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An Island in between: Malta,Identity and AnthropologyJon P. MitchellPublished online: 19 Nov 2007.

To cite this article: Jon P. Mitchell (1998) An Island in between: Malta, Identityand Anthropology, South European Society and Politics, 3:1, 142-149, DOI:10.1080/13608740308539529

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REVIEW ESSAY

An Island in between: Malta, Identity and Anthropology

JON P. MITCHELL

Malta is the southern-most of the southern European nation-states, lying on the very fringes of the region. As a consequence of its location, the politics of contemporary Malta are dominated by questions of identity -mainly whether Malta should join the EU and be considered European, or whether the Maltese are better served by adopting a more independent position in the central Mediterranean, and acting as a bridge between its northern and southern shores. The general elections of 1992 and 1996 saw the issue of European Union accession rise to prominence. The former established an apparent mandate for Malta’s entry to the Union, that was subsequently withdrawn by the latter, following controversy over the introduction of VAT and threats to traditional hunting practices. Both issues loom large in popular perceptions of Europe.

Questions of identity preoccupy the Maltese population, and its academic output. A number of recent publications have emerged, bringing together scholars from different disciplines to pin down Maltese identity (Cortis 1989; Fiorini and Mallia-Milanes 1991; Frendo 1994). Inevitably, the publications have been dominated by historians. Eric Hobsbawm once remarked that if nations are the modern world’s heroin addicts, then historians grow the opium. It is they who provide the raw material to fuel the fires of identity politics - in Malta’s case, providing the evidence for and against Maltese European identity.

The anthropological study of national identities, and particularly the role of history in their production, is an important and burgeoning field. Yet, it has not yet fully arrived on Maltese shores. This observation was made by Paul Sant Cassia in his History, Anthropology and Folklore in Malta (1993). One of the few indigenous Maltese anthropologists, he both summarized the development of anthropology in Malta to that date, and set out his agenda for the future. To a large extent, that agenda is still open. The key area of identity remains to be fully investigated.

South European Society & Politics, Vol.3, No.1 (Summer 1998) pp.142-149 PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

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Since 1993 a number of key developments have taken place in anthropology within, and on the subject of, Malta.1

MALTA’S ANTHROPOLOGICAL TRADITION

It is axiomatic that anthropology, although perhaps not the hand-maiden of colonialism, nevertheless developed in its wake. Malta was a British colony from 1800 to 1964, but it was not until the very last decade of this period that it became an object of anthropological study. Sant Cassia links this lack of interest to Malta’s ambiguous position between the known ‘us’ of the metropolitan homeland and the unknown and inexplicable ‘other’ of the other colonized territories - places which warranted, for example, the development of the International African Institute as an institution dedicated to British understanding of indigenous African cultures.

From the start, Malta seemed more explicable - a society in which the elites were literate, which had an institutionalized legal system, and had strong historical links with the Catholic church. Prior to British colonization, Malta had been an effective theocracy under the Knights of St. John (1530-1798). All this made Malta less of an ‘other’ and so less of an object for the anthropological gaze. In any case, the British interest in Malta was primarily as a naval base. It was a situation for which Maltese historians have coined the term ‘Fortress Colonization’. So long as strategic interests were not under threat, the colonial administration was happy to remain ignorant of local life. The need to understand the local population was less pressing than in other parts of the empire.

Consequently, anthropology in Malta had to wait until the last few years of colonialism, at a time when - partly because of decolonization -anthropology as a whole is said to have come ‘part-way home’. The development of European, and particularly Mediterranean, anthropology in the 1950s and 1960s marked a period during which anthropology was redefining its object. Governments of former colonies became increasingly intolerant of anthropologists’ attentions, and anthropologists themselves began to realize that European cultures were just as interesting as ‘exotica’.

THE BOISSEVAIN LEGACY

During this period, Malta came under the anthropological spotlight, with the pioneering work of Jeremy Boissevain in the late 1950s (Boissevain 1965, 1969). His main concerns became central to the Europeanist-Mediterraneanist oeuvre. His work centred on the

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relationship between Maltese ritual and political factionalism. Examining two Maltese villages, he observed a kind of competition -known as pika - between supporters, organizers and enthusiasts of different, local patron saints’ feasts (festi, sing. festa). Pika led to intense symbolic rivalry manifest in ever-exuberant spending on the main ingredients of festa: fireworks and brass band marches. It also at times led to direct, violent confrontation between different festa factions, or festa partiti.

Reading between the lines, the festa partiti can be seen as a symbolic or ritualized manifestation of party-political antagonisms. In a situation where most villages - and some parishes - were divided into two partiti, Boissevain observed that whilst one tended to be ideologically oriented towards the church and supportive of traditional bourgeois authority figures (lawyers, doctors, priests), the other tended to be more radical, even anti-clerical, and socialist in orientation. The division between festa partiti, then, mapped on to ideological and party-political divisions between the right-wing Nationalist Party and the left-wing Malta Labour Party.

