Increasingly, the poor are to be found in the urban areas of developing countries. Many urban households, not only the very poor, face economic insecurity and deprivation. Despite the steady growth of low-income groups in the urban areas of Africa, the mechanisms for coping with urban poverty were not studied to any great extent until the end of the 1980s. Most research into the strategies developed by households to cope with poverty had centred on the rural household. This article focuses on the inhabitants of the town of Mopti, situated in the Sahelian zone of Mali on the border of the inland delta of the river Niger. It deals with the subsistence strategies of different types of urban households and their adjustments to uncertain and deteriorating economic circumstances. In analysing these coping mechanisms account is taken of the various factors affecting households' ability to cope with reduced earnings or lack of income, such as their socio-economic position, migration status, composition and size, and ethnic background. A pertinent question in the analysis is whether urban households, in deteriorating circumstances, diversify their sources of income or specialise in one activity.

The article addresses African and Indian newspaper networks in Kenya in the late 1940s in an Indian Ocean perspective. Newspapers were important parts of a printing culture that was sustained by Indian and African nationalist politics and economic enterprise. In this period new intermediary groups of African and Indian entrepreneurs, activists and publicists, collaborating around newspaper production, captured fairly large and significant non-European audiences (some papers had print runs of around ten thousand) and engaged them in new ways, incorporating their aspirations, writings and points of view in newspapers. They depended on voluntary and political associations and anti-colonial struggles in Kenya and on links to nationalists in India and the passive resistance movement in South Africa. They sidestepped the European-dominated print culture and created an anti-colonial counter-voice. Editors insisted on the right to write freely and be heard, and traditions of freedom of speech put a brake on censorship. Furthermore, the shifting networks of financial, editorial and journalistic collaboration, and the newspapers’ language choice – African vernaculars, Gujarati, Swahili and English – made intervention difficult for the authorities. With time, the politics and ideologies sustaining the newspapers pulled in different directions, with African nationalism gaining the upper hand among the forces that shaped the future independent Kenyan nation.

The trial of Thomas Kwoyelo – the first war crimes prosecution of a former Lord's Resistance Army fighter, and the only domestic war crimes prosecution in Uganda at the time of writing – has been packed with drama, intrigue and politics. The article considers what Kwoyelo's trial means for those most affected by the crimes he allegedly committed, and, more broadly, what it means for the ‘transitional justice’ project in Uganda. The article is concerned primarily with how the trial has been interpreted ‘on the ground’ in Acholiland: by local leadership; by those with a personal relationship to Kwoyelo; by direct victims of his alleged crimes; and by those who were not. Responses to the trial have been shaped by people's specific wartime experiences and if or how his prosecution relates to their current circumstances – as well as by the profound value of social harmony and distrust of higher authorities to dispense justice. We conclude with a discussion of the relevance of our findings for the practice of ‘transitional justice’ across the African continent.

The collective violence in rural areas of southern and central Plateau State between June 2002 and May 2004 was accompanied by widespread social mobilization and heightened ethnic and religious divisions. Vigilantes adapted to the new insecurity and were important local actors in the crisis, but became polarized along religious lines. Their emphasis shifted from vigilance against theft within villages to vigilance against the more serious threats posed by armed militias. The intersection of vigilantes and militias was situational; where there was less violence vigilantes were more prominent, but elsewhere their functions merged. Social action and the patterns of violence were shaped by power relations between identity groups and the struggle for territory. The notion of indigeneity continues to be used by all sides to make territorial claims, and historical narratives of belonging and grievance are actively put forward to bolster political legitimacy. The violence was also strongly defined by religion – the political dominance of Muslims, especially in Wase, generating particular animosity. Religious and cultural beliefs were also expressed by vigilantes and militias themselves, and, while not a direct cause of violence, supernatural beliefs did affect forms of mobilization and decision making.

