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…no spirit can walk abroad… The Collapse of Agrarian Societies, Forced Migration and Refugee Camps in Africa

Ulrich Schiefer, Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, Lisbon, Portugal
schiefer@iscte.pt

Filipa Almeida, Centro de Estudos Africanos, ISCTE, Lisbon, Portugal
filipa.almeida@gmail.com

Migrations – a common trait of African agrarian societies – in the past used to adapt to long-term or short-term changes in environment – have by now become part of a dynamic process that takes societies to the brink – and sometimes over it. Forced migrations on a massive scale are an important phenomenon in the breakdown of societies. Often these societies pass into a plasmatic state where vital and structuring processes for production and reproduction fail. Many African agrarian societies which have proven their resilience withstanding centuries of external assault seem to be losing out against the combined onslaught of modern interventions – development cooperation, trade offensives, military interventions and arms trade, humanitarian and emergency relief - which create the conditions for the unfolding of internal dynamics that drag the societies ever further down. The collapse of African agrarian societies is not yet fully understood – the development paradigm has clouded the vision of scientists and practitioners for too long. Theoretical and methodological research and intervention approaches seem to eschew the intervention agency’s interest as well as the disintegration processes of societies, looking instead at the breakdown of quasi-modern institutions they need as interfaces for “cooperation”. We consider three interlinked critical subsystems decisive for the breakdown of societies: production, violence and the spiritual dimension. We contend that the intervention format “refugee camp” often contributes to make the disintegration of societies permanent and irreversible thus hindering reconstruction of traumatised societies. Our case study from Portuguese speaking Africa shows that agrarian societies themselves are able to handle large flows of refugees and that adequate intervention strategies should be developed to further their resilience rather than to jeopardize it.
Contents: The end of the development paradigm Development intervention and the collapse of agrarian societies From anomie to collapse: a self-reinforcing dynamic process The spiritual dimension: a widely ignored critical sub-system of agrarian societies The plasmatic state of societies.