Showing papers in "Africa in 2003"

Powers in the Village: Rural Benin between Democratisation and Decentralisation

Abstract: The current largely donor-driven decentralisation projects in Africa are based on several interlinked master narratives: the democracy and grass-roots narrative, the accountability narrative and the governance narrative. They are based on the key idea of an intrinsic link between economic liberalisation, democracy, decentralisation and development. Democratisation and the current decentralisation projects in francophone Africa are founded on the explicit presupposition by their promoters that the over-centralisation of political decisions at the top of the state stifles local political and economic initiatives. The assumption is that only a decentralised politico-administrative system can ensure good governance. Consequently, decentralisation has been added to the arsenal of political conditionalities associated with the granting of development aid. For donors, it is the key that is supposed to open many doors: decentralisation is not only supposed to lead to the

Money and Death. Funeral Business in Asante, Ghana

Abstract: This article examines the current commercialisation and expansion of Asante funeral celebrations in Ghana. Funerals have always been the main public social events in Asante, but the growing funeral business significantly alters the way death is celebrated. The article takes as a point of departure a view of death as a field of strategic interaction, providing the ritual context for the creation of remembrance and identities, the elaboration of differences, the competition for status and power, and the negotiation of culture and social bonds and values. Within the framing narrative of respect for the dead and guiding the spirit to the next world, funerals are much about life. The article describes how, in shaping death, people deal with money to negotiate values of life and relations between the living, and shows that, contrary to both popular belief and critique on global commercialisation, in Asante the money economy and the social significance of the funeral tradition do not contravene, but rather reinforce each other. The funeral celebration is not wiped away by monetisation, nor is it a kind of last defence against it. Indeed, it is exactly through money and commodification that funeral celebrations are expanding, social ties forged, and cultural performances stimulated, albeit in new ways. In Asante funerals, people appropriate practices of consumption and commercial enterprise as well as indigenous traditions and exchange patterns in a process of ‘cultural bricolage’, and develop new, local styles of celebrating death, in which money has come to play a central role as social glue and as an expression of lifestyles, cultural values and ideals. It is argued that we cannot understand ‘traditional ritual’ unless we move beyond the rather rigid opposition between tradition and modernity still prevalent in ritual studies to acknowledge the open, flexible nature of tradition that makes it so vibrant in modern African life.

On the Aesthetics and Dialogics of Power in the Postcolony

Abstract: Achille Mbembe's ‘Provisional notes on the postcolony’ has become a canonical contribution to the literature on postcolonial African politics, yet the piece has also proved difficult to digest and build upon. This article focuses on Mbembe's thesis that postcolonial rulers and subjects share an ‘aesthetics of power’, involving ceremonialism and an emphasis on bodily functions and metaphors. It attempts to disentangle Mbembe's insights into such political dispositions from the state-centrism and radical pessimism of his account by examining its analytical indeterminacies and critically re-evaluating his theoretical deployment of Bakhtin. It then develops an alternative Bakhtinian approach to Mbembe's problematic through an analysis of the public staging of political relations in Buganda (Uganda). The standardised ceremony staged by local communities in Buganda to welcome visiting dignitaries—a ceremonial form here designated ‘political hospitality’—projects and enacts legitimate relations of reciprocity and communication between rulers and subjects through performative prestation and the giving and eating of food. It thus lends itself to political ceremonialism and the elaboration of corporeal political metaphors without entailing the pathologies that Mbembe (mis)identifies as intrinsic to such dispositions and discourses. The distorted magnification of this ceremonial pattern by the national state does contribute to the state–society impasse that preoccupies Mbembe. Yet, contrary to Mbembe's bleak vision, such local idioms also provide resources for popular critical consciousness and, thus, some grounds for cautious optimism regarding the postcolonial African political predicament.

The State as Raider Among the Karamojong: ‘Where There are no Guns, They use the Threat of Guns’

Abstract: The article brings together archival material, past ethnography, and memory on the one hand, and up-to-date eye-witness and newspaper reports on the other, to set current traumatic events in the very long view. The presentism of contemporary developmental and research approaches has precluded such perspectives. Thus the current disarmament programme being forced on the Karamojong of north-east Uganda by the Uganda People's Defence Force is no more unprecedented than the armed conflicts it is intended to resolve. The advent of colonial administration and memories of it are examined to illuminate the constraints of the present exercise. Events are not occurring solely in a local context, still less just on the national scene, but in the global context directed by world power. Thus the significance of cattle-raiding, the nature of which has not been drastically changed by firearms, has been exaggerated as part of a threat to world peace that must be tackled by international action. This has provided the rationale for repeating the brutality of the small wars of imperialism on a larger scale and with less prospect of an ensuing peace. The article proposes a rediscovery of African agency in Karamojong religious ceremonies that are not controlled by world orders. RESUME L'article rassemble d'une part du mathriel d'archives, des donnees ethnographiques anciennes et la memoire, et d'autre part des informations recentes parues dans la presse et recueillies aupres de temoins oculaires, pour situer des evenements traumatiques actuels dans une perspective a tres long terme. Le presentisme des approches contemporaines en matiere de developpement et de recherche empeche une telle perspective. Ainsi, le programme actuel de desarmement impose aux Karamajong du Nord-Est de l'Ouganda par les Forces de defense populaire de l'Ouganda (UPDF) n'a pas moins de precedents que les conflits armes qu'il entend resoudre. L'arrivee de l'administration coloniale et les souvenirs de celle-ci sont examines pour eclairer les difficulties du programme actuel. Les evenements ne surviennent pas exclusivement dans un contexte local, et encore moins sur la seule scene nationale, mais dans un contexte mondial dirige par des puissances mondiales. Ainsi l'importance du probleme des vols de betail, dont la nature n'a pas ete exageree dans le cadre de la menace de la paix mondiale a laquelle doit repondre une action internationale. C'est ce qui a servi a justifier la reprise de la brutalite des petites guerres d'imperialisme a une plus grande echelle et avec moins d'espoirs de paix. L'article propose de redecouvrir l'organisation africaine dans les ceremonies religieuses karamojong non controlees par des ordres mondiaux. ********** New world orders have implications. New theory has effects on the way the world is seen. The conjunction of governmental and academic perspectives may become dangerous for the objects of policy who do not own those perspectives. This is the view from Karamoja, one of those less-toured corners of Africa where the Cape to Cairo railway never ran. This would give the peoples of north-east Uganda the ignominy of anonymity were it not for the notoriety attracted by the nomadic pastoralist Karamojong due to their vulnerability in a semiarid environment to drought, livestock disease, and the dearth of famine as well as their repeated tendency to the violent homicide of strangers. On returning to Karamoja for further fieldwork in March-April 2002 to gather oral material on history and to observe politico-religious institutions coinciding with a looming disarmament programme, the author encountered its violent phase, when the Ugandan government lost patience with the voluntary surrender of firearms and resorted to force. This was one of two major military operations to bring security to the north of Uganda at a time when the government of Museveni, which has been a major beneficiary of aid in Africa, was under pressure from donors to disengage from Rwanda, Congo, and the SPLA. …

