A team of outsiders comes to grassland villages in rural highland Madagascar and asks about bushfire (doro tanety). Fire is bad, respond the villagers. It has no advantages and degrades the environment. Asked the same questions, city dwellers in Antananarivo are more equivocal: it’s bad for the environment, but might be a necessary evil for cattle raising and farming. Meanwhile, fires continue to be lit prolifically in this grassy landscape with a long dry season, a little less than in the past, but still omnipresent in the landscape with smoke plumes, black scars, and night-time flickering lights.
What’s going on here? To understand these contradictions, one needs to understand fire ecology, agrarian livelihoods, the power of discourses, as well as the psychology and ethics of research methods. Fire ecology, because fire is inevitable in wet-dry tropical grassy landscapes. Agrarian livelihoods, because fire can be a simple and effective tool for pasture renewal and field preparation (at the same time as a threat to thatched roofs and tree plantations). The power of discourses, because a century of anti-fire propaganda by governments, foresters, and conservationists – serving their interests, reflecting older temperate zone biases – shapes the frame in which people talk about fire. And research methods, because how do you ask people their honest opinions about a criminal activity when you arrive in their village in a sparkling four-wheel drive vehicle? These questions are at the center of a paper “Anti-fire statements coexist with millions of anthropogenic fires in Madagascar” that we recently published, under the leadership of Víctor Fernández García and funded by a SNIS research grant.
What the paper shows is that what people say about fire doesn’t match with their continued heavy use of fire. Their words don’t match their actions. But this is not surprising in a context where fire is illegal, where the use of fire has long been stigmatized by those in power (French colonial administrators, post-Independence officials, conservation actors), and where some fires of course do have negative impacts.
Another interesting finding in the paper is that rural people think that fires should be governed by the local community and local leaders, while city dwellers point first to national authorities (and certainly not rural communities). Is this a classic urban-rural divide, where rural people feel misunderstood, poorly served by central authorities? Or is this answer to the question specifically linked to fires, an indirect hint that people might want to manage fire themselves (and thus rid themselves of the constraining laws and discourses on fire)? Those questions need further investigation.
That sensitivity about the authorities, the discourses and positions to which they have to conform or enforce, is omnipresent in Madagascar. I often show the images below in my classes when I speak about governmentality. I tell the story of spending the day with four boys and their two grazing zebus weeding a taro field on a ridge high above the village at the end of the rainy season. As the day came to a close, humidity rose, thunderstorms rumbled, and the biting blackflies (mokafohy) came out. We started the two-hour walk back:
“We began to descend the steep rocky slope, with a magnificent view of the valley. We paused on a rock, swatting at the no-see-ums (blackflies? midgets?) that had been bugging us for a good while, biting and itching. One of the kids lit the grass between a big rock and the trail, and we all jumped into the resulting smoke to get away from the bugs. We stayed there a while, and 8 or 10 fire ignitions in the drier tufts of grass only succeeded in burning about 15 or 20 meters squared of grass (too many rocks, the trail, green grass). It was definitely some element of playing with the fire. We sat and chatted in and out of the smoke. Mostly the fires were lit below the rocks. One place they put several dry branches over the grass, starting a small campfire. Solo later carried a smoldering branch almost back into town — a long way in the rain — and called it an ‘aro moka’ (bug defence). There were some comments about watching out that the mayor doesn’t see us (hey, brother, don’t start so many fires, slow down), or about how I (the foreigner) shouldn’t be seen with a fire. The mayor doestn’ like fires because they destroy the environment, said the kids. “Look,its burning, we are destroying the environment” they said, but with not a tone of sarcasm!? But obviously, on that hillslope, we were within view of potentially a lot of people. We left, worried about the potential for rain. Ndimby did a short praying ceremony that the rain stay away, but it didn’t. Passing the other fire scars along the trail I casually mention “for moka also?” and they answer: yes, we burned these yesterday because of the insects. Then the skies let loose, we got home drenched and shivering” (Fieldnotes, 16 April 1998).
Discoures of bad fire, of environmental degradation, of destroying their soils were internalized by the boys – from radio, school, political speeches. And yet they still used fire. Perhaps it was a case of ‘boys play with fire’ or ‘boys will be boys’. But I think it also shows that in rural areas actions speak louder than words.
References:
The new paper: Fernández-García, V, HM Randriamiadanarivo, JJM Natolojanahary, C González, CA Randrianasy, L Ravaoherika, TL Andrianiaina, LH Raoilison, BA Razafimahatratra, MR Rakotoarison, VN Andriamandimbisoa, J Llopis & C Kull (2026) Anti-fire statements coexist with millions of anthropogenic fires in Madagascar. Ecology and Society 31 (2). https://doi.org//10.5751/es-17120-310210.
For more context, history, and much more: see my book Isle of Fire: a Political Ecology of Landscape Burning in Madagascar (University of Chicago Press, 2004). PDF author’s version of my book
