Journal ArticleDOI
Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in british colonial africa
TLDR
The authors argued that the case for colonial invention has often overstated colonial power and ability to manipulate African institutions to establish hegemony, and that tradition was a complex discourse in which people continually reinterpreted the lessons of the past in the context of the present.Abstract:
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.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Disinventing and (Re)Constituting Languages
TL;DR: The authors argue 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.
Journal ArticleDOI
The ‘reversal of fortune’ thesis and the compression of history: Perspectives from African and comparative economic history
TL;DR: Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson as discussed by the authors 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 more prosperous parts of non-European world of 1500 into the poorest economies today.
Journal ArticleDOI
Challenges in Land Tenure and Land Reform in Africa: Anthropological Contributions
TL;DR: In this paper, the interface of anthropological research on land with policy positions across formative periods is discussed, from the colonial period through to the present as land tenure reform has repeatedly become a development priority; and recent research on intensifying competition over land, its intersection with competition over legitimate authority, new types of land transfers, the role of claims of indigeneity or autochthony in land conflicts, and challenges of increasing social inequality and of commodification of land for analysis and for land reform.
Book
Local Politics and the Dynamics of Property in Africa
TL;DR: In this article, the history of land policies in the Upper Regions of Ghana and the dynamics of property are discussed. But the authors focus on the land conflicts under institutional uncertainty and the rent of non-enforcement.
Journal ArticleDOI
An Institutional Theory of Direct and Indirect Rule
TL;DR: In this paper, an institutional theory of direct/indirect rule is proposed to explain the difference between a relatively direct (centralized) and a relatively indirect (decentralized) system of rule.
References
More filters
Book ChapterDOI
Ethnicity in Ghana: a comparative perspective
Carola Lentz,Paul Nugent +1 more
TL;DR: The recent Edinburgh Symposium on Ghanaian ethnicity as mentioned in this paper was a forum where research agendas and perspectives could be discussed, and the purpose was both to consider what recent advances in the study of ethnicity have to teach those who work primarily on Ghana, and to consider ways in which the Ghanaian experience might shed light on issues of continental (and possibly wider) concern.