In this paper we argue that although the problematic nature of language construction has been acknowledged by a number of skeptical authors, including the recent claim in this journal (Reagan, 2004) that there is no such thing as English or any other language, this critical approach to language still needs to develop a broader understanding of the processes of invention. A central part of our argument, therefore, is that it is not enough to acknowledge that languages have been invented, nor that linguistic metalanguage constructs the world in particular ways; rather, we need to understand the interrelationships among metadiscursive regimes, language inventions, colonial history, language effects, alternative ways of understanding language, and strategies of disinvention and reconstitution. Any critical (applied) linguistic project that aims to deal with language in the contemporary world, however estimable its political intent may be, must also have ways of understanding the detrimental language effects i...

Disinventing and (Re)Constituting Languages

Over the next few decades, global migration is likely to play an influential role in shaping the nature of politics and economies internationally. This timely study illuminates possible implications of migrant flows from a development perspective. The authors survey the magnitude of the poor to rich-country flows, the rich-country policies that are driving them, and the multiple channels through which skilled migration affects development. They provide a rich discussion of the policy options, as they search for those that avoid the worst losses to poor countries while maintaining the most liberal feasible international migration regime.

Give Us Your Best and Brightest: The Global Hunt for Talent and Its Impact on the Developing World

▪ Abstract Taking as a point of departure Fernandez's survey (1978), this review seeks to show how research on African Independent Churches (AICs) has been reconfigured by new approaches to the anthropology of Christianity in Africa, in general, and the recent salient popularity of Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches (PCCs) in particular. If the adjectives “African” and “Independent” were once employed as markers of authentic, indigenous interpretations of Christianity, these terms proved to be increasingly problematic to capture the rise, spread, and phenomenal appeal of PCCs in Africa. Identifying three discursive frames—Christianity and “traditional religion,” Africa and “the wider world,” religion and politics—which organize(d) research on AICs and PCCs in the course of the past 25 years, this chapter critically reviews discussions about “Africanization,” globalization and modernity, and the role of religion in the public sphere in postcolonial African societies.

Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal‐Charismatic Churches

Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750.

Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson have dramatically challenged the tendency of economists to confine their empirical search for the causes of economic growth to the recent past. They argue that the kind of institutions established by European colonialists, either protecting private property or extracting rents, resulted in the poorer parts of the pre-colonial world becoming some of the richest economies of today; while transforming some of the more prosperous parts of the non-European world of 1500 into the poorest economies today. This view has been further elaborated for Africa by Nunn, with reference to slave trading. Drawing on African and comparative economic historiography, the present paper endorses the importance of examining growth theories against long-term history: revealing relationships that recur because the situations are similar, as well as because of path dependence as such. But it also argues that the causal relationships involved are more differentiated than is recognised in AJR's formulations. By compressing different historical periods and paths, the 'reversal' thesis over-simplifies the causation. Relatively low labour productivity was a premise of the external slave trades; though the latter greatly reinforced the relative poverty of many Sub-Saharan economies. Again, it is important to distinguish settler and non-settler economies within colonial Africa itself. In the latter case it was in the interests of colonial regimes to support, rather than simply extract from, African economic enterprise. Finally, economic rent and economic growth have often been joint products, including in pre-colonial and colonial Africa; the kinds of institutions that favoured economic growth in certain historical contexts were not necessarily optimal for that purpose in others. AJR have done much to bring development economics and economic history together. The next step is a more flexible conceptual framework, and a more complex explanation.

The ‘reversal of fortune’ thesis and the compression of history: Perspectives from African and comparative economic history

Exploring a range of studies regarding the ‘invention of tradition’, the ‘making of customary law’ and the ‘creation of tribalism’ since the 1980s, this survey article argues that the case for colonial invention has often overstated colonial power and ability to manipulate African institutions to establish hegemony. Rather, tradition was a complex discourse in which people continually reinterpreted the lessons of the past in the context of the present. Colonial power was limited by chiefs' obligation to ensure community well-being to maintain the legitimacy on which colonial authorities depended. And ethnicity reflected longstanding local political, cultural and historical conditions in the changing contexts of colonial rule. None of these institutions were easily fabricated or manipulated, and colonial dependence on them often limited colonial power as much as facilitating it.

Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in british colonial africa

PART I - Introduction by T Spear - PART II: BECOMING MAAS AI - Dialects, Sectiolects, or Simply Lects?: The Maa Lang uage in Time Perspective by G Sommer & R Vossen - Be coming Maasailand by JEG Sutton - Maasia Expansion and the New East African Pastoralism by JG Galaty - Aspects of 'Becoming Turkana': Interactions and Assimilation Betw een Maa- and Ateker-Speakers by J Lamphear - Defeat & Dispersal: The Laikipiak and their Neighbours at the End of the Nineteenth Century by N Sobania - Being 'Maasai', but not 'People of Cattle': Arusha Agricultural Maasai in the Nineteenth Century by T Spear - PART III - BEING MAAS AI - Becoming Maasai, Being in Time by P Spencer - The Wo rld of Telelia: Reflections of a Maasai Woman in Mataparo by T Chieni & P Spencer - 'The Eye' that Wants a Per son, Where Can It Not See?': Inclusion, Exclusion, and a B oundary in Maasai Identity by JG Galaty - Aesthetics, E xpertise, and Ethnicity: Okiek and Maasai Perspectives on Personal Ornament by D Klumpp & C Kratz - PART IV: C ONTESTATIONS & REDEFINITIONS - Acceptees and Aliens: K ikuyu Settlement in Maasailand by R Waller - Land as Ours e, Land as Mine: Economic, Political and Ecological Margin alization in Kajiando District by DJ Campbell - Maa-Spea kers of the Northern Desert: Recent Developments in Ariaal and Rendille Identity by E Fratkin - PART V - CONCLUSION S by Richard Waller - Bibliography - Index

Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity in East Africa

Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa

Early Swahili history reconsidered

Maps Figures Preface Acknowledgments 1 Swahili and Their History 2 The African Background of Swahili 3 The Emergence of the Swahili-Speaking Peoples 4 Early Swahili Society, 800-1100 5 Rise of the Swahili Town-States, 1100-1500 Appendices Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index

Thomas Spear

Papers

Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in british colonial africa

Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity in East Africa

Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa

Early Swahili history reconsidered

The Swahili : reconstructing the history and language of an African society, 800-1500