Old problems in new conflicts: some observations on eritrea and its relations with tigray, from liberation struggle to inter-state war

Abstract: There can be few more sensitive or emotive subject-matters in the field of Mrican studies today than the attempt to explore relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia in general, and between Eritrea and Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, in particular (Reid, forthcoming). Temperatures rise and tempers fray; accusation and counter-accusation fly with as much impunity as the academic arena can tolerate, which is actually a substantial amount; the term 'heated debate' is something of a polite understatement in a field where the search for 'objectivity' is as apparently fruitless as it is held to be in other areas of intense conflict between proverbial bad neighbours or presumed 'family members', as in Rwanda, Northern Ireland or Israel-Palestine. Virtually everyone who has written on Eritrea-Ethiopia laments the lack of objectivity in the field, usually only to find themselves accused (sometimes with justification, sometimes less so) of the very same failing. One is either a 'greater Ethiopianist', bitterly opposed to the aggressive, militaristic independence which Eritrea had the temerity to achieve, or an 'Eritrean nationalist', bitterly opposed to the aggressive expansionism of the Ethiopian empire-state. It is an apparently infinite debate characterised by polarisation, a discourse which has, at its very core, the old notion that 'if you are not with us, you are against us'. The intellectual and literary battlelines are as clearly drawn as any physical confrontation witnessed by the region at any time over the past two or more generations. An unwavering adherence to the formula 'if you are not with us, you are against us' has served many of the protagonists discussed in this paper very well in the crucible of armed struggle, survival in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds; it is less edifying in the context of informed, scientific discussion and, actually, in the end achieves nothing. The purpose of this brief prelude is not to herald a piece of unprecedented objectivity, as someone, somewhere, will regard it as partisan, whether in overall approach and argument, or simply in a tum of phrase here and arrangement of words there. Academic 'polar bears'

Going to the city ... and coming back? Turnaround migration among the Jola of Senegal

Abstract: The 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.

Dangerous Pursuits: Hunter Associations (Donzo Ton) and National Politics in Cote d'Ivoire

Abstract: This article examines the resurgence of hunter associations (donzo ton) in Cote d'Ivoire during the 1990s in the context of game depletion, rising crime rates, and a dysfunctional state. Initiated hunters (donzow) are widely respected by the general public for their mystical powers and potent amulets which protect them from malevolent forces in the natural and social worlds. The donzow's success in reducing crime in northern rural areas led to an expansion of the dozon ton to the national level, as donzow were increasingly employed as private security guards in the country's major cities. The government and political parties also employed donzow to complement the police and gendarmes in maintaining order during the 1995 presidential elections. The attempt by politicians to manipulate the donzo ton during re-election campaigns was frustrated by the decentralised structure of the hunters' organisation and the diversity of its membership. Fearing that the donzo ton would become a politically destabilising force, successive governments have attempted to restrict its activities to the northern savanna region. The policy of containing the donzo ton to its so-called 'original cultural hearth' is discussed in the framework of the national cultural identity ideology of ivoirite and its xenophobic political manifestations around the 2000 presidential elections. RESUME Cet article examine la resurgence des associations de chasseurs (donzo ton) en Cote d'Ivoire au cours des annees 1990 sur fond de diminution du gibier, d'augmentation de la criminalite et de dysfonctionnement de l'Etat. Les chasseurs inities (donzow) sont trSs respectes du grand public pour leurs pouvoirs mystiques et leurs amulettes puissantes qui les protegent des forces malveillantes dans le monde naturel et darts le monde social. Le succes des donzow a reduire la criminalite dans les regions rurales du Nord a conduit au developpement du donzo ton au niveau national, les donzows etant employes de maniere croissante comme agents de securite prives dans les grandes villes du pays. Le gouvernement et les pards politiques ont egalement employs des donzows pour renforcer les effectifs de police et de gendarmerie dans leurs activites de maintien de l'ordre au cours des elections presidentielles de 1995. La tentative par les politiciens de manipuler le donzo ton au cours des campagnes de reelection fut contrariee par la structure decentralisee de l'organisation des chasseurs et la diversite de ses membres. Craiguant que le donzo ton ne devienne une force de dSstabilisation politique, les gouvernements successifs ont tentse de confiner ses activites a la region de savane du Nord. La politique de confinement du donzo ton a son soi-disant [??]foyer culturel d'origine[??] est debattue dans le cadre de l'ideologie identitaire culturelle nationale d'ivoirite et ses manifestations politiques xenophobes a l'occasion des elections presidentielles de 2000. ********** Since the 1990s initiated hunters (Jula: sing. donzo, pl. donzow) and their associations (donzo ton) have become increasingly visible in national political and social life across West Africa. (1) Donzow play a prominent role as private security guards in rural and urban areas of Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso (Bassett, 1999; Hagberg, 1998: 121-6; Hellweg, 2001), as militia men fighting alongside government troops in Sierra Leone's civil war (Richards, 1996: 166-83; Figaro, 12 May 2000), as auxiliaries to defence forces operating along unstable borders of Cote d'Ivoire and Guinea, and as conservation agents in protected areas and natural resource management projects in Guinea, Mall and Burkina Faso (Caspary, 1999: 108; Leach, 2000; Petit, 2000: 400-8). (2) The culture and history of hunter associations in the Mande diaspora have been the subject of numerous studies (Bird and Kendall, 1987; Cashion, 1984; Cisse, 1964, 1994; McNaughton, 1982). However, with the exception of the kamajor of Sierra Leone, comparatively little has been written about the role of Mande and Mande-influenced hunter associations in contemporary politics. …

