project were to be given technological assistance to shiﬂ from swidden
to irrigated rice agriculture. Villagers were also to receive access to Western medical care
by way of a traveling health team which would periodically visit each village, and

economic assistance to repair schools and expand the educational opportunities in the

region.

 

1 Many of the villagers are descended from ancestors of the Betsileo ethnic group,
and claim kinship ties to Betsileo residents of other communities outside the forest. As
such, while all agreed that Ranotsara was ethnically identiﬁed as a Tanala village, and
practiced the Tanala way of life, many also identiﬁed themselves as simultaneously Tanala
and Betsileo. These issues regarding ethnicity and descent are discussed in chapters Four
and Five.

Hﬁ‘ﬁ: m \h 35 {I112
22:23:15 3125: who (it
2.326565 In this 9. 3}
5:52:11; access to the 1
1:22.35 medicines. as :‘r,
siegmrf (I) Peters 1

2:. capped. mth no e

 

siesta me that hearL

‘E‘ ”~02

....2.2 to em out 1hr
‘52-:
.2.: personal commm

:3: AL. 9
75-h am. Who. he.

 

3

Health care was initially provided to residents in Ranotsara, via monthly visits by a
physician and nurse who dispensed pharmaceutical medicines and treated chronic and
acute illnesses. In this way, access to Western medicines was directly linked to
relinquishing access to the forest; indeed, residents were discouraged from using '
indigenous medicines, as the health team disparaged plant and other indigenous medicines
as “backward” (D. Peters 1994a). After three years of the monthly visits, the health care
abruptly stopped, with no explanation or warning to the villagers. Project administrators
explained to me that health care was terminated because local conﬂicts made it too
problematic to carry out the project's agricultural objectives in this village (Project
Manager, personal communication 1995, recorded in ﬁeld notes). The former physician
for the health team, who had been responsible for making the monthly visits, explained
that he did not receive any support for health care activities and when his contract expired,
his work was terminated. The American Conservation Director informed me that in his
opinion the only link to health and conservation was to conserve the forest by limiting
population growth. Because most of the women refused to use the birth control pills
oﬁ'ered by the health team, he felt that the project had no obligation to continue health
services (Conservation Director, personal communication, 1996, recorded in ﬁeld notes).
Nonetheless, the project did continue to support the idea of exploring the possible
commodiﬁcation of plant medicines as a means toward sustainable development of the
region's ecosystem (RNPP 1994).

At the same time that visiting health care in this village ceased, other signiﬁcant
regional changes took place. Madagascar entered into a World Bank directed land

privatization campaign. Some villagers appropriated land that had been farmed by their

 

 

525M hating 11 re
ﬂied Rim (rm reg
2.1.223: ofthe Ma...
:22 :0 smite and

£9.31“; ‘2355 10 LC:

31". miter: (u 1i:

[£3275 recent pa

\u
m2: 00“” to b
:1- .2: 3'»
planné
ELF-s

4
neighbors by having it registered to themselves, while others complained that their taxes
increased when they registered their land. Structural adjustment schemes included the
devaluation of the Malagasy Franc to halfits previous value. The Gulf War caused petrol
prices to escalate, and a cyclone caused considerable damage to village homes and
obstructed access to urban markets. Rapid inﬂation drastically changed the local
economy; some community members, who for historical reasons had more land than
others, beneﬁtted by this inﬂation, while the majority suffered.

In the recent past, such economic distress would have been mediated by clearing
more forest land. Instead, such distress was exacerbated as ﬁrrther clearing was
prohibited. Moreover, those already advantageously positioned by their greater economic
power beneﬁtted by the project's assistance in the shift to irrigated rice agriculture because
they had access to suitable lands and labor power, and because they had the capital to
invest in fertilizers and chemical inputs. Consequently, within a period of a few years, the
social structure of the village changed from one in which all households had access to
forest land for subsistence agriculture, to one in which the majority of the households
worked as agricultural wage laborers for a minority controlling irrigated rice ﬁelds.

During this period of rapid social change, and right on the heels of the abrupt
departure of the traveling physician, illnesses and deaths escalated considerably, while
access to pharmaceutical medicines was sharply curtailed. Most people no longer had the
purchasing power to buy pharmaceutical medicines, which had been introduced through
health programs of the colonial state. While I had expected that those who could no
longer purchase pharmaceutical medicines would rely more on plant medicines, this did

not occur. With the introduction of Western medicines and medical beliefs, promoted by

22.2221: and Luthe'.
$222232! shied fr. 7
xii-.32; 11m Liar
mm as one who I:
mix are timed I."
:22: .15 such tamer '

15m I found that It. '

 

”for. heirs of char.

RISE UX‘SI impel:
it: rat-mom [line
7333 331 Western-tra-
311 mi. healthcarc

L979,» ' I
2.1.222 or Ifnadiam

I it: 0% .
“A [5‘3 feet.

 

 

5
the colonialists and Lutheran and Catholic missionaries, the role of the ombiasa
(diviner/healer) shifted from diviner and healer, to primarily diviner, treating more
cosmological illnesses than “illnesses of God” or “illnesses of age.”2 The changing role of
the ombiasa as one who treats primarily cosmological illnesses has led to neglect of
illnesses that are viewed treatable by Western medicines, if such medicines cannot be ll'
obtained. As such, rather than ﬁnding that increased poverty led to increased use of plant
medicines, I found that to be true only of acute illnesses, whereas increased poverty led to

increased neglect of chronic illnesses.

 

Those most impoverished suffered from increasing illnesses of poverty, including
severe malnutrition. Illnesses that were formerly treated by the traveling physician, or
prior to him, Westem-trained nurses and physicians (afﬁliated with colonial or post-
colonial national healthcare available until the late 1980's in the nearby towns of
Ranomafana or Ifanadiana), by the mid-1990's were oﬁen left untreated until they became
so severe that they affected one's ability to work. These illnesses included scabies,
venereal diseases, and respiratory infections. Whereas some acute conditions, such as
malaria and serious respiratory infections, would continue to be treated with the plant
medicines that had formerly been used in tandem with pharmaceutical medicines, the plant
medicines were now used almost exclusively for these acute illnesses. But the use of
plants alone was not viewed by many villagers as sufﬁcient — illnesses frequently became

so grave that the sick person could no longer function effectively within the society, and it

 

2 These are my translations of the terms used to categorize illness among my
informants (aretina Zanahary “illness of God” and aretina antitra “illness of age”)

 

—

 

6
was at this point that alternatives to plant medicines were sought, be they medicines of the
pharmacy or of the ombiasa.3

At the same time that land-use and economic changes were causing many to
become more poor and thus less healthy, those who were beneﬁtting from the economic
changes associated with conservation of the forests and privatization of the land, were in
many cases able to continue purchasing antibiotics and chloraquine, as well as soap and
food - essential to maintaining good health.

While most villagers endured severe health consequences associated with their
intensiﬁed poverty, as well as illnesses associated with their tropical environment — such as
nmlaria, hepatitis, and tuberculosis — they were struck by the irony that the very
Westerners who they perceived - rightly or wrongly — to have cut off their supply of
pharmaceutical medicines, were interested in their plant medicines, as environmental

education and sensibilisation‘ programs had suggested.

Enter, the anthropologist. I arrived with appeals to residents to help me learn

about local practices and how they used medicines. Indeed, despite my eﬂ‘orts to explain

 

3 In the case of sick children, their mothers, rather than their fathers, oﬁen
suffered the loss of work (although informants indicated that mothers and fathers would
both stay home and care for the children, it was rare for a father to do so. On the other
hand, it was fathers who transported sick children to the hospital at Ranomafana, and thus
they also lost work. If, however, there were an older female at home to care for sick
children, then she would do so. As more older women were themselves pushed into wage
labor or their workloads otherwise compounded, this childcare option was not always
available).

‘ The French term for environmental sensitivity programs, or “making one
sensible.”

—

‘i. In.

 

I 52:23: rams of
11:12: 023‘ after 5:
22“ 2.2221: the as

93:11:15. but new ;

I“ 5033: 53:1;

lktsmp‘balen of 1
The 5263.135 “81'!

2.55m I’m. ht-

I

F

1’

;l

more on “he

7
the broader interests of my research, I was initially perceived as being there to study plant
medicines. Only after several months of interviews and following up sickness episodes
and asking about the use of pharmaceuticals, was my research regarded as not being just
about plants, but being about sickness and healing from multiple perspectives.

Two social factors critically inﬂuenced my research methodology and ﬁndings.
First, the presence of the national park project not only affected local lives, it aﬂ‘ected
nearly every facet of my research, as project administrators sought — and achieved - direct
and indirect control of my research. Second, the village I selected was regarded by many
as cursed. It was behaved to be cursed because many of its residents were dying. During
my fourteen month residency, 18 people died — comprising roughly ten percent of the
village's population of 180 people.

The deaths were variously attributed to respiratory disorders, seizures,
malnutrition, fevers, liver problems and ghost sickness. As every few weeks, or
sometimes every day, another person died, suddenly or following an illness, I reﬂected
more and more on whether or not the village had indeed been cursed. Standing outside a
home ﬁlled with the wailing relatives and ﬁiends of one man suddenly dead in the middle
of the night, the third that week, I felt a darkness engulf me as I began to faint — fearing I
would be next. Were they indeed dying because some cosmological curse had struck this
seemingly exotic corner of the globe — a cosmological force that I could not in my
educated ignorance begin to comprehend? Or were they dying for some more mundane
reason? Ten percent dead in just over a year suggested to me that either the ancestors

were indeed displeased, or an environmental explanation was at hand. (Of course, I did

'"l

 

 

1.1 3:255 ire posit-.121).
3 335335 were 0'15:le 4
lg arr} rate. as CT.
I: I its silage. “mm.
L; ofthe project I St:
re: manners. u 1'
tires of the recer.‘
(his. the assoc:
”.m ptotectrcr.
17535 accessed} little.
“mm Change; a.

“:2 rich 2 cornea 1

"m“mﬂdem a:

(7231056 “Till 36cc
33:35
WWW); ca:

Q and 80030”le

 

Yul, .
3mm” Into 'pf
be. .
\‘c “-
7Ts~ .2
A" “mdmators 21-.
12:
3;»...
"son . .
The ”gm 51:

3's». .
’W 1

21 1a
Hie) and the r

8
not dismiss the possibility, as many villagers suggested, that both explanations were true —
the ancestors were displeased and so they sent this environmental curse upon them.)

At any rate, given that there was a history of environmental, health, and economic
data on this village, having been gathered both before and after its establishment as a pilot
village of the project, I surmised that I had to bring the death rate to the attention of the
project administrators, who were charged with responsibility for exploring the social
ramiﬁcations of the recent social and environmental changes.

Cleariy, the association between the deaths and the enclosure of the farming lands
for biodiversity protection, as well as recent economic changes, was not necessarily causal
nor even necessarily linked. But when there have been recently introduced environmental
and economic changes, and a few years later there is an acceleration of environmentally-
related deaths among impoverished people, there might be a possible connection.
Exploring such a connection was in keeping with the objectives of my research. At the
very least, as a resident and guest of the village, I felt it my moral responsibility to seek
help from those with access to health and economic data, and health and economic
resources.

Unfortunately, calling attention to the high death rate, and seeking access to health
documents and economic data, were regarded by my compatriots as not only outside the
bounds of inquiry into "plants," but embarrassing and potentially subversive. My eﬁ‘orts to
access data and address the health crisis I was witnessing, led to increasing concern among
project administrators that my research, once of no interest to them, required close
supervision. The rigid surveillance of my research that ensued (which extended as well to

my personal life) and the resistance of project ofﬁcials to any social science inquiry in the

mart forest 199”
:2; . mg the expatrtat:
mix crimping
15m rinsed critter:
:iegot Seer‘hele
crabs herself ice;
.2 30m of a world
3:. :21th players de~
Moreover. not or!
it": itesttons. they a.
:2 3 mid) consent,
3'; 3f7'3'll‘2101tsl‘ttps uh; ‘
13:4 til-R3101“ a:

31%, '
”2m and other 1‘;

fl

I

mﬁmthe

~

5E

1:" . .
'thdlndea

3%
hmwm I M;

‘h'. .
serge,

a Ranotsara v.

 

9

southeastern forest region (regardless of distance from the park or relevance to the
project) that the expatriate administration did not wholly control, prevented me from
systematically examining whether there was indeed a causal relationship or other link
between imposed environmental and social changes, and the escalating sickness and death
in the region. Nevertheless, I believe the story of the village, including the presence of an
ethnographer herself deeply embedded in the political conﬂicts of the region, provides a
telling portrait of a world gone wrong — a system broken by outsiders and insiders, one
which multiple players desperately sought to keep going, each in different ways.
Moreover, not only did these circumstances shape my methodology and frame my
research questions, they also helped to shape my theoretical perspective. While I set out
to do a relatively conventional study in medical anthropology, I was not ﬁrlly aware of the
kinds of relationships which existed between the health status and medicinal use of the
residents of Ranotsara, and the rapidly changing economic circumstances brought about
by the project and other factors. I was particularly unaware of the salience of the
distinctive lineages in the village, and how economic changes and interventions would
deepen this social divide and inﬂuence the meanings attached to the respective kinship ties.
In addition, I was unsuspecting of how politicized these changes and the high
death rate in Ranotsara were in the eyes of the project. Once I became aware of these
relationships and processes, the focus and scope of my study broadened to include these
factors at the same time that my ability to gain access to the data to examine them was
curtailed and manipulated by the project administrators. By restricting my access to

information and people, the project administration provided me with the privilege of

2:": and Wmné

use. 5931 me ha”

Final [tologv
The fours on soc.

an mas. has game-

 

:mes rehelous desr.

 

ti: easement to h

I~ '..l' t .
ma. polite etc

5. '
£12 in! , .
“‘ ”31317121110112
..
“will? I

10

studying and experiencing the kinds of power relations which political ecologists have

suggested lie at the heart of cultural relations and contested resources.

Political Ecology

The focus on social diﬁ‘erentiation within societies, and the centrality of power to
social relations, has gained prominence through the emergence of "political ecology," a
sometimes nebulous designation for cultural ecology studies which link human interaction
with the environment to broader political and economic processes shaping resource use.
Speciﬁcally, political ecology is distinguished from cultural ecology by recognizing that
resource use patterns may be culturally adaptive, yet environmentally destructive.
Moreover, political ecology is policy oriented, in that it unites empirical research with
policy options aimed at achieving conservation and social equity (Whitesell 1993).

Political ecologists point out that power relations have multiple levels. At the
household level there are age and gender variables that affect how one interacts with the
environment. At the community level, social status may mediate resource use. And at the
national and international level, multiple and competing pressures inﬂuence cultural and
environmental interactions. Attention to the tensions and conﬂicts that these multiple
levels of power induce, gives far more depth to social analyses than do understandings of
culture as some thing that adapts to a changing environment.

Unfortunately, many attempts to examine power relations that shape environmental
use in post-colonial societies have explained environmental degradation exclusively in
terms of the disproportionate power of the industrial world in relationship to the poorest

countries in the world. Clearly, the role of the industrial world as an over-consumer of the

itsresou'ces ant: tr.
grin): in the U0?“
2.31 and M p0“ ET
a. grade 3 linear. a

2...... .. . w:
Ls-w‘vsszia‘ prOVI‘C
agrees amhses of
£23132: Blaiite 1'
III} attemt to at?
summon ot‘ ca;
wigeois red he:
menswear
W preside the

ET ' ’ ' ‘
.‘l'ﬂll992 l),
Qﬁgfq .
- 3M0T5. (lCVajL

b.
e-ﬁ-

”1hK“Mkap(

l?”‘\

”A and econorm

:25» -
“ﬂamedto d0 5(

“stem
ML" ' .
.22. mm m
":35.
~1wa r
e. i i i‘

...-—n

1 l
earth's resources, and the way that capitalist expansion has exacerbated environmental
degradation in the tropics, cannot be understated. Nonetheless, to ignore the roles of
national and local powers in both the degradation and protection of tropical environments
would provide a linear, and possibly economically-reductionist, view of a much more

multi-dimensional problem. In order to avoid the economic reductionism that oﬁen

"..I_" -

accompanies analyses of power relations, political ecologists have cautioned against
regarding social and environmental change as exclusively outcomes of capitalism. Bryant

(1992113) cites Blaikie (1989) on this point:

 

any attempt to attribute desertiﬁcation to "natural forces" other than the

penetration of capitalism is written off in some quarters as merely a

bourgeois red herring. This is a simplistic and unnecessary polarisation

since it is the dialectic between environmental and social change which

must provide the context in which land degradation is discussed.

Bryant (1992: 13,14) suggests that economic reductionism fails to explain
ecological factors, devalues the role and importance of the state, and neglects human
agency. Thus, while a politically-oriented cultural ecology has sought to critically analyze
the political and economic dimensions of social and environmental change, at the same
time it has aimed to do so ﬁ'om multiple vantage points in which a diversity of variables
interact to shape the human/environmental nexus.

Bryant (1992) has tried to draw together the major areas of what he terms "Third
World political ecology. " Third World political ecology focuses on the developing world
as disproportionately aﬁ‘ected by First World policies and economic strategies, but
embracing three critical areas of inquiry. The ﬁrst is the contextual sources of

enviromnental change. He identiﬁes state policies, interstate relations, and global

capitalism as variables that shape how national and international forces affect the

 

—

-.:3mertt A second a'

taste wees Till:
mete. tn uhrch cork.
222336. in historical c.
|
m: dpohttca‘ re
sated 1n this regard.
3:4 33 as salient to c;
322-33. 3mg:

timid} 0f atce

“K: have lmPOSGd d:

. for?“ is
{3.1 {id .

10w POltcjE
3’5;

 

12

environment. A second area of inquiry for Third World political ecology is conﬂict over
access to resources. This area focuses on local-level dynamics from a temporal
perspective, in which contemporary practices regarding access to resources are
understood in historical contexts. Finally, Bryant suggests that the inﬂuence of socio-
economic and political relationships on human-environmental interactions is all too often
neglected. In this regard, he suggests that the political ramiﬁcations of environmental
change are as salient to cultural ecology analyses as are the environmental ramiﬁcations of
political change.

In a study of access to health resources in an environment in which US. and global
interests have imposed drastic measures limiting access to forest resources (by prohibiting
access to the forest), one could easily fall prey to economic reductionism, by alleging the
seizure of ancestral lands has caused people to become impoverished, thereby leading to
illness. In this study, however, I show how the relationship between access to medicines
and access to the forest is mediated by state and local-level dynamics interacting with
international policies. In many ways, the creation of the national park and the way in
which it has been managed have contributed signiﬁcantly to economic and social
stratiﬁcation (Hanson 1997), thereby enriching a minority, who in turn control agricultural
and economic resources available to the majority.

In many other ways, however, despite the inﬂux of international wealth to facilitate
changes in resource management, the international community has had very little impact in
the way that the forest is used, health resources accessed, and residents‘ lives aﬁ‘ected.
National and local policies have far more salience to the lives of most of the residents, and

the ramiﬁcations of a USAID conservation and development project on the economic

I! ,3: will news of If.
gamble to a loca‘ f
1:“ 312' powers the: .'
3.3mm dis‘rthut:
t: 3332 relations A:
less taco forbids;
221% to comempor
Iris til rho loses fr
53% means have c.

m and Was to 2‘.

IM Media] Anlhrt
I“ “ pOhtjcaj et

:Efmndmgs of the t.

35::- .

“Rheum \sh
his“ , , '
hit-t

 

1 3
status or world views of most people living in Ranotsara is so abstract that it is no more
understandable to a local forest farmer than to a project administrator. Nonetheless,
international powers that have imposed environmental policies on residents, and the
disproportionate distribution of ﬁrnds and agricultural assistance, have had an impact on
local power relations. At the same time, local level dynamics, rooted in a history of
domestic slavery, forbidden marriages, and contested claims to land and power, have also
contributed to contemporary social inequalities and conﬂicts that now inﬂuence who
beneﬁts and who loses ﬁ'om environmental and economic change. These changing and
differing interests have consequently shaped the relationships between access to health

resources and access to forest resources.

Critical Medical Anthropology

Just as political ecology has focused on social inequality and power as fundamental
to understandings of the environment and enviromnental change, so too does critical
medical anthropology view social inequality and power as the primary determinants of
health and health care (Baer, Singer and Susser 1997 :3). This perspective rejects medical
anthropology's orthodox illness/disease dichotomy, in which illness is viewed as the
suﬁ‘erer's experience, while disease is regarded as the pathogen or biological malfunction.
Instead, critical medical anthropology views disease not as a biomedical problem, which
serves to reify the mind/body separation, but as a health problem patterned by social

relations and inequalities, such as malnutrition, environmental toxins, poor housing, and

poverty.

men
men of encomi
marshes Sh???
reorder loci- 6C0:
‘ moat nails.
tr'hapolop' rets.I
trnhopotogr I?
am econorns

 

From the perspe '.
2.3 to and antral on ,
we 51ft at a high let

111 This concept of"

 
 
  
 

ttsstemehttnes as a r

mites and otl
the min this
Cllimitation of to
“We on health
mm! approach 1

 

me SIUdlCS pICSC‘

l 4
[Critical medical anthropology] views health issues within the

context of encompassing political and economic forces that pattern human

relationships, shape social behaviors, condition collective experiences,

reorder local ecologies, and situate cultural meanings, including forces of

institutional, national, and global scale. The emergence of critical medical

anthropology reﬂects both the turn toward political-economic approaches

in anthropology in general, as well as an effort to engage and extend the

political economy of health approach (Baer, Singer and Susser 1997:3,4).

From the perspective of critical medical anthropology "health can be deﬁned as
access to and control over the basic material and nonmaterial resources that sustain and
promote life at a high level of satisfaction (Baer, Singer and Susser 1997 :5, emphasis
theirs)" This concept of health is the concept that I embrace in this study in presenting
access to medicines as a resource issue. The authors further suggest that

While the ultimate character of health care systems is determined outside

the health sector by dominant social groups, like heads of insurance

companies and other large corporations, signiﬁcant forms of struggle take

place within this sector and help to shape its institutions. Consequently, an

examination of contending forces in and out of the health arena that

impinge on health and healing becomes an essential task in building a

critical approach to health issues (Baer, Singer and Susser 1997: 5).

The studies presented by Baer, Singer and Susser (1997), however, take a top-
down approach, in which political and economic forces press down upon people with
relatively little autonomy or power, thereby affecting health and health behavior. For
example, in discussing the historical and social context of alcoholism, the authors provide
detailed evidence and sound argument to show how alcoholism can be understood in
relationship to social class relations, in which drinking serves to unite workers in

solidarity, control workers for the service of production, provide meaning to workers

whose lives have been rendered meaningless through the production process, and provide

 

ring artists 3130b
and as a health l)T

Such an ara‘ysrs :~

 

Ti :r'n nternationa’ h.
were class boondene
rite poorest in soccer
It how i. is experien:
.5: is a health prot

inimiterimced a

 

“Mal location shat
iris and news uithrr.
st shape other h.

k Bic. Singer 3;

15

proﬁts to capitalists through the comrnodiﬁcation of alcohol. As such, alcoholism can be
understood as a health problem directly related to class relations.

Such an analysis is an important one in understanding the social and historical
roots of an international health problem. But alcoholism is also a health problem that
permeates class boundaries. And although alcoholism is a health problem of the wealthiest
and the poorest in society (and may well disproportionately affect those in the poorest
strata), how it is experienced, and how it is understood, diﬂ‘ers among classes. Moreover,
alcoholism is a health problem that divides not only the classes, but also within social
classes, it is experienced and understood diﬂ‘erently, as gender, age, race, religion, and
geographical location shape how alcohol is consumed and understood. The competing
interests and views within a social strata that shape the etiology and morbidity of
alcoholism, shape other health problems as well.

As Baer, Singer and Susser’s (1997) study of alcoholism reﬂects, much of the
work in critical medical anthropology has focused on how health status, the health and
illness experience, and health care, are shaped by the capitalist economy imposing its
values and interests onto others. Morgan (1984) argued that a reliance on dependency
theory to explain health problems has prevailed in critical medical anthropology, citing
Baer (1982), Morsy (1979), and Singer (1986) as providing some of the most important
work in this area, but limiting their analyses to documenting the ways that capitalist
expansion and penetration have adversely affected health and contributed to inequitable
distribution of health resources.

Speciﬁcally, Morgan (1984) points out that dependency theorists, in explaining

medical systems and health problems in developing nations, oﬁen deﬁne capitalism in

*1 the market in vs T"
5:22: fairer than relat.
1 :naism does not a:
11:13 the mats of p:
:31. negated into tr:

5.2-32 of social 1"

Faring r C n'tiral S) n1

[herring chow
staterooms uithin so:
if“ culture as .
:pe'ie': a well. one c

21”» ‘

t A‘
x. 1133'
s;

To do so. I props“
22¢. ecology. 10Wafd
1‘2: 1’3

shuns I0 presem '-

d

to 1.
096, Leathe

 

~47“ .J
1C '
g} ancilj'Ses

l6

terms of the market, in which cornmodiﬁcation of products for proﬁt is the deﬁning
attribute, rather than relationship to the means of production. Furthermore, she indicates
that capitalism does not affect people in a society uniformly — how they are themselves
related to the means of production, and the initiative they themselves take to resist or
become integrated into the penetration of capitalist economic systems, is critical to an

understanding of social processes regarding health and medicine.

Framing a Critical Synthesis

Extending critical medical anthropology to include the competing interests and
social tensions within social groups is in the best tradition of cultural anthropology. By
understanding culture as comprised of conﬂicts and tensions that are not only hierarchical,
but parallel as well, one can provide a more holistic analysis to critical medical
anthropology.

To do so, I propose forging a synthesis of critical medical anthropology and
political ecology, toward a political ecology of health perspective. While there have been
earlier efforts to present a "political ecology of health" position (eg. Baer 1996;
Gruenbaum 1996; Leatherman 1996), eﬁ‘orts which have successfully extended critical
medical anthropology to include ecological factors, they have not had much basis in
political ecology analyses. For example, Baer (1996:452) describes how he views political
ecology:

Like critical medical anthropology, contemporary political economy has at

best given passing consideration to environmental factors. However, neo-

Marxist and other radical scholars are attempting to integrate ecological

considerations into their analyses of various types of societies. Such
endeavors have been referred to as the "political economy of ecology"

Memo! 1980).
Gminan W- l
Rec 1988). 'radx '
'50an ecology' J
mon' stems fr. '
hubeen inspn' ‘ ‘l
insn and Rude?
1133;)

 

Baer's comments \
rnéiegsts to pay gr:
Ines terrain a need I
m such theorists ha‘
L‘smnentai change
its: 10 inc sphere of

Inwabiologcal pro

 

17:" 1
£5 are L‘ierentln 1

- “Wﬁlhereiam
1n:
“3000 by pom

ll".

V's ‘
“LEO. v‘ﬁ ' -
Mg Interment e

l7

(O'Connor 1989), "eco-Marxism" (Benton 1989; DeLeague 1989;

Grundman 1991; Raskin and Bemow 1991), "coo-socialism" (Pepper 1993;

Ryle 1988), "radical ecology" (Merchant 1992), "socialist ecology," and

"social ecology." Much of the interest in what I simply term "political

ecology” stems from Green politics in Europe, particularly Germany, and

has been inspired by the work of neo-Marxist scholars such as Andre Gorz

(1980) and Rudolf Bahro (1982) and ecoanarchist Murray Bookchin

(1989)

Baer’s comments suggest a recognition of the need for critical medical
anthropologists to pay greater attention to the role of the environment in shaping health,
but there remains a need to delve deeper into the literature of “political ecology” to draw
out how such theorists have explored differing levels of power interacting toward social
and environmental change. Nonetheless, theorists of political ecology have given little
attention to the sphere of health, viewing indigenous medical systems as homogenous, and
disease as a biological process. How people variously experience sickness, how medical
resources are diﬁ‘erently interpreted — as well as accessed -— by local populations, and how
people interpret the relationship between their environments and their health - remain to
be understood by political ecologists examining the relationships between ecology and
health. By bridging political ecology with the political economy of health, and in so doing,
incorporating interpretive analyses of health and ecology, better understandings of local-
level strategies to access the resources of health become possible.

The failure of political ecologists to address issues of health, and of medical
geographers to address issues of inequality, has been noted by Mayer (1996', in press) who
advocates a political ecology of disease framework by which to analyze social processes

shaping disease ecology (1996). He suggests that a political ecology of disease approach

must show how large-scale political, social and economic processes inﬂuence local

ms and disease em}

:11: to n: moan
tings disease be 1';
£355. nil ilunnnate
mines to the tmerse

Disease ecology, 5
Wm} approae'
My 1958..\1ead-|
mmndmg eml
C’COllOllllC PGWCT 3
m the hOUSehOlC 3'
Muenced bl u .'
Urn Muenees n.'
has: Mple of;
3&3th of heat
mm?“ in uncl
2mcitations Nay;

Ward SUCh an U1

'3" ..

‘fS m Whjch hlf

 

 

 

r-ﬁ ‘
{Nair MW mega“

“”5 “mm ecoie
5:: ,
f.

l
‘.I

n;
*0:
“Se {S feSOWCé" 0

l 8
practices and disease ecology. Understanding local contexts of disease, and relating these
contexts to the macro-dimensions of political economy is fundamental to a political
ecology of disease, he argues. Exploring the interconnections of differing scales, Mayer
suggests, will illuminate patterns of disease ecology in ways which conventional
approaches to the intersections of health and disease have failed to do.

Disease ecology, so basic to medical geography and epidemiology, is also a

powerful approach to understanding disease emergence and resurgence

(May 195 8; Meade 1976). Many changes that are relevant to

understanding emerging and resurgent diseases are due to political and

economic power at a variety of scales, ranging from the transnational down

to the household and individual levels. Some, or even much of this power

is inﬂuenced by which groups control decisions over land use. This, in

turn, inﬂuences the relationships of people and the environment. This is a

basic principle of political ecology which has received some attention in the

geography of health and disease (Mayer 1996), and has been used

increasingly in understanding the consequences of human-environment

interactions (Mayer, in press).

Toward such an understanding of the political ecology of health and disease,’ I
examine ways in which historical and contemporary interventions aimed at controlling land
and society have penetrated the African body through illness, disease, and death. In the
tradition of political ecology, I focus not only on how people have been affected by the
political economy of the region, but also on how they have exercised their own wills to

survive. One strategy toward survival has been through the quest for medicine. I examine

medicines as resources of the forest, and explore the differing strategies to obtain these

 

5 I use the term “political ecology of health” to refer to multiple levels of well-
being, illness, and disease. In this way, it is to be understood as an experiential state,
which may or may not include biomedical concepts of disease. As this dissertation will
show, however, I regard the prevalence of (biomedically-deﬁned) disease in developing
countries as a critical social issue which the promotion of “natural” medicines fails to
address; a political ecology of disease approach is therefore compelling.

gems by those who hr

 

was This deﬁmtrrv
1mm It do:
attends forest the
cabin of plant use h;
I: parts healing pro;

555me of? death a

 

fares u mums
street is illuminated ‘
:3ng and entironm

H150 morporate
:zceit abi-product c

Tit-cl , . .
“mm tn .\‘.

:8
,l

“Wield 1“Set

in rip-335 0f prodUCI}

a.» .-,
5'5 ~11 .
13531.3 -
this;
i "‘29 dOmat

. us, an
35-»

“at l‘ .
' Am dig“ em

19

resources by those who live in the forest. Such an examination requires an understanding
of forest medicines as those substances perceived and used by forest residents as healing
substances. This deﬁnition includes pharmaceutical medicines, water, earth, foods,
animals, and plants. It does not necessitate that the substance be found in the forest;
rather it regards forest medicines as those medicines used by people living in forest
communities. As such, medicines symbolize the power of the ancestors (whose
knowledge of plant use has been passed through generations, and who have bestowed on
certain plants healing properties), but also the power of the outside world (to restore
health and fend oﬁ‘ death and disease). Further, by the very nature of such an examination
of medicines as resources — and thereby property, the salience of access to medical
resources is illuminated - which means understanding economic differentiation, social
diﬂ'erences, and environmental change in the shaping of resource use.

I also incorporate concepts from political ecology regarding social stratiﬁcation as
not merely a bi-product of capitalism — indeed, pre-capitalist state formation contributed
to social hierarchies in Madagascar; these hierarchies, in turn, have shaped power relations
at the local level. In so doing, I build on Morgan's (1984) call to treat capitalism in terms
of the means of production, to examine the uneven ways that it affects people, and the
ways that people actively engage or resist it. Moreover, I emphasize that indigenous
knowledge is not uniform within a culture (Warren 1997). Different people have different
knowledge domains, and these multiple ways of knowing shape health and health care

diﬂ'erently for diﬁ‘erent people, as well as contribute to medical pluralism.

nttrthmpoloa' “f F‘"
Tm political CCOltf‘r
gems 'mowledge S} 5'
1. mm from most
tart or “where"
1:; ts fndmentally p.
its renames
In most of the po;
istbeahh and con.»
ﬂ That are No pr;
“Sum (those who 5'
testes to be mmmod:
3" Mam Q] .
. , Oball); '.
Lhasa alSO Wlefalt
H333ll 0f “limit"

trons.

”World.

 

2 O
The Anthropology of Forest Medicine Use

The political ecology of health framework which I use here builds on work ﬁ'om
indigenous knowledge systems (e. g. Brush and Stabinsky 1996; Dove 1996; Zerner 1996),
while departing from most studies in tropical forests and medicines by conceptualizing
“community” or “culture” as heterogenous, and by considering the social/environmental
nexus as fundamentally political. Such ideas have not abounded in most presentations of
forests medicines.

In most of the popular literature and discourse on the "forest” and "medicines," as
well as in health and conservation policies, forest medicines are inevitably perceived as
plants. There are two primary ways that forest medicines, or medicinal plants, are viewed
by outsiders (those who do not live in the forest). One view regards forest medicines as
resources to be commodiﬁed. As the multinational pharmaceutical industry expands its
drug marketing globally, the commodiﬁcation of tropical resources by capitalist
enterprises also accelerates. \Vrth this expansion of the proﬁt-oriented medicine industry,
the concept of "traditional" has been reduced to that which is of little or no value to the
Western world.

At the same time, ecologists present a second view, wherein they call for
researching and preserving traditional medicines and indigenous knowledge systems
concerning their use, in the name of biodiversity and as a strategy and goal of sustainable
development.

The use of natural plant-derived medicines is perhaps the only sustainable

form of medicine. It can foster a greater consciousness of the value of

biodiversity while offering appropriate medicines for the developing and

industrialized world and high-value crops for worldwide production.
Botanical medicines are experiencing a meteoric rise in popularity

underside. especraﬁ
ofherhs for health <
derand can also de
tit bank of extract:
areal health care

des‘e'roprnerrt and $1
an feed this rap
barren “997) ind

2gb. linked to sustain
13m knowledge it
Baby recognizing
12am those know

“mam Plantst

T515 lows on the

21

worldwide, especially in the United States and Europe. The increased use

of herbs for health can help save the environment, but this increased

demand can also destroy local ecosystems and push threatened plants to

the brink of extinction. The key to achieving the positive potential of the

natural health care movement is environmentally and socially conscious

development and sustainable production of the botanical raw materials

which feed this rapidly growing business (McCaleb 19972221).

Warren (1997) indicated that research on the medicinal properties of plants is
integrally linked to sustainability of environmental development through a focus on
indigenous knowledge. Indigenous knowledge, he argued, is an important national
resource; by recognizing intellectual property rights to proﬁts from medicinal plants, and
by including those knowledgeable as participants in the commodiﬁcation and marketing of
plants, medicinal plants become a key symbol to sustainability.

This focus on the preservation of biodiversity as a morally righteous objective has
indeed been seized by the pharmaceutical industry seeking Third World resources for First
World drugs. Their focus on "traditional" medicine has two objectives. One, to gain
knowledge about the unknown medical system in order to appropriate both the knowledge
and the resources for Western proﬁt, and two, to gain knowledge about the unknown
medical system in order to tap new markets for Western drugs. This knowledge and these
resources thus obtained become ”Western,” whereas what is left behind as of no use, or
what remains undiscovered by Western researchers or unfamiliar to them, is "traditional. "
This dichotomized ideology presumes there to be no tradition in Western allopathic
medicine, nor anything modern in indigenous medicines.

To bridge this gap, some medical anthropologists have called for more attention to
medical pluralism, as opposed to studies of medical “systems.” While Stoner has charged

that the “medical systems” have become dichotomized as “folk” or “modern,” ignoring the

3e forms of medicrne “
in: 1:386) have critiqu:
rm r entering the r:
me quest for care.
:sne sieh categories t
tiers. economic. or .'

"iii redial sistem is 5?

 

Moreover. Beer. 8.
am to pie-state so.
Eaton They allege
misnorshipt in Slf‘ﬁ.‘
imlb’ waists r
211' societies, the at:

i, "‘4‘

 

 

22

multiple forms of medicine that practitioners employ to heal the sick, Comaroff (1983) and
Stoner (1986) have critiqued the concept of medical system for the ethnocentric bias
inherent in separating the medical from other social dimensions. Comaroff charges that
the scientiﬁc quest for categories (within the medical system) is itself ethnocentric in that it
presrunes such categories to exist, and that the distinction of various social domains, such
as religious, economic, or medical, are recognized as separate domains among the people
whose medical system is studied by the ethnographer.

Moreover, Baer, Singer and Susser (1997) suggest that medical pluralism is not
indigenous to pre-state societies, but is instead, directly associated with increasing social
stratiﬁcation. They allege that the role of shaman is primary to the dyadic core (healer-
patient relationship) in simple preindustrial societies, whereas in horticultural societies one
ﬁnds multiple specialists utilizing varying components of the folk medical system. In
industrial societies, the authors suggest, the biomedical physician dominates a myriad of
medical systems. They ﬁuther contend that the concept of medical pluralism is perhaps
better understood as medical dominative systems, in which biomedicine dominates all
other systems.

While not disputing the association between increasing levels of social stratiﬁcation
and increasing medical specialization, I would suggest that this view reiﬁes the
folk/modem dichotomy by its reliance on economic boundaries separating " simple
preindustrial” foraging societies ﬁom horticultural from state industrial societies. In
reality, multiple economic strategies are practiced in all societies and all societies have
been incorporated into states. While differing economic strategies may predominate in

societies, this does not necessarily mean that they are unifomrly practiced by all

 

ﬁrst and mcu'ttura
”:2: engage in econor;
rent-n affect their li'.‘

mm of toll and or 7

L2: or muted rice arr

 

Moreover. bromedrc
tees; treatment of Cr

ri- , 3 .
we. «hire an Mpbizsr

sti
1 .
Phh‘SICians
32:!

 

2 3
community members. In this dissertation, I show how a society characterized as
horticultural and agricultural is tied to the market and tied to the state, and its members
differently engage in economic strategies ﬁom foraging to irrigated agriculture, and that
these practices affect their health and access to medicines differently. To classify them as
practitioners of folk and/or modern medicine is as misleading as classifying them as
swidden or irrigated rice agriculturalists.

Moreover, biomedicine may predominate in that it is more desirable for certain
people in the treatment of certain disorders, but it does not always predominate.
Likewise, while an emphasis on the hegemonic inﬂuence of biomedicine, particularly in
regards to the commodiﬁcation and distribution of pharmaceuticals, is imperative to
understanding how biomedicine is incorporated into post-colonial societies and viewed by
community members, such an emphasis can obscure an equally imperative emphasis on
how biomedicine is often superior to plant medicine in treating many critical health issues
— notwithstanding the fact that it is often injurious as well. It is for this reason that the
World Health Organization (1988) has called for the equitable distribution of essential
medicines throughout the globe.

Nonetheless, distinctions of "folk" and "modern" continue to be routinely
employed by physicians and anthropologists alike, particularly in regards to the study of
medicines. van der Geest and Whyte (1988: 10,11) have alluded to this problem:

In situations of pharmaceutical pluralism, terms like "traditional" and

"modern,” "indigenous" and "Western" medicines are almost unavoidable.

So are the quotation marks around these terms. There is an uncomfortable

sense that they are misleading, since the pluralistic context transforms both

imported and native medicines. Thus we ﬁnd "modern" medicines being

distributed by "traditional" healers and utilized in ways never imagined by
the manufacturers. Penicillin may become an ancient Ayurvedic medicine.

And we 5“ r“
scale adyertiSe
jamu {10m 1nd
here mar 5‘3“"
terms me trad
Moreover. CO‘

in the Western is o:
21hr post-colonial n
rjtsit suggests that t
rational“ African r
reaction is facilitat
than medicine. F e
mi biomedicine drain
eats distributed. wh;
see changes patter
Despite the Cl
Milne, and despite

Emmi“ the pOIlllt

24

And we see ”indigenous" medicine being manufactured on an enormous

scale advertised on television, and exported to other countries. Genuine

jamu from Indonesia can be purchased in Europe. The nuances involved

here may serve to remind us once more of the care needed in the use of

terms like traditional and Western medicine.

Moreover, concepts of "traditional" medicine are not just imposed by outsiders
from the Western world. They are just as likely to be perpetuated by outsiders ﬁom
within post-colonial nations - that is, urban-based, Westem-educated elite. Feierrnan
(1985) suggests that there is an assumption in the medical anthropology research that
”traditional” Aﬁican medicine is something that "traditional" Aﬁicans do. This
assumption is facilitated, in part, by the social status of those Aﬁicans who write about
Aﬁican medicine. Feierrnan points out that focusing on the competition between popular
and biomedicine draws attention away from more critical questions, such as how are social
costs distributed, what is the relationship between production and health, and how do
social changes pattern health and disease?

Despite the convenience of distinguishing between traditional and Western
medicine, and despite the securing contrast between the domains, it is important to
understand the political and economic forces that shape medicine, in order to understand
that regardless of whether a medicine is found in the backyard or in a child-resistant plastic
bottle, medicines are resources, and as resources, distinguishing them according to their
material form may not tell as much about the person taking them as does distinguishing
them in terms of their political and economic form.

Time, space, matter, cause, relation, human nature, and society itself are

social products created by man just as are the different types of tools,

farnring systems, clothes, houses, monuments, languages, myths, and so on,
that mankind has produced since the dawn of human life. But to their

SOClai products bU
wegones are def:
itself acts to COan
our understanding
conventions that s
to which the basic
are not nrtturztl bu

Nonetheless. the t

tench addressed by 01

7L}
iris because a second

send in Western sie
Its medicines — know
ices rich cornucopia c
Malt enriching boil

Agrouing segue
alternatives are 5;

ony uith a li
freedom of choic.

mum to n
Niches, like or
Sttbstances is mo'
1997228129) '

he ﬂew that for

been ,
en Mitre 'natura

ferment .
popuhnzatior

Pro?"
HD1993), “tree m

r
'Ir

«tin '
Mp bellWen tro

  
 
 

ilticalf
. ores“
31‘ e hone

lit
in People for we»

2 5

participants, all cultures tend to present these categories as if they were not

social products but elementary and immutable things. As soon as such

categories are deﬁned as natural, rather than social products, epistemology

itself acts to conceal understanding of the social order. Our experience,

our understanding, our explanations - all serve merely to ratify the

conventions that sustain our sense of reality unless we appreciate the extent

to which the basic 'building blocks' of our experienced and sensed reality

are not natural but social constructions (Taussig 1980:4).

Nonetheless, the political and economic forms of medicine used by forest residents
are rarely addressed by outsiders, except to the extent they are presumed to be proﬁtable.
This is because a second view outsiders bring to the study of forest medicines is deeply
embedded in Western views of what constitute such medicines. This is the view that
forest medicines — known only as plant medicines —~ are natural healing agents from the
forest's rich cornucopia of biodiversity. They are, as such, " good things, " "natural," and
potentially enriching both in terms of health and wealth.

A growing segment of the public believes that herbal medicines and other
alternatives are safer, possibly more effective, more natural, and more in
harmony with a lifestyle that promotes self-care, individual responsibility,
freedom of choice, and “holistic” thinking. A part of this too is the belief

that a return to more natural therapies is a return to the time in which our

medicines, like our foods, came from the earth, and the use of these natural

substances is more in harmony with our natural surroundings (McCaleb

1997228229).

The view that forest medicines are medicinal plants and medicinal plants are by
their very nature ”natural," and ”good," comes primarily ﬁ'om studies in ethnobotany and
the recent popularization of ethnobotanical research in tropical forests (e. g. Davis 1985;
Plotkin 1993). Three major themes have prevailed in this literature regarding the
relationship between tropical forests and indigenous medicines. The ﬁrst theme is that
tropical forests are home to countless health resources - speciﬁcally, medicinal plants used

by forest people for treating diseases and wounds, as well as providing nutrition. A classic

eagle of the 'global' val
in Ross Perisinkle is use
certs to be an effectise
raisnoie of the potentia'
resizing that there are u:
it: cancers hart diseasr

A second theme. a:
Smarties is that it
been scientiﬁc comm“
«fit into how medicines
3“ lillam medicines atii

kitten to the potentia

{the
i and thnaceuuc

in or”

forest diversity is 0'

 

2 6
example of the ”global" value of tropical forest plants is Madagascar's Rosy Periwinkle.
The Rosy Periwinkle is used indigenously to treat diabetes; discovered by Western
scientists to be an effective treatment for childhood leukemia, it is frequently pointed to as
an example of the potential medical and economic value of tropical forest plants,
suggesting that there are untold other plant species which can be used in the treatment of
other cancers, heart disease and AIDS.6

A second theme, and an important concern to Western scientists and
environmentalists, is that as forests are destroyed, indigenous communities, as well as the
Western scientiﬁc community, may lose medicines. Lacking sufﬁcient ethnographic
inquiry into how medicines are used by forest residents, however, the extent to which the
loss of plant medicines aﬂ‘ects those who live in the forest is not clear. More attention has
been drawn to the potential "global" loss of medicines - that is, the loss to Western
medicine and pharmaceutical corporations — that deforestation might cause, than to how
loss of forest diversity is or is not associated with the loss of medicines for forest
residents.

A third theme is that increased population pressure is leading to increased
deforestation of the tropics, as forest residents increase swidden agriculture on a limited
land base, encroaching on old growth rainforests. This theme is advanced by many
conservation and development planners who are concerned with halting the destruction of

tropical forests and, as previously indicated, is one of the ideas shaping policy of the

 

5 Plotkin (1993) points out that the two drugs developed from the alkaloids of
the Rosy Periwinkle led to annual sales of over $100 million, with no money being

returncd to Madagascar, the country of origin.

Farina Nations?
.1735“; forests adCrF‘i
3:; heaith care. for
:i-a more foreste
3' an. of the fore
sgzcd for its irritabi‘
C onsen'atio
liming the forest
”QT-‘3 1993), with er
teas are used b}
2:11 roles that oh
T0 Persuade

it W to toga;

53?. .il -
‘ “L PYOﬁtm

 

2 7
Ranomafana National Park Project. This view holds that if women who live and work in
tropical forests adopt family planning practices, and have access to improved prenatal and
infant health care, forest populations will decrease, and forest residents will no longer need
to clear more forested land. This view focuses more on how the health of people affects
the health of the forest, presuming as well that what is good for the forest (conservation)
is good for its inhabitants.

Conservation planners and ethnobotanists are consequently concerned with
conserving the forest in order to preserve plant species (e.g., Middleton, O'Keefe and
Moyo 1993 ), with exploring shared indigenous knowledge systems of how local forest
products are used by healing specialists (e.g., Naranjo 1995), and with investigating the
cultural roles that plants play in indigenous communities (e.g., Alcom 1995).

To persuade local forest communities of these “scientiﬁc” needs, environmentalists
often appeal to local communities to support conservation objectives by suggesting there
is potential proﬁt in local forest medicines. They often suggest that everyone will beneﬁt
if plants found to be of value to Westerners - either for medicines, perﬁrmes, or beauty
creams - can be marketed nationally or internationally.

As countries like Cameroon begin to see the economic value of the

medicinal plants in their forests, they can better appreciate the foolishness

of clear-cutting those forests for timber, ranching, or mining. In fact, one

of the strongest hopes we have for saving the ancient forests is that their

true economic value will now be recognized (McCaleb 19972236).

In this vein, Cameron (1996) argued that commodifying medicinal plants can be

used to improve the economic position of low-status villagers while promoting

biodiversity conservation:

The project Vt
arcade medi.
hmdmu
lrt ligl
and arable lau
motored ma
19°C Eclcho
the dual bent
and safeguar
is esnrrated
376 are Bride
people to he
Action Plan
to monitor a
the biologic
regions of .‘
Pilots and a
337.3555me
Patent of:
mlttting

While Can

28

The project will link biodiversity conservation with the marketing of high-
altitude medicinal plants in the vicinity of Khaptad National Park in the Seti
Zone of far western Nepal. . .

In light of the rapid destruction of biologically diverse ecosystems
and arable land under cultivation throughout Nepal's farming middle hills,
improved management of forest ecosystems is urgently needed (Biene et al.
1990; Eckhohn 1976). Promoting the sustainable use of ecosystems meets
the dual beneﬁts of providing income to local people, as well as conserving
and safeguarding the genetic resources housed within them (FAO 1985). It
is estimated that, of the over 6,500 species of ﬂowering plants in Nepal,
370 are endemic to Nepal and over 700 species are reported by local
people to have medicinal properties (Nepal Environmental Policy and
Action Plan 1993:36-3 7). However, due to the lack of a national program
to monitor and protect Nepal's biodiversity, no systematic inventories of
the biological diversity of the Khaptad National Park region, (nor of most
regions of Nepal in general) exist; thus, it is unknown how many species of
plants and animals are extinct or becoming extinct. Indeed, the
establishment of national parks and protected areas, covering nearly eleven
percent of the country's total land area, has been Nepal's greatest effort at
protecting ecosystems and biodiversity (Cameron 1996;84,85).

While Cameron points out that anthropologists can be effective in facilitating the
distribution of proﬁts of commodiﬁed plant medicines in ways that are socially beneﬁcial,
rather than socially disruptive, she also points out that pharmaceutical corporations are
anxious to appropriate local knowledge, with little interest in protecting the intellectual
property rights of powerless participants or ensuring equitable distribution of any proﬁts
that reach local communities.

The pharmaceutical industry and others have indeed capitalized on the
conservation movement in order to maximize proﬁt. Yet the merging of the objectives of
the pharmaceutical industry with those of environmentalists is commonly represented as
being so potentially ﬁuitf‘ul, that an alliance which in decades past would have struck many
as inherently conﬂicting, is now viewed by multitudes of environmentalists as symbiotic

and “natur .”

mug the com?
research program
Smlth min Beet
Yet undisco‘ered

I

‘lClnA-i pianlS '
Megan is a ’
The mOS’.
“memes. R31“
other \tildeCSS
deircate balance t
1%” 559)
The phannaceuti
:. and medical 53518?
as For example. eth
1 _ . - '
sen sorld medrcrne
:eo-ca knowledge that
“is '
“a genetic material
~21“?
”M41
* plants can be de
ca; m comparison to f
asses ‘
of the industna

“‘13 area of rese

«as on the Comet

2 9

Among the companies which have embarked on major medicinal plant
research programs are Merck, Bristol Myers, Squibb, Pﬁzer, Monsanto,
Smith Klein Beecharn, and Eli Lilly. The interest of these companies in as
yet undiscovered medicinal plants — or rather, the compounds from
medicinal plants — is a testimony to the importance of preserving
biodiversity as a source of future medicines.

The most impressive collections of biodiversity are found in true
wilderness. Rainforests, whether tropical or temperate, wetlands, and
other wilderness areas must be preserved intact to avoid disturbing the

delicate balance of these awesomely productive ecosystems (McCaleb
19972229).

The pharmaceutical industry has also exploited the scientiﬁc research of indigenous
plants and medical systems in order to capitalize on indigenous knowledge for Western
nwds. For example, ethnobotanists are more likely to get ﬁrnded to bring back to the
Western world medicines which can be commodiﬁed by pharmaceutical companies,
medical knowledge that can be developed toward biomedical objectives, or to otherwise
provide genetic material to Western scientists. While some attention is given to how
tropical plants can be developed into drugs to treat tropical illnesses, this attention remains
scant in comparison to how these same plants can be developed into drugs to treat
illnesses of the industrial world.

This area of research on the part of ethnobotanical science has been criticized for
its focus on the commercial potential for Western proﬁt, in which the research itself is
value laden but couched as ”universal" beneﬁts by way of "discovering" potential cures for
disease (Davis 1995). Nonetheless, as Gare (1995:79) points out:

Through treating things as commodities, the natural conditions for human

creativity become private property and are then treated as capital, while

people's creative potential is reduced to labor power to be bought and sold
on the market.

Nowhere is ti
r... Such a 'ocusr
are: of local cor
rents. exclusive
2““ . "us nth me
2:2; experts redu

Increasing A
5013mm tau
fmers bor'r
InUS: be proc
picking and *
comamutant:
TEpregem a c
hm the few (
L. S Ang
31051 farmer.
mam Va:
agroeCOHOm
loward the S

3 0

Nowhere is this more true than in the focus on plant medicines as having monetary
value. Such a focus on how plant medicines can be commodiﬁed is intended to transform
the labor of local communities toward just such ends. Medicines viewed as economic
resources, exclusive of their social and symbolic resource value, are in this way
synonymous with medicines as property, to be bought and sold for proﬁt, and the local
medical experts reduced to labor power.

Increasing American utilization of medicinal plants creates a demand for

botanical raw materials which could produce a tremendous boon to

farmers, both domestically and abroad. . . . In many cases these botanicals

must be produced using ancient and labor intensive methods including hand

picking and “garbling,” or manual removal of twigs, rocks, and other

contaminants from the dried herb. Because of this, these commodities

represent a continuing economic opportunity in developing countries for all

but the few crops which can be mechanically harvested. According the

US. Agency for International Development, the greatest challenge facing

most farmers in developing countries is ﬁnding markets for crops with

sufﬁcient value to sustain a family business. In many parts of the world,

agroeconomic development has shiﬁed away from subsistence farming

toward the search for specialty crops and cash crops which can be grown

on farmland which is currently idle (McCaleb 19972234).

Thus, the view of forest medicines as inherently good and natural goes hand-in-hand with
the global marketing of forest medicines.

The arguments for preserving forest “ecosystems” in order to preserve indigenous
medicines and indigenous knowledge may be well intended, but the focus on “indigenous”
categories tends to neglect the social differences that characterize every society, and which
determine whose knowledge is accessed, and how the beneﬁts of such research and
commodiﬁcation will advantage or disadvantage diﬁ‘erent members of a society.

Moreover, by relying on ethnobotanists to legitimate commercial aims as being

beneﬁcial to science (once issues of intellectual property rights are negotiated and settled,

3'; ”R a: alll the que
561:3 as apolitical an
Wu} should vs e l
asment that kn
groxided untold
liars" porential l
moan and tl
welfare and etc
it Biosphere;
While indigenor
:31 ml mmpens
mm bomﬁcal res
it; blowledae a;
Vin} ' . .
“*7 mmGilead m M
The political c
i... pants are bll
3*» "u '
*4. Shot]; are n

the: .1!
MM and D01 '

3 1
if they are at all) the quest for scientiﬁc knowledge of the forests‘ rich pharmacopeia is
presented as apolitical and globally beneﬁcial.

Why should we be so concerned with biological diversity? Consider, for a

moment, that knowledge of a relatively small number of species has

provided untold beneﬁts to human welfare and the world economy. . . .

Many potential crops and wild relatives of cultivated species remain

unknown, and their discovery could have an enormous impact on human

welfare and economic productivity (Systematics Agenda 2000: Charting

the Biosphere)

While indigenous knowledge of plant medicines does indeed merit respect,
attention, and compensation when such knowledge has been appropriated by outsiders,
and while botanical research of forest plants does make a substantial contribution to
scientiﬁc knowledge and the treatment of many diseases, the scientiﬁc process itselfis
deeply embedded in political concerns.

The political context of science is inherent not only in the questions that are asked
— which plants are biomedically eﬁcacious (and therefore can be commodiﬁed) — but in
which questions are not asked. Why people living in the forest need medicines, why they
select plants and not pills, or why they choose pills and not plants, and how the quest for
medicine is related to changing ecologies, social structures, and economies, are questions
that are not regarded by many policy makers as relevant to understandings of how the
forest environment is related to the health of forest residents. And considered irrelevant,
these questions are generally not asked of forest residents.

One reason issues of social structure, economics and politics are not considered by
some as germane to the anthropology of medicinal plant use, is that the marriage of botany

to social science has for the most part focused on how plants are used and valued within

the indigenous medical system. Moreover, this focus has relied almost exclusively on

5:: abiological frames».
sizes) or on an inter;
9:; it those who use tl
“involve has at

Increasing
item the raw corr
WW that v
plant world as bu
ngllﬁye {Oundar
mom”) beca
amt. (Ford 10
we the m
is“ 0f Ethnolor
mom COncer
Classiﬁmm uh
mm]? Como;
00mph and ﬁrrr
Stuclim 0f halluci
chmer of com
1971,19750 “-
OanMVttstern <
“Phased the e
PredlSPOSlliorL m
Ul‘v'Olh'ing PSFChO

”though fOCUSir

miles ProxideS mm

32

either a biological framework (toward understanding the biological value of plant
medicines) or on an interpretive framework (toward understanding the symbolic value of
plants to those who use them). Davis (1995) summarizes how the merging of ethnobotany
and anthropology has evolved:

Increasingly as ethnologists joined the ﬁeld, the emphasis shiﬁed
from the raw compilation of plant names and uses to an intellectual
perspective that viewed the character of a people's relationship with the
plant world as but one means of approaching an understanding of the
cognitive foundations of a culture ..... As anthropologists working in
ethnobotany became concerned with the "totality of the place of plants in a
culture“ (Ford 1978), the intellectual potential of the discipline began to be
realized. The study of plants became a vehicle for addressing general
issues of ethnological signiﬁcance. Several themes emerged. The
important concept of cultural relativism was reinforced by studies of folk
classiﬁcation, which revealed that aboriginal taxonomies, while not
necessarily coinciding with Linnean concepts and categories, were equally
complex and ﬁrmly rooted in biology (Conklin 1954; Berlin et al. 1974).
Studies of hallucinogenic plants oﬂ‘ered insights into the origin and
character of complex religious beliefs (La Barre 193 8; Reichel-Dolmatoﬂ‘
1971, 19750. Work in medical anthropology highlighted the signiﬁcance
of non-Western concepts of health and healing and, in doing so,
emphasized the elaborate connection between spiritual belief, psychological
predisposition, and pharmacology that underlies all indigenous practices
involving psychotropic preparation (Davis 1995:43).

Although focusing on the biological and interpretive dimensions of botanical
medicines provides critical insights into their local use, such a focus, when it remains
isolated from the historical context and the political economy of medicine use, is
problematic. Apart from a focus on biological efﬁcacy, by conceptualizing the cultural
context of medicines as the cosmological and social meanings of medicines, one is almost
forced to think in terms of a shared concept of reality grounded in a common history and

undivided interests. But social categories of class, caste, gender, age and ethnicity shape

sic-’3 23““ m S
355 and mule:

CLETCﬂl em‘ll'
.a‘ El." 3330331 his
sing the {OFCSU
is ﬂamers in the 1
amulet econon
a‘ sedan their (ir
team as traditior
ﬁtment from c

2m economy. he

3:538 its int egratir

‘mtilse' to participz
Imegration ir
Q7" Imeglaled Cor

h

.'.{.3, ~ .
walla Nation;

3 3
the social system in such a way that communities are united not just through shared
interests and knowledge, but through conﬂicting ones as well.

Current environmental policies in Madagascar largely ignore social differences and
local and national histories, in favor of simplistic views that swidden rice production is
destroying the forests, it is practiced due to tradition and poverty, and that by educating
forest farmers in the practice of irrigated rice production, and increasing their integration
into a market economy, they will act rationally, which is to say, adopt the new technology
and abandon their (irrational) " cultural tradition." The ﬁxing of people’s beliefs and
behaviors as traditional ﬁrrther presumes that they lack the ability to make choices without
enlightenment from outsiders (F eeley-Harnik 1991). The desire to reap the rewards of the
market economy, however, is presumed to be so universally innate that a project need only
facilitate its integration into local economies in order for the culturally-bound native to
“choose” to participate.

Integration into a market economy is central to the development objectives of
many Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDP's), including the
Ranomafana National Park Project, which sees economic opportunity tied to global
capitalist expansion as the salvation of the forests. While human interaction in the
ecosystem is viewed by some as "unnatural," it becomes natural when harnessed for
commodiﬁcation. Hand in hand with this view, is the view that elements within the
ecosystem remain ”undiscovered," and their "value” threatened — as if those living in the
”ecosystem” do not "discover" or "value" the rich potential of their forests:

Tropical forests in particular are rich potential sources of valuable foods,

medicines, and products of all kinds -— if we don't destroy them before their
potential can be discovered. When we selectively remove species and

mirage or destroy
cannons potential
lords of ecosystem
Rich 1990 lOll

The importance of
Minimal res.
“-3939 penuml.
3&2 and Childht
Nasal chemical c
mpomnlS fOl' Lin
llioi’liversity found
Walled beneﬁc
the Ranomafana a}

“We are t
IhIOUgh the mom
llamacologca] c
de'elopmm SCCIC
collaborm0n with
‘8 airman-e me,
thIe‘elmlﬂlllal col
Mutable hlines

34

damage or destroy entire ecosystems (as in deforestation), resources of
enormous potential value are lost . . . Tropical forests, more than other
kinds of ecosystems, remain uncatalogued treasure houses (Erlich and
Erlich 1990: 101).

The importance of Madagascar‘s indigenous plants to international
pharmaceutical research and development is well documented. The
Malagasy periwinkle, containing a chemical used to treat Hodgins [sic]
disease and childhood leukemia, beneﬁts millions of people worldwide.
Natural chemical compounds found in many plant species provide vital
components for the treatment of disease. Because of the tremendous plant
biodiversity found in the remaining rainforests there is likely potential that
recognized beneﬁcial species or as yet undiscovered plant species exist in
the Ranomafana area.

There are well publicized examples of economic beneﬁts generated
through the association of local communities with international
pharmacological companies. During the second phase, the natural products
development sector of the RNPP will identify potential means of
collaboration with both national and international enterprises. While this is
an alternative means of increased beneﬁts to peripheral zone communities,
three potential constraints will be carefully reviewed; 1) potential non-
sustainable harvest of medicinal plants and 2) inequity between local
beneﬁts and pharmaceutical proﬁts 3) Malagasy enviromnental law
concerning export/exploitation of beneﬁcial medicinal plants (RNPP
1994:35).

As with the Ranomafana National Park Project, much of the focus on the cultural
context of medicines in other tropical forest communities is made by people trained in the
natural sciences and public administration, who usually conceptualize culture as something
others have, something that is exotic, shared by all members of "the tribe," and ﬁxed in
tradition. At best it is agreed that it is important. Indeed, in the best tradition of the
missionaries of the nineteenth century, understanding culture is seen by many twentieth
century international aid workers — hoping to "improve" economies, environments, and

health — as a prerequisite to the success of changing that culture. In the following quote, a

and. century missr
-r.‘ .13. . 'liI'L'i’e
mate emf...

lhere still how
literature treatrn
deﬁne about ti
under the name
our attention 1
titles found in l
dominant tribe 1
differences in C1
inhabitants of tl
new we has e a
long gain some
hi‘herto been ﬂ
Under e
00ml Would
the "151 aghcul
dfveIOped, An
the people lifte
liberty brought
mlOll'ﬂation ab

35

nineteenth century missionary suggests that ethnological knowledge of the Malagasy
would facilitate enlightenment and economic change:

There still, however, remains a very marked gap in, at least, our English
literature treating of the Malagasy ethnology: we know hardly anything
deﬁnite about those numerous wandering tribes which are popularly known
under the name of Sakalava . . . . Yet these people have many claims upon
our attention. They form one of the most numerous of the many different
tribes found in Madagascar; they were until the present century the
dominant tribe of the country; and they present some strongly marked
differences in customs, superstitions, and dialect ﬁom those of the
inhabitants of the interior and of the eastern coast. It may be hoped that,
now we have a Protestant mission established at Mojanga, we shall before
long gain some more accurate information about these Sakalava, who have
hitherto been almost entirely untouched by any Christian teaching . . . .
Under enlightened and upright Hova governors, the Sakalava
country would recover its prosperity, commerce would be opened up, and
the vast agricultural resources of the western provinces would be
developed. And last, but not least, Christianity would be introduced, and
the people lifted up from their present heathen condition into the light and
liberty brought by the Gospel of Christ. We still, however, need much
information about the Sakalava tribes (Sibree 1878:456-45 7,468).

One hundred and sixteen years later, a USAID report reﬂects little change:
Local customs, traditions and cultural variations can be an obstacle
to both conservation and development objectives. The RNPP

[Ranomafana National Park Project] will make every effort to identify
these forces and work with the recognized community structures to

accomplish the objectives that beneﬁt both the communities and the park.

Local knowledge will be incorporated into all aspects of the project to

heighten the chance of success of activities (RNPP 1994: 86).

The language of global environmental management has been crafted in such a way
as to make a focus on the historical and cultural contexts of environmental change
impossible to incorporate into international policy (Hildyard 1993). Hildyard shows how
that the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UN CED) held in

Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and popularly regarded as the Earth Summit, framed the

mall crisis in term
2: mg the North as t
z; :2: ettrtromnental pf
:33an- pro'oiems fro
.3::' lat emironment
25:3 were presented by
1'17, slamming the cr
21mm emironment.

lﬁdyard further ind
“'3: no one in post er
aim“) is wgeested,
35W sale in the su
“Sigma in the hum,

F“ emironmentali

ﬂatbed Critical pTO

sWiles to eXtinctio:

occurs on the Scale

V93" futu
NED re .Sim

3 6
enviromnental crisis in terms which concealed the role of the North in creating the crisis,
while casting the North as the only possible solution to the problem. For example, he
notes that environmental problems were consistently stripped of their history by divorcing
contemporary problems ﬁ'om the past. References to ‘recent,’ ‘new,’ and ‘the latest’ data
suggested that environmental problems are something new, and in the Earth Summit, these
problems were presented by ‘government,’ ‘international’ or ‘industrial’ authorities,
thereby safeguarding the credibility of those whose actions have historically produced
contemporary environmental problems.