Such antagonism persists in the 1990s. The grass-roots support for the two main political parties is still oriented towards different festa organizations, but the Nationalist-Labour division can be taken a step further, to incorporate identity politics at a national level. Thus, a pro-clerical stance can be interpreted as support for emphasizing Malta’s long-established links with Europe. Indeed, it was the pro-church Nationalist Party that in 1990 tabled Malta’s application to join the EU (then the EC). In contrast, 1990s anti-clericalism is coterminous with anti-Europeanism. The Malta Labour Party, which remains cynical of the Catholic church’s power and influence in Malta, is similarly opposed to strong links with Europe, and since coming to power in October 1996, seems to have gone some way to establishing tighter links with Libya.

As well as the relationship between ritual, religion and politics, Boissevain’s other legacy was a concern with the personalized politics of patronage and clientelism. In its various forms, this has been seen as the quintessential southern European political culture (Gellner and Waterbury 1977). Like the politicization of ritual, and the ritualization of politics, this type of personalized politics is as common in 1990s Malta as it was in the 1960s. However, it is something about which Maltese are increasingly self-conscious. In the past few years, commissions against clientelistic practices have been established, and public opinion is damning of cases that are unearthed. Yet, there is a profound sense of inevitability too - a feeling that ‘this is the way we Maltese do things - it will never be stamped out’. Again, this can be linked to a politics of identity, this time in its relationship to ideas about development.

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The concept of patronage, as used by anthropologists, has been criticized for once more setting up a distinction between the (stereotyped) notion of bureaucratic rationality prevalent in the North and West, and (similarly stereotyped) non-bureaucratic and even corrupt practices in the South and East. Where ‘we’ have rational, disinterested bureaucracies, it is argued, ‘they’ have corrupt ones based on patronage and clientelism. Moreover, the difference between the two is couched in the idiom of development, itself derived ultimately from Weber - ‘they’ have not ‘yet’ developed a fully functional bureaucratic ethic.

Problematic though this argument is, it is nevertheless one into which indigenous Maltese arguments about bureaucracy, politics and corrupt practices also fall. The issue surfaces in debates among intellectuals, in politicians’ rhetoric and in everyday discourse. By castigating themselves for their inability to conduct politics in a disinterested, non-personalized way, Maltese themselves fall into a model whereby the ideal of bureaucratization, ultimately based on an image of European rationality, is held up as a future hope. This ideal would play Malta into a northern and western politico-cultural sphere. Once more, conflict emerges between the interests which herald this rationality as an attainable ideal for future Maltese politics, and those which are more sceptical - whether European identity should be sought in political life, or whether the Maltese ‘Mediterranean’ character makes this impossible.

Boissevain’s early work - and my observations on it - are ‘from the outside in’, as it were: in the classic mode of an external observer treating a foreign culture as their object of study. Since Boissevain, a handful of other scholars, mainly from Britain and the USA, have also worked in Malta. Their topics of research range from indigenous music and its relation to politics, patronage and clientelism in the fishing industry, and the position of women in the Maltese urban centres (Herndon 1971; Lafayette 1996; Mitchell 1996; O’Reilly Mizzi 1981; Wilhelmsen 1976).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIGENOUS MALTESE ANTHROPOLOGY

Over the years, an indigenous Maltese anthropology has also developed. British-trained scholars, such as Paul Sant Cassia and Ranier Fsadni initially focused their attentions comparatively, on other Mediterranean societies - principally Cyprus, Tunisia and Libya. Latterly, though, they also turned their attention, along with a new generation of anthropologists, to Malta itself (Fsadni 1993; Sant Cassia 1989; 1993).

The impetus for this was the development in the early 1990s of an anthropology programme at the University of Malta. The University has

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a long history, dating back to the late sixteenth century when the Jesuits established a college in Malta. It remained a fairly small establishment until the early 1990s, since when it has expanded rapidly, not only in absolute student numbers, but also in terms of the degree programmes on offer.

Sant Cassia took on the initial task of setting the anthropology programme on track. He established a BA programme, and the provisions for higher degrees - at both master’s and doctoral levels. The programme has had frequent input from overseas scholars, and all courses are assessed to international standards through links with other European departments. The list of visiting scholars which the University has entertained includes Colette Piault, Jack Goody, Keith Hart, Bob Layton, Michael Carrithers and Judith Okely. Since 1994, the programme has been run by Sybil O’Reilly Mizzi, an American with Maltese connections, who has made the longitudinal study of women in urban Malta her life’s work.