Forgetful Remembering: A Colonial Life in the Congo

Abstract: MEMORY: REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING ABSTRACT Social memory, cultural memory, culture as memory, and memory as culture, landscape and memory, places of memory, regimes of memory--all these have been prominent topics in cultural studies, also in anthropology; in this work, attention is usually paid to remembering. Based on several prior inquiries into popular historiography and local regimes of memory, this paper is an attempt to include forgetting in a model of 'memory work'. What this entails is shown with ethnographic evidence, the recording of a conversation made in Lubumbashi in 1986 with one of the African pioneers of the town. The text in French and Swahili, accompanied by an English translation, is accessible at www2.fm.uva.nl/lpca. ********** When I was recently invited to talk about 'Forgetting Africa', I began by pointing out that the phrase entailed a performative contradiction. By pronouncing it, we negate what it seems to affirm. In plain words, we remember Africa when we talk about forgetting Africa. Giving this insight more thought, something occurred to me that I found at first quite disturbing: is it not inherently contradictory to use 'forgetting' as a transitive verb designating an action that has an object? The contradiction lies between the negation expressed in a verb whose meaning is constituted in opposition to remembering and the affirmation of some content that is being forgotten. I am sure logicians have a solution for this problem but as an ethnographer and anthropologist trying to understand what forgetting means when I encounter it in my work, it is neither my task nor my concern to analyse the logical status of concepts or statements. I want to understand the pragmatics of speech, the ways language articulates with action in practices that perform what, with all the misigivings we may have about the term, we continue to call culture. Specifically I have been concerned with 'forgetting' in the context of several projects of research devoted to documenting and interpreting popular historiology, a term designed to cover both written and oral accounts, narration of history as well as metahistorical principles that account for the specific shape of shared memory. (1) The adjective 'popular' signals a contrast with academic historiography and, above all, the fact that such historiology is part of contemporary African culture I have been studying, since the mid-1960s, in the urban-industrial region of Shaba/Katanga in Zaire/Congo. (2) Social memory, cultural memory, culture as memory, and memory as culture, landscape and memory, places of memory, regimes of memory--all these have been prominent topics in cultural studies, also in anthropology. I contributed to several of them but I found myself getting more and more uneasy with tendencies to ascribe to memory and remembering predominantly positive value (often stressing the integrative, normative, and symbolic functions of shared memory, to a point where the concept becomes interchangeable with culture). This did not fit what I found out in studies of popular religion, theatre, song, or history writing, where remembering clearly was critical, contestatory, and at times subversive) Not only that: not only could memories have critical effects; what I found was that remembering in the sense of producing memory that could be narrated, exhibited, performed, in short, shared, required critical work. Such work had to be carried out in a field of tensions between positing and negating. I began to speak of memory work, a dialectical notion, I believe, that makes it possible to think remembering and forgetting together and thus avoid the kind of positivity that results in conceptual entropy. So, the way I propose to think about forgetting is not: memory = remembering vs. forgetting = not-remembering But memory requiring memory work carried out as remembering and forgetting (4) Let me, before I show how this idea can work in the practice of interpreting popular memory, try to make the general thesis a little more concrete by disputing two assertions that at first appear self-evident: You either remember or you don't In this view, memories can either be called up, produced, or not. …

Religious Revival in the Roman Catholic Church and the Autochthony-Allochthony Conflict in Cameroon

Abstract: This article explores the reasons for, and the repercussions of, a virulent and protracted crisis in the South West Province of anglophone Cameroon during the 1990s caused by the emergence of a Pentecostalism-inspired revival movement within the Roman Catholic Church. The so-called Maranatha movement and main-line Catholicism were viewed by both parties as incompatible, almost leading to a schism within the Church. The originally internal Church dispute gradually became a particularly explosive issue in the region when the politics of belonging, fuelled by the government and the regional elite during political liberalization, became pervasive. Includes bibliographical references, notes and summaries in English and French. [Journal abstract]

Redrawing the map of the Horn: The politics of difference

Abstract: The 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 the de facto independent 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. RESUME Cet article examine la morphologie changeante des territoires situes dans la Corne de l'Afrique et les discours qui legitiment cette morphologie. Il commence par la Corne elle-meme, les differentes facons de la delimiter et les interets qui sous-tendent celles-ci. Il aborde ensuite l'Erythree, l'Ethiopie, la Somalie et le Somaliland independant de facto et etudie leurs raisons d'etre. L'article constate que ces raisons ne suivent pas toutes le meme module. Les criteres d'inclusion ou d'exclusion des populations ou des territoires different et constituent un riche reservoir de conflits futurs. A plus petite echelle, celle des etats regionaux compris dans une unite principale, l'article s'interesse aux Oromo d'Ethiopie, qui constituent le principal groupe ethnique de la Corne de l'Afrique. Il constate une contradiction entre ce que l'on rapporte comme les origines des Oromo et les criteres selon lesquels on peut etre considere comme Oromo. Dans la derniere partie, il traite des relations internationales et transnationales dans la Corne de l'Afrique. A cheval sur les frontieres, d'importants regroupements sont issus d'alliances entre les Etats et des mouvements ethniques, des forces d'opposition ou des chefs de guerre d'Etats voisins ou d'anciens etats, contre d'autres Etats ou spheres de pouvoir. Ces alliances se font dans la discretion et il semble que l'on ait peu tente de leur donner une base ideologique ou des raisons historiques. La logique qui semble suivie est celle selon laquelle tout ennemi d'un ennemi est un ami potentiel. ********** In December 1986, just after I took up a new position at a faculty of sociology, some new colleagues tried to find out about possible cooperation and asked me about my research interests. I told them I was interested in boundaries. They looked disappointed. They had heard of Luhmann's boundaries of systems and were possibly acquainted with other rather metaphorical and theoretical uses of the term. Apparently these concepts did not appeal to them. I then assured them that I was thinking of the actual red lines on the map. They liked that a little better, but even then they did not look enthusiastic and it took me some time to persuade them that those red lines are of some sociological interest. Much has been written about (social and cognitive and other) 'maps' and 'boundaries' and both concepts have become theoretically charged in various ways. It might therefore be appropriate for me to renew my vow and insist that I really mean those red lines on the map and the ways in which they have been redrawn. …

Rituals of Verification: Indigenous and Imported Accountability in Northern Tanzania

Abstract: Holding 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.