Hildyard further indicates that by treating environmental problems as ‘global’
problems, no one in power is held responsible for creating them, and to the extent that
responsibility is suggested, it is in terms of a ‘lack of knowledge’ in which all of humanity
has a shared stake in the survival of the planet. In this way, too, the authority of the North
was legitirnated in the humane call to save the planet.

Few environmentalists would argue that environmental degradation has

reached critical proportions -- destroying local livelihoods, condemning

species to extinction, blighting landscapes, and (if climatic disruption

occurs on the scale predicted by some climatologists) possibly threatening

the very ﬁrture survival of humans and other mammals. But within

UNCED the critical nature of such threats was used to justify giving those

currently in power still more authority; to legitimize programs which would

remove control still further from local people; and to sanction more
management, more top-down development, more policing and still greater

control of people (Hildyard 1993:31).
The use of language to construct diverging and paradoxical worlds permeates the
debates among researchers trained in varying methods, theories, and concerns, and among

administrators charged with carrying out the national and international agendas of global

ecology. These diﬁ‘ering languages also reﬂect a ﬁrndamental discord distancing social

gs ion pOllC.V makers l
gmrderelopment (for
2:35 lap 1n 11ml C3565
isn't and he biological SCI
.5, peaking an unintellit
a orienting the planet.
lhis disciplinary divide
senor and development
222ml locale where inst
items communities In A
Metal Conservation of
M03: at Stony Brook, u
Wail Project. solicite
mum for research and t
‘ ill-me for scholars

ill-re? -
“is and Phl'smal scienti

 

 

 

«mesof conservation :2:
Shh an appeal did not :

I‘mWY because '1
W scientists de

   

3 7
scientists ﬁom policy makers. The discord between social science and
conservation/development (for the two are very often interchangeable in the globalized
era), runs deep. In many cases this divide is characterized as an academic divide, in which
the social and the biological sciences are portrayed as dueling disciplines, with social
scientists speaking an unintelligible language and failing to recognize the environmental
crisis confronting the planet.

This disciplinary divide was expressed in a recent email interchange regarding
conservation and development issues in Madagascar, but could be extended to any
geographical locale where institutional economic and social changes are targeted toward
indigenous communities. In April of 1997, David Meyers, Program Ofﬁcer for the
lntemational Conservation of Tropical Environments (ICTE) at the State University of
New York at Stony Brook, which provides institutional support to the Ranomafana
National Park Project, solicited feedback from researchers regarding a proposed
consortium for research and training in Madagascar. Publishing his appeal on Hevitra, an
e-mail list-serve for scholars of Madagascar, he suggested that the failure of social
scientists and physical scientists to engage in productive discourse was impeding the
objectives of conservation and development. In reply, Professor Maurice Bloch suggested
that such an appeal did not reﬂect a genuine interest in cooperation.

I am wary because in my previous experiences of this matter I have found

natural scientists deliberately avoiding the work of the social scientists
who, like myself, have worked in Madagascar, and found them trying to
replace it by their own “social scientists” whose research is usually
superﬁcial but more amenable to their aims and thinking. The reason is
that what we have to say is too difﬁcult and too much of a challenge to
their ideas and that, as [historian Edgar] Krebs says, natural scientists lack
the historical and cultural perspective which would explain to them 1) that
for Malagasy peasants conservation is but one new and very similar

mention of inter
halides the Malagas
ten listorically spec
r. gear cost on othe
Natural scientists net
in. to. but also be;
@5315 they are treat
mﬁSO‘Nhh agIeeTnc
My

hsoenis to me that 1
31575515 0f the Male
intramural}, OPPo
“M lllC Malagasy 1
con“’ﬂ'l'atlllnlSlS wa
eh genuine. dialc
(Malice Bloch A;
‘lmllble maj] '.

H

l -
N‘ .
'—

lnreply, Meyers th
tested to contacr the \1

“nearing: (Dan'd Mex-

A1,}. ‘ 1|
““3516 email 1] -.
T'Z"3-l

int
ngf-‘Sled that em
him

25%

tr 3
rider Control Of Wes
it
At

AlthoU
dis“laugh not Our
' 11g that an

38

manifestation of interference and bullying by the outside (which to them
includes the Malagasy state). 2) Ideas about conservation are a very new,
very historically speciﬁc, fad in the West which is difﬁcult to impose [and]
at great cost on others [and] as though it was based on eternal truths.
Natural scientists never hear that message, not only because they don’t
want to, but also because since they are ALWAYS seen as government
agents they are treated by the Malagasy peasants with justiﬁable fear. . .
and so with agreement and endorsement in the hopes that they will go
away.

It seems to me that the problem in the proposed consortium is that the
interests of the Malagasy concerned and of the natural scientists are
fundamentally opposed and so, if social scientists represent and explain
what the Malagasy feel and think, they too, will be opposed to what the
conservationists want. Before plunging into a joint enterprise genuine,
really genuine, dialogue must take place. It will be most upsetting to all.
(Maurice Bloch, April 3, 1997, Research and Training in Madagascar.
Available email Hevitra-Iﬂ-psumr psi] edu from
blochﬁpolypcitechniquefr )

 

In reply, Meyers thanked the author for his comments and urged “all who are

interested to contact the World Bank, USAID, and other large donors for the most recent

documents on the PE2 [Second Environmental Program of Madagascar] for ﬁrrther

clariﬁcation.” (David Meyers, April 3, 1997, Research and Training in Madagascar.

Available email lievitra-l-@psuvm.psu.edu from (integers ﬁ‘lltitalz‘ihl sits sunyslw etlu ) He

 

ﬁrrther suggested that environmental programs were, in fact, established and implemented

by Malagasy institutions, implying that the World Bank and USAID funded ANGAP, and

other national institution funded wholly or in large part by U. S. and European monies, are

not under control of Westerners, but are instead, the national institutions they purport to

A response to Meyers pointed to the fallacy of his reply.

Although not out of character with the record in these matters, it is still
dismaying that an invitation to bring together in a consortium the very real

arms of biologists and
elite foilouod so spec
has: sane concerns to tl
alDEl. .. Charging at
cleaner are not the $211
mitt) myself were addri
he: on

The notion that the Male
the Second Entironmen‘
nines straight from the
.nenoro. Antarnbahoa
2mm Tanala Mil
Tillman Merina and l
to me. Perhaps it is the
“Till all this - more thar
coni'ersation (Edgar Kr

\lidagmnailahle t
Krebs response itself:
”tool from Meyers or oth
an regarding bringing tr
Despite the very real .
titre a much greate, and
its from consen'ation at
“013mm policy is econr

he“ ' .
alll - .
the“ appllcallon

 

inlay .

W 0"” ‘he Study

A; r

of th

39

concerns of biologists and social scientists doing work in Madagascar
could be followed so speedily by a different sort of invitation, i.e., to carry
those same concerns to the World Bank, USAID, ANGAP, ONE, ANAE
and DEF. . . .Charging at windmills and having a conversation with
colleagues are not the same thing. None of the points raised by Dr. Bloch
and by myself were addressed in David Meyers’ response. He just passed
them on.

The notion that the Malagasy are the driving force behind AN GAP and that
the Second Environmental Program (PE2) —— “The Landscape Approach” —
comes straight from the Sakalava, Betsileo, Vezo, Tandroy, Tanosy,
Antemoro, Antambahoaka, Anatefasy, Masikoro, Betsimisaraka,
Zaﬁmaniry, Tanala, Mikea, Antakarana, Mahafaly, Bara, Tsirnihety,
Tsilmnaka, Merina and (why not) Vazimba . . . sounds a bit disingenuous
to me. Perhaps it is the suspension of belief needed to accept or go along
with all this — more than any horrible disciplinary divide — that stops
conversation (Edgar Krebs, April 4, 1997, Research and Training in
Madagascar, available email llcx'itr‘a-LQ psuvm psuedu from

Wendyxs'a’Q‘jhumrs.hcfjlruedu ).

Krebs’ response itself stopped the conversation. There was no ﬁrrther interest

expressed ﬁ'om Meyers or others, at least none that reached the list-serve of Malagasy

scholars, regarding bringing together social and natural scientists.

Despite the very real divide which separates the sciences, this divide is conjured to

obscure a much greater, and far reaching, divide, and that is the one which severs social

science from conservation and development policy altogether. While conservation and

development policy is economic policy, which would imply a commitment to social

science, in their application to environmental concerns, policy makers have relied upon the

biological sciences to legitimate their agendas. By prioritizing the science of the physical

world over the study of the social, they have couched the dialogue in the language of the

biological sciences. But it is a dialogue they know not well. As Krebs asserted,

The majority of conservationists I met while doing ﬁeldwork in
Madagascar knew very little of biology. . . . Biologists should also be
concerned that of all the USAID money earmarked for conservation in

 

\W. only an
meat there are r
ears comparable tr
smiles of the ecolog
caressed b\ Charle
:r. Megan birds th
l2 Plats ., This undt
shes the perceptu-
aperanrtg in the islar
re making a sacntit
fOTEipers who desc
me consulting vnt'r
N008 and Comple
Aiiilm'ol/‘010lg3 R0
The creation of 3 cc
r-Dblerns attending
ClSﬂhere)‘ of the l-
0“ them lWluCh is a
We potl'ttedly - 0
in doing ﬁght nov
and Training in .\la
trom ‘r.\ .3. 1‘ ‘1

Krebs points to a ‘
sir while relying upon
Iteration and develop
km, or of the possibif

M the “tide that is 1

4O

Madagascar, only an invisible percentage has gone to fund research. I
regret that there are no long-term studies of the ethology and ecology of
lemurs comparable to those made by Jane Goodall on chimpanzees; no
studies of the ecology of the Malagasy forests comparable to those
conducted by Charies Elton in the woods of suburban Oxford; no literature
on Malagasy birds that can match the essays by W.H. Hudson in “Birds of
La Plata.” This underlying ignorance of the natural history of Madagascar
justiﬁes the perception many Malagasy have of international NGO’s
operating in the island. Quoting Alex de Waal, “they see not people who
are making a sacriﬁce to assist the poor and vulnerable, but immensely rich
foreigners who descend from aircraﬁ (and 4-wheel drives) spending a short
time consulting with local people, never in the vernacular.” (“International
NGO’s and Complex Political Emergencies: Perspectives from
Anthropology,” Royal Anthropological Institute, London, 1995:10) . . .
The creation of a consortium is not necessary if one is aware of the
problems attending development! conservation projects (in Madagascar and
elsewhere), of the literature they have generated and that otherwise bears
on them (which is already a rich conversation in many disciplines), and —
more pointedly — of the work ethnographers and historians have done and
are doing right now in the island. (Edgar Krebs, April 3, 1997, Research
and Training in Madagascar, available email H ex'itr‘a-L”Zipsuvmpsuedu
from \Vendyuagjlrux'ms hcfjhuetlu ).

Krebs points to a very real concern in the application of science to policy, and that
is that while relying upon the biological sciences to legitimate their objectives,
conservation and development administrators are, by and large, generally ignorant of
science, or of the possibilities that exist of enhancing both research and policy by actually
reading the work that is generated by researchers of all persuasions. For example, the
very nature of research in the natural sciences has brought such researchers in day-to-day
contact with local residents, who are employed by them as guides, cooks, and interpreters.
Moreover, natural scientists are researchers and as such, most have an appreciation for
the research process, regardless of its disciplinary foundations. My own experiences were
that the natural scientists conducting research in the Ranomafana National Park were

much more concerned with the social ramiﬁcations of conservation policy than were the

5;. :er themseh e
133:3: pmef“ 0i ll
1:: soft of social sci
the he language a
...:: and in many v
326335 which em
But Krebs poi
:»g;1~_':~ate policy a
Mme rather
:Cﬁﬁ into read\
3‘35 maﬁa-1V8 ;
(mini! sue!
misnomer l

SClelli‘eg an

4 l
policy makers themselves, in part because they spoke to residents and saw for themselves
the chronic poverty of the region. In addition, they generally showed intellectual curiosity
in the work of social scientists. While there remained a deﬁnite and discernible distinction
between the language and objectives of social and physical scientists, discussion was
ﬁequent and in many ways fruitful, as each informed the other of important data and
perspectives which enriched both realms of research.

But Krebs points to a very real concern regarding the use of the biological sciences
to legitimate policy and the promotion of the idea that it is the inability of researchers to
communicate, rather than the unwillingness of administrators to incorporate the concerns
of science into ready-set economic agendas, that renders conservation and development
projects ineffective and potentially destructive of local societies and lives.

Casting such a reaction in terms of an academic divide, of that lazy
misnomer: paradigm problems; or of an essential quarrel between the social
sciences and biology, is rather perverse. It is shifting the ground and
looking at another scene not to look at what is happening before our very
eyes, which is perfectly straightforward and easy to read. Ifthe tables were
turned, anybody, biologists included, would be horriﬁed at the sight of a
“native” marking oﬁ‘ and rearranging our backyards to suit wholly alien
criteria. And any biologist (I would if I were one) should equally balk at
the sight of a nebulous ﬁeld, implicating her/him and his/her profession, a
ﬁeld which slides from biology to conservation to development in erratic
ways, ones certainly not governed by the ethics inherent to the pursuit of
knowledge (Edgar Krebs, April 3, 1997, Research and Training in
Madagascar, available email Hexitra-L‘Zipsux'mpsuedu ﬁ'om

Wendynx‘ar’tjjhuvms.hcfjhtredtr ).
Clarifying the “Cultural” Context of Medicines
Not only within the context of ethnobotanical studies, but in the development

literature, as well (where the policy implications of ethnobotanical research are often

manifest) the intersections of “culture” and the natural world have been approached in a

near cavalier fashion
ernironmerttal chang
undifferentiated ‘thir
the modern world. i
news of culture as i'
Moreover. tl
observations of the
observer, The closr
correspond to that
“ill be deemed “cu
are deemed dilierer
As Abu-Lu
0th“, In 50 doing
Observer that they
011mm} is Particul
llﬁdagasw, Whe'
form degadatioi

42

near cavalier fashion. Development planners oﬁen remain limited in their concepts of how
environmental change is related to culture by late nineteenth century views of culture as an
undifferentiated “thing” to be deﬁned and manipulated in order to bring its members into
the modern world. The social forces by which culture is created are obscured by myopic
views of culture as inseparable from unchanging “traditions.”

Moreover, those social forces that are identiﬁed as “cultural,” may be limited to
observations of the features and practices that are obvious and outstanding to the
observer. The closer one’s material world, economic system, language, and belief system
correspond to that of the (Western) observer, the less likely these features and practices
will be deemed “cultural,” or in need of change. Conversely, where practices and beliefs
are deemed different, they are more likely to be judged as “cultur ” phenomena.

As Abu-Lughod (1991) notes, culture is a conceptual tool used to create ‘the
other.’ In so doing, differences cast as cultural can be so rigidly ﬁxed in the mind of the
observer that they appear innate, or racial. Such casting of social forces and practices as
cultural is particularly salient to understandings of health and environmental change in
Madagascar, where ethnicity has been conjured by project planners and the state to explain
forest degradation, economic status, and agricultural practices. By deﬁning ethnicity as
the most important social variable determining resource use, the state and the project are
operating under perversely distorted concepts of community that only deepen the chasm
between Western conservationists and local residents. This chasm is made all the more
unbridgeable, as the forest is literally and conceptually treated as an “ecosystem” separate

from the humans that inhabit it.

As the Ranorn;
determining factor in l
enticed much of the
Renal 1980) has tenc
explain current practit
understandings of hor
mu organization in.
m2 10031 residents
an adaptation to the e
not asked, “hen ap;
health furthermore, i
“hitting emironm

There is anot
allltlied to understam
Wk (1979271)
Moved from the re
Shem combines CO.
sinkincible "topias,"
are instead regarded
some“: The tran
“mm Comm/m0

r .
cumlmchaltterr

43

As the Ranomafana National Park Project presumed local “culture” to be the
determining factor in how the environment was used and what people believed and
practiced, much of the social research in the region (e. g. Ferraro 1994; Harrison 1992;
Kottak 1980) has tended toward environmental determinism. While this latter view does
explain current practices and views in a general sense, and lends a useful perspective to
understandings of how the agricultural system, economic systems, and various forms of
social organization interrelate, it does not account for the diversity of behaviors and views
among local residents. Moreover, by presuming the practice of swidden agriculture to be
an adaptation to the environment, the question of whether or not it is, in fact, adaptive, is
not asked. When applying the concept to the relationship between the environment and
health, furthermore, it is unclear whether health-seeking behaviors are or are not adaptive
in differing environmental contexts.

There is another important consideration regarding how cultural concepts are
applied to understanding the relationships between health and the environment. As
Foucault (1979127 1) has observed regarding penal institutions, social problems become
removed from the realm of politics and placed in the realm of technology as the prison
system combines coercive regulations with scientiﬁc propositions, social eﬁ‘ects, and
“invincible utopias.” Social problems are no longer understood as political problems, but
are instead regarded as technological problems, requiring technological, or scientiﬁc,
solutions. The transformation of the political into the technological is characteristic of
current conservation and development policies in Madagascar, and is a subject to which I

return in Chapter Four.

ire of Ethnicity |

By using $4
lanmafana Natic
rower interests as
so under the cloak
erectionnaires tha

laith professiona

 

44

Use of Ethnicity by the Ranomafana National Park Project

By using science to legitimate health, land, and agricultural policies, the
Ranomafana National Park Project recast social tensions, inequalities, and competing
power interests as cultural traditions in need of technological remedy.7 And while doing
so under the cloak of cultural sensitivity, they elicited sets of “cultural beliefs” from
questionnaires that, as Millard (199224) has indicated to be a common practice among
health professionals, ended up trivializing the relationship between cultural systems and
health. In the case of the RNPP, the relationship between health and the environment
thereby became one in which practices and beliefs were sorted into one of two “cultures”
and so sorted, equated with one of two “agricultural systems” that were alleged to hold
diﬂ‘ering “threats” to the environment, and consequently justiﬁed social regulation.

In associating cultural practices with agricultural systems, the project conﬂated
culture with ethnicity, presuming that ethnic identity and cultural practices were the same
thing. Having it ﬁxed in their minds that the Betsileo and the Tanala represent two
separate identities and, most importantly, two separate cultures, project reports began to
reify the distinction by indicating that the cultural system in which the project was
launched was characterized by two distinct groups, the Betsileo, whom they claimed are
more amenable to social change, and the Tanala, whom they characterized as clinging

tenaciously to their traditional practices (RNPP 1994). Because the project viewed

 

7 I would like to thank Professor Laurie Medina for bringing to my attention this
parallel between Foucault’s work on the prison system and the project’s approach to
conservation and development.

arnonmental change
m'ormly experienced
res-dents usw their en
morantly, how the 5
her would use the loc
ts forest exploitation
ndrced to ethnic affri
were negatively ex'alui
W elithographic mu
“"5 adorned with phc
Ballet), and music-p

The PTOject llt
Md 0f Population i
dlengthen? 1994)
for three reasorts Fir
10 Wk: conga,
essential to maintain
it residents identifie

“NPR

BMW: thosi

amenable to Change,

 

W ”'49 Bernie,»

 

45

environmental change as something that is fundamentally wrong and its social impact
uniformly experienced by local residents, it was unable to explore the ways in which local
residents used their environments to maintain their health and standard of living, and more
importantly, how the social structure in which residents lived diﬁ’erentially inﬂuenced how
they would use the local environment. Hence, environmental change was conceptualized
as “forest exploitation,” “deforestation,” or “slash-and-burn” farming, and culture was
reduced to ethnic aﬁliations in which Betsileo were positively evaluated, while Tanala
were negatively evaluated. It was no wonder, then, that when the project established a
local ethnographic museum aimed at increasing tourists’ cultural awareness, the museum
was adorned with photos of hard-working irrigated rice agriculturalists identiﬁed as
Betsileo, and music-playing, dancing, singing, shaman-worshiping, forest-burning Tanala.

The project tied these ethnic distinctions to health by employing a Malthusian
model of population increase to explain the relationship between health and enviromnental
change (RNPP 1994). Primary health care was regarded by Project ofﬁcials as necessary
for three reasons. First, increased population pressure was identiﬁed as the primary threat
to sustainable conservation efforts. Second, improving people’s health was reported as
essential to maintaining economic productivity of the local population. And third, because
the residents identiﬁed health care as their most important need, providing it was regarded
as good PR

Because those identiﬁed as Betsileo were regarded as more intelligent and more
amenable to change, they were consequently viewed as more likely to adopt family
planning practices. Those identiﬁed as Tanala, in contrast, were not only regarded as less

healthy than Betsileo - their poor health was regarded as their own doing, because they

idiot live like \l'ester.
mommy. and were tie
ashamaru over phi'sit
m planning The a
a of age. class. line
anomedicine that w e'

While employir
m the use of the
than into other impc
m“ “be“ within.
in“"0111 the more suit
ml“ manage their .
”090568 refonnulatin
”ml? and social din
in ii exPloring how
5“ about the World n
Whore or further fr or.
relevance only thIOUg
obtiously Over-100k“

lifts about their wor

Such

 

WW expen

these nuanced detail

   

belong 0f dilfenr:

 

46

did not live like Westerners, did not have latrines, did not so readily join the globalized
economy, and were viewed as culturally crippled in their own health care by their reliance
on shamans over physicians. They were also regarded as being less likely to practice
family planning. The actual beliefs and practices of villagers, which vary more on the
basis of age, class, lineage, and religion, were ignored in favor of concepts of
ethnomedicine that were essentialized in terms of ethnicity.

While employing the concept of ethnicity is often essential to understanding social
identity, the use of the concept to understanding people’s views and behaviors may block
inquiry into other important cultural features which divide and unite people. The question
remains, when applying anthropological concepts of culture to social policies, how do we
draw out the more subtle and complex dimensions of identity which shape how people
actively manage their environments and health? Anthropologist Kay Milton (1996)
proposes reformulating the concept of culture to reach these interlocking dimensions of
identity and social diﬁ‘erence. She suggests thinking of culture in terms of what is unseen,
that is, exploring how people’s experiences shape the way that they think, interpret, and
feel about the world in which they live. Whether such a deﬁnition draws us closer to
culture or further from it (toward the individual, whose experiences take on cultural
relevance only through social discourse) is not so important as is the terribly obvious, but
obviously overlooked, idea that people be asked about their experiences, feelings, and
ideas about their world, before presupposing any cultural or “ethnic” traditions displacing
such personal experience. When linking environmental change to changing health, it is
these nuanced details of identity that draw us closer to understanding how the views and

behaviors of differing groups of pe0ple forge the social and environmental linkage.

 

C ontrary to the
tai'ional" people ffO
Either? in that they a
axons are directly rel:
in not determine one's
Wral experience a
Ethe social construct
Wives proxides a ‘

Farmer (1995
mid“ expeﬁence
medical anthmpolog.

“ltd World" In ch

i5 .

 

 

4 7

Contrary to the simpliﬁcation of the local residents of the Ranomafana region as
“traditional” people from one of two cultural groups, they are no different from people
anywhere in that they are active, contribute to the creation of their own cultures, and their
actions are directly related to their social positions. Moreover, while these social positions
do not determine one's actions or perceptions, they are inﬂuential, intersecting with
personal experience. As Milton (1996) suggests, personal experience plays a salient role
in the social construction of culture, and an exploration of individual experiences and
narratives provides a telling portrait of cultural complexity.

Farmer (1995) has also emphasized in his ethnography of AIDS that illness is an
individual experience, and it is only through an ethnography of individual experiences that
medical anthropology can dispel stereotypes of illness, suffering, and treatment in "the
Third World." In chapter eight I discuss how the illness experiences and subsequent
deaths from the indigenous diagnostic category of “albumen” were experienced differently
for two men of prominence from two different lineages. In that chapter, I show how
nearly everyone in the community agreed that plant medicines were insufﬁcient for curing
the two men, yet the explanatory models of why these particular men fell ill varied widely
throughout the community. Moreover, the environmental, political and economic contexts
in which these two men lived and fell ill contributed markedly to their deaths.

This study contextualizes medicine use within a model of culture in which culture
is seen as active, changing, and contested, comprising multiple individual experiences that
converge, diverge, coincide, and contradict. While shared interests may be apparent when
a society is positioned against the interests of the state or other outside agents, closer

scrutiny reveals that, encroaching forces of the state aside, at the local level various

 

arguments of the m4
regimes are differen

The geograph
:eiicines in a tropica
iferentiated within a
minunity, such insir
abroader context 11
5mm as being varia
Sud: to reduce a gI’Ot
”Wall Of their lives,
petimlar Culture. Th

We misleading or f

he diﬁer“0&5 and ch

 

48

components of the medical system can be understood as contested resources. These
resources are differentially accessed in terms of power relations at multiple social levels.8
The geographical scale of a village-level study provides insights into the use of
medicines in a tropical forest community, where power relations are becoming increasingly
differentiated within a single generation. While representing a single year in a single
community, such insights do permit one to draw conclusions about forest medicine use in
a broader context. The very personal stories which unfold illuminate the reality of forest
farmers as being variable, unique, and shaped by both social and personal experience. As
such, to reduce a group of people to their purported "culture" provides an inaccurate
portrait of their lives, as well as that of others categorically placed within the bounds of a
particular culture. This is not to suggest that an understanding of culture is by its very
nature misleading or false, rather, I suggest that culture should be understood in terms of

the diﬂ‘erences and changes which create it.

 

9 By “power” I refer to the degree to which a person can inﬂuence the behavior
and beliefs of others. Thus, power extends from one’s formal social authority, such as a
political or religious leader, to one’s informal position, such as age, gender, lineage, and
wealth status. Whereas a political leader may have “oﬂicial” power, if they are unable to
inﬂuence others they remain relatively powerless, whereas a person who is in a position to
lend money or provide wage work, has a greater degree of power. In this sense, too, men
may be viewed as more powerful than women to the extent the inﬂuence their gender
grants them over others supersedes other categories of “power.” That is, the power of
one’s gender is relative, because there may be other factors contributing to power in a
community. Ifa woman is in a social or material position that enables her to inﬂuence the
behavior or beliefs of others, then she may, in fact, have more “power” than does a man
whose only claim to power is through his gender. Power is not something that
corresponds to any single criteria, although wealth status does come close. Power is a
quality forged of multiple social features and only when the intersections of these features
are explored can one’s “power” be discussed.

 

The political C
myopological come
c-tthe scientiﬁc proce
fie. those who gather
at hills to reach phm
it are not faceless t
mad creators. by cr

mmralt traditions "

Methodology

From 1992 to
Pmdlssenation Fellov
lfﬂure, health and me

bagues e! C n'r'Iisum.

lain)

and at the Nari

 

4 9

The political ecology approach to health that I build upon also draws out the
anthropological context of forest healing to illuminate the social and political dimensions
of the scientiﬁc process. It shows that culture is alive — that those who become sick and
die, those who gather leaves and bark for healing illnesses, those who walk across bridges
and hills to reach pharmacies to buy antibiotics for their children — are people with names;
they are not faceless tribal members blindly pledging allegiance to tradition. They are
instead creators, by creating new practices that may or may not be consistent with

“cultural traditions.”

Methodology

From 1992 to 1993, supported by a Social Science Research Council
Predissertation Fellowship, I conducted historical and archival research regarding land
tenure, health, and medical systems in Madagascar, at both the Institut National des
Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris, France (under the direction of M. Pierre
Verin) and at the National Archives in Antananarivo, Madagascar. During this same
period, I made a preliminary visit to the Ranomafana National Park, residing in the village
of Ranomafana from April 1993 to August 1993. During this period, I met with other
social and biological scientists conducting research in the region, as well as local project
administrators. Project documents were made available to me during this visit, under the
administrative direction of Dr. Joseph Peters, Principal Conservation Technician at that
time. As such, I was able to familiarize myself with prior and ongoing research and policy

in the region.

From Jan
lhdagascar. Tr
research clearan
peiod was dex’c
ntenieuing phi
meys of custc
determine the sr
moms. and at
to longer made

From A
Momma. Ra:
Mb We and
Signiﬁcant acce
mom, and i

M Ofincregu

5 O

From January, 1995 to July 1996 I resided in the Ranomafana region of
Madagascar. The ﬁrst four months were spent in the village of Ranomafana, awaiting
research clearance before project ofﬁcials would approve my relocation to a village.9 This
period was devoted to making local contacts, studying the language, and informally
interviewing pharmacists, health care workers, and project employees. ‘0 I completed
surveys of customers in two local pharmacies during both the dry and wet seasons, to
determine the social category of the people using pharmaceutical medicines, for what
reasons, and at what cost. Under new administrative supervision, project documents were
no longer made available to me.

From April of 1995 until the end of June 1996, I resided in the village of
Ranotsara. Ranotsara had been a pilot village of the project, it had a history of colonial
health care and subsequent western health care provided by the project, it had recently lost
signiﬁcant access to this health care when it was drastically cut from project development
programs, and it had undergone signiﬁcant environmental and economic changes as a

result of increasing irrigated rice agriculture. It was adjacent to the national park

 

9 Upon arriving in Madagascar in 1995, I learned that the institution which
had agreed to sponsor my research would not do so without material considerations in
excess of those I was able to provide; as such, the project agreed to sponsor my research
clearance, which was subsequently provided to me by the Ministere d'Eau er F orets.
Despite providing the project with a copy of my research proposal clearly detailing my
research and educational background, I was cleared to conduct ethnobotanical research of
medicinal plants as a botanist ﬁ'om Duke. It was not for many more months that this error
was cleared up.

1° I was explicitly directed from the American project manager that any
formal interviews I attempted prior to my research clearance (which was not delivered for
over four months, despite assurances it would take only a few days) would lead to my
eviction from the region.

 

boundaries, with svsic'
rice ﬁelds had been p‘.
while its relatively rer
for health care, its rel
wlF'tIllOll as well.

I initially drex
each household Wit
recorded incepeh 1m
1m and resources- 3
Med Maxim-S \
M illness categorii
CCOIJOUIiCS, hygieng

consulted others for

51

boundaries, with swidden rice agriculture practiced by all residents, but expansion of these
rice ﬁelds had been prohibited in recent years by the establishment of the park. Moreover,
while its relatively remote forest location made use of medicinal plants a common practice
for health care, its relative closeness to the main road made access to western medicines
common as well.

I initially drew a map of the village, and then conducted a demographic survey of
each household. Vlfrth the assistance of a local research assistant, I conducted tape-
recorded in-depth interviews with men and women of each household regarding access to
land and resources, agricultrual practices, work responsibilities, and health status.
Detailed interviews were also conducted regarding how individuals identiﬁed and treated
local illness categories, how they conceptualized the relationships between nutrition,
economics, hygiene, and health, which medicines they used most commonly, when they
consulted others for health care, and who they sought out for treatment.

A wealth-ranking exercise was completed in which respondents, selected to
represent apparent wealth differences, were asked by me to sort households based on local
criteria of wealth, which included access to land, access to labor, and access to money, as
well as stores of food. Cattle ownership had become so rare that it was no longer
considered a marker of wealth, because only one household that was considered wealthy
had cattle, while two other households considered to be of intermediate wealth had a few
cattle, and two households considered to be of greater wealth had none. The information
produced through these wealth-ranking exercises form the basis of how I represent “class”

or economic status in this dissertation.

From
rage; I esta
economics ar
medicines am
with some pe
could not mal
Hiking. and <
m an)? event. 1
Many Othe c
ml! Comer:

1.1150 ;
lllSlory and SO
women 10 del
EmalOgies a,

the hilel'ies ll

HlStOr

52

F rom representative wealth categories, and reﬂecting a balance of gender and age
ranges, I established a focus group which met weekly to discuss issues regarding
economics and health, as well as strategies which might improve independent access to
medicines and health care. The membership of this group changed from week to week,
with some people being regulars, others more sporadic. In every case, when one person
could not make it, every effort was made to ﬁnd a replacement of similar age and wealth
ranking, and of the same gender. This social representation was not always possible, but
in any event, the multiple participants provided for a greater range of community voices.
Many of the comments represented in the following chapters were derived from these
group conversations.

I also prepared genealogies of Ranotsara which inspired discussion of village
history and social organization, as well as agricultural and work calendars for men and
women to determine periods of peak workload, income, and health status. These
genealogies and their subsequent revisions and clariﬁcations (for correcting and discussing
the histories they revealed became a local pastime) led to the lineage distinctions I discuss.

Histories of the two respective lineages were obtained in tape-recorded interviews
of two lineage heads, and these histories are summarized in Chapter Five.

I worked with three different local healers, visiting them weekly, in meetings which
focused on the illnesses they treated, methods of diagnoses, and plants used for treatment.
The information provided to me during these meetings provide the comments I have
recorded regarded illness treatment, and have contributed, along with information ﬁ'om

others, my conclusions about the changing role of indigenous healers.

 

A resident i
been regarding illn
seiect illnesses to f-
ernployed and the 1

In addition
heed in a house Vt”
“111 Cooking. I a;
and coffee. cookii
dining illness epis
chilx‘lfen of the hi
the “11329. Which

Willy “Till Cl(

53

A resident of the village conducted daily visits of each household, interviewing
them regarding illness symptoms, episodes, and treatment; her information helped me to
select illnesses to follow up on, as well as to understand the multiple treatment strategies
employed and the prevalence of different illnesses.

In addition to these structured methods, I conducted participant observation. I
lived in a house which I had built in the village. I employed a young woman to assist me
with cooking. I assisted in planting, weeding and harvesting rice, pounding rice, bananas
and coffee, cooking, attending local ceremonies, rituals, and funerals. I visited homes
during illness episodes, and assisted in caring for the ill. I spent considerable time with the
children of the village, and with the women. I did not spend as much time with the men of
the village, which obviously limits my understandings of men's roles, but I did visit
regularly with elder males and interviewed them regularly regarding their care and
treatment of the sick.

At two points during the process of my research, my dissertation advisor, Dr.
William Derrnan, visited my site and met with ofﬁcials in the city of Antananarivo. During

these visits he reviewed my research methods and ﬁndings, providing direction for

focusing my inquiry.

Organization of the Dissertation
This study is organized as a story of a land and people. It is couched in history,
because it is impossible to understand the story otherwise. It is contrasted to policy —

particularly international environmental and economic policy that penetrates the far

reaches of the t
notation of '1
But in r
the tillagers wl
:om'ersations.
memorable. am
from memory.
“POW cent
PlCtide more a
rbtiorcled inten-
mS’Jtutiona] re;
the“ Persona
The max
and ‘0 SUbordii
Problemued
“hich Can be c
Femini:
been “One th

from wins.

54

reaches of the forest in search of genetic material for "global" commodiﬁcation, and
protection of ”pristine ecosystems" for Western science and tourism.

But in presenting history and policy, I do so by recurrently engaging the voices of
the villagers who hosted my stay. The speciﬁc quotes are taken from notes of events and
conversations. In some cases, in order to make particular dialogues and anecdotes
memorable, and to make the people more real to the reader, I elaborate on the discourse
ﬁ'om memory. I do not rely on memory for explanatory discourse — if a comment is
important, central to my argument, although a verbal exchange may be embellished to
provide more authenticity, the explanation or point reported is taken from notes or tape-
recorded interviews. In cases in which I attribute a particular position to a particular
institutional representative, 1 indicate by citation that my information was derived from
direct, personal communication with that person, and was recorded in my notes.

The narrative form I adopt is intended to give life to the subjects of my research,
and to subordinate the "research problem" to the people whose lives science has
problematized. That is to say, I tell stories, whose connecting themes provide a plot
which can be conceptualized as the research problem.

Feminist anthropologists (e.g., Abu-Lughod 1993; Behar and Gordon 1995) have
been among the vanguard in challenging the language of ethnography which separates art
from analysis. By questioning the privilege of anthropologists to speak for the colonized
and calling for more biography, social history, narrative, literary essays, ﬁction, and stories
of the ﬁeldwork experience, they believe that the voices and lives of those less privileged
will become more central to ethnography. At the same time, the barriers which separate

the writer from those she is writing about are weakened, as oral histories penetrate written

prose and inﬂ
LllllYEISllleS h
Anot

of a privilege
liarding (19
how scienci

that the (:01

593906 ant

Qumions .

 

 

 

 

55

prose and informants turn once again into the people they had been before alien
universities had rendered them htunan subjects of a research project.

Another way in which feminists have been in the forefront of challenging the bias
of a privileged authorship has been through the social critique of science. For example,
Harding (1991) suggests that questions be asked of science and nature which draw out
how science and technology are responsible for social problems. In so doing, she suggests
that the conventional questions science asks, those which illuminate only the beneﬁts of
science and obscure the ways that science creates problems, will become more balanced by
questions which are of interest to people of subordinated social status.

Toward this objective, I have sought to make the experiences of the Malagasy
more central to this story by presenting them as the protagonists of the story. By
employing the technique of narrative, I hope to provide the reader with an understanding
of the people as the centerpiece to the environmental story I tell.

Chapter Two provides a discussion of the geographical and social setting in which
the research was conducted, and introduces the Ranomafana National Park and Project as
it entered the lives of the residents of Ranotsara. In order to provide context for my
discussions of land use, ethnicity and the use of ethnic categories, and health care in
Ranotsara and in Madagascar, the section I introduce in Chapter Three is necessarily a
partial overview of the project; I return at diﬂ‘erent points in the study to more detailed
discussions of the project and how project strategies and objectives compared to broader
social histories.

In Chapter Three I discuss the history of pre-colonial and colonial policies

regarding land reorganization in Madagascar in order to show how forests are

 

 

conceptualized an
by elaborating on
has been tied to cl
he Ranomafana rt
problematic and d

I continue
Ranotsara and the
Wed ways.
has been associate
WOW to how oth
NP, View the sc

Chapter Si:
Med, and how d
mam People ha
differential access I

m ”’6” cultural id '

 

“My, lin

5 6
conceptualized and used by contemporary people on the island. I follow in Chapter Four
by elaborating on how land reorganization in the southeastern forests near Ranomafana
has been tied to changing identities. I show how present concepts of ethnicity - which, in
the Ranomafana region are directly related to conservation and health policies — are
problematic and do not reﬂect how the residents view themselves.

I continue the discussion in Chapter Five by relating the founding of the village of
Ranotsara and the creation of two distinct lineages which divide and unite the villagers in
unexpected ways. I then discuss how the history of health and health care in Madagascar
has been associated with the land and social reorganization of Madagascar. I contrast this
history to how others, including the state and international policy makers, as well as the
RNPP, view the social context of health and its relationship to the environment.

Chapter Six shifts to stories of how several different illnesses were diagnosed and
treated, and how deaths were handled during my residency in Ranotsara, to show how
diﬁ‘erent people had different access to health resources and knowledge, and that this
differential access had more to do with one's relationship to the local economy than it did
to their cultural identity. This relationship was ﬁuther mediated by age, gender, and most
importantly, lineage.

In Chapter Seven I continue the discussion of health and illness, by focusing on a
single diagnostic category, albumen, with multiple “explanatory models” and treatment
strategies, bringing into question notions of "traditions" and medicine. In this chapter I
suggest that lineage or social power alone carmot explain one’s economic position or

health status, as even members of the highest ranked lineage, and indigenous leaders, are

 

Therriselves subjec
endangered.

In the C01
of the present anc

pvspecdve contr.

lives

I have use
Protect the anon.“
Wgarding the righ
[his decision beca
Lbems‘iil'es as indi
to use their OWn n
the? Prefer, but it I
Ranomafana Natic

Professiom ti tles

 

Ellie ego“; as rep

5 7
themselves subject to economic and social disempowerment, and their health critically
endangered.
In the Conclusion, I summarize the key points I make, drawing together the stories
of the present and the past to demonstrate how using a political ecology of health
perspective contributes to our understanding of forest medicines in the context of forest

lives.

I have used pseudonyms throughout the dissertation, and have done so in order to
protect the anonymity of my informants in accordance with my university agreement
regarding the rights of human subjects. Nonetheless, I am not entirely comfortable with
this decision, because most of the informants with whom I lived and studied regarded
themselves as individuals whose views were important, if continually ignored. By failing
to use their own names, it may appear that I am rendering them more anonymous than
they prefer, but it is a dilemma I cannot easily resolve. For administrators of the
Ranomafana National Park, I use neither names nor pseudonyms. I have used, instead,
professional titles only, translated into English. Clearly, determining their identity requires
little effort; as representatives of a very public enterprise, and the project having
encouraged publicity on its own behalf, it would be impossible to discuss the project with
absolute anonymity of its representatives. My reason for choosing to refer to them by title
only is that because they were Operating, albeit as individuals with unique personalities and
psychologies, as institutional representatives, it would matter little who wore these hats.

The names of all researchers, however, are real.

 

While Ram
Ranomafana Natio

given names or acr

The use of
mill-its that things
being with the deep.
implies that things
lies have continue
ﬁeldwork may not

I Cannot so
Waive best, In t
they did happen. E
me Unless I knov

Changes hBVe not C

ﬁltration probab}y

 

 

58

While Ranotsara is a pseudonym, all other place names are real, as is the
Ranomafana National Park. All institutions referred to are real and referred to by their

given names or acronyms.

The use of tense is always problematic in ethnography. To use the past tense
implies that things were, that people were, that the people one writes about have ceased
being with the departure of the ethnographer. On the other hand, to use the present tense
implies that things have not changed since the departure of the ethnographer, when in fact,
lives have continued and changes have unfolded. What was true during the period of
ﬁeldwork may not be true by the time the ethnography is written.

I cannot solve the problem of tense, I can only choose that which suits the
narrative best. In this case, when speaking of speciﬁc events, I use the past tense, because
they did happen. But when providing ethnographic or political detail, I use the present
tense unless I know the situation has changed. The choice to do so does not imply that
changes have not occurred, but indicates only that to the best of my knowledge, the
situation probably remains much the same. ”

Regarding my own role in the ethnography, I have chosen to include my presence,
because it did indeed have a signiﬁcant impact in the village. I introduced material objects
to the village which had previously been absent, or in some cases totally unknown. I

brought with me pharmaceutical medicines, which I dispensed and which inﬂuenced the

 

1‘ I have made every effort possible to substantiate where changes have taken
place, but communication with both the village and the project have been limited since my
departure due to the isolation of the village and the resistance of project personnel to this
research project.

 

use of pharmaceut
brought into the cr
hos "objectively"
the fact that l cert;
to resources and tl
and follow as muc
"Tanala” with net
Pthileged White or
“hat follo
mam privilege i
”rm Cttlture,” 1

atier all

 

 

 

59

use of pharmaceutical and plant medicines. I introduced my own ideas and politics. I
brought into the community a micro-economy by providing jobs and loans. No matter
how ”objectively" I tried to draw out class inequalities and tensions, there was no escaping
the fact that I certainly reproduced class inequality by the glaring gap between my access
to resources and those of the people with whom I lived. Although I tried to learn about
and follow as much as I could of their way of living, and was often affectionately labeled
“Tanala,” with newly accomplished skills or understandings, I know that I remained a
privileged white outsider in many people’s eyes.

What follows, then, is the story of what I learned, never having shaken the role of
material privilege into which I was born, and never having found some secret passage into
“Tanala culture,” revealing hidden mysteries of the Other. This is a very Western story,

after all.

 

A Biodiversity
Althougl
forests. PCOple

hill; deserts, an:

 

Chapter 2

THE RESEARCH SETTING

A Biodiversity of People: The Research Setting

Although Madagascar is noted for its forest environment, not all Malagasy live in
forests. People do live in crowded cities, as well as small towns, tiny hamlets, forested
hills, deserts, and coastal ﬁshing villages. The geographical terrain includes tropical,
cloud, and montane forests, grasslands, and desert. The island is distinguished by a spine
of mountains running longitudinally down the center of the island. The southern regions
of the island are dry, barely fertile desert. In other parts of the island, shifting cultivation,
primarily of rice, but also of manioc, maize, beans, and other crops, has been practiced
with varying intensity since early settlement, combined with pastoral production. In
addition, irrigated rice has been practiced for at least two hundred years, but land suitable
for wet-rice production is limited throughout much of the island. Along the coastal areas,
ﬁshing supplants agriculture as the primary economic practice.

No matter how remote a village, its inhabitants have ridden in cars, listened to
radios, maybe even watched television sets. They have all seen well-dressed Asians,
Europeans and Americans, packing cameras, notebooks, computers, tape recorders, or

Bibles. Most rural residents engage in economic exchange of one sort or another with

60

 

people from other r
tricly, as a person r
months of the year,
through the year, a
in a town they have

Human hab
idyllic Garden of E
(1992:7435) ppm

threat to the island

The
Wars giant
Once cloak.
“lib a Shel?
lowering A
as a footba
that Carrier

The

 

61

people ﬁ'om other regions, countries, or continents. The concept of "remote" is a bit
tricky, as a person can be cut off from roads and communication during certain rainy
months of the year, constrained by old age or affliction from going to town for supplies all
through the year, and yet at the same time, be economically dependent upon market prices
in a town they haven't seen in years or even decades. ‘
Human habitation, however, has been characterized more as an intrusion upon the
idyllic Garden of Eden so frequently conjured in images of Madagascar. Harrison
(1992:74,7S) provides a characteristic summary of how human culture is regarded as a

threat to the island's non-human ecology:

The past serves a clear warning. “ﬁthin the past two thousand
years giant lemurs roamed the mosaic of forest and wooded savannah that
once cloaked the plateaux. There were dwarf hippos and a giant tortoise
with a shell well over a metre long. And huge elephant birds like the
towering Aepyomis, chest like a wine barrel, thighs like a horse's, egg big
as a football: probable source, through sailor‘s tales, of the legendary Roe
that carried Sinbad oﬁ' in its talons.

The plateaux are now bare and increasingly barren. The bones are
all that remains of the creatures that once lived there. A row of twelve sad
skulls in a glass cabinet in Tsimbazaza zoo commemorates the extinct
lemurs. The skeletons of Aepyomis and dwarf hippo, and the shell of giant
tortoise, stand beside them. No major climatic changes occurred that could
explain their disappearance. But, some time during the ﬁrst centuries of
our era, longboats sailed over from South East Asia, by way of southern
India and East Aﬁica, bringing the ﬁrst humans to the island.

“Within a thousand years of their coming, no land vertebrate heavier
than 12 kilogrammes survived. Their habitat, the plateau forest and
savannah, was destroyed by ﬁre, turned into pasture for the longhomed,
humpbacked Zebu cattle which the settlers brought over, and rice paddies
in the valley bottoms. The survivors were hunted to extinction for their
meat.

Anewwaveofextinctionsmaybcimminent. Themainthreatisthe
clearance of the rainforests to provide farmland for growing populations.

In all such accounts, whether popular or policy-oriented, the people are not among

the island's ”wealth," they are not a part of the islan 's "treasure trove." They are, at best,

 

friendly... I'pOOL'
ignorance as the it

By 1
hours aheai

Wh.
extra care a
hold of unb
to their nec
extract fror.
Reverend h
few of thos
certain area

....tl
Constrained
impersmio;
the l980$ C

F on
With 3 Socie
may be seer
OHM tabr
“3953' h
the "calmer
‘5 Possible,

l
The Stereo:

dllmioa and in

 

 

62
”ﬁiendly," ”poor,” "uneducated." At worst, they remain ﬁxed in superstition and
ignorance, as the following comments of a well-known travel writer attest:l

By temperament they are disinclined to look more than twenty-four
hours ahead, on any issue (Murphy 1985: 151).

While pregnant, Ruth had been advised by her local ﬁiends to take
extra care as some ombiasa [diviners], far out in the bush, still like to get
hold of unborn babies; the sun-dried heart and eyes of the unborn are added
to their necklaces as particularly powerful charms. This sounds like an
extract from one of the more luridly heathen-bashing chapters of the
Reverend Matthews or the Reverend Ellis. Yet when I recall the faces of a
few of those Mahafaly herdsmen it seemed not entirely impossible that in
certain areas such customs survive (Murphy 1985: 153).

....these seemingly easy-going, cheerful, friendly Malagasy are so
constrained by a complicated system of beliefs and prohibitions
(superstitions, to us) that fear is one of their dominant emotions - even in
the 1980s (Murphy 1985289).

Fortunately casual travelers only need to know that they are dealing
with a society far more complex than it looks and to remember that they
may be seen as potential dangers because vazaha [foreigners] are ignorant
of local taboos and could possess mysterious powers to which the
Malagasy have no antidotes. This is why so many fady [taboos] surround
the treatment of vazaha and why one's behaviour in a village should, as far
as possible, be guided by the people (Murphy 1985260).

The stereotyping of Malagasy as h0pelessly ﬁxed in traditions of ancestor worship,
divination, and irrational fear of outsiders, has been used to separate contemporary forest

farmers from the recent history and political economy of their regions, including

 

‘ While drawing from travel books may appear a poor choice, in that they are hardly
authoritarian and are well known to contain distortions, inaccuracies, and a heavy handed
dose of romantic imagery, they are important representative texts, particularly in this age
of global tourism. Travel books not only encourage tourism of foreign lands, but in so
doing, they inﬂuence the perceptions and actions of tourists who often expect to ﬁnd
superstitious savages, bare breasted or wearing loin cloths. Travel books thus serve to
condition the views and interactions of foreign travelers, and they reinforce deeper images
of places like Madagascar - places imagined as dark, forbidden and forbidding, untouched
by the modern world.

 

whim} autocracy a
sensation. Just as Y
“goers as a supersti
mo of [Ire-colonial
hi and “Vest so too c
mites as 'tradition‘
uinﬂation for why p(
AS in much of
sWIheastern .\
burning huge s
plow is not 1h:
taboo because
The People M
'We had a Plow,“ 21
E"“3'0ne med ll ‘ . .
Nth wet-rice ﬁelds,

”W to it. He,
set ..
mm)“ mm u.

 

 

don’t See one here n

 

 

63

precolonial autocracy and corvee labor, colonial rule, and neo-colonial resource
appropriation. Just as Murphy could explain Malagasy codes of conduct regarding
foreigners as a superstitious fear of their "mysterious" power, with no mention of the
history of pre-colonial autocracy, colonial rule or neo-colonial foreign authority over their
land and lives, so too can conservation and development managers explain agricultural
practices as ”tradition” (RNPP 1994) or one can ﬁnd in Sierra Magazine the following
explanation for why people living near Ranomafana do not have enough food:

As in much of the tropics, the people living in the Ranomafana rainforest of

southeastern Madagascar are the forest's worst enemy, slashing and

burning huge swaths of trees to clear land for crops. Plowing the soil

would help them raise more food on a single plot of land and let them stop

roaming so destructively through the forest, but just teaching people to

plow is not the answer here. For the people of Ranomafana, plowing is

taboo because it turns the earth's back on God (Knox 1989281).

The people where I lived howled with laughter when I read them this passage.
"We had a plow," 21 year old Lalao explained. ”I think it was Faly's [the village leader].
Everyone used it . . . everyone who could. We liked it, but it only helped a few people
with wet-rice ﬁelds. You can‘t use a plow in a tavy [swidden] ﬁeld. I don't know what
happened to it. He probably had to sell it, it really wasn't worth keeping, because only a
few families could use it. Most people don't have the land for a plow. That is why you

don't see one here now. It lms nothing to do with Zanahary [God]."

Viewing the economic practices of forest residents as destructive, tied to tradition,
and in need of control by outsiders, is not just a view of non-Malagasy. Indeed, urban-
based, educated Malagasy are ﬁ'equently among the most condemning of the practices of

their rural compatriots. In the following quote, written by a Malagasy for a WorldWide

 

Fund for Nature 0“
in is also \iewed as
Opt: access regdme *
Madagascar
scientiﬁc poi
between .‘vla

resources thr
down clear r

independent

in the 1970's

deforestatior

ad. 1 ).

This quotatit
W as a national re
33min] Park proje
imlMCSSiOn tlm the 2
”mac 0’ eCorrorr.

64

Fund for Nature (WWF) Report, swidden agriculture is not only viewed as destructive,
but is also viewed as a result of the state "giving" forest residents access to the land, an
open access regime viewed as innately unmanaged.

Madagascar's enormous biodiversity is extremely important from a

scientiﬁc point of view. Traditionally our Queen regulated the balance

between Man and Nature, deciding on distribution and utilisation of natural

resources through a feudal system, whereas the French colonialists laid

down clear regulations, but this was no real guarantee of conservation. At

independence in 1960 government had strong control of the resources, but

in the 1970's people were given ﬁ'ee access, which led to severe

deforestation and grass burning with resultant soil erosion (Rabetaliana

n/d: I).

This quotation illuminates how the forest, and its use, are viewed by the Malagasy
state as a national resource to be managed by the state. Conversely, the Ranomafana
National Park Project, while ostensibly a ”national" institute, operates under the
impression that the forest is a "global" resource. By suggesting that species deemed of
scientiﬁc or economic value must be protected, the 1973 US. Endangered Species Act
has legislated the rights of US. citizens to manage forests outside the boundaries of the
United States; this legislation grants Western conservationists the moral authority to
intervene in Malagasy land management on behalfof “science” (see Zerner 1996 for a
discussion of such conservation narratives). Not only is this perception expressed in the
rhetoric and discourse of RNP project administrators, the institutional amliations of the
RNPP reﬂect a view that Madagascar’s ﬂora and fauna are of global concern. The RNPP
is ﬁnancially backed by not only USAID, the WorldVVrde Fund for Nature (WWF), and
the MacArthur Foundation, but it is institutionally supported by the World Bank, which
ﬁnds and controls the Association National des Gestations er Areas Protegee (ANGAP)

the Malagasy institution charged with overseeing national parks and protected areas.

 

While these various in
mining reports back
an of fares and the l
which they live, work
corsewation policies
Wing the land.

And unlike or
development project:
hm hm wmpletei;
i997] and w. 1. Pet
b5 91ij ofﬁcials)
hem c0"‘Pletely disr

“Age morally Super

 

 

 

65

While these various institutions deliberate how to best manage Madagascar’s forests by
volleying reports back and forth between Washington, New York and Antananarivo, by
way of faxes and the Internet, the residents of the Ranomafana forest view the forest in
which they live, work and die, as their rightful land, a conviction of such force that
conservation policies are regarded less as policies of protecting the land than as policies of
seizing the land.

And unlike other far more participatory efforts in other conservation and
development projects and in other national parks, the residents of the Ranomafana forests
have been completely excluded ﬁom the debates on proprietorship of the land (see Hanson
[1997] and W. J. Peters [1997] on how participation has been represented and thwarted
by project ofﬁcials). Moreover, local views of how the forest might be managed have
been completely disregarded in favor of preservationist views of biodiversity as a graven
image morally superior to the human lives of the forest ecosystem.

To shiﬁ the discourse from one of non-human biodiversity to one of human
diversity, in this chapter I discuss the daily lives of those who become sick, those who
work in the ﬁelds. First, aﬁer a brief description of Ranotsara, I discuss the way one lives
in a forest village, showing how men, women, children, and older adults spend their time.

I then discuss the agricultural system of the area, showing how swidden horticulture,
irrigated rice agriculture, and cash-crop production all comprise a single agricultural
system. I then show how the Ranomafana National Park Project has affected the lives of

Ranotsara's farmers, as well as how Ranotsara's farmers are perceived by the Project.

 

lire Village
The \
Madagascar.
annual precip
very hot and
heavy, consta
commonly do
is Very real to
few clothes [c
borne; or ﬁelc

gentler, with i

 

 

 

66

The Village and Villagers of Ranotsara

The village of Ranotsara is located in the southeastern montane rain forests of
Madagascar, where the altitudinal gradient ranges ﬁom 600 to 1200 meters, with an
annual precipitation rate of approximately 2900 mm. (F errarro 1994). While the climate is
very hot and dry ﬁ'om about October to the end of December, from January to March,
heavy, constant rains begin, including one or more cyclones every year. Such cyclones
commonly destroy crops, homes, and even kill people. The threat of cyclones, therefore,
is very real to the residents of Ranotsara, who must work daily in the thundering rain, with
few clothes for protection, and can still face serious loss should a cyclone destroy their
homes or ﬁelds. From March through September, the rains continue, becoming much
gentler, with intermittent sunny days.

From a distance, Ranotsara is a lovely, quiet hamlet of thatch and tin-roofed
houses made of mud, resting amongst banana, coffee, and jack-fruit trees in the center of
vast wet-rice ﬁelds, oﬁen shimmering in the brilliant green of swelling rice. Surrounding
these ﬁelds rise stony, forested hills, reaching to the celebrated forests of Madagascar, just
a ten to twenty minute walk ﬁom one's home. The eerie cries of lemurs echo through the
village every morning and every evening - the residents readily discern a species just from
the sounds it makes as it plays. Children play just as joyfully, and their laughter enlivens
the peaceful image of the village, while the rhythmic beating of dozens of women and girls
pounding rice, bananas, and coﬁ‘ee provides a steady percussion to mark the time of day.

Reaching the village, a different view envelops the visitor. The people are poor —
most wear shredded, ﬁlthy rags for clothes; a few wear brightly—colored new clothes

imported ﬁ‘om the West — Beverly Hills 90210 t-shirts for the boys, ﬁilly acrylic dresses

 

for the girls, one
once, borh scrax
others are bareljI
all active - haul:

Vutuallx
noses running 6
leSlonS. huge be
public health su
ten were unden
(Kightlinge, 19'
Their Parents a;

“lethargic. mal

MSW and sat el

 

 

67
for the girls, one or two digital watches on the wrists of young men. Nearly everyone is at
once, both scrawny and strong - while some men are obviously robust and muscular,
others are barely heavier than their bones. Yet regardless of the fat on their ﬂesh they are
all active - hauling wood, beating rice, planting crops, and carrying children.

Virtually every child has some visible health problem -— bellies bloated with worms,
noses running, ears oozing white or yellow pus from infection, skin encrusted with scabies
lesions, huge boils protruding ﬁom legs and arms. Most are coughing or wheezing. A
public health survey of the region found that 69 percent of the children under the age of
ten were underweight, and 11 percent were wasted (having low weight for height)
(Kightlinger 1993). The parasite load of children was 97 percent (Kightlinger 1993).
Their parents and grandparents are often as sick, and yet they defy the stereotypical image
of lethargic, malnourished Africans. Instead, all, young and old, scrawny and robust,
hungry and sated, are working, playing, interacting.

The profoundly poor health of the people in an area of such ”species rich” forests
struck another observer as well. Visiting the newly-established Ranomafana National Park
in the early 1990's, Paul Harrison noted of Ambodiavy, one of the park's model villages
and about ten kilometers from Ranotsara:

The health of Ambodiaviavy's people is among the worst I have

seen in seventeen years of travel throughout the Third World. Halfthe

children were infected with malaria, though only one in six had had fever in

the past fortnight. The children delouse one another in lines or circles of

four or ﬁve. The village is riddled with ﬂeas. It took me three days to get

rid of the ones I caught. One in six children has scabies lesions on their

hands. One in three has lesions from the jigger ﬂea. The female eats her

way into ﬂesh, covers herself with a cyst, and converts herself into a living

brood chamber, bloated with her swelling eggs. The hatched larvae eat

their way out. Locals pick the cysts out with a pinubut the sore often gets
infected.

 

an aven
lising in
of 2 kilt
These p
contribt
three ha
are malr

hobbies
aching t
seen a d

Blind, la
children

Harrisor
encOuntcrs in R
Working in the l
m”1&0"! both sj

ways

 

 

 

 

 

68

There are internal parasites. Over 90 per cent of the children have
an average of six roundworms, as big as a medium sized garden worm,
living in their stomach. One child had a hundred, with a combined weight
of 2 kilos. Half have whipworrn as well, and a third have hookworrn.
These parasites consume much of the limited food that the child eats. This
contributes heavily to child malnutrition. So does diarrhoea--one person in
three has an attack in any given fortnight. Almost six out of ten children
are malnouﬁshed--one in ten severely so.

There are the bleak cases like forty-eight-year-old-Fambelo, who

hobbles around on a stick, no longer able to dig his ﬁelds, with swollen,

aching throat and back pains. He has been seriously ill for a year but hasn‘t

seen a doctor, because he's afraid of the cost in drugs and hospital charges.

Blind, landless Miray can aﬁ'ord no treatment or help, but supports his ﬁve

children working on others' ﬁelds, feeling his way (Harrison 1992286).

Harrison’s description of sickness in Ambodiaviavy is not much diﬁ‘erent than one
encounters in Ranotsara, where just as “blind, landless Miray” supports his children by
working in the ﬁelds of others, foregoing the health treatment he so badly nwds, others
confront both similar and diﬁ‘ering fates and obligations shaping their health in multiple

ways.

Living and Working in the Forest

The hard-packed reddish earth of the village landscape is swept or trampled clean
each day, while the periphery of the village remains muddied with discarded rice husks and
the feces of pigs and children. Chickens and ducks run in and out of homes, pigs are
sometimes penned up, sometimes not, sleeping along the edge of a house, passing through
the village. Cows periodically pass in herds through the edge of the village, leaving large

puddles of feces in the yards of homes, or the paths of residents. Everyone is barefoot - a

 

few in the villas
shoes are never
There a
people, a third
roofed. Some
a new tin roof
“will; tin was
MOS! ﬂoors an
m9“); and
m“ have settli
abolll ﬁve met
through the Ce
Shutter to C105
Stories‘ With c

CaSes 8 rolled.

69

few in the village own rubber sandals to wear to market on Sundays, but in the village
shoes are never worn, and most have never had a pair put on their feet.2

There are approximately thirty homes, altogether housing from 180 to about 200
people, a third of them children or teens. Homes are mud-walled, and usually thatch-
roofed. Some houses have tin roofs, although most of these are rusted and leaking (while
a new tin roof reﬂects cash available to buy it, an older tin roof may or may not speak to
wealth; tin was more aﬁ‘ordable twenty or thirty years ago, many people could afford it).
Most ﬂoors are hard-packed earth, some are cement. Woven grass mats are rolled out for
company, and for sleeping on at night. Often the ﬂoors are covered with old worn mats
that have settled into the wet dirt ﬂoors as if a part of the earth. Most homes measure
about ﬁve meters by ﬁve (though some are as large as nine-by-six), with a wall running
through the center to mark off two rooms. Each room has a small window with a wooden
shutter to close when it rains. Two of the houses are considerably larger, having two
stories, with cement ﬂoors, vinyl-padded chairs, and even coﬁ‘ee tables. Beds are in most

cases a rolled-out grass mat on the earth ﬂoor, or laid across a bed of planks in the larger

 

2 While wearing shoes — assuming a resident could even afford them — might cut down
on the transmission of parasites, in a village surrounded by rice ﬁelds - where it is virtually
impossible to get anywhere without wading through rice ﬁelds, streams, and rivers - shoes
are impractical. Moreover, it remains necessary to remove one's shoes when entering a
home — bare feet retain and transmit much less dirt and feces than the soles of a shoe do.
To be wearing and removing shoes every time one enters a home, which is to say, several
times an hour, becomes tedious, especially since there is no place to leave the shoes during
heavy rains - and taking the time to remove them would soak a person even more. While
I began my ﬁeldwork adamantly donning my parasite-resistant Teva sandals, I soon gave
them up altogether as I experienced the incredible obstacles they presented in daily village
life and going in and out of homes.

 

homes. In a few
bugs) provides a
Possessit‘
exclusive proper
One or two six-t
quart pot for cot
boiled greens or
E’le like the n
Sleeps. All wor
SmOOthjng and rl
some haV'e two
Mel day.
Other p
few enamel-co]
Maybe a fOrk 0'
|
“Cooks. A knl

“seam“ Fl

inf - |
We”

 

70

homes. In a few cases, mattresses stuﬁ'ed with thatch or rice husks (and loaded with bed
bugs) provides a soft pallet on which to sleep.

Possessions are few. Grass mats, woven by women every May and June, are the
exclusive property of women. So are their pots and pans, although again, these are few.
One or two sixoquart aluminum covered pots for cooking rice. Maybe a smaller four-
quart pot for cooking laoka, the generic name for any sauce that goes on rice, usually
boiled greens or beans, rarely chicken, crayﬁsh, eels, pork or beef. Some baskets, woven
yearly like the mats, are used for storing the weeks' or days' supply of rice, coﬁ‘ee, or
greens. All women and older girls own a mpandrary, a well-worn jaw of a cow, used for
smoothing and tightening grass mats. All women have a plastic bucket for hauling water,
some have two. Some women have a plastic hair clip, or a pair of earrings, to wear on
market day.

Other possessions are the domain of men. They include the dishware, such as a
few enamel-covered tin bowls or plates, a few large soup-spoons for eating the rice,
maybe a fork or two, two to four tin cups, perhaps one or two plastic glasses for drinking
toaka may, the local moonshine. A large wooden spoon used by women to stir the rice as
it cooks. A knife, usually hand-made, also used by women to cut greens or other
vegetables. Farming tools are the possessions of men, even though women are as active
in farming as are the men. These include spades and knives used for farming and hunting,
as well as baskets for catching crayﬁsh, ﬁogs, and eels, empty bottles used for toaka gasy
or cooking oil, tin lamps to be ﬁlled with kerosene, perhaps an old ﬂashlight, usually
without batteries. Two homes have radios, which often provide reports of the conring

weather or national policies that may affect the farmers. Batteries, when available, are left

 

in the sun (when
have hand-power
belong to the me
for the whole far

days are far mor

 

 

 

 

 

71

in the sun (when available), a practice which sometimes helps to charge them. Two homes
have hand-powered sewing machines, much prized among the women, although they
belong to the men. Men also own the blankets, most families having one or two at most,
for the whole family to share. The temperature will often fall to the low forties; cool, wet
days are far more frequent than hot and humid ones.

