Re: Africa

Very interesting discussion indeed, but I think it misses the point. Native
populations everywhere and at all times in history have had to confront
their environment, and very often it was a hostile environment. They had to
exploit natural ressources to get their food, housing, dressing, and warming
up by cold weather. They were conscious of the struggle of all living
species to survive, and were themselves a part in that struggle against
other species and the environment. So the angelical relationship of men with
nature exists only in the Bible and other mythical books, and could only
have been possible -if at all- before man acquired self-consciousness, that
is, before the upcoming of homo sapiens. Erich Fromm, in his book "Fear of
Freedom", interprets brilliantly along these lines the myth of Adam and Eve
in Paradise, where the fact that they eat the fruit of the Knowledge Tree
condemns man to work -i.e., to transform nature- in order to survive.

But the adaptative process -which is what life is all about- implies also
some familiarity with, and respect for, the laws of nature. Even for nomad
peoples, it was necessary to know the habits of animals, the geographical
distribution of food, and the cycles of nature. It was even more so for
those peoples who domesticated animals and vegetables in order to settle
down. Superstitions, religions and other ideologies sacralizing the earth
and the sun (for instance, in the egyptian and inca civilizations), or the
five elements present in the teachings of the ancient chinese and greek
philosophers, favoured a respectful attitude towards nature in general. Of
course, those beliefs were, by definition, irrational, and sometimes
contradictory with what we would regard today as "ecological".

But particular attitudes of one tribe or another -be it native american,
african or european- are not important at all in the global picture.

As a whole, mankind has been able to adapt to and to accumulate knowledge
about Nature for several millennia, which means that destructive attitudes
toward the environment have not predominated up to now. This is what is
generally defined as "progress".

The real question then is, will historians, in a thousand years from now,
say the same thing of the cultures that prevail today? In other words, is
indefinite progress possible? Aren't we entering a turning point in which
the industrialization process and the technologies used -previously
considered signs of progress- can cause permanent damage to the environment
and thus threat the very survival of mankind? If that is the case, the
debate about the friendliness or unfriendliness to the environment of the
agricultural techniques of particular groups of zulus or masa'i seem rather
irrelevant.

As regards the State-Nation, it is of course a well known product of
historical and social evolution, and there isn't much to discuss about that
point. It was introduced by western nations to their colonies. Since the
populations of the colonies were themselves in another, very different stage
of social evolution, this form of political organization was foreign to
them, and was introduced forcefully and traumatically.

However, the political or ideological aspects of the Nation-state can be
rationally accepted and assimilated, and these are not the most relevant
features of colonization. We should not forget that ideology is only the
apparent side of the social system: underlying it, there is a mode of
production that characterizes the economic and social structure. The Nation
State put an end to feudal confrontations in Europe, and very soon it became
the political basis of the capitalist system. So the characteristic feature
of colonization was the fact that it brought, violently and in a few
centuries, primitive societes to feudalism and then to capitalist modes of
production.

Since colonization was itself subject to historical constraints, the new
rulers, being a part of the european system, established State boundaries
that had not taken into consideration factors like the cultural or
geo-economic unity of local social systems. Today, globalization makes the
State-nation less important, because the integration to the international
economic system so requires. But the countries which were previously
colonies, and which have not yet succeeded to integrate economically with
the international system, are now ravaged by civil or interstate wars,
remain marginal to the world-system, and their economic viability seems
problematic.

So the question is not whether the Nation-Sate is foreign to native
cultures, but how can they retrieve their economic potential of development,
and if it is through internationalization, in what terms?