Sharing Home, Food, and Bed: Paths of Grandmotherhood in East Cameroon

Abstract: This article focuses on relationships between grandmothers and grandchildren in an urban society in East Cameroon. It argues that despite fluid generational demarcations between grandmothers and mothers, women perform their grandmotherhood differently from their motherhood. As a result of the claims grandmothers often make on their children's children, grandmothers easily replace mothers but they do not rear children in the same way. The sharing of home, food, and bed is central in the performance of grandmotherhood and differs from relationships of sharing in the mother-child bond. The article also argues that grandmotherhood in East Cameroon is not a clearly bounded, unambiguous life stage but that it contains multiple trajectories that do not occur in the same time or in the same order. Multiple trajectories, characterised by both agency and constraint, are explained in terms of differences within and between grandmothers' life courses. The article shows that grandmothers play vital roles in complex practices of marriage and descent and, in contrast to previous studies in the area, that matrilineages are closely linked to patrilineages. RESUME Cet article s'interesse aux relations entre les grands-meres et leurs petitsenfants dans tree societe urbaine du Cameroun oriental. Il montre qu'en depit de demarcations generationnelles fluides entre les grands-meres et les meres, les femmes exercent leur grand-maternite differemment de leur maternitr. En consequence des droits que les grands-meres revendiquent souvent sur les enfants de leurs enfants, les grands-meres remplacent facilement les meres mais ne les elevent pas de la meme maniere. Le partage du domicile, de la nourriture et du lit est un element essentiel de la grand-maternite et differe des relations de partage qui s'exercent dans le lien mere-enfant. L'article montre egalement qu'au Cameroun oriental la grand-maternite n'est pas une etape de vie clairement delimitee et sans equivoque, mais contient des trajectoires multiples qui ne surviennent pas au meme moment ni darts le meme ordre. Ces trajectoires multiples, caracterisees a la fois par l'action et la contrainte, sont expliquees en termes de differences entre les parcours de vie des grands-meres et au sein de ces parcours. L'article montre que les grands-meres jouent des roles essentiels dans les pratiques complexes du mariage et de la descendance et, par contraste avec les etudes precedentes dans ce domaine, que les matrilignages sont etroitement lies aux patrilignages. ********** Throughout my fieldwork in a provincial town in East Cameroon I followed the life of Marie-Lucie. When I first met her in 1993, she was thirty-three years old and having a sexual relationship with the prospect of having more children. When I met her for the last time in Cameroon in 2000, she was forty years old and calling herself une vieille femme because 'she did not sleep with men any more'. Now, as a 43-year-old woman, she is worrying about her death and the possible futures of her children. (1) Despite her 'advanced age' she leads a dynamic life. She cultivates a field of cassava, peanuts, and vegetables in the vicinity of the kindergarten where she works as a teacher for a low, irregularly paid salary. She needs to do both the agricultural and the wage work since she is responsible for four biological children, on average six foster-children, and two grandchildren. She gives herself to all these children but enthusiastically celebrates the presence of her two grandchildren: a four-year-old girl and a one-year-old boy. The celebration of these two grandchildren sharply contrasts with the indifference that she displayed towards her last-born biological child during my second fieldwork in 1996. She deliberately neglected this child when he was three months old and fell ill. She did not make any attempt to keep him alive as he reminded her of a badly ended relationship and she felt too old to care for children born from relationships that had already been broken off. …

Badme and the Ethio-Eritrean border : the challenge of demarcation in the post-war period

Abstract: The Ethiopian-Eritrean 'border war' of 1998-2000 was about much more than a stretch of relatively useless borderland, but in the subsequent negotiations this issue has come to dominate the agenda. The focus of the controversy is the village of Badme. Despite the border decision prepared by the Eritrea-Ethiopia Border Commission (EEBC) under the auspices of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2002, no one knew for sure which country had been accorded Badme until the EEBC issued a statement on 21 March 2003, declaring that the place would be in Eritrea. However, with this statement the case is not yet closed. Ethiopia remains unconvinced and has called for a 'proper' interpretation of the issue in the spirit of the December 2000 Algiers agreement. This article discusses the background to the conflict and explains why Badme has become such a highly symbolic prize. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]

African Tourist Encounters: Effects of Tourism on Two West African Societies

Abstract: This article compares encounters with tourism in two African communities, the Dogon in Mali and the Kapsiki in north Cameroon. The societies are comparable in many respects, but the effects on them of the tourist presence quite different. The Dogon react to tourism by bolstering their cultural pride and self esteem, and they develop inventive ways of gearing their cultural performances to tourist demands without compromising the rituals to which the performances belong. For them, the tourist presence signals the importance and intrinsic interest of Dogon culture. The Cameroonian Kapsiki (called Higi in north Nigeria) interpret the attention bestowed upon them and their country as indicating that they are marginal, living at the rim of the habitable world. They translate the tourist quest for 'authenticity' as being 'backward' and left out. The reasons for these different reactions are traced to processes inherent in cultural tourism, to the specific agenda of tourism in either place, and to some characteristics of the host cultures. The overall effect of tourist encounters with local communities seems to be to reinforce existing patterns of identity construction and to restate the images of the relevant 'other' already current in those cultures. INTRODUCTION: SEPARATE REALITIES In a Dogon village a heated argument centred on a boy from a neighbouring village who had been caught stealing some ritual objects from one of the clan houses. He wanted to sell them to tourists. His clan elders came over to make amends, and the old men from both villages settled in the shade of the particular clan house. During their lengthy discussion a large group of women collected their communal millet harvest and, with their baskets filled with stalks, filed into the neighbour's house. At that very moment a group of tourists passed the clan house. None of the three groups--women, elders, tourists--paid any attention to either of the other two. The elders were just busy repairing the problems tourism had generated, i.e. the theft of the objects; only one girl stopped to have a look, only to be urged on by her friend. For their part the tourists, led by guides from another village, had just seen their mask dance and were on their way to the next place on their itinerary (a crocodile pond). Neither the women in their--quite 'traditional' and also highly photogenic--working party, nor the old men engaged in discussion in the shade of the clan house, fitted into the tourist definition of what was 'interesting' in Dogon culture: not enough, anyway, to merit stopping and looking, not even taking a picture. But the reverse held as well: neither group of Dogon was particularly interested in the other, or in the tourists. Evidently, as an anthropologist I was myself among the elders. (All indented examples are field incidents.) This small scene from a Dogon village encapsulates several aspects of the typical interaction between a village community and tourists. The various features of this interaction, which I shall call 'encounter', form a central fascination of the anthropology of tourism (Nash, 1981, 1996; Chambers, 1997; Burns, 1999), as they are fraught with contradictions and paradoxes. One of these evidently concerns the various definitions of what is 'interesting' and 'authentic', another is the way images of the other are constructed in the encounter, a third is the influence of the tourist presence on the host cultures. More fundamentally, the question is raised of what constitutes a tourist encounter, and in what ways representatives of the cultures construct their separate realities. In addressing these issues in a comparative study of two West African instances of tourism, I argue that the interaction between hosts and guests is characterised by some shared factors and even paradoxes but in its impact is not uniform at all, and may have different repercussions for the host communities. The focus here is on what is usually called 'eco-tourism'--or in other settings 'heritage tourism'--where the African cultures and village communities form the main attraction. …

Lifetimes intertwined: african grandparents and grandchildren

Abstract: In this volume we return to one of the treasures of our contributors' anthropological heritage: the study of kinship in Africa. We have chosen to focus on the intertwined lives of grandparents and grandchildren because they raise so clearly fundamental issues of temporality and relationship. While grandparents and grandchildren live together in shared time, their lifetimes overlap only partly. They have different pasts and different futures, and they share a present that in many countries is being radically affected by historical transformations such as urbanisation, impoverishment and the scourge of AIDS.

