bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Chiefs of rain – chiefs of ruling: a reinterpretation of pre-colonial Tonga (Zambia) social and political structure
Authors: O'Brien Dan 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionThis article reassesses the accepted model of pre-colonial Tonga (Zambian) society. In a series of books and articles Elizabeth Colson has established an anthropological framework in which to analyse Tonga social and political activities. The basic parameters of that framework would appear to be: ‘Until the beginnings of the colonial period, approximately seventy years ago the largest named territorial unit among the Tonga was the small neighbourhood community.’ Ritual offices existed within the neighbourhood but political office was embryonic or non-existent until the British Government recognized headmen and chiefs and later developed a local council with an appointed civil service. (Colson, 1980b: 35). Social life is characterized as ‘anarchical’ (Colson, 1970a: 87). Politically the Tonga were said to be ‘stateless’ (Colson, 1970a: 207) and ‘amorphous’ (Colson, 1970b: 36). In a paper given in 1968 Colson analyses the concept of tribe, and states that the Tonga only recognized themselves as Tonga when young nationalist schoolboys tried to give them self-awareness. Thus, the Tonga in Colson's view are a creation of British bureaucracy and of a burgeoning nationalism. (Colson, 1968: 202; cf. also Colson, 1970b: 36). More recently the same basic position is reiterated, though the possibility of a change of viewpoint is left open; ‘Even the idea of a social unit of all Tonga is a recent creation and is still likely to be invoked principally in the national political arena, though the continued importance of the shrine of Monze may have political overtones of which I am unaware.’ (Colson, 1977: 137).
The dissolution of Freetown City Council in 1926: a negative example of political apprenticeship in colonial Sierra Leone
Authors: Wyse Akintola J. G. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphFreetown City Council, established in 1893, was the victim of a colonial government which concentrated authority in white hands and resented the survival of a municipality run by Africans. Successive governors regularly presented it as a scapegoat, along with the whole Krio community, for disturbances in Freetown, notably the 1919 anti-Syrian riots and the 1926 railway strike. In 1925 financial malpractices in the council were disclosed and some officials were prosecuted. The following year the Mayor, Cornelius May, editor of the leading newspaper, theSierra Leone Weekly News, and a highly respected public figure, was charged with conspiracy to defraud, along with the Town Clerk and the City Treasurer, and was given a nine-month prison sentence. Then, on the recommendation of a Commission of Inquiry, the City Council was dissolved and replaced by a Municipal Board.
Criminals and the african cultural imagination: normative and deviant heroism in pre-colonial and modern narratives
Authors: Austen Ralph A. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn a previous essay (Austen, 1986a) I attempted to trace a particular type of deviant hero in African history and culture: a ‘social bandit’ or criminal figure identified in the popular imagination with resistance against alien or indigenous oppressive elites. The search proved frustrating within its original terms of reference but it did suggest an alternative paradigm for identifying the entire relationship between cultural norms and criminal behaviour in Africa. The present article attempts to develop this paradigm through the analysis of six African narratives dealing with heroic and/or anti-heroic figures in a variety of contexts.
Bandits, rebels or criminals: African history and Western criminology (review article)
Authors: Cohen Stanley 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIt has long been a cliché in the social sciences to talk about the insulation of disciplines and sub-disciplines from each other. We all know what it is like tostudy a phenomenon – poverty, crime, the family – from within one academic paradigm and then come across a quite different view of the ‘same’ phenomenon. The result is usually self-pity: ‘If only I had known what they were up to’ or ‘If only they knew what I was up to’.
Divinatory failure: the religious and social role of Gisu diviners
Authors: Heald Suzette 
Published: April 2006

