Lowland-Highland Divide (Asase Lewa)
In the geography and social and cultural anthropology of Asase Lewa, the Lowland-Highland Divide refers to the historical, geographic, and social divide between the Asalewan Lowlands and Asalewan Highlands. In a geographic and environmental sense, the Asalewan Lowlands is characterized by lower elevation, closer proximity to the Transvehems Sea, and is traditionally covered by subtropical and tropical woodland and savannah cover, whereas the Asalewan Highlands is characterized by higher elevation, greater distance from the Transvehems Sea, and, as a result of largely being on the windward side of the Northern Bahian Mountains, enjoys high levels of precipitation that result in most of the Highlands being covered by thick broadleaf forest}}, including dense rainforest and cloud forest in some areas. Socially and politically, the term refers to social divides between the Lowlands, traditionally characterized by significantly higher levels of state capacity, social stratification, urbanization, sedentary agriculture, and high levels of agricultural fertilty relative to the Highlands, which prior to the modern period was largely characterized by stateless societies or decentralization, greater social equality, and, in many though not all parts of the Highlands, quasi-nomadic migratory patterns, either thanks to the greater practice of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, silvopastoralism, or swidden agriculture. Though the majority of modern-day Asase Lewa's land area is considered to be a part of the Highlands, population was traditionally relatively evenly divided between the Highland and Lowland regions owing to far greaater population density and agricultural fertility in the latter; in the modern-day, however, substantial human migration and urbanization has resulted in the vast majority of Asalewans living in the Lowlands.
The term Lowland-Highland divide was coined by the late nineteenth-century and early-twentieth century Estmerish anthropologist Percival Brian Enright, primarily in reference to the inability of governments based in the Lowlands—either pre-colonial empires and Houregic states, or the colonizers of Asase Lewa themselves, whether Paretian or Estmerish—to exert substantial political or social control over the Highlands. Whereas the Asalewan Lowlands became politically dominated by a succession of centralized empires and Houregic states as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries, throughout the pre-colonial period and into the early colonial period, the Asalewan Highlands remained dominated by non-state forms of social organization, most prominently an egalitarian, communal form of village organization similar to the medieval, pre-Irfanic system of Sâre, as well as secret societies, tribal bands, age sets, and the ojeṣẹbun system.
Though Enright mostly restricted his observations to pre-colonial societies, this trend of greater state control in Lowland areas continued into the colonial periods; the colonial Estmerish state, benefitting from greater state control and substantially greater agricultural fertility, successfully reoriented the Lowland economy towards the production of cash crops under a plantation economy in which White colonists became the primary property-owning class, but, despite substantial sedentarization and villagization campaigns, failed to uproot traditional social structures or orient the economy away from subsistence agriculture and towards cash crop production.
Similarly, although both Lowlanders and Highlanders largely supported the Asalewan Revolution by the time of its victory in the 1950s, albeit for different reasons—Lowlanders generally supported it out of resentment at intense economic inequality and racialized labor exploitation, and Highlanders out of fears that colonial villagization and enclosure would uproot traditional social structures—Lowlander and Highlander reactions to the post-colonial socialist state have been very different, with Lowlanders generally being much more supportive of efforts at centralization and modernization whereas Highlanders were generally much more skeptical of such efforts. With the post-colonial socialist state establishing stable state control over the Highlands, rates of nomadism or semi-nomadism substantially declining, and widespread migration from the Highlands to the Lowlands, some have argued that the divide is not as significant as it once was.
Nevertheless, social outcomes between the Lowlands and Highlands remain very distinct from one another, with traditional hallmarks of economic development such as GDP per capita and urbanization being roughly twice as high in those areas traditionally considered part of the Lowlands as those considered part of the Highlands and the Lokpaland insurgency, arguably the most extreme manifestation of Highlander resistance to post-revolutionary centralization, remaining a low-intensity conflict in one part of the Highlands. Consequently, the term remains widespread in Asalewan anthropology and has become commonly-used in Asalewan politics and society as a whole, which features frequent discourse about uneven development between the Highlands and Lowlands and has seen many political organizations having explicitly formed to defend Highlander interests since the end of single-party rule during the Protective-Corrective Revolution. Since the late twentieth century, the Lowland-Highland divide has also become a popular case study amongst anthropologists interested in challenging traditional narratives that most peoples are attracted to state control, settled agriculture, or modernity. This is due both to extensive Highlander resistance to the socialist state and Section's modernist projects in the late twentieth century, and especially, because of substantial migration by many peoples from the Lowlands to Highlands during the pre-colonial period—such as the Awari branch of the Gundaya, Asuntifi branch of the Ashana, and the Ajaizo branch of the Anlo—to escape features of Lowlander life such as the Transvehemens slave trade, excessive taxation, or forced labor.