The politics of personal relations: beyond neopatrimonial practices in northern cameroon

Abstract: democratique du peuple camerounais (RDPC). The position of Minister charge' de mission serves as a springboard to greater power and prestige. Many well known Cameroonian Ministers and directors of national businesses started their political career as a young charge' de mission, including President Paul Biya himself, nominated charge' de mission at the age of twenty-nine under President Ahidjo (Flambeau Ngayap, 1983: 120). The duties of a charge' de mission include responsibility for daily functions at the presidential palace, its personnel and its budget and arranging the President's domestic and international travels. The holder is thus very close to the President. To be one of the President's chums is a very privileged position and offers excellent security for personal well-being in a state often described as neopatrimonial.

Localisation, Ghanaian Pentecostalism and the Stranger's Beauty in Botswana

Abstract: This 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 'localization policy'. Like many other nationalities, expatriate labour from Ghana has increasingly become the object of localization 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 localization 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 localization policies. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]

Mobilising Yoruba Popular Culture: Babangida Must Go

Abstract: Nigerian video films are often characterised as apolitical. A rare and significant exception is Gbenga Adewusi's Maradona (also known as Babangida 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 form ewi, 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. RESUME Les videofilms nigerians sont souvent qualifies d'apolitiques. Une exception rare et significative est le film de Gbenga Adewnsi intitule Maradona (encore appele Babangida Must Go), sorti en 1993 en reponse a l'annulation de l'election presidentielle du 12 juin 1993 par le chef miliataire Ibrahim Babangida. Ce film denonce avec force cette annulation et l'ensemble du regime politique, en employant diverses formes culturelles yoroubas et transnationales: la forme poetique chantee ewi, des sketches satiriques d'artistes issus de la tradition du theatre itinerant yorouba, les formes televisuelles de films musicaux, les programmes d'informations et les emissions avec appels d'auditeurs/telespectateurs, ainsi que les ressources de la presse ecrite. Ce film demontre le potentiel politique du videofilm, mais egalement les limites du systeme de diffusion de ces films. ********** The 'video boom' in Nigeria since the early 1990s, during which the production of feature films shot on video and sold as video cassettes has risen to the level of 500 a year, coincides with a period of political turmoil and deep crisis (Haynes, 2000). Cassette technology has enormous radical potential--because it is so cheap, mobile, and dispersed, the state apparatus can hardly control it (Sreberny-Mohammadi and Mohammadi, 1994, demonstrated its importance in the Iranian revolution; Larkin, 2000, has applied their theory of 'small media' to the Nigerian situation)--but the orientation of most Nigerian video production has nevertheless been resolutely commercial and extremely cautious in political matters. Invaluable as evidence of the effects of the economic collapse and social anomie of this period, only a few video films produced before the end of military rule in 1999 attempted anything like a direct political analysis of the causes of the crisis, and fewer still can be seen as direct political interventions. (1) The rare and significant exception under consideration here, Gbenga Adewusi's Maradona (2) (1993; also known as Babangida Must Go) indeed advertises itself on the jacket as the 'First Yoruba Film on Nigerian Politics'. The silence of other film makers is remarkable in contrast to the role of Nigerian print journalism--the other great chronicler of this terrible period of the nation's history--which constantly tested the limits of the military regime's tolerance, at the price of many arrests, detentions without trial, beatings, assassinations, seizures of equipment, and closures of media houses. Popular music, which is the only other art which commands anything like the same level of attention as the videos now do, has also carried many oppositional voices, sometimes strident, of which the late Fela Anikulapo Ransome-Kuti's was only the most famous. While censorship of video films on political grounds is not unheard of, it is rare, and the relationship between the video industry and the Nigerian Film and Video Censors' Board became increasingly cosy and lax as production boomed. The main reason the merest threat of censorship deterred film makers from addressing political topics was doubtless the precariousness of their financing: though made on shoestring budgets, video films are still relatively major investments for those involved, and few producers could survive the total loss consequent on having a film banned. …

Reaching the Larger World: New Forms of Social Collaboration in Pikine, Senegal

Abstract: Actors in fluid African urban environments try to make collaborative social action work, collective responsibility enforceable, and instruments of power effective and legitimate. These efforts give rise to an uneasy tension between the adoption of normative discourses concerning urban management and governance, the ways in which urban residents attempt to adapt to a vast range of new opportunities and crises, and the role of the city as a place of experimentation. Given this tension, what are diverse groups of African urban residents doing to make cities habitable and to use cities as a means of enlarging the spatial parameters in which they operate? Focusing on the site of one of urban Africa's major governance restructuring projects, Pikine, Senegal, the article discusses a particular instance of translocal economic collaboration among three discrete groups of women. Whereas the major intervention, the City Project, sought to promote greater co-ordination among the localities making up Pikine, ‘real’ co-ordination, as exemplified by these women's collaboration, may be taking place in unanticipated and relatively invisible ways. Through examining some of the intricate difficulties actors often face in operating at translocal levels, ‘small leaps’ across scale are sometimes significant accomplishments and potentially important precursors to new extended forms of economic collaboration.

Saint mediation in the era of transnationalism: The 'da'ira' of the Jakhanke 'marabouts'

