The Struggling State The Struggling State Nationalism, Mass Militarization, and the Education of Eritrea Jennifer Riggan TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS Philadelphia • Rome • Tokyo TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 www.temple.edu/tempress Copyright © 2016 by Temple University—Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education All rights reserved Published 2016 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Riggan, Jennifer, 1971– author. The struggling state : nationalism, mass militarization, and the education of Eritrea / Jennifer Riggan. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4399-1270-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4399-1272-0 (e-book) 1. Civil-military relations—Eritrea. 2. Militarization—Eritrea. 3. Militarism—Eritrea. 4. Teachers—Eritrea. 5. Education and state— Eritrea. 6. Nationalism—Eritrea. 7. Eritrea—Politics and government —1993– I. Title. JQ3583.A38R54 2016 320.9635—dc23 2015013666 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992 Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Ermias Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Everyday Authoritarianism, Teachers, and the Decoupling of Nation and State 1 1 Struggling for the Nation: Contradictions of Revolutionary Nationalism 33 2 “It Seemed like a Punishment”: Coercive State Effects and the Maddening State 57 3 Students or Soldiers? Troubled State Technologies and the Imagined Future of Educated Eritrea 89 4 Educating Eritrea: Disorder, Disruption, and Remaking the Nation 122 5 The Teacher State: Morality and Everyday Sovereignty over Schools 155 Conclusion: Escape, Encampment, and the Alchemy of Nationalism 193 Notes 211 References 221 Index 231 Acknowledgments have tried to write this book with honesty, integrity, and compassion. It has been a long process, and I am deeply indebted to many people who have provided support, insight, and advice along the way. Many IEritreans at all levels—Ministry of Education personnel, school directors, teachers, students, and others—were gracious enough to share their obser- vations, their analyses, their experience, and sometimes even their lives and friendship with me. All were working hard to make Eritrea the best country possible for its young people. I admire and deeply respect each individual I spoke with in the process of researching this book for all the struggles they took on. I am very grateful to all those who enlightened me with their visions, hopes, and criticisms. I especially thank the teachers and others who shared so much with me over the course of several years. I was fortunate to receive a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation, which was invaluable in the completion of this book. I also received funding from a Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship and a Fulbright/IIE student fellowship to complete this research. The National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation provided an opportunity for wonderful mentoring. I am particularly grateful to Aurolyn Luykx and Leslie Bartlett for their encouragement. The title of and several long segments from Chapter 2 are from Jen- nifer Riggan, “It Seemed like a Punishment”: Teacher Transfers, Hollow x | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Nationalism, and the Intimate State in Eritrea,” American Ethnologist 40, no. 4 (November 2013): 749–763. I thank Angelique Haugerud and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on the ideas that shaped that arti- cle, which are also integral to this volume as a whole. An earlier version of Chapter 3 was published as Jennifer Riggan, “Avoiding Wastage by Making Soldiers: Technologies of the State and the Imagination of the Educated Nation,” in Biopolitics, Militarism, and Development: Eritrea in the Twenty- First Century, edited by David O’Kane and Tricia Redeker Hepner, pp. 72–91 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009). I am grateful to the volume editors for their feedback on that work. Earlier versions of various chapters in this book were also presented at numerous conferences. I am indebted to panel organizers, discussants, fellow panelists, and audience members who provided feedback on this work. I also thank Sara Cohen at Temple Univer- sity Press for her enthusiasm for this project and the anonymous reviewers who provided insight on the draft manuscript. This book was shaped by comments, feedback, and conversations with an eclectic group of scholars and thinkers. I am grateful to my dissertation committee, a group of powerful intellectuals and fine human beings who supported me as a scholar and a person and have very much shaped who I am in both regards. Kathleen Hall is not only an intellectual role model but also a nurturing friend and mentor who inspires me through her ongo- ing search for meaningful, critical academic engagement with issues that we care about in the world. Over