text: Can Malians trust each other? | Bridges from Bamako
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  27 Responses to Can Malians trust each other?
  Bruce, Thank you again for your insightful and practical articles! Re this one, I am afraid that the optimistic conclusion to the article, that trust may find its way back into Malian society, will unfortunately probably not happen! Ethnic groups don't trust one another, politicians fuel that mistrust, personal selfishness and desire to succeed at others expense, is so inherent in members of society, that I think mistrust and ill feeling, and even hatred of others–like the rebels of the north against the government and military of the south, will ensure mistrust and even fighting continue! I would like to be optimistic–I am bt nature–but I also understand human nature!
  A bit of advice, Allan: never make claims about human nature to an anthropologist! Most of what's commonly understood to be "human nature," including our species' predisposition to aggression, or the notion that "different groups fight because they are different," turns out not to be supported by the evidence. As a result, I tend not to trust people who say they understand human nature.
  I'm going to reread this at least a couple more times as it raises so many interesting and complex ideas. Thanks very much for getting the info out to us.
  My blog actually draws a lot of complimentary comments like this one, but they almost always turn out to be spam. A vaguely worded comment that isn't specific to the post looks suspicious to me. I guess I'm not very trusting!
  I am a real. A RPCV, retired diplomat, and have commented one other time, when I wasn't positive. I didn't make a pithy, specific comment because, as I said, I wanted to reread it a couple of times. I'll not make you suspicious w complements again. So much for being nice!
  Please feel free to be nice! It's just that 98% of the time, when I get comments like yours ("Best thing I've read on this blog"), they turn out to be fake, composed by robots that can't even read, and I have to delete them. So I'm relieved to know that yours were written by an actual person who's actually read the posts in question!
  You definitely opened a pandora's box here. "Trust" is a highly complex and multidimensional construct. The term is often used in a variety of distinct, and not always compatible, ways. Therefore, determination of which society trusts and which one does not may be a tricky enterprise. You believe that it is "easy to find signs of pervasive mistrust" in Mali. I think the American society, despite its success in many areas, is not immune to the pervasiveness of mistrust. Just infuse the discourse of race in any aspect of American life, and mistrust will point its ugly head in every corner. You are right to point out that "Malians don't trust their political leaders, as shown in a 2013 poll. They don't trust their country's partners abroad. They don't trust courts or the police, whom they suspect of subverting justice for personal profit." Recent polls show that the majority of Americans do not trust their political leaders either. Needless to say that race and class seriously mitigate the trust people have in American courts and the police.
  Of course, I am digressing because you are talking about Mali, not the U.S. Let's then return to your subject matter. I am not saying there is no mistrust in Mali. I am simply saying the premise that links development to trust and underdevelopment to mistrust may need to be reassessed. To your credit, the Nigerian example in your text is a good start in debunking these myths. I also praise your skepticism about culturalist analysis even though it seems to me your own argument does not escape the culturalist trap.
  Finally, if the humanist philosophies and practices of mɔgɔya, adamadenya, and diatiguiya are important characteristics of the Malian society, your perceived pervasiveness of mistrust reveals a contradiction. In fact, there is an inherent element of trust in mɔgɔya, adamadenya, and diatiguiya. For example, Malians would readily open their homes and hearts to a stranger who shows up at their doorstep. Americans would likely be skeptical of such an uninvited presence because they do not trust strangers. A parent letting his or her child sit on a stranger's lap in a bus, or anywhere else for that matter, is very unlikely here. Yet one of your followers said this was exactly what happened to her in Mali. I am pretty sure you know her experience is not uncommon at all. Maybe trust and mistrust are two sides of the same coin, and they are both pervasive in every society. Food for thought!
  Thanks for this feedback, Amadou. I'm not entirely sure what my own argument about trust is…. On the one hand, I don't endorse attempts by Collier, Fukuyama or others to use it as an all-encompassing property of social cohesion, and I'm wary of how the concept seems to lend itself to culturalist analysis; Collier's discourse on "dysfunctional social models" sounds a lot like Huntington's discourse on dysfunctional cultures. On the other hand, I do suspect that generalized mistrust, particularly in the absence of strong institutions to ensure fair treatment, poses a significant social problem. As for mɔgɔya, adamadenya, and jatigiya, I know a lot of Malians who think that those qualities just aren't what they used to be. Maybe the erosion of those values plays into the loss of mutual regard–if such a loss indeed exists.
