bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Persistence of Subsistence and the Limits to Development Studies: The Challenge of Tanzania
Authors: Waters Tony 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThere are two general approaches to assessing what is known as ‘development’. First, there are classical accounts focusing on Europe's development during the industrial revolution. They describe how urban areas expanded at the expense of the social and economic resources of the rural areas, disrupting an independent subsistence peasantry. A major consequence is that today all Europeans are dependent socially, politically, and economically on the modern capitalist system. The second (more common) approach to development focuses on the modern Third World. This approach assumes that, as with Europe, the entire Third World is dependent on the modern capitalist system. Development studies focus on the assessment of how Third World countries can most effectively engage world capitalism. Discussion is typically reduced to comparisons between world systems theory and neoclassical economics. The Tanzanian government has used standard policies grounded in neoclassical and world‐system assumptions since independence. But both policies failed to produce the predicted economic growth. This article argues that both policies failed because the Tanzanian peasantry, like the early modern European peasantry, is not dependent on the operation of world capitalism for basic subsistence. In fact, as studies have shown, rural Tanzania is only weakly incorporated into the capitalist world system, and in consequence has not been an easy target for what world‐system theorists call ‘peripheral integration’. What makes Tanzania different is the fact that the rural peasantry do not use market mechanisms in the distribution of the ‘means of production’, especially arable land for swidden agriculture, or, for that matter, labour or cattle.
Rethinking Ancestors and Colonial Power in Madagascar
Authors: Cole Jennifer , Middleton Karen 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThis article reconsiders the relationship between ancestors and colonial power through a comparative analysis of the mortuary rituals of two Malagasy peoples, the Betsimisaraka of the east coast and the Karembola of the deep south. In contrast to analyses which emphasise an opposition between ancestors and colonial power, it argues that mortuary rituals construct striking analogies between the two. These analogies rest on similar conceptualisations of power as both enabling and enslaving, and are enacted in contemporary mortuary ritual through the incorporation of colonial goods and labour practices. By playing on similarities and differences between ancestral and colonial power, Betsimisaraka and Karembola mortuary rituals parody and critique mimetically appropriate colonial power, even as their appropriation of colonial symbols endows ritual practices around ancestors with the power to pull against the centralising power of the national sphere. Bakhtin's conception of heteroglossic language provides a useful way of conceptualising the multiple dimensions of ritual practices around ancestors.
Wayward Pastoral Ghosts and Regional Xenophobia in a Northern Madagascar Town
Authors: Sharp Lesley A. 
Published: July 2008

AbstractIn the plantation region of the Sambirano Valley in north-west Madagascar the spirits of wandering foreign dead haunt the region's forests. They are the displaced ghosts of migratory Antandroy, drawn here in search of employment. As pastoralists from the island's distant, arid south, Antandroy as an ethnic category are juxtaposed to self-perceptions voiced by indigenous Sakalava, whose kingdom coincides with this Valley. Tandroy difference is defined in reference to local constructions of savageness and strangeness: as pastoralists they are obsessed with herds; they migrate; they willingly participate in wage labour. In life, they are tolerated ‘guests’ of the region but in death they frustrate Sakalava with their persistent presence. Unlike any other migrant group, deceased Antandroy may continue to haunt the region, begging and stealing what is not rightfully theirs: food, wives, work, and fortune. Close analysis of these perplexing spirits reveals a localised ambivalence that characterises migrant identity and the meaning of work in an urban community shaped by the forces of multiculturalism and capitalism. By virtue of their persistent presence within the social and sacred geography of the Valley, the Tandroy dead threaten the integrity of Sakalava identity in a community (and nation) where indigenousness is defined by rootedness to the land. Central to the arguments presented here is the potency of the spiritual stranger, a social category that extends the anthropological analysis of religious appropriation beyond the boundaries of possession and embodiment. Further, the decipherment of complex meanings associated with alien spirits emerges ultimately as key to more general understandings of the symbolics of difference.
Secrets of Success: Uncertainty, Profits and Prosperity in the Gari Economy of Ibadan, 1992–94
Authors: Wan Mimi Y. 
Published: July 2008