Abstract: The focus of this article is the intersection of the motivations for international migration and innovative new forms of religious organisation. An example is provided by the recent introduction of a prayer ritual called da'ira in the Muslim community of the Jakhanke Jabi in eastern Senegal. For centuries, supererogatory prayers mingled with local practices have been at the heart of the religious traditions of the Jakhanke Jabi marabouts. Yet their religious practice underwent considerable change when the young disciples began to migrate to Europe and the United States. Prayers raised during the ritual address the invisible saints capable of serving the needs of transnational migrants. At the same time the economic base of community agriculture shifted from labour provided by the students to donations increasingly coming from overseas groups of followers. Since then a great number of people--including politicians--seeking success in business, career, health or marriage have solicited the spiritual help and protection of Jakhanke Jabi marabouts. ********** In 1926 the legendary marabout Al-Hajj Soriba Ibrahim Jabi left the religious community of Touba in the Fouta Jallon (northern Guinea) and paid a pious visit (Arabic: ziyara) to the sanctuary of Abd al-Qadir Jilani in Baghdad. While in the holy city of the founder of the Qadiriyya order he took the opportunity to copy the names of the invisible saints and took them all the way back to Africa. But it was not until the 1970s when the institution of da'ira became popular in Senegal that Al-Hajj Soriba initiated his own da'ira in the remote village of Maka in eastern Senegal where he had settled in 1956. Since then the da'ira with its ritual of the invisible, living saints who are said to control the spiritual universe while protecting migrants who travel the world has given an impetus to the spiritual potency of the Jakhanke Jabi marabouts. As elsewhere in Senegal, the Arabic term da'ira (meaning 'circle' in Arabic) refers to a form of socio-religious organisation grouping the followers of a marabout or movement together. (1) But among the Jakhanke Jabi marabouts in Maka, strongly influenced by the Qadiri mystical traditions, the term da'ira denotes not only the entourage of a marabout but also the weekly prayer ritual for saint mediation and intercession. For centuries, supererogatory prayers mingled with local practices (e.g. healing, divination and the manufacture of amulets) have been at the heart of the religious traditions of the Jakhanke marabouts. But their religious practice underwent a major change when the prayers directed to the society of invisible saints became the main object of the ritual of da'ira. While the migration of the young disciples to Europe and the United States has intensified, the da'ira has begun to serve as a means to identify the 'men of mystery' (Arabic: rijal-al-Ghayb) capable of unravelling the mysteries that veil the outside (read: Western) world. A great number of people seeking success in business, career, health or marriage now solicit the spiritual help and protection of Jabi marabouts. The followers of the Jabi marabouts, who call themselves Dahiratoul Khadriya Ibrahimaya [sic], have guaranteed a constant flow of money and other commodities all the way to Maka. To some extent these cash donations have become the primary means through which followers establish or maintain their relationships with the spiritual centre. Along with the emergence of, what I would call, a 'transnational economy' of the Dahiratoul Khadriya Ibrahimaya has come a renewed interest in large-scale public offerings. New means of communication have facilitated this trend and nowadays it is not unusual for the marabouts in Maka to receive telephone calls from their followers in the United States, Europe, and Asia asking them to raise supplications and make offerings on their behalf. The international expansion of the Dahiratoul Khadriya Ibrahimaya, in turn, has significantly contributed to the charismatic appeal of the movement and subsequently altered the encounter between marabouts and state officials in Senegal. …

The Talk Goes Outside: Argument, Privacy and Power in Mambila Society towards a Sociology of Embedded Praxis

Abstract: In this paper the sociological implications of loud argument are considered, by taking a case study from the Mambila in Cameroon. Meetings of rotating credit societies are non-traditional forums where power and status are in dispute. These meetings contrast with both domestic arguments and with disputes held in the Chief's court. Rotating credit society meetings usually include arguments but these are dismissed as being unimportant by local informants. They pose a challenge for anthropological analysis since they are such a regular but disregarded--and disparaged--occurrence. Raised voices increase the range of bystanders as witnesses, so to argue loudly is a very social act. ARGUMENTS AND THE INEFFABLE This paper is a small contribution to the study of the ineffable, to the study of small scale but extremely social events that form the bedrock of ordinary life. That very ordinariness makes such events difficult to conceptualise or discuss. A heated dispute, i.e. an argument, is an essentially ambiguous social practice. On the one hand it is specific, being tied to the issue in dispute: the sparks and context unite in disharmony those who argue. On the other hand it is a universal social act. By definition, an argument involves more than one person--solipsists do not argue--and the paths of argument, mediation or resolution trace the patterns of power and authority, the structures that comprise society. Small wonder then that anthropologists seem endlessly fascinated by, possibly even obsessed with, quarrels and disputes. As John Haviland (1997: 568-9) puts it, 'argument is a particularly potent arena for doing ethnography, in part because the language of argument directs us to people's hearts', and later, 'fights are an appropriate place to look because they are similarly ubiquitous, and because they are passionate--when arguing we frequently "forget ourselves".' Professionally, we really are 'looking for trouble'. Such an orientation carries its own problems. It is hard to explain why one is so interested in the small, messy and private problems of one's neighbours. It is difficult to explain why and how their words and actions transcend the local. For they do, but in complex and subtle ways. The words spoken in the heat of an argument, the forms and the means of argument point to deep and widely distributed ways of organising society. (1) Briggs (1996, 1997) discusses some of the wider ramifications of disputes and pragmatic research. Haviland (1997) raises the question whether Gricean co-operation and orderly turn-taking are idealistic social aspirations rather than observed features, although, as Brown and Levinson (1978: 100) observe, the maxims are honoured mainly in the breach. A MAMBILA CASE STUDY Some quarrels happen in the privacy of the home, others in public. Of the public quarrels, some are more serious than others. In this paper I consider the quarrels that often accompany the meetings of rotating credit societies (dasis). These are far less serious than those heard at the Chief's court, where arguments are concluded by ritual oath taking (extensively analysed in Zeitlyn, 1994) which provides a definite conclusion to an argument, since its ultimate resolution is thereby taken out of human hands. In many, if not most, rural communities the norm is that one lives near the place where one was born and where one will die. Privacy is therefore a scarce resource which is highly prized and which people labour to achieve (see Haviland and Haviland, 1983, for a Mexican parallel). In Mambila villages much of social life takes place outdoors in the sight of passers-by, who may be casual visitors, but are more likely to be siblings, cousins or lifelong friends or enemies. The management of social relations in such an environment reflects these basic facts (a similar European case has been documented by Rapport, 1983). Houses in Mambila villages are built close together. …