  I did not mean to say your "argument about trust" because you did not really make one. What you did make is an argument, or perhaps I should say a claim, about the "pervasiveness" of mistrust in Malian society. Interestingly, this claim is dropped in the middle of some crazy social and culturalist analyses around trust. I am glad to know you do not endorse those guys' ideas. The fact that you used them in a relatively lengthy way without making a real effort to distance yourself could be misleading. That was my concern. Despite some Malians' belief that our society has lost its fundamental qualities (i.e. mɔgɔya, adamadenya, and jatigiya), you cannot deny those attributes are still observable in Malian society. Therefore, we have a contradiction that invites critical anthropological and sociological analysis.
  While I think the way Collier and others use trust is misleading and based on erroneous assumptions, I wouldn't go so far as to call it crazy. As for my remarks about the pervasiveness of mistrust in Mali, I tried (not hard enough, apparently) to qualify them with references to the anecdotal nature of the evidence. At the end of the day I'm just not sure whether mistrust is more pervasive in Mali than, say, in the U.S. or Canada. But I think it's worth considering the possibility.
  I should also add that I found myself rather distressed by Collier's latest book. I consider his 2007 book The Bottom Billion a real gem, and in it he goes out of his way to refute culturalist explanations of poverty. "The most depressing reaction" to poverty, he wrote, "is for people to see the [impoverished] society as intrinsically flawed" (p. 85); he contended that poverty has nothing to do with a society's intrinsic qualities. I'm still trying to reconcile what he wrote back then with his more recent ideas on trust. Is trust intrinsic to society? Should we classify it as "cultural" or not? If we view it as the product of historical, political and economic forces (cf. his citation of the paper on the slave trade), perhaps we should consider it as separate from culture, and as extrinsic to boot. Then again, culture is also a product of historical, political and economic forces… so can any aspect of society be intrinsic at all? As you can see, I'm very far from drawing conclusions. My goal was just to raise some questions.
  Koro Niang, thank you for your clear arguments. I was about to comment but no need after you…
  I wanted to respond to the last comment you made in reaction to my post, but the reply icon did not show at the bottom of your text as it normally would. Therefore, I decided to use this other thread of our conversation to post my response.
  You wrote, "At the end of the day I'm just not sure whether mistrust is more pervasive in Mali than, say, in the U.S. or Canada. But I think it's worth considering the possibility."
  We are all entitled to our beliefs and opinions, which, for the most part, are function of our frames of positionality. It is always informative to question those frames when we talk about the "Other."
  Hi Bruce! Nice stuff — really enjoyed how you incorporated the take of other recent books into your analysis. Gonna chime in as a curious linguist here:
  Are you sure that people used the post-position 'ma' in the first clause of your Bamanan quote? I would expect it to be "Ne dalen tɛ n yɛrɛ NA, kuma tɛ mɔgɔ wɛrɛ MA" — might be hard to tell but the post-positions actually have different tones (mǎ vs lá/rá/ná) and in general they are not interchangeable. Just curious! Ala k'i sara.
  Coleman, I'm truly humbled by your level of knowledge! The short answer to your question is no, I'm not at all sure. The Bailleul dictionary says that the correct postposition for the verb "k'i da" (meaning to trust in something) is "la," so my "ma" above is apparently mistaken. To be honest, I mix up those postpositions all the time.
  I ni ce! Yeah, in Jula-speaking BF where it's frequently a second language there is a lot more variable use of post-positions too. Ni an sera ka ɲɔgɔn faamu, baasi tɛ yan!
