Head of institute in Moscow Vitaly Naumkin: Portrait of Soqotra’s first ethnographer (Part 2 of 3) [Archives:2003/07/Reportage]

BY SERGE D. ELIE
FOR THE YEMEN TIMES
Currently, he is a sought after commentator on Islamic affairs on television channels in the Gulf. Also, since his work on Soqotra he has published books on ethnic conflicts in central Asia, and numerous articles on a plethora of subjects. In the summer of 2003 a book will be published on the liberation struggle of South Yemen against the British entitled “The Red Wolves of the Yemen”.
Long before he could make the initial trip to Soqotra in 1974 he has been “dreaming” about it. His curiosity was aroused by two factors: First, the presence of an indigenous language, which was not a dialect of any known language. Second the survival of a unique culture due to isolation from external influences, and which allowed the testing of a number of anthropological hypotheses, such as the nature of the kinship system according to which the people of the island organized their communal relationships; the particularities as well as the resilience of their religious beliefs in the face of a generalized Arabization of the peninsula, among other topics.
More important was his desire to test the validity of a grand hypothesis he had formulated about the groups of people speaking what are called the Modern South Arabian Languages. He hypothesized that during the time of the ancient civilizations of South Arabia, the group of people who are the carriers of the languages of Mehri, Soqotri, and the languages of the tribes in Dhofar in Oman were nomadic bedouins roaming on the margin of these civilizations and who lived under conditions of semi-autarky, which partly explains the maintenance of their distinct languages.
His original plan was to study these three groups in their milieu from an ethno-linguistic and archaeological perspective in order to reconstruct their cultural ways of life on the periphery of the ancient civilizations, which could help elucidate the origin and preservation of their languages and thus of their cultural uniqueness.
Although he had taken a number of short trips to the island since 1974, the decisive moment arrived in 1983 when he led a three month expedition of a team of over a dozen Soviet scholars representing the following disciplines: Archaeology, physical and social anthropology, linguistics, medieval history, and a medical doctor. This initial mission was followed by yearly visits until 1991. The research missions to Soqotra were financed by the Soviet Academy of Sciences at the rate of sixty five thousand dollars a year.
The interest of this institution was not simply a matter of political solidarity with the newly constituted state in South Yemen, but based on a long tradition of Soviet scholarship on South Arabian civilizations, of which there were a few Russian scholars of world-renowned status. The political friendship between the two states only facilitated the pursuit of fieldwork to complement the library/archival research that had been done thus far.
When asked about the theoretical framework that informed the investigation conducted on the island, Professor Naumkin equivocally suggested that given the time that has elapsed since his initial investigation that led to the book Island of the Phoenix, and the changes that have occurred in the discipline of anthropology since, it was not useful to try to recollect the theoretical influences on the research. In fact, there was not one theoretical framework as the book is in essence a synthesis of all of the disciplines represented during the many research expeditions to the island.
Although he had full editorial control over the final product, he felt obliged to include the contributions of all his co-researchers. The sub-title of the book then is a misnomer, namely “An Ethnographic Study of the People of Socotra.” Instead it should have been, at least as I see it, “A Multidisciplinary Overview of the Socotra Archipelago.”
Whatever the framework it reflected the prevailing influences within the academic context of the Soviet Union at the time, in terms of the available theoretical lenses. These lenses showed a lack of awareness of the changing criteria of ethnographic knowledge, and of the more recent theoretical paradigms for the appropriation of ethnographic subjects.
In terms of his own methodological approach, he suggested that it was one driven by trial and error, as there was no precedent to follow beside a few indirectly relevant scholarly articles and travel books.
Key issues
I sought his opinions on a number of issues that were pertinent to the current situation in Soqotra: The first issue concerned the cultural geography of the island. That is, the “ethnic” composition of the population. He was not sure that ethnicity was an applicable concept. For, according to him, the economic base that would support the constitution and the maintenance of such social category was lacking.