One thing the residents of Ranotsara did not have was garbage. When I ﬁrst
arrived in the village and asked the children where I could throw an empty can, everyone
was perplexed. Such a thing would never be thrown away; someone seized it and took it
home. Over the next few days I proceeded to collect all my garbage, including plastic
wrappers, broken bottles, discarded batteries, wasted note paper, and the like, and asked if
there was a place to bury it. A crowd encircled me to watch me bury so much old plastic,
paper, and broken glass. Never had they had the money to buy so much, much less bury
so much. They expressed both disgust that I would be so wasteful (while I was thinking
myself ecologically correct for only throwing out what was to me so little), as well as envy
that I could be so rich as to throw away so much. It didn't matter — the pigs would root
up whatever was buried, and the children turn to toys, or their parents to utensils, all my

waste. Eventually, it was rarely necessary to throw anything away, though I continued

throughout the year to be the only one with garbage.

Other prized possessions include any type of cannister that can be tightly closed.
Because rice and soap are two of the favorite meals of rats, having a means of securing
them is a genuine need. Nestle milk tins, rare due to the egregious cost of the product, are

among the most prized, while any type of cannister discarded by foreigners will do the

 

 

trick. But her
enough for sc
purchased (at
was often can
brought her b.
hadn‘t even an
that had bitter
tired to do an)
bitten by a rat
it ate me and n

Childre
Warhead Y
which girls use

Catch birds or s

 

 

 

 

72

trick. But having tightly-closed cannisters or containers big enough to store rice, or small
enough for soap, was rare. Oﬁen women would ﬁnd that the soap or medicine they'd
purchased (at a price which they couldn't afford) had been eaten at night by the rats. Rice
was often eaten as well, although bananas could be hung out of reach. One woman
brought her baby boy to me to show me how a rat had nibbled his foot in the night and he
hadn‘t even woken. Another woman, Soa, showed me the scars on her foot left by a rat
that had bitten her in her sleep. She giggled as she described it. "I felt it, but I was too
tired to do anything but kick it,” she explained. I told her I thought it was horrible to be
bitten by a rat in your sleep. ”That’s true," she conceded, ”but that is our life, I was happy
it atemeand nottherice." Shegiggled againandaskedmeiflhadanytoakatodrink.

Children's possessions include two diﬂ‘erent types of sling-shots. The wooden and
rubber-laced Y-shaped sling-shot is owned by boys. The other type is a macraméd cord
which girls use. The slingshots are used to shoot at birds which infest the rice ﬁelds, or to
catch birds or small animals for eating.

Toky was twelve years old, but looked about nine. A grin the size of a crescent
moon, and a belly like a watermelon he was so bloated with worms, Toky is a survivor.
His father had died when he was six, and he learned at an early age to take over the tasks
of the household while his mother worked in the ﬁelds. He chopped and hauled wood for
cooking, made his own breakfast, lunch, and dinner of boiled green bananas, which he
never tired of. He roasted his own rice for snacks and cared for his little brother, iPaul,
throughout the day. There really isn't much that Toky cannot do - he is clever, ambitious,

and the best story teller in the village.

 

But he is
cost about ten 0
tillage were in t
ayoung boy's d:
Toky we.
be made from It
CTaﬁSman at it,
Once done, Tol
animals he'd 5hr
Masobe‘" he sa
Sllgar or oil fro
fate, nunless _
dangling in the
She! m Mambc
One dal

blue. He Was

 

73

But he is very poor, and not having the money to buy a length of rubber, which
cost about ten cents, he had no sling shot. When I learned that several of the boys in the
village were in the same spot as Toky, not having what was one of the most basic tools of
a young boy’s daily living, I invested about two bucks and bought them all rubber.

Toky was probably the proudest boy in the village with his new sling-shot, which
he made from the limb of a tree alter my giving him the rubber. He proved such a ﬁne
craftsman at it, that he soon found himself teaching the other boys how to make their own.
Once done, Toky boasted daily of the birds he'd caught in the rice ﬁelds, or the small
animals he'd shot to feed his family. "But don't worry,” Toky told me, "I won‘t use it on
Masobe," he said with a grin, referring to my neighbor who was forever snitching coﬂ‘ee,
sugar or oil from me. And then the grin vanished and a most serious look came across his
face, "unless ..... " and Toky's giant eyes slowly sailed toward Masobe's house, the threat
dangling in the air for just a moment too long, before he picked up the sling-shot, mimed a
shot at Masobe, and rolled on the ﬂoor cackling.

One day, a French tourist who had been hiking through the hills arrived out of the
blue. He was given a place to sleep in an unused room of a cement-ﬂoored home. He
kept to himself and showed little interest in the residents. Toky, who had been learning
English from me, was most eager to show 03‘ his new but limited language skills, not quite
understanding that white people often come from diﬁ‘erent parts of the world. As far as
Toky was concerned, this was another vazaha (foreigner), he was white, he spoke a ﬁrnny
language, he must be like me. Besides, I could speak to him (in French), so why couldn‘t
Toky speak to him as well (in English)? What I had failed to explain to Toky was that

French and English are two different languages, and that this man did not speak English.

 

Ill-1m

Toky
shortly, very
"504‘
Toky
the man had r
with pictures
"Mob
favorite new .
is not a real 1
"How
"Been
the English w
new"? knc

ignorame of !

74

Toky went to visit him, taking his new sling-shot to show off. He came back
shortly, very unhappy.

”Saay-be ianao [you are very sad]," I said to him, "inona iry [what is it]?" I asked.

Toky explained that he had gone to the vazaha's room and tried to talk to hint, but
the man had no interest in talking to him, he was more interested in reading his book ﬁlled
with pictures of lemurs and birds.

"Malta sling-shot!" he said, telling me he was going to take his sling-shot, his
favorite new word in English, and continuing in Malagasy, "shoot the tourist, because he
is not a real vazaha. "

”How do you know he is not a real mzaha?," I asked him.

”Because he does not even know the word sling-shot,” he said, emphasizing again
the English word. "I will tell the police he is a spy, or comes ﬁ'om another world.
Everyone knows sling-shot,” he exclaimed, shaking his head in amazement at the tourist's
ignorance of this most basic word. A sling-shot was, to Toky, the most basic of human
possessions, and to not recognize one was practically unhuman. And with that, Toky,
more gentle and rare than a Golden Bamboo Lemur, launched into a pantomime of doing
away with the tourist with his sling shot (right through his eye ball), chopping up his body
with a kitchen knife, washing the knife clean, chopping down and hollowing out a tree in
which to hide his body, and ﬁnally tossing the tree - loaded down with imaginary rocks ~-
into the Namorona river.

Suddenly, a sputtering of incomprehensible babble sprang from Toky whose eyes
ﬂared with rage as he jumped up with his sling shot and shook it ﬁercely. And just as

suddenly Toky's face changed to one of innocence and fear, as he threw himself on the

 

 

ﬂoor and look
folded hands. '
[he did not
laughing hyste
(He r
of the body an
me the longcs
of a policem
M5 in a for
While
om“ POSSe55i
their homewo
toys are h an d I

they Carried v

 

 

 

75

ﬂoor and looked up to an invisible presence, imploring with his sling shot held between his
folded hands, '{fa tsy olona izy [but he was not human]," he cried, ”tsyfantany sling-shot!
[he did not know sling shot!]" he explained, and with that Toky rolled again on the ﬂoor
laughing hysterically.

(He repeated this story, with more and more elaborate variations on the concealing
of the body and the interrogation by the police, for several evenings aﬁerwards. It took
me the longest time to ﬁgure out what the incomprehensible babblings were — his version
of a policeman speaking English, a disturbing reminder that authority, in Toky’s world,
speaks in a foreign tongue).

While the sling shot is perhaps the most basic possession of both boys and girls,
other possessions of children include their school books, a pen or pencil, a notebook for
their homework, and sometimes homemade wooden toys. One of the most common such
toys are hand-crafted wooden blocks which the children called "cassette radio,” and which

they carried with them, pushing wooden ”buttons” and singing their own songs.

The only other possessions the people of Ranotsara might have would be tools of
the trade, such as plates, coins, or mirrors, used by ombr'asa (shamans) for divining
misfortune or sickness, a globe owned by one of the teachers, or cow horns owned by
mpanjaka (village leaders) and used for offering ceremonial roaka. A few young men
owned kabosy, hand—crafted wooden ukeleles, which were often brought out for planned
or spontaneous parties.

Perhaps the most prized possession of both men and women are lamba, or

brightly-colored cloths. Lamba are used for clothing - wrapped over clothes, or worn

 

alone as skirt:
back, tied like
Soa's husbanc
clothes he am
[318.0, a youn
You have no
had nothing.
death yet har
Cloth
MC! or we
Change Of clc
Tsara
skinny as a st
button Or Die
Shorts as he i
to sch001. A
shorts were i
and Twah
hours a day,
..whj
Shorts?" 1 as]
. T5}:

(1an 1%

76

alone as skirts or dresses for women. They are also used for carrying children on the
back, tied like a sling. And most importantly, lamba are used to wrap the dead. When
Soa's husband, Lita, died from what appeared to be hepatitus, I remarked on how few
clothes he and his family had during his life, yet now that he was dead he had many lamba.
Lalao, a young woman and friend replied, "Yes, that is the Malagasy fomba [custom].
You have no lamba when you are alive and need clothing, but when you are dead and
need nothing, you will be well-dressed! " She appreciated the irony of having nothing until
death, yet having nothing to be buried in would be an even crueler irony.

Clothing is limited for everyone. Some have a good set of clothes, for going to
market or wearing at ceremonies, but not everyone. Yet most people have at least a
change of clothes, to wear when the others are washed.

Tsaralahy was one of the people who had no change of clothes. Six years old,
skinny as a stick, Tsaralahy had a raggy pair of shorts to wear, without so much as a
button or piece of elastic to hold them up. He could always be seen clutching his little
shorts as he ran, trying to hold them up while he played ball, stood in the doorway, walked
to school. Although I employed his mother, and gave her cloth and buttons, Tsaralahy’s
shorts were never repaired or replaced. In fact, they eventually disappeared altogether,
and Tsaralahy, covered with scabies lesions within a few months, was naked twenty-four
hours a day.

”Why doesn't his mother use the Iamba [cloth] I gave her to make him some new
shorts?" I asked some of the women.

”Tsyfantarro [I don't know]," one answered. ”She likes the cloth for herself. She
drinks toaka [homemade rum]."

 

l rem:
why his moth
repeatedly wl
school teache
was ashamed
nwd clothes I

'Wha

”He

 

 

 

 

77

I remained puzzled about Tsaralahy and why he had no clothes. I asked repeatedly
why his mother did not make him clothes. She always assured me she would. I asked
repeatedly why others did not intervene. But no one could give me a clear answer. The
school teachers had done their best, one of them, Bodo, explained. ”We told her that he
was ashamed to come to school because he has no clothes. We told her that he would
need clothes to attend school."

"What happened?” I asked.

”He stopped conring to school.”

Tsaralahy’s mother ﬁnally relinquished the Iamba she had been wearing, which I
had given to her to make her son’s shorts, when she wrapped Tsaralahy for burial on New
Years Day. Like so many other children in the village, including those well fed and well-
clothed, malaria hit suddenly and hard, and left his parents wounded and deeply scarred.
Yet the story of Tsaralahy is baﬂling because a child is so loved in Madagascar, that to
neglect one is both rare and incomprehensible. As I show in Chapter Four, however,
Tsaralahy’s neglect, and the community’s failure to intervene, were not the only such
incidents I witnessed. One question I cannot answer remains, did his mother so prize
Iwrrba that she would reserve it for herself, rather than convert it to shorts for her son?
The answer matters little, as the Ianrba could not have saved Tsaralahy, but the medicine

his parents desperately sought as his life gave way may well have.

Daily Activities
Just as dying is done in the home, so too is cooking, on a three-stoned ﬁre pit over

which corn, tobacco or, rarely, strips of beefor eel, hang to smoke. In some cases, there

 

are separate
open-walled t
lacquered-bla
light penetrat
intriguing sof
Silk. The (hit
kernels. The
sister may pe
00m“, a rat

and dipped ir

 

 

 

 

 

78

are separate homes for cooking, and in a few cases, cooking is done outside, under an
open-walled thatch roof. The walls and ceilings of homes in which one cooks are a
lacquered-black ﬁ'om the smoke, with soot-covered cobwebs enshrouding the rafters. As
light penetrates the small square of window, the sunlight illuminates the cobwebs with an
intriguing soft beauty, as if the home were draped ﬁ'om corner-to-corner with ﬁlaments of
silk. The dried ears of corn suspended over the ﬁre glow with shining black and golden
kernels. The smoke ﬁ'om the ﬁre drifts and curls into the sun, while an infant sitting by his
sister may pee a barely noticed trickle of urine onto the ﬂoor, an older man might spit in a
comer, a rat might pass unhurried along a wall. A tin cup is wiped clean with an old rag
and dipped in a pot of coffee, sweetened with sugar the hosts can‘t afford, and oﬁ‘ered to
the guest.

Concepts of health and cleanliness are different here, where a bar of soap costs a
day's wages, water doesn‘t run ﬁ'om the tap, and there is hardly any dry land twenty meters
from a house on which to build a latrine. The homes rest on an island amongst the rice
ﬁelds, and a grove of coffee trees provides the village with a natural and somewhat private
”latrine," with special areas for children and sick people.

Moreover, keeping clean is a continual challenge for farmers, who labor in wet-rice
ﬁelds, where the mud is calf-deep, and thick with worms and feces, or they work in the
hillsides, digging, planting, and chopping in the equatorial sun Women pound rice,
bananas and coffee up to two hours a day before it is even ready to cook. Children learn
to crawl and walk in the mud and dirt, because they have no alternative. Babies have no

diapers - cloth is too expensive, and so is the soap to wash them.

 

Keep
importance tl
smell bad, to
one's body h
considered d

Even
particular, 0
Younger peo
the coloniali
Po‘my that
for soap, 511

combat it. I

 

79

Keeping clean is a challenge. Still, as with everything, people differ in the
importance they give to cleanliness. To be clean was considered having hair that did not
smell bad, to have bathed recently. One could be covered with mud and still be clean, if
one's body had been washed recently, just as one could be mud and dust free, but still be
considered dirty, if one had not had a bath and smelled foul.

Even given this deﬁnition of clean, some people are cleaner than others. In
particular, older people placed more importance on bathing and cleanliness than did
younger people. This was variously attributed to the indiﬂ‘erence of youth, the stress that
the colonialists and missionaries placed upon cleanliness in the past, and the growing
poverty that makes keeping clean when one's workload increases, and yet has less money
for soap, such a constant challenge that it is easier to give up and live with ﬁlth, than to
combat it.

While I heard no end to the explanation for poor hygiene, sickness, and even
poverty, as being due to the people being too Iramo, or lazy, to do differently, this
explanation (usually oﬂ‘ered by Malagasy elite or Americans) was hardly plausible, given
the daily lives of the residents. The local economy is based on farming, and as such,
everyone works ﬁ'om sunrise to sundown, in the management of their environments.
Women rise at about four—thirty or ﬁve, nurse their babies, go to the river to bathe and
bring back water for cooking. Older girls (ﬁ'om the age of about eight) pound the rice for
breakfast, as their mothers start the ﬁre (their husbands or sons having chopped and
brought ﬁrewood), boil the water, clean the newly pounded rice, cook it, and prepare
some greens if they are available. More often, breakfast is boiled green bananas or

manioc, because for all the rice that is grown it is not enough for three meals a day all

 

through tl
(Ferraro 1

Al
school, w
at home t.
sometime
repair am
older peo
aPprcmim
hard labo

H
makers. r
the ﬁelds

The Fol.

80

through the year. The entire region has been a net importer of rice since the mid-19805
(Ferraro 1994), a period coinciding with the advent of structural adjustment policies.

After the breakfast dishes have been taken to the river and washed, children go to
schooL while their parents begin working the rice ﬁelds; older women will usually remain
at home to watch over the young children, sort beans, and cook, older men (and
sometimes women) may just gossip and drink toalra, or they may participate in housing
repair and construction. Growing poverty and social change has recently forced some
older people to work in the rice ﬁelds of the wealthier residents, for wages of
approximately 30 cents a day. For the most part, everyone is active and most engaged in
hard labor, and this hard labor is centered around agricultural production of rice.

How the production of rice has been represented by various writers and policy
makers, however, is in sharp contrast to the way that it is experienced by those who work
the ﬁelds. Inextricably linking swidden rice farming to the changing forest cover in

Madagascar, the standard representations of raw are those of destruction.

The Forest and the Land

The term for swidden agriculture in Madagascar is raw, and, ignoring the history
of rapid industrialization, mining, and export production in nineteenth century Madagascar
(discussed in detail in Chapter Two), it is a term conjured continuously to ”explain”
deforestation in Madagascar. T my is typically described as follows:

With 90 percent of the forest gone, uncounted species have lost their

habitats and become extinct, and most of the soil cover has been lost to

erosion.

This destruction is largely due to slash-and-burn agriculture.
People are constantly burning the rain forests for agricultural purposes - it

 

isd
andI

teal.

pro
bet

Mt
- and it is.
trees reduc
uﬁcks,re
bunungth
to the im

Yielding ri

 

dklpaui
me to {a},

andlhad

fares: is

farmers‘

81

is the way they make a living. First, the villagers burn the virgin rain forest
and plant crops in the fertile burned areas. But since the soil loses its
fertility in 3 or 4 years under these conditions, ﬁelds soon cease to be
productive and so the farmers move on to another patch of rain forest and

begin the cycle again (Wright 1993:451).

Most images of law that are presented to the public focus on its destructive aspect
— and it is, indeed, destructive to forest cover. Photos of law suggest burned hillsides,
trees reduced to stubble. References in policy documents, and academic and popular
articles, refer to it as "slash-and-burn,” illuminating the practice of chopping the trees,
burning the ”virgin” forest, abandoning ﬁelds. This image, however, does not correspond
to the inmge of (my that many farmers hold. Farmers refer to any as inter-cropped ﬁelds,
yielding rice, manioc, maize, beans, greens, and other crops. Indeed, as I walked along a
dirt path with twelve-year old Kalapiso, she pointed to a ﬁeld of ripe manioc, and asked
me to take a photo, telling me that ravy is not just burned earth, which we had just passed
and I had photographed, it is also food and therefore, life.

The life of the forest, then, is inseparable from the lives of the residents. While the
forest is typically characterized as an intact ecosystem threatened by encroaching tavy
farmers, it is viewed diﬁ‘erently by the people who live and work within in. To the
residents of Ranotsara, the did, or forest, is the land in which they and their ancestors live
and die, their source of sustenance. Viewing the forest as both their past, present, and
future, they do not see themselves as outside it - rather, they view those who seek to keep
them out of it as outsiders of the forest.

In addition, the forest is not perceived by the residents of Ranotsara as a bounded
environment - the forest extends to the village, having multiple terrains, textures, and

transitions. What I and others have termed “the village” is to the residents the tanana, or

82

community (itself a problematic concept, with ever-changing patterns of residence and
alliance that I discuss in more detail in Chapter Three).

The tanana is a part of, or within, the forest landscape. Dense forest, incorrectly
termed ”virgin" forest by many Westerners seeking to capture a paradoxical image of
undeﬁled growth, is more precisely termed ala be [great forest] by those who live with the
trees, and distant forest is called My. As the forest is transformed from a landscape of
undomesticated to domesticated sustenance through the process of tary, it passes through
stages. Whereas an etic view of swidden horticulture speaks of plots left fallow, the
Malagasy forest farmers view regenerating land as jinja; as this land is planted with cash
crops, it becomes hibohibo. Each of these stages is valued for providing essential
resources to those who manage the "fallow. "

Taiy itself has two stages, as Hanson (1997:36) explains:

Mitaty ala and many kapolra are the two phrases used to describe the

clearing, burning and planting of primary forest and healthy secondary

forest respectively. The Tanala also refer to swidden as manazava tarry (to

make the land clear) and manadr'o tarry (to clean the land). The ambivalent

and complex attitudes the Tanala maintain toward forested land is apparent

as one considers these phrases. For while forested land is thought to be

"cluttered" and "wild”, vegetation is also the sign of land that is still fertile -

land that still has tsiro (taste).

T my, therefore, is as much a part of the forest environment and process as is a
dark and tangled grove of trees. The forest is alive and moving, and diﬂ‘ering faces of the
forest provide differing needs.

The contrast between local views of the land and forest, and state and project
views of the forest as a degraded landscape caused by swidden farming, is not limited to

Madagascar. Fairhead and Leach (1996) noted that scientists and policy-makers have,

 

 

'natura}

interact

Preludiq
be ignm
control
Colonial

”identil

 

8'
A“ A.
—

ﬂ

4

83

since the late nineteenth centruy, considered the patchy landscape of Guinea's forest cover
to reﬂect a process of continued degradation, also associated with swidden farming.
Incorporating historic photographs of the region with maps and local narratives, the
authors found that contrary to representing a progressive loss of forest cover, the patchy
landscape was, in fact, a reﬂection of both stable and progressive forest growth. That is,
despite the received view that there had been an original vegetative state ﬁ'om which the
present landscape could be used to infer degradation, forest cover had either been
relatively stable or had actually increased with time. Fundamental to the received view,
they suggest, is the fallacy of a climatic climax vegetation in which there exists a state of
”natural" vegetation in a given region, which remains unchanged except by human
interaction.

Fairhead and Leach (1996) argue that contemporary environmental policy's reﬂect
prejudices and assumptions of colonial science, in which local inhabitants were assumed to
be ignorant of the land, and colonial administrative policies regarding land and resource
control shaped ways of thinking about local land and resource practices. The objectives of
colonial policy thereby inﬂuenced the methodologies of colonial science, leading to
”scientiﬁc” legitimation of uninformed assumptions.

Colonial science developed not only ideas concerning forest loss,

but also methodologies for elucidating vegetation change which became

and have remained 'authoritative'. Central has been the deduction of long-

term change from snapshot or short-term observations, inferring process

from form. Thus it is that forest islands appear as relics indicating a

historical process of forest loss; a deduction now made not only from on-

the-ground botanical, forestry and vegetation survey observations, but also

when forest islands appear in remotely-sensed imagery (F airhead and Leach
1996:] I4).

 

practice

inCOFDOI
Fairheac
moveme

SCierice.

 

m~
...

mnw—s

 

uﬁxﬁm

”(7'71

p—ue-O
A

 

84

Fairhead and Leach point to the need for historical research to understand the
different processes that shape how landscapes change unevenly. Feeley-Harnik
(1995:55fn) raises this same point for Madagascar, suggesting that remote-sensing
analyses of the island have been used to attribute changes in forest cover in the eastern
regions of Madagascar, without addressing problems related to the baseline data such
analyses use to assess rates of deforestation. She points to how reports of deforestation
trends in Madagascar regard Malagasy agriculturalists as an undifferentiated group, and
have not considered the major historical transformations of land use and land tenure in
Madagascar, processes which have contributed to the complexity of present land use
practices.

Feeley-Harnik suggests that the faulty methodology of science has been
incorporated into contemporary conservation policy in Madagascar. In this same way,
Fairhead and Leach (1996) ﬁnd that in West Aﬁica, the popularity of conservation
movements have enabled the contemporary Guinee state to continue replicating colonial
science.

Scientists and others have also repeatedly observed Kissidougou's
landscape ﬁ'om a social position which made forest destruction logical, and
attention to local inhabitants' opinions difﬁcult or unimportant. Racialist,
pejorative views of African farming and forestry practices came to
dominate Guinee's colonial administrations. The preconceived opinions
and hurried visits of today's foreign experts, and the attitudes and training
of urban-based state ﬁrnctionairies, compound such views. It can be
argued that the image of the rural farmer as environmental destroyer, and
hence the need for modernization of resource management and farming
techniques, conforms to and helps to justify the self-distinction of urban
intellectuals as 'modern' and progressive; distinctions reinforced under the
First Republic when the urbanized were politically and economically
privileged, and their vision of a highly mechanized, capital-intensive

technical future dominated approaches to rural development [Riviere,
1971] (Fairhead and Leach 1996:114, 115).

 

plants
persist
fthCSr

of Ma.
growir

v

TheA

(Qty pr

descn'r

 

85

Feeley-Harnik (1995:45) echoes this comment, "Yet the older arguments opposing
plants to people, and primordial 'slash-and-burn' planters to modern world citizens,
persist. " Land management practices in rural areas are indeed much more complex than
representatives of the state or conservation projects may represent them to be. In the case
of Madagascar, the process of tary cultivation is not the simple, lazy-man's habit of
growing a garden that the term ”slash-and-burn" suggests, but is instead a labor-intensive

agricultural strategy that regenerates the land as much as depletes it.

The Agricultural System of the Ranomafana Region

Hanson (1997:37-39) provides a model description of how farmers manage the
(my process -— and how this labor contrasts with how it is perceived by outsiders. His
description merits quoting at length:

Contrary to the implications of the phrase 'slash-and-bum', raw land
preparation proved to be a complex process indeed. In late August,
Botovelona began chopping down the small trees and larger shrubs
constituting the forest under story (manaratsaka, or (my zanakazo). Then,
working with a large ax (famaky, and-om), he felled the larger trees
(mandavo sangy), careﬁrl to direct them in such a sway that they might
help prevent soil erosion during the torrential rains. For a month and a
half, Botovelona waited for the newly cut vegetation to dry in the sun
(manar‘na tangy), and in mid-October, he burned (manor-o raw). Before
burning, Botovelona prayed to Zanahary [God] and the forest spirits
(falrasiry) to request permission to burn. After waiting for a few days for
the land to ”cool”, Botovelona then when through the ﬁeld checking for
trees that were not dried in the ﬁre.

In November, Botovelona, his immediate family, and those relatives
he could enlist ﬁ'om his kin cooperative began planting. Before planting,
however, Botovelona performs a sac-tarry sotra (a simple thanks to the
earth), asking Zanahary and the forest spirits for their blessing. Then the
planters move in a line across the steep ﬁeld poking a stick sharpened at
one end (ﬁtonrboka) into the ground and dropping two to three seeds into
the holes. In the ﬁrst (my planting, Botovelona plants rice, preferably
tarrmasr’na or rombarongo . the two preferred varieties of upland seed.

 

 

 

prOle:
Conn;
cont-e
enVirr
are m

then,

86

Beingizina and vary malady are also planted in the tray, yet these are
generally less favored. The ﬁrst rice is often intercropped with cucumber,
corn, and various greens. In January and February, the ﬁelds must be
weeded (miava). The guarding of the ﬁeld against fody occurs in March
and April, and the ﬁeld is ﬁnally harvested in April and May. The reaping
of law rice is variously labeled mipitika vary, misongo vary, and mila vary
and involves clipping the tops of the plants (the salohim-bary) with a small
knife (karima). T my rice yields in the ﬁrst year are generally low,
averaging 0.5tons/hectare (RNPP 1990:6). Botovelona now waits until
August to once again weed the ﬁeld and to turn it over into clods
(nraniﬁkrﬁka). He waits two weeks and burns the plot again. In
September, Botovelona plants beans and corn and harvests these crops in
December. After planting rice in his any ﬁeld for two years in a row,
Botovelona faces a number of choices. He can go ahead and plant rice for
another 2-3 years, intercropping it with a wide range of vegetables.
However, this choice quickly deteriorates the soils fertility. He may
decide, on the other hand, to dedicate the plot to bananas or coﬁ‘ee trees.
While bananas generally take only one year to produce results, coﬂ‘ee can
take up to seven or eight. IfBotovelona does choose the cash crop option
for his ﬁeld, he can no longer plant rice there and must look for an
additional plot. The decision faced by the farmer after two years of rice in
a any ﬁeld is inﬂuenced by such factors as whether or not he has other
plots to work with and if he can readily borrow rice during the period his
cash trees grow.

The complexity of the options facing Botovelona in his tary ﬁeld
stand in stark contrast to most representations of tary farming in
Madagascar as easy and simple. Nothing could be ﬁrrther ﬁom the truth.
In fact, the farmer's strategy of how, when, and what to plant in his upland
ﬁelds could spell the difference between famine and survival should a heavy
storm during the cyclone season submerge and rot his valley crops.

”Deforestation" and even "the forest," then, are complex concepts, which the
project has not even attempted to understand. Hanson’s perspective reveals a sharp
contrast from those who have already deﬁned the problem. Likewise, my own
conversations with residents revealed that contrary to not understanding the processes of
environmental degradation associated with swidden production, the residents of Ranotsara

aremoreconcemedwithforestlandthanforesttrees,becauseitisthelandtlratsustains

them. ”We need the land,” Masobe, an elder village male explains, "but not the forest. But

 

 

the la:
under.
the vii

CCIllS (

the for
(irriga
need c

for Chi

that th

iﬂi el'Te

Bur in

 

settle ‘

87
the land is not enough, if we do not have enough workers to work the land." Masobe

understands the value of workers - his wife has died, and his only living child residing in
the village has, like many others, begun working for wages of 1,500 frng a day (about 30
cents at the time of my research), for a wealthier resident who owns irrigated rice ﬁelds.

Bodo, a 32 year old village school teacher and mother of ﬁve girls, elaborates.
"Land is more important than the trees. Even though we have learned about the animals in
the forest, we need food more than trees. There are people who don‘t have tam'm—bary
(irrigated rice ﬁelds) and so they need tary. And for those who have ram'rrr-bwy, they
need chemical inputs. For those who are poor, who don't have tam'rrr-bary or the money
for chemical inputs, they need the forest for (my. "

Masobe and Bodo’s suggestions that the land and trees are separate does not mean
that they do not understand the ecological relationship between land and trees. As
Hanson’s description reveals, tary farmers possess sophisticated understandings of the
interrelationship between land and trees and that trees are necessary to prevent erosion.
But they have been presented with a conservation ethic that itself separates trees from
land, by emphasizing the value of trees. In response, Masobe and Bodo have sided with
the land.

When suﬁcient land is available to farmers for allowing any ﬁelds to remain
fallow for ten to ﬁfteen years (which some outsiders refer to as 'abandoning”), it proves to
be a sustainable agricultural strategy. Nonetheless, as populations have been forced to
settle in villages and remain stationary, and as current privatization of lands have
prevented farmers from migrating, the land base has been diminished, fallow periods

shortened, and more and more people forced to increase (my production.

 

 

 

with i

differ:
Ranot
labor

ﬁelds.

will bl,
have t
familn
Subset-

tree rc

Plant 1

makin

Flame.

 

been

88

The current agricultural system employed by subsistence farmers combines (any
with irrigated rice agriculture and cash crop production. Rather than representing three
diﬁ‘erent types of agricultural systems, the land is farmed as a single system in which three
different cropping strategies are practiced simultaneously to maximize yields. In
Ranotsara, the majority of farmers where I lived owned tary ﬁelds exclusively, lacking the
labor and suitable land for irrigated rice, while a minority owned (or rented) irrigated rice

ﬁelds. Most all had some sort of cash crop land, such as bananas or coffee.

The daily work is seasonal, yet certain patterns are maintained. The wet-rice ﬁelds
will be prepared by the men using arrgady, long-handled, narrow-based spades, after cattle
have trampled the ﬁelds (while a generation ago every family owned cattle, now only three
families in the village have any cows, with most belonging to one family, to be discussed
subsequently). T my ﬁelds are cleared with army-be (big knives), and burned, after which
tree roots are dug up by men.

After the ﬁelds are prepared for sowing, women and young girls work in teams to
plant the rice. This can be very arduous work, because it requires being bent over for
hours at a time. Moreover, the wet-rice ﬁelds are infested with parasites and feces,
making it a rather unhealthy environment in which to work. Once the rice has been
planted, it must be weeded daily. While weeding is primarily the responsibility of women,
the recent shift to wage labor in Ranotsara has necessitated some men and young boys to
begin participating in this activity.

When the crops are mature, they must be harvested, which is the responsibility of

both men and women. Taty rice is the easiest to care for and to harvest, although the

89

steep terrain of the ﬁelds make it a bit difﬁth to work. T avy rice is cut off in stalks with
a small home-crafted blade, while a large sickle is used for cutting wet-rice. While both
men and women will cut any rice, only men and boys cut wet-rice. Women and girls then
thresh the rice to remove it from the stalks. The rice is then ready to dry in the sun, later

to be stored and pounded.

Other crops that must be planted, weeded, and harvested include beans and
manioc, both important dietary staples. In addition, most families either own, or tend,
banana and coffee trees, which provide an important cash crop.

The farming activities of all adult men and women can take from four to eight
hours of every day; the only time they have oﬁ‘ is in the event of a death (in which case all
but essential work ceases for three days), if there is an important festival, or if a
govermnerrtal or health representative comes to the village. In addition to the daily
farming and cooking activities, water must be hauled from the river at least twice a day,
clothes must be washed, children cared for, houses repaired, medicines collected and
prepared, ﬁrewood collected and chopped, ﬁsh traps set in the river, tools crafted, and
trips made to the market to purchase supplies or sell crops. The day usually ends at

sundown for the men, a bit later for the women who must wash the dinner dishes.

The Labor and Education of Children
It is not possible, however, for the adults of the village to ﬁnish a days' work in a
day. The labor of children is vital to the productivity of the household and village.

Children contribute to the household by watching younger children (primarily the

 

 

 

res
pre
and

fort

resit
marl
recoz
who
impo;
childr
their (

foam

9O
responsibility of girls, but also of boys), by helping prepare the meals (in some cases,
preparing them alone, while their parents work the ﬁelds), pounding the rice, collecting
and chopping wood, and working in the ﬁelds for wages and meals, or if their parents are
fortunate enough to own and control their own ﬁelds, by assisting their parents.

About one-quarter mile from the village is the two-room village school. Two
resident teachers instruct two levels of students; lessons include reading, writing, and
mathematics. There is minimal instruction beyond that. Few children or youths can
recognize Madagascar on a world map, while I found none who were locally educated
who could identify Aﬁica, the United States, or France. Nonetheless, school is vitally
important to most every parent, who will sacriﬁce their own needs in order to pay for their
children's pencils and notebooks. The school teachers, however, have few supplies of
their own, and must depend upon very old curriculum guides, limited chalk, and tattered
foam for erasers.

School begins after breakfast, and lasts until about three, with a two hour break for
lunch. After school, most children take their sling-shots to the rice ﬁelds and scare oﬁ‘ the
birds as they feed at the end of the day. Other children go to the forest to catch insects or
small game for protein, while others (young boys) go to the forest to tend the cattle and

guide them ﬁ'om ﬁeld to ﬁeld.

Regional Links
Administratively speaking, Ranotsara is situated in the faritany (province) of
Fianarantsoa, with the ﬂmndronana (sub-province, or local political seat) in Ifananadiana,

approximately 32 kilometers east of Ranotsara. Despite its proximity, Ifanadiana remains

.—

 

 

 

 

 

distant. Tl
the souther
and-a-halfl
the eight kil
6,000 fmg f:
representing
taken care 01
additional 6,(
Such
“median in

houMnd-aha

mp is 0ﬁen ye

91

distant. The nearest road is Highway 25, which runs 205 kilometers from Fianarantsoa in
the southern highlands, to Mananjary on the eastern coast. Highway 25 is about a one-
and-a-half hour strenuous hike from Ranotsara. To reach Ifanadiana, one must ﬁrst bike
the eight kilometers over the mountains to the main road, await a local taxi-browse, pay
6,000 ﬁng for one-way fare (approximately $1.50 at the time of my ﬁeldwork, and
representing four to ﬁve days' wages for most villagers), and hope that business can be
taken care of in time to catch a taxi-browse returning, for which one must pay an
additional 6,000 ﬁng.

Such a trip often requires spending the night with extended family or ﬁiends in
Ifanadiana, in order to take care of all business and get back before nightfall, then hike the
hour-and-a-half over the mountains to return to the village. In the rainy season, such a
trip is often very diﬁicult, if not impossible. In addition to having to hike and climb over
the slippery muddied path, there are three rivers to be crossed; in the rainy season, one of
these rivers must be crossed by way of a long single log set across the banks of the river --
requiring a challenging balancing act on the slick wet trunk, particularly difﬁcult if one is
carrying a child on the back, a basket ofbananas on the head (to be sold at market), and a
toddler in the arms. This river alone discourages many women from even making the trip,
regardless of its necessity (while others skip merrily along defying gravity).

A second river is crossed by wading knee-to-waist deep across its width, but then
one must cross massive Namorona river, which must be crossed by way of a bamboo raﬁ,
similar in design to a pirogue. Not everyone, however, knows how to maneuver the raﬁ,
particularly women. Consequently, when one reaches the river, if the raft is waiting and

they or someone accompanying them, or by chance reaching the bank at the same time,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

knows hov
the other si
is not, then
traveled, su
setting in a
youth or late
Dun]
torrential rail
09mm), as
um30mmon fc
A Communal .
Wages that d

every ﬂinch c

Unavailable {Or

 

 

92

knows how to steer it, they can cross without problem. On the other hand, if the raft is on
the other side of the river, with no skipper in sight, or if the raft is available but a skipper
is not, then one must wait. Because the path from the villages to the main road is heavily
traveled, such a wait is never very long, no more than an hour at most, (unless the sun is
setting, in which case, travelers have returned home, except for the occasional drunken
youth or late-comer).

During the rainy season, however, this raft is frequently unavailable. The heavy
torrential rains that pour ﬁom January to April (continuing, though much lighter, until
October), as well as ﬁequent cyclones, oﬁen destroy the raft. During my stay it was not
uncommon for the raft to be repaired one morning, only to be destroyed the same night.
A communal eﬁ‘ort contributes to the maintenance of this raﬁ. Young men from the ﬁve
villages that depend upon it take turns repairing it or building a new one; unfortunately,
every time it came the turn of the men ﬁom Ranotsara to repair the raft, it remained
unavailable for weeks at a time. Residents ﬁ'om other villages continually chided the men
from Ranotsara for their laziness, a reputation that was even invoked by project
representatives to explain the alarming death rate. The men ﬁom Ranotsara responded
that it was useless to repair the raft, it would only be smashed the following night, so why
bother? Instead, they could wade shoulder-deep across the river, as long as they followed
the safest route, or they could hike through the cane ﬁelds to the shallowest spot in the
river, having no need ofthe raﬁ.

The route through the cane ﬁelds, however, is very narrow, diﬁicult, and almost
impossible to traverse for pregnant women or women with small children. Moreover, it is

a favorite haven of boa constrictors, which most women fear (there are no poisonous

 

 

 

snakes in Me
was up to [ill
the women it
tired of waiti:
before a raﬁ r
obstacle to tr.
as to whether

Despir
Mama ar
there every m
distribute the
M” ““1 Day I
privatization r
there. AﬂyOn
or at least to F
some“, or it
Ramada,“ are
make.

The ne.
along the "lain
mos: fanners 0

Oil, map, Sugazl

 

 

93

snakes in Madagascar, but they do get very big). As such, when the raft was gone and it
was up to the men of Ranotsara to repair it, you could be sure that it would be a while and
the women would be angry. Sometimes, residents of one of the other villages would get
tired of waiting and they would go ahead and repair it, other times, it might be a month
before a raft was repaired. At any rate, the raft to cross the river was a continuous
obstacle to travel, and during the rainy season a trip was never ventured without inquiring
as to whether or not there was a raft.

Despite the diﬁculties one encounters in order to reach the main highway, trips to
Ifanadiana are essential for the two local schoolteachers, at least one of whom must go
there every month to collect their governmental pay - often to ﬁnd no one available to
distribute the money, and therefore requiring an overnight stay until someone shows up
who can pay them. And anyone wishing to register land, as the national policy of land
privatization requires, must go there. Anyone wishing to access dental services must go
there. Anyone needing any health care beyond the most basic primary care must go there,
or at least to Ranomafana. Anyone needing to press civil or criminal charges against
someone, or having such charges pressed against them, must go there. In short, trips to
Ifanadiana are ﬁ'equently necessary, and entail considerable time, eﬁort, and money, to
make.

The nearest and most commonly-used market for residents of Ranotsara is also
along the main road, just across the Namorona river, in the hamlet of MoraToky. For
most farmers of Ranotsara, MoraToky is where rice, bananas and coffee will be sold, and

oil, soap, sugar, or petrol purchased. About a ten-minute walk from MoraToky, also

 

 

along the r

market cer

In Hot “'1

Wit
century, at
"black stonr
into a celeb
twentieth or

89d the Villa

94
along the main road, is the town of Ranomafana, which also serves as a very important

market center.

In Hot Water: The Transformation of Ranomafana

With the onset of French colonial rule in Madagascar at the end of the nineteenth
century, a thermal hot springs was discovered near the village of Vatomainty (meaning
"black stone"). By the 1940's, the French had transformed the surrounding community
into a celebrated resort for medical treatment and cure. During the ﬁrst part of the
twentieth century, a multitude of healers and chronically ill people migrated to the area
and the village of Vatomainty was renamed Ranomafana (”hot water”). Throughout the
period of colonial occupation, Ranomafana was popular as a resort town ﬁequented by
European and elite Malagasy ﬁom urban areas, while the surrounding rural communities
remained dependent on subsistence farming.

In the early 1970s, a Japanese-constructed hydroelectric power dam was
constructed in Ranomafana to provide electricity to Fianarantsoa and a saw-mill located
near there, as well as to Ifananadiana and the businesses and homes of non-local residents
of Ranomafana. The dam utilized local labor with non-local Malagasy supervisors
(Hardenbergh 1993). Hardenbergh (1993 :75) suggests that the presence of non-local
personnel for the dam, along with increased purchases by the family of the gendamrerr’e,
sent by the state around 1970 to stop thievery, contributed to increased market prices in
Ranomafana By the mid 1980s, Ranomafana had become a very important market center
for residents residing in the nearby forest villages, such as Ranotsara. While daily

commerce continued in MoraToky, Ranomafana had attracted numerous outsiders and

 

 

outside n
residing i;

there at I:

95

outside money, thereby positioning it as a central market center. Virtually everyone
residing in Ranotsara has family in Ranomafana, and during my stay most residents visited
there at least once a month, while others, primarily the old, visited Ranomafana rarely.

In the late 1980s, however, the role of Ranomafana in the lives of residents of
Ranotsara, changed dramatically beyond its role as a local market for goods. During that
time, a primatology research team from Duke University visited the Ranomafana region to
locate and assess endangered lemur populations. Accompanied by local guides, the
researchers were shown several species of lemur which live in the forests of the region.
One of these lemurs, the Golden Bamboo Lemur, was unknown to Western scientists, and
another, the Greater Bamboo Lemur, was believed to be extinct. Following this ﬁnd by
Westerners, serendipitously coinciding with the 1986 US. Foreign Assistance Act which
mandated that USAID link development aid with environmental protection, and with
USAID's own declaration of Madagascar as a priority for such aid, one of the researchers
involved in the Duke project contracted with the Malagasy government to have 41,500
hectares of the local forests declared a protected area, while she pursued, and
subsequently secured, US. funds to establish a National Park in the region. Consequently,
on August 14, 1990, through a grant agreement between Duke University and USAID, the
Ranomafana National Park Project (RNPP) was thus born as the administrating agency
responsible for launching the Ranomafana National Park during its early years, and was
incorporated into USAID's Sustainable Approaches to Viable Environmental Management
(SAVEM) programs. The Project thereby became one of USAID/SAVEM‘s six

Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDP's) in Madagascar.

96

With the creation of the Ranomafana National Park Project, the Ranomafana area
was once again host to foreigners and urban-based elite Malagasy who have, historically,
been viewed by those living in rural areas more as foreign oppressors, than as national
compatriots. The arrival of the foreigners has, however, also brought with it the
opportunity for some people to prosper from commerce with the outsiders. In the town of
Ranomafana, which is centrally located in the forested area, those who own restaurants,
hotels, or Western-styled housing have been advantaged, while prices for local goods and
produce have increased beyond the purchasing ability of most local residents. Hanson
(1997:41,42) notes that

over the last ﬁve years, prices in the Ranomafana market have skyrocketed.

People in Ambodiaviavy believe that these increases are due to the

numerous vazaha (foreigners) attending the market. Ecological tourists

ﬁ'om all over the world visit the RNP and before entering the forest, stock-

up with provisions bought at the local market. Believing that most vazaha

”have wealth” (manan-lrarena), the salespeople raise the prices of ﬁ'uits an

vegetables. These merchants are then reluctant to sell such produce to area

residents as they are never sure when the next tourist will arrive.

Hanson further points out that of these merchants working in the Ranomfana
market, only two claimed that their ancestral lands were located in the region; the
remaining were merchants were from large cities and were primarily

Thus, while the project promotes an image of empowering local communities
through economic development, it is clear that beneﬁciaries are not necessarily those who
have relinquished rights to the forest. The project makes no secret of its “trickle-down”
approach, in which prosperity of local elites is considered a ﬁrst-step toward economic
development.

Many programs are top-down or bottom-up, but the middle should also not
be ignored. Skilled entrepreneurs and businessmen can be helpful in

97

implementation. If these people feel the project is assisting the local
economy, they can give useﬁrl advice and assistance (Wright 1993 : 18).

Nor do those prohibited entry from the forest necessarily stay out. Recognizing
that local residents did not necessarily respect the authority of the outsiders, the project
hired local residents to “monitor” the agricultural practices and forest activities of their
families and neighbors. With ﬁnes and, in a few cases, imprisonment (which stopped when
one man died in prison after being incarcerated for taking timber from the forest) having
limited success, the project incorporated a coercive element into its plans.

Attempts to protect some of the remaining forests by creating a national

park, however, brought us directly up against the villagers. For the people

of Madagascar, our preservation efforts were obstacles to their use of their

own natural resources. They use forest products such as thatch for the

construction of houses, as food, and as medicines, and of course they clear

the forests for crop land.

Therefore we went around to each of the small villages in the area

and explained to the villagers that we wanted to help them preserve their

wildlife and would be willing to make an exchange for their cooperation

with the Department of Water and Forestry (Wright 1990:452, emphasis

added).

Thus, when the National Park was established, use of the forest was prohibited.
As such, ﬁrrther shifting cultivation of forested land was and remains prohibited, along
with collecting ﬁrel wood, ﬁsh, medicinal plants, hunting, or foraging. Only researchers,
scientists, and people purchasing a permit are permitted to enter the forest. At the time of
my ﬁeldwork, the cost of a permit to enter the forest was approximately $15 -- clearly
beyond the purchasing ability of a local resident who might make as little as 30 cents a
day. Whattoaforest farmerwashisorherancestral land, tobeusedwhenneeded orto

be passed to one‘s children, is now land that he or she can no longer even walk upon, no

98

matter how many decades one has lived in the shade of the forest's trees. But a tourist or
a ”researcher" like myselfcan arrive from Antananarivo or Andafy, that mythical land
where all the white people come from, and spend a day in the forest enjoying its pristine

beauty, or a year there earning a living or degree.

The Ranomafana National Park Project
The objective of the Ranomafana National Park Project (RNPP) is
to preserve the biological diversity and ecosystems of the park through a
program linking conservation of the core park area with improved
standards of living and income alternatives within the surrounding
peripheral zone3 (RNPP 1994:2).
The project was intended to provide administrative and technical support during
the early stages of the park, in order to ensure its long-term success.
The objective of this project is to help preserve the biological diversity and

ecosystems of the newly created Ranomafana National Park through an
integrated program linking conservation of the core park area with

 

3

The "peripheral zone” has proven to be an elastic concept in the minds of park
administration. Initially, it was to include any village or community within ﬁve kilometers
of the Park boundaries. During my stay, Park administrators told me that the peripheral
zone would be reduced to three kilometers, because this was shown to be the zone which
mostirnpactedtheforestsinthe region, whileatthesametirne, Iwasinformedby one
senior project administrator that the peripheral zone of the park had been extended to
include all regions in the southeast to ensure that any research undertaken complied with
the objectives of the project (Director of RNPP Antananarivo Oﬂice, personal
communication, January 1995). This view was upheld by other project administrators, as
discussed in Appendix 11. When residents of Ranotsara sought project assistance for
health and agricultural projects, they were sometimes told that they no longer resided in
the peripheral zone, and therefore, were ineligible for such assistance, while surveillance of
their farming activities continued. Residents were not at all clear on whether or not they
were ”within” the peripheral zone, nor was 1, despite my numerous questions in this
regard. Indeed, the peripheral zone was at any time from three to twenty-ﬁve kilometers
from the Park boundaries, depending upon the objectives of the project.

 

99

sustained development within a surrounding buffer zone. The project seeks

to: (I) prevent ﬁrrther degradation of natural resources through alternatives

to slash and burn agriculture, (2) increase agricultural and forest

productivity, (3) strengthen Malagasy institutions and technical and

research capacity, and (4) study and analyze the area's rich biology

(U SAID n/d28).

The park is nationally supervised through the auspices of the World Bank and
USAID-funded Association Nationale pour la Gestion d'Aires Protégées (AN GAP)
which, from 1990 to 1995, was responsible for implementing the national plan for
biodiversity protection and training, and for coordinating the peripheral zone development
activities. From 1995 to the present, it has taken the lead in managing the park itself, as
well as overseeing the continued operations of the project.

The project was organized into two phases. Phase I (1990.1993) was a planning
and design phase, in which comprehensive baseline socioeconomic and biological data
were to have been collected, the park boundaries established and demarcated, the
infrastructure developed, and the peripheral zone development activities implemented.
Twenty-six villages were targeted as "pilot villages” to participate in conservation and
development activities and receive strategic and ﬁnancial assistance. Phase II (1994-1996)
was intended to ”build on the research, data collected, and lessons learned during the ﬁrst
phase of the project...successﬁrl on—going activities will be continued in the original pilot
villages while some project activities may extend beyond the 5km peripheral zone to
provide a regional perspective and approach" (RNPP 1994zi).

A central tenet held in the creation ofthe park is that it does not exist in a

vacuum. People living in the peripheral zone are integral parts of the

ecosystem, and it is recognized that biological diversity of the core area can

be preserved only if local residents beneﬁt ﬁom and actively participate in
the management of area resources. In order to progress towards the

100
project goal of conservation of biological diversity and ecosystems of

Ranomafana National Park, the objective of the RNPP during Phase II
is:

To diminish human pressures on the protected area through
the introduction of sustainable agricultural systems,
alternative income sources, and the sound management of
natural resources of local communities.

Means to the objective include the implementation of an integrated

conservation and development project linking sustainable management and

utilization of natural resources with increased socio-economic levels of

residents in the peripheral zone (RNPP l994zii, emphasis in the original).

Project activities included increasing the productivity of staple and market crops,
facilitating sustainable utilization of forest products, initiating alternative means of income
generation, developing non-consumptive alternatives to forest use (particularly eco-
tourism), and developing a protected area infrastructure.

The central theme in the RNPP will be the linkage of forest and natural

resources to improved socio-economic conditions. By establishing this

linkage through project activities, it is anticipated that local residents will

have an increased awareness of the value of natural resources, that local

residents will perceive empowerment over the management of area

resources, that they will gain incentives for conservation of the resource

and the project goal can be achieved (RNPP 1994zii).

The Project seeks to transform the economic structure of the community from
subsistence hillside farming to a {tee market economy, with a heavy emphasis on wet-rice
paddy production, eco-tourism, and international marketing of renewable resources. In so
doing, it adopts a theoretical position of participatory, sustainable development. How
villagers were to be integrated into the Project remained problematic. Nevertheless,
integration was initially sought through the (loosely-deﬁned) participation of the twenty-

six original ”pilot villages,” one of which was Ranotsara.

1 01

...we went around to each of the small villages in the area and explained to

the villagers that we wanted to help them preserve their wildlife and would

be willing to make an exchange for their cooperation with the Department

of Water and Forestry. Their responses revealed just how low their levels

of public health actually were. Above all, they wanted access to medicines

and to hospitals; they had no medical facilities at all, but they wanted their

people to be healthy (Wright 1990:452,453).

The villagers of Ranotsara well remember the 1986 visit of the Principal
Investigator of the Project. ”She came here with a notebook and she was very ﬁiendly,”
Faly, a village leader recalled, “She told us we could no longer go into the forest or burn
tangy. She said ifwe stayed out of the forest, they would help us. She asked us what we
needed, and we told her there was much sickness, we needed doctors and medicines. And
we told her our school needed supplies, and if we did not burn law, we needed chemical
inputs and fertilizers for the tanim-bary, and jobs for people who do not have tanim-bary.
She wrote everything down, and then she drank some toaka with us, and she left. We
never saw her again, but after that, some doctors came to see how sick we were.”

Faly's wife, Nuina, picked up the conversation at this point. She was very excited
and, as often with her, laughing so hard she could hardly keep from coughing and hacking.
"Yes, the doctors came, and they all had plates with them. They were very nice plates,
like the white ones you have,” she said, laughing, hacking, and pointing to me, as she
referred to my white enamel covered tin plates, “we thought they were very nice vazahas,
to give everyone these plates, we thought at ﬁrst they were like the missionaries, to give

us such a nice gift. And every family got enough plates for each of their children. But

then they told us what they wanted us to do with them! ! !” Nrrina and all present began to

102
laugh hysterically at the memory of a team of public health specialists who distributed
plates to be used to collect fecal sammes of children in order to measure parasitical loads.
We began by conducting a survey of the villagers in order to

determine exactly what their health needs were; the results painted a grim

picture indeed. Water in the villages contains all manner of waterborne

diseases. Fifty percent of the people had malaria during the cold season

when you couldn't even ﬁnd a mosquito. Infant mortality is extremely high,

and half of the children are malnourished; 97 percent of the children had

wornrs of some sort. Sanitation levels are practically nonexistent (Wright

1990:453).

So we are implementing alternative agricultural practices that allow

rice paddies and forests to coexist; we are educating the villagers about

basic sanitation and health care; we are encouraging ecotourism as a source

of additional income and, therefore, as a preservation incentive; and we are

exchanging ideas with the villages and integrating their techniques,

knowledge and perspectives into our problem-solving approaches (Wright

19902453).

In following chapters, I return to ﬁrrther discussions and descriptions of the
Ranomana National Park Project, and I discuss the realities of life and death in Ranotsara,
as contrasted to the public image conjured by the Principal Investigator and other project
planners, who contend that conservation of the forest is linked to improved health and
well-being of forest residents. The actual beneﬁts residents have received ﬁ'om the
project, in exchange for relinquishing rights to the forest land, are discussed in terms of the
health care they did and did not receive, their changing economic status, and how such
changing economics shaped their health and health care.

As previously mentioned, however, the relationship between access to forest
medicines and the changing forest environment, cannot be viewed solely as a relationship
between village residents and the Park Project. The national park is very central to the

research setting, and integral to the relationship between access to medicines and the

103

changing forest relationship. Moreover, the presence of the expatriate and national elite
community in their roles as project managers and staff, provide a signiﬁcant and
provocative social context in which to understand contemporary social change in
Ranotsara. Nonetheless, they represent physical and social components of a cultural
complexity that includes multiple and competing interests within and beyond the village,
extending to the national capital of Antananarivo, and the international comforts of the
World Bank.

While these places and players shape the transforming history of the forests of
Ranotsara, and the health and medical spectrum of its people, how national and
international processes aﬁect local lives is not experienced by all villagers evenly. As I
show in Chapter Pour, the village is divided by two distinct lineages, with ancestry having
more to do with access to, and use of, resources, than does ethnicity. Moreover, the
recent economic changes associated with agricultural liberalization, structural adjustment,
and the penetration of conservation and development ideology, has further divided the

village into a minority of land-owners (or controllers) and a majority of land laborers.

 

faunalhanfori

aTlll'dSl this bioc

 

NO(

omelet
was \M
badly ;
World

is hom
seven

from o
Arid So
bounty
l€ﬁ int;
fOUnd

SUEtChl
and mu
trOpica
hEClgeh
as a for
CUP. ll
fans. \i
your 09
faSClnat

As this

k suggeSts3

 

Chapter 3

NO OTHER PLACE ON EARTH: THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN MADAGASCAR

I once described Madagascar as looking like a badly presented
omelette, lying in the Indian Ocean off Africa's eastern ﬂank, from which it
was wrenched millions of years ago. Like all the best omelettes, well or
badly presented, it is stuffed with goodies. The fourth largest island in the
world, ninety per cent of its ﬂora and fauna is found nowhere else. Aﬁica
is home to one species of pot-bellied baobab tree, Madagascar boasts
seven. Madagascar is home to two-thirds of all the world's chameleons,
from ones the size of a matchstick to ones almost as long as your arm.

And so it goes on, until you become bewildered by the rich biological
bounty of the island. It is a treasure trove and, if the mysterious forests are
left intact and explored carefully, new and astonishing species are still to be
found. Inhabited by wonderﬁrl, friendly people, it is a beautiﬁrl country,
stretching its languid thousand-mile length in blue waters teeming with ﬁsh
and multicoloured coral reefs. Its forests encompass everything from thick
tropical to montane, to dry deciduous forest, to spiny forest as prickly as a
hedgehog, and to pygmy forests only six inches high. It has lemurs as big
as a four-year-old child and others that are small enough to ﬁt into a coﬂ‘ee
cup. It has woodlice the size of golf balls and moths the size of Regency
fans. When you go on an expedition such as ours, it behooves you to keep
your objectives stemly in mind, lest you be distracted and led astray by the
fascinations that envelop you (Durrell 1992: 5).

As this colorful — and blandly typical —— introductory paragraph to a popular travel
book suggests, the island of Madagascar is known more for its biodiversity of ﬂora and
fauna than for its nearly ﬁfteen million men, women, and children who live and work

amidst this biodiversity. But despite its abundance of natural resources, attracting hoards

104

105

of experts, consultants, tourists, and photographers, Madagascar remains one of the
poorest countries in the world, with a per capita income of approximately $23 5 in 1995,
having fallen forty percent since the mid-seventies (World Bank 1996). The World Bank
(1996:5) estimates that 74 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and
among these poor, 92 percent live in rural areas. UNICEF (1992) indicates that
Madagascar is among the ﬁfteen poorest nations in the world, with the people identiﬁed as
Tanala, who live in the southeastern rainforest region where this study takes place, having
the lowest average rural income in the country.

Contact with international markets has characterized Madagascar since its
founding by humans. The island was ﬁrst settled by Indonesian seafarers and East
Aﬁicans probably around 6OOAD (Verin 1986). Its strategic location in the Indian Ocean
attracted the attention of Portuguese, Arab, Asian, British, and French traders.
Throughout its history of human habitation and economic development, it has been
characterized by international trade and agricultural production. While its geographic
beauty has always been among its virtues noted by foreign explorers, traders, and
missionaries, in the last decade the island's geography and natural resources have gained
such international stature that the environment is regarded as a ”global" resource meriting
management by the world's economic powers.

In this chapter, I discuss how Madagascar has come to be of such global concern.
In order to understand contemporary issues regarding the ”ancestral" lands of the forest, it
is important to understand how people came to live in the forest in the ﬁrst place and how
lands became cast as ancestral. Thus, I begin by showing how the pre-colonial autocracy

and colonial government shaped land and resource use through social policies including

106

forced labor, taxation, relocation, conservation, and development. This period also saw
the rapid transformation of ethnic identities, and the introduction of Christianity and
Christian concepts of healing, processes which are discussed in Chapters Four and Five.
The combined processes of economic change, migration, and changing social identities,
had profound inﬂuences on agricultural practices, health status and health care, and how
one lived in and near the forest. This discussion illuminates how concepts of "traditional"
land tenure regimes, as I will show for "traditional" medicine, and "traditional" cultural
identities have been anything but "traditional. " Moreover, it shows how the most severe
environmental degradation in Madagascar, attributed to "Tanala" farming methods, is

actually more closely related to Madagascar’s urban industrialization.

The Rise of a Pre-colonial Autocracy

Madagascar’s biological isolation has never been matched with a comparable social
isolation. Indeed, its strategic position in the Indian Ocean made it a popular post for
international trade in not only spices dating from the sixteenth century, but ﬁ'om the
eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries, guns, ammunition and slaves were commodities to
be traded with Europeans and mainland Aﬁicans. The European expansion of economic
trade in the Indian Ocean, dominated by a thriving slave trade between the Mascarene
Islands and Madagascar, resulted in social and political changes in the rural interior as
people were displaced, local economies unbalanced, and people impoverished. While the
effects of this trade were uneven throughout the island, the economic beneﬁts reaching the
interior contributed to the rise of a pre-colonial autocracy which shaped concepts of ethnic

identity, radically altered gender relations, led to illness, malnutrition and death among

l 07
large sectors of the population, and brought with it migration, industrialization and
changes in agricultural production that drastically and unevenly changed the island’s
ecology. These social forces were intensiﬁed with the imposition of colonial policies, and
have been replicated in many ways by recent conservation and development initiatives.

The rise of the pre-colonial Merina autocracy dates to the late eighteenth century
when the nrler of a petty kingdom, Iarnboasalarna, took the name Andrianampoinimerina,
and seized control of the central highlands. While Andrianampoinirnerina is revered
throughout contemporary Madagascar as a benevolent and sagacious nrler who
centralized power during the period of anarchy associated with the international slave
trade, the history of his reign presents a very different portrait. He gained power by
bribing his enemies' supporters, accusing wealthy landowners of sorcery and subsequently
appropriating their property, and threatening those who did not support him with slavery,
prison, or death. Slaves were essential to his power base because they were not only
economically valuable, they were also necessary to construct the kingdom and develop a
domestic infrastructure.

Andriarrampoirrimerina amassed slaves through three principal methods. First, he
waged attacks against villages weakened by smallpox. Second, he established a penal
code in which transgressors were sold into slavery. And third, be instituted taxes enabling
him to seize not just the property of debtors, but the debtors themselves.‘ By increasing

his slave exports, Andrianarnpoinimerina was able to gain sophisticated weaponry from the

 

‘ While all of these measures had been employed before Andrianampoinimerina, he
escalated their practice to an unparalleled extreme.

108

British and French, which facilitated the expansion of his kingdom and helped him to
establish an army (staffed through the forced military service of young men) (Bloch 1986).
Despite the eﬂeaiveness of these policies in bringing him to power, however, he
was never able to rule more than one-third of the island, as the majority of the population
forcefully resisted the policies and ideology he enforced. The resistance to the autocratic
rule of the highland monarchy persists to this day, and underlies much of the resistance to
contemporary social policies, some of which will be discussed in this and other chapters.
Nonetheless, the reorganization of the land and people under Andrianampoinimerina, as
well as his successors, has had lasting repercussions throughout the island, and has come

to be internalized in multiple ways for all of Madagascar’s people.

Land Reorganization

The rise of the Merina kingdom, having emerged in association with the
international trade in humans, was made possible by warfare, taxation and a penal code.
Warfare, directed to the forested areas of the east, increased the territory under control of
Andrianampoinimerina, while taxation enlarged the royal coffers. Both had devastating
effects on economies and social organizations throughout the island as people were
pushed onto more marginal farming areas, women's agricultural and work responsibilities
increased with the loss of men to slavery and military service, and the majority of people
were dispossessed of their land. But it was the establishment of a legal code directed at
land reorganization, and especially crucial to the expansion of the kingdom, that most

decisively altered the Malagasy social system, as well as agricultural practices.

109

According to Linton (1933), in his study of the southeastern Tanala social
structure, prior to the rise of the Merina autocracy individual ownership of land had been
unnecessary.2 Individual ownership, to the extent land could be so conceived, was vested
in the village. While there were deﬁned boundaries, these boundaries were usually natural
ones, such as rivers or mountain ranges. Transgressing these boundaries by pasturing
cattle or cutting taro» could lead to war. As such, the communal land tenure system served
to limit forest exploitation, while maintaining land rights. Fallow land and virgin jungle,
Linton maintained, were regarded as common property. Villagers were permitted to set
traps and beehives, use timber, and gather forest products on such land.

Selling land outside the lineage was sanctioned only when a member of a lineage
had been enslaved and money was needed for ransom. Even in this case, Linton pointed
out, sale was usually regarded only as a pledge for a loan.3 The cultural restrictions
governing use of the communal land thus served to preserve biological resources, rather

than enable their exploitation.

 

2 Whereas Linton was speciﬁcally referring to the period prior to colonization, a
review of the land tenure laws as outlined by Berthier (193 0), Compte (1963 ), and
The'bault (1951) suggests that the pattern of communal land holdings to which Linton
refers had transformed during the early reigns of Andrianampoirrimerina and Radama I (ca
1796-1828). It is likely, however, that the Tanala retained many of their customary
practices pertaining to land tenure throughout the Merina reign (indeed, as will be
discussed in this dissertation, resistance to land appropriation continues among the Tanala
to this day).

3 Of course, Linton's description of land tenure was limited to the Tanala Menabe (a
sub-group of the Tanala), so it cannot necessarily be extended to the whole of
Madagascar, but it does provide a certain perspective on how land had been organized in
the southeast, at least in one forest region.

110

By the turn of the eighteenth century, Andrianarnpoinimerina’s rule changed many
of these indigenous practices. He began by declaring himself the eminent proprietor of the
earth (a concept later reaﬂirmed by all of his pre—colonial successors), in which the land
was his alone (Berthier 193 0).‘ Having achieved the subjugation of most of the
highlands, be rewarded those who had supported him with gifts of land and administrative
positions, and he used land reorganization to extend his domain. Each of his subjects,
Thébault (1951) reported, was given an area to maintain (but not om’), in exchange for
cattle and money. Next, be divided the land into six states, or "tribes," over which he
reigned.

Each ”tribe” thus created, was proprietor of the soil which was consequently
assigned to them, and these lands took the generic name of tanim—pirenara. The tanim-
pirenara were shared among the diverse fokonolona [a line of descent arising ﬁom the
same ancestor, whose tomb constitutes the symbolic property around with the group is
united‘]. To demarcate property limits and avoid future disputes, a border of stones
(orimbao) was solemnly put into place around each tanim-pirenara. This done, within

each ”tribe" the folronolona was provided with a portion of the land, which was shared

 

‘ Verin (1990) reported that Andrianarnpoinimerina was not the ﬁrst king to declare
the earth his own, but he was certainly the most successﬁrl (pre-colonial) ruler in the
effort.

5 Ownership was acquired in other ways as detailed subsequently.

‘ What remains uncertain is when the fokonolona ﬁrst appeared. Beaujard (1983)
indicates that the fokonolona originated in the eastern Tanala regions in the seventeenth
century, whereas Larson (1992) argues that it was the Melina king Andrianampoinimerina,
who ﬁrst instituted the fokonolona in order to diminish the power of the ruling mpanjaka
in favor of a local control that was less threatening to Merina expansion.