the years, Sandra Barnes has shaped my thinking through coursework and conversations, provided ongoing inspira- tion and encouragement, and continued to provide extremely supportive and helpful mentoring over the past decade. Guidance by Ritty Lukose helped shape much of my early thinking on this project; most notably, I am grateful to her for pushing me to focus explicitly on the relationship between the nation and state. I am very fortunate to have benefited from the support, encouragement, and guidance of three such accomplished anthro- pologists, each of whom brought a distinct perspective to my work. I am also blessed to have the support of many friends who are distin- guished intellectuals and excellent editors. My thinking on teachers and, indeed, my decision to focus on teachers, would never have taken its current form without my long conversations with Aiden Downey about his brilliant work on teachers in the urban United States. He and I exchanged lengthy e-mails across the world as I typed up field notes with a view of the Red Sea and he wrote about schools on the East Coast of the United States while looking out over snowy Montana. Maia Cucchiara and Dana Holland both generously edited, in its entirety, much earlier versions of what became this ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | xi book. Both have always been wonderful friends, and Maia is a great writing companion. The book could not have come to fruition without consistent support from Thea Abu El-Haj, with whom I met regularly during the writing phase. She read the entire manuscript as it evolved, sometimes in multiple forms, and had a marvelous way of telling me when to scale back and when to stop. Hilary Parsons Dick, Cati Coe, and Christy Schuetze read several chapters in their near final form and helped me hone them into finished work. Over the years, a multidisciplinary, eclectic group of colleagues read chapters and helped me work through ideas. I am particu- larly grateful to colleagues at Arcadia: Samer Abboud, Angela Kachuyevski, Sonia Rosen, Peter Siskind, and Amy Widestrom, who read portions of the manuscript. My entire department has been exceptionally supportive in helping me complete this work. I have also been fortunate to have many wonderful talented research assistants at Arcadia. I especially thank Hope Kwiatkowski, Josephine Lippincott, and Kate Slenzak for their attention to detail and copyediting. Scholars who work on Eritrea are a small, intimate, and supportive group. Victoria Bernal, Tricia Redeker Hepner, and Tekle Woldemikael in particular provided professional and personal advice, regularly exchanged information and ideas, and helped me work through the idiosyncrasies of doing research on Eritrea. I also benefited from conversations small and large with fine scholars who study Eritrea—too numerous to mention here—and I am thankful for all the insights that resulted. Amanda Poole in particular has supported and inspired me in a multitude of ways over the past fifteen years. She is a true “multipurpose” friend and colleague for whom I am very grateful. Finally, I appreciate the support and sacrifices of my husband, Ermias; our children, Yonathan and Samuel; my parents, Ann and John Riggan; my brothers, Matt Riggan and Francis Vargas; and my sisters-in-law, Erin Own and Kim Vargas, all of whom may have grown tired of my working on this book but without whom I could not have completed it. During the years of completing this project, my two sons were born. In so many ways (perhaps not all of them welcome), this book has been a part of their lives from the start. Raising two small children while writing this book would not have been possible without my loving and involved family. I thank you all. The Struggling State Introduction Everyday Authoritarianism, Teachers, and the Decoupling of Nation and State Assab, May 2000 eacher Ezekiel woke up and found that his head was resting on a pile of Kalashnikovs. He could feel the rocking motion of the boat and the sun beating down on him, his body soaked in sweat. Squinting, The opened his eyes and scanned his belongings; everything he owned of any worth was in a pile around him. Next to his head, two feet, wearing shida, the black plastic sandals emblematic of Eritrean fighters, were anchored on top of his radio. Opening his eyes a little wider in the bright sunlight, he looked up at the fighter who was scanning the crowded boat, calling for someone. The fighter waved, having found his friend, and then stepped down from the radio and moved on, never even noticing Ezekiel waking up from much-needed sleep. Ezekiel put his head back down on his Kalash- nikov pillow and closed his eyes. Three days earlier, it had been a typical blazing hot day in late May in Eritrea’s port town of Assab. Having finished marking exams, Ezekiel and his friend had been on their way to the cinema to have a drink and watch a movie to celebrate the end of the school year.