The World Health Organization has recognized ‘traditional medicine’ as a de facto and economical substitute for biomedicine in the developing world. Accordingly, the Zambian government aims to integrate ‘traditional healers’, locally known as ng'anga, with their biomedical counterparts in a national health care system. Hence, on the one hand, ng'anga elaborate their practice into ‘herbalism’, which could meet scientific standards and fit into the scope of biomedicine. On the other hand, they continue to deal with affliction by positing the existence of occult agents, such as witchcraft and spirits, at the risk of being criticized for exploiting indigenous beliefs. As a result, many ng'anga associate themselves with Christianity, the national religion of Zambia, which serves as an official domain of the occult where they take refuge from biomedical rationalization. However, conventional churches, the government and health authorities do not approve of the link between Christianity and traditional medicine; hence ng'anga as traditional healers are marginalized in modern, Christian Zambia. Being thus dissociated from the national religion, ng'anga are officially confined to the periphery of national health care, where they submit to the primacy of biomedicine and the workings of state power.

This article explores relations between ways of experiencing socio-economic disorder, strategies on how to deal with it, and monetary classifications that symbolize these ways and strategies. It assumes that we can learn something from the fact that the concept of pesa makech (‘bitter money’) has been replaced with the much more diffuse notion of pesa marach (‘bad money’) in Western Kenya during the last twenty-five years. This shift in how ‘negative forms’ of money are discursively marked indexes a change in the way in which the people of Kaleko, a small market centre in Western Kenya, conceptualize the disorder of their surroundings. Instead of interpreting disorder as an effect of events taking place inside their sphere of influence, residents of Kaleko now predominantly situate the cause of disorder in actions of external actors that are perceived as uncontrollable: the ‘economy’, money itself, politicians, members of other ethnic groups and untrustworthy Luo. This necessarily changes the ways in which disorder is tackled: while pesa makech’s bitterness could be resolved by ‘sorting out’ (rieyo) the homestead's disorder, nowadays people employ other ways that aim at resolving disorder: upscaling rieyo’s potential to the Kenyan nation; ‘struggling’ (chandre) through disorder; and relativizing rieyo’s applicability.

Among the Punu of Congo-Brazzaville ikoku dancing is perceived through the concept of joy. In line with the privileging of the emotional experience, this article intends to consider the dance as an emotive institution – that is, a socially organized activity that creates culturally meaningful forms of emotion within which an understanding of self, as well as social identities and relations, are shaped. In ikoku, a succession of dance sessions, embarked on with shame-banishing pride and performed individually or as a couple, awakens a shared joy. Through the dance patterns and idiom, this joyful dancing is connected to the fecundating sexual encounter and to the activity of fishing, linking the dance world to the life-bearing water spirit world. The joining of sexual differentiation and maternal containment that in this way is enacted and deeply experienced by the participants – if the event succeeds in awakening joy – supports basic structures of Punu rural society characterized by the tension between conjugal relations based on a patri-virilocal principle and matriclanic belonging. The emphasis that our analysis places on the dance form itself, and on the shared joy in dawning fertility it evokes, also proves to be fruitful in understanding how ikoku dancing persists in changing contexts – and even in urban ones.

The article examines a murder trial in the Nigerian city of Ibadan during 1902. In the course of the trial a senior chief stated that those found guilty of the homicide should be fined, not executed, as a more severe punishment. The meaning of this statement is closely investigated in the context of the political climate in Ibadan at the time, of past judicial practices and through a reconstruction of the murder incident. It was argued that the assertion related to increasing competition between Ibadan chiefs and was an attempt to define constitutionally the economic and political value of a follower’s body.

