Week 10 – Innovation and social identity in Madagascar

This early draft was authored by Rita Astuti.

Preamble

After sending the abstract, I spent some time digging into my fieldnotes and photo archives. I found more information than I expected about the topic of this paper. As you will see, the paper is currently largely descriptive, since I’m not sure what analytical points I can draw from the material. I look forward to participating in the workshop as I’m sure this will give me new conceptual tools with which to analyse this case study.

Introduction

This paper is about an innovation in the way the Vezo of Betania, a fishing village in Madagascar, rig their canoes (i.e. the way they set the sail). I describe the innovation and I report how villagers assessed its pros and cons. I then discuss a theory, put forward by one individual, as to how this innovation first came about, as well as how several villagers described the mechanism by which it became widespread.

By way of context, the reader should know that Vezo people define their social group identity (their being Vezo) by reference to what they do – sailing, fishing, trading fish, etc. – rather than by reference to their ancestry. Given the centrality of sailing to what they do, the canoe is said to be “the root of Vezo-ness” (Astuti 1995) [1]. One might assume that such a link between social identity and the canoe would make the latter less susceptible to change and innovation. As we shall see, this is not the case.

Technical innovation: the sequence of observed events

During my first period of research – between November 1987 and June 1989 – people in Betania rigged their canoes with “tehy mitsanga” (literally: standing poles). I will refer to this type of rig as a double sprit sail (Fig. 1): a rectangular sail held up by two sprits (poles), which were tied to the outrigger boom and rested inside a holder at the bottom of the hull (which had 6 holes, 4 along the long axis and 2 along the short axis). Changing the position of the sail required undoing the knot, lifting one or both of the sprits, repositioning them in the appropriate hole and re-tying them to the outrigger boom. Quite a laborious operation.

In January 1989, when I visited Belo-sur-Mer, a village about 60 kms south of Betania, I found that people were using a different rig, which they referred to as “tehy mihanto” (literally hanging pole). I will refer to this type of rig as a common sprit sail. [The same rig is illustrated in Les Vezo du Sud-Ouest de Madagascar by Koechlin (1975), who carried out his research in the late 60s/early 70s in Bevato, a village about 100 kms south of Belo]. This sail is rigged on one movable mast, which is tied to the boom of the outrigger and rests inside a holder at the bottom of the hull (which has 2 holes along the long axis) and one sprit which, suspended in a sling made of rope, pivots around the stationary mast. This rig makes it possible to change the position of the sail without any un-knotting, lifting and re-knotting. A much easier operation which, as we shall see, affords new manoeuvres (tacking) that weren’t possible with the double sprit sail.

When I returned in 1994, I noticed that some villagers in Betania had adopted the common sprit sail. My host father was one of them (Fig. 2); his two sons were not (Fig. 3). My visit was short and my ethnographic attention was elsewhere, and I therefore didn’t investigate the issue.

By the time of my visit in 1998, virtually all Betania villagers had abandoned the double sprit sail and had adopted the new rig, whether for fishing (Fig. 4) or local transportation (Fig. 5).

But the fact that some were still using the double sprit sail meant that I was able to elicit people’s opinions as to the reasons for their diverging preferences. By 2004, the topic was no longer of interest as the new rig had become universal (and has remained so as shown in Fig. 6).

Pros and cons (as discussed in 1998)

According to those who had adopted it in 1998, the main advantage of the common sprit sail is that it makes sailing very easy (mora mare). This is because, as noted above, it does away with the need to reposition the sprits in response to either a change in the wind or in the desired direction of travel. In both cases, the sailors only have to pull on the ropes and let the suspended sprit move to the new required position. As people put it (using the French word), the new technique makes the process of sailing “automatique”.

Because of this automaticity, the common sprit sail makes tacking (what Vezo describe as “turning this way and that”, i.e. zig-zagging into the wind) a realistic option. With the old rig, tacking wasn’t possible because each change in direction would have required manually and arduously moving the sprits. Instead, people would take the sail down and paddle.