This article discusses sexual licences and prohibitions among the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania with particular reference to the institutionalized yet controversial sexual relations between young pre-menarche girls and adolescent unmarried men. These relations are referred to as children's ‘play’ in the local vernacular, and as such fall within a larger moral order of age and gender hierarchies that privilege male seniority. The article uses the metaphor of ‘serious games’ adopted from Sherry Ortner as an analytical device in order to capture the dynamic and ambiguous character of Maasai sexual licences and prohibitions. Being at once serious and playful, ‘games’ lend themselves particularly to players' creativity, initiative and agency. The article aims to demonstrate how the structures of the games open up and create space for women and other ‘juniors’ to act intentionally and with purpose in their sexual lives.

This article proposes an analytic framework to describe variation in forms of land-related conflict that emerge in widely varying circumstances and settings. Focusing on conflict among smallholders, the article suggests that these social processes can often be thought of as redistributive conflicts that are shaped by the land tenure regimes that govern land access and allocation. Land tenure regimes can be conceptualized schematically as constituted by rules about property, authority, jurisdiction and citizenship, and as differentiated along these dimensions. They define a locus of political authority over land rights at the local level, a territorial arena, social groups with different land rights and interests, and the distribution of political and economic powers and rights among them. These arrangements vary across space and over time, shaping the political arenas in which land rights are contested and producing different forms of land-related conflict. In many situations, these dimensions of land regimes are blurred, layered and changing, adding additional dimensions of complexity to land politics that the analysis proposed here may help to illuminate.

During my field study of Yoruba art (1955–7) little of the symbolic meaning of the forms and component elements of the ritual sculpture was revealed to me through straightforward answers to straightforward questions. Indeed, it soon became evident that if meaning with any degree of resonance was to be arrived at, such a technique had to be abandoned in favour of an interpretative analysis in relation to myths and praise songs on the one hand, and the observation of the use of sculpture in ritual on the other.

In the past anthropology was concerned with alien, exotic societies such as Indians, Africans, and Pacific Islanders. Today it is in vogue to do the anthropology of modern societies. Abroad this is termed the study of nation-building and development; at home it becomes the study of various sub-cultures with attention towards ethnic minorities and deviant groups rather than upon the more powerful and prominent segments of our society. Anthropologists tend to neglect those groups nearest themselves, and in the scurry to conduct relevant research, a broad area of great theoretical interest has been passed by. Almost no attention was ever paid by anthropologists to the study of colonial groups such as administrators, missionaries, or traders. Today we can read anthropological studies of the impact of such groups upon native populations, but the focus of such work dims with the colour line. Thus, an anthropologist has studied the machinations of the members of a Nigerian emirate but not the tactics of the British Resident and his staff. Another applied potted Weberian bureaucratic theory to Soga local government but neglected to discuss the British district officers in the same chiefdom. Another asked how Christian Tswana behaved, but not about those missionaries who had converted them. Anthropologists may have spoken about studying total societies, but they did not seem to consider their compatriots as subjects for wonder and analysis.* In the studies of Christianity in Africa, consideration was mainly in terms of the relations of the convert to his traditional society, to the process of social change, or sometimes to the development of native separatist churches. It never included the missionaries who had made the conversions or described everyday affairs at the mission station, clinic, or school.

The 1990s saw the emergence of a thriving Nile perch export market from East Africa. This commercial table fish species is landed by migrant fishermen at villages that have sprung up along the shores of Lake Victoria, and then exported to overseas markets. By analysing the Ugandan perch fishery as a set of careers, the article shows that, although some fishermen have benefited from the perch boom, most face an uncertain and marginal existence. Few of them, however, move away in response. Analysis of an anthropological case study reveals that this is because the fishermen value the urban culture characterizing prominent village landings, expressed in particular clothing and hairstyles, the prevalence of non-kin ties, and a prospering leisure industry epitomized by the proliferation of pool tables. Hence, a cultural preference for life at the landings, rather than a universal quest for economic opportunity, drives their economic decision making.