AbstractCompetition, success and secrecy are fundamental characteristics of the local food economy of Ibadan, Nigeria. With the growth of the processed cassava, or gari, trade throughout this area, these characteristics are revealed in a number of contexts in the food trade. Traders and shopkeepers circulate their wealth and plough profits back into a range of trading items to obscure their exact economic status from other traders and their families. Success in this context entails secrecy in a number of respects. In relation to buyers in the gari trade, secrecy entails the obfuscation of whether the trader deals retail or wholesale, what she is worth in terms of food stocks and her personal wealth. Successful traders also invest their earnings in social celebrations, in their children's education and in personal homes that all work to foster and enhance their social status and validate their wealth.
‘Beer Used to Belong to Older Men’: Drink and Authority Among the Nyakyusa of Tanzania
Authors: Willis Justin 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThe Nyakyusa were the subject of a classic series of ethnographies. This article suggests that these works took insufficient account of struggles over authority in the colonial period. Consequently they overstated the formalisation of chiefly power and understated the complex relationship between generational tensions and political authority in the pre-colonial period. Following discursive and practical changes in the use of alcohol, the article identifies a shift in the nature of power among the Nyakyusa over the twentieth century and develops the idea that drinking talk, and drinking practice, are central fields for the creation and recreation of the assumptions of power which underpin authority.
Degradation Debates and Data Deficiencies: The Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania
Authors: Brockington Dan , Homewood Katherine 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThe Mkomazi Game Reserve is contested by people who wish to use its resources and by conservationists who have argued that the reserve should be set aside for wildlife. Underpinning the conservationist case is the argument that people are harmful to the reserve's environment. Former residents of the reserve, notably pastoralists, argue that human use of the reserve did not cause its degradation. The debate is characterised by a lack of data extraordinary in view of the assertions made. An earlier paper set out the contrasting views and defined the data that would be needed to test them. This paper assesses what data there are, and whether it is possible to evaluate the extent to which people caused environmental change at Mkomazi. Using physical data and comments about the environment made by observers it is argued that no firm conclusions can be drawn about small-scale change but that there are indications of large-scale resilience. As a result of this uncertainty the article goes on to consider the extent to which there can ever be clarity about environmental change at Mkomazi as a philosophical contention or as a researchable issue.
There are Many Kongo Worlds: Particularities of Magico-Religious Beliefs Among the Vili and Yombe of Congo-Brazzaville
Authors: Hersak Dunja 
Published: July 2008

ABSTRACTThe article analyses the distinctiveness of magico-religious practices in the north-western sector of the vast Kongo cultural complex, namely among the peoples who refer to themselves as Vili and Yombe. On the basis of fieldwork and a critical examination of the sources, the article points out that such widely distributed terms of proto-Bantu origin asnkisicannot be covered by a single or even a multi-stranded definition; the variants, ranging from spirit to object, express local and time-specific beliefs. An approach that seeks a single Kongo universe is an ethnographic, historical and linguistic misreading that obscures existing regional concepts while possibly overlooking the importance of other notions. The article focuses on sorting out the basic ethnographic data relating to the beliefs current in the region and reveals not only long-standing aspects, some of them common to the wider Kongo world, but also those that have developed more recently in this particular coastal zone where different peoples trade and interact.
Seen From Below: Conceptions of Politics and the State in a Botswana Village
Authors: Helle-Valle Jo 
Published: July 2008

AbstractBased on the contentions that rules cannot determine practice, and that the state is only a composite reality that needs to be analysed as a part of a wider socio-cultural totality, this article investigates how the state, as government and political practice, functions in a village in Botswana. Consequently, lay villagers' attitudes to the state and hence the issue of legitimacy become focal points in the discussion. It is argued that what is conceptualised by most villagers as the state is not co-extensive with its formal boundaries. Rather, it is associated with that which is ‘modern’ or ‘European’ and hence seen to be alien. This means not that the state is conceptualised in merely negative terms but rather that it achieves its legitimacy less on ideological grounds than from its role as a generous patron. This is due to the state's extraordinary wealth. It is argued that this form of legitimacy to some extent defines the roles it can play and makes it in some ways vulnerable but, on the other hand, enables the state to buy time to develop a political and administrative system that steers it clear of the common miseries that most other African states face.
Going to the City … and Coming Back? Turnaround Migration Among the Jola of Senegal
Authors: Linares Olga F. 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThe Jola of Lower Casamance in southern Senegal are involved in ‘turnaround’ (or circular), rural to urban migration. Using data from three Jola communities located in different geographical and cultural sub-regions, this article compares the dynamics of migration among the villages and explores variations along gender and generational lines. Special emphasis is placed on the number of young unmarried girls and boys who return to the village during the rainy season to help their parents with agricultural work. It has been argued that the movement of people from the countryside to the city has had a negative effect on local food production. ‘Turnaround migration’ mitigates to some extent the impact of the rural exodus on rural communities. It has important implications of its own for the future of agriculture in the various Jola sub-regions.
Mobilising Yoruba Popular Culture:Babangida Must Go
Authors: Haynes Jonathan 
Published: July 2008