In the literature and accumulated folk wisdom of development in rural Africa there are numerous instances of government projects which are expensive, ineffective and unpopular. These include now classic failures of the past, such as the Tanganyika Groundnuts Scheme (Wood, 1950; Frankel, 1953), which are still cited as cautionary tales demonstrating the need for proper project appraisal. There are also numerous more recent examples, for the phenomenon of failure has persisted and governments and international agencies continue to implement schemes ‘little better planned than their more spectacularly misbegotten predecessors’ (Hill, 1978: 25). Among recent initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa the large-scale irrigation projects developed in northern Nigeria during the 1970s have attracted particularly extensive adverse criticism. This has focused on the social and economic impact of the introduction of irrigation and particularly on questions of land tenure (inter alia Wallace, 1979, 1980, 1981; Oculi, 1981; Adams, 1982, 1984; Palmer-Jones, 1984; Andrae and Beckman, 1985; Beckman, 1986). A number of accounts discuss technical aspects of the land survey carried out at Bakolori {Bird, 1981, 1984, 1985; Griffith, 1984), while others focus on economic problems (e.g. Etuk and Abalu, 1982). However, although economic and technical aspects of these developments have been criticised, it is the social impacts of project development and more particularly the political responses to those impacts which are of greatest interest (Wallace, 1980; Adams, 1984; Andrae and Beckman, 1985; Beckman, 1986). This paper examines the bature of the response of farmers affected by one of these schemes, the Bakolori Project in Sokoto State.

Dreams and visions have an important place in the life of many of the more colourful African churches of Zionist or Pentecostal type. This has often been noted (Sundkler, 1961; Pauw, 1960; Sangree, 1966; Welbourn, 1966; Peel, 1968) but has rarely received any detailed consideration. Any definitely sociological, rather than psychological, treatment of the topic is particularly rare. My object in this paper is therefore to attempt an explicitly sociological examination of the phenomenon in one particular church which I have studied. I shall consider the telling of dreams and the extent to which it is controlled and patterned by beliefs and expectations, i.e. dream-telling as an institution; and I shall go on to examine the part it plays in the life of the group and the ways in which it is further patterned by this.

La littérature sur l'ethnicité en Afrique indique le rôle important quʼont eu les missionaires Chrétiens dans la création des langues en Afrique. Il a été soutenu que certains groupes ethniques africains doivent lew existence à l'invention de leur langue à des missionaries qui avaient créé un dialecte écrit—basé sur une ou plusieurs langues vernaculaires—dans laquelle ils avaient traduit la Bible. Cette langue avait été utilisé pour l'éducation dans les écoles de la mission et plus tard dans les écoles du gouvernement. Le dialecte de la Bible était en conséquent devenu la langue courante accepté du groupe ethnique et a acquis la fonction d'être un des marqueurs d'identité le plus prominent du groupe.

En ce qui concerne la langue Igbo, l'histoire des efforts des missionaries CMS pour créer une langue Igbo courante écrite montre que ce processus nʼavait pas toujours été très simple. Cet article décrit le processus problématique de créer une langue écrite. Les missionaries ont essayé continuellement en se basant sur plusieurs dialectes mais cela avait pris la moitié d'un siècle avant quʼils ne produisent la première traduction de la Bible. Ils avaient compliqué les choses en travaillant dans plusieurs dialectes, mais finalement ils avaient réussi à créer un dialecte de norme quʼils ont appelé Union Ibo, un mélange basé sur plusieurs dialectes Igbo.

Les missionaires avaient aussi été confronté avec de la résistance provenant d'au moins une partie de la population Igbo, qui avait contesté leur choix de dialecte. Cependant, il semble que la majorité des Igbo nʼétait tout simplement pas interessé. La population Igbo était beaucoup plus interessée par l'éducation en anglais, et bien que les missionaires CMS avaient forcé une certaine éducation vernaculaire, l'intêret y était resté limité. Il nʼest done pas surprenant que la langue de la Bible ne soit pas devenu la langue de norme acceptée par le groupe ethnique Igbo. La langue Igbo orale fonctionne cependant comme l'un des marqueurs d'identité les plus importants du groupe. Cet article maintient que l'importance de la langue Igbo pour l'identité Igbo est en partie le résultat des activités des missionaires.