111

among the families of the tribe (Thébault 1951:210). A family did not necessarily have a
life-interest in the land; the fokonolona remained the acting proprietor and could reclaim
the land at any time, while Andrianarnpoinimerina could reclaim the land from the
fokonolona at any time.

To facilitate his economic goals, the new king declared that the rice ﬁelds would
be shared by the various fokonolona, by dividing them into what were called hetra. The
herra was the collective property of the tribe or the fokonolona, who were responsible for
collecting individual taxes on each lot (indeed, the word hetra has come to mean taxes in
the contemporary Malagasy language). While an individual did not retain legal possession
of the hetra rice ﬁelds, he could transfer the rights to this land to his children through
succession, inheritance, or purchase. If a member of a fokonolona did not have a hetra,
the herra could be reclaimed and given to them. If someone died intestate, or left the
tribe, the helm could be reclaimed and redistributed among the tribe. Property other than
rice ﬁelds was also divided similarly, and land for building houses or growing other crops
was divided into zara-tany (literally, a division of land).

To acquire hetra, all subjects of the new kingdom were limited to four modes of
transmission. Thébault (1951) indicated that these four modes of transmission or
acquisition of the newly created private property, included (any vidina (land acquired by
purchase), tanin-dnmma (patrimonial land which was transmitted by succession or
inheritance), fehivava (land given in payment of a debt), and Iolombintany (land granted
by a royal [Andriana] chief or sovereign, for services rendered). This last form of land
transfer became a common form of payment to soldiers whose service attracted the

attention of the king, or to other loyal supporters of his new society. Such Iolombintany

112

lands, in which title was complete and without restrictions, was not subject to the
fokonolona management, or to taxes. Moreover, the Iolombintany was the only class of
land which constituted legal possession (Thébault 1951). All other land holdings remained
limited to rights to use.

Berthier (1930) alleged that these lolombintany lands constituted the ﬁrst form of
private property. The emergence of private property was not, however, a well-deﬁned
turn of events. Rather, it was a process which began before Andrianampoinimerina's
reign, and outside the highlands. Certainly, the seizure of land by sixteenth and
seventeenth century rulers (such as that practiced by the Antemoro and the Sakalava who
forced their subjects to labor the land as serfs) constituted a form of privatizing the
commons for their own beneﬁt. Also, the exchange of land for slave ransom suggested
that lineages were involuntarily relinquishing their land to others. Dubois (193 8) had
further pointed out that the very annexing of land and requiring people to remain
stationary was, in eﬁ’ect, a privatization of land that had formerly been communal. The
Iolombintany, however, did establish a very deﬁnitive title to land that contributed to the
growing class formation, in which certain groups were privileged over others in their

access to land and resources, a process discussed in Chapter Three.

Industrialization and Environmental Change

To enforce tax collection and ensure the rapid appropriation of labor, the king
prohibited geographical mobility, requiring everyone to live among what he popularized as
”ancestral lands,” (discussed in the following chapter) and he regulated the sale of hetra so

that they could not pass outside the "ancestral group" or to those people now regarded as

113

slaves (Campbell 1985; Compte 1963; Larson 1992). Although most people resisted
permanent occupation of lands, and migratory lifestyles associated with shifting cultivation
continued to be covertly practiced throughout the island, for those who did willingly or
unwillingly settle in stationary villages, their acquiescence to state policy contributed to
agricultural decline. By forcing permanent land occupation, the fallow period necessary to
restore soil nutrients was shortened, and the damaging effects of shifting cultivation
intensiﬁed.

By ﬁxing people in permanent settlements, however, the Merina state was faced
with the problem of ensuring that those who lived amongst the island’s resources could
not claim control over them. To limit local control over resources, it was necessary for
the state to assert proprietorship. This was done through terres lavavolo. Land which
was not allocated as hetra, or otherwise transferred as outlined above, was classiﬁed as
terres lavavolo, or vacant land (Berthier 1930). The lavavolo lands, which included the
forests, swamps, rivers, lakes, grasslands, and any other unoccupied land, belonged to the
king. Even the earth underneath occupied land was declared property of the king — thus
Andrianarnpoinimerina bestowed upon himself mining rights. Because cultivation of land
could imply occupation, Andrianarnpoinimerina banned the planting of trees on hillside
land in order to assure that wealthy individuals did not accumulate land by developing it
(Larson 1992). In so doing, indigenous methods of forest renewal were curtailed.

While Berthier (1930) maintained that the fokonolona continued to enjoy the
privilege of using the forests and pastures, Tacchi (1892) indicated that one of the ﬁrst
things Andrianarnpoinimerina did upon his rise to power was to promulgate strict laws

concerning the forest. These laws prohibited anyone from taking any ﬁrewood, upon the

114

penalty of one dollar and one bullock.7 The discrepancy between Berthier‘s argument that
communal use of the forests was permitted, and Tacchi's assertion that it was strictly
forbidden, is probably explained by regional and temporal differences, in which certain
customary practices continued without sanction in some regions or during some periods,
but were more strictly enforced in others, particularly if the forest area was of value to the
monarchy.

The value of the forests to the monarchy was considerable. Several authors have
pointed to the magnitude of forest destruction during the development of the Merina
empire (e.g., Boiteau 1982; Verin 1990; Tacchi 1892). A massive industrialization
crusade was initiated to build up the empire and promote international trade.
Consequently, roads and railways from Antananarivo to the eastern coast were
constructed and a massive hydraulics system was engineered. These projects, built
through corvee labor, destroyed enormous expanses of forests, particularly from the
capitol city of Antananarivo in the central highlands, to the eastern port of Tamatave on
the coast. Indeed, Bloch (1989), Hardenbergh (1992), and Verin (1989), have suggested
that the Merina expansion and development of waterworks caused total deforestation

throughout much of the eastern forests in this region.8

 

7 The only exception to this rule, Tacchi wrote, was when a woman gave birth to a
child, because it was the custom to place the mother and child beside a very large ﬁre.

' To this day, the long-term effects of this destruction are readily apparent ﬁ'om the
eroded hillsides which ﬂank the roads from the capitol to the eastern coasts. The dry and
ﬁssured earth is commonly photographed to show the eﬁ‘ects of deforestation from terry,
with no reference ever made to the role the roadways (now paved highways) played in
creating this damaged landscape.

in". .."".. .__"“

115

Nineteenth Century Merina Rule and Colonial Gestation

The last half of the eighteenth century was a period of rapid social transformation
diﬂ‘erentially aﬁ‘ecting the multitude of the island's population. The mechanisms employed
by Malagasy rulers to advance this transformation included labor appropriation, land
reorganization, economic restructuring, taxation, and social reorganization. The European
demand for slaves in the Mascarene Islands led to an increase in warfare (aimed at taking
captives who could be commodiﬁed); in turn, warfare destroyed vast tracts of forested
lands, as well as required great quantities of wood charcoal to ﬁrel an associated iron
industry east of Anatananarivo. Proﬁts from these slave raids were then used to facilitate
political ambitions rather than economic development. A wealthy elite thus emerged,
along with an impoverished majority. These mechanisms of economic and political
restructuring by the Malagasy Merina were echoed by foreign powers in the nineteenth
century, as they united with the Merina kingdom in an effort to lay the foundation for

colonial rule, a process which I detail below.

Andrianarnpoinimerina died in 1810, and his son Radama succeeded him as King
of the (newly created) Melina. Having selected a successor who would carry on the task
of "uniting” the island under Melina imperialism, Andrianampoinimerina's hegemonic
legacy continued. Forced military service was expanded, and made even more oppressive
as food was withheld ﬁ'om soldiers (expected to supply their own provisions). Passing
through malaria zones, and weakened ﬁ'om hunger, many died; those who deserted were

burned alive.

116

This period of early Merina history was also marked by increasing hardships in
manual labor. Verin (1992 personal communication) suggests that manual labor became
much more degrading under Radama's rule, as it became more sharply contrasted to the
privileged professions of an educated elite. Antemoro scribes were brought to the palace
to educate a select few in reading and writing, in order to strengthen the adrrrinistrative
component of the state, and to facilitate international exchange. Radama also signiﬁcantly
increased slave and cattle raids toward the south and the east, thus crippling the social
structures of non-Merina communities and attracting the foreign interests he sought. To
defend against these cattle raids, those living in the southeastern forests concealed their
cattle in the forests, rather than penning them where they were openly visible to cattle
thieves.

The British assumed control of Mauritius as a plantation colony in 1814 (while the
French retained control of the neighboring island of Reunion), and they wanted exclusive
control of the trade route in the Indian Ocean. Consequently, it was judicious for them to
support Radama's territorial expansion in order to secure Madagascar‘s backing of this
ambition.

This alliance was consummated in 1817 by the signing of a treaty between the
British Monarchy and Radama, who, through this act, was proclaimed by the British as the
King of Madagascar. While Andrianampoinimerina’s monarchy extended to many regions
of the highlands and the migration which ensued contributed to his ever-widening reach,
he was not recognized as a leader by most of the island’s population, nor was Radama
viewed as such by most of the island's populace. But in so recognizing the Melina king as

the island monarch, Britain was able to legitimate its political and economic claims to the

117

island's resources. These claims were instituted through the treaty, which granted Britain
free trade status (without duties), particularly essential to the cattle and rice exports
needed for the development of Mauritius. Exporting slaves was prohibited, but owning
them was not. This prohibition eﬁ‘ectively limited the ability of Radama's rivals to amass
suﬁcient wealth to challenge him, while enabling his supporters to maintain their wealth
through the appropriation of labor. The loss to Radama of the proﬁts from slave exports
was compensated by the British.

The alliance of the British with Radama also brought on an acceleration in
environmental destruction. The introduction of literacy enabled Radama to disseminate
his political communique’s by way of the written word. With the assistance of missionaries
(whose presence was stipulated by the 1817 treaty), he established a printing press,
necessitating extensive forest clearing in order to manufacture paper. In addition, the
British persuaded Radama to form special bands of woodcutters, blacksnriths, and
carpenters to advance the expansion of the new government and its ofﬁcers; the labor for
these endeavors was obtained through forced government service (Campbell 1985).

The treaty ﬁrrther authorized soldats colons [colonial soldiers] to increase export
crops in Madagascar, which were needed in the Mascarenes, as well as international trade.
Having military license to enforce this policy, subsistence farnring in forested areas shifted
to single-crop agriculture. Farmers were forced to burn forested areas and plant sugar
cane, tobacco, wheat, corn, oats, rice, and even mulberry bushes for feeding silk worms.
Fallow ﬁelds were put into production, rather than left to restore the soils nutrients. Such
shifts to commodity production exacerbate environmental degradation because subsidiary

crops, which prevent erosion on steep slopes, restore soil fertility, and shade the soil, are

118

no longer cultivated (Collins 1991). It is likely, therefore, that indigenous farming
methods which may have maintained biodiversity and preserved the forests through tavy
production were replaced with non-restorative agricultural techniques. Fertilizers were
also introduced, which provided increased short-term production at the long-term loss of
soil fertility.

In order to ensure economic development, the British insisted that Radama
develop an adequate communication and transportation system (Campbell 1985). Using
corvee labor, Radama had vast tracts of forests from the highlands to the coasts cleared
for roads and canals. Precious woods from the northwest were felled and exported,
leading to the virtual clearing of all the forests of the northwest coastal areas by the end of
the century (F eeley-Harnik 1992). Rubber industries were established in the forests, also
contributing to rapid exhaution of forest cover.

The industrialization of Madagascar was dominated by the exploitation of male
corvee labor (later replaced with wage labor), but the desires of the kingdom and the
Europeans to intensify production led to the conscription of women and children
(Campbell 1985). Their own, now limited, lands were abandoned, as they were forced to
devote their energies into production for the state. Women were also actively recruited
for the production of pottery (fueled by rice husks) and basket and mat weaving
(Campbell 1985), although their educations were limited to low-paying sewing skills and
domestic proﬁciency.

As populations moved into the steeper and less fertile forested areas of the
southeast to avoid corvee labor, slavery, and cattle theft, and as the majority of men and

many women who were unable to escape the reach of the state were conscripted into

119

forced labor, subsistence agricultural and pastoral production declined in the southeastern
forests, leading to famine. The Merina state, meanwhile, accelerated agricultural and
pastoral production in these same forests for its own proﬁts. For example, in 1822,
missionaries introduced a tanning industry to Madagascar, requiring extensive pasturage
of cattle which further advanced the destruction of the forests in the region extending from
the highlands to the southeast, as trees were burned to encourage the new growth on
which the cattle fed. Moreover, the bark from Ialona and peach trees was used as the
chief agent for manufacturing leather, which was exported to Europe. Cattle were also
needed to supply Europeans with canned meat necessary to feed their armies.

In 1828, missionaries introduced soap making, in which the ashes of shrubs were a
primary ingredient. Production of iron smelting, gunpowder, and military fortiﬁcations
were increased during Radama's reign, all requiring wood fuel (most of this production
extended eastward, from Antananarivo in the highlands to Tamatave on the coast). The
missionaries also introduced brick making, ﬁreled by peat and forest wood (which was to
revolutionize the architecture of Antananarivo), as well as the extraction of limestone and
sulfur (Sibree 1898). The ecological destruction of this industrialization was
unprecedented, and irreversibly altered the productive capacity of the land. While famine
devastated those living in the forests, the Merina monarchy and the European economy
prospered from the land's resources.

Sibree (1898) has discussed how the London Missionary Society, whose arrival
was sanctioned through the 1817 Treaty, was more an industrial force than a spiritual one,
and representatives of the LMS, such as James Cameron, were brought to the kingdom

chieﬂy for their ability to launch the industrial reformation of Madagascar‘s economy. In

120
addition to establishing iron forges, soap reﬁneries, mines, brick-making factories,
tanrreries, and cash-crop plantations throughout the island, the churches were used as
training institutions for masons, carpenters, tilers, and glaziers; only men were taught these
trades, which were to provide them a particularly lucrative career, and create a nearly
impermeable class of skilled workers.9

Increasingly resentful of the military conscription that forced men to leave their
homes and women to assume their agricultural tasks, women began to organize (Larson
1992). For example, in 1822, Radama, having already abandoned the traditional lamba
for European clothing, cut his long plaited hair short and ordered his soldiers to do the
same. This directive to relinquish such a personal freedom and cultural pride, prompted
nearly 4,000 women to protest outside the capitol of Antananarivo. In response, Radama
selected ﬁve of their leaders, ordered their heads shaved, and then had them publicly
executed. The remaining women were surrounded by soldiers and starved for several
days, then heed to return home.

This public humiliation of those who openly resisted the Merina monarchy,
induced others to resist more covertly. The primary form of covert resistance was to
relocate to deeply forested lands, particularly the southeastern forests, where the new laws
of the Merina kingdom were unenforceable. Such relocation, however, had serious costs.

Malaria was far more prevalent, and, as stated previously, the lands were less fertile. But

 

9 But to have sufﬁcient unskilled labor to work in these new industries, without cutting
into the proﬁts of the state, the missionaries used, and advocated the use of, large numbers
of slaves. Their homes, schools, and churches were all built from slave labor (Campbell
1985). Indeed, they did not support the abolition of slavery until late in the nineteenth
century (Campbell 1985). It was not until they were safely ensconced in the political
economy of Madagascar that the missionaries began proselytizing Christianity.

121

even the minimal existence afforded by living in these steep and densely forested terrains
provided many with a greater chance at survival than they would have under servitude to
Radama's kingdom.

The rapid industrialization of Madagascar was maintained after Radama's death in
1828, with the ascension of his widow, Ranavalona, to the throne. While Ranavalona is
noted for her tyranny against Christians and fervent anti-foreigner policies, Campbell
(1985: 194) suggests that her reputation is incompatible with the historical record,
describing her reign as a "drive to industrialize," in which large-scale training of an

industrial workforce was launched, and environmental destruction continued.

Laying the Foundation for Colonial Rule

The French, alarmed at the growing alliance of the British with the Merina
monarchy, sought to regain some of their former inﬂuence in Madagascar. As such,
during Ranavalona's reign, the French Navy from Reunion began to press " shadowy
claims" for territory in the east (Bloch 1986:18). Ranavalona sensed the unstable position
that jeopardized her monarchy by the presence of the Europeans. In addition, the
missionaries were gaining too much power of their own, particularly as Christianity was
gathering support among those who most resented the domination of the monarchy.
Consequently, although she recognized the necessity of maintaining suﬂicient trade with
the foreign powers to facilitate the industrial and economic expansion of her empire, she
nonetheless needed to disempower the Europeans. To do so, she ordered all the
missionaries out of the country, save for three (Cameron, Grimths, and Jones) whose

engineering skills she required. These missionaries directed industries in which Malagasy

122

were required to deliver fuelwood for soapmaking and nitre and cattle fat for gunpowder
(Campbell 1985). While Campbell (citing Raombana 1853-54) notes that the Malagasy
contributers did not receive any beneﬁt from the manufacture of these products, they were
ﬁned and ﬂogged if they failed to deliver the resources. Moreover, the missionaries
established elaborate "banking" schemes in which loans were made to those so
impoverished, with usurious interest rates.

Ranavalona encouraged other European industrialists, not alligrred with the church
(such as Jean Laborde), to come to Madagascar and set up industries. The missionaries
supported her in this endeavor. Campbell (1985: 138) illustrates the allure of Madagascar
to foreign developers through this advertisement in a South Aﬁican newspaper:

Thousands and tens of thousands of acres of good land, contiguous to

streams and rivers, remain yet unappropriated, uncultivated, and of course

unproductive; but which, if required, could be easily turned to account.

Between Ankova (i.e., Imerina) and the Sakalava country are also

numerous herds of wild cattle. And Madagascar has not beasts of prey to

alarm the fearful settler. (South Aﬁican Commerical Gazette, 6 November

1 83 0)10

Rather than suspend foreign trade, Ranavalona increased it. Along with corvee
labor and military aggression, international trade was a cornerstone to her administration
(Campbell 1985). The monopoly of the Merina on foreign trade during her reign affected
rural agriculturalists severely, as they received lower prices for their produce, but paid
higher prices for imported goods (such as fertilizers) (Campbell 1985).

Appropriation of land and property was simpliﬁed during Ranavalona's rule, as

recourse was virtually unenforceable. For example, the Rev. David Griﬁths, one of the

 

‘° Unfortunately, he did not report to what extant such solicitations brought foreign
investment to Madagascar.

 

 

123

few missionaries allowed to remain following the deportation of the London Missionary
Society, indicated (in Cousins 1895) that up to one million people had been destroyed and
reduced to slavery during the queen's reign. Her methods of enslavement and
impoverishment included conﬁscating the property of any person who brought a civil suit
against someone, and failed to prove their claim because they had not bribed the judges.
The unsuccessﬁrl plaintiﬂ‘s were then sold in the slave markets.

Moreover, soldiers and civilians could be called to duty on a moment's notice,
regardless of their agricultural obligations. In a letter to his wife, the Rev. Grifﬁths wrote:

All the people of the inland provinces, and on the eastern coast from

Vohimarina to Fort Dauphin, have not a week that they can call their own

to cultivate their ground or provide for their families, but are required to

engage in some government service or other, as tilling the ground, felling

timber, making and carrying charcoal, collecting wax and gum copal, etc.

and carrying hides {tom the interior to Tamatave. All the tailors have their

service exacted in the same manner by the Government without any

remuneration. The people often remark, with feelings of stoical

indiﬁ‘erence, ‘We shall not teach our children anything, for the more they

know, the harder will be their service' (Griﬁths 1840 in Cousins 1895:344,

emphasis in original).

Toward the end of her reign, Ranavalona began easing up on her anti-European
stance as she began to fear the possibility of an alliance between the British and French,
whose combined power could easily crush her government (Bloch 1986). In addition, she
had become dependent on their military, industrial, and administrative resources (which, as
Bloch [1986] pointed out, was no accident, but was instead the intended aim of the
Europeans). Finally, the queen's prime ministers were gaining control over her

government through their own inﬂuence and wealth. Consequently, resurrecting the

formal alliance between the Merina monarchy and the European governments was

124

advantageous, if not essential, to Ranavalona's political stability. Such a move was desired
by much of the populace as well, who viewed European authority as preferable to the
cruelty of the queen's command. The French seized upon the instability and social
inequalities associated with the Melina monarchy by appealing to the population and
alleging that they would represent the interests of rural and coastal Malagasy whose non-
Merina identity rendered them, the majority, socially marginal. At the same time, the
education and bilingual language skills of the highland elite continued to position them
advantageously for key administrative positions in the new colonial state.

Ranavalona's reign (and with it, the de facto dominion of the Melina empire) thus
came to an end through many of the same mechanisms of persuasion, intimidation, and
military and economic strength that brought Andrianarnpoinimerina to power less than half
a century earlier. As Andrianarnpoinimerina gained strength by appealing to the tyranny of
others, the Europeans appealed to the fears and poverty of the masses. As
Andrianarnpoinimerina gained power through conquest, or threat of conquest, so did the
Europeans intimidate the queen with their military strength encircling the island. And as
Andrianarnpoinimerina gained power through the economic prosperity of his slave trade,
so did the Europeans gain an advantage over the Merina monarchy by their own economic
supremacy.

By the second half of the nineteenth century, the Europeans were to position
themselves in the Melina kingdom and Malagasy society so ﬁrmly that their colonial
designs were effortlessly installed. Their policies of land and labor appropriation differed

very little ﬁom that of the Merina, but through their military and economic strength, and

125

assisted by the inﬁastructure that Radama and Ranavalona had begun to set into place,

they were able to seize the land and its resources on an even larger scale.

Colonial Land and Labor Policies

The colonial era, from 1895 to 1960, was marked by forced labor, land
appropriation, taxation, the introduction of cash crops, forest conservation, and the
development of a medical infrastructure.

Labor was controlled through laws (passed in 1897, 1902, and 1907) requiring all
adult men, ages 16 to 60, to work 50 days a year for the colonial government, without
pay, and to pay a head tax of 2.50 F (Hanson 1997).

In general, throughout the ﬁrst three decades of the 20th century, the

French colonial administration ransacked the eastern forests for cash and

labor. These revenues, rather than being returned to the region via

meaningful development projects, were employed either to pay oﬁ‘ the

rather large debt and ﬁnes the pre-colonial state had incurred to France

(Rabearimanana 198513 17), or invested in the colons (Fremigacci

1986:327). Taxes on the common people proved inordinately high. For

example, taken together, the various forms of taxes owed to the

adnrinistration by the average household in 1918 reached 26.60FF (ibid:

303). Sirnply unable to pay this amount, individuals were forced to take

out loans and/or labor for the administration (Hanson l997:67,68).

Taxation, however, required a stationary population. Jarosz (1993:373) indicates
that law was incompatible with colonial objectives because swidden rice farmers tended
to live in scattered, extended family groups which moved frequently. Tax collection and
labor appropriation (for forced labor parties) were difﬁcult to carry out in communities
practicing law. Consequently, laws prohibiting the burning of forest cover and
regenerating growth were enacted in 1881 (by the Melina autocracy, toward the same

ends), 1900, and 1902. In 1900, the service forestier was established, with authority to

 

126

grant forest concessions and enforce rules regulating use of forest resources. In 1913, the
Governor General of the colonial state assumed authority over all forest concessions of
100 hectares or more, and in that same year, law was prohibited throughout the island
and linked to the prohibition was the promotion of irrigated rice agriculture, which was
considered more sustainable and intensive. By prohibiting any, the state not only sought
to facilitate tax collection as people were ﬁxed into stationary settlements, but they also
wanted to protect forest resources for commodiﬁcation by the state and European mining
and timber concessions. The practice continued, however, particularly in the southeastern
forests where swidden agriculture was the most efﬁcient and productive way to farm such
steep terrain. As such, in 1930 the Governor General was granted authority over all
permits to use forest resources, and punishments, including ﬁnes and imprisonment, were
established for transgressors. Hanson (1997278) points out that these decrees were largely
aimed at French concessionaires who exploited the “principle forest products” of ebony,
wood for industrial use, charcoal, and bark for textiles and ﬁbers. While the ban on tavy
was directed toward the rural Malagasy farmer, the regulations regarding forest
exploitation were intended to facilitate and regulate exploitation of the forest for European
industrialists.

Another major feature of colonial forest policies came in 1928, when one million
hectares of forests were divided into nine separate reserves and redeﬁned as “protect ”
areas (Ramanantsoavina 1963 in Hanson 1997 ). In so doing, the prohibition of tow was
linked to the enclosure of forests for conservation purposes, at the same time that
exploitation of these same forests was facilitated by laws regulating and sanctioning the

use of the forest for industrial development. The southeastern forests were especially

127
productive for European industrialists as timber operations and coffee plantations were
launched concurrently with the prohibition on (my. It is no surprise, then, that any
became, once again, a covert act. And, as during the reign of Andrianampoinimerina, tavy
became a practice embedded not just in the symbolic realm of the ancestors, but came to
represent resistance for those people whose economic livelihoods had been dependent
upon shifting cultivation (see Hanson 1997 on tavy as a form of resistance).

Jarosz (1993) indicates that the colonial policy promoting irrigated agriculture in
place of tow failed because the regional variations of the island were not uniformly
conducive to wet-rice irrigation. In those highland areas where suitable ﬂat-lands made
irrigated rice production feasible, the ban was eﬂ‘ective, but in mountainous areas, such as
the eastern coastal forests, enforcing the ban was impossible as farmers continued to
practice tavy - the only possible way to grow rice in those regions.

Jarosz (19932374) further suggests that the failure of the ban on taty was in part
due to the resistance of farmers who interpreted the colonial policy in differing ways:

The colonial state's perspective on shifting cultivation emphasized the
necessity of its prohibition as an economic goal to ensure rational forest
management, which would ultimately increase state revenues and increase
the abundance of local rice grown by other forms of sedentary agriculture.
The economic objective was articulated in terms of forest conservation and
the necessity of the ban. . . . Peasants interpreted the ban as a form of labor
control compelling them to work for wages and buy rice, thus losing their
independence. Moreover, the ban meant that the sacred space where the
living engaged in dialogue with the ancestors was annihilated by colonial
decree. Mass revolts and resistance, as well as scattered, individual acts of
noncompliance, spoke directly to this annihilation and the divergent
meanings of tarry to the Malagasy peasants and the state.

Resistance to the ban was more than pitting the right to subsistence
over forest conservation; it embraced issues of power, labor control, and
Malagasy identity. Not surprisingly, the French failed to eradicate the
practice. . .

128

One additional reason the prohibition on law failed could be attributed to the
hypocrisy many Malagasy felt was reﬂected in the policy. Jarosz (1993) points out that
tavy was portrayed as environmentally destructive, while at the same time forest resources
were viewed as resources of value to outsiders, a discourse she indicates resembles
academic discourse on the subject:

Early academic accounts of shifting cultivation characterize it as unplanned,
aimless, nomadic, unproductive, and uneconomical in the utilization of land
and labor and destructive of the environment (Whittlesey 1937). The
discourse of colonial conservation parallels the academic view. Writing
about the forests of Madagascar in 1890, one observer on a missionary
tour expressed "a hope that the present wholesale destruction of the forest
by the natives may be soon effectually stopped by the Government, and
that its valuable resources may be speedily utilized" (Baron 1890, 211 in
Jarosz 1993:372).

Another major agricultural innovation coincided with the promotion of irrigated
rice production and the prohibition against two», and that was the introduction of cash
crops. In the southeastern forests, this production was primarily in coffee, but banana
trees were also planted for export. Jarosz (l993:370,371) indicates that export
production varied regionally, but that the introduction of coffee crops in the southeastern
forests was especially destructive of the forest ecology:

According to Temple (1972), the soil erosion rates on coffee plots
are nearly double those of subsistence plots, because broad expanses of
bare soil under the coﬂ‘ee bushes are particularly vulnerable to violent
storms during the rainy season. The state's emphasis on export production
led to a pattern of uneven economic development and regional
fragmentation (Isnard 1971; Hugon 1987) which created increasing
production pressures and demands upon environmental resources.

The introduction of coﬁ‘ee cultivation also led to shortfalls in rice
production. Razoharinoro-Randriamboavonjy (1971), Althabe (1982), and
Rakotoarisoa and Richard (1987) have noted the tension between cash
cropping and rainfed rice regimes in terms of claims on land and labor time.
Due to its labor demands and attractive producer prices, coffee cultivation
increased in popularity among European settlers and Malagasy farmers. As

129

rainfed ﬁelds were abandoned - the causalities of labor shortfalls, low

producer prices, cyclones, and drought — food security in the eastern region

was eroded.

In the 19305 and 19405, coffee plantations, having been introduced in Madagascar
in the 1920's, were expanded in the southeastern forests, and area colons [colonial
oﬂicers] were granted free access to appropriate lands for such production (Hanson
1997). Hanson (1997:70,71) discusses how the introduction of cash-crop production, in
association with the shift to irrigated rice production, affected the Tanala farmers of the
southeastern Ranomafana region:

...beginning in the early 1900's, French authorities forced the Tanala

to abandon their mountaintop homes and settle the valley spaces along the

major roadways. The motivations behind these dislocations were diverse.

However, in the Ranomafana region, the goal of the colonial administration

was particularly clear. During the ﬁrst decades of the twentieth century,

then Governor General Marcel Olivier laid the ﬁscal basis for the

development of coffee plantations in the region. Olivier understood that to

secure the labor force needed for these plantations, he would ﬁrst have to

force the Tanala to settle the valley ﬂoors, and second, introduce irrigated

rice culture to keep the population fed.

As the coffee trees matured, however, they became less productive. This decline
in cash-crop production, accompanied by less investment in subsistence agriculture,
contributed to rice-shortages and economic decline in the mid-1940's. The greater
impoverishment colonial agricultural policies created in the southeastern forests led to this
region being in the forefront of resistance. Thus, it is not surprising that in 1947, an
indigenous resistance movement emerged from the eastern forested regions near
Ifanadiana, a movement that was to become one of the most devastating of colonial

rebellions. More than 100,000 Malagasy died in their ineffective efforts to gain

independence from colonial rule, when Senegalese men were brought to Madagascar to

130

serve the French army and kill their Aﬁican counterparts. Allen (1995247) describes the
colonial repression which followed as "one of the most bloody acts of repression in
colonial history,” and included execution, torture, starvation, and banishment into the
desert, as among the tactics the colonial administration employed to suppress the
insurrection. The post-rebellion period, lasting until 1956, included a complex
propaganda campaign in which French sympathizers were repatriated, convicted
conspirators were executed, and all news reporting the events was censured. Even Alfred
Hitchcock was enlisted to produce a documentary ﬁctionalizing the insurrection so that
any ﬁrture rebels would be dissuaded from similar agendas. The result of these responses
was that the rebellion of 1947 was rapidly mythologized by both the colonial state and by
the diverse Malagasy themselves.

In the southeastern forests of Madagascar, where the rebellion was the most
violent and the suppression the most severe, the rebellion symbolizes the unity of the
”people of the forest" in their deﬁance of foreign control over their land and livelihoods,
and their victimization to these same policies and the oppression which ensued. At the
same time, memories of the period conﬂict, revealing that social diﬁ‘erences do indeed

contribute to diﬁ‘ering memories.

Masobe ”Big Eyes" is a tall, spotted man, whose spots villagers insist, came ﬁ'om
his having eaten a spotted chicken killed by his wife, Tody. Masobe, origirmlly from an
eastern coastal village, and Tody lived in Ranomafana from the late 1940's until the 1960's,
where Masobe worked as a cook in the local hotel, and Tody, close to her home village of

Ranotsara, farmed the tavy ﬁelds she had inherited from her family. After losing his job at

131

the hotel, Masobe and Tody moved to Ranotsara and raised their children. Thus it came
to be that Masobe resided in his wife's village, a rather unorthodox move in this patrilocal
society. After Tody died, Masobe remained in Ranotsara, while Tody's taty ﬁelds passed
to their son, Germain. Now an elderly widower who lives alone, Masobe became virtually
landless, because he lacked the strength or the family to work his ﬁelds.

He describes the infamous year of 1947, when all of the eastern forests were
colonial battlegrounds. "The men went to the deepest parts of the forest to watch the
villages from a distance, to see if the soldiers had arrived. The French had brought
Senegalese soldiers to the area to chase us into Ranomafana, where we could be guarded.
Men were forced to work for the colonial government. Women were not always strong
enough to go with us into the forest, and so they stayed in the village"

Nirina is in her late seventies or eighties; her grandfather was one of the founders
of the village of Ranotsara, and her husband of ﬁfty years, Faly, a local mpanjalra. She
remembers this period well. "Masobe said women were not strong enough to go to the
forest? What does he know! It was hardest on women because we had to do our own
work and the men's work. We had to grow rice, and take it to the men. We had to also
teach girls and boys work they did not do before.” For example, she indicated that boys
had to learn to cook, and girls had to learn to chop wood. “What can Masobe know of
women’s work!?” Nirina asked rhetorically.

Masobe, however, argued that men would come down at night to tend the crops,
or they began cultivating in the forest. Both agreed that these years were hard on

everybody, and the violence they witnessed left deep impressions on their hearts that

132

outsiders often fail to recognize when telling the farmers what, and how, and where, to

grow their crops.

Thus, the forests of southeastern Madagascar, presently characterized by
conservation and development discourse as representing an intact ecosystem threatened by
the spread of taro» ﬁres, whose only social context is regarded, at best, as rooted in
poverty, poor technology, and high birth rates (e. g. Harrison 1992; Jolly 1987; Keck,
Shanna and Feder 1994; Pryor 1990; World Bank 1994) or attributed to ethnic tradition,
at worse (RNPP 1994) have, in fact, been farmed and protected by forest residents both
acquiescing to, and resisting, state and international economic policies for the last two
hundred years. That the forests have survived at all, is not due to the natural processes of
a virgin ecosystem naturally and harmoniously ﬂourishing beyond the reach of humans.
The forests have, in fact, been home to humans who have variously preserved the forest
cover for protection and concealment; been forced to burn it for production of cash crops
ﬁrst during the reign of Radama I, then during the mid-twentieth century under colonial
decree; been forced to intensify production and limit fallow to pay taxes and crops to both
Merina and colonial authorities; and been induced to increase shifting cultivation to oﬁ‘set
the social and economic repercussions of forced labor. Many of these same policies have

been reproduced by state and international policies since colonization.

Conservation and Development: Post-Colonial Land and Economic Reforms
In 1960 Madagascar gained sovereignty, but remained dependent upon France

through its control of private enterprise and the post-colonial government (with many

 

133

French colonial administrators and advisors remaining in government posts). This period
marked the First Republic of President Philibert Tsiranana, or the period of the Malagasy
Republic (Republic Malgache). By 1972, Tsiranana's power declined, with a peasant
rebellion and military coup culminating in the collapse of the First Republic, to be replaced
by the Democratic Republic of Madagascar.

The Second Republic of Madagascar was a Soviet—styled Socialist Democracy, led
by Didier Ratsiraka, from 1975 to 1991. Ratsiraka advocated an isolationist stance,
rejecting all foreign-owned industries or land holdings, while maintaining political alliances
with then Eastern Europe, Korea, and China. Sharp (1993211) points out that although
this period was characterized as a socialist one, "its economy may be deﬁned more clearly
as a form of state capitalism, where the ownership of all major industries and land holdings
rests with the national government."

Ratsiraka's policies, however, which included several poorly designed investments
in national industry, and massive investment in the urban sector with profound neglect of
the rural sector, led to a rising international debt. As such, in 1980, during the Second
Republic, Madagascar became the ﬁrst Aﬁican socialist state to agree to structural
adjustment policies of the IMF. The adjustments entered into included privatization of
banking and industry, and repeated devaluation of the Malagasy Franc'l which led to 100
percent inﬂation.

This period, the late 1980's and early 1990's, also saw the introduction of a

multitude of international conservation development projects. This is because the World

 

11 10-15% from 1982 to 1986; 46% in 1987; and 13% in January 1991.

134

Bank's agricultural reforms were tied to the conservation of the island's "megabiodiversity"
(Allen 1995). At the same time, the United States Agency for International Development
(U SAID), having been empowered through the US. Endangered Species Act of 1976 to
regulate resource use in developing countries, made Madagascar a major conservation
priority. The Endangered Species Act

...stated that the preservation of animal and plant species through the

regulation of hunting and trade, limitations on pollution, and the protection

of wildlife habitats, should be an important objective of US. development

assistance. Protection of endangered species was also emphasized (U SAID
n/d: l 7).

USAID subsequently identiﬁed Madagascar as

one of ten "threatened hot spots”: a series of tropical areas identiﬁed as being
critical to the global conservation of plant and animal diversity. Because of its high
levels of biodiversity and endemisnr, Madagascar has been termed "the single
highest major conservation priority in the world" (U SAID old: 1).

Madagascar is categorized as a "Group 1" country, i.e., has "urgent needs for
natural resource interventions (U SAID n/d219)

Conservation was further linked to development through the United States Foreign
Assistance Act (FAA), section 119, amended in 1986.

AID is required to enter into long-term arrangments in which the recipient
country agrees to protect ecosystems, support research, and deny
assistance for actions that signﬁcantly degrade protected areas. CDSS's
[Country Development Strategy Statements] are required to include an
analysis of the actions needed to conserve biological diversity. Whenever
feasible, activities are to be carried out by PVO's [Private Voluntary
Organizations] (U SAID n/d218).

The linking of conservation with structural adjustment reforms was
institutionalized nationally through the Madagascar’s 1987-88 Environmental Action Plan

(BAP) (the ﬁrst such environmental plan in Aﬁica). A World Bank creation, the EAP

1 3 5

took the position that indigenous land management practices were environmentally
destructive because individuals lacked incentive to increase productivity and protect
ancestral lands (Leisz, Robles and Gage 1994). This "tragedy of the commons" concept,
which McCay and Acheson (1987) have shown to be fundamentally incorrect because
indigenous communities do have mechanisms for protecting commonly held lands, has
been presumed by the World Bank to be a necessary precondition for the conservation of
the island.

Inherent in the EAP is the belief that it is necessary to secure

people's rights of access to their land and natural resource base in the

periphery zones of Madagascar's protected areas. The lS-year, three-phase

plan emphasizes that security to land is important to environmental

conservation (Leisz, Robles and Gage 199424).

And in 1989, Madagascar entered into the Debt-for-Nature Swap, exchanging $2.1
million of debt for conservation projects, and another $1 million with the World Wildlife
Fund. Proceeds from the trade were earmarked for national parks management, erosion
control and training of park rangers (Allen 1995: 177). The following year, USAID
developed a program entitled SAVEM (Sustainable Approaches to Viable Environmental

Management) which was "to establish sustainable human and natural ecosystems in areas

of Madagascar where biodiversity was threatened (SAVEM 1997: 1)."

Madagascar currently has 36 speciﬁcally deﬁned protected areas, which include
national parks, special reserves, and nature reserves, and over 260 protected areas more
broadly deﬁned to include Classiﬁed Forests and Reforestation Zones. Many of these
protected areas were established during the colonial area. While Leisz, Robles and Gage

(1994) suggest that during the colonial years, strict enforcement of exclusionary policies in

136

the forests was enforced through the imposition of ﬁnes and imprisonment for anyone who
transgressed the human/nature boundaries, Hanson (1997) suggests that enforcement
remained uneven. Certainly during the post-colonial years prior to the EAP, strict
enforcement eased up.

With the return of foreign powers safeguarding the storehouses of nature, ﬁnes
and imprisonment returned as punishment to those residents who materially beneﬁtted
ﬁ'om the “global resources” by using them in any way. To mitigate the eﬂ‘ects of sharply
curtailing local access to the natural environment, peripheral or buffer zones were
established as part of UNESCO's mid-1980's Man and Biosphere Program.

The main objective of UNESCO's Biosphere Reserves begun in the late
1960's is to protect a core area of biodiversity and at the same time involve
the surrounding human population in beneﬁtting from the reserve through
better land use practices and sustainable development activities. The
reserves are designed to include different zones of human activity. At the
center of the reserve is the core zone, where human activity is strictly
regulated to ensure a maximum of protection to the biodiversity in the
reserve. Around the core is a buﬁ‘er zone where limited human activity,
such as limited herding, limited agriculture, and the gathering of forest
products is allowed by the forest service. Finally, around the buffer zone is
the transition zone where people live in their villages and work on their
land. In the two zones where human activities are ofﬁcially allowed by the
state, reserve operators undertake research and extension projects which
involve local inhabitants in research on better land use practices and, also,
sustainable development activities (Greg and McGean 1985; Batiss 1986)
(Leisz, Nobles and Gage 1994:3,4).

In order to coordinate the protected areas of Madagascar, the World Bank
established the "National Association for the Management of Protected Areas" [AN GAP]
in Madagascar. Funded by the World Bank and USAID, this institution serves as the

Malagasy national coordinating institute of all protected areas, in conjunction with the

_' ..., -.. _

 

137

national Depw'tement d'Eau et Forets [Department of Water and Forests]. Six ANGAP
protected area projects were thereby identiﬁed for SAVEM funding:
Recognizing that these areas were being threatened, in part by
deforestation and exploitation, the projects were constructed as integrated
conservation and development projects (ICDP's) and based on the concept
that local populations will alter their behavior (to conservation of the
environment) if they see a relationship between their economic and social
well being to the protected area and if they are empowered to make the
right kinds of decisions. . . . In general ﬁgures, the ICDP's received
approximately eighteen and a halfmillion dollars ($18,500,000) through
SAVEM for a period of approximately 3 1/2 years (SAVEM 199721).
Among these Integrated Conservation and Development Projects that the United
States government ﬁnances is the Ranomafana National Park Project, located in the

southeastern forests of Madagascar.

Population Migration and Land Reorganization in the Ranomafana/Ifanadiana
Region

As this chapter has shown, the southeastern forests of Madagascar have provided a
reﬁrge from control and domination for the last two hundred years. Originally founded
between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries by entrepreneurs seeking to capitalize on
international trade on the eastern coast, the area that is now known as the
Ranomafana/Ifanadiana region was a safe haven for cattle thieves and slave traders, who
obtained much of their stock ﬁ'om the western regions south of the expanding Merina
kingdom, a region which later became the administrative division of the Betsileo. Kottak
(1971a: 14) notes that slaves were exchanged for ﬁrearms, and that this exchange
contributed to the concept of a Tanala ethnicity (discussed in more detail in the following

chapter) through the making of petty "kings.”

138

Access to ﬁrearms created temporary ”kings" of Tanala descent group
leaders. Normally dispersed in small villages throughout the forest,
members of several Tanala descent groups assembled on fortiﬁed hilltops
when Betsileo and, later, Merina military expeditions invaded their country.
They dispersed again when the military force withdrew. Tanala "kings"
were simply temporary military coordinators and heads of raiding parties
whose positions rested on possession of ﬁrearms.

By the eighteenth century another wave of irnnrigrants came to the region. Hanson
discusses these waves of immigration in the Ranomafana region:

It is important to distinguish the waves of refugees to the Ranomafana
forests described immediately above from a set of more organized and
larger-scale irnrnigrations from the north which occurred between the 18th
and 19th centuries. Most of these latter newcomers were of Betsileo
origin, escaping their highland homes in fear of forced labor and taxes, and
seeking the more fertile soils of the Ranonrafana forests. Solondraibe
(19862152) speaks of two mass Betsileo immigrations. The ﬁrst resulted
from the arduous demands issuing from the Betsileo kingdoms of Lalangina
and Isandra; the second, ﬁ'om similar demands of the Merina kings
Andrianarnpoinimerina and Radama I. It is, for the most part, these latter
two groups of immigrants who founded the villages now surrounding the
RNP [Ranomafana National Park] and whose descendants participate in the
RNPP [Ranomafana National Park Project]. A ﬁnal group to arrive near
the Ranomafana region during the pro-colonial period was part of what
Campbell (1988) calls the "Merina colonies". These "colonies” were
settlements of civilians and military ofﬁcers sent from the high plateau to
found agricultural communities. These 'communities’, however, also
became collection points for the slave trade. The eﬂ‘ects of these garrisons
on the eastern forest cover is signiﬁcant (Hanson l997:58,59).

Thus establishing themselves amongst the slave traders and cattle thieves, the new
settlers themselves became "people of the forest," or "Tanala."

Another wave of immigrants, identiﬁed mostly as Merina or Betsileo, and coming
from highland urban areas, settled during the 1920's and 1930's, when coﬁ‘ee and timber

concessions were introduced. These peOple came to beneﬁt ﬁ'om economic opportunities

associated with the expanding market economy and settled along major transportation

139

routes of Ranomafana-Ifanadiana-Mananjary trail or the newly-constructed National

Route 25. Merchants followed, "seeking to develop businesses along the roadways.

These peoples were of Malagasy, French, Chinese and Indo-Pakistani origins. They

established coffee plantations, set-up small shops featuring local forest products, and
operated lumber concessions" (Hanson 1997260). At the same time as these outside
entrepreneural groups were settling, colonial ofﬁcials encouraged the already settled
highland farmers to labor for hire on wet rice ﬁelds in the valleys.

A well known fact of governing in Madagascar is that shortages of rice

often lead to social disturbance. Thus, beginning around 1915, we witness

these three processes of dislocation, coﬁ‘ee and rice production occurring

simultaneously. Lucile Rabearimanana (1988284) argues that perhaps more

important than the French colonial administration in developing wet-rice in

the Ifanadiana distrct were the waves of Betsileo and Melina peoples who

migrated to the region in search of gain from the proﬁts of the export

economy. These highland populations were responsible for the transfer of

knowledge concerning irrigated rice culture and labored for hire on Tanala

ﬁelds. It is important to note here, that through their own participation in

this growing cash economy, many Tanala farmers now had the means to

effect a transition in their diets from manioc as the staple to rice (Hanson

1997:70,71).

Following independence, the next in-ﬂux of outsiders were the Japanese, who
funded the building of the JIRAMA dam on the Namorona River in Ranomafana in the
early 1970's. Hiring local labor to provide electricity to the city of Fianarantsoa, the dam
was perceived by most as a favorable project because people were employed. When the
Ranomafana National Park Project came two decades later, it was with mixed feelings.
Recalling the brutality of the colonial years and the continual eﬂ‘orts to appropriate the
forest lands of the region, outsiders were viewed as thieves. At the same time, recalling
the economic opportunities of the dam, outsiders were equally perceived as cash-rich, and

therefore, short-term opportunities to gain additional income were in sight for some.

140

By linking its agricultural and environmental objectives to misconceived
perceptions of local ethnic identities, the Ranomafana National Park Project fostered even
more ambivalence among residents who redeﬁned ethnic identiﬁcations to either beneﬁt
ﬁ'om project assistance (as Tanala) or to “rise” in status (as Betsileo) while simultaneously
revising their own or others’ ancestry to justify increasing economic inequalities as
inherent in one’s caste.

In the following chapter, I continue this discussion of the history of land
reorganization in Madagascar with a discussion of the how the land and labor policies
launched by Andrianarnpoinimerina and developed by subsequent rulers were inextricably
linked to the social restructuring of the island. This social manipulation included
deepening the divisions of class and caste, fundamentally altering gender relations, and
creating "tribal" divisions currently conceptualized as "ethnic" ones and directly tied to
concepts of race. In so doing, illness related to poverty and geographical inaccessibility
became naturalized as “tropical” illness, while health care and healing became aligned with
concepts of morality. By relegating the most impoverished and geographically isolated
groups to an ethnic status deemed “backward,” “lazy,” “ignorant,” and “promiscuous” (all
terms I often heard used by Project management and others to describe local residents),
the association between living in the forest and healing with its medicines became

simpliﬁed as a “tradition” uniformly practiced by everyone so grouped.

 

Chapter 4

SOCIAL STATUS AND ACCESS TO LAND

In the foregoing chapter, I discussed pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial land
management in order to show how Malagasy forests have represented contested terrain
for centuries, and how traditions tied to the forest may not be so long-lived as often
believed because population migrations, changing patterns of land-use, and local forms of
resistance to governmental decrees have contributed to the forging of "traditions" such as
(my.

In this chapter I discuss how the history of land reorganization and agricultural
policy has been speciﬁcally tied to changing identities. In particular, I focus on the history
of Merina, Betsileo and Tanala ethnic identities. I then show how the Ranomafana
National Park Project, in seeking to control forest resources, conﬂated "ethnic" identities
with agricultural practices through poor understandings of the concept of culture. In so
doing, the history of land reorganization and social change in southeastern Madagascar
has been reduced to ethnic categories and ”tradition.”

The way in which ethnicity has been tied to land-use practices in Madagascar has
been reported as a colonial practice in West Aﬁica, where the persistence of ethnic

stereotypes has been invoked by local residents toward political objectives.

141

142

Images of forest loss can also be reproduced in local political
discourse concerning ethnicity. Colonial stereotypes of ethnic
differentiation among Kissidougou’s populations rested partly on
environmental behavior. As a ‘forest people’, Kissia who live in the south
of the prefecture were contasted ethnically with the more notherly ‘savanna
people’ of Kuranko or Maninka origin. . . .Such stereotypes overlook
evident similarities in everyday ecological knowledge and resource
management, as well as the more complicated nature of Kissidougou’s
settlement history. Nevertheless, these stereotypes and their linked vision
of progressive forest loss are sometimes invoked by rural and urban Kissia
themselves, when expressing anxiety about Maninka domination, whether
economic, cultural or military. Sharing one forest — where the forest
islands of neighboring villages have come to touch each other — is one of
the strongest metaphors of Kissi political solidarity, linked as it used to be
to past alliance in warfare and to common initiation institutions. Accepting
the idea that the Kissi region could (until even recently) have been united in
one forest provides a politically appealing vision of ethnic unity; an instance
of people using environmental issues to make politico-ethnic points
(Fairhead and Leach 19961118).

In this chapter I show similar processes at play in the Ranomafana region, where
social unity becomes expressed as a Tanala ethnicity when contrasted to outside control,
yet its importance to identity and practice diminishes in the village, where lineage cleaves
the community, and caste forms a nearly impenetrable boundary between economic

classes.

Tribalism and Concepts of Race in Madagascar

...one of our new ﬁiends observed that although the Malagasy do use the
word ”tribes” it gives vazaha a wrong impression. In his view this word
suggests wider diﬁ’erences of ethnic origin, language and custom than exist
in Madagascar. He pointed out that apart from a small Kishwahili-speaking
community of Comorians (immigrants of Afro-Shirazi stock from the
Comoro Islands), all the Malagasy speak mutually intelligible dialects of
Malagasy and share a unique common culture. The many regional
variations in custom are superﬁcial, based mainly on contrasting natural
environments and past political divisions. They are not, he insisted, marked
enough to be properly described as tribal differences. I did not presume to

 

1 4 3

argue; the Malagasy are sensitive on this issue, having learned the hard way

that internal dissension invites vazaha intervention. They are well aware

that at present both Moscow and Washington would welcome any excuse

for directly inﬂuencing political developments within Madagascar.

Nevertheless, as we traveled further and noticed the radical physical

differences between the "highland people" and the "coastal people," we

decided that the use of "tribes" - however politically undesirable - makes

ethnographic sense (Murphy 1985: 107,108, emphasis in the original).

This quote, taken from a popular travel book of Madagascar, illuminates three
issues regarding the study of ethnicity in Madagascar. The ﬁrst is that Madagascar is
perceived by many as divided between highland and coastal populations and that these
geographical divisions have become cast as tribal divisions; the second is that ethnicity in
Madagascar is often conﬂated with race and differences between people are
conceptualized less as social diﬂ’erences and more as biological ones; and third,
enlightenment on the shaky ground of tribal divisions notwithstanding, old ideas die hard.
Dervla Murphy begins her narrative by disclosing that she has been told tribalism is a
historical and political construct, but concludes that because she saw physical differences
among people, she would hold ﬁrm to the notion that tribes make ethnographic sense.

Ethnographers, however, have sought to dispel, rather than reafﬁrm, the concept
of natural tribal divisions. While Madagascar is said to be home to eighteen diﬁ'erent
ethnic groups, historical and ethnographic analyses have shown that these ethnic groups
are political and historical constructions that originated both as an expression of, and
response to, the expansion of the pre-colonial autocracy (see, for example, Bloch 1986;
Kottak 1971b; Larson 1992). These divisions were later exploited by the colonial state to
shape and understand Malagasy identities and to facilitate political control. In the process,

concepts of identity have been forged in such a way that ethnic status has become far more

144

important to outsiders than it is to those who are said to comprise the ethnic groups while,
as in mainland Aﬁica, ethnicity has come to be a means by which people can negotiate
their identities in order to situate themselves politically and socially.

Archer (1978) points out that as in other countries considered "primitive,"
tribalism is invoked as the fundamental conﬂict hindering economic and political
development in Madagascar. He argues that on the contrary, despite differences in certain
customs, beliefs, and dialects, the Malagasy are primarily a homogeneous population
whose diﬁ‘erences throughout the history of its uniﬁcation in the 18th and 19th centuries,
have predominately originated in economic and political, rather than ethnic, conﬂicts.

For example, French colonization facilitated the emergence of a wealthy Merina
class, living primarily in Antananarivo but with close links to wealthy merchants and
landowners throughout the island. Their accumulation of wealth had been possible
because they had previously beneﬁtted from Protestant educations and inﬂuential status in
administrative posts during the Merina monarchy (Bloch 1986:32). At the same time,
decedents of slaves and other free people among the Merina emerged as an impoverished,
landless class, who had more in common with their rural counterparts than they did with
other Merina. The French promoted suﬂicient propaganda, however, to create the
impression of religious and ethnic divisions characterizing internal conﬂicts between
Merina and non-Merina, and Protestant and anti-Protestant factions, rather than the actual
class divisions that were only loosely related to Protestanisrn through its historical role in
education and administration.

The class divisions that separated people within regions were further obscured as

social divisions became characterized as geographical divisions, with social conﬂict

145

perceived as being between people ﬁom the high plateaux and people from the coastal
regions. Indeed, the geographical distribution of people has had signiﬁcant bearing on
how ethnicity is perceived. Madagascar was settled by two groups: Indonesian seafarers
who slowly migrated inland to settle in the high plateaux regions where malaria was less
common, and Bantu seafarers who settled along the western coastal areas where they
established trading communities. As further population migrations dispersed throughout
the island, lighter-skinned descendants of Indonesians, with straight hair and ﬁne features,
were among the ﬁrst to receive the favorable attention of Europeans in their support of the
Merina kingdom. As people were abducted into slavery from the coastal regions, it came
to be that darker skinned people in the highlands were more likely to be descended from
slaves, while lighter skinned people were more likely to be descended from slave holders.

But early ethnographic accounts pointed to endogamy to explain the history of
how lighter and darker-skinned people became socially segregated, such as this summary
by Ralph Linton (1939:251) in his discussion of "The Culture of Madagascar":

The races are extremely diverse, great multiplicity of type being favored by

endogarnous group patterns. But certain main racial types are

distinguishable with a fair degree of localization. In the plateau, the bulk of

the population is mesocephalic, with light brown skin, long wavy hair,

fairly heavy beard, and straight eyes.

Linton (1957:26,27) extended his argument further to presume a moral culpability
of the darker phenotype, as he ignored the relationship of Madagascar’s industrialization
to disease distribution, by attributing the spread of malaria in pre—colonial Aﬁica to Bantu
descendants whom he charges virtually exterrninated the superior race:

In Madagascar, brown people of southeast Asiatic origin occupy

the central plateau of the island where there were no anopheles mosquitoes
until they were introduced by the building of a railroad from the coast.

146

Completely surrounding this island of Asiatics was a belt of Negroid
peoples who occupy all the fever infected coastal lowlands. One of the
most interesting aspects of this situation was that the Negroid people all
speak Malayo-Polynesian languages and have cultures which show a strong
Asiatic tinge. There can be little doubt that they arrived on the island after
the Malayo-Polynesians by a process of gradual inﬁltration rather than
mass settlement. They presumably brought malaria with them ﬁom Aﬁica,
with the result that the Asiatic racial type was eliminated in all areas where
there were fever carrying mosquitoes, although not before the Asiatics had
transmitted much of their culture to the Negro immigrants.

The separation of Malagasy peoples according to their phenotype has been
indiscriminately glossed as Merina and non-Merina populations, conferring an ethnic
identity onto these “racial” categories. Campbell (1985) suggests that the concept of
racial superiority of Merina over darker-skinned Malagasy was ﬁrrther facilitated by
European evolutionists who argued that the lighter skin and skeletal physiology of the
Marina suggested closer resemblance to European physiognomy and hence, greater
intelligence.

This conﬂation of ethnicity with race is still deeply embedded in concepts of
Malagasy society. For example, Huntington (l988:3,4) cites Michel (1957) as equating
ethnic identiﬁcation with race:

The author of one study of the Bara cited the "fact" that Bara "skin is

frankly black and impregnated with the strong odor characteristic of the

Bantu" as evidence that the social and religious system of the Bara is

essentially Aﬁican.

More than thirty years later, Murphy (1985: 10) writes:

The exact origin of the Merina, the largest and most enterprising of

Madagascar‘s eighteen main tribes, remains a mystery. Scholars offer

contradictory explanations for their light brown skin, straight black hair and

impeccable Polynesian features . . . The minority of Merina who do not

look pure Polynesian tend to be tallish and rather dark with slightly wavy

147

And ﬁnally, writing for the World Bank, Pryor (1990:202) oﬂ‘ers this simple

description of social differences:
Ethnic ﬁictions do exist, however, and have a strongly regional

focus. In "high politics" the most important cleavage is between the

peoples of the highlands (primarily Merina and Betsileo) and the rest of the

island (the coastal peoples, or the cotiers) (see Spacensky 1970). Aside

ﬂow the racial diﬁ'erences between these two groups, these cleavages are

accentuated by a number of important economic and cultural factors

(emphasis added).

Before showing more speciﬁcally how these social divisions have been represented
by policy makers regarding the use of the environment and health and healing practices, I
discuss how three such "ethnic" groups came to be, namely, the Merina, Betsileo, and the

Tanala.

Forging Ethnicities

In addition to the economic and land reforms instituted by Andrianampoinimerina,
the economic and political expansion of the new kingdom required that cultural belief
systems be manipulated. Ombiasa and mpanjaka were used to promote a world view in
which certain classes of people were divinely privileged over others. Viewing their
authority as precariously positioned in the changing social order, many cultural leaders
promoted the new policies. Social cohesion loosened as respect for leadership gave way
to fear of leadership. A Merina ethnicity emerged, in which solidarity with the new royal
leaders was pitted against ‘the other,‘ non-Merina ethnicities (a strategy emulated by the
French colonialists a century later [Andriambelomiadana 1992]).

According to Larson (1992), there are no references to Merina as a social group

prior to the nineteenth century. He alleges that the concept of a Merina ethnic identity did

148

not emerge until the late eighteenth century. Prior to that, inland communities shared
common ideologies, cosmologies, rituals, principles of social organization and politics, but
were not collectively identiﬁed (aside ﬁom derogatory references made of them as dog-
pigs). It was not until 1792, when Andrianampoinimerina moved his kingdom to
Antananarivo, that the terms Merina and Irnerina (the place of the Merina), were
geographically extended and gained popularity among the local people. This period, he
suggests, was when social practices now associated with Merina traditions (such as
irrigated rice agriculture and burial in “ancestr ” tombs) emerged as explicit ethnic
practices distinguishing privileged groups ﬁom the subjugated groups of the expanding
empire. Merina ethnic identity, he argues, was fashioned in part by a few ruling elite who
sought to diffuse social discontent in the highlands.

This forging of ethnicity was directly linked to the reorganization of land during
the rise of the Merina monarchy. For example, Larson indicates that one of the most
signiﬁcant tactics Andrianarnpoinimerina employed to assure his success was to invent an
ethnic tradition and social structure in which ethnic groups would be distinct, identiﬁable
groups. Toward this end, he popularized ancestral tombs and ancestral land
(tanindrazana). The ofﬁcial demarcating of land holdings was very important to
Andrianampoinimerina's land policy, in order to prevent other rulers from attracting
followers, and to ensure the collection of taxes (Campbell 1985', Larson 1992). The new
hetra, not necessarily ancestral to those to whom they were assigned, (having in most
cases recently migrated as a result of warfare or to escape slavery), were recast as
ancestral lands by Andrianarnpoinimerina. Anyone who did not support the ”ancestral

land” was to be publicly driven away by the fokonolona and his hetra seized and given to

149

others. The manipulating of this ancestral tradition continued through the nineteenth
century, creating a new ethnic "Merina" identity that previously did not exist (Bloch 1985;
Feeley-Harnik 1991; Larson 1992).1

Each twrindmzana and ancestral tomb would have its own relationship to the king,
its own history, and its own set of rules and social order. This construction of ethnicity
served to assure the loyalty of the ﬁrenenena (small-scale corporate descent groups
organized around political leaders to designate the kingdom) to the king and provide a

sense of safety and security to rural inhabitants.

Deepening Social Divisions and Castes

As Andrianarnpoinimerina initiated his land reorganization policies that were to
later become state policies, he linked them to social restructuring. The emergence of class
divisions, clearly triggered long before with concepts of sovereignty and serfdom, were
rapidly ﬁxed in the new society. Landlessness or near landlessness, differing access to
resources, monetization of the economy, monopolization of the slave trade by an elite
group of chiefs and kings, and the introduction of foreign-owned or -controlled industry,
all served to dispossess the majority of the population of the means of their production and

to facilitate class divisions.

 

1 Imerina had been documented as a place name, but it wasn't until the early
nineteenth century that Merina is mentioned as an ethnic group (Larson 1992).

1 5 O

Andrianampoinimerina, while not establishing caste divisions himself, capitalized
on them to give credence to his dominion.2 To do so, however, it was ﬁrst critical to
justify to the public the necessity of slavery. One way that he succeeded in this eﬁ‘ort was
by exploiting the authority of the ombiasa [shaman, or divination specialist and healer], by
propogating the myth that the diety Zanahary had ﬁxed the destiny of each person, and
that people were not equal in the eyes of Zanahary, who had created some with more
elevated destinies than others (Beaujard 1983:388). Beaujard further suggests that the
mpanjalca [village chief or one who governs], viewing their authority as precarious in the
new social order, used their divination skills to contribute to the perpetuation of this myth,
in order that their political strength be viewed as divinely determined.

Four broad social divisions were then advanced. These were the andriana3 (nobles
by birthright), hova4 (free peOple), mainty (slaves or emancipated sovereigns, including
descendants of hova reduced to slavery), and andevo (slaves) (Dubois 193 8). Slaves were

forbidden from owning land, thereby rendering them dependant on how or andriana.

 

2 Campbell (1985) reports that it was King Andriamasinavalona (1675-1710) who
laid the foundation for a caste-based society by restricting such castes to a speciﬁc area of
Imerina and imposing compulsory state service (the irrigation of rice ﬁelds). Following his
death, civil wars fragmented the region until Andrianarnpoinimerina rose in power and
reinstituted Andriamasinavalona’s techniques.

3 The amiricma are frequently invoked as a "traditional" class of royalty. Dubois
(1938) however, argued that the formation of the andriana caste was deﬁned by Ralambo
(who ruled from 1615-1640), and is therefore, of relatively recent social innovation.

" Dubois (1 93 8) points out that the term "hova" is problematic, because among
the Betsileo the term refers exclusively to descendants of chiefs and the privileged class.
Among the Imerina, however, the term refers to all free people and means "second class. "

151

Campbell (1985) maintains that the Merina social structure resembles not so much
a class system, in which economic mobility is theoretically possible, than it does a caste
system.’ In this caste system, the hova were elevated in status only as the andevo were
absorbed through forced labor and slavery. Each new Merina social group, as in India,
was absorbed as a new caste, according to Campbell. Moreover, to maintain such a caste
system, it was necessary to enforce rules of endogamy, which he did by legislating family
law and restricting each caste to a speciﬁc territory from which they could not move
without royal consent (Campbell 1985). The concentration of caste, Campbell notes,
provided a concentration of labor resources. Therefore, by concentrating hova and
wrdevo castes in the eastern forested regions, their labor could be appropriated to exploit
the forest resources.

In addition to exploiting social divisions of class and caste, gender divisions were
fundamentally restructured in association with the reorganization of land. Having no
previously codiﬁed system of inheritance in which land was passed, nor demarcated
divisions of land limiting access, it was necessary for the king to regulate transfer. First,
according to Larson (1992), a fundamental characteristic of the social restructuring was to
link every household with a deﬁned community; toward this end, Andrianarnpoinimerina
tried to create a patriarchal household structure in which men were to become heads of
households. A man assumed legal rights after leaving his parents' home and setting up his

own household with a woman. Only men, according to Compte (1963) were granted

 

5 Linton (1933) had also noted the resemblance to a caste system, but pointed
out that such a type of social organization was not uniform throughout the island, and
even within the limited territory of the Tanala, there were differences. For example, the
southern Ikongo was organized more like a caste system, than were the northern Menabe.

152

hetra, which were limited to the surface of a rice ﬁeld sufﬁcient to support one family for
one year. Women - who had previously shared land equally with men - did not have the
right to buy or sell hetra, but could inherit them.

Inheritance, however, was strictly regulated. Frotier de la Messeliere (1932),
Larson (1992) and The'bault (1951) contend that prior to the nineteenth century, males
and females had, theoretically, equal rights to inheritance. Rights to inheritance, however,
like all social policies and practices, were disparate throughout Madagascar, and had been
changing for quite sometime prior to the rise of the Merina, even in the highlands.6
Notwithstanding the diversity of inheritance rights, Andrianampoinimerina's mandates
severely curtailed women's access to land and resources in the highlands. Father to son
inheritance was promoted, and wealth acquired jointly during marriage was apportioned
two-thirds to the husband, and one-third to the wife (the institution of marriage is
discussed subsequently). Andrianarnpoinimerina justiﬁed the unequal division of property
because men were obliged to serve in the military to defend the country and safeguard the
kingdom (Rabenaro 1967). The contributions made by women, who maintained the hetra
and reproduced the labor supply, were accordingly disregarded. These policies, initially
affecting only highland groups, came to be regarded as indigenous Malagasy law when the
colonial administration sought to promote its own social policies by incorporating existing

social and political structures into its reorganization of land and resources.