AbstractNigerian video films are often characterised as apolitical. A rare and significant exception is Gbenga Adewusi'sMaradona(also known asBabangida Must Go), which was released in 1993 in response to the annulment of the 12 June 1993 presidential election by the military ruler Ibrahim Babangida. The film is a fierce denunciation of the annulment and of the whole political regime, employing a number of Yoruba and transnational cultural forms: the chanted poetic formewi, skits by artists from the Yoruba travelling theatre tradition, the televisual forms of music videos, news broadcasting and call-in shows, and the resources of print journalism. This film demonstrates the political potential of the video film, but also the limitations of the video distribution system.
Powers in the Village: Rural Benin Between Democratisation and Decentralisation
Authors: Bierschenk Thomas , de Sardan Jean-Pierre Olivier 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThe Republic of Benin has often been cited as a model democracy in the African context. After years of pressure from bilateral aid donors, particularly France and Germany, municipal elections were held in 2002. This article addresses three related questions. How have free presidential and parliamentary elections affected political dynamics at the local level, especially in the rural areas where most people live? What do rural people think about the change of national regime? How will decentralisation affect local government? Based on empirical research in rural Benin, it shows that démocratisation means more of the same hybrid and composite form of local government. The boundaries between the state and private organisations (including Northern NGOs), and between the national and local levels, remain blurred. Local political arenas are more fragmented than ever, and informal politics flourish. This not only dilutes power at the local level, as different veto powers block one another, it entails constant negotiation between those involved, making political processes less predictable and local political institutions less accountable. Decentralisation is only making matters worse.
Rituals of Verification: Indigenous and Imported Accountability in Northern Tanzania
Authors: Kelsall Tim 
Published: July 2008

AbstractHolding people to account for their actions is a feature of all societies. This article examines two different mechanisms of accountability, both of which are used in the Arumeru District of Tanzania. The first is a form of ritual cursing called ‘breaking a pot'; the second is the local government financial audit. By placing both practices in the same frame the article aims to unsettle the conceptual divide between the rational and the irrational, the modern and traditional, the scientific and the occult. It also asks whether imported forms of local government, such as are represented by Arumeru District Council, might be made responsible via indigenous and indexical mechanisms of accountability, or whether imported institutions are best rendered accountable by ‘universal’ means.
Redrawing the Map of the Horn: The Politics of Difference
Authors: Schlee Günther 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThe paper examines the changing shapes of territories in the Horn of Africa and the discourses which legitimise these different shapes. It starts with the ‘Horn’ itself, the different ways to delineate it, and the interests behind these. Then Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and thede factoindependent Somaliland are discussed and their justifications for being examined. These justifications are found not to follow the same pattern. The criteria for inclusion or exclusion of populations or territories differ and form a rich reservoir for future conflict. On a lower level, that of regional states comprised in a major unit, the Oromo of Ethiopia, the largest ethnic group in the Horn of Africa, are discussed in some detail. Accounts about how the Oromo have come to be and who is to be regarded as an Oromo are found to be mutually conflicting. In the last part, international and transnational relations in the Horn of Africa are looked at. Major groupings cross-cutting state boundaries are formed by states forming alliances with ethnic movements, opposition forces or warlords in neighbouring states or ex-states, against other states or spheres of power. Publicity of such alliances is kept low and few efforts seem to be made to give them an ideological basis or historical justifications. The logic followed in these cases seems to be simply that the enemy of an enemy is a potential friend.
Old Problems in New Conflicts: Some Observations on Eritrea and its Relations with Tigray, from Liberation Struggle to Inter-State War
Authors: Reid Richard 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThis article examines the problematic relationship between Eritrea and Tigray as represented by the Eritrean and Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Fronts. The EPLF won independence for Eritrea in 1991, at the same time as the TPLF seized power in Ethiopia; the two movements had had a difficult relationship, beginning in the mid-1970s, during their respective armed struggles, and the issues which had caused disagreement remained unresolved as the movements made the transition to government. This paper examines the nature of those issues and the degree to which the war of 1998-2000 between the two countries can be seen to have reflected much older tensions and indeed contradictions in the Eritrean–Tigrayan/Ethiopian relationship. Thus, the paper begins with an overview of Eritrean opinion, during the recent war, about the relationship in question, and then moves back in time to the era of the liberation struggle. Here, the author attempts to explain the complexities of the respective Eritrean and Tigrayan revolutions insofar as each impinged on and influenced the other, with particular reference to the issues of frontiers, nationality and ethnicity, and sovereignty. The paper, finally, considers the apparent paradoxes in the perceptions which Eritreans have of Tigray and Ethiopia, and suggests that changes in attitude are necessary on both sides of the Mereb river border if the relationship is not to be defined by perpetual confrontation.
Remembering J. M. Stuart-Young of Onitsha, Colonial Nigeria: Memoirs, Obituaries and Names
Authors: Newell Stephanie 
Published: July 2008