History
Origins and early Houregic period
- Origins of the divide, i.e., the birth of states in the Lowlands while stateless society and Sâre survives in the Highlands
- Consistent trend of many Lowlander states being established due to invasion or raids by Highlanders suffering from overpopulation (Ibn Khaldun moment)
Lowland-Highland divide and the Transvehemens slave trade
- Lots of people migrate from Lowlands to Highlands (most prominently the Ajaizo, Asuntifi, and Awari) to try to escape the slave trade or invasion by hostile states, are partly successful
Toubacterie
- Estmere finds conquering Lowland regions generally easier than Highland regions (parallels to the conquest of states being easier than non-states during much of the Scramble for Africa)
- Estmere establishes plantations and cash crops in the Lowlands, kinda tries in the Highlands but agricultural fertility is lower and establishing state control is harder
Asalewan Revolution
- Revolution and other anti-colonial movements like Abidemism start in the Lowlands and have basically Lowlander grievances (i.e., the grievances of urban and plantation wage laborers), but spreads to the Highlands when it becomes much more tenable to sustain guerrilla warfare there
- Highlanders resent attempts to reorient the economy towards cash crops or marketize it
- Colonial state embarks on Strategic Hamlet-style villagization and sedentarization campaigns to try to quell the insurgency, this begins to affect the Highlands' demographics but only increases support for the Section
Post-colonial period and today
- Lowlanders (or at least the ones that aren't part of the upper classes that get kicked out) pretty much entirely on board for the Section's modernist and centralizing ambitions
- Highlanders are much more resistant, friendly to the Section at first, especially land reform, but mostly resent attempts to crush Fetishism, tribal chiefs, and secret societies, place local assemblies under centralized authority, engage in primitive accumulation to fuel modernization, etc.
- The Section begins staandardizing languages along a single variety, which is largely urban and usually Lowlander (in the constituent republics where there are both lots of Lowlanders and Highlanders)
- Highlanders heavily participate in the Protective-Corrective Revolution because of their grievances with the new government and are pretty pivotal in pushing for government by workers' councils (understood by many of them as the same thing as their traditional village assemblies), despite being ideologically very different than Edudzi and the urban rebels and radicals that dominate the Revolution
- During the 1970s, Highlanders (especially pygmies) enjoy some concessions and increased power, particularly on the local and regional levels, but especially nationally the Section and urban/Lowlander radicals still dominate the country and push forward a much more modernist and radical agenda (most famously, up to family abolition in some areas!) than most Highlanders want
- It's possible that communal dining/living/sleeping arrangements in some areaas are de facto modeled after age sets? So this + the communal nature of childcare and social life in the Highlands (or really Asase Lewa in generaal) means that communalization and traditional society could be reconciled quite a bit in some areas (???)