 

6 Sarah Fee (1993 personal communication) indicates that among the Antandroy
of the south, where Islamic inﬂuence had penetrated long before the rise of the Merina,
rights to inheritance have for several centuries favored males over females. Frotier de la
Messeliere (1932) had also reported the long-standing gender inequities in property
division and social relations in those regions under Islamic inﬂuence.

1 5 3
Transformation of Gender Relations

During the rise of Merina autocracy, gender relations were regulated by
codiﬁcation of a family law that was essential to the maintenance of property laws.7 The
fanambadiana had been an informal gender relationship, wherein women were free to
leave their partners, but it was not necessarily an ideal arrangement for women. F rotier de
la Messeliere (1932) indicated that women were considered vady marolahy (the spouse of
many men). In this arrangement, a woman was regarded as the spouse of not only her
partner, but his brothers, as well. Upon her spouse's death, the widow could become the
partner to one of these brothers, or a cousin (entin-doloha).'

Andrianarnpoinimerina banned the practice of vady marolahy, as well as
polyandry. In so banning women from having more than one spouse, he reaﬂirmed the
rights of men to polygamy - although they were limited to no more than seven wives at
one time. Regardless of the gender inequity of the law, polygamy was not necessarily
viewed as injurious to women. Multiple wives lightened the domestic responsibilities of

women because work could be shared; polygamy therefore became increasingly

 

7 Andrianampoinimerina's legislation was not recorded in writing; the ﬁrst
documented code of laws was drawn up by Ranavalona I in 1828 (The’bault 1951). In this
Code, however, she referred to the legislation of Andrianarnpoinimerina and Radama I as
the basis by which the written Code was drafted.

3 What is not clear, however, is whether this relationship was a voluntary
one. All the literature that I have come across indicates that a woman was considered the
master of her own body and enjoyed sexual freedom. Assuming this to be true, then the
vady marolahy arrangement could have been to her beneﬁt, particularly upon being
widowed, in which case, if the brother was obliged to "marry" her, her economic security
would be ensured. If, on the other hand, the relationship was an obligatory one on her
part, then the vady marolahy relationship was to her detriment, which was how F rotier de
la Messliere viewed it.

154

advantageous to women as their economic responsibilities increased. F urthermore, the
institution of polygamy was practical, given the increasing shortage of men in the
community. Campbell (1985) noted that polygamy drastically increased with the shortage
of male labor. While wealthier groups could exploit slave labor for their economic
production, less wealthy groups, now controlled by men, turned to "marriage. " Whereas a
female slave could cost up to $100.00, Campbell (1985) observes, a wife could be
purchased for only $20.00 to $30.00.

To further- restructure the social organization of the community, control of the

fokonolona was vested in male elders, who were given authority to rule on divorce, child
custody, inheritance, land conﬂicts, domestic disputes, adoption, disavowing of children,
and slavery (Larson 1992). The conversion of the fanambadiana relationship to a marital
relationship cannot be pinpointed, but I suggest that by curtailing women's rights to
multiple partners, and vesting with men the authority to rule on the dissolution of these
relationships, the farmbadr’ana was gradually recast as a "marriage," which was to
become even more institutionalized in the nineteenth century through Christian ceremonies
and colonial licensing.

As women'sfamzmbadiana roles were restructered, their voice was also silenced.
Among the strategies he employed toward the invention of a Merina ethnicity,
Andrianarnpoinimerina instituted the speech-making "tradition" of kabary. Kabary were
formalized oratory designed to mythologize the history of the highland kings and thereby
legitimate Andrianarnpoinimerina as a rightfully-titled monarch of all the highlands
(Campbell 1985; Larson 1985). Because the kabary was intended as the history of the

kings, and not the history of the people, voices of resistance were suppressed; women,

155

who had been among the most audible opponents of the new order, were forbidden - upon
threat of enslavement - from attempting their own kabwy (Larson 1992).

In addition to being divested of land and voice, women were deprived of legal
rights, unless they independently owned hetra on which they paid taxes. Women who did
not have hetra (the majority of women, considering their limited means to acquire it),
could not bring civil actions on their own behalf, and were forced to rely on their husbands
or male relatives (Larson 1992).

But with the transformation in the gendered-division of labor brought on by corvee
labor, slavery, and missionary educations, not all women were disadvantaged. Indeed, the
growing prosperity of a Merina elite class brought with it marked disparities among
women, as some women became very wealthy, while others were impoverished. For
example, Campbell (1985) indicates that one of the avenues to economic prosperity that
the Merina empire did facilitate was (by 1820) the widespread ownership by the Merina of
non-Merina slaves. The responsibilities for domestic reproduction were doubled for
enslaved women who were responsible not only for the domestic reproduction of their
own families, but for the domestic reproduction of their masters' families.

Consequently, while tensions between genders was exacerbated by the policies of
the Merina state, men and women were also united by their class interests and evolving
ethnic identities. As such, the rise of the Merina autocracy was a period of great social
conﬂict. Campbell (1985), for example, rejects the claim that the Merina expansion
provided unprecedented peace and prosperity, as is popularly taught in contemporary
Madagascar. He notes that there was never voluntary obedience to Hova authority and

Merina power was never strong enough to maintain law and order for more than a third of

156

the island. But resistance to Merina rule, while effective, also contributed to the success
of Merina social restructuring. For example, Campbell (1985:11) notes that Malagasy
groups were stratiﬁed by status and rank according to the ﬁrmness of imperial rule and the
extent to which they collaborated with Merina imperialism. In 1810, he reports, when
Bezanozano groups blocked the Marina trade outlet to the east coast, Radama’s troops

defeated them and subjected the survivors to perpetual servitude.’

 

9Similar social domination was exercised against groups which came to be known
as the Betsinrisaraka (Campbell 1985) and the Sakalava (F eeley-Hamik 1991). Feeley-
Harnik (1991: 101) reports that to concentrate their labor supply, as well as enculturate
others in Hova practices, the Merina state established petit-colonies in which ’pens' were
constructed to enclose local (Sakalava) inhabitants. She quotes Guillain (1845 in Feeley-
Harnik 1991:101) Andrianampoinimerina’s successor, Radama I:

Radama wanted to make of them at once kinds of model colonies to which

the indigenous people would be drawn and would habituate themselves

little by little to living peaceably among the Hova, to searching for their

well-being in agriculture and not in marauding; to recognizing, in a word,

the advantages of a more civilized social state than their own.

But these efforts to socially, politically, and economically dominate the masses
were not readily accepted. Economic resources had been drained from the country by the
military expansion (Campbell 1985); the remaining wealth had become concentrated
among a minority elite who had ties to the Merina state or were otherwise enriched by the
slave trade or expanding industry. These conditions were the catalyst to massive
resistance to the nineteenth century Merina monarchy. Several groups were persistent in
their deﬁance to Merina rule. While the Sakalava, representing an established kingdom on
the western coast of Madagascar, remained the primary economic and political rivals to

the Merina, their rulers interrnarried with Merina rulers in efforts to consolidate their own

power; nonetheless, the Merina were ultimately the beneﬁciaries of this practice. Despite

157

While two-thirds of the island did not voluntarily submit to Merina rule, and their
involuntary submission fostered local tensions with the displacement of men from rural
communities, among those who did acquiesce to incorporation in the Mcrina state were
the highlanders living to the south of the Merina region, and who became known as the

Betsileo.

Emergence of Betsileo and Tanala Ethnicities

The Betsileo were an administrative construction of the Merina autocracy (Kottak
1971a). The area which is now regarded as Betsileo was ﬁrst populated around 1700.
Andrianampoinimerina, seeking to control the mass populace and the fertile lands,
organized the island into six administrative divisions. This administrative reorganization
began as small surveillance posts around which provinces were formed (Kottak 1971 a).
Kottak (1971a: 136) stressed this point in his ethnography of the Betsileo.

Many of the ethnic units enumerated in the Malagasy census originated as

labels for provincial and territorial divisions of the Merina state. Employed

also by the French, they were reinforced, and today they ascribe ethnic

status for life.
In the case of the Betsileo, he indicates that

The distinction between the Betsileo and the Bara appears to have been

created by the Merina when they drew an administrative line between the
Betsileo province with its capital at Fianarantsoa and the Bara province

 

the negotiated power struggles of the groups’ leaders, however, the Sakalava people did
not acquiesce to such domination, nor did the Antandroy to the south, the Antankara to
the north, or the Betsimisaraka to the east . Betsileo and Tsirnehty identities, and their

well-documented resistance, did not transpire until later in the century.

1 5 8
with its northern capital at lhosy. Through time, this administrative

division has come to be regarded as an ethnic distinction (Kottak
1971a: l 36).

The administrative divisions of the Betsileo and the Merina were further reinforced
by the colonial administration. Allen (19952124) (citing Chaigneau) points to this process
of reifying ethnicity:

The extent of "tribalism" in Malagasy politics has often been

exaggerated to disguise other animosities of political elites, social classes,

or religion. It is nonetheless true that political and social privileges

originating in the nineteenth-century internal colonialism of the Merina

have engendered considerable resentment among other Malagasy.

Chaigneau identiﬁes the role of the French colonial administration in

perpetuating the conﬂict: "The colonial govermnent bequeathed a practice

of exploiting the bitterness emergent from situations of domination, while

building an anthropological and ethnological literature aiming at "scientiﬁc"

justiﬁcation of this opposition. This was the product of an analysis which

proved effective and convenient in controlling the country but which

scarcely considered sociological realities. "

One strategy toward this end was French colonial Governor Gallieni's politique des
races. Governor Gallieni was the ﬁrst colonial governor to control Madagascar, taking
control with the occupation of Madagascar in 1895, and colonial annexation in 1896.

Allen suggests that the politique des races was a colonial effort to institute a
quasi-aﬁrmative action cammign in which coastal groups were targeted for educational
and economic opportunities to facilitate social parity with the Merina (which the colonial
government sought to disempower). In the end, however, the politique des races turned
out to be an ineﬂ‘ective policy because, as Allen argues, the better-educated high-plateau
”Merina" proved to be the more suitable job applicants for colonial administration, and

colonial resources were too limited to implement the policies of the politiques des races.

1 5 9
Thus, during the colonial period social disparity intensiﬁed between Merina and non-
Merina, rather than lessened.

Whereas ethnic groups in Madagascar, as elsewhere, have been essentially political
constructs, Kottak (1971a: 136ﬁr) notes that

There have been exceptions in which ethnic designation is determined by

environment rather than by political order. The Tanala inhabit the

rainforest between the highlands and the east coast. The term Tanala

means "people of the forest. " Anyone who lives in the forest and practices

a Tanala horticultural economy is a Tanala. The common cultural

adaptation confers a certain ethnic unity here.

Thus, Kottak makes two important points relevant to the ethnicity of the Betsileo
and the Tanala. First, he suggests that the Betsileo, like most other of the eighteen
"designated ethnic units" of the Malagasy population, are fairly recent administrative
constructions, rather than self-distinguished sub-cultures of the greater Malagasy
"culture." Second, he points out that the Tanala are not an administrative division, but are
instead forest residents identiﬁed by the way they live within their environment. This
conception of the Tanala as being deﬁned by the way they live is similar to how Astuti has
represented the concept of ethnicity among the Vezo. Astuti (1995) has shown how the
Vezo, people of the west coast of Madagascar whose economic subsistence is based on
ﬁshing, are presumed to be an ethnic group based on descent, yet viewed from the
perspective of the people themselves, Vezo is a performative category in which people
become Vezo by living as Vezo.

...Vezo become what they are through what they do; both identity and

difference result ﬁ'om activities that people perform in the present rather

than from a common or distinct origin they acquired at some point in the
past (Astuti 1995:465).

160

Her concept of “becoming” Vezo parallels Kottak's (1971b) view that anyone can
become Tanala, by practicing the Tanala forest economy. The Tanala and the Betsileo,
while treated as two different "ethnic groups," are, according to Kottak, two very diﬂ‘erent
categories of people - one a political category of highland people administratively created
by the nineteenth century Merina state, the other a geographical category of people who
live within a certain environment and therefore practice certain economic strategies for
eﬁ‘ectively living within their environment - most notably, swidden agriculture.

Building on Harris (1979), Kottak proposes a model of cultural adaptive types,
rather than "ethnic" groups, to understand how different groups of people use the land in
which they live. In so doing, he treats "Tanala" as swidden agriculturalists living in the
forest, and "Betsileo" and "Merina" as irrigation agriculturalists living in the central
highlands. He clearly illuminates the fallacy of regarding the Merina administrative
divisions of the population as credible cultural boundaries, but uses the names of these
groups to help identify people living within different environments. Thus, he groups
"Merina" and "Betsileo" together as irrigation agriculturalists of the central highlands, as
he does the "Tanala" and the "Betsimisaraka" (living in the central coastal forests
northeast of the Ranomafana region) as swidden agriculturalists of the eastern escarpment.
The analytical boundaries separating groups of people are, in this model, economic
boundaries rather than ethnic ones; the economic strategies people practice are thereby
made fundamental to understandings of social structure. Conceptualizing culture, then, is

less a matter of identity than it is a matter of economic relations.

161

Kottak's conceptualization of adaptive types echoes Linton's (19392290) argument
that the social distinction separating Betsileo ﬁom Tanala does not arise ﬁ'om descent, but
instead from economic practices.

Tanala and Betsileo cultures were identical in the main. The
diﬂ‘erences are traceable to the change in productive methods from dry to
wet rice cultivation. This is proven by several circumstances: The
traditions in Betsileo indicate an old culture very like Tanala; the
institutions of both indicate a common source, and many of them are still
identical; the changes in Tanala were gradual, and were well on the way to
becoming identical with Betsileo when the French took over; and ﬁnally
some of the Tanala tribes took over the wet rice method and abandoned it
because of the serious incompatibilities it created in the social structure.
The spread of wet rice cultivation cannot be attributed solely to diﬁ‘usion;
wet rice culture was endemic in Tanala and coincident with dry rice. Its
spread was favored largely by exhaustion of the dry method. Hence in
examining the changes secondary to this main innovation, we need not
depend exclusively on diﬂirsion for an explanation.

The history of wet-rice and swidden rice agriculture is therefore more clearly
understood by examining the historical and social factors shaping land use, rather than
summarizing Betsileo and Tanala "cultures" and presuming the practice of tary to be
embedded in a cultural belief system, as I will show it has been by the Ranomafana
National Park Project in implementing its health and agricultural policies. First, however,
I discuss in more detail the ways in which ethnicity, caste, and lineage have evolved in the

Ranomafana region.

Honoring Tradition: "Cultural Sensitivity" and the RNPP
The Ranomafana National Park Project [RNPP] has identiﬁed swidden agriculture
as the greatest ecological threat to the region's biodiversity (RNPP 1994). The most

important economic and social strategy of the RNPP administration has been to encourage

1 6 2
the shift from swidden rice agriculture (law) to irrigated rice agriculture (tanim-bary), a
strategy which failed for the colonial administration. To compensate the residents for loss
of the forest lands, the Project promised improved health care, sanitation, contraception,
education and revenues ﬁom the National Park.

To gain understanding of the perceptions and needs of the local villagers,
members of the RNPP and representatives of the Department of Water and
Forest visited all the villages surrounding the proposed national park. This
survey took seven six-day trips on foot over steep terrain.

The average village housed 300 individuals who lived in about
thirty adobe mud huts with thatched rooms. We met with the village elders
ﬁrst, then had a general meeting with the population of each village. The
elders discussed the need for schools, health clinics, and technical
assistance with agriculture. As we listened, the scope of the project
increased. For long-term success in protecting any habitat we need to be
realistic and begin with incorporating the needs of the people who live
adjacent to the protected area from the beginning (Wright 1992:28).

The project has raised high expectations among the local villagers that
cannot be met. And unfortunately, pilot projects do not address this issue.
The equitable distribution of beneﬁts to villagers in compensation for the
loss of resources of the park needs to be given highest priority
(DEF/USAID/ANGAP Debrieﬁng, 7/12/93, General Observations).

That the project promised social beneﬁts in exchange for rights to forest land is
clear. What is less clear is how residents were selected to receive these beneﬁts. As with
many development projects, those villages located closest to the road-~and therefore more
visible to consultants, reporters and tourists - received more beneﬁts.10

Ambatolahy is a village ﬁve miles from Ranomafanana, just off the

n[?] road. It is near the entrance to the park in what scientists call high

humid cloud forest. All seven of the park guides [the Principle Investigator

of the RNPP] has hired to lead tourists into the park come from this town
(Boblen 1993227).

 

1° See Chambers 1983 and Hancock 1989 on beneﬁciaries of development
projects.

1 6 3
During our return trip she stops at a village at the park trailhead to

present a toilet seat she had brought from the United States for installation

in its privy. (Will other villages be envious? Will she have to order twenty-

ﬁve more?) At her suggestion this village has also built a thatched-roofed

snack bar. Here the villagers sell soft drinks to thirsty hikers with an

appealing shyness bordering on diﬂidence. A noncash economy is reaping

its ﬁrst monetary payment from the park; a service industry is being born

though no one quite realizes it (Bohlen 1993:36).

Hanson has also shown how the village of Ambodiaviavy received hurricane relief
aid from the park, as well as other beneﬁts (Hanson 1997), while the centrally located
town of Ranomafana has been rewarded with numerous construction projects and local
businesses are provided with periodic coats of whitewash.

But how those villages off the road have been selected for project beneﬁts,
particularly for health care, is related more toward perceived agricultural practices and
ethnic identity than it is toward putting on a good show. In determining how social
beneﬁts would be distributed, the project focused on the social factors contributing to the
environmental destruction in the area. More speciﬁcally, the project attempted to address
the local social factors contributing to the practice of tavy.“ In so doing, it identiﬁed two
"ethnic groups" in the region - the Tanala, and the Betsileo, representing the early settlers
and the later immigrants, respectively.

Two ethnic groups live within the buffer zone: the Betsileo people of the

Western highlands and the Tanala people who mainly live in lower

elevations in the central and eastern regions of the park. There is much
irrtermingling between the two groups (RNPP 199424).

 

11 Not surprisingly, the relationship between urban resource use and
environmental change, the historical context of farming in the Ranomafana region, and the
social changes associated with structural adjustment and the park itself, were not included
in this focus.

164

According to project documents, the agricultural practices of the residents are
distinguished by ethnicity.

Two basic forms of subsistence agriculture are practiced by farmers in the
peripheral zone. . .The Tanala people traditionally practice slash and burn
agriculture or "tavy.". . . The use of tavy has had a considerable negative
environmental impact in the eastern cloud forest and lowlands. Since 1960
it is estimated that 50% of the existing forests have been cut, mainly for
tavy . .. The Betsileo people traditionally cultivate paddy rice in relatively
ﬂat land around rivers and streams (RNPP 1994:5).

T my is viewed as the "tradition" of the Tanala (RNPP 1994: 16).

The advantages of tavy agriculture are that it often yields more than
paddy rice, especially in the ﬁrst year, it is easier to cultivate, local people
can't afford chemical fertilizer necessary for paddy rice, multiple crops can
be planted in tavy ﬁelds, fewer tools are needed for tavy, guarding the
ﬁelds is not necessary and cattle can graze on the residue. One important
aspect of this agricultural system is cultural in that the Tanala people have
traditionally practiced tavy (RNPP 1994: 16).

The project thus describes the economic and pragmatic reasons why tavy is
practiced, but concludes that an important aspect of why it is practiced is cultural "in that
the Tanala people have traditionally practiced tavy (RNPP 1994:16). The reasons why
pe0ple practice a certain farming strategy is thus reduced to a timeless, non-rational notion
of "tradition," in other words, even though the system makes sense economically, it is
practiced by the Tanala for "cultural" reasons, because it is their "tradition. "

They are further said to be inexperienced with irrigated rice farnring, and must
depend upon Betsileo labor to do it for them.

Most Tanala villagers, and even some Betsileo villagers in the

central section of the park, are not skilled at working on rice paddies.

Having inhabited the region for more than a century and having depended

mainly on tavy agriculture, they have lost much of the necessary

knowledge, if indeed they ever had it at all. For the last ﬁve to six decades,

or longer in some cases, many Tanala households have used migrant
Betsileo laborers from the High Plateau to work their rice paddies. Peters

165

(1993:190) reports that in one Tanala village, residents "may even leave the

rice paddies idle if they do not have enough money to employ the Betsileo

to complete all the paddies (Ferraro and Rakotondrajaona 1992).

The Tanala are further characterized by a social organization in which power is
vested in the mpanjaka, with women having relatively little power in comparison to the
Betsileo (Ferraro 1994). It is alleged that due to their "tradition" and their "culture" that
they have been resistant to the project strategies to increase irrigated rice ﬁelds, and pose
the greatest social threat to the "ecosystem. "

RNPP development activities during Phase II will rely on a prioritized

approach to address threats identiﬁed in the three target areas: 1) non-

sustainable, consumptive utilization of forest products 2) sustainable,

consumptive utilization of forest products and 3) sustainable, non-

consumptive utilization of the forest. These activities will be tailored to

take into account ethnic variations of resource use and economic

stratiﬁcation patterns within peripheral zone communities (RNPP 1994:24,

emphasis added).

The Betsileo, in contrast are viewed by the project as being more amenable to
irrigated rice farming, more experienced with agricultural innovations, and more educated.
Their social structure is distinguished from the Tanala, in that power is represented to be
more democratically-controlled, with village elders and women having more authority in
decision-making regarding resource use. Like the Tanala, the social structure and
agricultural practices of the Betsileo are said to be rooted in their "traditions" and their
"culture" (RNPP 19945).

This dichotomizing of village residents by their ethnicity provides a circular
reasoning by which the project classiﬁes people. If they practice irrigated rice farming,
they are Betsileo; if they are Betsileo, they practice irrigated rice farming. Ifthey are tavy

farmers, they are Tanala, if they are Tanala, they are tary farmers. This view treats the

166

fact that the northern, southern, and central regions are ﬂatter, with more land conducive
to wet-rice agriculture, as coincident to ethnicity. The eastern "Tanala" region is much
more topographically constrained -- very little land is suitable to irrigated rice farming, yet
the practice of swidden farming is regarded by the project as "ancestral tradition," borne of
this topography perhaps, but, over time, has become so ﬁrmly ﬁxed in the Tanala mind as
the way of the ancestors that they are incapable of adopting new farming practices unless
they have no other choice.

This ethnic stereotyping has impeded both groups from receiving development
assistance. Prior to the project, UNICEF provided assistance to the Malagasy government
to target those they identiﬁed as Betsileo for receiving credit to buy fertilizers and other
agricultural inputs, because they were allegedly more responsive to increasing wet-rice
production. Now, presuming that it is the Tanala who need the most "sensibilization," the
project has targeted those they identify as Tanala - based on the extent to which they
practice tavy - to receive the beneﬁts of agricultural extension. Working to incorporate
the supposed "Tanala culture" into its scheme, the project both aims to obliterate the
culture of tary, while catering to the perceived traditions of a Tanala ethnic identity. At
the same time, they embrace a neo-colonial policy of indirect rule, in which agricultural
change is facilitated by working within the village social structures in the name of
"participation. "

The programs will attempt to work through local power structures to

address the cultural aspect of tavy as well as through educational and

technical programs that look at the production levels of the crops and

alternatives ..... Targeted groups of residents will be those who have

historically been involved in cutting virgin forest lands. These people

include young or poor households who have not inherited land, migrants
who have no designated land and older people who contend that use of the

167

forest is their right. Programs will be concentrated mainly in villages on the
eastern side of the park where population densities are the greatest and
tavy is utilized extensively. The western region of the park and the areas of
the high plateau, which are mainly inhabited by Betsileo, have no tavy
tradition and land that is more conducive to paddy rice. These areas will be
excluded ﬁom the programs unless individual villages are identiﬁed as
posing a signiﬁcant threat (RNPP 1994:22).

Moreover, Hanson (1993) suggests that the ways in which Project planners have
stereotyped local populations in terms of ethnicity may have profound effects in the
manipulation of cultural rituals to legitimate claims to land, and might lead to other
recontextualizations of folldore and ritual. He, too, points to the ways in which ethnic
stereotypes have been reproduced by the project and divorced ﬁ'om political and historical
context:

In planning many of these projects, Park researchers have
deliminated a population who they believe pose the most immediate threat
to the area's forests. Park development, sociological, and health team
discourses, in representing the needs of this population, have reproduced
some long-standing ethnic stereotypes. The Betsileo, located to the north
and west of the protected area, have an extensive history of contact with
the more "developed" Merina and French populations in the highlands.
Because of this association, the Betsileo are said to be hard working
farmers, competent with wet rice agriculture and open to Park innovation.
It is only poverty, population growth and landlessness that has forced these
populations into law. The T anala, on the other hand, remained relatively
isolated ﬁ'om highland inﬂuences. The Tanala "prefer" tavy (Peters
1992:235), burning a section of forest and relying upon the soil's short-
lived fertility to produce rice, corn, beans, manioc, coffee, bananas, and
pineapples. That the Tanala continue to depend upon such an
"unsustainable" agricultural system is, in part, an effect of their political
organization. According to Ranomfana National Park socio-economic
discoures, the Tanala mpanjaka (governors), unlike the more
democratically-oriented Betsileo leaders, wield complete control over the
distribution of resources. The mpcmjaka's monopoloy over the village's
wet rice ﬁelds forces younger farmers and more recent immigrants into
tary production. Because the mpanjaka are concerned with maintaining
such privileged positions, Tanala traditional authority is seen as a major
obstacle to Park "development" projects (Peters 1992:234.23 7; Sanrisoa

168

1992:134-135; Ranomafana National Park staff, personal communications)
(Hanson 1993:338-339).

Contrary to the mpanjaka of Ranotsara controlling the irrigated rice ﬁelds and
undermining democratic processes, it is instead those who have most beneﬁtted from the
project itself who control the most land in Ranotsara. The processes of colonialism,
structural adjustment, the Japanese-funded JIRAMA dam, and the Ranomafana National
Park Project, have provided the most signiﬁcant means by which three households of the
Zaﬁnaraina lineage have been able to absorb the land and labor of the village and in so

doing, undermine the authority of the mpanjaka.

Drawing ﬁ'om Kottak's (1971a) model of adaptive strategies, understanding the
relationship between agricultural practices and social structure can help to understand
local power structures. In an article well-known to scholars of Madagascar, and which
can be found on the shelves of the RNPP library, Oxby (1985) has argued that historical
changes, not "traditional" reverence for the mpanjaka, have shaped power structures in
Malagasy farming communities.

The transformation of land use from forest to farm is gradual: the
ancestors of the irrigated-rice cultivators of the central plateau area of
Madagascar were hill rice cultivators several centuries ago, when the area
was covered by forest. Gradually, as the forest was destroyed, they turned
to irrigated agriculture. In some cases, people were pushed back into the
forest as a result of wars and reverted to hill rice cultivation (Bloch 1975).

Instructive also is the social transformation, ﬁom a sparse
population of forest dwellers living in semi-permanent settlements whose
social organization is relatively egalitarian, to a village—based society
characterized by higher population densities and a more hierarchical social
structure. These parallel changes in land use and society are important in
understanding the farmers' choice of agricultural strategy (Oxby 1985:43).

1 6 9
If, then, rice cultivation is a result of historical circumstances how is it that people's
histories have been replaced with their ethnicities? As Hanson (1993) argues,
stereotypes, rather than empirical research, shape discourse on populations in the
Ranomafana region. He ties contemporary stereotypes to colonial representations of the
Tanala and Betsileo.

These colonial understandings of the Tanala as lazy and
unconcerned with the future of the forests constitute the historical
precedents for RNPP attitudes toward the Tanala of the Ranomafana
region. Most RNPP socioeconomic studies distinguish between the
Betsileo living to the west and north of the RNP, and the Tanala,
occupying the areas south and east of the Park. "The Tanala," we are told,
"traditionally practice tavy . . . cultivation," whereas the Betsileo, who in
the past planted rice in the valley ﬁelds, "have now begun practicing tavy
since arriving in the region, due in part to the topographical constraints"
(Ferraro & Rakotondrajaona 199226). In Madagascar, tavy and wet-rice
cultivation occasion very different responses from observers. Ferraro and
Rakotondrajaona argue that "many Malagasy and foreign people who come
to Ranomafana ﬁom other areas comment that the locals in this region,
especially the Tanala, are lazy. They say that the Tanala prefer tary
because it is easier; that they don't work very hard on their rice paddies,
preferring to pay migrant Betsileo to work on them. These observations are
partly true" (ibid210). As the historical sketches I presented above make
clear, these observations are absurd. However, such stereotypes are the
norm in the RNPP (Hanson 1997:103).

As Hanson (1993:338-339) further indicates, the discourses of ethnicity employed
by the RNPP neglect informed understandings of how the Betsileo and Tanala ethnic
distinctions have evolved. In addition, I contend that they also reﬂect weak
understandings of the broader academic scholarship on ethnicity and culture.

Young (1986) distinguishes two primary models of ethnicity: the instrumentalist

model, which treats ethnicity as a political concept based on competition and self-interest,

170

and the primordial model, which treats ethnicity as a cultural phenomenon, based on
historical tradition.

In discussing Tanala and Betsileo ethnicity, D. Peters (1994b), employs an
instrumentalist model in an effort to make the project more egalitarian. Using stereotypes
of the Tanala as tary farmers who have no knowledge of irrigated rice agriculture and are
less "developed" than the Betsileo, she aims to increase Tanala participation in the project
and bring them closer to Betsileo standards of living.

Converting forest land to farm land by way of the slash-and-burn
agricultural practice is the most intensive natural resource use by the
resident populations in this area. This practice is regarded as the most
destructive activity to the forest and led directly to the establishment of the
park. The exclusion of the local populations ﬁ'om the traditional tary rice
agriculture will disrupt the household economy of the Tanala, the tavy
agriculturalists. In addition, as tavy represents a way of life, governs a set
of cultural beliefs, and dictates local social organization, the ban on tavy
will have impacts beyond the disruption of household economy (D. Peters
1994bz6).

These data show that the exclusion of the resident peoples from the
natural resources within the park boundary means disruption of household
economy, more time allocated to working, and loss of natural resources for
a variety of purposes. The most serious impact perhaps rests in the impact
on cultural identity, if the project is to succeed in banning law. The data
also suggest that impacts on the Tanala and the remote villages will likely
be stronger than on the Betsileo because the life of the Tanala and the
remote villages is more connected to converting and exploiting the natural
resources (D. Peters 1994b28).

Because the Betsileo in general own more paddy ﬁelds, it is likely that they
may beneﬁt more ﬁom introduced technologies (e. g., water management
and organic and chemical fertilizer application) than the Tanala; the
households that are fortunate to own more paddies are likely to beneﬁt
more (D. Peters 1994b:9).

Peters' image of Tanala and Betsileo ethnic groups is the one most often cited in

project documents; unfortunately, it is her image of ethnicity the project has incorporated,

171

not her aim. Peters' main point is that those most disenfranchised and impoverished
should become principle beneﬁciaries of any development aid, including health aid. A
class or caste analysis divorced ﬁom ethnicity would more accurately represent the local
populations, thereby illuminating her call for a more egalitarian project. The project,
however, appears to have closed its ears to her main point, brandishing only the images
she employed in its effort to address the cultural needs of the population.

Hanson, conversely, employs the "primordial" model Young identiﬁes, in his
efforts to situate tavy in history and record Tanala "consciousness." His eﬂ’orts to
historicize the Tanala are aimed at contextualizing contemporary views and practices as
transformative and reasoned, rather than the ageless "tradition" and irrationality of tavy
portrayed by the Ranomafana National Park Project.

For the Tanala, the economic and cultural aspects of tavy cannot be

separated. Rather than being a non-sustainable means to meet basic needs

as the RNPP argues, tavy represents a historical response to such forces as

slavery, forced labor, taxation, forced export agricultural production, and

pre-colonial and colonial forest policies. The most signiﬁcant

regionalization process for the Tanala in recent memory is the creation of

the Ranomafana National Park and the establishment of the RNPP (Hanson

1997: 83).

Yet both these models of ethnic groups presume economic and social homogeneity
(Banks 1996:13) and therefore makes understanding of culture fairly simple, reducible to a
pat set of beliefs, traditions, and taboos. Barth (1969) suggested that the boundaries
between groups are salient to ethnicity, not the cultural content they enclose. He rejected
the idea that ethnic identity is a collection of traits, in favor of understanding those traits

that the actors themselves consider signiﬁcant. How one identiﬁes themselves, as

compared to others, illuminates the boundaries that are salient to the social groups -- not

1 7 2
to outsiders. Larson (1992; 1996), however, challenged Barth's noted concept of
ethnicity, by suggesting that boundaries cannot pre-exist content. Larson's approach to
content is toward an understanding of the multiple roles and relationships within a social
group from which common identities are forged.

By shifting our sight from inter-ethnic relationships at the border to intra-

ethnic transactions at the center, the active roles of those consistently

under-represented in traditional narratives emerges with greater clarity. In

this light the process of ethnogenesis becomes a complex one in which

contending and multiple purposes, intentions, interests and interpretations

might be discerned. Ethnic groups no longer appear as monolithic blocks

of identity confronting one another but as arenas where a common identity

is both forged and debated (Larson 1992:5).

In his study of Merina ethnicity, Larson examines how the Merina themselves
constructed a pre-colonial ethnicity in their interactions with the dominant economic
forces of the late eighteenth century. His model for ethnogenesis can also be applied to
understandings of Tanala ethnic identity in contemporary southeastern Madagascar. By
examining the competing and communal interests and identities among forest farmers who
now socially identify themselves as Tanala, but trace their ancestry to Betsileo, one can
better understand Tanala culture, than by compiling inventories of cultural traits.

In the following chapter 1 detail the history of two lineages in the village of
Ranotsara, and describe how contemporary social life is positioned around these lineages.
I contrast this representation of social organization to that which is portrayed by the
Ranomafana National Park Project. I conclude by discussing how the project’s
conception of social organization has shaped the health care it has provided to residents

and understandings of health and sickness. I suggest that these health services and

173

perceptions replicate efforts by the colonial state to control populations and disregard the

ramiﬁcations of policies to restructure the land and people of the island’s forests.

Chapter 5
DIVIDING THAT WHICH CANNOT BE DIVIDED:
ANCESTRY AND ETHNICITY IN RANOTSARA

As Erikson (1993: 12) notes, "Only in so far as cultural differences are perceived as
being important, and are made socially relevant, do social relationships have an ethnic
element. " The Ranomafana National Park Project regards agricultural practices as
important and has focused on ethnicity as the divisive trait separating farmers. In this
view, farming practices — ethnically distinguished - are regarded as relevant to
conservation. But the residents themselves value ancestry, its associated caste, and access
to material resources as more salient social divisions. These internal social differences in
the village of Ranotsara supercede the boundaries of ethnicity, and form the core of social
identity. The residents of Ranotsara, most of whom identify themselves as descended
from Betsileo but living as Tanala, are united through their relationships to land and labor,
while at the same time they are not so much divided by ethnicity as they are by economic
differences.

Covell (1987:81) has discussed how ethnic identiﬁcation in Madagascar has come
to be embraced by Malagasy in efforts to access social beneﬁts.

Another organizing principle of Malagasy society and politics is that
provided by the non-class solidarity ties of ethnicity, extended family, and

locality. These lines of division are not unrelated to economic differences,

174

175

and, indeed, much of the social and political importance of these groups

comes from the use made of them as bases for individual and group

protection and advancement. To a degree this cohesion rests on the belief

that 'in unity there is strength', but the groups also form useful bases for the

phenomenon Schatzberg refers to as social closure. This is 'the process by

which social collectivities seek to maximize rewards by restricting access to

a limited number of eligibles. This entails the singling out of certain

identiﬁable social or physical attributes as the justiﬁcatory basis of

exclusion (1980, p.28). Similarly, Bates argues that the persistence of

ethnic groups does not rest on the attachment of their members to

'traditional' values, but that "Ethnic groups persist largely because of their

capacity to extract goods and services from the modern sectorJ (1974, p.

471)

Yet ethnicity remains the prevailing social distinction made by outsiders,
particularly the Ranomafana National Park Project, as it sets policy and negotiates access
to economic resources and medicines. In this chapter I discuss the founding of Ranotsara,
a village in the southeastern forests of Madagascar. From this founding two distinct
lineages emerged. Descendants from these lineages comprise the present village
population, and tensions between the lineages, rather than between ethnic afﬁliations,
explain current land management practices, economic status, and “cultural” behaviors and
beliefs regarding health and healing. As members of the different lineages gained or lost
prestige and power with the social changes of the twentieth century, conﬂicting histories
of the lineages unfolded. At the same time, the shared history of resistance to outside
control over local resources and livelihoods has contributed to social alliances that
transcend community differences. These alliances are particularly acute in terms of how
residents perceive conservation policies and their association with health resources. As
the history of class and caste in Ranotsara is told, a simultaneous history is told of how a
national park entered into the lives and bodies of the residents of this small village. In so

doing, ethnicity became reiﬁed as the fundamental boundary separating farmers ﬁom

176

farmers, and used to explain spiraling sickness and death amidst what has been presented

as a wonderland of natural medicines and a biodiversity of planetary bounty.

The Founding of a Tanala Village

Time is not marked by clocks or calendars in Ranotsara, at least not with a rigid
adherence (plastic digital watches having made their appearance). According to the
villagers, people often live to be a hundred years old, a hundred and twenty, a hundred and
ﬁfty, or more. A year past might be a year past, as a westerner would mark it, but it might
also be six months past or two years past. Time is instead marked by the seasons and the
crops, and people are so busy living their lives according to the seasons and the crops, that
they really haven't much time to mark the time. The past is taloha (in the past). And so it
is diﬁicult to know exactly when the village was founded, but it was agreed that it was
founded sometime around the time of the French occupation, which began in 1895, when
Madagascar became a protectorate of France (and a colony the following year).

The village was founded by two men, Rabiby, from the village of Ambatofady near
Antananarivo, and Rarnanjato, from the southwestern village of Analamena. Rabiby was
of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage and Rarnanjato of the Zaﬁndraraoto lineage. These two men
established the village just under cliffs on a hill north of the current village, and named it
Betsizaraina ("vast area that cannot be divided"). How close in time the men came is
uncertain; what appears to be in agreement is that the ﬁrenana (lineage) of the
Zaﬁndraraoto lineage settled the area near Ranotsara ﬁrst, which would make sense given
that the Zaﬁndraraoto lineage has a long history in the region. According to the elders of

this lineage, and according to a project survey of the region (SAFAFI 1989), these

177

founders were Betsileo hova, in other words, they were free men who came from the high
plateaux. This status is important in understanding present land use patterns, and will be
discussed subsequently.

Why they came is also unclear, but according to Faly, mpanjaka of the
Zaﬁndraraoto lineage in Ranotsara, his ancestor married and came ﬁ'om near the capital
city of Antananarivo, migrating little by little before eventually settling in the present
region. Faly emphasized that his ancestor was how, but was not Merina. He wanted me
to understand that the people of Ranotsara do not like the Merina. This point, and the
way that he emphasized it, led me to believe that it was probable his ancestor migrated to
avoid Merina (or Merina-inﬂuenced colonial) autocracy, which included the forced labor
of fanonrpoana and taxation. At any rate, Faly was certain that his ancestor did not ﬂee
the highlands due to any wars. The other lineage that founded the village is the
Zaﬁnaraina lineage, which were said to be andriana, or noble caste.

According to elders from both lineages, the Zaﬁndraraoto were adept at swidden
horticulture. Because the Zaﬁnaraina came ﬁ'om regions with land more suitable to
pasturage and irrigated rice agriculture, they did not know how to farm the hills in this
new terrain. As such, the Zaﬁndraraoto taught them the technique of law, while the
Zaﬁnaraina showed the Zaﬁndraraoto how to farm the limited ﬂat lands at the base of the
village.

The village moved, however, sometime during the early part of this century. It is
not exactly clear whether the move was in association with colonial policies, but the
explanation for the village's new name, Ranotsara, which means Good Water, is that at the

old site, there was only one nearby river source, and the villagers used that for cooking,

178

bathing, and drinking. They also used it to dump the old mats on which corpses lay
decaying, and the old cloths they were wrapped in.

"Everytime someone died," Koto, an elder of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage told me as we
sat in his home eating boiled manioc, "there was a rush to the river so people could get
their cooking and drinking water, and take a bath, before the tsihy [grass mats] were
thrown in the river. So after the village moved, the tsihy were taken to sacred spots in the
forest, and the river was clean."

Because the Zaﬁndraraoto had settled the area before the Zaﬁnaraina, they became
the tornpontany, or masters of the land. As such, to thank the Zaﬁnaraina for teaching
them the technique of wet-rice agriculture, according to Faly’s younger brother, Tojo, the
Zaﬁndraraoto gave to the Zaﬁnaraina some of the ﬁnest ﬂat lands available in the new
location, while they, too, took many ﬂat lands but also retained some of the ﬁnest tavy
ﬁelds, where their crops would be protected from cyclones, and where their skills were
best perfected.

This account has been pieced together ﬁom discussions with several elderly
informants from both lineages, and includes contradictory and ambiguous histories. But
based on my knowledge of the history of the region, and based on their consistent reports
that the Zaﬁndraraoto gave the Zaﬁnaraina land to thank them for teaching them farnring
techniques, I believe that this account is fairly accurate. It is particularly important in
understanding that it is not the ethnicity of the two groups that determined which lands

they farmed, nor in which manner, but it was lineage and experience.

179

The villagers were unanimous in asserting that both groups adapted the Tanala
way of living, while maintaining ancestral connections to what became known as the

Betsileo.

The two lineages led to two types of mpanjaka [village chief, literally, "one who
governs"]. These are the mpitan-tranobe [guardian of the big house] and the mpitan-
kazomanga [guardian of the hazomanga -- a sacred wood]. The mpitan-tranobe is the
mpanjaka of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage, which, as mentioned previously, was regarded as a
long-established lineage of andriana (royal) descent. The mpitan-tranobe was also a
mpitan-lrazomanga, but because they were not andriana, the mpanjaka of the
Zaﬁndraraoto lineage was not regarded as a mpitan-tranobe, but was recognized as
guarding the sacred wood of its lineage.

During my ﬁeldwork, the position of mpitwr-tranobe was held by Liva. Liva was
said to be in his 603, a fact that led to much scandal when he, a widower, married a young
woman of 16. When his house was destroyed in a cyclone in 1994, rather than having it
rebuilt, he moved to a remote location some two kilometers distant, where he and his new
bride established their own family in a lone hilltop house surrounded by sugarcane and
overlooking the mountains, a river, and the radiant green rice ﬁelds of his family.

"I left [the village] because there are so many andevo [slaves] in Ranotsara that no
one is ﬁt to guard the hazomanga [of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage]," Liva explained.

The label of andevo is a strong one in Madagascar. To be descended from slaves
marks one a social outcast, unsuitable for marriage among those of hova or andriana

ancestry. While it is true that there came to be two classes of slaves in Madagascar,

180

andevo mainty [black slaves, prohibited from marrying outside their caste, or owning
land], and andevofotsy [white slaves, similar to indentured servants who could buy their
way out of servitude], any rumor of being descended from slaves is ruinous.

Yet Liva's allegation, while he would not elaborate, became an allegation I was to
eventually hear repeatedly. Indeed, as more and more people of both lineages died, it
became common rumor that the reason for the deaths was that there were so many andevo
in the village. How is it, then, that Ranotsara, said to be founded by two lineages, one of
free people who, as masters of the land, granted to the Zaﬁnaraina prized agricultural
lands, is now cast as a village of untouchables — a lineage descended from slaves — whose
intermarriage with the royal Zaﬁnaraina has cursed the village with sickness and death, and
whose cohabitation with the royal descendants has rendered the original masters of the
land landless - laboring for wages approximating thirty cents a day on lands that they
themselves are said to control?

This puzzle is at the heart of sickness and environmental change in Ranotsara.

Caste and Class in Ranotsara

As stated in the foregoing, the village was founded by two men — Rabiby, of the
Zaﬁnaraina lineage, and Ramanjato, of the Zaﬁndraraoto lineage. Sometime around 1915
Rabiby's grandson, Ramitsiry, married Ramanjato's daughter, iKalahafa. Their youngest
son, Tody, is one of the oldest men in the village, next in line to be mpanjaka-be, should
his cousin Liva die before him. As such, Tody is respected as a mpanjaka in the village,

while Liva lives an-tsaha (away, near his tavy ﬁelds).

181

The marriage of Tody's father, a Zaﬁnaraina, to a woman of the Zaﬁndraraoto
lineage is said to have brought a curse to Ranotsara. Indeed, one well-respected elder
alleges that the marriage was one of royalty to a slave -- that iKalahafa was andevo, and
by allowing such a marriage, and worse, burying Rarnitsiry in his family's tomb despite his
fall from grace, the union has cursed the village ever since.

Things were hardly made better when two of Rabiby's grandaughters followed suit,
with Nirina marrying Ramanjato's grandson Faly, and her sister Bely marrying Faly's
brother Sabo.

Nnina is now an old woman; sometimes she says that she is seventy years old,
other times she thinks that she is maybe ninety. She has a face woven in deep lines and a
strong, straight body that moves slowly, as if in pain. Her eyesight is poor, she can no
longer see the stones in the rice or the rats in the dark, but her eyes are alive. Her
expressions change like lightning with more toothless grins and howling heckles than a
cartoon character, her brain even more animated, and her arms and her back and her neck
nearly as strong as any man's.

Nirina explains that she had known Faly since they were children, and they were
always very close, although they grew up in separate villages. Because it was her mother
who was Rabiby's daughter, Nirina was raised in her father’s village, while she retained
family ties to Ranotsara. When she grew up, she married a man she no longer speaks of,
and they moved to several cities in Madagascar, including Tulear, a French colonial port.
As such, Nirina became a woman of the world, and when her marriage ended in divorce,

she returned to Ranotsara and married her childhood ﬁiend, Faly.

182

"My grandfather was one of the ﬁrst men to build a home in Ranotsara when it
was over there," she gestures toward the hills of the enclosed Ranomafana National Park.
"Because of this, my family wanted me to guard the hazo-manga," she explained, referring
to the succession of mpanjaka, "but I did not want the responsibility. So to appease the
people, I married someone who could guard the hazo-manga for his own lineage. That is
why I married F aly." Nirina's explanation for her marriage to F aly as merely for the sake
of propriety was never very credible — they were extremely close, the best of drinking
buddies who constantly joked and bickered among themselves with unasharned pride in
each other. However, while it is not common, women can be chosen for the honor of
mpanjaka, and so her comment is at least an interesting one.

Nirina and F aly had one child, who died in infancy. Nirina was unable to bear
children afterwards, and so they adopted a son, Andre, as their own.

"They never had any more children," an elder explains, "because the marriage was
fady [taboo]. Nirina is wrdriana-be [very royal], her grandfather founded the village. She
displeased the ancestors when she married an widevo."

Her sister Bely was said to have been equally cursed, not only losing an eye, which
Bely said grew bigger and bigger until it exploded, but suffering from salamanga as well.
Salamanga is a very rare spirit possession disorder, which, it is said in the neighboring
village of Ambodiaviavy, aﬂlicted her when she deﬁed the ancestors yet again by failing to
become an ombiasa as they wished for her. Her life in poverty and the many deaths of her
family members were the prices she paid for transgressing the social order and marrying

the descendent of a slave.

183

But did Nirina and Bely marry the descendents of slaves, as is commonly
whispered in the village? Did Rarnintsiry marry into the andevo cast as well? And does it
really matter? I suggest that they did not marry into slavery — if, indeed, iKalahafa, Faly,
and Sabo had been descended from slaves, the marriages would not have been allowed to
take place, and when deceased, Raminstiry and Bely would not have been buried in their
ancestral tomb afterwards, as they were (and the elders of the village concurred that Nirina
will be buried among the Zaﬁnaraina as well). And if the Zaﬁndraraoto lineage was indeed
descended from slaves, it is unlikely that they would have amassed so much land. Finally,
and most importantly, there is no record of the Zaﬁndraraoto lineage being anything but
hova.1

Recasting the Zaﬁndraraoto as andevo, however, might helped to justify present
economic relations in the village. Ramitsiry and iKalahafa had two sons and four
daughters. The youngest son, Tody, is already one of the eldest men in the village, as has
previously been mentioned. But their eldest son, Lahy, since passed away, married Sely,
an elderly woman who wants as little to do with foreigners as possible, recalling very
clearly the many waves of vazaha who have come to their village to "help," ﬁrst during the
colonial years when she was a young mother in Ranotsara, later with the Ministry of
Forests and Water to control tavy farming, and most recently, with the Park. Now she

lives with her youngest son and oversees the family's affairs, leaving it to them to deal with

the outsiders.

 

' Hanson (personal communication 1999) who has conducted extensive historical
research of the area, including the Zaﬁndraraoto lineage, has also indicated to me that he
has never heard of this lineage being associated with andevo.

 

 

184

For reasons that remain unclear, Lahy had been selected by the colonial ofﬁcers in
the region to receive coffee and banana trees. As such, he not only had the cash-crop
colonial concessions to control, he had also been in a position to purchase many cattle,
and to hire highland migrants to work his ﬁelds. These factors alone do not account for
the current status of his family, but did lay a foundation.

Lahy and Sely had three sons and three daughters. As the eldest, Koto received
the best farming lands of his family. Among these lands were many irrigated rice ﬁelds,
passed on from his ancestors, who, as Zaﬁnaraina, had received the ﬂat lands ﬁom the
tampon-tarry [masters of the land], the Zaﬁndraraoto. Koto managed these lands with
care, and received many cattle from his father which he also managed with care. He also
cleared his own tary ﬁelds, and as his cash resources increased, he purchased land from
others in Ranotsara. As discussed in the previous chapter, the sale of land was not
customary; nonetheless, as the shift to cash crops contributed to a decline in subsistence
crops and economic differentials, it became more common for land to be sold during cash
shortages.

Koto's youngest brother, Rivo, was similarly positioned with favorable lands and
many cattle. The brothers were both blessed with keen business sense, the willingness and
energy to work hard, and the particularly useﬁrl skill of working well with outsiders.

Their sister, Baovita, had a son, Pascal, who the brothers soon recognized shared
their entrepreneurial vision and even spoke a bit of French. While he did not have the
lands or cattle of the two brothers, Pascal's outgoing personality, business sense, and best

of all, his marriage to Rahasoa, a school teacher, provided him with the essential access to

185

outside channels that the brothers needed to take advantage of outside resources and the
ever in-coming vazaha.

Another brother, Lita, received prize lands from his father, and worked as hard as
his brothers. But as his eyesight began to fade and blindness seal his fate, Lita kept more
and more to himself. Unable to engage in business, unable to work, it was left to his wife,
Soa, and their eldest children, Ketaka, Chantelle and Lala, to farm the lands.

Eventually, Soa and the children could not maintain the irrigated rice production.
In the generations past, these responsibilities would be shared by other family members.
But in the recent years, the rapid inﬂation, accompanied by a number of cyclones, led to
rice and cash shortages. These factors, integrally linked to structural adjustment policies
and an in-ﬂux of international development projects, enabled the three men to capitalize on
the economic changes affecting the village.

Koto describes these years, from 1985 to 1987, and again in the early 19903, as a
diﬂicult period when his own economic situation declined, and further frustrated when he
broke his back and could no longer work his ﬁelds. As such, he was forced to sell all of
his cattle, and he transferred his lands to his children. His son, Philippe, a young but
equally sharp business man, took his place managing the family lands.

Koto indicated that it was during these years that people throughout the village
stopped helping each other out. "In the past, if someone died, everyone contributed to the
cost of the cow or rice. Now, only the family contributes. This changed during my
generation; ﬁ'om my father's generation, only Tody is still living."

In the mid to late 1980's, as rising prices (associated with structural adjustment,

the Gulf War, and the inﬂux of vazaha with the coming of the park) and severe cyclones

186

led to rice and cash shortages, Rivo, Pascal, and Philippe helped the villagers by loaning
rice and cash, in exchange for repayment in double the following year. As such, many
people found themselves in debt to the three men, while the three men grew prosperous.

When the vazaha came to Ranomafana to construct the JIRAMA dam, the three
men, led by Rivo, organized village men to construct housing for the outsiders. And when
the park project came to the village, as will be discussed subsequently, the two brothers
were among the ﬁrst to accept the new policies, rallying to receive the outsiders. Their
seeming eagerness to embrace the new policies and embark on new farming techniques,
along with Ranotsara's close proximity to the forest and its relative proximity to
Ranomafana, made the village appear particularly appealing to the project officials and so
it was subsequently selected as a pilot village of the project. By being designated a pilot
village, the residents were assured that through assistance to these open-minded men, they
would receive development assistance in the form of ﬁsh for stocking ﬁsh ponds, beans for
a woman's cooperative, cement and rooﬁng for the school, and seeds for farming irrigated
rice. With Rivo, Philippe, Pascal and his wife, Rahasoa, taking charge of distribution,
these resources, often intended for the beneﬁt of all the residents, remained a subject of
village gossip as to where the products ended up.

As people could no longer keep up with the spiraling cost of living, and as their
rice was being used to repay prior years' debts, they were no longer able to produce
enough rice and other crops to live on. Consequently, according to a number of villagers

who rented out their lands, Rivo, Pascal, and Philippe, offered landholders up to

187

50,000FMG (approximately $12.50 at the time of my ﬁeldwork) to rent their ﬁelds for a
period of three years"

This plan was most logical for those of the Zaﬁndraraoto lineage because not being
related to the four men of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage, they could receive, along with the cash
advance, the opportunity to continue working the ﬁelds for daily wages of up to 30 cents a
day, plus a daily meal. This strategy enabled the most impoverished residents to ensure
their survival, while not entirely relinquishing their rights to their land, which they could
receive three years later when times were better or, if no better, renew the lease for
additional cash. It further enabled Rivo, Pascal, Koto, and Philippe, to manage the dirty
business of securing fertilizers, chemical inputs, seeds, and other goods from the vazaha.
By working for the four men, the villagers were assured that rather than being subjected to
the rule of outsiders, the outsiders would provide resources to the village, because Rivo,
Pascal, and Philippe knew exactly how to negotiate with this old breed. And, no matter
the unequal access to resources these men had, they remained family (intermarriage having
cast everyone in some type of obligatory relationship); there are limits to the domination
family members can exercise over each other, whereas history had shown that no such
limits extended to vazaha.

Thus, while so many of the Zaﬁndraraoto lineage surrendered their lands, if only
temporarily, those of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage did not necessarily need to do the same,

because by sending one or two sons or daughters to help out on their relative's land, they

 

2 One informant indicated to me that if a person failed to repay the debt, the lender
would take the person's land. This comment was not collaborated, nor was it clear if the
land would be permanently or temporarily seized. I neither doubt the statement nor
disregard it, without further evidence.

_ .1-

   

1 88
were supporting their relatives' growing wealth, and in so doing, indirectly ensuring their
own future protection. After all, in a village of thirty households, there weren't many
ﬁelds held by the Zaﬁnaraina lineage that didn't already belong to one of these four men or
their immediate family.

But not all of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage could afford the luxury of retaining their land.
Some, such as Lita's family, simultaneously rented out their lands, and provided gratuitous
child labor so that they could beneﬁt from both the immediate cash provisions of renting
out land, and the long-term protective welfare promised by the kin network.

As the Zaﬁndraraoto rented out more and more of their ﬁelds, or worked as wage
laborers for the Zaﬁnaraina men, it came to be that in every Zaﬁndraraoto household there
were no longer enough people to work the ﬁelds that were not rented. It is in this way
that the majority of the land and labor shifted from the Zaﬁndraraoto to the Zaﬁnaraina
and, I believe, that the recasting of the Zaﬁndraraoto from hova to andevo began to be
whispered about the village.

Another signiﬁcant change linked to the international economy contributed to land
consolidation in Ranotsara. From 1993 to 1994, the national government promoted land
titling in the Ranomafana region -— in accordance with World Bank efforts to privatize land
holdings and thereby presumably encourage conservation. Hanson (1997) suggests that
the land registered with Madagascar's Service de Domain under this privatizing campaign
was almost all wet rice ﬁelds (Hanson 1997). Moreover, because in order to register land,
one had to pay an initial registration fee and annual taxes, only those with the most cash

income were likely to participate.

189

Rivo, Philippe, and Pascal were in the forefront of privatizing land during this
period. Rahefa recalls how the land he had inherited from his father, Faralahy, was lost in
this way. Before Faly became the mpanjalra of the Zaﬁndraraoto lineage in Ranotsara, his
elder brother, Faralahy held the position. Faralahy passed on some of his tanirn-bary
[irrigated rice land] to one of his sons, Rahefa; the remainder of his land he sold to
Philippe when the economic crisis of the late 1980's impoverished him. Rahefa went an-
tsaha, that is, he went to farm some distant tavy ﬁelds, and while gone, be rented his
irrigated rice ﬁeld to Rivo. Rahefa alleges that Rivo then registered the land in his own
name; when Rahefa returned to Ranotsara, he said that he discovered he no longer owned
the tanim-bary. Rahefa indicated that although there are indigenous methods of
arbitration through the fokonolona, he decided not to challenge Rivo, due to the latter’s
wealth. He indicated that he feared Rivo's position in the village and that the Zaﬁnaraina
lineage had become much more powerful than Rahefa's own family of Zaﬁndraraoto
mpanjaka.

Others in the village echoed this concern. For example, Liva, mpanjaka-be of the
Zaﬁnaraina lineage, reported that the strength of the mpanjalra was diminishing, and that
this decline began during his brother‘s reign as mpanjaka (I am not sure when his brother
assumed the position of mpanjaka, but he died sometime around 1993). As an example of
how power was shifting in the community, Liva indicated that when I arrived in the village
and asked permission to reside there, I was brought ﬁrst to the home of Rivo, and later to
the home of Pascal; it was these men who granted me permission to reside in the village.
Rivo assumed authority in the matter of my residence, and acted as contractor for the

building of my house. What he should have done, Liva indicated, was asked permission of

190
him, as mpanjaka-be. He did not, because my residing in the village was viewed as an
economic opportunity, and hence, the local entrepreneurs took charge.

Liva's report was certainly an accurate account of my experience. It was not until
I had moved to the village and the house was completed that I was even told of Liva's
position; while Faly and Tody were introduced to me as the mpanjaka, they took no
initiative in any dialogue and deferred to Rivo, Faly later telling me that his own authority
had signiﬁcantly diminished with the emerging wealth and social skills (in dealing with
vazaha) of Rivo.

Faly indicated that the role of the mpanjaka had changed in many ways in recent
years. For example, he indicated that when he ﬁrst became mpanjaka, if a person wanted
to clear a new ﬁeld, he could not do so until he ﬁrst worked on the ﬁelds of the mpanjaka.
Faly's son, Andre, added that in past generations if a person wanted to clear a new ﬁeld,
they had to ask permission of the mpanjaka, but with the increasing land shortages of the
last decade, they no longer asked permission, unless as a formality. "Now the land
belongs to all the people," he said, suggesting that ancestral land associated with a lineage
was disappearing in favor of a common property regime which a select few have been
controlling.

Rather than challenging the local appropriation of land and power, F aly and many
others chose instead to accept it, in order to reap direct and indirect beneﬁts in this period
of social change. Faly told me that he felt he had very little power to change the situation,
yet he recognized that Rivo and the others could provide a relatively reliable conduit to
the resources of outsiders. By resisting the temptation to invoke his authority as

mpanjaka and accuse Rivo and his kin of enriching themselves by appropriating resources

191

(such as rice provided by the national government after the cyclone, beans provided by the
project for a woman’s cooperative, and materials provided by the project for repairing the
local school), Faly and his wife, Nirina, chose to work with and for Rivo. By conferring
unspoken approval upon the activities of the village’s entrepreneurs, Faly was able to
exercise continued and unchallenged authority over Rivo in non-economic matters of the
village, avail himself of wage-work when needed, and not have to worry about dealing
with vazaha.

In contrast, Rivo’s own elder, Liva, left the village rather than continue in a role he
found to be ceremonial only.3 Tensions between himself and his kin continued, while he
continued to invoke his authority as mpanjaka-be and elder of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage in
order to position himself close to those in real power, and more importantly for Liva,
contrast his own lineage to that of Faly. Insisting that the Zaﬁndraraoto were andevo, he
maintained that his own position was the highest in the village and his own ancestry the
most pure. Not only did he claim an historical right to his title as mpanjaka-be, by
excluding himself ﬁom the village, distinguishing his lineage from that of Faly, and
associating at a distance with Rivo whom he pointed out was descended from a union with
andevo, Liva claimed a moral right to his title because he was one of the few in the village

who remained uncontaminated by the lineage of the inferior “other.”

 

3 Since leaving the village I have learned that Liva planned to return to the village
because the ancestors had been displeased by his departure; he had hoped that in so doing,
there might be fewer deaths.

192

Accessing Health Resources

In addition to seizing land and power in the village, the leading men of the
Zaﬁnaraina lineage have also assumed authority over health care in certain respects. While
Rivo and Koto are respected for controlling an indigenous treatment for measles that is
provided annually to the children of the village, Rivo and Pascal, by way of their frequent
trips to Ranomafana, access to cash, facility with outsiders, and, for Pascal, marriage to
the school teacher, have acted as spokesmen for the village in negotiating access to health
services provided by the Ranomafana National Park Project (discussed subsequently). In
this way the men of the community, rather than the women, have central roles in accessing
western health care, with the exception of Rahasoa, a school teacher whose position (and
marriage to Pascal) have enabled her to play a strategic role in accessing, controlling, and
dispensing medicines. Men’s physical strength is another factor contributing to their
important role regarding health care. Because it is diﬂicult to carry a sick child or adult
across rivers and hills to reach health services in Ranomafana, Ifanadiana, or more
distantly if necessary, men’s work determines in many cases whether or not a person
receives such care. For example, on many occasions Rivo or Pascal’s frequent trips to
Ranomafana included picking up medicines for themselves or others, or even carrying a
sick or wounded person to the clinic. Conversely, to those who worked for wages, such a
trip meant loss of wages. There were a few occasions when I compensated a family for
these lost wages so that a child or adult would get treatment promptly. Had I not done so,
I am certain that the family would have delayed or disregarded treatment to avoid losing

wages that were so necessary to survival.

193

Despite the ability of certain men to access health services in Ranomafana and
elsewhere -— services which, as I have discussed in Chapter One, are appallingly inadequate
and likely in many cases to worsen one’s health - the poverty of everyone (for even the
land rich residents have limited food and cash), combined with an unhealthy environment,
extremely demanding work loads and geographical isolation, contribute to poor health for
all village residents. Yet, the consolidation of economic power has enabled certain village
residents to maintain a ready supply of pharmaceutical medicines for treating respiratory
disorders and fevers, while the rapid decline in economic status of most residents, and the
associated decline in their nutritional and health status, has contributed to a growing
dependency upon forest and local indigenous medicines for others in treating these same
illnesses, though they are more likely to seek treatment only when these illnesses become
acute or interfere with work. Moreover, differences in age, gender, and religion have also
shaped how health resources are viewed and obtained.

To understand how health and healing are conceptualized differently by residents
within the same village, and how lineage has become ﬁrndamental to these diﬂ’erences, I
turn again to history with a discussion of how the 20"I century land and social changes,
discussed in Chapters Three and Four, have shaped health and health care in the forest

regions of Madagascar.

l 94

Changes in Health and Health Care

The population of Madagascar had declined signiﬁcantly throughout the late
nineteenth century, and this decline was tied ﬁrst to the fanompoana labor of the Merina
autocracy (leading to famine and disease) (Campbell 1992), and second, to the colonial
insurrection (Antananarivo Annual 1898). Campbell (1992) indicates that the declining
population of the late nineteenth century was preceded by a ﬁfty per cent annual fatality
rate among soldiers of the imperial (Merina) army, and several smallpox epidemics from
the early and mid-1830's. These losses were primarily centered in the highlands, but
contrrbuted to population migrations to forested and coastal regions as people sought to
escape servitude, death and illness. The losses of the latter part of the century, however,
were more far-reaching, affecting people in the lower highlands, particularly those now
identiﬁed as Betsileo, as well as the forested regions where rice production declined.
Campbell (1992) notes that the pre-colonial autocracy of the Merina empire contributed to
the population losses associated with colonialism. Challenging the view that the violence
and social dislocation associated with foreign incursions into Aﬁica created such
ecological disturbance that catastrophic human and animal diseases ensued, Campbell
argues that natural causes only partly account for disease and famine in Madagascar
during the late nineteenth century. More salient, he suggests, is the extreme fanompoana
labor imposed during the precolonial Merina autocracy. This cycle of disease and famine
also contributed to demographic change.

. . . . The birth rate in Madagascar . . . . was profoundly upset by
the adoption of fanompoana from the mid-1820s. Fanompocma decreased
income opportunities for young adults, which probably resulted in a rise in

the average age of marriage and in depressed fertility, and it involved long
periods of harsh physical labour, with inadequate rations, which delayed

195

puberty and altered ovulatory cycles in women, thus depressing fertility, as

well as increasing the incidence of miscarriages (Nurse, Weiner & Jenkins

1985:253-254). Traditionally, women worked harder than men and their

burden increased from the adoption of autarky, notably in the gold ﬁelds

from the 1880s (Campbell 1988a, 1988b, 1988c). Thirdly, the frequency of

conception was reduced as fanompoana often separated men and women

and, in order to spare the future generation from fanompoana some

couples probably limited their family size through practising abortion and,

despite the royal ban, infanticide. Decary (1947-48:30) and Sibree

(1924:253) estimate that infanticide was responsible for the deaths of 14.29

and 25 per cent respectively of Malagasy babies (Campbell 19922420, 421 ).

Campbell further suggests that the spread of fanompoana labor contributed to the
rapid spread of venereal diseases, particularly in male labor camps, and to women’s
increasing employment in prostitutition.

