Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CONGO_WHALEBOATS (Whaleboats in the Forest: Subaltern Technologies of Transportation on Congo’s Inland Waterways)
Reporting period: 2020-09-01 to 2022-08-31
Locally developed since the 1960s in post-colonial Zaire (nowadays DR Congo), baleinières are an authentic Congolese innovation that combines longstanding local traditions of craftsmanship with transnational South-South technology transfer “from below”. Baleinières (literally “whale boats”) are frugal transport technologies made of wood, recycled aluminum sheets and other locally available materials. Since the advent, in the early 2000s, of Chinese water-cooled, two-stroke Diesel engines, which are locally referred to as “moteur Chang Fa”, Chang Gong or onomatopoetically, as "moteur dakadaka", baleinières have dramatically multiplied and increased in size (nowadays they are up to 50 meters in length and up to three stories high). Together with the baleinières technology, these “low-tech” engines have revolutionized the transportation culture on Congo’s inland waterways, where they are also mounted onto dugout canoes and replace the more costly and dangerous outboard engines. As a result, nowadays about 50% of all food crops that reach city ports of Africa’s second city Kinshasa arrive aboard of baleinières. As expensive large scale pushboat-barge-convoys made of imported steel with their high-tech marine engines remain totally out of reach for the ordinary Congolese population, baleinières and their Chinese propulsion systems are today vital for the mobility and the survival of millions.
Their material composition and the ways in which they integrate engineered, muscular, and environmental forces lend baleinières a number of infrastructural advantages that help them reinvent and reconfigure the DR Congo's fluvial transport geography from below. They add transport facilities to remote villages and riverborne periodic markets and thus renegotiate the relationship between the urban and the rural in times of intense demographic and environmental pressure. Studying baleinières and their actors means to better understand these transformations in times of rapid transformation, not without exploring the socio-economic impact of this frugal innovation and its significance as a unique case of endogenous development.
Besides this overall goad, the research aims to 1. trace the baleinières’ "chaîne opératoire" of materials and skills in time and space, from the cutting of trees and the recycling of materials (tar, corrugated aluminum sheets, etc.), to the actual building of baleinières and the repairing and maintenance of the Chang Fa Diesel propulsion system; 2. to investigate the material and spiritual lives and ontologies of fossil-fueled internal combustion engines (ICEs) in the realm of African river transportation, which have been crucially overlooked by anthropologists so far.
Their material composition and the ways in which they integrate engineered, muscular, and environmental forces lend baleinières a number of infrastructural advantages that help them reinvent and reconfigure the DR Congo's fluvial transport geography from below. They add transport facilities to remote villages and riverborne periodic markets and thus renegotiate the relationship between the urban and the rural in times of intense demographic and environmental pressure. Studying baleinières and their actors means to better understand these transformations in times of rapid transformation, not without exploring the socio-economic impact of this frugal innovation and its significance as a unique case of endogenous development.
Besides this overall goad, the research aims to 1. trace the baleinières’ "chaîne opératoire" of materials and skills in time and space, from the cutting of trees and the recycling of materials (tar, corrugated aluminum sheets, etc.), to the actual building of baleinières and the repairing and maintenance of the Chang Fa Diesel propulsion system; 2. to investigate the material and spiritual lives and ontologies of fossil-fueled internal combustion engines (ICEs) in the realm of African river transportation, which have been crucially overlooked by anthropologists so far.
1. Work performed
a. Continuation of previous research and publication work
b. Three ethnographic fieldwork trips:
- Oct-Nov 2021: Kisangani, (Tshopo province, DRC): ethnographic research on baleinières' "armateurs" (owners) and the socio-economic impact of baleinières on the local economy.
- February 2022: in Kisangani and Basoko (Tshopo province): focus on boatbuilders and their craft, care and repair. Subsequent evaluation of materials.
- Jul-Aug 2022: Kisangani, Isangi, Tolaw, Yafira (Tshopo province, DR Congo): focus on baleinières' artisanal infrastructure. Subsequent evaluation of materials.
resulting in:
d. Four peer-reviewed publications
c. Nine workshop/conference papers and guest lectures
2. Main results:
- "Armateurs and 'real development'": Before becoming ship owners, most of baleinières' new owners were former itinerant traders in the local popular economy, who thus acquired experience in river navigation. The success of Kisangani's “transportants”, i.e. of bundle of actants combining baleinières and their owners in mutual dependence and conditioning, stems from a complex and intertwined interplay of circulations of materials, techniques, people, and know-how. The economic development achieved by baleinières occurs entirely without any public development policy and intervention. It thus qualifies as "real development" from below that is characterized by its impact rather than its public visibility. This development is manifested in a growing network of river transport that follows the needs of local populations, as well as in the gradual formation of a new group of entrepreneurs: the whaleboat owners (armateurs).