Using a case study of a rural town in the Ashanti Region, this article explores transformations in enterprise, property relations and informal governance that have occurred since Ghana embarked on a period of neo-liberal economic and political restructuring in the mid-1980s. Rather than a linear move away from state-controlled markets and authoritarian rule toward privatization and democratic decentralization, Ghana has witnessed a proliferation of authorities and economic enterprises, both formal and informal, that defy clear-cut distinctions between public and private property and institutions. In the town described here, as in many other localities in Ghana, chiefs have figured prominently as both instigators and examples of transformations in economic and governing practices and institutions.

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.

‘A translation of the meaning of the Holy Koran into the Hausa language’ – this is the careful wording of the title of the work sponsored by the Jama'atu Nasril Islam (whose President is the Sultan of Sokoto) and signed by Abubakar Mahmoud Gummi, the chairman of its executive committee and former Grand Khadi (Gummi, 1980). It is, in short, as official a Muslim publication as there can be in Nigeria. The Arab text (set in a standard Beirut naskh typeface) is on the right of the page, the Hausa, in roman script (boko), on the left; yet colleagues say that the Hausa still reads as if it was simply part of an oral, abbreviated tafsiri transcribed for printing. Though it is nowhere labelled as tafsiri, it has some footnotes and a sentence introducing each sura; and it is a truly vernacular translation – that is, it is not as awkward to read as, say, the books translated by Haliru Binji into what one could best describe as ‘malamanci’. Lastly, the printed text originally was circulated in sections – in part, it is said, to assess people's reactions to a Hausa translation of the Holy Koran being sold in the streets of Nigerian cities. It is a measure of the public's acceptance of this work – which is in reality no more than a printed version of the various oral ‘translations’ one can hear every year in public, on the radio or on tape – that not merely has it now appeared as a single volume but that it has already gone into a second edition; indeed, Alhaji Nasiru Kabara has now almost completed the process of producing his own version.

In ethnological accounts the dance is usually given a place quite unworthy of its social importance. It is often viewed as an independent activity and is described without reference to its contextual setting in native life. Such treatment leaves out many problems as to composition and organization of the dance and hides from view its sociological function.

Contemporary Nigerian vigilantism concerns a range of local and global dynamics beyond informal justice. It is a lens on the politics of post-colonial Africa, on the current political economy of Nigeria, and on its most intractable issues – the politics of democracy, ethnicity and religion. The legitimation of vigilante activity has extended beyond dissatisfaction with current levels of law and order and the failings of the Nigeria Police. To understand the local legitimacy of vigilantism in post-colonial Nigeria, indeed, it is also necessary to recognize its internal imperatives. Vigilantism in this context is embedded in narratives of contested rights, in familiar everyday practices, understandings of personhood and knowledge, and in alternative, older registers of governmentality. In addition to mapping temporal and spatial communities in which young men are vested with the right to exercise justice, this article assesses the legitimacy of Annang vigilantism within cultural frameworks of accountability linked to conceptions of agency, personhood and power, and the oppositions this produces between vigilantes and thieves.

The concept of belief, when applied in its strong sense, assumes an inner state that sets believers apart from non-believers. This article suggests that a concept of trust is more appropriate for the study of the religious orientation among Pentecostal Christians in Chinsapo, an impoverished township in Malawi's capital city. Trust is a critical issue because even fellow members of Pentecostal congregations can turn out to have been sent by the Devil. Pastors also have to exercise considerable forbearance in order to encourage spiritual growth among backsliders. The boundaries of Pentecostal congregations are often permeable, with little emphasis on doctrinal differences. Pentecostal Christians also have frequent contact with kin, neighbours, customers and co-workers who do not share their religious orientation. Rather than being a matter of calculating risks, trust emerges in relation to the existential dangers of misfortune, hunger and disease that affect the lives of all township dwellers. Everyday contexts of township life are as important as proselytizing in generating trust between Pentecostals and those who are yet to experience the second birth in the Holy Spirit. In contrast to views that lament Africans’ particularized trust relations as an obstacle to democracy, this article suggests that generalized trust can emerge from a particular religious orientation. The article draws attention to the actual sources of civility and trust in contemporary Africa.