As in mainland Aﬁica, the declining health of the Malagasy people was of great
concern to the colonial state. Because colonial labor policies necessitated an abundant and
healthy labor pool, demographic factors such as population losses, either from death or
migration, were directly linked to political concerns.

Therefore, to augment the shrinking population in order that the labor pool
available to the colonial state be steady throughout the twentieth century, the colonial
government established medical hospitals, dispensaries for Western pharmaceuticals, and
medical schools for training Malagasy (urban, elite Merina) in Western medicine. The
Antanananarivo Annual, a nineteenth century journal published by the London Missionary
Society, described in detail the colonial objectives of increasing the Malagasy population.
Central to this policy was a form of social engineering, in which the Merina (aka Hova) of
the highlands were identiﬁed as a distinct race which was superior to the populations of

the highlands.

196

The ﬁrst matter noticed is the small amount of the population of

Madagascar compared with the great extent of the island, there being

probably only 6.6 inhabitants to a square kilometre. The next point is, that

the Hova race appears to be the only one capable of furnishing the

population of the ﬁrture and sufﬁcient manual labour. "In one word, it is

the Hova race which is the superior one of Madagascar, the one which, by

its commercial instincts, its desire for comfort and its love of gain, and its

ability to work, is destined to spread itself more and more over the entire

island, to absorb the other peoples, and to give our colonists intelligent and

trained assistants, if we take all the necessary measures to encourage the

development of this population. ". . . In order to promote the fecundity of

the Hova race, which seems an undoubted fact in the past, the General

proposes to use a number of different measures; and these he groups under

ﬁve heads, as follows:-(l) legal, (2) administrative, (3) hygienic, (4)

political, and (5) ﬁscal (Antananarivo Annual 1898:247, quote uncited).

Legal measures included promotion of marriage, including exogarny and inter-
caste marriages, ﬁnes for divorce, and "the strict application of punishment" (ibid2247)
against women practicing abortion. Moreover, as fanompoana gave way to "prestation"
or unremunerated labor for the colonial government, all men "legally" married were
exempt ﬁom service if they had ﬁve or more children, while "young Hovas legally married
and the fathers of one child will be exempted from military service" (Antananarivo Annual
18982248), and families with at least seven children were provided with free education for
one of these children. Men who reached the age of 25 years and women of 21, and who
were not married, were taxed. Moreover, a "Children's Fete" was instituted in which large
families were honored, with money and gifts presented to such families and the parents
provided with "pronrinent positions" (Antananarivo Annual 18982248). In these ways, the
colonial government promoted early marriage and large families.

Another important administrative measure taken to increase the agricultural labor

supply was to promote tavy production. Attributing the abolition of slavery to declining

197
agricultural labor as freed-slaves became porters, the colonial state took the position that
tying people to land would promote agricultural production:
Owing to the rapid formation of roads practicable for carriages, porters'
work will gradually be less needed; and it will be desirable to increase the

number of natives who hold land. In all cases, however, holders must be
obliged to cultivate (Antananarivo Annual 1898:248).

Finally, increasing the health of the Malagasy was considered paramount to
augmenting the labor supply.

Under the heading of hygienic and medical measures, it is noticed

that notwithstanding the efforts of the various missions, the laws of health

are still very imperfectly understood by the Malagasy, especially as shown

by their non-use of warm clothing in the cold season of the year, the want

of sanitary arrangements, and the prevalence of certain diseases. The

causes of sterility, and of the high rate of infant mortality, are pointed out,

as well as remedies for this in the spreading of medical knowledge, and the

formation of hospitals, dispensaries, and medical schools. Drurrkenness

should be severely punished; and it is necessary that popular and simple

tracts on medicine and hygiene should be prepared and widely circulated

among the people.

Campbell (1992) indicates that the introduction of Western medicine through the
Protestant missionary societies (who used medicine as a bargaining chip to convert
people) and its promotion by the colonial government, had signiﬁcant effects on the use of
indigenous medicine as well. In the mid-nineteenth century, as fanompoana labor led to
widespread death and disease, and as traditional medicine proved inadequate to combat
such health problems, many Malagasy were drawn to the Western medicines being
introduced by the missionaries.

But after 1870, several social and natural events contributed to an even sharper

increase in death and disease. The population circulations associated with fanompoana

labor, in which people from the malarial zones of the coasts and forests moved ﬁ'eely in

198

and out of the highlands, brought malaria epidemics to the highlands. In addition, as men
were forced to labor for others, their own irrigated rice ﬁelds were often left idle, creating
breeding grounds for the anopheles mosquito in the lowlands. Finally, unusually wet
weather made an additional contribution to rising malaria epidemics throughout the island.
Another factor which Campbell points to as facilitating the spread of disease during this
period was the introduction of new disease brought by European steamships as trade
between the Merina kingdom and Europe increased.

Among the Betsileo of the southern highlands, impoverishment and famine were
compounded by particularly cold winters for which the people lacked adequate clothing,
leading to severe respiratory infections. As the Betsileo region was particularly hard hit,
many groups migrated toward the southeastern forested regions.

Campbell (1992:422-424) comments on the effects of this migration:

This combination of climatic and dietary factors, accentuated in

forced labour camps by insanitary conditions, facilitated the spread of

disease. . . . Thus, in overall terms, a plateau environment traditionally

considered healthy was, from the late 1870s, transformed into one wracked

by unrelenting disease and famine. This change, following hard upon the

adoption of Christianity as the imperial religion, tested to the limit the

ability of the latter, in the form of its preventative and curative

prescriptions, to meet the crisis. Of notable importance in this were

Western medicines and the taratasy [paper, in this instance, the Bible], the

most powerful of Christian talismans.

Because the new medicine could not combat the escalating death and disease,
many Malagasy returned to using indigenous medicines, but rather than abandoning one
for the other, they integrated Western medicine with the indigenous pharmacopeia to

increase the medical options available to them (Campbell 1992:35). Rather than

perceiving the curative power to be inherent in the medicine, however, successful cures

199

were attributed to the power of the indigenous healer. This resurgence of faith in
indigenous healing coincided with a revival in "traditional" ceremonial rites related to
health and well being, as well as an increase in spirit possession.

D. Peters (1994a), however, points out that while missionaries condemned the
practice of indigenous medicine, particulariy the role of the ombiasa in health care, the
Protestant and Catholic churches promoted differing views regarding health care.
Speaking speciﬁcally to the Ranomafana region, Peters notes that the Catholic church is
the oldest church in the area, whereas the Lutheran church has been gaining greater
popularity in recent years. With its own reverence for icons and chanting during worship,
the Catholic church did not overtly condemn the practice of ombiasa. As such,
Catholicism provided a greater opportunity for syncretic medicine to be practiced.

Conversely, the Lutheran church openly condemned the practice of ombiasa and
forbade its followers from seeking treatment from indigenous healers, while promoting
religious-based healing sessions as an alternative to ombiasa. D. Peters (1994a) notes that
rather than being successﬁrl in this effort, people began visiting indigenous healers

covertly, and insisting to outsiders that they did not practice indigenous medicine.

As these shifting strategies toward maintaining health care paralleled the
demographic distribution of disease, the political and administrative policies of the colonial
government to augment the labor pool proved effective. By 1941, however, the
increasing population contributed to the rice shortages discussed in Chapter Three. This
was because reproductive control of men and women, accompanied by the introduction of

Western drugs, vaccines, and health clinics, brought larger families and lower mortality.

 

l—r

200

At the same time, the focus on cash crop production left less land available for subsistence
rice production. To offset the impoverishment associated with the rice shortages and
subsequent revolt in 1947, tavy production was intensiﬁed (Hanson 1997).

Free Western medicines, well-supplied health clinics, and Westem-trained health
practitioners remained available to the Malagasy of the Ranotsara/Ranomafana region
throughout the colonial years. With liberation from colonial control, however, these
services were reduced. By the late 1970's, they were ﬁrrther reduced when the
Democratic Socialist Republic of Didier Ratsiraka shifted its social policies to the urban
sector, at the neglect of the rural sector. Structural adjustment policies of the mid-1980s
further limited funding available to the rural health sector. As such, by the late 1980's
when the Ranomafana National Park Project made its appearance in Ranotsara, via a visit
from the Principal Investigator for the project, the residents were eager to accept the
health services she assured would come their way.

Older residents, who had been born and raised during the period of colonial rule,
were among the most resistant to further encroachment on their land and lives by
outsiders, but also the most enthusiastic about receiving the type of healthcare they had
once been accustomed. Granted, the relative isolation of their village, their low social and
economic status, and their disaffection for colonial agents inﬂuenced the quality of the
healthcare they had received during those years, but unlike their younger relations, they
had become familiar with the rapid and effective cure many Western medicines had

provided them. Women, who had been the targets of maternal health services‘ were also

 

‘ Very few of the older women had ever given birth at home, recalling (with
ambivalence) hospitalized births they found much safer, if not consistent with their

201

among the most anxious for "modern" health services for their granddaughters. Both men
and women, however, shared a strong desire for strong and eﬁicacious medicines for their
babies and children. Younger people, who had been born and raised during the 1970's and
1980's, had no memory of such medicines, however. For them and their babies, sickness
was a way of life.

The age and gender distinctions inﬂuencing one's view of medicines, and more
importantly, the history of land appropriation, forced labor, cash-crop production,
migration and reproductive control, played no part in the health research initiated by the
Project. Indeed, as one anthropologist involved in the Project's ﬁrst health survey
indicated to me, her repeated appeals to project administrators to disregard ethnicity in
favor of exploring more salient historical and social correlates to health, were completely
dismissed and her own eﬂ‘orts to do so cut short with her termination from the project

(Hardenbergh 1998, personal communication).

Conceptualizing Ethnicity and Health

Prior to and during the ﬁrst phase of the project (1990 to 1993 ), the project sought
to gain cultural understandings relative to health care through the collection of
sociocultural baseline data. Hanson (1997) alleges that it was in the methodology of this
data collection eﬂ’ort that categories of ethnicity became set in stone. He suggests that
attempts to accumulate data on "households" were based on assumptions of what

constituted "typical" Betsileo and Tanala households.

 

indigenous beliefs. In contrast, only one woman of child-bearing age acknowledged to me
that she had had a hospital birth, all others giving birth on the dirt ﬂoors of their homes.

202

In almost every one of these studies, resident peoples were ﬁrst
constructed along ethnic lines. Thus, people were deﬁned as being of
either the Betsileo or Tanala ethnic group. . . Building upon this ethnic
basis, a set of standard sociological categories were used to further deﬁne
the household, its occupants, and their role in local and more global
markets. . . .

. . . . Kightlinger et. al., employed an even more detailed list of
"economic and social factors that either inﬂuence or reﬂect the health of
the individual and community" (1992:1). The tanana of Ambodiavaiavy
ﬁgures prominently in this study and is constructed along the following
lines: age and sex distribution, population count, knowledge of birth date,
number of children born to female household heads, ethnic makeup of
marriages, marital status, occupation, religious identiﬁcation, literacy rate,
educational level, house construction proﬁle, households with broken or
firnctional radios, sources of drinking water, distance from drinking water
source, use of boiled drinking water, fecal disposal, distance of
promiscuous defecation from household, disposal of household garbage,
crop calendar, hectares of land under cultivation, distribution of land under
cultivation, cattle and hog husbandry by household, distribution of chicken
and other fowl, children's growth rates, comparison of child wasting,
stunting and low weight, prevalence of malaria, intestinal worm infection
rates, rates of scabies infestation, death circumstances of children,
immunization coverage, ﬁequency of alcohol consumption, and tobacco
use. The data gained concerning the above categories are given visual in
the report via neat graphs. Reduced to a graph, the average Ambodiaviavy
'villager is now deﬁned according to a number of standardized categories
which can be compared cross-culturally and ﬁt within a global socio-
economic development inforrnation pool (Hanson 1997:90,91).

In conjunction with this data collection eﬁ‘ort, and not at all clearly separate in the
views of most villagers, the project promised health care to the residents of the original 26
pilot villages surrounding the park. This health care was represented as a traveling health
team, consisting of a physician, nurses, and midwives, who would diagnose and treat
illnesses and injuries, and provide pharmaceutical medicines. To the residents, the only
"link" necessary between the park and their health that was at all relevant to this offer, was

that if they gave up their land, they would receive much-needed health services as

compensation. To the project, however, a link between the objective of conservation and

203

the strategy of development had to be made intellectually. As such, in terms of health
care, by the time the second phase was being designed, the only link between the two
domains that the project perceived was in the control of reproduction. The Director of
Conservation during the project’s second phase, was adamant on this point in his personal
communications (1995-1996; recorded in ﬁeld notes) to me, suggesting that the only
responsibility of the project to health care was to control population growth so that tavy
would decline.

Therefore, as Tanala farmers were considered the primary tary farmers, the
objective of the project became to control reproduction of Tanala women. Under the
guise of providing maternal and neo-natal health care, the project employed "midwives"
who had no training in prenatal or neonatal care, or in delivering babies. They were
trained to dispense birth control pills and condoms. Indeed, when a physician and midwife
came to Ranotsara during my residency there, I requested the "midwife" to visit a woman
who had given birth earlier in the week. The midwife responded, "Why?" I explained that
the woman wasn‘t feeling well, and the baby should be examined. She declined the visit,
because the woman, having just delivered, had no need for birth control.

Throughout the physician's visit, he received no assistance from the midwife,
whose sole role was to wait for men and women to seek her out for birth control
information. Four women did so, each receiving a one-month supply of birth control pills.
They laughed, knowing full well that the "midwife" would not return with additional pills,
and they were correct, despite my request to her that she do so.

In fact, when she visited the neighboring village of Menarano, following her

introduction to the community she began a lecture, in a scolding tone, to the villagers,

204

telling them that the reason they were poor and the reason there were so many sick among
them was because they had too many babies.

The selection of Ranotsara as a pilot village did bring with it health care for a few
years. But internal divisions (associated with the rising economic power of the men of the
Zaﬁnaraina lineage) made the conservation and development objectives of the project
diﬂicult to carry out, and health care was abruptly stopped. While project administrators
found local disagreements too problematic to continue agricultural assistance (and hence,
healthcare — tied to relinquishing forest land and not to accepting agricultural assistance,
was disregarded), the villagers perceived the abrupt and unexplained termination of health
services as a "punishment" for their participation in the project - a participation which was
at times at odds with how the project expected them to participate.

The internal divisions of the village forged its social identity as Tanala, as rising
economic and social inequalities led to intensiﬁed tavy production (primarily among the
economic elite - provided with agricultural assistance by the project and thereby
economically empowered to hire laborers and rent tavy ﬁelds) and increasing
impoverishment created an image of poverty. This image was perceived by many
outsiders as evidence of backwardness, ignorance, and laziness. The solidifying of a
Tanala ethnic identity, which I believe was brought about in part by internal divisions in
the village and in part by the project reifying 19th century stereotypes, contributed to the
project abandoning the community as a pilot village. This abandonment was ironic given
that being identiﬁed as Tanala was a primary factor in gaining access to health care
because to be Tanala was presumed to mean being a tavy farmer and having too many

children.

205

Hanson (1997:24,245) points to future conceptualizations of Tanala needs and the
link between social identity and health:

With the turn of the twenty-ﬁrst century, the RNPP will in all

likelihood be deeply involved in the lives of Ambodiaviavy residents. The

question at this point is not whether RNPP planners will be able to

introduce and deﬁne what they believe to be the true needs of the Tanala.

This much is certain. Rather, the important consideration now is to what

extent, the Tanala people of the Ranomafana region will be able to

participate in this deﬁnition and interpretation process. This is no small

matter. If we assume that a medical center, for example, is deﬁned by the

Project as a Tanala need, it will make a good deal of diﬁerence for the

Tanala as to whether they decide who would staﬁ‘ the center, whether

medical teams ﬁ'om the center reach Ambodiaviavy on a monthly basis, or

whether the medicines within the center are offered to Tanala individuals

free of charge or distributed to lineage leaders.

Hanson's concern for the Tanala residents of Ambodiaviavy is also a concern for
the residents of Ranotsara. While Ranotsara is considered a Tanala village by the
residents, most of whom describe themselves as descended from Betsileo ancestors, it has
been identiﬁed in early project documents as a Betsileo village, which at the same time
ranked the Betsileo heritage as superior to a Tanala ancestry. "To have both a Betsileo
father and mother was a sign of distinction." [RNPP "Survey of Ranomafana Park Pilot
Villages" 1989]. In contrast to the project's ﬁnding, not one of the residents I interviewed
suggested that either ethnicity was superior to the other or that any distinction was
conferred by having two Betsileo parents as opposed to one or none.

The village was also routinely described by project workers as a Tanala village
during my residence there. The reason it was originally listed as a Betsileo village was
that most of the residents, when asked their ethnic identity, are asked "Inona no ny
fokonao?" which, translated into English, is "What is your descent?" As such, they

indicate they are Betsileo because their ancestors were. Still, they persist in practicing

206

tavy, thus conveying the Tanala status to project management. Moreover, as stated
previously, the descent to greater and greater impoverishment has burned an image of
backwardness and hopelessness into the eyes and hearts of project administration such that
Ranotsara can now only be understood as Tanala to these outsiders.

Another important dimension to the way in which ethnicity is conceptualized, is
reﬂected in the views of a local ombiasa, Naina. Naina is a handsome, well-built man in
his late ﬁfties, who has studied local medicines for at least thirty years, having learned
most of them ﬁ'om his father, also an ombiasa. Naina, a widower who had lost most of
his hearing, is now teaching the medicines to his son, F eno. Due to his hearing loss, he
has become very dependent on Feno to be his ears for him. Unfortunately, while an eager
student and very loyal to his father, sixteen-year-old F eno has already developed a heavy
dependence on toaka gasy, and Naina is often at loss for assistance when Feno is
unconscious from drink. Having no other son, and his older daughter showing more
interest in boys than in medicines, Naina is concerned that Feno learn the medicines and
not drink so much.

Naina explained that he was Tanala, and the Tanala, he suggested, unlike the
Betsileo, use medicines to treat illnesses of the head and stomach, and for general healing.
The Betsileo, although doing the same, he explained, are more likely to use medicines for
ceremonies (as opposed to healing sickness), and also use medicines against their enemies.
This distinction of "the other" as using medicines for ceremonies and sorcery was often
made by ombiasa, regardless of their ethnic identiﬁcation. They themselves would never
use medicines to harm, but others do, and others are deﬁned in terms of ethnicity. The

general consensus of the villagers, however, when talk turned to the subject of ombiasa

207

and mpamosary (witches), was that all ombiasa are learned in the arts of medicine, and
know which plants heal and which harm, and they can all be hired to employ that
knowledge, whether they called themselves mpamosavy or not. Thus, while ombiasa are
honored for their healing powers, they are also regarded as potentially injurious. Naina,
however, insisted that he used his knowledge only to heal, and this often includes healing
the illnesses caused by (Betsileo) mpamosary or by angry ancestors.

Naina's insistence that he practices Tanala medicine was also revealing in that
Naina indicated he, like Nirina, was Betsileo "a long time ago" [taloha be], and that he
had learned his craft from his Betsileo father. Nonetheless, having lived in Ranotsara all
his life and practiced the Tanala way of living, which in Naina's case includes farming
irrigated rice ﬁelds and tary, as well as raising cattle, Naina became Tanala, and
consequently, his healing, too, became regarded as Tanala. More signiﬁcantly, in practice,
it was not "the Betsileo" be regarded as his rivals; local competition among healers within
the region surrounding Ranotsara led ombiasa to safeguard their healing secrets from their
neighbors. In Naina's case, this positioned him in competition with both Vesa, an ombiasa
in Ranotsara, and Tonga, an ombiasa and mpanjalra in nearby Menarano. Both men are
members of the same lineage as Naina, the Zaﬁnaraina lineage, and all three descend from

Betsileo ancestors.

The question the remains, if, to the residents, Tanala is a way of life, and Betsileo
an ancestry, what exactly is the Tanala way of living? To the project, it is the practice of

tary; agricultural strategy is the boundary, and tied to the way that one farms the land is a

208

host of other social values, including cleanliness, intellect, modernization, sexuality,
superstition, and willingness to work.

To the residents, the Tanala way of living is the practice of tary, as well as cash-
crop production, irrigated rice farming, burial in caves, eating a diet of rice, greens, beans,
manioc, and green bananas, giving birth at home, brewing and drinking toaka gasy, and
recognizing and giving homage to the ancestors of the forest region. T avy, to the
residents of this "Tanala" village, is but one dimension of a complex economic and social
system in which people attempt to support themselves and their families on a limited land-
base constrained by the critical limitations of the forest environment; that is to say, heavy
rains, cyclones, relatively infertile soils, steep terrain, and limited acces to markets and
roads. The economy is dismal; W. J. Peters (in press, ﬁr), citing Samisoa (1992), indicates
that "In a random-sample survey of 100 village households in the Ranomafana National
Park peripheral zone, 50 percent of all households (average size approximately 6
people/household) were found to have annual incomes ﬁom all sources of less than
$50.00. "

Contrary to the project image that to be Tanala was to be a tavy farmer and to be
Betsileo was to be an irrigated farmer, in the village of Ranotsara, where the wealthier
residents all owned both irrigated and tavy ﬁelds, and the poorer residents sold or rented
their tavy and irrigated ﬁelds to the wealthier residents, there was no relationship between
being Betsileo and practicing wet-rice agriculture, and being Tanala and practicing tary.
People practiced agriculture based upon the type of land and labor available to them, not

based on "the way of the ancestors" or their ethnic identity.

209

Most importantly, there are not two different agricultural systems managed by two
different types of people. There exists a single agricultural system which includes
horticultural elements. That is to say, the people practice swidden and irrigated
agriculture concurrently, along with cash-crop production. A common view of the
persistence of tavy is that it is a form of resistance (e. g. Bryant and Bailey 1997; Hanson
1997; Jarosz 1993).

A comparable [to " scientiﬁc forestry" in Java] record of everyday
resistance occurred in colonial Madagascar where, as Jarosz (1993) shows,
French colonial ofﬁcials sought to stamp out shifting cultivation, but in the
process only incurred the implacable opposition of shifting cultivators in
this colony. Shifting cultivation (or tary) was a form of long-term land
management used for centuries by the Malagasy, but concerns about the
possible adverse effects of such cultivation on the island's commercially
valuable forests prompted the French to ban this practice in those forests in
1913. As elsewhere in the colonial worid (Bryant, 1994a; Jewitt, 1995),
this policy was linked to a paternalistic quest to 'civilise' shifting cultivators
through a sedentarisation programme that aimed to convert hill-dwelling
cultivators into valley-dwelling commercial farmers. However, this
'colonial vision proved difﬁcult to implement' as a result of the widespread
resistance of the Malagasy to the restrictions placed on the tary (Jarosz,
19932375). Everyday resistance here, as in Dutch-ruled Java, often
involved nothing more than the perpetuation of practices that were now
illegal, and shifting cultivators were arrested or forced to pay ﬁnes for
burning and clearing state-protected forests. Indeed, the tary represented a
conscious quest to hold on to local culture and beliefs; the fact that such
cultivation was undertaken in traditional dress and using traditional tools
was a piquant rejection of French attempts to convert the Malagasy to a
more 'civilised' European way of life (Jarosz, 1993) (Bryant and Bailey
19972171, 172).

I would suggest that rather than conceptualizing tary as a form of cultural
resistance, which it may well be, it may be more useful to focus on how - and which --
pe0ple do not resist intervention. While tavy may persist, many people do indeed embrace

agricultural innovations (while not abandoning tavy) and economic change. Who is

210

positioned to do so, and how they strategize such changes, illuminates the internal social
differences that homogenized concepts of cultural belief systems fail to ﬂesh out.

In the following chapter I shift from the discussion of tavy and history, to consider
how the daily lives and environment of the residents of Ranotsara are experienced bodily.
Encircled by wet-rice ﬁelds, in which they labor daily, backs bent and knee deep in fecal-
contaminated water, cooking over open ﬁres in small, windowless rooms, sharing bed and
closet-sized homes with ﬁve or six family members, eating minimally and working
exhaustively to provide the necessities of life, sickness is hard and lasting for many. This
sickness, viewed as “natural” in the context of “tropical” illnesses, is shared by all,
regardless of status. Gender and age, however, mediate the types of illnesses which strike,
and cash resources inﬂuence treatment. Nonetheless, illness and disease in Ranotsara are
associated with the social changes of migration, increased labor, housing, agricultural
practices, and animal husbandry, suggesting that there is nothing natural about tropical
sickness. What has become naturalized to the residents, however, is the suffering of the
body, the chronic discomfort one internalizes from infancy, when scabies afﬂicts a
newborn at two weeks of age, intestinal parasites infests the crawling baby, malaria
sickens the toddler, and chronic coughing strikes the child. By adulthood, when breathing
is difﬁcult and walking is painﬁrl, one has learned sickness and ache as a “natural”

condition. The following chapter will show how this naturalized sickness is experienced

and accepted.

Chapter 6

NATURALIZING SICKNESS

Medicine for the Dead

My ﬁrst day in the village was spent unpacking my far too many provisions,
arranging someone to help with the cooking (a young woman named Lalao), and someone
to help with the laundry (an older woman named Patrisse), as well as meeting many
people. It was a busy, stressful day that ended with my feeling more like Lucy Ricardo
than Margaret Mead. Finally, however, the introductions had been made, I had been
warmly welcomed, and my desk and bed were in place. Several women joined me for my
ﬁrst meal, and the dishes were washed in the river. As the women were bidding me
goodnight and I was longing for privacy once more, there was a knock at the door. I
answered it, and in the darkness I discerned a young, timid woman, late in pregnancy,
holding out a note for me.

The note was written by Jacqueline, a woman from Ranomafana who had assisted
me with ﬁnding a village for my research. I translated the note ﬁom French to English as I
read it to myself in the dim candlelight,

"Madame Janezi," Jacqueline wrote, "This is Nety. She is from Ranotsara. She
can cook, and clean and help you in many ways. She needs a job. Please hire her."

211

212

I did not know what to do. I did not need a cook, or anyone to clean my home.

"I would like to hire you, " I attempted to say in my pathetic rendition of the Tanala
dialect, "but I do not need anyone. I already have someone to cook, and someone to do
laundry, and a research assistant."

She looked heartbroken. She probably needed an income very badly, and being
pregnant and female, I wondered if she had any land or laborers to assist her with farming.
As young as she was, in her late teens or early twenties, it was also quite possible she had
no husband.

I looked around the roonr, and saw a piece of foam wrapped in sheets and
blankets, which was my bed. I recalled another anthropologist telling me that he hired a
woman to make his bed and sweep the ﬂoors, just because she needed the money.

"You could make my bed. I could pay you to make my bed and sweep the ﬂoors,"
I suggested, knowing it made me sound incredibly decadent and lazy to hire someone to
do something I could so obviously do for myself.

"What would the salary be?" she asked, clearly unimpressed with the job.

I had been told by many people that I had been paying my research assistant, and
any others I hired for whatever job, far too much for the local economy and it was
creating conﬂicts. Consequently, I vowed that no matter how absurdly low the local
wages, I would start paying within the limits of the local economy. So I quoted her a
price, I don't recall how much, one that was low but relative to the wages I was paying for
Lalao to cook and Patrisse to wash my clothes.

"That is not enough. . ." she said in a barely audible whisper as she looked to the

ﬂoor. To admit that the pay was not enough was clearly diﬂicult for her. A crowd of

213

about ﬁfteen or twenty people had surrounded us, and no matter my efforts to direct them
out the door, this ﬁrst night in Ranotsara was proving me to be ineffectual in a number of
respects.

"1 know that it is not enough to live on," I explained, "but it will only take ﬁve or
ten nrinutes a day, and the pay will increase, and if I ﬁnd more work, I can hire you for
more." She continued to look devastated.

"T sy mnpy izwry, tsy arnpy izany” [“It is not enough”] she repeated, mostly to
herself.

I wondered if the problem was my language skills. I had never been tutored in the
local dialect - even the Merina dialect of Malagasy was a challenge for me - and so I
thought perhaps she did not understand that I only wanted her to work for a few minutes
every day. A brilliant thought occurred to me.

"Come back tomorrow. My assistant, Degas, will be here, and he will explain to
you in Malagasy. Maybe we can think of something." “With that, she appeared happy,
and departed.

I went to bed and slept soundly as the rats scurried over my head.

The next morning, just as the sun was rising, there was a terrible banging on my
door. I opened it, and several people stormed in, screaming for Lalao. I could not make
out anything they said except for the word renirano, which means river, and law, which
means to fall, and so I thought perhaps Lalao had fallen in the river (just as I'd done the
day before) and would be late conring to ﬁx me breakfast. But it appeared they were

looking for Lalao. I was completely bewildered, and couldn't understand a word.

214

"Lalao is not here," I explained, and before I could ﬁnd out more about what was
going on, they ran off.

I dressed and stepped outside, expecting more warm welcoming in what was now
"my village. "

Welcome Wagon wasn’t exactly awaiting my appearance. Instead, right there,
smack dab in ﬁont of my door, was a ﬁre of twigs burning and smoking, with a big-bellied
woman hanging upside down, smoking like a Virginia ham. Some young men were
holding her by her feet, her long wet hair and limp arms dangling in the ﬁre. With grave
faces, several elder men and women were farming the smoke in her face with banana
fronds.

This was obviously weird. There was nothing at all about this in Linton.

"Who is it?" I asked the eldest man standing near me. He, like many others, was
scowling directly at me.

"It is the woman who came to you looking for work last night," he answered, "the
one you would not hire." There was no mistaking that she was now dead.

I ﬁ'oze and watched incredulously as they continued fanning her face with the
smoke. And I thought about how badly I wanted to run in the house for my camera.

"What happened?" 1 ﬁnally asked.

"She went to the river behind your house, to bathe for her meeting with you, " he
explained, "and she fell in the river and drowned."

This was no way to get acquainted.

I continued to stand, silently, watching.

215

"erafody.’!!" one of the elder women shouted, "We need fanafody!!!" They
needed medicine. They were all looking at me. They knew that in with all that ridiculous
vazaha stuﬂ‘ I'd brought, there must be a boxﬁrl of medicine. The scowling man next to
me said,

"She needs fanafody. F odigasy (Malagasy medicine, or plant medicine) is not
strong enough. We need vazaha medicine."

What could I tell them? Our medicines are strong. But not strong enough for
dead.

"T sy misy," (There isn't any), I explained, "There is no vazaha medicine for her. It
is not that strong. "

They stomped out the ﬁre.

"Get your camera," the scowling man said, "take pictures for her family," and with
that, he and the others motioned with their heads for me to hurry back in my house and
get the camera. When I returned, they hoisted her on the shoulders of some strong young
men, and motioned for me to follow.

Then the wailing began.

Nety was taken to her uncle's home (for I learned that she did not live in
Ranotsara, but had only come to the village of her uncle when she learned there was
potential work with a vazaha) and there the women undressed and cleaned her. She was
then dressed in her best dress, her hair combed and pinned up, and she was wrapped in

lamba (cloths). This done, she was taken, to the trano-be, or "big house," a large one-

216

room cement-ﬂoored house that I was to learn was used for funeral services, dances,
celebrations, meetings, and ceremonies.

Young men from her family were sent to the forest where they selected a ﬁne tree,
chopped it down, stripped it of its bark, and brought it to the village. This done, it was
hollowed out as a cofﬁn, and Nety's lamba, by now dripping with bodily ﬂuids, were
changed. Wrapped in a white sheet, she was placed in the hollowed out tree, and
visitation continued.

For three days and three nights, all non-essential work, including school and
farming, stopped. People came from villages throughout the area to pay respects.
Everyone was well dressed, and except for the wailing which never ceased inside the
trano—be, the village took on a festive mood as people visited with cousins and ﬁiends, ate
well, and drank toaka gasy. Everyone gave a gift, either money or food or lamba. The
trano-be was always firll, throughout the day and night. Nety was never left alone, and
her mother never left her side, as she fanned the ﬂies from her daughter‘s face for three
days and three nights.

On the third day, a cow was sacriﬁced, its meat and organs distributed to everyone
in the village. The village gathered, and her eldest maternal uncle, Koto, recited the
kabary. The kabary is a late eighteenth-century speech form introduced during the rise of
the Merina by Anrianampoinirnerina to provide an oratorical means of recording — and
creating — history (Bloch 1986; Larson1992). It now serves many purposes, including
replicating ethnic identities (Larson 1992) and providing a means of social resistance

through public speech (Hanson 1997). In this instance, the kabary served as a formalized

217

means through which one could both honor the dead, establish the dead's ties to her
lineage, and pressure the community to offer gifts to the family.

By reciting — in the text of the kabary —» the name of each person who gave a gift,
and the exact monetary amount or number of lamba, people knew who gave and who did
not give, and were accordingly judged as to the appropriateness of the gift. Everyone was
expected to give something, no matter how small, and to omit an oﬂ‘ering would in this
way bring public disgrace. Conversely, by making a generous oﬂ’er, one aligned
themselves with the family of the dead, thereby establishing the expectation of reciprocity.
In so doing, however, they would either be expected to provide equally to others with
subsequent deaths, or be judged as having acted prejudicially.

When the kabaty was concluded, vines, which had been burning quietly
throughout the speech, were removed ﬁ'om the smoldering ashes which had softened
them, and wrapped around the comn, then tightly tied to seal the lid closed. A few pieces
of kitay, or wood ﬁre], were left to burn and tossed in with the grass mats which had lain
under Nety's body. Along with the Ianrba she had worn, these objects were gathered
together. The kitay and the lamba would keep her warm, while the smoldering ﬂames and
smoke would keep the biby away.

Nety's body was hoisted high and a procession followed it out of the village, as it
passed over the head of the young toddling son her death had left orphaned. By passing
over his head, she blessed and protected him for one last time. Her body was taken to the
ancestral tomb of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage, and the lamba, kitay, and grass mats were taken

to a distant grove of trees for disposal.

218

With her body carried away, amidst the chanting and singing of French colonial

military songs by the pal] bearers, village life resumed.

In the year that followed, the death of Nety was explained in multiple ways. It
confounded the villagers, because the river was not very deep. The spot where Nety fell
was knee-deep with no current. And she was not found in the river, but laying dead on
the bank.

My ﬁrst thoughts, conditioned as they are by cheap novels, Hollywood, and hrrid
family newspapers, ran toward homicide. But murder, while it happens, does not happen
often enough in Madagascar that one would ﬁnd themselves murdered by a competitor for
the job of making a bed, or for very many other reasons‘. As much as ﬁnding a woman
drowned on a river bank next to a shallow river might sound suspicious to me, the truth

was, murder was highly improbable. At least, murder by a mortal.

 

‘ During my visits to Madagascar I only learned of three murders, all tied to the social
changes of development and involving foreigners. The ﬁrst, and most celebrated, was the
murder of a young Malagasy man who had become so well-respected as a wildlife guide
(including in Ranomafana) that the high wages and many gifts the vazaha bestowed on
him were said to have contributed to his unexplained murder (see Quarnmen 1991). The
second occurred during my stay in Madagascar, when a young female Peace Corps
worker was sexually assaulted and murdered while jogging; while I do not know the
details of this killing, it prompted much talk. Peace Corps workers I spoke to who knew
both the victim and her alleged killer indicated that she had been telling women that they
did not need to agree to unwanted sexual advances by this man. Whether or not there is
any truth to this account I do not know, but the Peace Corps workers I spoke to
interpreted her death as caution against introducing or advocating feminist perspectives
(an irony given the outspoken nature of many Malagasy women, whom I found to be far
more feminist than many “ﬁee” American women I know). They ﬁirther indicated that
this act was regarded as a consequence of white foreigners interfering in local lives. The
third was a more typical tale of a European tourist who was said to be drunk and ﬂashing
his money; he was reportedly stabbed on a dark street as he tried to hail a cab back to his
hotel.

219

Nety had awoken at four or four thirty, a very early hour even by Malagasy
standards, and gone to the river to bathe. It was still dark, and so the biby (water spirits,
nature spirits), were out. Everyone knew that it was dangerous to go to the river at that
hour.

Some consequently attributed her death to the biby.

As the months unfolded, however, other explanations were whispered. Nety was
found with blood between her legs. Perhaps she had been trying to perform an abortion?
Many people concluded that the reason Nety died was because she had tried to abort her
baby, and the ancestors struck her dead for the sin.

But several months later, when I discussed the incident with the RNPP physician,
he remembered her. He had been treating her for epilepsy. She had no income, and could
no longer afford the medicine. In all likelihood, he explained, she had a seizure in the
river, and in her seizure, had somehow managed to reach the riverbank.

"And that would explain the blood between her legs," I surmised, "because she
was nriscarrying perhaps?"

I raised my theory with various people in the village. It seemed likely, all agreed.
But still, the biby were angry.

"But would she have died, do you think, if she'd had the medicine to stop the
seizures?" I asked Nirina, who sat behind my house looking out to the river where Nety's
spirit now resided.

"Oh, if she had the fanafody for the seizures, then she would be alive. Seizures are
very powerful," Nirina explained, demonstrating with a feigned seizure that rattled her

whole aged skeleton. "Without medicine, many Tanala die from them. She needed

220

fanafody, and the fcmafody gasy is not strong. But now we must pay for fanafody vazaha

[Western medicines], and they are very expensive. She could not pay for the medicine. If
she had had the medicine, the biby might have ﬁightened her, but they would not have
killed her. Fanafody gasy would have cured her."

"What/anafody gasy?" I asked, "How would it have cured her? "

"Apanga," Nirina answered, "the plant used to bring back the soul. It is used to
treat unconsciousness. The plant is burned and the smoke inhaled. You saw how we tried
to bring back her soul by burning the apanga." I recalled the way Nety hung over the
burning vines, with the banana fronds farming the smoke into her face, and the ﬁantic
elders calling for stronger medicine, vazaha medicine.

Nirina ended her explanation with another feigned seizure and a loud laugh at her
own performance.

After reﬂecting on her comments, I later asked her what she meant by Tanala
dying. Was she suggesting that Betsileo do not need the same medicines as Tanala, that
Tanala are more susceptible to death than Betsileo?

Nirina sighed and gave me a long and patient look. “Ho maty Betsileo, ho maty
T anala, ho maty Vazaha! Maty daholo,” she declared with good humor, perhaps
wondering if I realized my own mortality. [“The Betsileo will die, the Tanala will die, you
foreigners will die! Everyone dies.”]

“We are the Tanala. Everyone here is Tanala. People who live here are no
different from Betsileo, but Betsileo live near F ianarantsoa. They have hospitals there,
they do not have the tary ﬁelds we have here. We live in the forest. Ifthey come here,

then they live the lives of Tanala. Then they will have our sickness and die along with us.”

221

I continued to ponder the many explanations for Nety’s death that were whispered
about the village. No patterns emerged initially, but with time and many repetitions, it
appeared that while the older people focused on her need for medicine for her seizures,
younger women (and some young adult men I was told by my male informant) were more
convinced she had been punished for her alleged sin of trying to abort, a rumor for which
there was no evidence. While it is entirely possible that older people wondered the same
thing, they may have been less willing to discuss the topic with me, particularly those who
were Catholic. I wondered, as well, if the difference in explanations could be attributed to
older people having more experience with seizures as something treatable by medicine,
and younger people knew only of a seizure as something uncontrollable. I will never
know. The subject of Nety’s death was oﬁ‘-limits for structured interviews. It lived on in
rumor only.

With the burial of Nety, I thought I would see no more sudden death, and
wondered how I would go about learning about how people treated sickness. I soon
discovered, however, that death and sickness were daily events, and watched awkwardly

and horriﬁed as child after child, adult after adult, fell ill and died.

A Quest for Diagnosis

Shortly after my arrival in the village, and as I noted one death after another, I
urgently appealed to project management to send the traveling physician to the village. As
Ranotsara had not officially been removed from the list of target villages, and the absence
of health care for the last three years remained unexplained oﬁicially, it was appropriate

for me to raise my concerns about village health status to the project physician, Dr. Tovo.

222

Dr. Tovo is a young, well-educated physician with considerable concern for the health of
the rural poor, and much pride in his education in tropical medicine. Working long hours
away from his family, he would travel great distances, hiking over treacherous terrain with
a backpack full of his few medicines and medical supplies, to check on a broken bone, or
follow-up 6n the care of an ailing patient. He was the sole physician for the estimated
30,000 residents of the Ranomafana National Park peripheral zone, and worked only with
the assistance of two nurses and one “mid-wife,” untrained in midwifery, but whose
responsibility it was to dispense birth control pills? He reported making approximately
1,000,000 frng ($250) per month, receiving a monthly raise of approximately 10,000 ﬁng
($2.50) after two years with the project.

Upon hearing of the deaths and the spreading illnesses of the village, Dr. Tovo felt
that visiting the village should be a priority. Moreover, my research on health and access
to medicines in the region suggested to him opportunities for collaboration in which we
could share knowledge. Consequently, within a month of my arrival in Ranotsara, the

residents received their ﬁrst health team visit in over three years.3 Dr. Tovo later informed

 

2 In contrast, one physician and one nurse were hired shortly before my arrival to treat
the project staff.

3 Oddly, on the day of his arrival, I received an unexpected summons to appear that
same day in distant Ifanadiana, to provide evidence I had paid for my visa (seven months
after arriving in Madagascar). As such, I was unable to attend the visit by the traveling
health team, and upon inquiring of the nurse ifI might discuss the visit, was informed that
he had been instructed by the American Project Director not to speak with me.
Fortunately, I was able to examine records of the visit provided to me by another, and
after interviewing residents, learned of the events of the day. Dr. Tovo himself indicated
that his decision to visit the village was regarded with surprising suspicion by project
administrators, who questioned him at length about his interest in the village. He said that
he had never before been questioned about a village he attended. At the same time that
project administration expressed such concern for the doctor’s work, however, I was

223

me that the health of the village was perhaps the worst he had seen in the entire village.
He reasoned that the wet and humid environment, characterized by irrigated rice ﬁelds
surrounding the entire village and creating a miniature island on which the village rested,
compounded by poor sanitation, poor water quality, its distance from the main road,
extreme poverty of its residents, and poor education about health matters, all contributed
to the sickness that prevailed. Among the illnesses that struck him were widespread
scabies (often infected), infected circumcisions, parasites, and respiratory disorders. Of
the 39 people he saw that day, 10 were treated for intestinal parasites, 14 for scabies
(including ﬁve people with infected scabies), and 16 for respiratory infections.‘ Perhaps

the most severe of this latter category was that suﬁ‘ered by Lanto.

Lanto was a bit of an outcast in Ranotsara. Her hair grew wild and she left it
uncombed; she kept to herself and rarely joined group activities. The death of her ﬁrst
husband, clearly by mosavy, as toaka is known only to kill when a mpanrosary poisons it,

brought lingering gossip as to who killed him and why. Although the granddaughter of

 

struck by an equally surprising lack of concern for the residents. Indeed, during a visit to
the home of project manager one evening, she rhetorically asked me, as she stirred some
cooking on the stove, how things were going in the village. I responded that another child
had died. Her reply was a mumbled, “humph,” prompting me to add, “that’s the eleventh
so far.” She looked directly at me and announced, “I think this gravy needs more salt.”
One can only speculate as to her response had I pointed out eleven lemurs had dropped
dead. Nonetheless, Dr. Tovo was instructed that he was not to return to the village and it
was not until the day of my departure (one day later than scheduled), that project
administrators directed him to return.

‘ These numbers cannot be taken to represent the health status of the village as a
whole, but reﬂect only those who were in the village at the time of his visit, had cash
available to purchase medicines, and chose to see the doctor.

224

one of the village founders and the sister of the mpanjaka, her status as a Zaﬁndraraoto,
accompanied by her poverty and social seclusion, cast her as an outsider in her own
village.

Lanto describes herself as a mpamboly, or farmer, and proudly proclaims that she
was born and raised in Ranotsara. When asked her ethnicity she says that she is Betsileo,
because her ancestors were Betsileo. She also indicates that she was once a Catholic, but
no longer practices because she is not interested in attending services or praying. She has
had two years of schooling and can neither read nor write. After the death of her ﬁrst
husband, she remarried, but her second husband, whom she describes as having “a
diﬁ’erent head,” than hers, moved away nearly two years earlier, leaving her to raise their
ﬁve children on her own, including two young and underfed toddlers.’ With limited land
of her own, Lanto struggled to feed and clothe her children, but a cyclone the previous
year had wiped out her crops, and so, she reports, she sold her banana trees (which she
estimated to be about 100 in number) to Rivo for 10,000 ﬁng (about $2.50). She was left
with tavy, but no one to farm it. Her eldest son had moved to Tulear and she had not seen
him since. Another son had gone to live with Pascal, when Lanto could no longer afford
to feed him; in exchange for room and board, he worked Pascal’s ﬁelds, leaving no one to
help Lanto farm her land.

Her own health was poor — bone thin and slow moving, she looked much older
than a woman in her early or mid-forties, and a chronic bloody cough limited her strength.

When strong enough, she worked for Rivo, Philippe, or Pascal for food and cash,

 

’ Only her eldest daughter has had any schooling, of about ﬁve years.

225

receiving about 1,000 ﬁng (about 25 cents at the time of my stay, and about two-thirds the
going rate) and one kapoaka'S of rice (valued at about 1,500 ﬁng at the time of my
interview).

Her economic strategies were, during the time I knew her, mixed, and limited. She
told me that she would not borrow money because she could not repay it. She said that
she worked a few days a week, but in truth, she probably worked less than that. “Mitaay
any sakafo,” she says, “I look for food.” From what I saw, and what was told to me by
herself and others, Lanto and her children eat and consume very little, having meals twice
a day. Meals consist of rice and greens, and sometimes wild forest or sweet potatoes.
Like many in Ranotsara, she often lacks rice, so she and her children often eat tubers.

Lanto was among the many women who met with me on several occasions for
long and personal interviews, often lasting halfthe day. Her constant phlegm-ﬁlled
coughing concerned me, and I asked how long she had been coughing so. Since the birth
of her last child, she disclosed, she had been suffering from marikoditra [a fever with
chills] and the kohaka [cough]. She did not know the cause, she said, but behaved it came
from working in the ﬁelds during the time of her pregnancy and following the birth of her
child. It was then, she said, that she ﬁrst became so very tired and her illness began. The
illness started with dizziness and vomiting, she soon became weak and had trouble
walking. She had a constant headache, and no appetite. The illness, she said, has made it
diﬁcult to work. Now, three years later, it has moved to her chest. Regarding it as life-

threatening, she was even more concerned with her failing eyesight. But no one in the

 

‘ A kapoaka is a Nestle milk can full, usually of rice, and is a standard unit of
measurement.

226

village had eye glasses, nor the means to obtain them. The closest optometry was in

F ianarantsoa, a full-day’s voyage and with the cost of the taxi-brousse’, food, and lodging,
not to mention the optometrist’s fee and the glasses themselves, beyond Lanto’s, and
everyone else’s, means.

And so she had grown accustomed to her failing eyesight in the same way that she
had grown accustomed to her cough. She would take “red pills” [antibiotics] and aspirin
periodically, she said, whenever the traveling physician visited; she has not had them since
he stopped coming, she reported." She said that she refused to take fanty'ody gasy,
claiming it did not help her. “Only the doctor’s medicines have helped,” she insisted,
adding that she paid 1,250 for each injection the previous doctor gave her.

Contrary to her claim that she did not use fanafody gasy, she did tell me that she
went to an ombiasa two years prior, to treat her illness. Rakoto told her that she was
suffering from bilo [known locally as ghost sickness; in other parts of the island it refers to
a type of possession]. To treat her, she said that he played the kabosa [home crafted
ukelele] to ﬁnd the bilo, but he did not ﬁnd it. She paid him 3,500 and two liters of toaka
for his services. He gave her some dried leaves, she said, but could not recall, or would
not reveal, the names of the leaves. She drank teas made from the leaves, and inhaled the

steam from the brewing leaves for a week.

 

7 A taxi-brousse is a public “taxi,” usually an old battered station wagon or smaller
car, in which up tol4 people might squeeze.

' While Lanto indicated her illness began two or three years prior, her disclosure that
she had been taking medicine for the pills during the period when the ﬁrst traveling
physician, prior to Dr. Tovo, had visited monthly, suggests that either the illness was of
much longer duration, or she was taking the pills for something else.

227

“I stopped,” she said, “I did not believe it was bilo. It was from having a baby, or
maybe from working too hard,” she considered. As I inquired further, she explained,
“This illness comes with being tired ﬁ'om giving birth; women get it when they have
children. But maybe I just worked too hard and got tired.” Lanto added that she did not
believe having children was a health problem, as I had inquired in previous interviews.
“The sicknesses of women,” she told me, “are sick backs. Our work is hard, and it hurts
our backs.”

Her comment corresponded to Avotri and Walters’ (1999) ﬁnding that women in
the Volta region of Ghana, West Aﬁica were not as concerned about reproductive health
as they were about health problems related to their work, including ‘Rvorrying too much,”
having difficulty sleeping, chronic tiredness, headaches, and bodily aches.

Women talked about the medication they took for various ailments, their

visits to pharmacies, health centers and hospitals, as well as the prohibitive

cost of these, and a handﬁrl of women spoke in terms of their responsibility

for their health. But these were by no means the main emphasis in the

interviews. Instead, women talked about the ways in which their day-to-

day lives created or exacerbated the health problems they experienced.

One particularly strong emphasis was on the ways in which women’s work

inﬂuences their health (Avotri and Walters 1999:1124).

Larrto’s understanding that her illness was likely to be related to the circumstances
of her life, rather than possession by a bilo, suggested an astute comprehension of the
social factors shaping health in the tropical forest. But the increase in illness, she felt, was
related to the cold weather. The cold brought on the back aches and neck aches that
plagued so many adult women, she suggested, while the coughing that was common to all

children was likewise an illness of the weather. But the poor, she said, in almost a

whisper, get all illnesses.

228

Unhappy with the treatment Rakoto had prescribed, because, she explained, it did
not cure her, she did not return. Nonetheless, she remained hopeﬁil, if not conﬁdent, that
Rakoto could cure other illnesses. Doctors, she revealed, cure illnesses of the body, but
ombiasa cure illnesses of the spirit. Fearing her children had such an illness, when they
began having headaches and coughing severely and constantly, she sent each of them to
Rakoto. Just as he did with her, Rakoto gave the children plants for drinking and
inhalation, but they were not the same plants he had given her, and he guarded the names
of the plants so she was unable to tell me what they were. But the children did not get
better. One child became unconscious and Rakoto did nothing, she recalled with a trace
of anger. Fortunately, her brother pointed out to her that the child was very hot and
instructed her to cool him with cold water. She did so, and he recovered. She recalled
with despair how the children were cured on their own, not by Rakoto, she stressed.
Nonetheless, she paid him 175 ﬁng for his services.

Lanto’s quest for treatment of her chronic cough and diﬁiculty breathing, did not
stop with Rakoto. She recalled going to Ranomafana shortly afterwards, where she was
told she needed an injection. She said she was not told the name of the illness or the
medicine, but recalled the price of 1,250 ﬁng quite clearly.

“The injections made me better, like the red pills. But I didn’t have the money to
keep getting them, and the trip was very long. So the cough would come bac .”

“Did you use plant medicines?” I asked, for the third or fourth time, broaching the
question from multiple directions to see if I could stumble upon some undisclosed secret

of the local botany.

229

“Ahibalala,” she answered, matter-of-factly, as she had each time before. Like so
many others, she turned to aliibalala the way an American turns to Tylenol or Echinacea
root. The only other medicines she admitted to using were those she used to maintain her
teeth, a method she learned from her father.

I asked Lanto if knowing more about the plants would help the health of the
people living in Ranotsara. “No,” she said, ‘Xve get sick more often than you vazaha
because we do not have fanafody. What we need is more fanafody vazaha, not more

plants. But there is no money for them.”

Lanto, having exhausted herself talking to me about things she found to be so
obvious, was among the ﬁrst to visit Dr. Tovo when he came to the village. Because his
visit was unannounced, most adults were working their ﬁelds when he arrived; many of
those working tary ﬁelds missed the visit altogether, remaining unaware that health care
had come to the village until it had once again gone. But because Lanto’s health was so
poor, she worked little. As such, she was at home, cooking for her children, when the
doctor arrived. After waiting her turn outside the makeshift clinic set up in the trano-be
[“big house” used for ceremonies and funerals], she timidly approached the young,
educated doctor, and asked him for help.

Listening to her lungs through his stethoscope, watching her cough with every
eﬁ’ort to speak, and questioning her about the course and symptoms of her illness, he
became concerned that she might have tuberculosis, a fairly common illness he
encountered as he hiked from village to village. Knowing how contagious and severe such

an illness is, he prescribed Tetracycline and Chloroquine (for a fever that accompanied her

230
cough) and advised her to go as soon as possible to the clinic in Ranomafana. To be sure
she did so, when meeting my assistant in the town of Ranomafana a few days later, he
shared his concerns and asked that I encourage her to go.

My verbal encouragement was not necessary, however, and Lanto went obligingly
to the clinic, without feeling the need to check in with the vazaha about what she should
do. She walked the 7 km distance in the rain, taking a day off work and leaving her
children in the care of the eldest. Upon arriving, she found the clinic was closed with no
reason stated. She returned to Ranotsara promptly, reaching the village by the end of the
day.

She shared her ﬁustration with me. “It is always this way, I am not surprised.
Sometimes they are open and sometimes they are not. I walked all that way and back
again, for nothing!”

This time, I did encourage her to return. But she expressed her concerns with me
that she wouldn’t have the money for the supplies, such as alcohol or cotton, for a blood
test. Her concern was well founded; while treatment was free, supplies were not.
Moreover, she would need to eat. I advanced her the money for supplies, and my
assistant, Degas, made an appointment for her for the following Friday.

So once again, she left her children and hiked the 7km to town. This time the
clinic was open and a nurse drew her blood, and told her to return the following Monday.
Hiking back again, she returned to the village by nightfall, completely exhausted. She
made no mention of the trip to me, and made it clear that she was too tired to talk about

it. On the following Monday, and without comment, she returned for the third time.

Once there, after waiting hours to be seen, they drew her blood again. She neither asked,

231

nor did they explain, why they were repeating the test. The blood drawn, she was told to
return the next day. Weakened and hungry, she tried to visit her family in Ranomafana for
some rest and a meal, but they were not there. She returned to Ranotsara without having
eaten all day.

On Tuesday she returned to Ranomafana for the fourth time. This time, she was
told to return the following day with a vial of her spit, which they would not accept at that
time. She said she was too worn out from all the hiking and would wait until Friday to
return. But by the time Friday came, Lanto was fed up. She refused to return, having
made four round-trip hikes over the mountainous terrain with a burning fever and severe
respiratory problems.

Degas, my assistant, followed up with the clinic to ﬁnd out if she did indeed have
tuberculosis. The ﬁndings were negative, but there was no attempt made by the clinicians
to ﬁnd out what was wrong with her. She was simply sick, with kohaka.

Lanto concluded that the antibiotics were all she had needed in the ﬁrst place and
the cough would plague her for the rest of her life. “I can drink ahibalala when it is bad,”

she concluded.

Under the Skin: Suffering with Scabies

Scabies is a highly-contagious and absolutely miserable aﬂliction. Caused by a
microscopic insect that burrows under the skin, it produces extreme and unrelenting
itching. The pharmaceutical treatment is to wash all clothes, towels, and bedding with a
lotion made from a base of DDT (Ascabiol). This lotion is also applied liberally to all

infected areas of the skin.

232

There is no plant or other organic substance known to the residents of Ranotsara
which will relieve the pain or cure the condition as effectively. Cleanliness is regarded, by
Tanala and Western health professionals alike, as the most important prophylactic
treatment, but the highly contagious nature of scabies makes even thorough and repeated

scrubbing with soap, even if available, no guarantee that it will not spread.

My ﬁeldwork began, after public introductions and Nety’s fatal seizure, with door-
to.door introductions. Accompanied by Degas, notebook in hand and an explanatory
speech of my research objectives memorized, I visited each family and interrogated them
with invasive but excessively polite demographic questions.

Kala’s husband, Zanabelo, was of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage. His mother, Bodo, was
the daughter of Raminstiry, who had married the alleged anadevo, Ikalahafa. As such,
although he had retained the well-respected lineage through his mother’s paternity,’ it was
tainted with his grandfather’s intermarriage of caste. Such intermarriage, as I have
previously indicated, does not necessarily render one impoverished; indeed, the wealthiest
individuals in the village, who control most of the land and resources, were themselves
descended from this alliance. Consequently, Zanabelo’s ancestry alone did not account for

the extreme poverty in which he and his family lived.

 

9 I do not know why his mother remained in her natal village. Although it is
customary for a woman to relocate to her husband’s village, if there are more practical
reasons for the husband to relocate to the wife’s village, he will do so, as did Masobe.
Zanabelo’s father, Ralita, died within a few weeks of my arrival. He was said to be over
120 years old, and well respected in the village.

233

Zanabelo was relatively land-rich, but lacked the labor to farm his land, which
included irrigated rice ﬁelds, tavy, and cash crops. In addition to the rice grown in the
irrigated and swidden ﬁelds, he intercropped his tavy ﬁelds with lentils, manioc and beans.
His cash crops included sugar cane, bananas, manioc and coffee, and he raised chickens
for food and trade.

Zanabelo explained that when his father was younger, they worked the land
together, and crops were abundant. But as his father aged and weakened, it was left to
Zanabelo alone to work the ﬁelds, along with his wife. He occasionally received help from
his family, but in recent years, his cousins Rivo, Philippe and Pascal, had prospered and
were hence preoccupied with their own lands; his other cousins were working for them for
wages that Zanabelo could not match.

His needs had increased in recent years as well. Working his ﬁelds alone has
required better tools, such as shovels and knives, and as his family grew at the same time
that he lost the help of his family in farming his land, the rice that he and his wife were able
to grow on their own declined. As such, he has been forced to buy rice at market, along
with sugar, coﬂ'eew, petrol, salt, lamba (for funeral offerings) and clothes. When he has
the money, he’ll buy a bit of meat for his family. Otherwise, they get by on the rice, beans,

greens and manioc they grow.

 

1" A small cache of coffee is considered relatively essential, in that it is offered to
honored visitors, as well as used as a medicine to treat tazo [fevers]. Its bitter taste is
believed to be medicinal. Coﬂ’ee as a daily beverage, however, is rare because it is too
costly, both in the loss of its sale, and in the ﬁre] wood necessary to roast it and the time
needed to roast and pound it.

234

Kala and Zanabelo were among the few villagers who regarded themselves as
Betsileo. (In contrast, Zanabelo’s wealthier brother, Raboly, considered himself Tanala.)
Married twenty years, they had three surviving children, at the time of my ﬁeldwork, 16
year-old Claude, 7 year-old Tonga, and 2 year-old Ravo. Five of their children had died,
the last, a twelve-year old son who had been schooled “for many years,”died suddenly the
previous year, after complaining of a headache and lying down to sleep. He never awoke.
Zanabelo himself had only ﬁve or six years of school; he can read and write a bit, ‘70 tsy
tsard’ [but not well].

Zanabelo explained that he often needs to borrow money from his cousins to make
it through the year. If he is able, he says, he would repay as soon as possible. Ifnot, he is
forced to wait for the following year’s crops, at which time he repays, whether in cash or
in rice, twice the amount he has borrowed. Ifhe could not repay the loan, he said, his
cousins would take his land [I could not ascertain whether or not this was true, although it
was repeated by others].

Zanabelo regarded the relationship between food and health as simple. You have
to eat well to be healthy. But in regard to the most serious health problems he perceived,
be indicated that hantana, or scabies, was one of the worst, yet unrelated to food. His
wife, Kala, in contrast, did not regard hantana as a signiﬁcant health problem.

Kala is an illiterate woman in her late 30s who had lived in Ranotsara for nineteen
years. She has never gone to school and, like her husband, does not practice or profess
Catholicism. Kala is very shy, but with a warm personality that slowly unfolds. She is

openly devoted to her children, and rocks her youngest in her arms as we speak.

235

They are covered with scabies, so badly infected that the two-year old looks like a
burn victim, and 7 year-old Tonga digs at his legs ﬁrriously while we talk, smiling broadly
all the time. Tonga’s smile is so constant, in fact, that in nearly all of my photos of
children crowded together for a photo opportunity, it is Tonga whose face is always the
most noticeable, his smile so outstanding. As he scratches and digs deeply into his
scabies-scarred legs, he appears unaware of the pain. His mother, as well, scratches
unconsciously at her hands and her feet, the red-dotted rash visible between her ﬁngers
and toes.

“Hantana is not one of our problems,” she tells me, in answer to my many
questions of health and living conditions. “We have it all the time. We learn to suﬂ’er with
it. Sempotra [respiratory problems] and tazo [fevers] are problems.”

Despite her repeated comments that she ignored hantana and did nothing to treat
it, she later admitted that she used a medicine made from velopotsy leaves, found in the
hibo-hibo [tary regrowth]. “Everybody uses it; everybody knows where to get it.”

But this comment, too, brought with it contradictory testimony, as she told me that
the plant had become increasingly difficult to ﬁnd with the spread of tavy, and later
remarked that it could be found everywhere and was in no short supply. Moreover, she
twice told me that she did not know of the plant until she moved to Ranotsara, and learned
of it from the other women, while one other time she said that she had learned of it ﬁ'om
her father. Rather than dismissing her comments as irrelevant, I was intrigued by them,
because since Ranotsara is a patrilocal community, I found it fairly common for women to
remark that they learned of new medicines upon moving to Ranotsara. While they may

have learned of these medicines from other women, in many cases this knowledge had

236

been transmitted through males. As such, contrary to other ﬁndings in Madagascar that
women are the primary keepers of indigenous knowledge of plant medicines (Sussman
1988), I found that this was not always true. Women's roles in ﬁnding and dispensing the
medicines were often central, but men's roles were also signiﬁcant in transmitting
knowledge of plant medicines, as will be discussed further.

Whether or not Kala had learned of volopotsy as an indigenous medicine for
hantana from her parents, and brought the knowledge with her, or learned of it after
arriving in Ranotsara, I do not know. But she did explain that she had been using it daily
on herself and all of her children for the last six months and they seemed to be improving.

"It doesn't look like it's working," I subjectively replied.

"It takes a very long time," she admitted.

I suggested she use Ascabiol and gave her a supply, explaining how to use it and
warning her of its toxicity. 1 emphasized that she should not let any of it get into open
sores. Knowing that I was, once again, interfering with the objectivity of the research
process, I felt it would be unprincipled to leave the children with such a painﬁrl condition
that would only worsen when I had a medicine I knew would be effective.

Shortly after this visit, Dr. Tovo came to Ranotsara but Kala did not bring her
children to him, later explaining to me that she lacked the money for the medicines he
would prescribe and dispense. “

We met a few weeks later in my home. Kala had agreed to participate in a lengthy

interview regarding women’s health concerns and beliefs. Tonga played outside with

 

“ There would have been a modest fee charged for the medicines, but in hardship
cases where medicine was needed, Dr. Tovo often waived the fee.

237

some other boys. As we talked, we watched as he kicked a grapeﬁ'uit around like a small
soccer ball. The backs of his legs were charred black like his sister, and so severely
infected that the blackened skin was split open with large wounds oozing white and yellow
pus, but the injuries did not slow his movements, which were quick and lively.

“Are there any health problems in your family, right now?” I asked.

“No, salama tsara izahay,” she answered [we are all healthy].

“What about the hantana?” I prompted.

“Sitrana tsara” [it is all (well) cured], she replied.

“Did you use the medicine I gave you?”

“Yes, it is all gone, thank you.”

Degas, my assistant, interrupted in English. “I have to ask her about his legs.
They are very infected.” I told him to go ahead.

“Hadiniko!” [I forgotl] she replied, suppressing a giggle. Yes, she agreed, his legs
were quite bad. He had been tending cattle in the woods for Rivo, she explained, and
came back itching. He must have rubbed his legs against some type of plant that caused
the itching.

I asked if we could look at Tonga’s legs. She called him in, and on closer
examination, it was clear his wounds were very infected. They smelled foul and the ulcers
had burrowed deep into his ﬂesh, reaching as high as his buttocks. The lymph glands in
his groin were swollen the size of small eggs. I urged her to get him to the clinic in
Ranomafana for treatment. She answered that she would wait, and when her husband

returned from an-tsaha, ask him. I also noticed that Tonga was wearing a new necklace,

238

with a piece of wood and a plastic bead tied around a length of string. I asked what it
was.

“Ody kany,” she answered, proud to show she me she had, in fact, done something
to safeguard her son’s health, despite what I might have thought of his legs.

Katry is an indigenous diagnostic category for fevers and seizures that affect small
children. To prevent katry, Zanabelo’s cousin, Alarobia, an ombiasa and mpanjaka who
lives in the neighboring village of Ambatovory, prepares amulets for all the local children
to wear around their necks. At the time of my ﬁeldwork, he charged 350 frng (about 10
cents, US.) for the ody katry, and nearly all the children in the nearby villages wore them.

After she left I asked Degas and Lalao if it was common for a woman to ask her
husband permission to get medical treatment for a child. Both immediately corrected me.
Kala did not need to ask his permission for medical care, but it would be up to Zanabelo
to carry Tonga across the mountains. As such, unless it was such an emergency that
another male in the community would undertake the endeavor, Kala was acting
appropriately by awaiting her husband’s return and consulting him.

That evening, he came to my home and asked my opinion of his son’s legs. Were
they really that bad?, he asked, weighing whether or not he should leave his ﬁelds idle to
take his son to Ranomafana. I assured him that I was no doctor, but I was very concerned
about the infection in Tonga’s legs. I urged him to get him to the doctor as soon as
possible, and in the meantime, keep the legs clean and ﬁ'ee of dirt. I gave him soap and
clean bandages. He thanked me, and the next morning, carried Tonga over the mountains

to Ranomafana.

239

He returned at nightfall, but the parents did not appear to be keeping the wounds
clean. The clinic nurse, Robert, who had treated Tonga in Ranomafana, chastised the
mother for washing his wounds. He explained that she had probably broken the skin open
by repeated washing. Robert gave Tonga an injection of antibiotics and nothing else.
Tonga’s legs were as dirty when he returned as when he left. The parents concluded that
there was nothing wrong with their son and I had overreacted. For the ﬁrst day after
their return, they tied the bandages around his legs, but removed them when they became
dirty. Tonga’s legs did heal slowly, while the scabies continued to rage through the
community, and the babies and children appear to barely notice.