Institutionally, anthropology has been concerned with establishing its position alongside a somewhat stronger sociological tradition, and a well-established and influential historical establishment. The Journal of Mediterranean Studies, published from Malta since 1991, has been important in pursuing this goal. Interdisciplinary in scope, the journal has encouraged a cross-fertilization of the disciplines and published some important work in, for example, performance studies and cultural history (Cremona 1995; Cassar 1993). As part of its expansion, anthropology teaching at the University of Malta has inserted itself into economics, legal studies and medicine - providing a fresh look at familiar issues for students in those fields. Since 1995, it has organized an annual conference. The themes of the three conferences to date reflect the theoretical preoccupations of the Maltese anthropological world, and the extent to which this local, indigenous tradition has built on the early work of Boissevain and others.

RECENT TRENDS IN MALTESE ANTHROPOLOGY

The first annual conference dealt with the theme of national development. This reflects a deep concern not only with modernization at a political and cultural level, but also with economic develoment and its consequences. A central issue in contemporary Malta is its dependence on the tourist economy. This sector is economically insecure, dependent as it is on the fashions and affluence of overseas consumers.

Seen in the 1960s as the economic saviour of independent Malta,

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tourism developed apace through the succeeding generations and peaked in the early 1990s, with a number of consequences. First, the Maltese shoreline has become increasingly over-developed, with old town houses and undeveloped areas being replaced by modern high-rise hotels. Second, several historical and archaeological sites have been targeted as tourist development areas. Third, and consequently, relations between the Maltese people and tourists themselves, as well as tourist developers, have become increasingly strained. A number of scholars, including Jeremy Boissevain, have begun to focus their attentions on the economic, environmental and social consequences of tourist development.

The second annual conference focused on changing religious beliefs in the modern world (Clough and Mitchell forthcoming). Featuring ethnographic examples from a wide range of societies, the conference was able to set up a comparative framework within which to examine the processes occurring within Malta - particularly the simultaneous rise of ‘new’ Christian religious movements and other types of spiritualism -‘new age’, satanism, witchcraft. This work represents a departure from and development of earlier work on orthodox Catholicism and the ritual tradition of festa, to encompass the expansion of the charismatic movement and various other forms of non-orthodox devotion. Subsequent related work has focused on the hoary question of structural causality in religious transformation - to what extent changing religious beliefs can be seen as a consequence of changes at a sociopolitical or economic level. Can the apparent rise in personalized religion, and the prevalent belief that satanism is rife in Malta, be seen as a result of the country’s marginal and potentially unstable position in the modern world system?

The third conference represented a development of O’Reilly Mizzi’s work on urban women in Malta. It put together scholars to discuss the position of women in the Mediterranean. A number of themes emerged, but particularly the complexities of tradition and emancipation in the contemporary Mediterranean situation. A central problem was whether or not the ‘traditional’ female roles of motherhood and homemaking can be seen as equally fulfilling as ‘modern’ career womanhood - particularly in a situation where traditional roles are highly socially valued. A profound ambivalence emerged about the process of ‘modernizing’ women’s roles, which mirrored ambivalence about the development process more generally.

The concerns of these three conferences confirm that Malta feels itself ambivalently situated, in a number of key areas, between the apparent ‘modernity’ of the European world, and the ‘traditional’ societies of what one might want to call the Mediterranean. This

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ambivalence at a socio-cultural level is compounded by economic and political marginality, and fuels the national debate about identity.

CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS

Besides these preoccupations, Maltese anthropology has also cast itself a wider net. At undergraduate and graduate level, important work is being done both within Malta and elsewhere. Among the current projects are an examination of rural change in Syria, a project on community and ecology among Arizona ‘cowboy’ cattle-herders, and an exploration of narrative and authority in the Maltese legal system.2

The suggested research on identity and the nation has also got underway. Two important projects have been conducted on Maltese minority groups. The first on the well-established Greek community, the second on Sindhi Indians (Sammut 1993; Falzon 1996). There is still more work to be done at this level, particularly on the Arabic community in Malta, and the small but growing number of refugee groups. In terms of Maltese identity itself, work is being done on historical consciousness and family memory among the established Maltese elite, on the mobilization of political rhetoric in the party politics of identity, and the dynamics of the public sphere as a medium for identity politics. This work can, and should, be taken further.

The creative construction of identity comes as a response to particular politico-cultural conditions. In contemporary Malta, it has emerged in the context of a post-colonial state that is economically and politically marginal to both the European Union and the Arab world. Richard Handler (1995) has recently argued that one of the dilemmas of researching questions of identity is that we tend to ‘deconstruct’ those identities just at a time when marginal societies are appealing to them for strength. Despite this dilemma, it is a task that should be undertaken, if we are to understand the situation of countries such as Malta, and more fully comprehend the dynamics of South European politics and society.

NOTES

1. I conducted two years of fieldwork in Malta’s capital, Valletta, from 1992 to 1994 (Mitchell 1996, forthcoming).

2. Mark Falzon, University of Cambridge, is working on the politics of identity in Europe; Nadia Theuma, University of Malta, is working on tourism in Malta; J-J Vella, University of Malta, is working on Syrian rural economy; David Zammit, University of Durham, is working on Maltese lawyers; and Louise Zerafa, University of Malta, is working in Arizona.

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