- Substantial protests by Highlanders helps contribute to the Psychological-Technological Revolution in 1981, after a couple years of intense political struggles between Highlander groups, the military/bureaucracy, and radical urban workers' councils that compromises that lead to the semi-liberalization of Asase Lewa also result in governance of Highlander areas getting more decentralized in practice
- But still lots of resentment in some areas, leading to the Lokpaland insurgency by the early 1990s
- Ultimately by the 1990s/2000s the inevitable march of urbanization and migration means that urbanites and Lowlanders become clear demographic majorities, Highlander communities are really declining a lot by this point (stagnating population at a time when AL is still growing rapidly, aging since young people leave, etc.) if they aren't already subsumed into the rest of Asalewan society
- Nowadays, most discussion about the Lowland-Highland divide in Asase Lewa is less about centralization, compromises about that having already been forged in the 1970s/1980s, and more about equalizing economic development between Lowlands and Highlands
Anthropological perspectives
Percival Brian Enright
- Comes up with the idea but since he's a turn-of-the-century anthropologist, is probably kinda racist or at least biased in favor of Lowlander society
Contemporary anthropologists
- Mostly maintaining the concept, but focusing a lot on the ways Lowlanders have migrated to the Highlands to escape state control or the slave trade, or the ways contemporary Highlanders have resisted state control
Criticism
Though, in the modern day, discussion about the Lowland-Highland divide has become a ubiquitous feature of Asalewan political life and is frequently studied by anthropologists, many other anthropologists and thinkers have increasingly criticized the term for being a misnomer, and for overstating social and political differences between Lowland and Highland societies. Such criticisms have been largely inaugurated by half-Asalewan, half-Estmerish anthropologist and philosopher John Kwamena Nyarko's 1997 book Kinship and Society in Pre-Colonial Asase Lewa, which argued that the term had become "overused, and obscure the real distinctions between state and non-state societies during pre-colonial Asase Lewa." Nyarko argued that the term was essentially a misnomer, because geographically lowland and highland distinction tended, but did not always, exhibit state or non-state societies in the pre-colonial period. As a key case study, he discussed the society of the Asuntifi branch of the Ashana; though the Asuntifi traditionally resided in a in a geographically low-lying part of Ashanaland, the Asuntifi have been considered—by Enright and other anthropologists, and by mass Asalewan opinion—an essentially Highlander ethnic group, because the Asuntifi were essentially stateless in the pre-colonial period, did not engage in substantial cash crop production in the colonial period, and exhibited heavy resistance to centralization and substantial out-migration, both rural-urban and rural-rural, to other regions in the post-colonial period.
Nyarko dubbed the Asuntifi and similar groups "Lowland Highlanders," and classified Lowland Highlanders as hybrid groups that lived in geogrpahically low-lying areas that were, for reasons such as low agricultural fertility or a prevalence of thick forest cover, especially by coastal mangroves and lowland rainforests, geographically unfavorable to state control. Nyarko also argued that Lowland Highlanders ought to be considered a hybrid group because they were frequently related to Lowlander ethnic groups and split off relatively recently, in the Asuntifi's case having split off from the rest of the Ashana and migrated to Asuntifiland during the eighteenth century. Other anthropologists have contested some of Nyarko's claims; the Asalewan anthropologists Kow Sika, for example, noted that geographically highland regions largely, if not entirely, correspond to those areas with pre-colonial stateless societies, and that many other highlander groups that split off from lowlander ethnic groups relatively recently, such as the Ajaizo and the Awari, migrated to highland areas rather than low-lying areas unfavorable to state control.
In addition to Nyarko's argument that the Lowland-Highland Divide does not adequately capture the influence of Lowland Highlanders such as the Asuntifi, Nyarko also argued that Enright incorrectly attributed certain forms of social organization—especially non-kinship organizations, such as age sets and to an extent secret societies and sodalities—to Highlander culture and statelessness. Conversely, Nyarko argued that such forms of organization were in fact widespread through Asase Lewa and indeed much of Bahia, noting the presence of sodalities, or secret societies, in other parts of Bahia such as Mabifia, and the presence of forms of non-kinship social association and age sets amongst Lowlander ethnic groups, especially some tribes of the Gundaya. Nyarko argued, therefore, that the presence of such non-kinship forms of organization had little to do with state control or statelessness in pre-colonial Asase Lewa and were thus not an important part of the Lowland-Highland divide. However, in defense of Enright's view and other discussion of the Lowland-Highland divide, some anthropologists such as Sika have argued that non-kinship forms of organization, especially secret societies and to a lesser extent age sets, assumed a central role in stateless, Highlander society whereas they played a much more minor role in state-controlled, Lowlander society. While the extensive interconnections and migration between the Asalewan Lowlands and Highlands meant that the two regions had many social and anthropological commonalities, Sika argued, the forms of organization that underpinned all others—village councils, secret societies, and to some extent age sets in the Highlands, kinship and states in the Lowlands—were drastically different.
See also
- Sodality, a term for Bahian secret societies, especially in Mabifia, that are common in the Asalewan Highlands
- Valley state, a similar division between lowland and highland in the anthropology of Southern Coius