I was not alone in my perplexity at the manner in which an illness that is so
miserable to live with would remain minimally treated or even completely neglected.
Many of the older residents expressed disapproval at what they described as the laziness of
the younger generation. The use of the word kamo [lazy] to describe young adults who
labor strenuously twelve hours a day, seven days a week, struck me as paradoxical when
uttered by local elders (while I found the same adjective, when used by sedentary project
personnel and other vazaha, as it frequently was, to be plainly racist). Some older people
attributed the hantana pandemic to the dirtiness [maloto - dirty] of the village area, the
lack of soap and the lack of money to purchase it, and a lack of attention to personal
cleanliness. One person who claimed to have no explanation for why the illness was so
neglected was the ombiasa, Naina.

“Curing hantana is not hard,” he said, “if it is caught early. But it is difficult to
cure when it becomes serious.” Naina listed the many medicines he used to treat skin

disorders, only one of which he ﬁnds in the forest.

24o

“Kimboinbohy, I ﬁnd in the savolra [regrowth], tainguaka is a moss. It works
well. I ﬁnd it in the forest sometimes, growing on dead trees, but it is also in the savoka.
Sevatrandraka, tanamangamay.” He counted them on his ﬁngers, looking out the
window to the forest in the distance. “T anamangamay is found along the road. And
kitsiotsiona is another good medicine. It grows everywhere. The medicines for hantana
are easy to ﬁnd. But they only work if it is caught early.”

“Why isn’t it caught early?” I asked him.

“T sy fantatro [I don’t know],” he answered, “There have only been two people to
come to me to be cured of hantana. One ﬁ'om here, and my wife, before she died. I
cured them both. But others do not come. And now the hantana is everywhere, like
venereal disease”.”

Naina didn’t know why people didn’t come to him for treatment. He didn’t think
that they went to the vazaha doctor either, he told me. “They ignore it,” he concluded. “I
can’t force them to come to me. And they don’t use their own medicines, either. Not

many people know the medicines to cure hantana. We have always had the illness, but

not like now. I don’t think many people know the medicines because it was never as

 

'2 Naina’s remark was revealing, but I did not have any evidence of venereal disease as
a health problem. Dr. Tovo diagnosed one person with a venereal disease during the
period of my ﬁeldwork, and in discussions with residents it was believed that it was
usually an illness of men, and unless a woman has symptoms, residents believe that she
does not need treatment. Due to the sensitive nature of the question, I did not pursue
much inquiry into people’s experience with venereal diseases. As for AIDS, there was an
awareness of SIDA (the French acronym for the disease) by all, and even one person
remarked that it was an example of how the illnesses brought by vazaha kill faster than the
illnesses spread from Malagasy to Malagasy. Surprisingly, however, AIDS has not spread
as rapidly in Madagascar as it has in other parts ofAfrica, and at the time ofmy departure
appeared to be largely concentrated in the port towns and the capital city. How quickly
the disease will spread from these urban sites to rural areas is difficult to predict.

241

common in the past, as it is now. They didn’t need to know. Maybe they don’t need to
know now, either, if they can get the docotera’s medicine. It works faster than mine. But
it is expensive, so they wait until it is grave.”

“Why do you think it is more common now?” I inquired, returning to his previous
point.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what causes it. It is a malady of the skin. People get
it from others who have it. T oaka [rum] and sakay [chile peppers] make it worse. They
make it spread. Ifa person avoids these things, it is easier to cure. It’s a good idea to
wash if the hantana is moist. We have always had it. Now it is very bad, but even if
people used my medicines or the docotera ’s medicine, we would still have it, but it would
not be the same.” Lehavana paused to drink some tea. He was silent for several awkward
moments, before he looked up from his tea with a smile.

“The name has changed! Write this down. Kidea was the name of scabies in the
past, and then it became farasisa", but when it started spreading, people could get it just
by sitting in the same chair. If you touch someone with hantana now, and the liquid ﬁ'om
it touches you, you will get it. Soon the whole village got it. That was about ten years
ago. That was when the name was changed to hantanal I don’t know why.” He returned
to concentrating on his tea, and I diligently wrote down his words.

Why scabies is so prevalent and why it remains untreated remains unclear. But it

was clear that I did not notice older people with the disorder, yet infants were certain to

 

‘3 Farasisa has been ﬁequently recorded in colonial and pre-colonial accounts of
health conditions on the island to refer to a wide-range of subcutaneous skin disorders.

242

get it within two weeks of their birth, and young adults were equally susceptible. Naina’s

children did not have it.

Parasites and Rice Fields

One evening in January, after a day spent visiting sick children, discussing
medicines with their parents, and dispensing Nivaquine and aspirin to those with high
fevers, there was a familiar knock at the door. It was twelve-year-old Toky’s ﬁiendly
nighttime visit, which had become a tradition of English and Malagasy greetings and
riddles, Toky’s infamous story-telling marathons, and his delivery of all the rumors I
wasn’t supposed to be hearing.

This time, however, I was surprised by the visit, because when I’d seen Toky
earlier in the day, he was curled up on a corner of the dirt ﬂoor in his home, his head
burning with fever and his mother feeding him soupy rice between his coughing. I opened
the door to ﬁnd him wrapped tightly in a dirty ragged blanket, the tears falling like rainfall
from a face that until that day was perpetually beaming with humor and life.

“Janezi,” he cried, “I am getting better since you came. My mother gave me
fancy'oay gasy. It was ahibalala. Here,” he said, offering me a torn slip of paper with the
words ahibalala aminy sempotra [ahibalala for coughing] written careﬁrlly in ballpoint
ink. “I already wrote it down for you so you can just put this in your notebook, and write,
‘Toky’s medicine’.” He proudly smiled through his tears.

“Toky, you are so sick, you should be home sleeping. Come in, it’s cold out

there.”

243

He came into the room and, as always, looked all around for signs of anything
new. Noting some chocolate on the bedside table, he glanced at me with a teasing smile
on his pale wet face.

“Here, Toky, I think you need some chocolate.” I gave him a piece as he said,
“Thank you,” in crisp accented English. Happy, but still wrapped tightly in his blanket, he
sat back in the comfortable wooden chair I’d had hauled liked a colonialist halfway across
the island, and savored the chocolate in teeny bites. When he had ﬁnished, he took a deep
breath and made his announcement.

“Janezi,” he said, “I am afraid I am going to die, just like all my ﬁiends.”

There was a strong melodrama to his words, but the truth they spoke could not be
easily dismissed. The truth was, in a lifetime that wasn’t much longer than my graduate
studies, many of his friends had died, of malaria, respiratory problems, unexplained sudden
illnesses. Today, with nearly every child locked inside his or her house and their’parents
staying at home to tend them, the threat of death to more children was very real and in
everyone’s minds. Two important elders had died in the last six weeks; both had been
strong and seemingly healthy. And three weeks prior, six year old Tsaralalri had died of
malaria. Three more children would die within the month, with many more to follow. So
while I had the sense that Toky’s mother had sent him to play upon my sympathies and
perhaps get cash or medicines or food, I also knew that what he spoke rang true. Toky
might well be next, just as anyone could follow.

“Toky, you will not die,” I insisted, “you are too smart for the bilo to catch you,

and no one will let you die. We need you to keep us laughing!” I tried my best to cheer

244

him up, but I have never been very good at that sort of thing. I knew he was in no mood
for lies.

“I am afraid I have too many worms,” he said, patting his swollen belly. It was
true, Toky’s belly was as bloated as a pregnant woman in her seventh month. There was
no doubting that he had a belly full of worms.

“This morning I counted iPaul’s worms. There were sixteen! Last week there
were only seven!” Ever since learning, from the traveling health team, that they counted
worms in stools, he had set out to monitor his little brother’s health. Toky doted on his
little brother as his greatest pride and happiness in life.

“I could not count all the worms I had, there were so many!”

“Yes, you do have many worms, and I can give you medicine for that, but they will
come back. The whole village has worms.”

Toky knew this. Everyone knew this. Worms were not something they believed
were natiual, but suﬁ‘ering with them had become natural. Everyone I spoke to in my
interviews and informally, knew how it was that worms entered the body. The health
team had told them, and they saw for themselves the worms swarming in the irrigated rice
ﬁelds.

I was stunned, myself, when I ﬁrst trudged out to Philippe’s rice ﬁelds to join the
women he’d hired to plant rice, and took a look at the water. As elderly Nuina and young
Colette both moved aside to make a place for me between them, I scooped up a batch of
rice shoots, and shoved the clumps of muddied roots into the warm brown water, sinking

them into the mud until they stood erect, their bright green tips pushing through the

245

surface. The water was teaming with long, serpentine worms, snaking through our ankles
and hands like ribbons of white.

I asked Nirina and Colette about them, as we planted the new rice shoots.
“They’re everywhere, now,” Nirina said, “but they aren’t so bad in the tavy ﬁelds. They
like the water.”

“We are used to them,”Colette laughed, scooping up a handful of muddy water
and watching the worms wash over her hands. She laughed at the look of disgust that
came over my face.

“What do you mean, Nirina,” I asked, “that they are everywhere now? Has it
changed?”

“Oh, we’ve always had worms,” she said, making a dismissive sound with her lips,
“but now that we are working more in the rice ﬁelds, we have more than we had taloha.”
Again, that vague but common word for the indeﬁnable past.

“You will get used to them, too,” Colette laughed, “and your face will stop
looking like that!”

Later that evening I asked Lalao, the woman who cooked and catered to me, for
her opinion. Her father, Rivo, controlled many of the rice ﬁelds.

“There aren’t as many in the tary ﬁelds,” she agreed, “but if the workers wouldn’t
drink the water, they wouldn’t get so many worms.” Her own siblings suffered from
coughing and scabies, and while I had no doubt that they, too, had worms, they weren’t as
obvious as among others.

I explained about other ways worms could be transmitted, ﬁom feet to hand to

mouth. She agreed that that was probably one way they were spread.

246

“But there is not much we can do about it. We have to work in the rice ﬁelds.
But the more money we make, the more tary we can clear. So if we work more in the wet
rice ﬁelds, we can farm more tavy rice, and then maybe there will be fewer worms with
time.”“

I reﬂected on this conversation as I sat with Toky, holding his bloated belly and
looking to me with sad pleading eyes, from a face well suited to dramatic exaggeration. “I
cannot get better,” he said, “because I must sleep on the wet ﬂoor all alone. Now that I
am sick, I can sleep with my mother, but when I begin to get better she will make me sleep
alone again, so that she can sleep with iPaul.” I knew he was hoping I’d oﬂ‘er my own dry
home, but I feared losing my privacy altogether once he moved in. Selﬁshly, I oﬁ'ered my
sympathies but not my help.

“You will get better,” I promised, “and if you don’t, we will get you to the
hospital.”

“But then I will not be able to go to school,” Toky pleaded, desperately seeking an

angle to get me to offer my home. “I will forget the English you have taught me, and you

 

'4 Lalao’s claim that increasing wealth through the expansion of irrigated rice ﬁelds
supported Ferraro’s (1994) claim that encouraging wet-rice expansion did not lead to a
decline in swidden production as the RNPP hypothesized, but instead, became a means of
increasing overall rice production. Lalao did not comment on how it was that more ﬁelds
would be cleared with the prohibition of further burning, nor did I ask given that she was
not a landowner herself. My own experience was that existing ﬁelds, and lands outside
the boundary of the park, were absorbed by wealthier people who rented or bought the
ﬁelds of their less wealthy neighbors. As such, increased wealth through the limited
agricultural assistance oﬁ‘ered by the project was more likely to foster the consolidation of
landholdings among an elite few, increase wage work by former subsistence farmers, and
increase production of tary currently in fallow.

247

will forget the Malagasy I have been teaching you. You won’t be able to ﬁnish your
wor .”

I assured him that would never happen. I would be sure he didn’t forget his
English lessons, and he could continue coaching me.

But he went home that night to sleep in the wet puddles that seeped through the
cracks in the mud that were the walls of his home.

Toky did recover from his fever and cough, though his belly stayed bloated.
Within a few weeks the cyclone beat his home senseless. Toky had just enough time to
grab his school books and their only cooking pot while Colette snatched up iPaul and they
burst out the door in the slamming rain, just as their home caved in. The next morning I
dropped by with my camera, taking a picture of the pile of mud and sticks that was their
home, Colette standing next to the pile, laughing sadly at yet another disaster in her life.

Toky began using my house to do his homeworlg but slept each night on a
diﬁ‘erent dirt ﬂoor, rotating from neighbor to neighbor until my research concluded and his
mother’s work with me had ﬁnished. Then they returned to her natal home, her husband
having divorced her when he found a younger wife. iPaul, like another of Colette’s sons

and so many of Toky’s ﬁiends, would soon die.

These stories of chronic illness illustrate the way that discomfort and illness have
been naturalized by many who, although not necessarily regarding themselves as
“healthy,” have surrendered to the futility of trying to combat so many health concerns.
Plant medicines are used, but with the daily constancy of discomfort, ﬁnding and preparing

medicines can be yet another chore in lives marked by interminable labor, if just to ﬁnd

248

water, cook a pot of rice, or earn enough to buy a bit of petrol for the comfort of a small
ﬂame burning in the night.

And while Nety’s death did not arise from one of the more common chronic
illnesses, her death was in all probability brought on by her lack of medicines to control
her seizures. Nety, a Tanala, was ﬁrlly informed and aware of her epilepsy and the
medicine that would control it. Contrary to views that the Tanala are hopelessly tied to
superstitious beliefs regarding illness, the multiple explanations that were oﬂ‘ered to
account for her death never departed from the general acknowledgment that she had an
illness that was treatable by Western medication which she could not afford.

And although of the wealthier lineage and closely tied to the village elites, if one
can call farmers who themselves work so close to the bone “elites,” as an unmarried
mother Nety lacked the cash to spend on medicines, and did not have land of her own
which she could employ toward income. As such, Nety’s gender and youth countered any
beneﬁt her lineage bestowed upon her, and her ethnicity failed to account for the fact that
her illness had not been treated. By all accounts, Nety had been taking Western
medication to treat her epilepsy; with the birth of her child two years previously and
another on the way, her medicines became a luxury she could no longer afford. Her family
concurred that the plants and other substances available in or near the forest could not
control her seizures as could the pills she had once obtained ﬁ'om the clinic in
Ranomafana.

And Lanto, herself a virtually landless woman, for what was left of her land after
selling it to Rivo was beyond her ability to farm once she became sick and her son went to

work for Raymond, was also unable to purchase the medicines she believed would relieve

249

her respiratory problems. From a lineage reputed to be descended from slaves, middle
aged and unmarried, she was a social outcast, even if sister to the mpanjaka. Her lineage,
gender, and marginality in the community contributed to minimal social support in
maintaining her ﬁelds and restoring her health. Her poverty thus exacerbated, her lack of
access to medicine, health care, and knowledge contributed to her chronic illness. That
she was Tanala seemed to have little bearing on the treatment strategies she pursued; she
herself showed little faith in the healing faculties of Rakoto who, like all the ombiasa
Ranotsara and nearby, was of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage.

Conversely, Kala and Zanabelo both identiﬁed themselves as Betsileo, but this
ethnic afﬁliation did not correspond to a more Westernized concept of illness and healing,
as the hierarchal ordering of ethnic categories would suggest. While Kala treated her
children’s scabies with local plants, she and her husband both remained unconcerned as the
condition worsened and became infected. And the clinic nurse who treated them either
accepted their interpretation of how the illness was caused and encouraged them not to
clean the wounds, or they interpreted his advice to correspond to their beliefs. Moreover,
while they did not seek out indigenous treatment for the condition, they did seek out the
preventative powers of a local ombiasa (of Zanabelo’s Zaﬁnaraina lineage) to ward off
katry, an indigenous diagnosis for fevers and seizures. These actions suggest that ethnic
aﬂiliation cannot be ascribed to indigenous explanations for health problems, nor to
treatment strategies. The lineage of Kala and Zanabelo was more likely to explain their
trust in the powers of their cousin, an ombiasa, than was their ethnic affiliation, but
lineage alone could not explain their actions, as they handled each illness episode

separately, seeking Western medicines when they were affordable and available (when I

250

provided them or the funds to purchase the antibiotic injection), indigenous plants when
the illness was deemed ordinary and treatable, and sharnanic intervention when the illness
was believed serious but unnatural, with cosmological origins.

In the following chapter, I continue this discussion by illustrating how the medical
belief systems of the people of Ranotsara known as "Tanala" are anything but
homogenous. Competing, contradictory, and conﬁising explanatory models of illness and

treatments to restore health are alive and well among these People of the Forest.

 

Chapter 7

LIFE AND DEATH IN RANOTSARA

This chapter focuses on the multiple explanatory models and treatment strategies

employed in the community of Ranotsara, suggesting that the concept of an indigenous

 

medical system is problematic. Moreover, the variety of beliefs and practices that
comprise the local response to illness is not at all related to one’s ethnicity; rather, lineage,
age, gender, and class are far more salient variables. Beliefs and practices related to health
and healing are ﬁrrther conditioned by the access one has to health resources. The
relationship one has to productive farming land, labor, and cash income, is the most
important factor shaping one’s health; this economic role further shapes how the
relationship between the forest environment and health is perceived and experienced.
Nonetheless, despite differences among community members in terms of health and
material comfort, even the most land-rich of residents are impoverished by Western
standards and this impoverishment, combined with limited access to Western health

resources, have contributed to illness and death for all.

251

2 5 2
Treating, and Not Treating, Illness

Baoroa sits on a plank of wood that is her bed on the second ﬂoor of her family's
home. The walls and thatched ceiling are lacquered from smoke; a small ﬁre burns in the
comer of the room over which a pot of rice is cooking. In her eighties and widowed for
several years, Baoroa's days are spent cooking, caring for her grandchildren and
greatgrandchildren, and resting — shortness of breath and severe arthritis limit her activities
outside the home. She says it has been over a year since she has been to the river to bathe.

Baoroa's husband was a well-respected ombiasa, although she won't admit that to
the vazaha. What she will admit is that her husband's ancestors were among the ambiana
founders of the village, and as such, her social status is very high, a status she holds with
pride as the eldest matriarch of the family. At her feet sits the wife of her grandson; the
young woman, Jeanine, has brought her eighteen-month-old son from a distant village to
consult her mother-in-law regarding the health of her boy.

The boy appears to be no older than six or seven months. His thin legs are folded
like little chicken wings on which he sits, his arms are like tiny twigs. Next to him, his
cousin iPaul, who was born just two weeks before him, rests on his mother's lap. Colette,
iPaul's mother, rarely without a side-splitting laugh bursting from her mouth, is now very
grave. She puts her ﬁngers around iPaul's leg, to show how fat her boy is. Jeanine, in
good humor, pinches the sagging skin from her own son's thighs to show oﬂ‘ the
comparison.

"He is too kamo (lazy) to walk," she says, as if this explains his skinny legs. His

head rolls limply back to stare at the shiny black ceiling. "He should be more like iPaul."

 

 

2 5 3

" T sy ampy vitamine!" Baoroa explodes in disgust ("Not enough vitamins! ") and
Colette echoes the sentiment, " T sy ampy," shaking her head. Jeanine merely smiles, and
continues her task.

She is mixing an ochre-colored paste of crushed roots ﬁom the wild ginger plant
(tamo—tamo), with water, and dabbing it on her child. Baoroa instructs her in the proper
method. First, the paste is rubbed on the child's fontanel; next, it is rubbed in bands
around the neck, arms, and thighs, "where he is manijjI-be," Colette explains (very thin).

" She did not do this when the child was born, and so biby have entered the baby. "That is
why he is so sick."

Later in the day there was much discussion among the women regarding the baby's
illness. I wondered why it was that if the family believed the baby did not have enough
vitamins, rather than give him food they painted his body with crushed roots.

"Baoroa said that he did not have enough vitamins. Do you believe that is why he
is sick?" I asked a small group of women who had come to my house for tea by the ﬁre.

"Yes, tsy ampy vitamine," Lalao said with sadness, as Nuina shook her head sadly
in agreement, "try ampy...." she concurred.

"Why don't they feed him? Because they don't have enough money? "

"No, they are very rich," Colette responded in envy, "Did you see her nice clothes,
that warm sweater she wears? She has many ﬁne clothes, like you. They have much land,
and many crops, and they eat laoka (sauce, usually of greens or beans, that is served on
rice) every day. They are not too poor."

"Then why don't they feed him?" I asked, bewildered.

 

2 5 4

"I don't know the reason," Lalao answered, "She also has a daughter, and she is
very fat."

"Maybe she thinks girls are better than boys." I suggested.

"No!" Nirina protested, shaking her head vigorously, "Tanala love all babies."

"Yes," Lalao agreed, "there is no difference. But when he was small, he was very
sick. Maybe she thinks that there is no reason to feed him because he will die. After he
was sick, he became weaker and weaker, and maybe she thought he would die."

"Does this happen often?" I wondered, "people don't feed their babies if they think
they will die?"

"No, not often. But maybe that is the reason," explained Lalao, "I don't know why
she does not feed him. She is not wise [tsy mahay izy].

"If she would not feed him, why didn't the family do or say something?"

"Because that is not our aﬂ’air [tsy ny raharahan' izahay]," answered Colette,
Jeanine's sister-in-law, "It is the business of the mother and father to feed their children."

"But it was diﬁ’erent in the past," Nirina added, "In the past, if a child was hungry,
the family would give him food, but now, life is hard, there is not enough money and not
enough food. People eat in their homes and do not share much food because there is not
much to share."

"No, there is not enough," Colette agreed.

I often heard about the better life taloha, in the past, and though I asked, it was
never clear how far in the past it was when things were better nor, as is the same in

America, if life really was better in the past, or if memories had made it so.

 

255

"But if he is sick because he doesn't have enough vitamins, " I asked, "why are they
giving him the tamo tamo?"

"Maybe there is another reason he is sick," Lalao suggested, "Maybe Rakoto will
cure him. He is knowledgeable [mahay] about the illnesses of the spirits [aretina biby].
That is why they took him to see Rakoto."

Rakoto had accepted the mantle of ombiasa with the passing of his father, a few
years before. Well versed in ceremonial, learned from his father, his own knowledge of
local illness categories and the plants used for treating them were either very limited, or it
was his willingness to share his knowledge with me that was limited.

But Rakoto could not cure the baby, he later confessed to me, because the parents
had waited too long before applying the tamo-tamo. By waiting so long, the soft-spot on
the top of his head had grown so big it reached the child's forehead. So Rakoto sent the
child to Letsara, a man who lived in a village in the hills above Ranotsara, and was known
for his expertise with ody loha (head medicine, or the medicine used to seal the soft spot;
noted for being different for each family).

Letsara gave the baby a tea, and made an inhalation for the child, but it was never
revealed to me which plants were used. He also made a paste from fandrinkabodr‘sa, a
thorny vine found in the secondary growth outside the forest, and added it to the tamo-
tamo, again painting bands on the wrists, knees, and ankles, and covering the soft-spot.

"Rakoto told them to use the tamo tamo," Lalao continued. "Maybe the baby will
be able to walk if they use the tamo tamo."

"But he cannot walk because he needs food," I said, having diﬂiculty accepting

painting the baby with roots as an effective treatment for starvation.

 

2 5 6

"He cannot walk because his legs are too thin," Colette patiently explained to me.
"Our babies were born at the same time, but she did not eat much even when she was
pregnant. Then her baby became sick and he didn't eat much. iPaul eats all the time!" she
laughed as we watched him struggle with a banana, "and so he has fat legs and walks all
the time. But her baby is too weak to walk, he is not strong at all. He is too weak to eat.
If he has vary [rice], he spits it out. He cannot even eat vary. Maybe the spirits have
made him sick because she did not follow the fomba [custom] of putting the tamo tamo on
his head when he was born. The spirits entered his body and have made him too sick to
eat. "

"She should give that baby laoka!" Nirina said in disgust, spitting out a wad of
paraky [chewing tobacco] as she set down her empty tea cup and hobbled off to ﬁnd some
booze.

By late afternoon the baby was unconscious. Baoroa and her eldest son, Koto-
Francoise, agreed that the best thing to do was to send the baby to the hospital in
Ranomafana for treatment, because he would surely die if he remained in the village. They
would continue the tamo tamo treatment, however, because unless the cause of the baby's
illness - his failure to eat - was not addressed, the eﬂects of the illness would worsen.

Jeanine, accompanied by Rakoto and Koto-Francoise, who carried his grandson,
reached the hospital by nightfall. The hospital physician diagnosed the child as suffering
from malnutrition and dehydration. He was treated with antibiotics and vitamins, and told
that there was no bed available for him to remain there. The family kept him with family

in Ranomafana and while there he received many visitors. Jeanine obtained powdered

 

 

257

milk (diluted with local water) and meals for the baby. She began feeding him watery rice
(vary lena, rice served in its cooking water, and given to the sick), with Iaoka.

The baby regained consciousness and after three days in Ranomafana Koto-
Francoise carried him home, hiking the nine kilometers over the mountainous terrain. He
reached the village by late afternoon, the limp baby wrapped in a blanket on the hot sunny
day. Several villagers met him at the edge of the village to celebrate the return of the sick
baby, following the family home to learn the news in Ranomafana and share the family's
jov-

By the end of the night, the baby had died.

The Malagasy Medical System

Understanding the Malagasy medical system necessitates understanding that it
does not exist. The very concept of a system — be it an coo-system, social system, or
medical system — is a reiﬁed concept that exists solely in the mind of the observer. The
observer selects, discards, arranges, categorizes, and ranks elements of the system in such
a way as to discern patterns. In medicine, these elements can be observed as signs,
symptoms, causes, processes, diagnoses, treatments and outcomes - how these elements
are grouped and evaluated constitutes the patterns of the medical system.

Medical anthropology has attempted to illuminate such patterns from their multiple
perspectives, in order to better understand differing ways of conceptualizing health and
illness that challenge our own perceptual patterns of health and illness. By focusing on
alternative healing systems or indigenous knowledge systems, however, one is almost

forced to think in terms of a shared concept of reality grounded in social structure and

 

 

2 5 8
history. There is indisputable value in doing this, but nevertheless, individual experience,

faith, character, intellect and knowledge penetrate the social system in such a way that no

 

two individuals in a given society conceptualize the illness experience, nor their health
needs, identically. Nirina, for example, viewed the illness of J eanine's baby in terms of
nutrition, while Rakoto viewed it in terms of social discord, speciﬁcally, the violation of
the fomba and the entry of malevolent spirits.

Were these diﬂ’ering views related to the social roles of Nirina, an elderly female

who had lived in cities and had considerable exposure to colonial medicine, and Rakoto, a

 

young male ombiasa trained in the use of forest medicines for treating illnesses caused by
spirits? Perhaps. Nonetheless, Baoroa, at least as old as Nirina, viewed the illness in
much the same way as did Rakoto, that is, in terms of social discord, even though Baoroa
acknowledged the baby needed vitamins. Baoroa's deceased husband, and now her son,
were well respected ombiasa. Nnina, conversely, while she herselfwas regarded as
knowledgeable regarding plant medicines for children, and covertly visited ombiasa,
considered herself a devout Catholic. At least publicly, she would promote the use of
Western medicines and vitamins for the child. That there is a multiplicity of views and
explanations for illness and healing in Ranotsara, then, is as true in the forests of
Madagascar as it is in East Lansing, Michigan. But I found no evidence co-relating
differences in these views to one’s ethnic identity. Just as concepts of health and healing
in East Lansing are understood in terms of education, family income, and social power, so
too did I ﬁnd these same factors having more to bear on explanatory models in Ranotsara
than did ethnic identity. For example, Baoroa and Rakoto were among the few in the

village who identiﬁed themselves as Betsileo, and tied this identity to their social status as

259

“andriana-be ” [very royal], a status they claimed due to their descendent from the

 

Zaﬁnaraina line that was not tainted by the marriage to andevo [see Chart]. Nirina,
conversely, reported that she had once been Betsileo, but became Tanala. It is not clear if
her change in ethnic status was associated with her marriage to F aly, a Zaﬁndraraoto, or
her many years of living the Tanala life of the forest. What was clear was that she

continued to identify her ancestry as Betsileo, but regarded her age and experience as a

 

rural farmer and woman to be the deﬁning characteristics by which both her Tanala

ethnicity and her world views were formed.

 

By stepping outside the "medical system" to focus on individual variations, such as
those expressed by Nirina and her close ﬁiend Baoroa, one is brought closer to
understandings of power and the relationship between power and knowledge. Although
having very different views regarding the illness of Jeanine’s son, Nirina and Baoroa did
not differ in any socially-relevant way except for the status brought them through their
marriages. Nirina, having been born into the Zaﬁnaraina andrr'ana lineage, lost status with
her marriage to F aly, while Baoroa, originally from Ranomafana, gained status through her
marriage into the Zaﬁnaraina. Ironically, it was the marriage of a Zaﬁnaraina (Rarnistiry)
to a Zaﬁndraraoto (iKalahafa) in the previous generation which elevated the status of
Baoroa’s husband, because his descent from Ramistiry’s brother, Ndrianomy, who married
andriana, rendered him “more pure” than his cousins. This single accident of heritage
became a deﬁning attribute in one’s identity in Ranotsara, as the family of Baoroa visibly
separated itself ﬁ'om the more materially-advantaged family of Rivo (grandson of
Ramitsiry), even maintaining a separate trano-be so that burial of their dead would remain

undeﬁled by either the Zaﬁndraraoto or those who married them.

260

As their material status diminished in comparison to their cousins (Rivo, Philippe
and Pascal), however, it became even more important for the family of Baoroa to adhere
to the social supremacy of ancestry. The role of Rakoto as ombiasa therefore served as a
direct conduit to this ancestral realm. It was not surprising then, that in explaining the
starvation of their kin, they would focus on this violation of tradition, while Nirina herself
took the more pragmatic approach and suggested the child needed food.

Thirty years ago, Glick (1967) raised the issue of power in terms of medical
anthropology and medical systems, in his discussion of ideas regarding sources of disease-
causing power. "One must learn where people believe power to reside or inhere; and one
must learn how they endeavor to put it to their own uses" (Glick 1967234). Ancestry has
become this locus of power in Ranotsara, and reﬂects some similarities to Glick’s own
ﬁndings.

Glick's study of a medical system in the New Guinea highlands used the concept of
power to understand how health and illness were patterned and experienced among the
Gimi. By focusing on medicines as having social power, Glick showed that the local
pharmacopeia extended beyond the "eﬁicacious" substances a Westerner might regard as
signiﬁcant. He found that illness, as a social process evoking a response within the
medical system, determines health needs. As such, medicine "needs" extend well beyond
those remedies judged as valuable by Western researchers, and the therapeutic substances
thus sought by the Gimi, as by others, are possessed of a power to heal, whether that
power be measurable in the laboratory or not. For Baoroa, the yellow-ochre powder of

the tamo-tamo root possessed a social power that Nirina’s laoka [sauce] did not.

 

 

2 6 1

As J eanine's son suffered ﬁom malnutrition and the family sought — in differing
ways - strategies for treating his illness, another member of the community fell sick. Solo
was a young man, in his early twenties, recently married and the father of a young boy. As
the eldest grandson of Kotomahay, in line for the position of mpanjaka of the
Zaﬁndraroato lineage, Solo's social status was among the highest of his age-mates; his
economic status, however, was among the lowest. He and his wife, Celine, and their son,
Jean Elie, lived in a small one-room house, about three meters by three meters. The house
was in poor repair and oﬁ‘ered minimal protection against the heavy rains. They had very
little land, which did not produce enough food for the family. Indeed, their crops and
income were so minimal that they often went without meals altogether. Jean Elie, about
four months of age, was severely malnourished, looking barely more than four weeks old.
His yellowed skin was covered with scabies lesions he'd had since birth, and his scalp was
raw from untreated cradle cap which had turned to open sores and become severely
infected.

Seventeen year old Celine had one year of schooling, and could neither read nor
write. She was regarded among the other women in the community as very nice but
extremely naive, not even understanding, some women giggled, how it was that she had
become pregnant when she began sleeping with Solo.

In mid-July, Solo fell ill late in the day. After working for wages in the ﬁelds of
the Zaﬁnaraina, he began to feel cold and his head ached. By early evening, his chest was
hurting, and by the following morning, his stomach hurt, he had diarrhea, and his legs

were sore. Throughout the morning his whole body hurt, and he described the pain as

2 6 2
moving all over his body. By noon, however, his headache had cleared and the pain had
settled in his stomach and the bones and joints of his legs.

The description Solo gave of his illness, as having begun in his head and
progressed to his chest, then his stomach, then legs, led his family to conclude that this
was an unusual illness marked by a unique progression from his head downward. This
was clearly not an illness of God, but instead, suggestive of either mosary (witchcraft) or
punishment of the ancestors. Therefore, it was necessary to consult an ombiasa.

Naina was called in to diagnose Solo's illness the ﬁrst night he fell ill. He arrived at
about eight in the evening, after dark. He said he found Solo unconscious, and the family
told him that Solo had been trembling. Not knowing the illness, he consulted the sikidy.
The sikr'dy is a divination system introduced by Arab traders in the ﬁfteenth century.
Linton (19332203) suggests that the term sikidy, when used by the Tanala Ikongo, refers
to all types of divination. including divination by water, sand or mirror, as well as by
seeds. My own experience, however, was that that in the region of Ranotsara, the term
referred solely to divination by seeds, which Linton suggests is how the Tanala Menabe
use the term. (When asked about the difference, the residents of Ranotsara indicated to
me that they were unfamiliar with the ethnic distinctions of Tanala Ikongo and Tanala
Menabe.)

According to the sikidy, Naina explained, Solo's illness was very grave and had
been sent by the ancestors to punish him for the way he had been treating his grandfather,
Kotomahay. Naina asked Kotomahay if Solo had upset him, and Kotomahay replied that
he and Solo had been ﬁghting because Solo was not behaving like a grandson and showing

him proper respect. Naina explained that in order to restore Solo's health, his

 

h-

 

2 6 3
grandparents, Kotomahay and Soary, had to show forgiveness by blessing Solo with water
in which the leaves and stems of the maniny tree (found in the forest), and raw white rice,
were added. In so doing, he explained, the ancesters would be satisﬁed that order was
restored.

While the ombiasa and the family were unanimous in believing the illness to be
caused by the ancestors, they at the same time believed that the cold, rainy weather caused
the symptoms of the illness. In effect, Kotomahay explained, the ancesters were upset
with Solo, and therefore, by attacking his strength, or immunity, caused him to be
susceptible to an illness brought by the weather. Consequently, Naina also prescribed a
tea made ﬁ'om the leaves and roots of ahibalala. As discussed in the previous chapter,
ahibalala is a plant that grows in the tavy ﬁelds and is known by virtually everyone in the
village as an all-purpose cold and ﬂu remedy. Family members explained that it was very
effective for tazo, or fever, and works in the same way that Niviquine works in treating
fevers. Moreover, it was said to be eﬁ‘ective for stomach disorders, and so he thought that
it would help Solo's fever and stomach upset.

Consequently, Naina's treatment was aimed at not only restoring social order (the
cause of the illness), but at healing the symptoms of the illness as well. My visit, however,
altered the treatment strategy of the family. The moment I began asking questions
regarding the medicines Solo had taken, I was asked for aspirin. I explained that although
I had aspirin, I did not know if it would be a good medicine for Solo's illness, because it
would upset his stomach. Kotomahay, a village elder whose knowledge of plant
medicines was well respected in the community, asked ifI could give his grandson

something else, if aspirin were not effective. Although I reminded the villagers, almost

264

daily, that I was not a doctera, and they did understand the limits to my knowledge, there
was no escaping the fact that I had medicines. I indicated that I had Nautamine, which
was effective for treating upset stomachs, though it would not really treat his illness. No
matter, Kotomahay thought Solo should give it a try. As such, I did give Solo some
Nautamine, and within moments of swallowing the bitter pill, he rose from his sickbed and 'i'
announced that he was much better.

But Solo was far ﬁom better, and as the day progressed, his family determined that

 

he needed to recover ﬁ'om the illness in order to ﬁrlly regain his strength. He spent the E
following week huddled in a dark corner of his grandfather's home, receiving visitors. His
grandmother cooked for him, though he ate very little. Chickens were killed and boiled,
and Solo served the meat and broth for his strength. But his illness, rather than
diminishing, grew stronger, and soon he was coughing. Meanwhile, his grandfather,
Kotomahay, also took sick with a headache, and stripping oﬁ’ his clothes and wrapping
himself in a burial shroud, he, too, huddled in a corner of his home, moaning audibly as he
received visitors. While Kotomahay indicated that he had the same symptoms as Solo, he
told me that he did not think the illnesses were related, but that he was having a heart
attack.

Village gossip, however, suggested that Kotomahay did indeed think his illness
was related to his grandson's sickness. Shortly before Solo fell ill, there had been a
Saturday night drinking bout among some young men in the nearby market town of
Masomanga. After many glasses of toaka gasy, a healthy young man fell into a coma and
died shortly after. His death, like all deaths from toaka ingestion, was attributed to

mosavy, or witchcraft. Legend has it that several years back someone from Ranotsara had

265

died after drinking the toaka brought by a visitor from Masomanga. That visitor was
thereby marked as a mpamosavy, as was the woman who headed the household he was
visiting in Ranotsara. Death from toaka, something people drank daily, was not regarded
as normal. Withcraft was obvious.

As such, the death from toaka gasy, in a healthy young man no less, was judged by
many people to be the work of a witch, and that witch was undoubtedly the woman in
Ranotsara who had hosted the stay of the visitor who had poisoned the toaka gasy he
brought to Ranotsara several years back. In revenge for the recent death in Masomanga,
some villagers speculated, a mpamosavy had probably been called upon to curse someone
in Ranotsara. Solo's illness, therefore, marked him, and his family, as somehow linked to
this mosary business (while no one would name the witch, I was told that she was already
grown and her husband had left her; that she was said to be of the andevo caste was also
signiﬁcant.)

Consequently, there were two simultaneous explanations for Solo, and then his
grandfather, falling ill — one was that the ancestors were displeased with the way that Solo
treated his grandparents and had cursed him with an illness — Kotomahay's response to
Solo was regarded by the ancestors as equally disgraceﬁrl, and so he too was struck down.
The other interpretation was that Solo and Kotomahay had been struck ill to avenge the
mosary death of the young man in Masomanga.

Kotomahay recovered, while Solo, either for his recovery or protection, it was
never really clear to me, was sent to distant relatives where he could have "new air."

Within a few months, however, Solo's son died ﬁ'om malnutrition, never having

been served the chicken that was sacriﬁced for his father. Celine told me she did not have

 

 

2 6 6
enough milk for the baby, and the food for the family was so scarce they could not give
any to the baby, who was too weak to chew rice. "Ahibalala," she told me, "is the only

medicine I know."

 

My initial reaction to these illness episodes was to wonder why it was that Solo's
illness - which ﬁom my perspective appeared to be a common ﬂu - received so much
attention, while his son's malnutrition remained neglected. The community did not

hesitate to rally for Solo, yet did nothing to intervene with his son's health, just as no one

 

would intervene to care for Jeanine's starving son - except to paint rings around his twig-
like limbs. How could the community allow children to starve while adults with upset
stomachs were nursed day and night?

The answers to these questions came bit by bit over the next few months, as Solo
slowly recovered, and his son continued to waste away. While I focused on what I
perceived to be ignorance - a failure of people to recognize the severity of malnutrition as
compared to vague aches and pains, the people of the community focused on issues of
power. And much of that power centered on one's relationship to the forest, that is, how
one was, or was not, empowered to control the land and resources of the forest that
surrounded them.

Although Solo's grandfather was a well-respected community elder in line for the
position of mpanjaka of the Zaﬁndraraoto lineage, the inﬂation of recent years contributed
to the economic disempowerrnent of Solo's family such that Kotomahay was frequently
forced to labor in the ﬁelds of Rivo, Philippe, or Pascal for wages of 1,500 frng a day

(approximately 3 5 cents at the time of my ﬁeldwork). Nonetheless, Kotomahay regarded

267

himself as better oﬁ‘ economically than when he was younger, because his children were
grown and he was no longer responsible for their care, despite the fact that he continued
to feed several of his children and grandchildren. And although he had good irrigated rice
ﬁelds, as each son married, he gave them their own land, thereby reducing his own land
holdings.

Unable to expand his tavy ﬁelds into the newly-created national park, Kotomahay's
access to land and forest resources did not expand as his children matured and took
possession of their lands. Compounded with the escalating cost of living, Kotomahay's
wages became necessary for family survival. Similarly, each of his sons, and his remaining
daughters, was forced into wage labor for the Zaﬁnaraina as well. The result of
Kotomahay and his grown children working for wages while simultaneously working their
irrigated and swidden rice ﬁelds, was that they had less labor available to work their own
ﬁelds and their harvests declined. Declining harvests led to the need to borrow rice from
the Zaﬁnaraina, which were repaid in double the following years. As such, much of their
own lands were devoted to growing rice for the Zaﬁnaraina.

Therefore, by the time Solo married and took possession of his rice ﬁelds, there
were no other family members available to help him and Celine work the lands, while Solo
also found himself assisting in clearing the lands and harvesting the crops of the
Zaﬁnaraina lineage, in order to have cash income. The result was that Solo had access to
land, but lacking access to labor and his own labor sold for wages, he was unable to
maximize the production of his land. In short, he was extremely poor, and did not have

enough food to feed himself; his wife, and his son.

 

268

Had community members intervened by calling attention to Jean Elie's
malnutrition, they would have had to confront the fact that Solo was unable to feed him
because he and his family were economically disempowered, and their labor power was
therefore devoted to wage work, rather than working their own lands. As such, their
relationship to the land had changed with the changing social and economic structure of
the village.

As for ignoring the fundamental reasons they were impoverished and simply giving
food to the boy, community members expressed the fear that to give food to others during
periods of scarcity would cause them to become malnourished themselves. Kotomahay
himself told me that this was a recent phenomena; during his parents' time, food and
resources were shared and those who lacked were provided for by those who had more.
But why, then, didn't Kotomahay or his sons give food to the boy? I do not really know;
Kotomahay was a kind and generous man. Perhaps he and his family had internalized the
fear of going without.

Kotomahay expressed his frustrations at not having the power to care for his
family, despite his role as village elder and future mpanjaka. His own sense of
disempowerment was reﬂected in his conﬂict with Solo — feeling that his grandson did not
respect his authority, he promoted the view that the ancestors had weakened Solo as
punishment, just as he later accepted the view that Solo's illness may have been caused by
the ever-powerful mpamosavy of Masomanga. This latter view explained why he, too,
became sick and thereby "disempowered" even more. Feeling weakened economically,

socially, and cosnrically, it is not that difficult to accept that Kotomahay and others in his

 

2 6 9
family may have felt that they lacked the power to help Jean Elie, whose wasting was a
reﬂection of the family's loss of power.l
Conversely, Jeanine's son had apparently starved to death, despite his family's

economic power. And while his malnutrition and death prompted much speculation and

 

difference of opinion, it did not prompt much intervention. Is it that children are regarded

1!

as unimportant? Quite the contrary, a child's death, while commonplace, is regarded as a

terrible tragedy. But to intervene with how a parent cares for their child is to subvert their

 

most fundamental power, that is, the power to care for one's family, while contesting an
even greater power - the power of the ancestors to intervene. As economic power
diminished for nearly everyone, families came to rely more and more on the power of the
ancestors to take care of social problems, because most people viewed themselves as
socially disempowered with the changing economy.

Another factor contributing to the failure of the community to act, was that
J earrine's husband was regarded as andriana; those who were allegedly andevo could not
intervene, while starvation was not regarded as an illness of the andriana. It had to be
something else. Respecting the power of the spiritual world, it was understandable that
the spirits would enter the boy's body and make him sick. And if Lalao was correct in her
view that after the boy had become sick, his mother felt that there was nothing she could
do to help him to survive, her own sense of disempowerment may have contributed to his

demise.

 

1 I oﬁ‘er these explanations as my own, possibly mistaken, interpretations and they
may or may not accord with those of the people to whom 1 imply them.

270

Despite the conﬂicting views as to where power resided in respect to the boy's
health and sickness, whether it be in tamo tamo, the parents, the spirits, or the hospital, the
consensus was that for others to feed Jeanine's son, when she and her husband could
afford to feed him, would take limited food away from one's own family. Howard and
Millard (199628) noted the same pattern of neglect in their study of the malnutrition in
East Africa, arguing that “In the period of food crisis, many sought to protect the
members of their own households by denying assistance to poorer kin who had little to
offer in return in the cash economy.” In Ranotsara, those without land or cash resources
could only oﬁ‘er their labor in exchange for assistance.

At the same time that kin turned their back on the plight of Jeanine’s child, to
suggest to Jeanine that she feed him would be rude. To call on the ancestors for
intervention, however, would enable the child to receive care. Moreover, in so doing, the
power of biomedicine and the power of forest medicines were invoked as his care gained
the attention of both ombiasa and the hospital physician.

In this case, the family had access to indigenous medicines, particularly through the
family connection to Rakoto and Baoroa. Yet in the early stages of the boy's life and
sickness, they rejected it. Family members allege that the mother - an outsider ﬁom a
different village - lacked access to knowledge, that she, as the primary caretaker of the
child, was ignorant. Her ignorance, it was said, explained her failure to eat well during
pregnancy, to follow the fomba of protecting the fontanel with tamo tamo, and to feed the
baby adequately.

Thus, the starvation of two babies, one ﬁ'om the Zaﬁndraraoto lineage, the other

ﬁ'om the Zaﬁnaraina lineage, were viewed and interpreted differently by the community.

2 7 1
Jean Elie's death was regarded as related to poverty, and he wasted away slowly, with no
intervention at all. The death of Jeanine's son, of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage, was regarded by
many as a spiritual disorder, even by those, such as Baoroa, who felt the child did need
"vitamins." As such, the healing power of forest medicines was sought, and when they
failed, the healing power of the hospital was solicited. There appeared to be no effort to
secure such power toward the healing of Jean Elie, perhaps because his family viewed
itself, and was viewed by others, as socially and economically powerless.

To some, however, the illness and death in Kotomahay’s family might be

 

understood in terms of his Tanala ethnic identity, while the diﬁ’ering approach to the
sickness and death of Jeanine’s baby might be conceptualized in terms of her family’s
Betsileo ancestry. But to distinguish the differing illness strategies as reﬂecting differing
ethnic views of medicine, would be misleading because it would obscure the ways in
which poverty and local kinship ties mediate the illness experience in Ranotsara.
Different economic positions, accompanied by different familial ties, are more salient to
how one explains and treats illness in Ranotsara, than are spurious ethnic differences.
Howard and Millard (1996) have pointed out that high rates of child malnutrition
are not attributable to local people, nor to outside inﬂuences such as the global economy
alone; rather, they suggest that it is the interaction of customary practices with these
outside forces that shape local economies. In the case of Ranotsara, the customary
practices that interacted with the global economy were those related to a division of labor
based on descent, in which those members of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage were better
positioned to call on their wealthier kin for assistance, while those of the Zaﬁndraraoto

lineage faced a continuing decline in economic security, ﬁrrther compounded by the Park’s

2 7 2
enclosure of lands they regarded as their rightful heritage. Moreover, Howard and Millard
(19962xv) note that

The shift to commodity food production has been accompanied by

weakening reciprocity between the poor and their community leaders, by

an increasing gap between rich and poor, and by the growing poverty of

many households faced with shortages of farmland and landlessness.

But landlessness alone, or even in association with close kinship ties to the ruling
lineage, does not explain all poverty in Ranotsara, just as poverty alone does not explain
all sickness. Gender and access to labor ﬁirther exacerbate poverty, as the following
story reveals, while lack of access to medicines, health care, and health knowledge,

combine with the tropical environment to exacerbate chronic illness.

Explanatory Models for A Culture-Bound Diagnosis

As discussed previously, Rivo and his brother Koto launched the land
consolidation that currently characterizes Ranotsara. But as their business savvy and good
fortune were blessing them with the riches of abundant crops and cattle and a bit of cash,
the fortunes of their elder brother, Lita, were not as prosperous. As the eldest brother,
Lita had received the largest and ﬁnest rice ﬁelds ﬁ'om their father, but in middle age, his
eyesight began to fail. By the time of my arrival, as Rivo and Koto had already established
their wealth, Lita’ s eyesight was virtually gone. He could no longer tend his ﬁelds, and
the only contribution he could make to the household was to chop the wood each day, a
task he carried out by touch, rather than by sight.

Having lost the ability to manage his ﬁelds or contribute to the household

economy, the responsibility fell to his wife, Soa.

2 7 3
When Soa married Lita, she was in her late twenties, with two children ﬁom a
previous marriage, and another child already buried. She left her ﬁrst husband, she
explained, because he was lazy, and did not take care of his children. In contrast, Lita

publicly adopted Lala’s remaining child, Ketaka. Lala and Lita then had four more

 

children, three boys and one girl, as Lita gradually went blind.
My arrival in Ranotsara was delayed by three days, however, when one of their
boys died of apparent respiratory failure, and a funeral had to be held. \Vithin a few

months, another son was gone, again of respiratory failure. Lala, having given birth to six

 

children, was left with only three surviving children, Ketaka, Lala, and Chantelle. At the
age of thirty-one, her husband blind and unable to work, Lala had little time to mourn her
children because it was up to her and her children to farm her land.

Having no adult relatives of her own to call on to help her farm, and Lala and
Chantelle too young to do much, Lala and Lita turned to Lita’s brother, Rivo, and oﬁ‘ered
to lease their irrigated rice ﬁelds to him for a period of three years in exchange for 50,000
ﬁng (about $12.50). They knew that this sum was signiﬁcantly less than the value of the
land, which Lala speculated would yield crops valued at up to 250,000 ﬁng a year, but
with no one they could call on to help with the labor, no cash with which to pay hired
laborers, and no other bidders for land in the community, the couple’s options were
limited. With the 50,000 ﬁng they received, Lala was able to buy clothing and school
supplies for the children, and some food, but she did not have enough to set aside.

She continued to work their tavy ﬁelds alone, but when she was in need of cash,
she left her own ﬁelds to work for wages for Rivo. Ketaka and Chantelle also helped

Rivo; as their father’s brother, they were expected to treat him with the same respect as

2 7 4
they would show to their father. In their case, this meant working in his ﬁelds regularly,
without pay, and every afternoon, after school let out, going to Rivo’s rice ﬁelds to watch
for birds, which they scared away with slingshots and stones. Although the girls received

no pay, in consideration of their labor Rivo provided them with regular meals. The labor

 

of the girls also served as a sort of social insurance, in case Lala came to him in the future
in need. Thus, while relinquishing her ﬁelds for such low pay could be perceived as
victimization, to Lala renting out the ﬁelds, in conjunction with “loaning” out the labor of

her children, increased her options and her potential leverage with her brother-in—law.

 

But Lala’s needs grew greater as her work wore away at her body and her poverty
dragged her down. She was the only person in the village who appeared depressed. She
rarely smiled, and did not pretend to be happy, unless she was drunk. She often drank
toalia gasy, as did many women, and though she could not aﬂ‘ord to buy it for herself
others offered it to her, knowing it was for her a sort of medicine. Lita, however, did not
approve of her drinking and they often fought over it when she returned home drunk.

“He is angry because I’ve been drinking toaka gasy,” Lala giggled one evening,
after a ﬁght had sent her out of her house and over to mine, where several of the women
had gathered. “Maybe he will divorce me, and then I’ll have less work. He is sick again,
you know, with bay.”

Yes, I knew. Lita’s chronic bay was providing me with rich data on forest
medicines. Bay is generally a skin disorder; some use the term to refer only to swollen,
pus-ﬁlled growths such as boils or carbuncles, others used the term to refer to any type of
skin disorder not-otherwise speciﬁed (such as scabies). Because the environment was

anything but sterile, with feces prevalent throughout the village and surrounding areas, and

275

clean water difficult to come by, the slightest break in the skin, such as from a mosquito
bite, could become infected very quickly. In no time at all I was covered with my own
bay, and my home became the local dispensary for antiseptic to cleanse everybody’s
budding bay.

Lita, however, did not come to me for help, sending Lala in his place to inquire
after pills. One particularly crippling bay had taken root beneath his scapula. As it grew
bigger and bigger, it became impossible for him to move his aim, and that meant that he
could no longer chop wood. Rivo, however, did not come to Lita’s aid, providing only
periodic offerings of cooking wood. Lala and Ketaka took over that obligation, as well,
collecting stray bits of wood on their way to and ﬁom the ﬁelds. Soa was also earning
extra money by pounding rice for Rivo, for which she received 1,500 ﬁng a day.

“I want a divorce,” Soa told me, still ﬁrming about Lita’s criticism of her drinking,
“but I have nowhere to go, and I am too poor to leave the village. And ifI divorce him, I
cannot ask Rivo for help if] need it. Do you have anymore roaka? My glass is empty,”
and she chuckled some more. By ﬁve am. the next day she was back to work in Rivo’s
fields, earning cash to pay the ombiasa for Lita’s treatment.

Naina stopped by to check on Lita every day, but the latter initially declined his
assistance. Naina explained that Lita was suﬂ‘ering ﬁom bay mainty, “black bay,” which
was the most serious form. Soa would gather medicines in the tavy ﬁelds and prepare
poultices for him, but by the time Lita agreed to Naina’s treatment, his wound was very
large and deep. Naina went to the forest for the branch of a tree, and stripping its bark, he

plunged the end of the wooden pestle-shaped branch in the ﬁre and held it ﬁrm to the

 

276

wound. Repeating this treatment several times a day, along with Soa’s home remedy, the
wound eventually opened, and within a few days Lita was healed.

But Soa’s problems continued to surmount. Within a few months, she was visibly
pregnant, confessing that she was due at the same time as the rice, implying her fear that
she would be unable to bring in her rice harvest. Adding to her daily work of farming her
own ﬁelds, pounding rice for Rivo, periodically working his irrigated rice ﬁelds (which he
had leased ﬁom her), she had begun working for me as well, to gain not only income, but
my obligations toward her. Contrary to Malagasy “cultural” forms of discourse, in which
participants seek to put the other at ease by remaining cheerﬁrl and by approaching
sensitive subjects circuitously, Soa tended to approach such subjects, particularly those
regarding her legitimate needs, very directly. When she needed money, she asked for it,
with no excuses and no explanations. When one day, as I was leaving the village to go to
the capital city of Antananarivo, she unexpectedly — and without pleasantries — handed
me a list of the items she would need for her coming birth and baby, I took the list and did
as she said, buying cotton, scissors, gauze, alcohol, hat, blanket, sweater. “Anything
else?” I asked.

“No, that is what I need to have a baby,” she answered, having expected me to

provide all that she needed, but no more than that.

As Soa’s pregnancy drew to a close, and she continued to work her tavy ﬁelds,
Lita fell very ill. He lay by the ﬁre in their small two-room home, and grew increasingly

weak. Naina was called, and his diagnosis was as they feared. Lita had albumen.

277

Albumen is an indigenous classiﬁcation for illness characterized by swelling feet,
hands, abdomen and face; yellowing of the eyes, nails and palms of the hands, and
darkened urine. People differ in their opinions regarding whether it is or is not
accompanied by fever. Some suggest that the skin leaves a dent if pressed, and others
point out that the may (sick person) will sleep a lot and only eat greasy foods. They
generally agree that it is an illness of older peOple, with some saying only older people can
get it, and others saying that younger people can sometimes get it.

Its cause is not always agreed upon, though many say that it is caused by too much
salt in the diet. Others say that it is brought on by becoming too cold, or by drinking too
much toaka. Some say that it is caused by wind entering the body, which makes the body
swell up. Others say that it is caused ﬁ'om eating too many sweets, while many say that it
is caused from not having enough food. Soa echoed the sentiments of many when she said
that it was usually inherited.

“Ifa person gets it when they are old, then it is inherited ﬁ'om their parents,” Soa
explained, “and if this happens, then all the children of the parents will get it when they
grow old. Most old people do get it, there is much albumen in Madagascar. You cannot
escape it. But if a young person gets albumen,” she continued, becoming very sad, “then
it is not inherited. Ifit is the ﬁrst time the generation has had it, then it is contagious.”

“Albumen?” Dr. Tovo, of the Park Project, explained, “albumen is something in
the blood, it is a protein. What you are describing sounds more like tazo vony,” he said,
referring to what would be literally translated as “yellow fever,” but which he translated as

hepatitis.

 

 

 

278

“T azo vony is not the same as albumen,” Nirina explained to me, after I told her
what the doctor had said, “tazo vony can turn into albumen, but there is no swelling with
tazo vony. Only yellow skin and yellow eyes.”

“And tazo vony will not kill you,” Soa added, “it may linger, but it can be cured.
The ombiasa can cure tazo vony but they cannot cure albumen. Not even the docetara
[doctor] can cure albumen.”

“No, the docetara have many medicines, but none to cure albumen,” Nirina
concurred. The women had stopped by my house for afternoon tea, which we were
drinking outside in the rain, under the thatch awning of my cooking area.

“If the ombiasa and the docetara can do nothing for albumen, is there anything
that the family can do? Are there forest medicines or other treatments?” I asked.

Soa answered. “Foods or medicines that bring on diarrhea sometimes help,
because the abdomen is swollen with water and this makes the water to leave. And if the
illness is caught early, the ombiasa might be able to cure it, but the there must also be a
saotra [ceremony of thanks to the ancestors]. If the ombiasa doesn’t catch it early, it may
be temporarily cured, but it will come back”

“What will happen to Lita?” I asked gently.

“He will die.” Soa answered, matter of factly.

“Yes, Miamanitra [God] will take him,” Nirina, schooled in Catholicism,
concurred.

The women ﬁnished their tea by the ﬁre and as Soa rose to pound rice for Rivo,

Nirina announced that it was time to go home and bicker with F aly, her husband of half a

century.

279

Despite the agreement that only the ombiasa could do anything, no matter how
ineﬁective, to help the person suffering ﬁ'om albumen, how the healers themselves
diagnosed and viewed the illness differed, even within the tiny village of Ranotsara. For
example, Naina said that it could be cured, but if it was cured, it became feﬂ, another
indigenous classiﬁcation usually, but not always, used synonymously with tazo vony. It
would never really go away, he explained, but remain dormant, ready to reappear at any
time. Naina provided his own views on the cause and treatment of the disease.

“There is an egg in the heart which causes the hands and feet to swell. The reason
I know this is because the sick person likes to eat a lot of eggs. When an egg remains in
the body, the body needs eggs. It is fady [taboo] to eat meat and salt when you have
albumen. When the egg is deprived of meat and salt, the person will vomit the egg.”

“Have you ever seen this happen?” I asked, skeptically.

“Eny ary [oh, yes], I have seen it,” he answered. “The egg is not in the shell. It is
very, very young. Angroso is the name of the illness at this stage, when the person has
vomited the egg. If the egg is not vomited, the marary will die. The illness will spread
from the face to the hands and feet. The illness begins with the face and eyes turning
yellow, and the urine is very dark. When the hands and feet become swollen, the illness
has spread.”

“How do you diagnose it?” I asked him.

“To diagnose it,” he answered with considerable patience, “I look at the eyes, face
and ﬁngernails. Ifthe person is malemy-lemy [sort of weak], does not respond to me, and

their face, eyes and nails are yellow, I know that it is albumen.”

2 8 0

“Do you consult the sila'dy?” I asked, referring to the divination system commonly
used to diagnose social and physical discord.

“No, I do not consult the sikr'dy, if I have seen the symptoms myself” he answered,
“because I know albumen. But if the treatment does not succeed, I will consult the sikidy
to ask if there is another treatment that may work.”

Rakoto, on the other hand, a young but popular ombiasa in the village, and a
distant cousin of Naina (both of the Zaﬁaraina lineage), said with pride that he could
indeed cure albumen.

“Albumen is contagious, it is spread through sneezing,” he told me. “It is also
caused by eating too much sugar. To avoid it, eat bitter things.”

“Who can get albumen?” I asked him.

“Anyone can get it, especially adults who don’t eat enough bitter things. But it
always begins with another illness that is often very different. That is why I consult the
sikidy.’

“How do you cure it?” I asked him, ready to note down the treatment.

“The treatment is never the same,” he responded, “the ancestors will tell me how

to cure it, through the sila'ajz”

Soa and her family called upon Naina to treat Lita. Knowing he could not cure the
disease, they sought to alleviate his discomfort. Soa went to the ﬁelds to gather extra ﬁre
wood to keep him warm through the night, and she killed most of her few chickens to boil
and feed to him. The broth is believed to provide strength to the sick, and people try to

maintain a stock of chickens for times of illness.

2 8 1

Lita grew progressively worse as Soa grew progressively bigger with her
pregnancy. Her sadness became even more marked, and she spoke of the future as if his
death would bring her the relief of caring for him, but with it would also come the
uncertainty of her own future. Not owning any land of her own, it was only through her
children that she could claim rights to the land, by farming it for them until they came of
age. To return to her own village would be equally uncertain, as her brothers had been
using her own land for so long that to claim it back (women having rights to one-third of
all property from their parents) would cause family problems.

“I will ask Rivo if I can stay here,” she said, “and he will let me, because I have no
where else to go, and my children are the same as his own children. And I will sell my
bananas to make the money to buy food and supplies for the next year.”

Soa’s tavy ﬁelds were planted with bananas, which she had been tending since my
arrival. Aside from the wages she received ﬁ'om me and Rivo, she had no other assets to
fall back on. But as the harvest season approached, Lita’s illness grew critical, and she
tended him night and day. Finally, knowing he would die at any time, but knowing as well
that she had to get her bananas to market before they grew overripe, she returned to her
ﬁelds with her children to assist in the harvest.

The bananas were gone. Every last one had been harvested. Only someone living
nearby and knowing she was unable to tend the ﬁelds while Lita lay sick, could have stolen
her bananas.

That night, before going home to help her husband die, Soa got very drunk. The

next morning by ﬁve a.m., she was back at work, pounding rice for Rivo, raising the six

2 8 2
foot pestle high in the air and bringing it down hard, again and again, as the pounding

rhythm rocked her unborn child.

Death That no Medicine Could Prevent

Albumen is not, however, always regarded as an inherited or contagious illness.
Even those who argued forcefully that albumen was a disease that was natural (conring
with age), from the environment (contagious), or brought by Zanahary [God] (a category
including both genetic and environmental disease), found none of these explanations ﬁilly
accounted for the illness of F aly, mpanjaka of the Zafrndraraoto lineage?

Faly appeared to be an old man, who guessed his own age to be somewhere
between eighty and ninety, but it was probably closer to sixty-ﬁve or seventy. His
grandfather, Ramanjato, was the founding member of the Zaﬁndraraoto lineage. He and

Nirina, of the Zaﬁnaraina lineage, had been married for about ﬁfty years, they guessed.

They worked hard together, and they drank hard together. Laughing and joking endlessly,

Faly never forgot his role as mpanjaka, taking the position very seriously. He lamented
the changing status of his role, as poverty and limited labor led him to relinquish his ﬁelds
to Rivo, and deaths and expenses forced him to sell his cattle one by one. By the time I
arrived, Faly’s status had diminished ﬁom that of a village leader, to that of an honored
elder. The true leaders of the village, he suggested, were those who had no titles, but

controlled the land.

 

2 I was not present in the village when Faly fell ill, and the following account was
drawn from interviews with those who treated and cared for him, as well as the ever-prevalent

village gossip.

 

 

283

In mid-November, Faly suddenly became very dizzy and feverish. He went inside
his home to lie down, while Nirina nursed him. He had no appetite, and his eyes became
very red. Soon, the tell-tale yellowish tinge that signals tazo-vony indicated that it was
time to call for an ombiasa. Nirina sent for Rakoto, and be consulted the sikiafy, learning
from the ancestors that F aly was the victim of mosary [witchcraft]. It did not take the
family long to discover the likely mpamosavy [witch], as she was right there in the family
—-— Faly’s younger sister, Lanto.

In her mid-forties, Lanto was much younger than her elder brother Faly. Her
isolated life as a single woman raising her children by herself, compounded by her inability
to work her ﬁelds due to her poor health, contributed to her image as a social outcast.
More importantly, she was rumored to be a thief.

“Rumorsl?” Nirina spat out, “Ny maranall” [the truth]. “I caught her stealing our
bananas, our coﬂ'ee, our sugar, even our chickens! They were no rumors. She was
always stealing ﬁ'om us, and she ﬁnally stole so much that F aly did not have enough to cat.
That was why he became sick, he was hungry. But he wouldn’t do anything about it; he
said she was his sister and she needed the food. We needed the food, too. So Faly and I
got divor .” Nirina began to weep, thinking back to the terrible row they’d had that led
her to storm out of their home and take up housekeeping in her adopted son’s abandoned
home.

“But I never stopped cooking for him, he still had to eat,” she explained,
reclaiming her pride.

Although their separation was a source of gossip and good humored ﬁin in the

village, as everyone knew it would subside, once Faly became sick, Nirina moved back to

2 8 4
their home. But neither her nursing, nor Rakoto’s prayers and healing plants, could
restore Faly’s health. He grew sicker and sicker, and within two weeks, he was dead.

As I returned to the village following a brief absence, I saw Nirina awaiting me on
the edge of the riceﬁelds. She stood, rigidly erect, until I approached. Having heard the
news of Faly’s death, I greeted her with sadness and, breaking the Malagasy fady of never
crying for the dead after their burial, Nirina fell in my arms sobbing. She’d lost her best
ﬁiend.

Within weeks of his death she was working the rice ﬁelds alongside women a ﬁfth
her age. Nirina, whose age and ancestry marked her as the most respected and noble

woman of the village, was working for Rivo.