This paper is the result of a study of all the known rock painting copies and photographs, undertaken during 1963 and early 1964—in the first instance to plot the occurrence of patterned giraffe paintings against those only in silhouette. The list has grown, however, and all animals and humans have been indexed and plotted on distribution maps, all information being finally synthesized. An analysis is presented of the human types and domesticated animals recorded in the art of Southern Africa. These items have been plotted on distribution maps, the significance of which is discussed in the following sections. The importance of the Mopani belt and of linguistics are also examined and a possible way from the east of Southern Rhodesia to the Cape of Good Hope indicated. The distribution of animal types is the subject of another paper (Cooke, 1964).

This article briefly discusses the various factors that gave rise to tension in northern Ghana between Fulbe pastoralists coming in from Burkina Faso and the local Kassena farmers (who have livestock of their own). The Ghanaian government's decision in 1988–89 to expel the Fulbe resulted in more problems, not least the dilemma of how to patrol effectively the permeable borderland and the gradual introduction there of modern firearms. In consequence some argue that it is not the policies of conservation that are being called into question but the government's sovereignty.

In many parts of Africa, discourses on witchcraft and sorcery seem to follow a mod-ernisation process of their own. There are striking regional variations in the ways in which these discourses are articulated with State formation and the emergence of new modes of accumulation. A common denominator remains, however, the close connection between witchcraft and aggression from within the ‘house’. In many respects, witchcraft is still the dark side of kinship, even in modern settings.

It is against this background that this article explores the implications of a new type of witchcraft trial in the Eastern Province of Cameroon. Since 1980 State courts have started to convict ‘witches’ mainly on the basis of the expertise of the witch-doctors. This seems to be accompanied by the emergence of a ‘modern’ type of witch-doctor, more intent on punishing than on healing, who try to recruit their clients in very aggressive ways. In other parts of Cameroon the articulation of local witchcraft beliefs and State authority seems to follow different trajectories.

This article deals with the moral panic that emerged in the Netherlands when it became publicly known that under-age Nigerian girls were being smuggled into the country to be put to ‘work’ in the sex industry. A massive police investigation not only found hundreds of cases but also uncovered the fact that certain unknown and occult rituals played a part in how traffickers, ‘madams’ and other sex bosses appeared to keep the girls locked in this exploitative system. Soon an unspecified notion of ‘voodoo’ came to dominate the entire police operation, the public image of what was happening to these girls, and the way in which the girls were treated within the Dutch judicial system and its care. The article deconstructs the moral panic and all the images of Africa and the occult which became so crucial to the way the Dutch state tried to deal with the situation. It sets this analysis in the context of an anthropology of globalisation and a cultural exploration of how issues of morality and identity are affected by what the Comaroffs have called the occult economies of late capitalist relations. It concludes that to a great extent the scale of the moral panic can be understood by pointing at the rigidity of the identity politics of the Dutch nation state in previous years. Its policies were meant to curb some of the effects of globalisation (such as illegal immigration from Africa) in order to preserve its integrity, but it now found them seriously undermined by something the policies were not designed to cope with.

Much has been written about the persistence of economic apartheid, inscribed in the geography of South Africa's cities, producing spatial configurations that are reminiscent of the old order of segregation while simultaneously embodying the particular inequities and divisions of the new neo-liberal order (Turok 2001; Harrison 2006). Through an ethnographic study of Rustenburg, the urban hub of South Africa's platinum belt (once labelled the ‘fastest growing city in Africa’ after Cairo), I explore how the failure of urban integration maps onto the failure of the promise of market inclusion. What is particular about mid-range towns such as Rustenburg is that the opportunities of ‘empowerment through enterprise’ are seen, or believed, to be all the more attainable than in large cities. Here the extended supply chains of the mining industry and the expanding secondary economy appear to offer limitless possibilities to share in the boons of the platinum boom. Yet as this account shows, the disjuncture and friction between corporate authority and local government have given rise to increasing fragmentation and exclusion, as only a very few are able to grasp the long-anticipated rewards of the new South African dream.