The Life of Winds: Knowing the Namibian Weather from Someplace and from Noplace

Abstract

This article brings the two questions, how and what we know, into a productive dialog to explain the difference between indigenous and scientific environmental knowledge. In the case I explore, scientists and Damara pastoralists ( ǂnūkhoen) both relate the arrival of the rains in arid Namibia to the interplay between two winds.However, when it comes to explaining those observations, their accounts could hardly be more different. While Indigenous people understand the arrival of the rains as a play between loving and caring winds, scientists recognize them as a consequence of a shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Building on Heidegger's phenomenology, I explore the relationship between the knower and the known. My main theoretical intervention is to show that Damara people and scientists have distinct ways of encountering the world: from someplace and from noplace. In those encounters, the weather is either enmeshed in forms of use in everyday skilled activity for rural pastoralists, or enframed by technology for scientists. By encountering the weather from someplace and from noplace, the world turns into a different place for each. The engagement with these weather worlds shows how ways of knowing the environment can be multiple, but they are not mutually exclusive. [Indigenous knowledge, weather, phenomenology, ontology, Heidegger] RESUMEN Este artículo coloca las dos preguntas, cómo y qué sabemos, en un diálogo productivo para explicar la diferencia entre conocimiento ambiental científico e indígena. En el caso que exploro, científicos y pastoralistas damara ( ǂnūkhoen) ambos relacionan la llegada de las lluvias en laárida Namibia a la interacción entre dos vientos.Sin embargo, cuando se trata de explicar esas observaciones, sus versiones difícilmente podrían ser más diferentes.Mientras los Indígenas entienden la llegada de las lluvias como un juego entre vientos amorosos y cuidadosos, los científicos los reconocen como una consecuencia de un cambio de la Zona de Convergencia Intertropical. Basado en la fenomenología de Heidegger, exploro la relación entre el conocedor y lo conocido. Mi intervención teórica principal es para mostrar que los damara y los científicos tienen distintas formas de encuentro con el mundo: desde algún lugar y desde no lugar. En esos encuentros, las condiciones climáticas están o bien involucradas en formas de uso en la actividad calificada cotidiana para pastoralistas rurales, o enmarcadas por la tecnología para los científicos.Al encontrar condiciones climáticas desde algún lugar y desde no lugar, el mundo se convierte en un lugar diferente para cada uno. El envolvimiento con estos mundos de condiciones climáticas muestra cómo formas de saber sobre el ambiente pueden ser múltiples, pero no exclusivas mutuamente. [conocimiento Indígena, condiciones climáticas, fenomenología, ontología, Heidegger] ǃKHŌǃNAMIS Nē xoaǃâs ge |gam dîra, mâti tsî ǁkhāti tare-e da a ǂan ti hâra,ûitsama ǁgamǁares ǃnâ |khī-ū, tsî ǁnā |gaus ai ǃkharagagusib hîa ǃhaoǃnāsi ǂans tsîôaǃnâ ǂans tsîr...

What Does the Situation Say? Theorizing Multiple Understandings of Climate Change

“…These observations link up with ontological debates in environmental anthropology (Burman 2017;Goldman, Daly, and Lovell 2016;Knox 2015;Mészáros 2020;Schnegg 2019;Whitaker 2019). In my previous work, I have also shown that Namibian scientists and Damara people share many observations about the winds, the rains, and climate change.…”

“…ǂNūkhoen people have a detailed understanding of how and why it rains (Schnegg 2019). This knowing makes two humanized winds, one female (huri ǂoab) and one male (tū ǂoab), responsible for the rain.…”

“…The rain has a different use for people who have gardens than for those who do not. In this view, the practice of gardening partly determines what the rain is and also how it is explained (Ingold and Kurttila 2000;Schnegg 2019Schnegg , 2021a. Second, knowing resides in things.…”

Ethnographic Upscaling: Exploring and Testing Hypotheses Drawn from In-depth Ethnographic Findings in Spatially Continuous Cases

“…They differ in other aspects though: Herero households are more entwined with the monetary economy and male household members especially are often experienced with labor migration, while Himba herders are subsistence oriented and have little experience with the labor market (see Bollig 2006; Tönsjost 2013; Van Wolputte 2007). Damara people speak an entirely different language, their kinship organization is rather distinct from the other two communities, and labor migration, remittances, and social transfers are as important as natural resource-based strategies like herding (Greiner 2008; Pauli 2009; Schnegg 2009, 2019).…”

“…2 The approach we present in this article was developed in the Local Institutions in Globalized Societies (LINGS) project, which aimed to understand institutional solutions for managing water in arid Namibia (Schnegg 2016(Schnegg , 2018Schnegg and Linke 2015). At the ethnographic level, the historical dynamics of water management and the complex interweaving of power, kinship, and identity, as well as cultural norms and standards, were explored in ethnographic case studies of specific places (Linke 2017;Menestrey Schwieger 2015, 2017, 2019. On the basis of rich ethnographic data produced in a number of ethnographic field studies, several hypotheses about the distribution of institutional solutions and their connection with power distribution, wealth differentials, and embeddedness of a community in wider regional networks through labor, trade or educational measures, and the like were formulated.…”