Faly’ s death left the position of mpanjaka open for his younger brother,
Kotomahay, to assume. Having recovered from the illness that fell him and his grandson,
Solo, Kotomahay proudly accepted the ofﬁce informally, and began acting the part of
village leader, presiding over important decisions, welcoming guests, and joining the other
mpanjalra in ceremonial duties. Until the weather cleared and the sila'dy was consulted for
an auspicious ceremonial date, the inauguration —— in which a cow would be sacriﬁced,
great quantities of toalca would be drunk, and everyone would stay up all through the
night, singing and dancing — would have to wait.

“I am your father, now,” Kotomahay told me upon my return to the village,
“because I am taking Faly’s place, and I will be as a father to you as he was a father to you
while you live with us. Soon, when the deaths have stopped, I will move to his home.

But for now, we must wait, because it is in his home that the dead of our lineage must be

 

 

 

285

lain. And I am sorry to tell you that I have received news of another death. My niece has
been living in a village far ﬁom here, with her husband and children. She died yesterday,
of tazo vony. Because she grew up here and lived here until her marriage, her body will be
brought back here so that she may be buried with the ancestors. But the village is far, and
it will be another two days before her body arrives. After she is buried, if the deaths have
stopped, I will move to the trano be [ceremonial house, used for ﬁrnerals, and in some
cases as a house of the mpanjaka].”

It rained sideways for the next two days, a cold and wet isolation, as the village
turned into an island of mud. Talk began to circulate that if the maty [dead one] did not
arrive soon, the river would rise so high it would be impossible to cross. And if the body
did arrive, many wondered, would it even be possible to get it up the slippery hills without
dropping it altogether? No, it was agreed, this was no time to die.

But the river hadn’t yet risen so high that the pallbearers couldn’t cross it. After
three days, the body was borne high on the shoulders of a group of men unknown to me.
The residents gathered at the edge of the village to greet the maty, and murmurs
immediately exploded in exclarnations of surprise. The four days since her death had
caused her body to bloat beyond recognition; she resembled an obese pregnant woman,
and I was assured that she was neither. The smell was so terribly fowl that even her
closest ﬁiends expressed discomfort at sitting with the body, which soon oozed putrid
body ﬂuids into tsihy after tsihy [grass mats, wrapped around the body].

“They can’t keep that body here much longer,” Benoit complained on the second
day, wrinkling his nose, “the whole village smells of maty.”

“Why haven’t they had the funeral?” I asked.

 

286

“Because her family must come ﬁ'om far away,” he explained, “so we must wait.
But I think they should just take it away right now, it’s going to bring more death.”

“Yes,” Lalao agreed, “they want to wait for the family to arrive, and they must,
because it is the fomba, but it has been too long. If it isn’t taken to the tombs soon, then
more death will come.”

“How much longer will they wait?” I asked.

“Until tomorrow, angamba [maybe]?” Lalao asked, not sure of the answer herself.

Fortunately, the answer came soon, as the family and ﬁiends arrived, ﬁlling the
mud-drenched village with the festivity of reunion and the sorrow of their loss. The
funeral was held in the rain; as the body was brought out, the putrid grass mats were piled
onto a clean grass mat for disposal in a sacred grove of distant trees. The mourners
rushed toward the edge of the village to see the body oﬂ’, where it would be taken to the
caves deep within the protected forest and left to join the ancestors.

I stood under the tole awning of Toandro’s house, watching as one by one they
left the trano be. When the village had emptied of any sign of life, with the mourners all
gone to say good-bye to the dead, I was surprised to see one more mourner slowly leave
the trano be, his head buried in his hands as he sobbed loudly at the loss. Kotomahay
lifted his head and looked at me, slowly approaching.

“She was my brother’s daughter, I raised her as my own. She was a happy child,
always laughing. But tazo vony kills everyone, even the young. We have no medicine for
it. The doctors have no medicine, the forest has no medicine. Only the ancestors know
who will be next.” He gazed at the trano be, the clay house he longed to make his home,

yet the place of so much death. He slowly walked back and picked up the tsyihy tied into

287

a bundle. It was growing dark and the rain was beginning to fall again, harder with each
passing minute. Without a word he began the slow walk in the growing wet darkness to

dispose of the bundle.

The next afternoon, the rain still coming down like hammers and nails, he
approached me again as I made my rounds ﬁ'om house to house.

“The walk to the forest has been very hard on me. My head hurts and I feel dizzy.
Do you have aspirin?”

I did, and I returned to my house and got some. He accepted graceﬁrlly and
without comment, slipping into his home to rest by the cooking ﬁre.

By nightfall he was in a coma.

The next morning visitors surrounded him as the ombiasa were called. Albumen,
one said. T azo vony another said. Aretina biby, they all said, when the truth was
discovered. Kotomahay had not taken the bundle deep into the woods, it turned out.
Instead, with the rain and darkness coming on, he had dropped it off in a sacred grove of
trees, distant, but not distant enough, ﬁ'om the village. His niece’s ghost had struck him ill
to curse him for this fatty. His ﬁnal diagnoses, ghost sickness.

At the end of the day he was still unconscious. With the rains falling harder and
harder and the winds picking up, getting him to Ranomafana was impossible, and viewed
as pointless. Only the ghost of his niece could save Kotomahay, but there was no sign of
mercy. As the night drew near midnight, the wind began to howl and the rain began to
hammer the earth harder and harder. With a loud smack, the cyclone hit, sending sheets of

tole ﬂying, thatch roofs crashing, doors slamming open and shut. And at almost that very

288

instant, the howling of mourners began. Just a few yards away from my own door, I
barely discerned the loud wailing of the women that had grown so familiar a mark of
death. The wind was so loud, the cyclone so ﬁerce, that the wailing sounded far, far
away. Pounding on my door, Colette burst in, drenched, babbling and ﬂaying her arms.

“Another death!” she said, “hurry, come!”

We rushed out the door and through the rain slamming down in the pitch black
night, expecting to ﬁnd Lita dead, but ﬁnding instead twenty or thirty people crowded
outside Kotomahay’s door.

He would reach the trano be after all, but not as the resident mpanjaka, instead as
the next maty, the fourteenth since I’d arrived, less than a year before.

Three days later, as Kotomahay’s body was taken into the forest to join the
ancestors awaiting him, the wailing began once more. Lita, whose illness had lingered for

two months now, had passed away, as his wife readied to give birth.

As I returned home in the cyclone following Kotomahay’s death, I found my home
crowded with women ﬁ'om the Zaﬁnaraina lineage. The cyclone, the midnight hour, the
rapid succession of deaths, had all electriﬁed the women, and amidst the shock and
sadness there was an intoxicating buzz, as everyone chattered at once in efforts to explain
how another death had hit so hard and suddenly. Lalao hurried to cut up some ﬁuit and
serve it to our guests as I stood around dazed, babbling expressions of shock and sorrow
and fussing with a petrol lamp. Giving up, I lit a paraffin candle just as Lalao handed me a
plate of pineapple and I sat down to the table, Colette, Soa, Lalao and others crowding

around as if for a seance.

289

“Kotomahay’s death was no accident,” Colette whispered, slowly and clearly, as if
speaking to a child, to be sure I understood. “He was andevo. His whole family is
andevo. That is why they have all been dying.” The wind and the women continued to
wail in the darkness beyond the door, and the rain continued to batter the metal roof.
Through all the unearthly whistling and wailing, we could barely hear the rapid pounding
on the door, but we gradually turned our heads one by one as it the beating became louder
and more and more demanding. Lalao opened it and a small quick ﬁgure shrouded in a
yellowed-plastic sheet slipped into the dark room. My little comrade, Toky, wasn’t going
to let this gathering take place without him. His dancing smile lit up the corner where he
silently tucked himself, eyeing the pineapple like a starving Oliver Twist until Lalao passed
him his share.

I voiced my confusion. “But iLisa died, Rabery’s son died, Baocecily’s grandcth
died, Rarnasy died. Bao died. Your own children have died. They were not andevo, they
were all Zaﬁnaraina,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but look at all the others who have died. Kotomahay, Faly, Tsaralahy,
Solo’s baby, Jenine, they were all andevo.” Colette smiled smugly as if her reply had
proven her point.

“Yes, Janezi,” Toky interrupted, teasingly, from the dark comer where he
crouched “andevo. . . ,” said as if to send a light-hearted chill up my spine, knowing it was
a word I’d grown to know well, and therefore just the sound of the word would clarify it
all.

I did not understand. I had been keeping track of the deaths, and they were nearly

equally divided between the two lineages. I could not determine any common feature,

290

aside ﬁ'om malnutrition, high fevers, and the lack of health services. From my
(layperson’s) view, a few had died of hepatitis, a few children from malaria, two from
malnutrition, a couple were just very old. But lineage, which did appear to play a roll in
daily health care, seemed unconnected to the deaths. As Nirina had said, Tanala die,
Betsileo die, Vazaha die. The same could be said for the Zaﬁnaraina and the
Zaﬁndraraoto. The illnesses which killed hit all, while the illnesses which merely slowed
and impaired hit hardest on the poorest. Colette’s andevo explanation made no sense to
me.

Soa interjected.

“They are cursed. The ancestors have sent death to them, and death to our village,
because they have married too many among us.” I thought of her own “royal” husband
who lay dying as we spoke.

Colette could not keep quiet, she was bursting to dis the local “other.” As always,
Lalao stood quietly aside, cleaning up after us and taking note of the talk, to take back to
her parents, Rivo and Kalanrira.

“An andriana would never have done what Kotomahay did,” Colette continued,
“by leaving the tsihy among sacred trees. That is the act of an andevo.” She sucked the
juice from her pineapple as she ate it in a few rapid bites.

“But Kotomahay was a very good man,” I protested, feeling uncomfortable that
someone who I had found to be so warm and kind to me would be disparaged only
moments after his death.

“He was a great man!” Colette countered at once, and everyone joined in praising

him. It appeared that they could easily distinguish the man from the lineage, while the

I!

291

lineage remained inseparable from his identity. He was, according to this conversation,
descended ﬁ‘om slaves, thereby still colored with the stain of history, a stain that would
linger through generations to come. The lineage explained his weaknesses, just as it
explained their strengths, but individual strengths among the Zaﬁndraraoto and
weaknesses among the Zaﬁnaraina were attributed to one’s personal character. Prejudice

looks the same wherever one ﬁnds it, I thought to myself.

The Birth of a Tanala

The night that Kotomahay’s body was taken to the forest, a forest one could
openly enter only as a corpse, Lita died, and he, too, was carried away in the raining night
to his own andriana forest tomb. A few weeks later, as I began to awaken to the familiar
cries of lemurs in the nearby distance, Lalao burst into my room, urging me to hurry and
awaken.

“Soa has had her baby,” she said, handing me a cup of coﬁ‘ee she had roasted and
pounded herself. Her tone was very sober.

“How is she?” I asked, concerned for Soa and disturbed that I’d slept through the
event. I’d wanted to participate in a local birth, a desire Soa found odd but agreeable.

“There is a problem. The afterbirth has not come. The baby was born six hours
ago. Soa is in much pain. They’ve sent for Alarobia’s wife in Ambatovory. No one here
has been able to help her.”

I hurried to dress and rushed off with Lalao. Colette met us on behind the house.

“Soa told me to go get you, when the baby was coming” Colette said, “but I was

afraid to wake you up. Vazaha like to sleep.” Colette, for once, was serious.

 

 

 

292

“It’s a girl,” she added, as we reached Soa’s house.

The whole village had gathered outside and although no one was wailing, the
mood was anxious and grave. We entered quickly, our heads bowed low.

Soa was huddled in a corner, the same corner in which her husband had died a few
weeks before. Her mother, who had traveled from a distant village to assist her daughter,
was beside her. Nirina and Kotomahay’s wife, Soary, were assisting her. Nuina held Soa
as Soary reached deep into Soa’s uterus. Soa made no sound, just stared off to the side.
A tiny baby wrapped in a soiled cloth lay next to her mother’s legs, the cord still uncut.
The baby made no sounds at all, but squirrned quietly and helplessly. Her head was
already wearing the tiny knit hat Soa had asked me to bring back ﬁom the city. A baby
must have its head covered at all times, no matter how hot, to keep it from getting
marikoditra, a fever with chills.

No one seemed to notice the baby, it lay all alone beside Soa.

Just then, only moments after we’d entered, Baofaly, arrived. She was married to
Alarobia, the ombiasa in Ambatovory, and was noted for her midwifery skills.

Wasting no time, the elderly woman directed Soary to give her a plate. Soary
moved quickly and found an enamel plate, pouring water from a plastic cup into the
shallow-sided plate. She carefully handed it to Baofaly, who dropped some leaves into the
water, and offered it to Soa to drink. As Nirina helped Soa drink the herbal water,
Baofaly reached into Soa’s uterus as so many others had been doing for hours, and
pressing on Soa’s abdomen with one hand and twisting her arm inside the suffering

woman, she expertly pulled out the afterbirth as Soa grimaced silently. As Baofaly placed

293

the afterbirth on the grass mat, a heavy sigh and murmured thanks to Zanahary, the
Christianized indigenous deity, ﬁlled the room, and then the baby was picked up.

The cord was cut and the dirty cloth quickly stripped from the baby, who was
promptly dressed in her new acrylic knit clothes. Soa rested in continued silence by the
ﬁre, not looking at all to her new child. The women passed the baby from one to the
other, each commenting on what a beautiful child she was, when ﬁnally Nirina, with great
decorum and a somber face, handed the baby to me with the announcement, “J anezi, you
are now Tanala.”

And with that, the room burst into hilarity as I took the bundled child in my arms,
and the door was opened to the crowd to gaze upon the new life.

A few months later, the baby, named Emma, died just as three of Soa’s other
children had in the last two years.

I recalled a picture Soa urged me to capture with my camera, late in her
pregnancy. Snatching up a fat healthy baby of six months, Soa held it against her bulging
belly.

“Take this pictine, Janezi!” she called out to me when she saw me wandering
around with my camera. “Tell the vazaha that we Tanala like having babies so much that

"9

we have another as soon as they’re born And laughing in merriment at her perceptive
joke, she handed the baby back to his mother, then picked up a six foot pestle to pound

more rice for Rivo.

Chapter 8

CONCLUSION

In this ethnographic study of forest farmers in Madagascar, I set out to show how
the use of medicines by indigenous people who live in the seemingly exotic realm of the
rainforest extends beyond plant medicines and “traditional” medical beliefs. My concern
has been, instead, to illuminate the multiple ways in which environmental and social
changes penetrate indigenous knowledge systems in such as way as to create complex and
ever-changing interplays between changing environments and access to health resources.

I have presented what I describe as a political ecology of health perspective to
understand these complex relationships. Speciﬁcally, I suggest that the environmental and
health nexus can be understood as a socially mediated process, in which local, nationaL
and international policies and practices are interconnected, inﬂuencing one’s health and
relationship to the environment in differing ways. Rather than viewing environmental
change as directly affecting the health of people in a given society in uniform ways, I
contend that social and environmental changes affect people unevenly, and their health is
thereby affected in multiple ways. Among the variables that shape these uneven relations,

my analysis has focused on economic status, lineage, age, and gender as salient to the

294

295

ways in which the changing forest landscape has inﬂuenced health practices and beliefs in
one small village strategically located amidst an internationally- ﬁinded conservation and
development project in southeastern Madagascar.

While my ﬁndings regarding the village of Ranotsara are unique to this village at
this particular place and time, and unique in that they have been represented through the
ﬁlter of my own subjective analysis, the village level study is particularly salient to a
political ecology of health analysis because it shows how national and international
policies and practices have very distinct implications at the local level. In the village of
Ranotsara, a history of social tensions related to lineage and economic status have divided
the village in such a way that it has been impossible for the community to experience the
beneﬁts or consequences of social and environmental change uniformly. Moreover, these
preexisting social ﬁssures have deepened with recent conservation and development
initiatives, and these social divides have had serious health consequences for some, but not
all, residents of the village.

Three important points have been raised in this study. The ﬁrst is that
conservation of the forest has had adverse economic effects among forest residents,
leading to less ability for the majority to purchase pharmaceutical medicines and greater
neglect of chronic illnesses, rather than increasing reliance on plant medicines. The second
is that contrary to the prevailing view that one’s cultural or ethnic identity determines how
they perceive and use their environment, and determines one’s medical beliefs and
practices, I found, instead, that just as concepts of the environment, and of health and

healing in the United States are understood in terms of education, family income, and

296

social power, so too do these same factors mediate one’s understanding of, and interaction
with, the environment and the medical realm of Ranotsara. The third point that I have
presented is that current practices related to the forest and to health are not the stuﬂ‘ of
tradition, but must be understood in historical and social contexts.

In what follows I elaborate on the evidence I have presented to support these

points.

Forest Medicines

There remains a proclivity among educated Westerners to conceptualize forest
medicines as botanical resources representing an ancient wisdom of that which is wild and
untouched, offering potential remedies and cures to the pains of affliction. These ideas are
not entirely oﬂ‘ target. People living in the forest do, indeed, have extensive, if variable,
knowledge bases of the potential medicines surrounding them, and there is no doubt that
the botanical bounty of the tropical forests conceals potential medicines for many grave
and debilitating illnesses.

But one's knowledge of the botanical inventory, and their use of these medicines in
their daily lives, is inﬂuenced by age and gender. While there was a considerable diversity
of knowledge about the local plant habitat in Ranotsara, I found that men and older
women have a greater knowledge of the botanical inventory of the region than do younger
mothers. This is, I believe, because Ranotsara is a patrilocal village, and the diversity of
Madagascar is such that even within short distances, ecosystems change. As such, as

young women marry and move to Ranotsara, they bring with them the botanical

297

knowledge of a diﬁ‘erent region. In some cases, there may be considerable consistency in
which plants are used, and how they are used, but in other cases, different plants might be
used for different purposes. Women therefore exchange information about these
medicines, leading to an ever-changing knowledge base among women as to which
medicines to use for which illnesses. As women age, their knowledge of the local botany
increases, and becomes more consistent with the knowledge of other elders, both male and
female.

To pass on their knowledge, however, they often rely upon sons, because they will
remain in the area as they grow into adulthood, while daughters are also taught the values
of local medicines so that they may treat their own children. Thus, women's indigenous
knowledge of plant medicines differs from men in that it is not just passed on
generationally, but it is also passed on to others within generations.

This generational knowledge, however, is unlikely to be as "ancient" as one might
presume. As I recounted in Chapter Five, the village is relatively recent, having been
founded by two separate groups of people a century past. Thus, there have only been a
handful of generations who have lived in the Ranomafana region, their ancestors having
come from the highlands. Villagers’ familiarity of the local botany therefore reﬂects not
only the knowledge brought ﬁom these highlands, but also suggests new knowledge, as
grandparents of the present inhabitants in all likelihood incorporated new plant species
into their healing repertoire. Thus, it is likely that contemporary indigenous knowledge of
healing plants is characterized by innovation and modiﬁcation, consistent with Western

science.

298

But at the same time that older people are indeed more knowledgeable of
indigenous medicines than are younger people, they are also more accustomed to
pharmaceutical medicines to treat illness. They have become habituated to the colonial
health care system. Those who live in the forest do not live out oﬁ’ from the rest of the
world. The medical systems of indigenous societies are syncretic systems of healing, and
as such, pharmaceutical medicines have been incorporated into local pharmacopeias as
important and efficacious healing resources.

While pharmaceutical medicines have been cognitively and practically incorporated
into indigenous medical systems, not everyone has access to them. The consolidation of
economic power in Ranotsara has enabled certain village residents to maintain a ready
supply of pharmaceutical medicines for treating respiratory disorders and fevers, while the
rapid decline in economic status of most residents and the associated decline in their
nutritional and health status, has contributed to a growing dependency upon forest and
local indigenous medicines for others in treating these same illnesses, though they are
more likely to seek treatment only when these illnesses become acute or interfere with
their work or other responsibilities.

Nonetheless, despite the ability of certain men to access health services in
Ranomafana and elsewhere — services which are appallingly inadequate and likely in many
cases to worsen one’s health — the poverty of everyone, combined with an unhealthy
environment, extremely demanding work loads and geographical isolation, has contributed

to poor health for all village residents.

299

Among the narratives I presented to support this point, the story of Nety’s death is
particularly demonstrative. Nety had died ﬁ'om an apparent seizure at the river’s edge,
and although her death prompted numerous and conﬂicting explanations, the physician’s
concern that she had stopped taking her seizure medication because she could no longer
afford the medication, is persuasive. Nety was of the more noble Zaﬁnaraina lineage,
which conferred upon her a higher social status than her Zaﬁndraraoto counterparts, and
provided her with important and close ties to those who controlled the majority of land
and resources in the village. But as a landless, unmarried mother, her gender and youth
countered any beneﬁt her lineage bestowed upon her, and her ethnicity failed to account
for the fact that her illness had not been treated. The neglect of her illness was not
necessarily from ignorance, but having become accustomed to the eﬁicacious properties of
the pharmaceutical anti-seizure medication, it is conceivable that plant medicines would
not be used as a substitute, because they were not regarded as emcacious for the
treatment of a seizure disorder.

A second example I presented to support my point that illness is suffered by all and
that pharmaceutical medicines are integral to the healing repertoire though often
unavailable, is the story of Lanto. Lanto, whose story I presented in Chapter Six, was
ﬁ'om a lineage reputed to be descended from slaves. Her lineage, combined with her
status as an unmarried, middle-aged woman, rendered her a social outcast, despite being
the sister to her lineage’s mpanjaka. Her lineage, gender, and marginality in the
community contributed to minimal social support in maintaining her ﬁelds and restoring

her health. Her poverty thus exacerbated, her lack of access to medicine, health care, and

300

knowledge contributed to her chronic illness. That she was Tanala seemed to have little
bearing on the treatment strategies she pursued; she herself showed little faith in the
healing faculties of Rakoto, who, like all the ombiasa of Ranotsara and nearby, was of the
Zaﬁnaraina lineage. Instead, she neglected her illness until persuaded by the physician to
seek biomedical care; her repeated and futile efforts to do so eventually exhausted her, and
she returned to her customary treatment, neglect of her illness most days, ahibalala tea
when her condition worsened.

The neglect of her illness was not necessarily ﬁ'om her ignorance; the stories of
chronic illness which I have presented illustrate the way that discomfort and illness have
been naturalized by many who, although not necessarily regarding themselves as
“healthy,” have surrendered to the futility of trying to combat so many health concerns, a
futility Lanto came to know well.

The incorporation of pharmaceutical medicines into Aﬁican healing systems has
received attention from others who have shown the ways in which the steadfast belief in
Aﬁican “traditions” is slow to recognize that African practices are generally based on
reasoning and experience, rather than superstition and ignorance. For example, Vaughan
(1991) has shown how even as colonialists recognized the rapid acceptance of
pharmaceutical medicines in eastern Africa, they continued to explain the incorporation of
biomedicine into indigenous healing systems as evidence of Aﬁicans’ continued belief in
‘magic,’ presuming they interpreted the eﬁcacy of biomedical drugs as magical, and not
“scientiﬁc.” On the contrary, as F eierrnan (1985) has indicated, Africans do practice

biomedicine and do become educated as Westem-trained physicians. The incorporation of

3 0 1
biomedicine into indigenous Aﬁican societies is indeed an Aﬁican practice. It is
misleading, also, to suggest that as Aﬁicans become educated in biomedicine that they
cease being Aﬁican, or that indigenous medicine remains the backward practice of rural
Aﬁicans uneducated in Western science. Such a conception is generally promoted as

rooted in cultural tradition and tied to ethnicity.

Culture, Ethnicity, and Medicine

A second, and perhaps the most important, point which I have made in this study is
that the use of medicine and of the environment is not related to one’s ethnic identity, but
is instead associated with one’s lineage, education, and social status. Moreover, policies
which presume health and environmental perceptions and practices have ethnic origins, are
potentially harmful.

In the story of Solo and Kotomahay's illnesses, and that of Solo's malnourished
son, which I presented in Chapter Seven, I explained how I found myself drawing on my
own prejudices to explain the neglect of the baby's nourishment to ignorance, which struck
me to be in stark contrast to the attention Solo's aches and pains received. While I
focused on what I perceived to be ignorance, a failure of people to recognize the severity
of malnutrition as compared to a common ﬂu, the people of the community focused on
one's relationship to the forest, or how one is, or is not, empowered to control the land
and resources of the forest that surround them. As economic power diminished for nearly
everyone, families came to rely more on the power of the ancestors to remedy social

problems, not because they were bound by traditions and unable to understand the severity

 

 

302

of malnutrition, but because they viewed themselves as powerless in the changing
community and therefore drew on the only power they felt that they could summon.

To some, however, the illness and death in this family might have been understood
in terms of their Tanala ethnic identity, while the diﬁ’ering approach to the sickness and
death of Jeanine's baby might be conceptualized in terms of her family's Betsileo ancestry.
But to distinguish the differing illness strategies as reﬂecting diﬂ’ering ethnic views of
medicine would be misleading because it would obscure the ways in which poverty and
local kinship ties have mediated the illness experience for these families. I found their
different economic positions, accompanied by diﬂ‘erent familial ties, to be more salient to
understanding how one explains and treats illness in Ranotsara than is a focus on ethnic
difference.

Another example which I used to show how ethnicity does not directly relate to
one's use of medicines was in the story of Celine and Zanabelo. Celine and Zanabelo
consulted Zanabelo's cousin, an ombiasa, regarding illnesses of their children, and I
suggest that their decision to do so had more to do with their trust in someone from their
own lineage than it did solely in their belief in his magical powers. Lineage, alone,
however, could not explain their actions, as they handled each illness episode in their
family differently. They sought Western medicines when they were affordable and
available, used indigenous plant medicines when the illness was deemed ordinary and
treatable, and sought intervention of the omdiasa when the illness was believed serious but
unnatural, with cosmological origins. Thus, multiple factors inﬂuence their treatment

strategies and cannot be easily reduced to either lineage or ethnicity.

303

Nonetheless, lineage has had considerable bearing on one's economic power, which
in turn inﬂuences health. To understand this relationship of lineage to economic and
health status, as well as to how one interacts with the environment, it is necessary to

contextualize present practices and beliefs in the social history of the region.

Historicizing Health and Environmental Practice

The third point which I have emphasized in this study is that in order to understand
how local social relations relate to health and environmental practice, it is necessary to
understand local and national histories. As political ecologists have shown, land use is not
the simpliﬁed process of continuing degradation promoted by many policy-makers. It is
uneven, both spatially and geographically. Moreover, land use change is not necessarily
perceived as degradation by inhabitants of the forest; those who lived in the forests of
what is now the Ranomafana National Park view the land in terms of its productivity and
subsistence value, viewing the earth as more valuable than the trees which grow on it.

In Chapter Three I discussed the history of pre-colonial and colonial policies
regarding land reorganization in Madagascar in order to show how forests are
conceptualized and used by contemporary people on the island. I argued that the pre-
colonial autocracy and colonial government shaped land and resource use through social
policies including forced labor, taxation, relocation, conservation, and development.
Understanding this historical context helps to understand that concepts of "traditional"
land tenure regimes, as I also demonstrated for "traditional" medicine, and "traditional"

cultural identities, have been anything but "traditional. " Moreover, the most severe

304

environmental degradation in Madagascar, attributed to "Tanala" farming methods, is
actually more closely related to Madagascar’s urban industrialization. Industrialization of
the Merina empire, combined with social and land reorganization, fostered massive
deforestation and concentrated people in the most forested areas. This deforestation was
further exacerbated as colonial forest policies divided one million hectares of forest land
into nine separate reserves and redeﬁned these areas as “protected” areas. In so doing, the
prohibition of tavy was linked to the enclosure of forests for conservation purposes, at the
same time that exploitation of these same forests was facilitated by laws regulating and
sanctioning the use of the forest for industrial development. The portrayal of tavy as
environmentally destructive was perceived as contradictory by forest farmers who saw
that the trees and plants of the forests were viewed as resources of value to outsiders.

In Chapter Four I discuss how the history of land reorganization and agricultural
policy has been speciﬁcally tied to changing identities. In particular, I focus on the history
of Merina, Betsileo and Tanala ethnic identities. The Ranomafana National Park Project
used “cultural sensitivity” in much the same way as colonialists throughout Aﬁica engaged
in "indirect rule," to persuade residents to adopt new practices. In so doing, they reiﬁed
social differences as ethnic ones, ranking the ethnic groups in terms of their modernity.

The cleavages produced by land reorganization in the nineteenth and early
twentieth century were ﬁirther exacerbated by post-colonial processes and events,
including structural adjustment, land privatization, the Gulf War, and cyclones. These
events, combined with unequal distribution of project beneﬁts, enabled a few families to

consolidate their land and resources, and appropriate the land and labor of their more

305

disadvantaged neighbors and kin. The ensuing economic inequality, however, was due as
well to existing social divisions in the village; these same processes have had different
consequences in different parts of the region, a distinction which illuminates, rather than
refutes, the signiﬁcance of integrating international and national policies and processes
with local-level processes.

The consolidation of economic power in Ranotsara has enabled certain village
residents to maintain a ready supply of pharmaceutical medicines for treating respiratory
disorders and fevers, while the rapid decline in economic status of most residents, and the
associated decline in their nutritional and health status, has contributed to a growing
dependency upon forest and local indigenous medicines for others in treating these same
illnesses.

The current agricultural system employed by subsistence farmers in Ranotsara
combines tary with irrigated rice agriculture and cash crop production. Rather than
representing three diﬂ’erent types of agricultural systems, the land is farmed as a single
system in which three different cropping strategies are practiced simultaneously to
maximize yields. In Ranotsara, the majority of farmers where I lived owned tary ﬁelds
exclusively, lacking the labor and suitable land for irrigated rice, while a minority owned
(or rented) irrigated rice ﬁelds. Most all had some sort of cash crop land, such as bananas
or coffee.

With the declining economy of many families, and their greater workload as they
labored, like Soa, Solo, and Lanto, on their own and others’ ﬁelds, illnesses intensiﬁed.

While all families suﬂ‘ered the experience of one or more early deaths, the prevalence of

 

306

illness was greatest among those who lacked suﬂicient nutrition, and were unable to treat

their illnesses in a timely manner because they lacked the money for medicines.

In Closing

In presenting these intersections of health and environmental change, it becomes
apparent that forest medicines, and forest health, can only be understood in the context of
forest lives, a context that has thus far been excluded from policies related to health and
the environment. ﬁom policies related to health and the environment. The exclusion of a
social context may be due to the sad reality that human lives have not received the public
attention that the lives of endangered species have received in seemingly exotic places
such as Madagascar. While considerable attention (both scientiﬁc and popular) is drawn
toward the plight of Madagascar’s lemursl there has been scant attention drawn to the
health eﬁ’ects that material and environmental changes have caused the Malagasy people.
But the Malagasy people, like people everywhere, are divided by their own internal
divisions, arising ﬁom shared and diverging histories, environments, communities, and
econonries.

By showing how these internal divisions have contributed to how one uses the

forest environment, and in turn, mediated the illness experience, I have sought to challenge

 

‘ In addition to the plethora of PBS specials and natural science magazines devoted to
the endangered ﬂora and fauna of the island, witness such titles as “Infant Death in
Propithecus diadema edwardsi at Vatoharanana, RNPP, Madagascar” (Erhart 1997)
“Effects of Food Availability and Forest Composition on Feeding Patterns of Propithecus
diadema edwar (Hemingway 1996), and “Psychological Well-Being of Nocturnal
Primates in Captivity” (Wright, et al. 1989).

307

prevailing views that the relationship between health and the environment can be
understood as a causal one, in which tropical environments have predictable effects on
human health. I have also sought to dispel notions that a "cultural context" is something
that can be interjected into such a causal relationship in a simpliﬁed manner that conﬂates
culture with race or ethnicity. The political ecology of health approach I have employed
has emphasized the internal divisions of the community in shaping the interactive
relationship between health and the environment.

Internal divisions have profound implications for social and environmental policy
and projects but without exploring these divisions or incorporating them into project
strategies, objectives to stop forest destruction will fall. In order to achieve the
environmental objectives of USAID and the Malagasy government, for example, a better
understanding of ethnicity and lineage is necessary. Such an understanding of social
identity and its consequences, however, brings into question the morality of these
environmental objectives when they are tied to social identity.

In the case of the Ranomafana National Park Project, while the project did not
create the poor health in the region, nor cause the deaths of so many people, I would
argue that the policies they established exacerbated the poor health in the region by
limiting the economic options of the majority of residents, deepening social inequalities
and divisions, and refusing to accept any responsibility for health, while at the same time
they promoted an image to the public, to funding agencies, and to residents, that they did
indeed provide signiﬁcant health care to residents. Moreover, by being blind to cultural

features outside the exotic realm of shamanism and slash-and-burn, they were unable to

 

308

explore any possible relationship between the economic and environmental changes in the
region and declining health. As a result, health care remained unavailable to some of the
sickest human residents of the forest, while broader understandings of how health and the
environment are intertwined differently for different social groups, remain elusive concepts
to many environmental planners aﬁ‘ecting social change.

The Ranomafana National Park was created ﬁ'om admirable objectives of
safeguarding the planet and preserving life. Yet at the same time, in so doing, it afﬁrmed
hierarchies and values regarding whose life was worth protecting. This conservation ethic
replicates the early eighteenth century construction of "wilderness" as a sublime and
sacred landscape, a meaning which, by the nineteenth century, led to the necessity of
taming the natural world for human habitation. By heralding the beauty of wilderness, a
place inhabited by God, it became a spectacle for tourists to behold (Cronon 1996212).

Cronon (1996214) points to the irony of how it was the elite businessmen of the
industrial age, those who had beneﬁtted the most ﬁom the industrialization of America
and its associated destruction of the environment, who most championed the wilderness as
a domain of recreation, for "sleeping under the stars . . . and living oﬁ‘ the land."

Thus, the decades following the Civil War saw more and more of

the nation's wealthiest citizens seeking out wilderness for themselves. . . .

Wilderness suddenly emerged as the landscape of choice for elite tourists,

who brought with them strikingly urban ideas of the countryside tlnough

which they traveled. For them, wild land was not a site for productive

labor and not a permanent home; rather, it was a place of recreation. One

went to the wilderness not as a producer but as a consumer, hiring guides

and other backcountry residents who could serve as romantic surrogates

for the rough riders and hunters of the ﬁ'ontier if one was willing to
overlook their new status as employees and servants of the rich.

309

In just this way, wilderness came to embody the national ﬁontier

myth, standing for the wild freedom of America's past and seeming to

represent a highly attractive natural alternative to the ugly artiﬁciality of

modern civilization. The irony, of course, was that in the process

wilderness came to reﬂect the very civilization its devotees sought to

escape. Ever since the nineteenth century, celebrating wilderness has been

an activity mainly for well-to-do city folks. Country people generally know

far too much about working the land to regard unworked land as their

ideal. In contrast, elite urban tourists and wealthy sportsmen project their

leisure-time frontier fantasies onto the American landscape and so created

wilderness in their own image (Cronon 1996214, emphasis in the original).

If anything regarding wilderness has been conserved over the last two hundred
years it has been this Western construction of the concept itself, as a landscape to be
preserved for the fulﬁllment of those living far ﬁom it. The only signiﬁcant change has
been that technological advances have enabled many more people to travel to "remote"
landscapes in search of "the primitive," in both landscape and society. Thus, not only does
the taming of wilderness persist, so, too, do the processes of colonial control over land as
the ever-expanding power of industrialized nations over less-industrialized nations grows
ever greater.

There is irony, too, in the fact that the very conservationists who have sought
lifestyles and careers aimed at “getting back to nature” and escaping the stress of
“civilization” by going to the far reaches of Madagascar, call for forest residents to leave
nature alone and step up their own “civilization.” Prohibited from transgressing the
Maginot line of the Park boundaries, Tanala residents are kept out of the forests, while

ecotourists and natural scientists are ushered in, a process that also parallels Cronon's

310

(1996) observations regarding the creation of US. national parks and the exclusion of
Native Americans.

The myth of the wilderness as "virgin," uninhabited land had always been
especially cruel when seen ﬁ'om the perspective of the Indians who had
once called that land home. Now they were forced to move elsewhere,
with the result that tourists could safely enjoy the illusion that they were
seeing their nation in its pristine, original state, in the new morning of
God's own creation. Among the things that most marked the new national
parks as reﬂecting a post-ﬁontier consciousness was the relative absence of

human violence within their boundaries. The actual ﬁ'ontier had often been

a place of conﬂict, in which the invaders and invaded fought for control of

land and resources. Once set aside within the ﬁxed and careﬁrlly policed

boundaries of the modern bureaucratic state, the wilderness lost its safe

image and became safe: a place more of reverie than of revulsion or fear.

Meanwhile, its original inhabitants were kept out by dint of force, their

earlier uses of the land redeﬁned as inappropriate or even illegal (Cronon

1996: 1 5).

Replicating this process of removing history ﬁ'om national parks to provide
comfort for tourists, the history of the southeastern forests of Madagascar as sites of
resistance and rebellion has been replaced with a history of primatology and soil erosion.
At the same time, the contradiction of coercing residents into "modernization" in order
that tourists and conservationists may enjoy the pleasures of escaping the modern world, is
equally obscured. Perhaps this contradiction is best represented by the Project Manager’s
dream of an organic café for the tourists in Ranomafana; it would offer carrot cake and
herbal teas made ﬁom local organic products, while forest farmers who have farmed
organically for centuries are pushed to add chemicals to their own crops, and are restricted

to an economic system that will never enrich them enough to afford a piece of this

wholesome cake for themselves.

 

U

EPEOGUE
One Last Death

My ﬁeldwork came to an end in the same way as it began, with another death. On the
morning of my departure, I awoke once more, not to the eerie cries of the lemurs, which had so
enchanted my mornings and nights, but to the ghostly cries of women wailing for the dead.
Mialy, a young woman in her early twenties, had died in the night.

Following eighteen months in the Ranomafana region and fourteen months in the village, I
had been pressured to leave by project oﬁicials who asked me to sign an agreement that I would
not speak to anyone aﬂiliated with the project in the absence of their supervisors, including the
project physician and health staff, and that I would not express any of my “personal or
philosophical views” to residents of Ranotsara. This unprecedented “agreement” was presented
to me shortly after I began to seek healthcare records for the region to assess whether the high
morbidity of Ranotsara was a new or unique phenomenon in the region, and as I became
increasingly outspoken regarding my concerns for the health of local people. In June of 1996, I
was summoned to the capital city of Antanananarivo, for a meeting with Malagasy ofﬁcers of the
Association Nationale pour la Gestation des Aires Protegees (AN GAP, funded by World Bank
and USAID) and with American representatives of the Ranomafana National Park. Following a

patronizing speech about the value of my research into “medicinal plants,” the document was

311

U

312

handed to me by the American Project Manager. Written in French, it bore no indication of its
origin - it was not printed on project letterhead, and it had no names other than my own. In
essence, it was a document for which no one held responsibility.

The Principal Investigator silently awaited my response to her Project Manager’ 5 direction
that I sign the document or, the American administrator informed me, the government of
Madagascar would revoke my research clearance. The Malagasy administrators present remained
silent.

I had already been subjected to persistent and invasive inquiries into my views, behaviors,
and habits by project ofﬁcials who conducted an “investigation” of my character by questioning
and interrogating hotel and restaurant employees, my research assistants, acquaintances, and
others. My mail had been delivered to the local post oﬁce and picked up, according to postal
employees, by project employees. I received none of this mail. An envelope marked
“conﬁdential” which had been sent to me from the American Embassy arrived, having been torn
open and re-taped. The letter bore the sad news that my father had died; the following day,
having kept the news to myself, project employees I met on the road told me they were sony to
hear that my father had died.

As such, by the time I sat down with the project administrators who had steadfastly
refused to discuss the issues of health and environmental change which they seemingly
“sponsored,” I was unwillingly to engage in further discourse because, just as with the project
itself, the discourse of the meeting was far ﬁom participatory. It was, instead, a discourse
orchestrated by those who sought to suppress meaningful dialogue in favor of maintaining an

image of social and environmental responsibility.

313

Looking around the table to a group more divided in interests and objectives than those
with whom I had been living the past year, but who shared the common agenda of preserving their
jobs, I expressed my deep regret that the focus of the project inquiry became my personal and
philosophical views, rather than the ﬁndings of my research which suggested that the conservation
and development strategies of their project, in conjunction with local, national, and international
economic and environmental changes, were contributing to alarming health problems.

To have agreed to not express my views to Malagasy residents would have not only
limited my freedom of expression, but it also would have put me in the position of withholding
information from the people with whom I was working. In short, it would mean that I not
disclose to them the theoretical premise of my research nor the reasons for my questions.
Moreover, because I perceived project employees, particularly members of the health team, to be
subjects of my research, to refuse to speak with them in conﬁdence and only in the presence of
their supervisors, would have ﬁrrther violated the university contract I had signed concerning
protecting the anonymity of human subjects. Although I raised these concerns to the people
present, including the Principal Investigator, they showed no interest in, nor understanding of, the
rights of human subjects.

Following the meeting, the PI. asked me to meet with her in private, during which time
she expressed immense sympathy for my departure (apparently having forgotten her tacit
acquiescence to the project’s coercive tactics ensuring my departure) and she asked when I would
be leaving. I indicated to her that I would leave the village within two days. As I reached
Ranomafana, on my return to the village, I met someone at a hotel who asked if I were the person

ﬁ'om Ranotsara. Indicating that I was, she said,

314

“It is really wonderful what the project is doing there.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, having never heard such a remark before.

“Bringing them medicines, to help all the people who have been dying.”

I had thought, by that time, that no actions of project administrators could stun me, but
this statement certainly did.

“I didn’t know about it. Who is bringing medicines?”

“[The Principal Investigator]. She is having Air Mad ﬂy in Medicines. They will arrive
Thursday. The doctor will take them out there.”

Consequently, I remained in the village a day beyond my stated date of departure.

Just as the woman at the hotel had disclosed, Dr. Tovo arrived the day after I was to have
departed. He was bearing boxes of medicines. My suspicions as to the objectives of the project
in dispensing medicines on the day after I was to have departed were betrayed in my face.
Keeping his distance ﬁom me, the doctor made his introductions to the community. After some
time had passed, I approached him in the presence of several community elders and leaders, and
asked where the medicines had come from.

“They are not from the project, but the project has asked me to distribute them.” He did
not say, but it was clearly evident, that by having the project doctor dispense them, that they
would appear to be providing them.

“Then where did they come from?”

“Air Mad, and Fannad,” he answered. Air Madagascar is the national airline, while

Farrnad is a national pharmaceutical company, which produces low-cost generic forms of essential

315

medicines. His answer sounded as if he were avoiding the question — Farmad may have produced
them, Air Mad may have ﬂown them in, but who provided them?

“I don’t understand,” I asked, “Who is behind this?”

He smiled, acknowledging my impatience and knowing well the ﬁ'ustration I had felt
throughout the last year.

“A tourist was here when Rabery’s son died. After you told her about all the people who
had died, she went to Air Mad and Farmad and got them to contribute the medicines.”

I felt like a fool. I remembered the tourist well, a Belgian woman who had come with a
tour guide, hiking through the “primitive” terrain of the rainforest. She was one of the very few
who passed through who showed any interest in the people. She came out of the house in which
she was staying to ﬁnd out what the wailing was about, and I, in my growing disgust with the
indiﬂ‘erence of my compatriots, remarked that this death was only one in a series, and I told her of
my frustrated eﬂ'orts at doing anything about it.

She apparently did something, something so simple, that I in my self-absorbed fury at the
project’s failure to act, had not even thought to do myself. She asked the people of Madagascar
to do something, to provide essential medicines.

Of course, the medicines the doctor dispensed would do little to help in the long-term, and
the health crisis in Ranotsara reﬂects similar patterns of health problems throughout the island.
But the act of providing the healing substances would go far. And the people of Ranotsara knew
well that it was not the project which provided the medicines, nor myself, but the kindness of a

stranger passing through.

3 16

That night, as we boiled a pig and celebrated my departure, Rabery’s sister grew ill. Only
a few days before I had photographed her hacking away the rice in her brother’s tary ﬁelds, her
cheeks swelling with the broad smile she displayed for the camera. Now, like Nety, and without
warning, she began seizing. Dr. Tovo left the festivities to look over her. Administering anti-
seizure medication, she promptly vomited it up. As the seizures grew more severe, he ordered
some young men to hurry over the mountains to Ranomafana to get medicine he could inject.

As the hours passed and the villagers grew more and more intoxicated and well-fed, the
music played and the people danced, the family of Mialy remained inside, anxious for the return of
the young men. Dr. Tovo continued to try, futilely, to get the woman to keep the medicine down.

By nightfall the young men returned, half drunk, with no medicine. They told the doctor
that the pharmacy was out of stock.

“They probably only went as far as Moratoky,” he said, shaking his head and showing his
ﬁustration at his inability to help, and his profound sadness at the knowledge of what such
powerful seizures would do to such a young and vibrant woman.

“But even if they went to Ranomafana, the medicine probably wouldn’t be there. There is
not much medicine in stock,” he conceded.

We pondered ways that he could keep the medicine down. He tried to push tubing down
her throat, but it would not work. He deliberated ways to crush the medicine and inject it safely,
but that idea would not work. In the end, there was nothing he could do, despite his boxes and
boxes of Western medicine.

The village was too remote, the pharmacies too poorly stocked.

She died in the night.

317

And so my stay in the village ended with one last trip to the trano be, the “big house,”
which I had come to know as the House of the Dead. Expressing my sadness to her mother, a
woman younger than myself, I left the village, having distributed my “essential” cultural objects to
the boards who surrounded me, in their hopes that I would bless them with the riches of the

Western world, and their knowledge that I would not.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abu-Lughod, Lila
1991 Writing Against Culture. In Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present.
Edited by Richard G. Fox. Pp. 137-162. Santa Fe: School of American Research
Press.

Alcom, Janis B.
1995 The Scope and Aims of Ethnobotany in a Developing World. In Ethnobotany:
Evolution of a Discipline. Richard Evans Schultes and Siri von Reis, Eds, pp. 23-
39. Portland, Oregon: Dioscorides Press.

Allen, Philip M.
1995 Madagascar: Conﬂicts of Authority in the Great Island. Boulder: Westview Press.

Andriambelonriadana, Rochel
1992 Librealisme et Developpement a Madagascar. Antananarivo: Foi et Justice.

Antananarivo Annual
1898 The Population of Imerina and Measures for Increasing It. VI:247-248.

Archer, Robert
1978 Madagascar Depuis 19 72: La Marche d'une Revolution. Paris: Harmattan.

Astuti, Rita
1995 People of the Sea: Identity and Descent Among the Vezo of Madagascar.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Avotri, Joyce Yaa and Vivienne Walters
1999 "You Just Look at Our Work and See if You Have Any Freedom on Earth":
Ghanaian Women's Accounts of Their Work and Health. Social Science and
Medicine 48:1123-1133.

318

319

Baer, Hans A.
1982 On the Political Economy of Health. Medical Anthropology Newsletter 14(1):]-
2,13-17.

Baer, Hans A., Ed.
1996 Critical Biocultural Approaches in Medical Anthropology: A Dialogue. Special
Issue of Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1024.

Baer, Hans A., Singer, Merrill, and Ida Susser
1997 Medical Anthropology and the World System: A Critical Perspective. Westport
and London: Bergin and Garvey.

Banks, Marcus
1996 Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions. London and New York: Routledge.

Barth, Fredrik
1969 Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Diﬂ‘erence.
Bergen and Oslo.

Beaujard, Philippe
1983 Princes et Paysans: Les Tanala de l'Ikongo: un Espace Social du Sud-Est de
Madagascar. Paris: Editions L'Harmattan.

Berthier, Hughes
1930 Droit Civil Malgache. Antananarivo: Imprimeiie Oﬁcielle.

Blaikie, Piers
1985 The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries. London:
Longrnan.
1989 Enviromnent and Access to Resources in Aﬁica. Aﬁica 5921:18-40.

Bloch, Maurice
1986 From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in the Circumcision Ritual of the
Merina of Madagascar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1989 Ritual, History and Power: Selected Papers in Anthropology. London and Atlantic
Highlands: The Athlone Press.

Bohlen, Janet Trowbiidge
1993 For the Wild Places: Proﬁles in Conservation. Washington, DC: Island Press.

320

Boiteau, Pierre
1982 Contribution a l'Histoire de la Nation Malgache. Antananarivo: Editions
Sociales.

Brush, Stephen B. and Doreen Stabinsky, Eds.
1996 Valuing Local Knowledge: Indigenous People and Intellectual Property Rights.
Washington, DC: Island Press.

Bryant, Raymond L.
1992 Political Ecology: An Emerging Research Agenda in Third-World Studies.
Political Geography 11:12-36.

Bryant, Raymond L. and Sinead Bailey
1997 Third World Political Ecology. London and New York: Routledge.

Campbell, Gwyn R.
1985 The Role of the London Missionary Society in the Rise of the Merina Empire
1810-1861 (A Contribution to the Economic History of Madagascar). Swansea:
University College.

1992 Crisis of Faith and Colonial Conquest: The Impact of Famine and Disease in Late
Nineteenth-Century Madagascar. Cahiers d'Etudes Aﬁicaines 1272XXXII-3 :409-
453.

Cameron, Mary M..
1996 Biodiversity and Medicinal Plants in Nepal: Involving Untouchables in
Conservation and Development. Human organization 5521:84-92.

Chambers, Robert
1983 Rural Development: Putting the Last First. New York: Longrnan Scientiﬁc and
Technical, co-published with John Wiley & Sons.

Collins, Jane L.
1991 Women and the Environment: Social Reproduction and Sustainable Development.
In Women and International Development Annual, Volume II. Edited by Rita S.
Gallin and Anne Ferguson. Pp. 33-58. Boulder: Westview Press.

Comaroﬂ‘, Jean
1983 The Defectiveness of Symbols or the Symbols of Defectiveness? On the Cultural
Analysis of Medical Systems. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 723-20.

Compte, Jean
1963 Les Communes Malgaches. Antananarivo: Editions de la Librarie de
Madagascar.

 

I!

 

321

Cousins, William E.
1895 Madagascar in the Year 1840. Antananarivo Annual V2342-344.

Covell, Maureen

1987 Madagascar: Politics, Economics and Society. London and New York: Frances
Pinter.

Cronon, William
1996 The Trouble with Wilderness or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.
Environmental History 12426-19.

Davis, E. Wade
1985 The Serpent anad the Rainbow. New York: Simon and Schuster.

1995 Ethnobotany: An Old Practice, A New Discipline. In Ethnobotany: Evolution of a
Discipline. Richard Evans Schultes and Siri von Reis, Eds, pp. 40-51. Portland,
Oregon: Dioscorides Press.

Dove, Michael R.
1996 "Center, Periphery, and Biodiversity: A Paradox of Governance and a
Developmental Challenge," pp. 41-67,, in Valuing Local Knowledge:
Indigenous People and Intellectual Property Rights, Stephen B. Brush and
Doreen Stabinsky, Eds. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Dubois, S. J.
1938 Monographie des Betsileo (Madagascar). Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie.

Durrell, Gerald
1992 The Aye-Aye and I: A Rescue Journey to Save One of the World's Most Intriguing
Creatures From Extinction. New York: Simon and Schuster.

The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited
1998 Madagascar: Report. First Quarter, February 19, 1998.

Erhart, EM.
1997 Infant Death in Propithecus diadema edwardsi at Vatoharanana, RNPP,
Madagascar. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement 24 (Annual
Meeting Issue): 108.

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland
1993 Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. London and Boulder:
Pluto Press.

322

Erlich, Anne H. and Paul R. Erlich
1990 Life in Peril. In Lessons of the Rainforest. Edited y Suzanne Head and Robert
Heinzrnan. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

F airhead, James and Melissa Leach
1996 Rethinking the Forest-Savanna Mosaic: Colonial Science and its Relics in West
Aﬁica. In The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received Wisdom on the Aﬁican
Environment. Melissa Leach and Robin Meams, Eds, pp. 105-121. Portsmouth,
NH and Oxford: Heinemann.

Farmer, Paul

1995 Aids and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press.

Feeley-Harnik, Gillian
1991 A Green Estate: Restoring Independence in Madagascar. Washington and
London: Smithsonian Institution Press.

1995 Plants and People, Children or Wealth: Shifting Grounds of "Choice" in
Madagascar. PoLAR 18:2:45-64.

Ferraro, Paul John
1994 Natural Resource Use in the Southeastern Rain Forests of Madagascar and the
Local Impacts of Establishing the Ranomafana National Park. M. S. Thesis,
Department of the Environment, Duke University.

Ferraro, Paul and Basile Rakotondrajaona
1992 Preliminary Assessment of Local Population Forest Use, Forestry Initiatives,
Agricultural Operations, Cultural Diversity, and the Potential for rural
Development in the Region of the Ranomafana National park, 1990-1991. In
Socio-Economic Surveys in the Ranomafana National Park Periphery.
Ranomafana National Park Project. Pp. 78-129. Durham: Duke University.

Feierrnan, Steven
1985 Struggles for Control: The Social Roots of Health and Healing in Modern Aﬁica.
Aﬁican Studies Review 2822/3273-147.

Foucault, Michel
1979 Discipline and Punish. Harmondsworth.

Frotier, de la Messeliere, P.
1932 Du Mariage en Droit Malgache. Paris: L'I-Iarmattan.

323

Gare, Arran E.
1995 Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis. New York: Routledge.

Gesler, Wilbert M., Sheryl Thorbum Bird, and Stephen A. Oljeski
1997 Disease Ecology and a Reforrnist Alternative: The Case of Infant Mortality. Social
Science and Medicine 44:5:657-671.

Glick, Leonard B.
1967 Medicine as an Ethnographic Category: The Gimi of the New Guinea Highlands.
Ethnology 6:31-56.

Gruenbaunr, Ellen
1996 The Cultural Debate over Female Circumcision: The Sudanese Are Arguing This
One Out for Themselves. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1024:455-475.

Hancock, Graham
1989 Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid
Business. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press.

Hanson, Paul
1993 Reconceiving the Shape of Culture: Folklore and Public Culture. Western
Folklore 522327-34

1997 The Politics of Need Interpretation in Madagascar's Ranomafana National Park.
Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of F olldore and Folklife, University of
Pennsylvania.

Hardenbergh, Sabrina
1992 Household Food Distribution of Subsistence Slash-and-Bum Cultivators near
Ranomafana national Park, Madagascar. Presented at the Annual Meetings of the
American Anthropological Association, San Francisco.

1993 Undemutrition, Illness and Children's Work in an Agricultural Rain Forest
Community of Madagascar. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts,
Department of Anthropology.

Harris, Marvin
1979 Cultural Materialism: the Struggle for a Science of Culture. New York: Random
House.

Harrison, Paul
1992 The Third Revolution: Population, Environment and a Sustainable World.
London: Penguin Books.

324

Hemingway, C. A.
1996 Effects of Food Availability and Forest Composition on Feeding Patterns of
Propithecus diadema edwardsi. American Journal of Physical Anthropology,
Supplement 24 (Annual Meeting Issue): 126.

Hewitt, Adrian
1992 Madagascar. In Structural Adjustment and the Aﬁican Farmer. London: Overseas
Development Institute.

Howard, Mary Theresa and Ann Millard
1997 Hunger and Shame 2 Child Malnutrition and Poverty on Mt. Kilimanjaro. London
and New York: Routledge.

Huntington, Richard
1988 Gender and Social Structure in Madagascar. Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press.

Jolly, Alison
1987 Man Against Nature: time for a Truce in Madagascar. National Geographic,
Febniary 1987:160-183.

Jarosz, Lucy Antonina
1993 Deﬁning and Explaining Tropical Deforestation: Shifting Cultivation and
Population Grth in Colonial Madagascar (1896-1940). Economic Geography
69:4:366-379.

Keck, Andrew, Narendra P. Sharma and Gershon F eder
1994 Population Growth, Shifting Cultivation, and Unsustainable Agricultural
Development: A Case Study in Madagascar. World Bank Discussion Papers #234.
Aﬁica Technical Department Series.

Kightlinger, Lon K.
1993 Mechanisms of A scaris lumbricoides Overdispersion in Human Communities in
the Malagasy Rainforest. PhD. Dissertaton. University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Knox, Margaret L.
1989 No Nation an Island. Sierra, May/June 1989:78- 84.

Kottak, Conrad
1971 a Cultural Adaptation, Kinship, and Descent in Madagascar. Southewestern
Journal of Anthropology 27:2:129-147.

325

1971b Social Groups and Kinship Calculation Among the Southern Betsileo. American
Anthropologists 73:178-193.

1980 The Past in the Present. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Larson, Piers Martin
1992 Making Ethnic Tradition in a Pre-Colonial Society: Culture, gender, and Protest in
the Early Merina Kingdom, 1750-1822. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of
“fisconsin-Madison.

1996 Desperately Seeking the 'Merina' (Central Madagascar): Reading Ethnonyms and
Their Semantic Fields in Aﬁican Identity Histories,” Journal of Southern Aﬁican
Studies 22:4:541-560.

Leatherman, Thomas
1996 A Biocultural Perspective on Health and Household Economy in Southern Peru.
Medical Anthropology Quarterly 10:4:476-495.

Leisz, Stephen, Andrea Robles, and James Gage
1994 Land and Natural Resource Tenure and Security in Madagascar. Report prepal' r
USAID/Madagascar. Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Linton, Ralph
1933 The Tanala: A Hill Tribe of Madagascar. Chicago: Field Museum of Natural
History.

1939 Analysis of Tanala Culture. In The Individual and His Society. By Abram
Kardiner, with a foreword and two ethnological reports by Ralph Linton. Pp. 291-
354. New York: Columbia University Press.

1957 The Tree of Culture. New York: Alﬁed A. Knopf.

Mayer, Jonathan D.
1996 The Political Ecology of Disease as One New Focus for Medical Geography.
Progress in Human Geography 2024:441-456.

in press Geography, Ecology, and Emerging Infectious Diseases. Social Science and
Medicine.

McCaleb, Robert S.
1997 Medicinal Plants for Healing the Planet: Biodiversity and Environmental Health
Care. In Biodiversity and Human Health, Francesca Grifo and Joshua Rosenthal,
Eds. Pp. 221-242. Washington, DC: Island Press.

326

McCay, Bonnie J. and James M. Acheson, Eds.
1987 The Question of the Commons: The Culture and Ecology of Communal
Resources. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Middleton, Neil, Phil O'Keefe and Sam Moyo
1993 Tears of the Crocodile: From Rio to Reality in the Developing World. London
and Boulder: Pluto Press.

Millard, Ann V.

1992 The Anthropological Analysis of Health. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 62123-
5.

Milton, Kay
1996 Environmentalism and Culture Theory: Exploring the Role of Anthropology in
Environmental Discourse. London and New York: Routledge.

Morgan, Lynn M.
1984 Dependency Theory in the Political Economy of Health An Anthropological
Critique. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1(2): 13 l-153.

Morsy, Soheir
1979 The Mising Link in Medical Anthropology: The Political Economy of Health.
Reviews in Anthropology 62349-363.

Murphy, Dervla
1985 Muddling Through in Madagascar. Woodstock: The Overlook Press.

Naranjo, Plutarco
1995 Archaeology and psychoactive Plants. In Ethnobotany: Evolution of a Discipline.
Richard Evans Schultes and Siri von Reis, Eds, pp.393-399. Portland, Oregon:
Dioscorides Press.

Oxby, Clare
1985 Forest Farmers: The Transformation of Land Use and Society in Eastern
Madagascar. Unasylva 37 :2: 42-51 .

Peters, Dai
1994a Indigenous Healing and its Role in Health Care in the Ranomafana National Park
Periphery of Madagascar. Paper presented at the Symposium on Indigenous
Knowledge and Contemporary Social Issues. Tampa: University of Southern
Florida, March 14-16, 1994.

327

1994b Social Impact Assessment of the Ranomafana National Park Project of
Madagascar. Paper presented at the International Association of Impact
Assessment conference in Quebec City, Canada, 14-17 June 1994.

Peters, William Joseph, Jr.
1997 Local Participation in Conservation of the Ranomafana national park,
Madagascar. Journal of World Forest Resource Management 8: 109-135.

in press Transforming the Integrated Conservation and Development Project (ICDP)
Approach: Observations from the Ranomafana National Park Project, Madagascar.
Agriculture and Human Values.

Plotkin, Mark
1993 Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in
the Amazon Rain forest. New York: Viking.

Pryor, Frederic L.
1990 The Political Economy of Poverty, Equity, and Growth: Malawi and Madagascar.
Washington: Oxford University Presss (for the World Bank).

Quarnmen, David
1991 A Murder in Madagascar. Audubon 93: 1248-58.

Rabenaro, Georgette
1967 La Position de la Fernme dans le Droit Couturnier Malgache Cahiers du Centre
d'Etudes des Coutumes. Vol. IV. Antananarivo: Universite de Madagascar,
F aculte de Droit et Des Sciences Econonriques.

Rabetaliana, Hanta
n/d Prospects for Natural Resource Management in Madagascar. Unpublished
Manuscript, WorldWide Fund for Nature, Antananarivo, Madagascar.

Ranomafana National Park
1994 Ranomafana National Park: Integrated Conservation and Development Project
1994-1996. Stoney Brook: Ranomafana National Park Project.

Sarnpan' Asa Fanrbolena Fiombiana (SAFAFI)
1989 Survey of Ranomafana Park Pilot Villages. Unpublished document submitted to
Dr. Patricia Wright, Ranomafana National Park Conservation Project, September
26, 1989.

 

328

Sustainable Approaches to Viable Environmental Management (SAVEM)

1997 Madagascar's Integrated Conservation and Development Projects: Lessons
Learned by Participants, Project Employees, Related Authorities and Community
Beneﬁciaries. Executive Summary, May, 1997. Submitted by K. Lynn McCoy
and Hajanirina Razaﬁndrainibe.

Sharp, Lesley A.
1993 The Possessed and the Dispossessed: Spritis, Identity, and Power in a Madagascar
Migrant Town. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sibree, James

1878 The Sakalava: Their Origin, Conquests, and Subjugation; A Chapter in Malagasy
History. Antananarivo Annual 12456-468.

Singer, Merrill
1989 The Limitations of Medical Ecology: The Concept of Adaptation in the Context of

Social Stratiﬁcation and Social Transformation. Medical Anthropology 10: 223-
234.

1986 Toward a Political-Economy of Alcoholism: The Missing Link in the
Anthropology of Drinking. Social Science & Medicine 23(2)2113-130.

Stoner, Bradley P.
1986 Understanding Medical Systems: Traditional, Modern, and Syncretic Health Care
Alternatives in Medically Pluralistic Societies. Medical anthropology Quarterly
1722:44-48.

Systematics Agenda 2000: Charting the Biosphere
1993 New York: American Museum of Natural History.

Sussman, Linda K.

1988 Routine herbal treatment for pregnant women, neonates, and postpartum care
among the Mahafaly of southwest Madagascar. Unpublished manuscript of
presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association,
Phoenix, Arizona, November 1988.

Tacchi, A.
1892 King Andrianampoinimerina, and the Early History of Antananrivo and
Ambohirnanga. Antananarivo Annual IV 2474-496.

Taussig, Michael

1980 Reiﬁcation and the Consciousness of the Patient. Social Science and Medicine
14823-13.

329

Thébault, E. P.
1951 T raité de Droit Civil Malgache: Les Lois et C outumes Hova. Fascicule 11: Les
Biens, Les Obligations et Les Contrats. Paris: J ouve & Co., E Uiteurs.

UNICEF. 1992. State of the World's Children. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

United States Agency for International Development (U S SAID
n/d USAID/Madagascar Environment Program. USAID, Antanarivo.

van der Geest, Sjaak, and Susan R Whyte, Editors
1988 The Context of Medicines in Developing Countries. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.

Vaughan, Megan , ,
1991 Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.

Vérin, Pierre
1986 The History of Civilisation in North Madagascar. Translated by David Smith.
Rotterdam and Boston: A. A. Balkema.

Warren, Michael
1997 Employment and Income-Generating for Indigenous and Tribal Peoples: Lessons
Learned in Asia. Unpublished manuscript presented at ILO-INDISCO Donor
Consultation and Planning Workshop. New Delhi, India, 4-8 November 1997.

Whitesell, Edward Albert
1993 Changing Courses: The Jurua River, Its PeOple and Amazonian Extractive
Reserves. University of California, Berkeley, Department of Geography, Ph.D.
Dissertation.

World Bank
1994 Madagascar: A Strategy for High Growth and Poverty Alleviation: An Economic
Strategy Note. Report No. 13274-MAG, June 29, 1994, Country Operations
Division, South Asia and Indian Ocean Department, Aﬁica Region.

1996 Oﬁce Memorandum, for General Distribution, ﬁom Nils O. Tcheyan, Chief;
AF 3AE, Dated February 23, 1996, Re: Madagascar - Proposed Second
Environment Program Support Project, Pre-appraisal Review Meeting.

World Health Organization
1988 Ethical Criteria for Medicinal Drug Promotion. Geneva: World Health
Organization.

330

Wright, Patricia C.
1990 Ecosystem preservation and public health. Environmental Impact Assessment
Review 10:451- 453.

1992 Primate Ecology, Rainforest Conservation, and Economic Development: Building
a National Park in Madagascar. Evolutionary Anthropology 121225-33.

1993 Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar: Rainforest Conservation and Economic
Development. Prepared for the Liz Claibome-Art Ortenberg Foundation
Comrnunity-Based Conservation Workshop, Arlie, Virginia, 18-22 October 1993.

Wright, P.C., Haring, D.M.., Izard, MK, and Sirnons, EL.
1989 Psychological Well-Beirrg of Nocturnal Primates in Captivity. In E. F. Segal (Ed),
Housing, Care and Psychological Wellbeing of Captive and Laboratory Primates
(pp. 61-74). Parkridge: Noyes Publications.

Young, Crawford
1986 Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Class in Aﬁica. Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 26232453.

Zerner, Charles
1996 "Telling Stories about Biological Diversity," pp. 68-101 in Valuing Local
Knowledge: Indigenous People and Intellectual Property Rights, Stephen B. Brush
and Doreen Stabinsky, Eds. Washington, DC .2 Island Press.

"I71114474114!!!“