Neither nationalism nor ethnicity is vanishing as part of an obsolete traditional order. Both are part of a modern set of categorical identities invoked by elites and other participants in political and social struggles. These categorical identities also shape everyday life, offering both tools for grasping pre-existing homogeneity and difference and for constructing specific versions of such identities. While it is impossible to dissociate nationalism entirely from ethnicity, it is equally impossible to explain it simply as a continuation of ethnicity or a simple reflection of common history or language. Numerous dimensions of modern social and cultural change, notably state building (along with war and colonialism), individualism, and the integration of large-scale webs of indirect relationships also serve to make both nationalism and ethnicity salient. Nationalism, in particular, remains the pre-eminent rhetoric for attempts to demarcate political communities, claim rights of self-determination and leg...

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/sipa/U6800/readings-sm/calhoun.pdf

Nationalism and ethnicity

Craig Calhoun, one of the most respected social scientists in the world, re-examines nationalism in light of post-1989 enthusiasm for globalization and the new anxieties of the twenty-first century. Nations Matter argues that pursuing a purely postnational politics is premature at best and possibly dangerous. 
Calhoun argues that, rather than wishing nationalism away, it is important to transform it. One key is to distinguish the ideology of nationalism as fixed and inherited identity from the development of public projects that continually remake the terms of national integration. Standard concepts like 'civic' vs. 'ethnic' nationalism can get in the way unless they are critically re-examined – as an important chapter in this book does. 
This book is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociology, history, political theory and all subjects concerned with nationalism, globalization, and cosmopolitanism.

Nations Matter: Culture, History and the Cosmopolitan Dream

Acknowledgements 1. The study of politics in Africa 2. The movement legacy 3. The problematic state 4. The economy of affection 5. Big man rule 6. The policy factor 7. The agrarian question 8. Gender and politics 9. Ethnicity and conflict 10. The external dimension 11. So what do we know? 12. Quo vadis Africa? References Index.

African Politics in Comparative Perspective

https://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/C6A23857BA3934CCC12572CE0024BB9E/$file/Mustapha.pdf

Ethnic Structure, Inequality and Governance of the Public Sector in Nigeria.

L'A. souligne l'importance de la notion de reseau pour l'analyse sociologique. Il rappelle que les phenomenes sociaux sont des constructions sociales. Il estime, de meme, que les processus sociaux sont stochastiques, locaux, historiques et qu'ils forment des espaces heterogenes, differencies au sein desquels se forment et interagissent des reseaux. Il met en relief le role du langage concu comme le mediateur qui permet de tisser les relations sociales dans ce cadre. Il s'interroge, enfin, sur le role joue par le temps, par les mecanismes de perception en cette affaire

Network switchings and Bayesian forks : Reconstructing the social and behavioral sciences

A remarkable feature of African studies has been the sharp discontinuities in the characterization of transitions in African history and society from one era to another. Thus, for an important example, colonialism has rarely been related to the previous era of the slave trade in the analysis of any dominant socioeconomic themes in Africa. Such discontinuity is significant in one important strand of modern African studies: The transition from the lore and scholarship of colonial social anthropology to postcolonial forms of African studies has been stalled into a brittle break because its central focus on the “tribe” has been under attack. Social anthropology gained strength through its analysis of the tribe and its associated concepts of kin groups and kinship behaviors in colonial Africa. However, following criticisms of the mission and manners of social anthropology by postindependence African scholars and politicians, and a brave reexamination of the conceptual problems of their discipline, social anthropologists more or less agreed to abandon the use of the tribe and of its more obvious derivative tribalism with respect to Africa.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0010417500016698

Social Anthropology and Two Contrasting Uses of Tribalism in Africa

/pdf/history-of-the-urhobo-people-of-niger-delta-1ws3qjcw56.pdf

Peter P. Ekeh

Papers

Social Anthropology and Two Contrasting Uses of Tribalism in Africa

History of The Urhobo People of Niger Delta