Chibale Zambia: homogeneity and heterogeneity

Chibale Zambia: the theme homogeneity and heterogeneity. Were the readers to compare Seur 1992 with IJzermans 1995, both publications about Chibale phenomena, they might have the feeling of reading about two different universes. Seur 1992 focuses on processes of agricultural change, strategic behaviour of individuals and groupings, and agricultural entrepreneurship and contains many (extended) cases and dialogues with the people studied. It is a restudy of Long 1968b which dealt with comparable subjects. It reduces practically all human motives to those of the agricultural entrepreneur and religious affiliation to Jehovah’s Witnesses. This reduced reality had little resemblance to that which I studied in more or less the same area in the period of five years before Seur stayed in Chibale.
One may simply explain the differences by pointing at the wondrous ways of North Atlantic motives and reductionism. However, the cause may also lie partly in the conditions in Chibale. It is certainly not impossible to single out a grouping of people discerning themselves through a specific set of aspects. All kinds of groupings of people compete for influence and a certain way of life. Grouping can be based on religious orientation, political orientation, clan, area within Chibale, farming strategy and cultural practice. Some groupings like those based on religious affiliation aim at outlining a great number of aspects of the lives of the persons belonging to them while other groupings deal only with a specific set of aspects.

Heterogeneity

Chibale Zambia: homogeneity and heterogeneity form an unavoidable thread when looking at Chibale issues. This site does not go into all the historical, social and cultural factors underlying this theme but, in order to understand something about music in Chibale, it is necessary to realise its importance. Heterogeneity in Chibale has two aspects. First of all, the differences between groupings can be large. Secondly, within a grouping differences are the norm. There is little indication that this had been different in the last two centuries. Wim van Binsbergen¹See for instance van Binsbergen (1992: 258-261). at many places has argued that an important part of the ‘contradictions’ are related to the variform historical background of the subsystems constituting present-day society. These contradictions are expressed and temporarily averted in ritual; an explanatory model opened up by Victor Turner²For instance in Turner (1968)..

Chibale Zambia: homogeneity and heterogeneity. The general tendency towards heterogeneity can be interpreted as a sign of the absence, or lack of dominance, for a long time of a common system of reference, a kind of ‘body of homogeneity’ or ideology of cultural and social unity. From the other side, the acceptance of heterogeneity leads to the acceptance in discussions and disputes of all kinds of reasoning which, next to uncertainty, provided flexibility in times of change.³Compare, for instance, Seur (1992: 289): Again, we may conclude that women (as well as men) in Nchimishi often treat matrilineal ideology and its related norms as a kind of strategic resource used in various ways and in different contexts to further personal or collective interests and objectives.

Homogeneity

The various groupings use (fictional) bodies of homogeneity. These can be relatively concrete and explicit –though typically not undisputed– as with the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the spirit possessed but they can also be idealistic as, for instance, is done by the development-oriented commercial farmers.

In the past, as others must have told you, people were guided by tradition. But I think we are undergoing what you might call a cultural revolution, and it will take us some time before we get some certainty again, before new rules and customs will appear. So, you will see different things taking place at different farms, until we reach the time when things will be sure again, then we will have a new culture.
∵ Musonda Chunga, in Seur (1992: 283).

Apart from the ‘inner circle’ of Jehovah’s Witnesses, people belonging to divergent groupings do not ignore each other. Empathy for people with alternative viewpoints is not rare. Heterogeneity clearly is an important characteristic of Chibaleness and the shared Lalaness is one of the factors providing some homogeneity.

Continue to the article about the theme regionality and nationality.