The new rig has another advantage, which is that the sail can be kept almost parallel with the hull (i.e. close-hauled), which allows sailing, as much as is physically possible, against the wind. This wasn’t an option with the old system because the two sprits, both tied to the outrigger boom, could not be aligned along the axis of the hull. Notably, this is not an advantage that my interlocutors pointed out explicitly, probably because it offers improved tacking, which, under the old system, was not even attempted.

So, what are the disadvantages? The main reason some people resisted the new rig was that while it makes sailing easier it also makes it more dangerous. This is because, if there is a sudden change in the wind direction, the suspended sprit is out of the sailors’ control. This means that the canoe is at a higher risk of capsizing or breaking up. In addition, in strong winds, the sling that holds the sprit comes under a lot of pressure; if it breaks the consequences are catastrophic: the hull cracks and, in one instance, a man was reported to have been hit by the sprit and to have died as a result. The sprit itself can also break under the increased pressure, and so can the mast (but see below). People complained that the increase in the theft of poles was due to all these breakages.

Those who use the new rig disagree. Badiga, the man who was first to adopt it in Betania, remarked that, like death, capsizing is something that just happens (“capsizing, like death, is not selective”). In more technical fashion, he also suggested that responding to a sudden change in wind is far more dangerous with the old rig than the new one. This is because one has to quickly lift and reposition the two sprits, with the risk of losing control over them with equally catastrophic consequences. When making this point, he showed me his foot: many years back, when he was adjusting the position of an original, double sprit rigging, one of the sprits had slipped from his hands and had landed on his foot and crushed it. He added that his damaged foot is proof that the new system is better than the old one. Another man pointed out that the reason some people think that the new rig causes the mast and the sprit to break is that they recycle the old poles instead of using new, purpose-built ones appropriate for the new system.

As I mentioned, by the time I was having these conversations in 1998 the majority of people had adopted the new system. Those who hadn’t seemed keen to inflect their decision with a moral valence. For example, one elder remarked that with the new technique the wind becomes the “owner” of the canoe and that he doesn’t like that – he much rather be the one in control. Another remarked that the reason the new technique is popular is that it requires less effort; he tried it but went back to the old rigging because, when he sails, he wants to use his own strength. Another common remark was that the new rigging technique was particularly trendy with young men who like to show off their fast sailing, even if it means taking reckless risks.

As far as I could tell, such personal preferences were the main factors in determining whether people decided to drop the old rig for the new one. When I enquired about the costs of transitioning from one system to the other, some reported that there were no costs since they had used the old equipment (sail, sprits and sprit holder) and that they only had to add a few ropes. Others argued that to use the new rig properly and safely a new set of poles was needed and that the sail had to be repurposed, rotating it by 90 degrees.

All in all, my overall impression was that the new system didn’t have insurmountable entry costs which would have stopped people transitioning from old to new. Having said this, in at least one case – the case of Badiga, who was the first to adopt the new rigging technique in Betania – the impetus for change came when an external event disrupted his equipment. I’ll have more to say about this man’s reflections on how the new system came about, but here I’m interested in what he said about the moment when he decided to make the transition, having had plenty of time to observe it and discuss it with people who were using it already. The moment came when a cyclone (which he dates to 1989) buried his canoe into the sand. At that point, as he set out to replace it, he decided to cut a new mast and a sprit and to start sailing in the new way.

Where did the new idea come from?

In an article on “The Evolution of Pacific Canoe Rigs”, Adrian Horridge writes that all variations on the common sprit sail scattered across the Pacific region (e.g. China, Philippines, Indonesia) “was certainly introduced independently to many places by western colonists and I know of no case that can be shown to be indigenous” (1986: 92).