AbstractThe literature has tended to deal with diviners only where they have been seen to play a notable role in the transformation of social relationships. This leads us to overlook their relative social invisibility in many African societies. Yet we may gain insight into the rise of prophets and charismatic healers by looking at the other side of this story in the multitude of very humble practitioners plying their trade. This is the context in which this article explores the role of diviners among the Gisu of Uganda.The privacy of consultation, the search for distant diviners, the way they are approached only at times of crisis and as agents of private counteraction or vengeance, go some way towards explaining why it is difficult for diviners to gain recognition. Added to which are the difficulties of another order which relate to what might here be regarded as divinatory success. For divination may be seen to fail at a number of different levels: in the lack of credibility of a given practitioner, i n a lack of unanimity among those consulted and in the multiplicity of causal agents evoked.An argument put forward here is that scepticism is endemic to the system and, possibly, distinctive to it. We should ask not, as Evans-Pritchard did, how belief i s sustained despite the presence of scepticism but what it is about these beliefs which encourages scepticism. It is not useful to explore this issue in terms of the rationality question or the ‘truth’ of belief systems. If we are to draw a comparison with modern attitudes, of greater significance are the organisation and differentiation of knowledge and its relationship to power. It is suggested that diagnostic systems used by societies such as the Gisu encourage an agnostic attitude in a way i n which those of the modern West do not.In the final part of the article the social role of divination is reconsidered and some of the positive functions proposed for it are questioned. Gisu divination can be seen to have evolved into a very narrow niche whose parameters are bound, on the one hand, by the limits of belief and, on the other, by a system of interpersonal vengeance. We may say that the socially marginal attributes of diviners, exclusively concerned with the negative aspects of social relationships, represent a real social marginality. At best they are agents by which the individual may be reconciled with harshnesses imposed by his own destiny, of ancestral affliction; at worst they are agents of individual vengeance and retribution. This may be taken as more or less disqualifying them from articulating a positive, future-oriented vision on behalf of the community. Clearly it is not impossible but it is a huge jump from these humble practitioners, interpreting the present in terms of the past and trading evil with evil at an individual level, to prophets capable of formulating a positive social vision, a means forward, on behalf of a wider moral or social community.
‘Bringing what people want’: shrine politics among the Agar Dinka
Authors: Mawson A. N. M. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractLarge shrines are built by Dinka in parts of the central southern Sudan. In early 1983, coinciding with the deepening political crisis which led to the current devastating civil war in Sudan, the byre of the divinity Mayual, a shrine of the Agar Dinka of southern Bahr al-Ghazal, was rebuilt by representatives of several subtribes with lands around the town of Rumbek.The byre shrine stood for the community of its rebuilders, a community that recognised the politico-religious centrality of the subclan Panamacot, the senior subclan of a group of religiously powerful subclans known as rordior, the sons women. The senior religious figure from Panamacot was the master of the byre. The master of the byre was also President of Rumbek Town Court, a secular office created by the government. Until his election in 1976 Agar had maintained that the institutions of religious leader and secular court official could not be combined in the same man.In late 1982 and early 1983 the imminent rebuilding of the shrine became the focus of a politico-religious dispute between the master of the byre and a divinely inspired rival from a different subclan. The dispute was a struggle for influence within the rebuilding community. The form and logic of the dispute were in part created by the particular nature of each man's religious abilities, which in turn derived from his possession by particular manifestations of Divinity, manifestations which imaged differing (but not distinct) areas of historically constituted experience and were intrinsic to the creation of that experience. A politico-religious crisis was created by the coming together of people's experience of the activities of different manifestations of Divinity and the differing abilities of each religious leader with experience of daily life, perceptions of the past, and fears about the way national and regional politics were unfolding. The episode demonstrated the way that, among Agar Dinka at least, divinely inspired leadership depends upon an interpretive deal continually negotiated between a leader and his followers, a deal in which all parties are speculating on the future in the light of both the present and the past.
Continuity despite and through death: regicide and royal shrines among the shilluk of southern Sudan
Authors: Schnepel Burkhard 
Published: April 2006