  You are about the "Ma," but the phrase is actually "Ne dalen tɛ n yɛrɛ LA, kuma tɛ mɔgɔ wɛrɛ MA". "Na" would not make sense in this situation. However, if the speaker is addressing someone directly in the imperative form "Na" would be fine. It would be a contraction of "ne la" in the expression "da ne la" or dan'a which translates "trust me."
  Thanks Amadou. In reality it's one post-position that is phonologically conditioned so "la" and "na" both make sense but one may sound off based off the word that precedes it. In your example "da n na" the post-position is preceded by a nasal "n" and therefore gets realized with a nasal consonant also. In Bruce's quote I wasn't sure if it would be produced as "la" or "na" since the head noun is "n" and not "yɛrɛ". Both "la" and "na" sounded possible to me but I should have gone with your ear or my linguistic training and not my L2 intuitions!
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  I find Collier so unsatisfying and this particular analysis on trust backwards. Africans lack trust – never mind the hundreds of years of colonization and then re-colonization by corporations. It's trust! This whole trust shtick leaves me feeling that Collier is working out some personal issues and has pulled Africans into his mess it in a dangerously judgmental way!
  you'd better leave Collier out of this and direct your fire on Bruce. He is the one who brought Collier in to validate his on assumptions. I had some exchanges with him on the subject. I hope those made him think a little bit deeper, but I doubt it. You are peeling off a layer which I decided not to scratch at all. I just asked Bruce to look at his own yard, infuse a dose of race in his assessment of trust/mistrust, apply the measure to America, and then we could talk. He was not interested in doing that. He preferred to believe there was more mistrust in Mali than in the U.S.
  I don't think Bruce is so much giving Collier an unequivocal endorsement, as he is exploring what his new theory looks like applied to Mali. Even so, your challenge is fair and one can just look at the headlines: stop-and-frisk and Ferguson peppered with stories on how your refrigerator might kill you. A miracle we have a GDP! The more I think about Collier, the more his latest feels like veiled racism. Really – read a bit of Collier and then turn to Kipling – at least Kipling rhymes!
  Not sure why you draw these conclusions, Amadou. Your comments really did make me think about these questions in a new way, and I thank you again for posting them.
  My conclusions were based on the fact that you did not seem to budge an inch from your initial assumptions as shown through one of your closing statements: "At the end of the day I'm just not sure whether mistrust is more pervasive in Mali than, say, in the U.S. or Canada. But I think it's worth considering the possibility.." That said, I am glad to know that our conversation has led you to think about the questions. The point of these exchanges is to pull together diverse perspectives that would help all of us think more about the issues under scrutiny. It is my pleasure to be part of the journey..
  Bruce, one of the books you cite says that lack of trust is caused by inequality. Could American society's lack of trust of its traditional institutions of power (the federal government and wealthy corporations) be due in part from rising economic inequality in the states?
  The Spirit Level authors cast inequality as a driver of multiple other social ills–mistrust, poor health, etc. I find their argument plausible. So the answer to your question is Yes, rising inequality in the US could be driving lack of public trust toward institutions. But how could one prove such a relationship?
  Even before colonialism, at times more than half of West Africa's population lived under slavery in various forms. Like under the Songai empire. What kind of 'trust' do you assume existed in those days? Was the trust you write about intra-tribal or inter-tribal? Has there at any point in history been a culture of trust between touareg and bambara/songhai etc? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to talk about loyalty rather than trust? Or is this 'trust' thing something that started after decoloniazation and disappeared with globalization?
  Just trying to understand what all this is about. Thank you.
  These are very pertinent questions. I suppose part of what you're asking is what our unit of analysis should be. Here I'm considering Bamako specifically, and Malian society more generally in their present-day forms. Members of these groupings often say that trust obtained within them (which means, inter-ethnically) in the past more than today. If they're correct, how far back would that period of trust extend? When one looks at the history of the region, one can emphasize the cross-cutting alliances or the factionalization, raiding etc. We should be wary of efforts to idealize the precolonial past (which is a full-time project for a lot of Malians I know, who see "Maliba" as a template for the way things should be). Yet I do wonder whether my Malian friends are right that trust is on a downward trend that goes back, if not over centuries, then at least over generations.