Rebounding Nationalism: State and Ethnicity in Wollega, 1968-1976

Abstract: This article deals with the interrelationship of ethnic and national processes in a rural district in Wollega at the time of the Ethiopian revolution of 1974. It describes how the state policy of 'official nationalism' and Amharisation on the one hand, and the policy of land confiscation and land grants on the other, affected two different categories of Oromo: the small, educated elite, and the peasants. The government promoted Amharic as the language of state, whilst the Oromo language was banned from public contexts and not allowed in print. The government feared popular involvement in politics, and all political parties and organisations were banned. University students voiced demands for modernisation and land reform whilst the war in Eritrea raised the 'question of nationalities', but there was not yet any Oromo nationalist claim for statehood. Among the farmers, opposition to the state centred on land tenure and taxes and on the abuse of authority by the government. Most Oromo-speaking regions had been conquered and incorporated into the empire in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Land was confiscated and granted to warlords, or to local leaders who collaborated with the emperor. The original inhabitants became tribute-paying tenants under the new lords. As most landlords were immigrants to the area, ethnicity was an obvious aspect of property relations. In Wollega, however, local Oromo who had collaborated with the emperor were in control of much of the land and both landlords and share-croppers were Macha Oromo. They shared basic value-orientations by which performance is judged. Memories of the moral economy of an earlier time provided an alternative to the existing situation. Reference to history implied an active selection of elements in the formulation of a critical discourse on power and property that addressed the basic opposition between society and state. The last part of the article describes how educated and farmers met in a political meeting that was organised by the local authorities in 1976 to celebrate the revolution and its land reform. The occasion turned into an intense celebration of local values and, at least to some of the participants, this was a moment of new ethnic awareness and a call to revive gada, the Oromo ritual system. Threatened by ethnic identification, the state responded with brutal repression, and several people were murdered. Shortly after, some activists joined the Oromo Liberation Front to wage guerrilla war against the state. RESUME Cet article traite de la correlation entre les processus ethniques et nationaux dans le district rural de Wollega au moment de la revolution ethiopienne de 1974. Il decrit comment la politique de > et d'amharisation menee par l'Etat d'une part, et la politique de confiscation des terres et de subventions agraires d'autre part, ont affecte deux categories distinctes d'Oromo : l'elite instruite, minoritaire, et les paysans. Le Gouvernement a promu l'amharique comme langue d'Etat et interdit la langue oromo dans les contextes publics et les ouvrages imprimes. Craignant une participation populaire a la vie politique, le Gouvernement a interdit tous les partis et organisations politiques. Les etudiants universitaires reclamaient une modernisation et une reforme agraire alors que la guerre en Erythree soulevait la >, mais aucun nationaliste oromo ne reclamait encore l'independance. Chez les paysans, l'opposition a l'Etat se centrait sur le regime foncier et l'abus d'autorite exerce par le Gouvernement. La plupart des regions de langue oromo avaient ete conquises et incorporees dans l'empire au cours des dernieres decennies du dix-neuvieme siecle. Les terres furent confisquees et octroyees aux chefs de guerre ou aux chefs locaux qui collaboraient avec l'empereur. Les habitants durent alors payer un tribut aux nouveaux chefs de guerre. …

Manjaco Rulers after a Revolution

Abstract: This article iuxtaposes a series of vignettes that feature the attitudes of the Manjaco of post-revolutionary Guinea-Bissau to traditional rulers with a similar series of vignettes E. E. Evans-Pritchard used to paint a portrait of Azande attitudes towards aristocrats. It poses the question: if what Evans-Prichard wrote about the Azande reflects the desires and preoccupations of a typical colonialist anthropology, what might the way we write about Manjaco reveal about postcolonialist anthropology as it is currently being constructed? Evans-Pritchard drew a sharp distinction between the idealised 'before' and the all too unpleasantly real Carter' of the colonial encounter. In the Azande version of this dichotomy authority is ultimately intact and unquestioned on one side of the historic divide. On the other side authority is about to disappears with colonialism's impositions being the catalyst of this disappearance. By contrast, Manjaco were more likely to revile than revere their kings, and they tended to treat this as an enduring fact rather than to historicise it. Manjaco were also bad subjects and citizens. Or so it has seemed to colonial administrators and revolutionaries. Are we to frame this pervasive cynicism about authority and order as a kind of degeneration--an extension of colonial-era malaise into the era of the postcolony? Or are we to take Manjaco attitudes at face value? The article suggests that, in posing such questions, an emerging postcolonialist anthropology is inevitably a reflection of our view of the capacity of people like the Manjaco to make society work in the postcolonial era. RESUME Cet article juxtapose, d'une part, des croquis illustrant le comportement des Manjaks de la Guinee-Bissan postrevolutionnaire face aux dirigeants traditionnels et, d'autre part, des croquis similaires d'Evans-Pritchard dressant un portrait du comportement des Azandes face aux aristocrates. Il pose la question suivante: si ce qu'Evans-Pritchard ecrivait a propos des Azandes traduit les desirs et les preoccupations d'une anthropologie colonialiste typique, que peut reveler ce que nous ecrivons des Manjaks sur l'anthropologie postcolonialiste telle qu'elle se construit actuellement? Evans-Pritchard etablissait une distinction nette entre l' [??]avant[??] idealise et l' [??]apres[??] bien trop desagreablement reel de la periode coloniale. Dans la version azande de cette dichotomie, l'autorite ressort intacte et incontestee d'un cote de la ligne de partage historique. De l'autre cote de cette ligne, l'autorite est sur le point de disparaitre, les impositions du colonialisme erant l'element catalyseur de cette disparition. A contrario, les Manjaks etaient plus susceptibles de vilipender que de reverer leurs rois et ils avaient tendance a le traiter comme un fait immuable plutot que de l'historiser, Les Manjaks etaient egalement de mauvais sujets et citoyens. Ou du moins c'est ce que pensaient les administrateurs et les revolutionnaires. Faut-il considerer ce cynisme generalise envers l'autorite et l'ordre comme une forme de degenerescence--un prolongement du malaise de l'ere coloniale dans l'ere de la postcolonie? Ou faut-il se contenter de juger le comportement des Manjaks sur les apparences? L'article suggere qu'en posant ces questions, une anthropologie postcolonialiste emergente est inevitablement le reflet de notre opinion sur la capacite des peuples comme les Manjaks a faire fonctionner la societe dans l'ere postcoloniale. ********** Today, as James Clifford puts it, 'all the beautiful primitive places are ruined' (1988: 4), if there ever were such primitive places. Visit a West African village and you seem to enter a 'ruptured landscape' a 'pulverized space of postmodernity' (Gupta and Ferguson, 1992: 8-9) in which the here and the there, the then and the now, are inextricably 'entangled'. (1) What kind of ethnography can anthropologists write about the 'ruptured landscape' of a village in contemporary West Africa? …

Patriarchies, prophets, and procreation: Sources of gender practices in three African churches

Abstract: The problem: leading, though not from the helm Sophie Odunlami, a schoolmistress in the Yoruba town of Isonyin, might have lived a relatively comfortable and predictable life had it not been complicated by two events: a dream and an epidemic. Her dream of healing waters during the 1918 flu epidemic, and her gift as a visioner, made her a central figure in the founding of Christ Apostolic Church (CAC); nevertheless, because she was female she would never become a CAC 'pastor' and head her own assembly. Mrs Rosaline Adebola Sodeinde, an educated successful businesswomen, was the right arm to the charismatic founder of the Celestial Church of Christ (CCC); however, she could not aspire to the clergy, for CCC rules and regulations prohibit women's ordination, their speaking in church unless called on by a male, and their entering the church compound when menstruating. In contrast, Church of the Lord (Aladura) (CLA) women are ordained and there is no prohibition against their becoming 'Primate' and heading the church; however, when menstruating, they must sit outside the sanctuary, even if they are the Minister-in-Charge. How women negotiate power structures within these three African Instituted Churches (AICs) informed my earlier article, 'Impurity and power: women in Aladura churches' (Crumbley, 1992), which focused on menstrual taboos as a window on institutional history and organisational process. Thickly described vignettes immersed the reader in the engendered ritual life and power relations of Aladura congregations. As such, 'Impurity and power' laid the ethnographic groundwork for the more analytical investigation below by posing this question: are structural constraints on explicit female leadership in these case study churches the consequence of imposed foreign gender practices, a legacy of pre-colonial Yoruba culture, or mutually reinforcing traditional and foreign patriarchies? By focusing on women's access to explicit leadership-that is, formal decision making rather than indirect influence-this paper argues that the status of these women and associated gender practices reflect three dynamics:

Remembering J. M. Stuart-Young of Onitsha, colonial Nigeria: Memoirs, obituaries and names

Abstract: Colonial 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.