AbstractThe paper re-analyses the problems raised by the Shilluk practice of regicide and the rituals associated with royal shrines. Using recent field data, older colonial texts and previous anthropological analyses, the author compares Shilluk ideas to the medieval notion of 'the king's two bodies' as described by the historian Kantorowicz and emphasises the crucial differences. Shilluk kingship, it is argued, is open, competitive and charismatic. Furthermore, the interregnum, far from being a threat to law and order, is an excellent opportunity to express, maintain and renew the social order and the fictional continuity of kingship. But it is more than that: rather than just responding to the embarrassment of death, the Shilluk actively bring forth death–they seek life through death, not merely life despite death.
Sisters, wives, wards and daughters: a transformational analysis of the political organization of the Tiv and their neighbours.Part I: the Tiv
Authors: Fardon Richard 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionThe re-analysis of classical ethnography has become an anthropological industry Since segmentary lineage models enshrined so many of the assumptions integral to what we have learned to call the structural-functional paradigm, they have been subjected to trial by this form of interrogation particularly often. Africanists will be aware that the statuses of Evans-Pritchard's model of Nuer social organization and of Fortes's of Tallensi remain controversial within anthropological circles long after their publication. Another of the classical analyses of a segmentary lineage organization, that made by Laura and Paul Bohannan of the Tiv, seems to have escaped the same degree of controversy. The reason is not without interest: the Bohannans' analyses have been ensured relative immunity from criticism by the general acceptance that their model of Tiv social organization so evidently corresponds to some of the ways in which indigenous Tiv social theorizing represents Tiv society. In other words, and quite explicitly, the Bohannans' analytic model is also a Tiv folk model.
The inheritance of private property among the Nama of southern Africa, reconsidered
Authors: Carstens Peter 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphAlthough the Khoikhoi or so-called Hottentots are still discussed in social anthropological literature, there is relatively little interest in them nowadays in comparison with the San (Bushmen) or various Bantu-speaking peoples. This lack of interest is really quite surprising since Radcliffe-Brown drew heavily on the Nama Khoikhoi material in his essay on the mother's brother in South Africa (Radcliffe-Brown 1924). Radcliffe-Brown, incidentally, based his knowledge of the Nama almost entirely on his interpretation of the field work of Mrs A. W. Hoernlé, using two unpublished papers and personal communication with Mrs Hoernlé as his sources. There is, however, a more important reason why the Khoikhoi are of interest. Many aspects of their way of life, ranging from the status of wives to religious beliefs and practices, are very ‘unAfrican’ if we equate African with Bantu-speaking Africa as is so often done.
Conversion and school at Chikuni, 1905–39
Authors: Carmody Brendan 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionReligious conversion, a concept central to missionary activity and to the influence that Christianity has exerted in a variety of fields, embodies a wide range of meanings (Lonergan, 1971: 105–7). In the African context it has generally meant a change from a traditional to a universal religion, entailing a psychological transformation through which the convert's underlying assumptions about the world are reconstructed, accompanied by a socially recognised display of change (Jules-Rosette, 1976: 132–3). Robin Horton, among others, has devoted scholarly attention to the conversion process from the viewpoint of the Africans undergoing conversion but the missionaries, the advocates of conversion, have received no comparable attention (Beidelman, 1974: 235; cf. Beidelman, 1982).
The secret spirit cult of the Sor in Karamoja
Authors: Weatherby John M. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphOver a period of some fifteen years I carried out ethnographic studies in north-eastern Uganda, firstly of the Kalenjin peoples on and around Mount Elgon, and subsequently of the Sor, a small mountain community of Karamoja.The earlier study formed the basis of a thesis on the Sebei of Mount Elgon and lasted for ten years, during which time I was based near Kampala and made intermittent journeys to spend two to three weeks at a time in different parts of the Mount Elgon and western Kenya region.
Du Clan à la chefferie dans l'est du Cameroun
Authors: Copet-Rougier Elisabeth 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionLes sociétés gbaya et mkako de l'Est-Cameroun constituent une frontière entre deux mondes. Les Mkako sont à la limite bantoue du nord-ouest du bassin congolais tandis que les Gbaya représentent le monde oubanguien dans les savanes à galeries forestières. Qualifiées autrefois d'anarchiques, ces sociétés partagent des caractéristiques communes: acéphales, dénuées de pouvoir politique centralisé, de règies de succession relatives au rôle de leader, sans hiérarchie lignagère ni organisation segmentaire, sans toujours de référence au territoire, elles reposent sur une organisation patriclanique caractérisée par la fluidité des unités sociales dans une disposition où le clan ne constitue pas toujours à proprement parler un groupe «corporate». Enfin, l'un de leurs traits marquant réside dans l'antagonisme entre l'idéologie égalitaire sans cesse affirmée et la compétition des homines importants, ou bien l'émergence de leaders, qui se fondent sur des rapports d'inégalité, aussi ténus qu'ils puissent être.
Ideologies of intervention: the Ugandan state and local organization in Bugisu
Authors: Bunker Stephen G. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphWhere peasant production predominates in the national economy, the state is faced with a difficult dilemma. It must derive its revenues from cash crops, but if it appropriates too much, it will drive peasants out of the cash market and into subsistence (Hyden, 1980; Bunker, 1983b). Many African states have attempted to resolve this dilemma through direct contrôl of crop markets (Bates, 1981). Market control in peasant economies, however, usually offers the major means of wealth and upward mobility at the local level, so different power groups there may challenge the state's hegemony (Saul, 1969; Hyden, 1970). I have already shown how such groups achieved significant control of markets in Bugisu, Uganda (Bunker, 1983a), and how the state responded with periodic interventions to limit their power and autonomy (Bunker, 1983b). In this article, I examine how the Ugandan state has justified its continued intervention in the local economy and how power groups among the Bagisu have legitimated their claims against the state.
Land tenure and agrarian change in Kenya
Authors: Haugerud Angelique 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThis article examines the relationship of formal and informal land-tenure systems to processes of agrarian change. Although it is often assumed that formal legal recognition of private rights in land can help to transform agriculture, causal links between particular tenure systems and agrarian processes are not easily demonstrated. It is difficult to separate the effects of land tenure from those of a host of other influences on agriculture. A number of studies have pointed to causal relationships among high population density, agricultural intensity, and individualisation of land rights (Podolefsky, 1987). Nevertheless, formal privatisationper semay have relatively little effect on processes of agrarian change, even in an economy where land is productive and scarce and where its distribution is relatively unequal.
A question of honour: property disputes and brokerage in Burkina Faso
Authors: Lund Christian 
Published: April 2006