In referring to an economic base he warned that he was using a Marxist analysis, as it was pertinent. I seized the opportunity to comment that there was no Marxist analysis whatsoever in his ethnography of Soqotra. He revealed that he was always more liberal than Marxist. He had abandoned his division of the population into a three-tiered “ethnospheres” each composed of a distinct racial typology and linked to the distinctive ecological milieus of the island and their livelihood systems.
Now he was deploying the conceptual capital of the social sciences in late modernity: There was great “fragmentation” within traditional social categories, and “multiple identities” were being formed, he asserted. There were hidden linkages between people that could no longer be contained within a traditional kinship grid.
All of these have to be uncovered and interpreted. Indeed, identities were undergoing a kind of enlargement process in Soqotra. This entails a self-identification process that was gradually emerging from a localized identity confined to the boundaries of clan or tribe, and that was being encompassed by one that currently straddles the communal (Soqotri) and the national (Yemeni). In spite of his hesitancy to deploy the concept of “ethnicity”, this process of self-identification suggested an evolving transition process from tribe to ethnicity and lastly incorporation into a national identity. The latter was still in progress as “inter-ethnic” contacts have only recently began to intensify between the islanders and the mainlanders and, increasingly, foreigners as tourists, researchers and UN experts.
The second issue was that of language. I inquired whether he had ever raised the issue with the government of South Yemen of formalizing Soqotri into a written language. He confirmed that he had discussed the issue at the highest state level that is with the Prime Minister and the President. Their answer was that the issue was not a priority at the time, as their political focus was on meeting basic material needs not cultural ones.
Moreover, there was some political sensitivity to the issue, as there was a potential for divided allegiance during the conflict with Oman in the 70’s since many Soqotrans were of Omani origins. Today, however, the situation has changed. There is not the slightest manifestation of interest, nor the faintest spark of desire, among Soqotrans for any kind of autonomous political entity that would be constituted as a loose association with the Yemeni state.
There is neither a historical nor a legal basis for any claim by another state against the legitimacy of the Yemeni state’s sovereignty over the island. Thus there seems to be no currently existing or potential threat that could induce political nervousness or security concerns about the Soqotri language being used as a pretext for claims to political autonomy.
Indeed, given the current emphasis on Soqotra as a touristic destination, preserving its cultural particularities would enhance the island’s assets. Accordingly, it would seem that the current context provides a strategic window of opportunity for the national authorities to consider the fate of the Soqotri language within the framework of a national cultural policy. The continued absence of such a policy, is contributing to the gradual disappearance of many assets in the national cultural patrimony, and not only in Soqotra.
The third issue was whether the model of a “segmentary society” – that is, a society characterized by strong tribal divisions and the use of violence as a means of conflict resolution- was applicable to Soqotra. Prof. Naumkin admitted that it was not. He noted the absence of bellicosity, and of its corollary institution the blood feud, among the tribes, the lack of a strict hierarchical system, and the small number of members within each tribe. His discussion of tribes in the ethnography of Soqotra did not make use of the conceptual repertoire associated with a segmentary society.
Indeed, he confessed that at the time of his research in Soqotra he was not aware of the literature on segmentary society. Thus an opportunity to invalidate the generalized applicability the segmentary model is assumed to have in the context of tribal societies was missed. Moreover the reasons why the introduction in Soqotra of the Sheikh system (Nidham Mashayekh) after unification seemed not to have found a conducive milieu and the consequences it has generated remain to be explored.
He became acquainted with the debate on segmentary societies in the middle of the 1990’s, and sought to make use of it in an article entitled “Tribe, Family and State in Mahra and Socotra” published in 1995 in Arabian Studies. In this article, however, the issue received short shrift. Thus an investigation into the attempt of the newly unified Yemeni state to replicate what was the political model of the northern part of Yemen into the Soqotra tribal landscape has yet to be undertaken.
That is, the attempt to affix a corporate identity linked to territorial boundaries to Soqotri tribes in order to turn them into administered entities has escaped scholarly attention and an opportunity to cast the segmentary paradigm to the dust bin of history, at least as far as Soqotra was concerned, was not seized.

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