Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum Ethnogovernmentality: The making of ethnic territories and subjects in Eastern DR Congo Kasper Hoffmann ⁎ University of Copenhagen, Denmark Ghent University, Belgium ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Ethnicity Governmentality Territory Subjectivity Conflict DR Congo ABSTRACT In this article I investigate colonial constructions of ethnicity and territory and their effects in the post-in- dependence period in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The core argument of the article is that the constructions of ethnicity and territory that are set in motion in struggles over political space in the Congolese conflicts are conditioned by what I call “ethnogovernmentality”, which denotes a heterogeneous ensemble of biopolitical and territorial rationalities and practices of power concerned with the conduct of conduct of ethnic populations. Through ethnogovernmentality colonial authorities sought to impose ordered scientific visions of ethnicity, custom, culture, space, territory, and geography, upon ambivalent cultures and spaces. I show that while ethnogovernmentality failed to produce the stability and order the colonial authorities sought, its ethno- territorial regime of truth and practice has had durable effects on people’s sense of self and on struggles over political space. 1. A dotted red line DuringfieldworkineasternCongoin2005Ishowedafadedcopyof a BA thesis submitted at a local university to one of my interlocutors. The title was “Essai d’histoire politique de Batembo” (Essay on the poli- tical history of the Batembo). The interlocutor was a former adminis- tratorinaCongolesearmedgroup,knownasthe Mai-Mai (water-water inKiswahili),whichhadfoughtagainstaRwandan-backedrebelgroup. Asheleafedthroughthethesishepausedearlyonatapagecontaining a barely visible map of his home district, Kalehe Territory. Then he began to restore the map. He retraced the boundaries; color-coded the administrative entities, added important toponyms, and retouched various other details until it looked like a map from a school atlas. He explained to me that the internal borders of Kalehe did not correspond totherealethnicbordersofthearea.Instead,heclaimedtheyhadbeen imposed by the colonial administration and subsequently by the Congolese state. He then added a new dotted red line and labeled it: “The likely boundary between Bunyakiri and Kalehe”. He explained to me that the territory of Kalehe should be divided into two different territories: Bunyakiri and Kalehe, because it contained two different ethnic groups: the Batembo and the Bahavu. He explained further that todayKaleheTerritoryisruledbytheBahavu,andthattheBatemboare marginalized and denied their right to ethnic autonomy, together with the benefits that would flow from this (see Map 1). Administrative maps are often objects of intense political struggles, especially in post-colonial context where they have been imposed on ambiguous and highly heterogeneous cultural and political landscapes. As the example above indicates issues related to ethnic territories and boundaries are highly contentious in the eastern parts of Democratic Republic of the Congo (henceforth: the Congo). Indeed, the issues of territory and ethnicity are at the crux of eastern Congo’s protracted violent conflicts as they intertwine with fundamental issues of citizen- ship rights and authority over territory, populations, and resources (Huggins, 2010; Mamdani, 2001; Mararo, 1997; Mathieu and Tsongo, 1998; Willame, 1997; Muchukiwa, 2006; Vlassenroot, 2002; Hoffmann et al., 2016). For instance, drawing on research on the conflict sur- rounding the creation of the Minembwe Territory, an ethnic territory fortheTutsipeopleknownastheBanyamulenge,JudithVerweijenand Koen Vlassenroot have shown that conflicts over territory, identity and authority interact in complex ways with patterns of mobilization, militarization and violence (Verweijen and Vlassenroot, 2015). How- ever, the issues of ethnicity and territory are also salient in national politics in the Congo. Following two regional wars (1996–1997; 1998–2003), a new constitution was adopted in 2006. It contained the framework of a decentralized state. By and large this model was a po- litical compromise between actors seeking a federal state model, and those, especially political actors from eastern Congo, which during the wars had been occupied by rebel groups supported by Rwanda and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.10.002 Received 28 January 2019; Received in revised form 25 September 2019; Accepted 2 October 2019 ⁎ Address: Department of Food and Resource Economics, Building: 1.102, Rolighedsvej 25, 1958 Frederiksberg C, Denmark. E-mail address: kh@ifro.ku.dk. Geoforum xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0016-7185/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Kasper Hoffmann, Geoforum, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.10.002