AbstractWhen conflicts over land arise in the region of Dori, in northern Burkina Faso, bribery of officials through ‘brokers’ is common. However, farmers often pay more in bribes than the land at issue is worth. ‘It's a question of honour’ people say. Disputes are arbitrated by competing state institutions. ‘Brokers’ monopolise and manipulate access to the institutions and largely control the legal outcome. People do not expect protection from the state but rely on their honour in countering adversaries. When the only defence of property is the owner's honour, and not the state, the price of infringement must be set high as a deterrent. The land in question may not be important, but any usurpation of it is an attack on the honour and hence on the whole property of the aggrieved party. To let one field go is to invite invasion of the rest. Competition for access to land between farmers is matched and complicated at a higher level by competition for jurisdiction between the various political and legal authorities.
Rumour and power in Togo
Authors: Ellis Stephen 
Published: April 2006

AbstractThe article describes some of the main political events which took place in Togo in mid to late 1991, at a time when the power of President Gnassingbe Eyadema was facing more serious opposition than at any time since his assumption of the presidency twenty-four years earlier, and examines how these events were represented in popular discussion in Lome. By analysing some aspects of the power struggle in that period, and popular perceptions of them, the article aims to shed light on the cultural mechanisms by which Eyadema sustained himself in power and through which his power could be contested.
Towards an understanding of the Afrikanerisation of the South African state
Authors: Seegers Annette 
Published: April 2006

AbstractWith President F. W. De Klerk's speech of 2 February 1990 and the dramatic changes subsequently evident in South African politics, many scholars have aptly turned their eyes on the state. If a transition towards some form of majority rule is at hand, as most observers believe, the questions are: what is the condition of the state to be inherited by the new governors, and how did it acquire this condition?One of the most striking processes has been the so-called afrikanerisation of the state, occurring throughout most of the twentieth century and especially after the (Purified) National Party victory of 1948. The article therefore first identifies beliefs and habits Afrikaner members of the bureaucratic elite acquired during their ascent through Afrikanerdom and, second, analyses the attempt to institutionalise these beliefs and habits within the state. The article is thus about the actions of an Afrikaner bureaucratic elite, ensconced in leading positions in all sectors of the state over the last forty years at least.
Sorcery accusations unleashed: the Lele revisited, 1987
Authors: Douglas Mary 
Published: April 2006

AbstractThe case described—an anti-witchcraft movement headed by two Catholic priests—occurred among the Lele of the Kasai (then in Zaire) in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The information was received during a brief visit in 1987. This small, local case of rage against sorcery is set in a broader context. Some nations support institutions whose express purpose is to detect, disable and punish occult evildoers, such as sorcerers, and demons. Western theology is not currently attuned to answering the questions that plague Africans about the causes of evil in the world, the causes of illness and death, questions which their pagan traditions answer all too plausibly in terms of sorcery. Some Christian denominations have defined their doctrine concerning demons in a way that accommodates local sorcery beliefs. Where the subject is barely mentionable African Christians are unable to contribute to the developing moral philosophy of the Christian Church. The novitiate training for the Catholic African clergy can give no special guidance in dealing with pastoral problems to which the pagan religion had ready answers.
‘Unity for Development’ youth associations in north-western Ghana
Authors: Lentz Carola 
Published: April 2006

AbstractSince the mid-1970s numerous ‘youth and development associations’, with membership based on origin in a particular territory or on ethnic affiliation, have been founded in northern Ghana. Although they have become significant actors in various political arenas, there has as yet been no research interest—a gap which this article seeks to fill by examining the associations' history, self-image, internal organisation and political as well as cultural dynamic. Taking the example of the north-west, some of the problems typically confronting the youth associations are discussed in detail, for instance the conflicts in creating and delimiting the community whose interests the association seeks to represent to the outside world (territorial versus ethnic boundaries), and the problems of defining the concept of membership (automatic versus voluntary), which reflect the tensions between community and organisation, the grass roots and the educated elite. Because these problems could threaten the very survival of the associations they use up a considerable proportion of their energies in becoming an ‘identity’ movement, transforming a heterogeneous population group into a self-aware community. The discourses, symbols and rituals connected with this level of action of the youth associations are analysed in the last section of the article.