AbstractColonial Onitsha provided the stage for John Moray Stuart-Young (1881–1939), a Manchester trader and poet, to perform the role of an educated gentleman. In his autobiographical writing, Stuart-Young created a host of famous metropolitan friends and constructed for himself a past through which he invited African readers to remember him. The extent to which Onitsha citizens accepted his version of his life is explored in this article, for during the period of Stuart-Young's residence in town, from approximately 1909 until his death in 1939, different sectors of Igbo society observed him closely, read his publications, worked with him and witnessed his patronage of young men. Local people, including the children, studied his behaviour over time and produced a range of African names and watchwords by which they remembered his life.
Localisation, Ghanaian Pentecostalism and the Stranger's Beauty in Botswana
Authors: van Dijk Rijk 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThis contribution considers the current position of the Ghanaian migrant community in Botswana's capital, Gaborone, at a time of rising xenophobic sentiments and increasing ethnic tensions among the general public. The article examines anthropological understandings of such sentiments by placing them in the context of the study of nationalisms in processes of state formation in Africa and the way in which these ideologies reflect the position and recognition of minorities. In Botswana, identity politics indulge in a liberalist democratic rhetoric in which an undifferentiated citizenship is promoted by the state, concealing on the one hand inequalities between the various groups in the country, but on the other hand defending the exclusive interests of all ‘Batswana’ against foreign influence through the enactment of what has become known as a ‘localisation policy'. Like many other nationalities, Ghanaian expatriate labour has increasingly become the object of localisation policies. However in their case xenophobic sentiments have taken on unexpected dimensions. By focusing on the general public's fascination with Ghanaian fashion and styles of beautification, the numerous hair salons and clothing boutiques Ghanaians operate, in addition to the newly emerging Ghanaian-led Pentecostal churches in the city, the ambiguous but ubiquitous play of repulsion and attraction can be demonstrated in the way in which localisation is perceived and experienced by the migrant as well as by the dominant groups in society. The article concludes by placing entrepreneurialism at the nexus of where this play of attraction and repulsion creates a common ground of understanding between Ghanaians and their host society, despite the government's hardening localisation policies.
Gold Trading Networks and the Creation of Trust: A Case Study from Northern Benin
Authors: Grätz Tilo 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThe paper provides insights into an illicit trading system and explores the logics that contribute to its proliferation. It joins the literature on informal trading networks and revises conventional wisdom about what is necessary to sustain them. Gold traders have established intricate webs of relations based on personal dyadic affiliations. These extended networks are very heterogeneous, involving a multitude of actors, spanning regional, ethnic and social categories. Unlike many other examples in the anthropological literature, the gold trade is not a business carried out by members of a single ethnic group. Yet, explanation is required as to why, despite this heterogeneity, confidence between all actors is created, particularly in this case where there is no legal recourse when informal contracts are broken. I argue that a patron–client system of risk-sharing at various economic levels is the basis both for economic rationales and cohesion among all actors.
The Making of the Ogoni Ethnic Group
Authors: Isumonah V. Adefemi 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThe existence of the Ogoni ethnic group is taken for granted in the literature that has grown out of the minority rights and environmentalist campaigns of the 1990s. This article departs from this tradition by engaging the historical development of the Ogoni ethnic group, taking as its point of departure elite politics in the context of colonial categories and post-colonial politics. With comparative data on the development of ethnic groups in Nigeria, it shows how elite politics and state structures and administrative decisions influenced the development of the Ogoni ethnic group and the identity it purveys. It also shows that differing interests in oil with unequal power bases spurred rigid positions that served to facilitate or constrain the execution of the Ogoni identity-building project.