When asked where the new rigging technique came from, most Betania villagers pointed to the south. No one named a particular person, but they all agreed that the people they had copied the technique from had themselves copied it from other people further to the south. I should note here that all along the coast villagers are connected by extensive kinship links. This means that they have many reasons to travel north or south for funerals, ancestral rituals, celebrations of one kind or another, in addition to fishing and trading. They thus have plenty of opportunities to observe localised “ways of doing things” (fomba), including sailing.

While the southern origin of the new rig is universally recognised by the people of Betania, Badiga (the man we encountered earlier) offered a more complex account of how he believes it came about, which very much aligns with Horridge’s claim about its Western origins. As a prelude to the story, I need to briefly introduce the schooners that sail up and down the western coast of Madagascar. Schooners (known as botsy) are built locally and are used to transport cargo and people. They were introduced by a Breton family of shipbuilders, the Joachims, who came to Madagascar via Réunion at the request of the King Radama II (in power from 1861 to 1863) as part of his pro-European policies and treaties. After Radama’s assasination in 1863, the Joachim family made their way to the west coast and eventually established themselves in Morondava, Morombe and Belo-sur-mer, where they opened boat yards and taught the locals how to build, rig and sail European-style schooners.

The history of how this knowledge came to be owned and passed on by Vezo villagers is outside the scope of this paper; all that matters here is that schooners, a Western introduction, are fore-and-aft rigged (i.e. the sails are set along the direction of the boat’s hull). With this in mind, let me return to Badiga’s account (which I paraphrase). He speculated that the person who first thought of changing the way the canoe was rigged must have reasoned as follows: schooners cannot be propelled by paddling and yet they manage to move even if the wind doesn’t blow in their favour; they do this by zig-zagging until they get to their destination. By contrast, in such unfavourable wind conditions, a canoe doesn’t move at all and people have to paddle to get to where they want to go. He thus suggested that the rig of the canoe was changed to mimic that of a schooner [by turning one of the sprits into a mast and adopting a fore-and-aft rig]. He concluded that with the new rig the canoe became “like” a schooner: it can zig-zag just like one, with the added advantage that, unlike a schooner, if there is no wind at all one can still paddle and move on.

Badiga didn’t offer any detail of how this person went from his “thought” to the implementation of the new rigging system – like many others, Badiga asserted that there is no “history” about how this happened. But he suggested that the new technique must have developed in the stretch of coast near Andavadohaka (about 250 km south of Betania), where there are lots of small islands scattered along the coast. Unlike in Betania, where people can sail in a straight line out in the open sea, people in the Andavadohaka region have to make their way around these islands. And to do this by sailing, rather than paddling, they have to be able to use, and easily switch between, all available points of sail: run, reach and close-hauled [these are not Vezo terms]. According to Badiga, these local conditions prompted the idea of rigging the canoe in the new way, turning it into something of a schooner.

How did it become widespread?

Badiga admitted that when he first saw the new rig, he didn’t like it. He was put off by the fact that there were far too many ropes compared with the old system. But then, after observing people using the new rig, he started to see “what makes it a good thing” and, he added, “what’s good becomes something that people are okay with doing, and it becomes something that people will learn”. Thus, while the old system was good for “keeping oneself alive”, i.e. to support one’s livelihood, the new system is much better than that: no need to struggle, one just sits at the back of the canoe, steering it along. Although he didn’t use the term, Badiga’s story was one of progress.

As we saw earlier, by 1998 most people in Betania had adopted the new rig. Badiga had led the way and everyone recognised him as the local origin point of the new system. However, when I shared Badiga’s speculation about the origin of the new rig with my host father, he strongly disagreed (in part because he misunderstood it as a claim on Badiga’s part to have been the one who came up with the idea, which wasn’t the case). He insisted that the people of Betania, including Badiga, had just copied what other people were doing elsewhere; and he added that this is not something that “comes out of somebody’s head”, that it’s not anybody’s thought, but it’s just something that people “copy” from other people.

