Revista CIDOB d'Afers Internacionals (Oct 2009)
Postcolonial conflicts in the Antankarana kingdom in Northern Madagascar
Abstract
This case study presents the elements that have come into play and the political strategies that have controlled the troubled development of negotiations over the conditions for establishing an aquaculture installation in the heart of a sacred monarchy, between the sovereign and representatives of the Malgache State, and the multinational company in question. National State regulation was replaced, in this case, by initiatives by both supranational actors (the World Bank, holdings, reformist religious movements) and local ones (plebeian groups and noblemen, migrants’ associations and rival dynastic branches), reaching a point at which the king of Antankarana imposed religious taboos and organised affliction rituals in opposition to the installation. This approach by contemporary globalisation highlights the way in which the mercantilisation of the environment and the private appropriation of land generate a reshaping of the conflict between political powers, both on a national and a local scale, to conquer the State apparatus and gain control of populations and territorial resources.