- With a view to better understand the challenges that baleinières and their operating actors face, the research has look at baleinières as sites of care and repair: the research has documented and analysed local efforts of restoration and replacement, both of the wooden body of the boat as well as of its propulsion system. It has become apparent that an entire sub-economy of recycling and repair is in the making, promising to improve the safety and the so far rather limited longevity of baleinières.
- Artisanal infrastructure: In search of the wider underlying causes of baleinières' unprecedented success, the research has uncovered that much of it relies on the interaction and skilful integration of mechanical, natural and muscular forces in the boats' riverine habitat: baleinière and their engines, the river and its current, as well as human bodies and their body techniques are skillfully entangled in a kinetic convergence of artisanal infrastructure, which renders the « hard » infrastructures inherited from the (post-)colonial past inadequate and obsolete.
- The frequent accidents of baleinières are in most cases cause by negligence rather than ignorance or poor maintenance.
a. Continuation of previous research and publication work
b. Three ethnographic fieldwork trips:
- Oct-Nov 2021: Kisangani, (Tshopo province, DRC): ethnographic research on baleinières' "armateurs" (owners) and the socio-economic impact of baleinières on the local economy.
- February 2022: in Kisangani and Basoko (Tshopo province): focus on boatbuilders and their craft, care and repair. Subsequent evaluation of materials.
- Jul-Aug 2022: Kisangani, Isangi, Tolaw, Yafira (Tshopo province, DR Congo): focus on baleinières' artisanal infrastructure. Subsequent evaluation of materials.
resulting in:
d. Four peer-reviewed publications
c. Nine workshop/conference papers and guest lectures
2. Main results:
- "Armateurs and 'real development'": Before becoming ship owners, most of baleinières' new owners were former itinerant traders in the local popular economy, who thus acquired experience in river navigation. The success of Kisangani's “transportants”, i.e. of bundle of actants combining baleinières and their owners in mutual dependence and conditioning, stems from a complex and intertwined interplay of circulations of materials, techniques, people, and know-how. The economic development achieved by baleinières occurs entirely without any public development policy and intervention. It thus qualifies as "real development" from below that is characterized by its impact rather than its public visibility. This development is manifested in a growing network of river transport that follows the needs of local populations, as well as in the gradual formation of a new group of entrepreneurs: the whaleboat owners (armateurs).
- With a view to better understand the challenges that baleinières and their operating actors face, the research has look at baleinières as sites of care and repair: the research has documented and analysed local efforts of restoration and replacement, both of the wooden body of the boat as well as of its propulsion system. It has become apparent that an entire sub-economy of recycling and repair is in the making, promising to improve the safety and the so far rather limited longevity of baleinières.
- Artisanal infrastructure: In search of the wider underlying causes of baleinières' unprecedented success, the research has uncovered that much of it relies on the interaction and skilful integration of mechanical, natural and muscular forces in the boats' riverine habitat: baleinière and their engines, the river and its current, as well as human bodies and their body techniques are skillfully entangled in a kinetic convergence of artisanal infrastructure, which renders the « hard » infrastructures inherited from the (post-)colonial past inadequate and obsolete.
- The frequent accidents of baleinières are in most cases cause by negligence rather than ignorance or poor maintenance.
The project documents and analyses a hitherto entirely unknown and ethnographically unexplored subject, whose numerous insights place the importance and the self-regulatory dynamics of endogenous development initiatives back on the table. It is expected that scholars of transport and mobility, but also development experts as well as local opinion leaders and politicians will abandon the often foregone conclusion that baleinières are "floating coffins", and that they rather reveal a great number of important dynamics within the local and rapidly changing popular economy. Especially the rethinking of transport infrastructure in light the findings about baleinières' infrastructural root causes ("artisanal infrastructure") will provoke and stimulate policy makers by valuing local efforts and achievements rather than despising them.