Identification in violent settings and situations of rapid change

Abstract: The papers collected here all deal with North-East Africa or, politically speaking, with IGAD (1) countries. Within this geographical framework, they address subjects as diverse as new states and justifications for their existence, changes in an administrative order at the regional level, and the violence directed by armed forces against civilians and their response to this. The actors under analysis include, in descending order of magnitude, large-scale collectives like states or emergent states, medium-scale ones like regional liberation movements or new ethnically-based administrative units within a larger state, down to gangs of raiders, both with and without uniforms. These differences in scale and in kind between the collective actors under study are more obvious to the educated reader than to many ordinary people who are exposed to their actions. Some people experience the state only as a group of armed raiders. The difference between state and non-state raiders might seem minimal to them and, historically, are they not right in a way? Have many states not started as gangs of armed men fighting against other men about some form of loot? Such considerations easily lead to debates about legitimacy and political morality. Some of the activities described in these papers are illegal by the standards of one or another set of laws, some are even criminal--at least from an outside perspective like that of universal human rights. The international community is certainly called upon to turn its attention to abuses like the ones described by Knighton in this collection. If human rights are not universal by their nature or by their origins, we should certainly strive to make them universal by enforcing their application universally. But in this introduction I want to address a different issue. What forms of identification occur in such settings? All papers are set against a background of violence and rapid change. How do people draw the boundary between friend and foe, between we-group members and strangers under such conditions? To answer such questions we shall have to look at forms of reasoning as well as at emotional forces. Rationality comes in severally as humans aggregate into larger units. One may try to join a group for specific reasons. Such an attempt may be rejected on equally rational grounds. A group may increase its homogeneity and the consistency of its aims and strategies by excluding dissidents. Or, alternatively, it may modify its aims and self-description either in order to accommodate new members, or in the process of doing so. People reason about the group boundaries they draw, they invent or select ancestors, and they classify languages and dialects in order to show that these boundaries make particular sense in just the way they have been drawn. Smaller units thus delineated are part of larger units: so we find systems of categories, taxonomies. The term 'identification' in the title is meant to hint at all these forms of reasoning about identity and difference. Neither the cognitive aspects of identification (the logic of categorical inclusion and exclusion) nor the perspective of rational choice in analysing who identifies with whom or what--and why they do so--have been fully and systematically explored in anthropology. Some of the most inspiring work in this direction is already forty years old (Barth, 1959, 1981) and little systematic advance has been made here since. Much ground remains to be covered. This collection of papers does not attempt a comprehensive theoretical approach either. But perhaps it offers food for thought and inspiration in that direction. This is not meant to suggest that the analysis of human aggregation can be reduced to a combination of cognitive anthropology and rational choice. There are emotional forces at work, which are covered by neither of these approaches. If we reserve the term 'identification' for the more rational (or 'cognitive') level of categories and classifications, then these may be studied under a label like 'bonding'. …

Concluding comments: collective identities in a complex world

Abstract: As I write, the United States and the United Kingdom have begun their invasion of Iraq. Thus, the most developed forms of violence are being brought into relationship with some of the world's most complexly layered local identities--all on global television. The unpredictability of this situation points, I believe, to one of the more profound aspects of the post-Cold War order. How will past forms of ethnic and religious identification condition the course of the war? How will the memory of horrific violence change identifications, encouraging new ways for people to place themselves in the world, to become in fact a 'people'? We do not know what will happen in the Middle East. Given all the usual caveats, examining what has happened in North-East Africa over the last decade may be useful, if only for sensitising ourselves to certain possibilities. As Gtinther Schlee usefully emphasises in his introduction, few areas of the globe have seen such dramatic shifts in local, state, and regional identities as North-East Africa. The exertion of violence has been a central element in this transformation. The preceding papers analyse various aspects of this process at various levels. Taken together, they illustrate the advantages of an approach--whether by social anthropologists or by political scientists--that traces out as precisely as it can the connections among levels, the resulting ironic juxtapositions, the unintended outcomes, from the global to the national to the grassroots. Before commenting on each paper, I think it would be helpful to step back and reflect on the history of how the issue of collective identity has been dealt with, particularly within social anthropology. In retrospect, I think many would point to 1969 and to the publication of Fredrik Barth's edited collection, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, as a significant transition. Before, most anthropologists tended to accept 'societies' and 'cultures' as givens. There were of course exceptions--Edmund Leach's analysis of highland Burma being one--but by and large, anthropologists proceeded upon the assumption that cultural boundaries and social actors' identifications with one side or another of such boundaries were unproblematic. After Barth, this assumption has become increasingly difficult to make. Issues of identification have increasingly come to the fore, so much so that Barth's collection is, literally, one of the most cited works in the whole social science literature. If this is so, the analyses in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries strike us today with a kind of wistful simplicity. Perhaps this is the fate of all seminal works that provoke the production of whole literatures. Barth and his collaborators present rich examinations of local processes, but they tend to neglect the operation of the modern state set within a global context (see Verdery, 1994; Barth, 1994). In most areas of the world today, the state is far more visible for anthropologists--in a few areas, only for its lack and the anxiety that this produces. The modern state itself classifies people in terms of their identities: it conducts censuses; it draws maps and boundaries; it establishes social welfare programmes. This 'official' identity work conditions local social and cultural processes, whether by reinforcing or contradicting them. Analysis cannot rest at the level of the state, however. Beyond the state, there are yet farther-flung patterns and structures that affect local processes, many of which anthropologists and others have recently begun to label as instances of the 'global'. When, for example, United Nations bureaucrats in New York decide exactly who can and cannot be counted as a refugee, they critically affect processes of local identity formation in places such as Ethiopia. Or take the example of international links between so-called First Nation peoples. The connections between native Americans, Australian aborigines, and Brazilian Indians have begun to affect how local people see themselves vis-a-vis their respective states. …

André Corten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani (eds), Between Babel and Pentecost: transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America . London: Hurst, 2001, 288 pp., £39.50, ISBN 1 85065 439 8 (hard covers), £16.50, ISBN 1 85065 438 7 (paperback).

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