Product: National Geographic - Africa [VHS] (2001)
Rating: 1.0
A well-intentioned though throughly Eurocentric view of Africa
Having seen only Episode 1, it is certainly well-intentioned, and is respectful of its subjects, both in Kenya and Tanzania. But two ongoing themes of the program are a) the age-old importance of land and b) the timelessness of the African people.Concerning a) this is for the most part a fundamental misreading of African peoples across the continent, reflecting a Eurocentric concern with land, as opposed to a concern with people. While land has long been a scarce resource in Europe, owing to centuries of overpopulation and a feudal system that equated land with wealth, the African continent was, until the nineteenth century, relatively underpopulated. Land was plentiful. What was important was that which was scarce: people. Jane Guyer's "wealth in people" work is excellent on this point. Bayart is good too. While there does generally exist an acknowledgment of the first-comers to a given region--in many places they are called "earth priests"--such as the Batwa of present-day Cameroon or the Somba of northern Benin--newcomers, such as the many Bantu-speaking groups, displaced these peoples and often co-opted them, most often as ritual specialists. Kairn Kleiman's work is excellent on this point.Concerning b) European and American understandings of Africa have constructed the continent as timeless, unchanging, and pristine, where true, unadulterated "culture" still endures despite Western modernity. The film reflect these conceits with the travels of the two main characters, one from rural to urban, the other from urban to rural. In both cases the rural is somehow unaffected by the modern (read Western, developed) world. The work of Charles Piot offers a much-needed corrective to such distorted views.Disclaimer: I am a graduate student in socio-cultural anthropology in the United States and my dissertation research focuses on local understandings of international development aid among a certain people in West Africa. This film, while as well-intentioned as a tourist who spends three weeks hiking Mount Kili on holiday, does little service to furthering (and correcting) Western understandings of this continent.