This reaction resonates with the way others described how they had learnt about the new rigging technique. The emphasis was always on “just watching”: one watches, and one knows. Learning is easy and, like other things that Vezo learn how to do – fishing, trading fish, building a canoe, etc. – it’s not something for which there is a (Western-style) school. Instead, children are taken out to sea; they get sea-sick and throw up; they get used to it; and when they have got used to it, they watch and they learn to do things (they also play with toy canoes and schooners, see Fig. 11).

Badiga agreed with this account: he told me that, after coming to appreciate its advantages, he had discussed the new rig with a relative who was using it, but when I enquired whether he had asked the relative to take him out sailing on his canoe so that he could learn the new technique, he replied no, that it was enough for him to just watch the way the canoe was rigged. Another elder who, in 1998, was still contemplating whether to adopt the new system, told me that he didn’t need anyone to teach him how to use it; all he needed was to watch and he would know.

No one stated this in so many words, but my impression was that the reason people emphasised that the new technique was adopted just by watching was that they didn’t perceive it as something radically new, but more like a variation on what they already knew about sailing – about the wind, the sail, the ropes, the poles, the hull, the outrigger, etc. They just incorporated new features into a well-known technical system, even if that involved changing that system quite radically (e.g. the transformation of one sprit into a mast). I suspect that it is for this reason that I didn’t encounter much anxiety about the loss of the old system. Some mentioned that it would be a good idea to mention to children how the old system works, in case they have problems with the new one and they want to revert back; by contrast, Badiga thought that there is no reason to teach children about the old way, since the new one is so much better.

Innovation and social group identity

An interesting aspect in all this is that nobody thought that changing the rigging method required ancestral approval (ancestors are normally kept informed of what happens among the living, and their blessing is sought ahead of any big undertaking, e.g. launching a new canoe or schooner, moving into a newly built house, going on a journey). When asked whether they had informed the ancestors before switching over, people told me that “sailing doesn’t have ancestral laws” (hence no need for ancestral blessing if one changes the way one sails) or that both sailing techniques are just ways of “dealing with the sea” and it’s a matter of individual (as opposed to ancestral) preference whether one uses one or the other.

Thus, even if the canoe is said to be “the root of Vezo-ness” – that which makes people Vezo – it remains open to change and innovation. This dovetails with an observation I made at the time of my first period of fieldwork, namely that there were no origin stories about the canoe. When asked where the canoe came from, what its origin was, my interlocutors would refer to the fact that the people of the past already knew how to make canoes; they would leave it at that. Only once an old man offered a more elaborate narrative: the first time people tried to make a canoe, they used a tree that was too heavy, and the canoe sank. They returned to the forest and saw another type of tree which they thought might be suitable, and indeed it was: this time the canoe floated. That’s the tree that people still use today, but the names of the people who made the discovery are not remembered, nor the time or place where it happened.

I read this lack of interest in the moment of discovery as one aspect of a more general disregard for the past, which is in line with the theory that Vezo are made who they are by what they do in the present (Astuti 1995, chs. 2 & 3). Specifically, what’s striking about the story of how the canoe was invented is that it fails to transform a fortuitous moment of discovery into a distinct and unique historical event. The narrative seems to make two contradictory points at once: first, that in the past Vezo already knew how to build canoes and that therefore in the present people don’t need to re-discover that knowledge; second, that, if necessary, Vezo could re-discover it at any time, in any place, by another contingent act of invention (Astuti 1995: 46-7). My suggestion is therefore that it is this general attitude towards the past that explains why “what makes the Vezo who they are” is open to innovation: innovation without a named inventor; that is adopted if and when people like it; and that spreads by simple observation.

References

Astuti, Rita (1995) People of the sea: identity and descent among the Vezo of Madagascar. Cambridge: CUP
Horridge, Adrian (1986) “The evolution of Pacific canoe rigs”, The Journal of Pacific History, 21, 2: 83-99.

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[1] Sailing is almost exclusively a male domain and in this paper I will only refer to the testimonies of men; women have other ways of rooting their Vezo-ness.