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How does one make sense of these depictions on cowardice, secrecy and „hardness‟? Among the Maasai, building a strong institution of secrecy has been a matter of expediency. Maasai survival has hinged on sustainability of herds in fragile environments and shrinking grazing grounds, keeping cultural practices in the midst of hostile groups and other hegemonic forces (e.g. the colonial and postcolonial state). In such an environment, economic survival and maintenance of social boundaries has been a matter of life and death. This „isolation‟ creates a fertile ground for enhancement of cohesiveness against the „others‟. For a captor or „suspect‟
therefore, the stakes are quite high and it is only through „hardness‟ that he can bestow honour and pride to himself and the larger group. A combination of factors may explain why the Kamba may not be as „hard‟ or secretive as the Maasai. Thanks to a wider adoption of Christianity, formal education, monetary economy, a weakening clan system and an individualised land tenure system, the sense of „collective interest‟ has been undermined. As the Maasai society becomes more differentiated and many of their traditional institutions weaken, „hardness‟ will probably be measured in other ways (e.g. academic achievements) and at some point, the issue of certain ethnic groups being more secretive or cowards may not arise.
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courageous when hunting and without any restraint. On the other hand, the Hutu agriculturists are said to be “hardworking, not very clever, extrovert, irascible, unmannerly, obedient”, while the pastoralist Tutsi are characterised as “intelligent, capable of command, refined, courageous, and cruel” (1999: 200, quoting Maquet, 1961: 164). He shows that these
„colonial‟ stereotypes have continued to shape interethnic interactions and coexistence in Rwanda and Burundi. Although Eller argues that most of these biases were externally constructed,177 it would be misleading to assume that African groups did not stereotype one another. In any case, stereotypes are not necessarily baseless. I entirely agree though, that the Europeans who saw unlike and unequal races in the Rwandan groups perpetuated and deepened ethnic divisions, tensions and animosity as the same biases were used to determine which group would rule over the others.
Peil and Oyeneye (1998) note that apart from enhancing group solidarity in situations of potential conflict and threat, stereotypes and prejudice give identity and self-respect to people whose status might otherwise be low. I would assume that this partly explains why most ethnic stereotypes are negative. Cottam and Cottam note that greater problems of disharmony occur where strong judgements are made by one group regarding the relative superiority/inferiority of other communities. They argue that it is even worse where the community is weak in terms of population but highly achieving, e.g. the Jews. In such cases, they aver, “a community that is judged to be relatively underachieving is likely to be seen stereotypically in contemptuous terms”. Such terms, they note, include indolence, intellectual inferiority, low moral standards, and poor occupational performance including „poor‟
leadership. They note that producing a sense of commonality in such situations is a daunting task. But as the subsection below will show, groups that display great disparities may also have commonalities, particularly if they share territory.
Group comparisons have also been seen as sources of conflict and competition. Horowitz remarks: “The cutting edge of comparison and conflict is the juxtaposition of backward and advanced groups” (1985: 166; see also Cottam and Cottam, 2001: 196). He argues that groups are in implicit competition for a favourable evaluation of their moral self worth. This comparative nature is said to derive from the juxtaposition of ethnic groups in the same environment. He notes that in unranked ethnic groups “…of Malays and Chinese, Hausa and Ibo, Maronites and Druze, Creoles and East Indians...” when placed in the same environment, no two groups are seen to possess the same distribution of behavioural qualities (Horowitz, 1985: 142-144). In such settings, stereotypes are said to crystallise as group comparisons
177 A position also taken by Mutiso, who, writing on how Kenyan groups are portrayed, calls the depictions “the stereotypes of the coloniser” (1975: 47).
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emerge. This compares closely with Alois Hahn‟s (2000: 15) conception of how neighbours are labelled strangers. Since each group has a distinctive inventory of imputed traits, alternative criteria of merit takes effect. Group worth, notes Horowitz, is important for self-esteem even at the individual level. Citing Firth‟s (1957) study in the Pacific We, the Tikopia, Horowitz illustrates how cleavage and comparison can be a source of conflict even in an isolated and a culturally uniform environment. In this particular case, each group was said to differ in temperament, talents and behaviour as they approached each other with a tinge of formality, suspicion and rivalry. Each, he notes further, was prepared to make disparaging remarks about the other. Some of the explanations for such tendencies have been provided by psychologists. Human beings are said to have a drive to evaluate their abilities by comparing them with those of others.178 Closely related to this are group anxieties and fear for extinction which may force one group to engage in a race to „catch-up‟ and avoid domination (see Yinger, 1994: 327). Wimmer‟s (1997a) discussion of xenophobia and racism corroborates the same argument. This partly explicates why groups sharing common territory strive to maintain distinctiveness as they interact and exchange with others.
Turning back to Horowitz, comparisons are also said to be made with those judged to be relatively similar to oneself, e.g. in a shared locality, and performance may either be improved to match the competitor and where that fails, attempts could be made to control the performance of the competitor or, as I show in chapter six, downplay this performance. As to how group comparisons have emerged in the third world countries, Horowitz underscores the influence of the colonial state authorities or what he calls “ethnic distribution of colonial opportunity”. Through this, some groups advanced or progressed faster than others due to the fact that they were disproportionately educated and represented in the civil service or in business while others are backward („traditional‟) because of being disproportionately in the subsistence rather than in the cash economy or disproportionately poor or uneducated. He notes that the British colonial administration had its own biases taking some groups as hardworking and industrious (e.g. Ibo of Nigeria, Kikuyu of Kenya and Tamils of Sri Lanka) while others like the Kamba of Kenya, the Hausa of Nigeria and the Kandyan Sinhalese of Sri Lanka were said to be lazy (Horowitz, 1985: 162-3). Such biases are said to have significantly influenced the distribution of facilities and productive resources enhancing regional/ethnic inequalities in the process. It is interesting that the Kamba, stereotyped as lazy by the British, regard themselves as hardworking (and the Maasai portray them as such) and depict the Maasai as lazy. This shows the relativism of ethnic depictions. “Laziness”, as I have noted, is
178 Horowitz (1985: 144) citing Leon Festinger (1954) in his book, A Theory of Social Comparison Processes.
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a label that is shaped by ecological factors, modes of subsistence and deployment of labour, which are critical underpinnings that are often ignored.
What is certain is that though often taken for granted, ethnic stereotypes influence human action; whether it is how Asians are despised in Britain (Baumann, 1996), or Nigerians being associated with drug trafficking, ethnic and personality stereotypes influence the way societies are organised, how they are perceived by others, whether groups can form alliances or not, who can be trusted and for what, whether daughters can be given in marriage, which migrants are friendly or unwanted and whom to trade with. They are used to justify discrimination,179 hatred, cattle raids and war. Torstrick for instance shows that Israeli depictions of Arabs as irrational and violent influence policy and the governing of Israel (2000: 36). In Nairobi, Kenyans of Indian and Pakistani origin hardly employ the Kikuyu as shop attendants out of the generalisation that the Kikuyu are thieves; instead, they prefer the Kamba or Luhya while the Maasai may be employed as watchmen for their image as “warriors”. Ethnic depictions can also forge closer ethnic relations, for example, in the deployment of labour; Kamba
“cowardice” and “honesty” earns them herding jobs among the Maasai. I would also like to mention that in certain circumstances, negative stereotypes across borders can be broken through improved flow of information or enhancement of “connections” (see Soffer, 1994:
187; Peil and Oyeneye, 1998: 79).