Cet article tente de répondre à deux questions. Premièrement, il essaye d'expliquer pourquoi les Wawa et les Kwanja (deux groupes voisins situés au Cameroun) se sont convertis à l'Islam et au Christianisme dans les années 1960, et il suggère qu'ils l'ont fait dans le but d'adopter une identité respectée, jugée plus “moderne” et associée à l'identité nationale. Deuxièmement, l'article analyse les raisons ayant motivé les Wawa à se convertir à l'lslam alors que les Kwanja ont en majorite choisi le Christianisme, et il explique leurs choix principalement en fonction de la manière dont ils interagissent et définissent leur propre identité vis-à-vis des Foulbé voisins.

This article traces the history of Mumboism, a millennial cult of south-west Kenya, 1912–34. Mumbo, the serpent god of Lake Victoria, promised to eject whites and chiefs from the region and usher in a period of prosperity. Mumboism gained followers, it is argued, because it mixed older ideas of patron–client relations with newer ideas of omnipotent, unseen beings, introduced by Europeans as Government and God. Mumbo challenged chiefs and missionaries, struggling to create patronage networks, by attracting clients, and threatened to unmask Government and God as impotent. Chiefs and, to a lesser extent, missionaries directed state power to the repression of Mumbo, eliminating it before it could undermine the very basis of European power.

In 1956 the Journal de la Société des Africanistes published a monograph-length paper by Jean Rouch entitled ‘Migrations au Ghana (Gold Coast: enquête 1953–1955)’ (Rouch, 1956). The paper was one of several publications during the 1950s and 1960s based on studies by Rouch and other researchers who participated in what was probably the largest study ever of West African migrations, financed by the Commission for Technical Cooperation in Africa South of the Sahara and the Scientific Council for Africa South of the Sahara (CCTA/CSA).

Our knowledge of the linguistic groups in the Lake Chad area of Central Africa is very incomplete. In many respects the work of H. Barth, Central-African Vocabularies, 1862, is our only source of information. This source is incomplete, especially phonetically, and therefore of little value. The study of the sounds of African languages has developed very much recently, and there is no important school of African linguistics in which descriptive phonetics does not play an outstanding role.

Par le truchement de l'examen d'un cas de déplacement populaire d'affiliation religieuse dans la petite capitale régionale de Fatick, cet article explore les facteurs qui donne naissance aux nouveaux mouvements maraboutiques au Sénegal. Tandis que la majorité de la population Sérère de la ville ce réclamait jusque-là de son appartenance à la tranche de la famille Sy, de l'ordre de Tijaniyya, située à Tivaouane, il s'est produit au cours des 6 à 8 dernières années un large transfert d'allégeance au profit d'un marabout Sérère, el Hadj Ousmane Mama Ansou Niang, appelé plus familièrement Ma Ansou Niang. Ce réalignement ne peut guere être interprété comme étant du aux qualités particulières du message religieux de ce charisme maraboutique, ou du messager lui-même. C'est plutôt le côté “demande populaire” du charisme dont l'importance émerge; cet aspect qu'il replacer dans le contexte des implications locales particulières de l'ethnie Sérère. Prenant en considération le fait qu'un modèle religieux a ainsi été adopté dans le but principale de répondre à des préoccupations séculaires, l'étude en deduit que le système maraboutique tout entier a été institutionalisé en tant que moyen primordial d'organisation sociale au Sénégal. Ainsi, ce fait de société a non seulement des implications significatives dans l'étude des mouvements Soufi sénégalais, mais aussi lorsqu'il s'agit de comprendre l'impact socio-politique de l'lslam du pays.

This paper presents a study of what is sometimes called detribalization—the process by which tribal people, especially those who have left their homeland and obtained paid employment in towns, are separated from the social and cultural heritage of their tribe. But this is too superficial a statement of the matter. It is necessary to define the problem in sociological terms before attempting a systematic analysis of the process. Accordingly I shall start by describing the system of social relations prevailing among Temne in Freetown, and shall examine the forces which, over the past fifty years, have influenced its character. At the beginning of this period relationships among the Temne immigrants appear to have been relatively close and stable, but, from the 1920's, disintegrative tendencies became progressively more marked until, at the end of the 1930's, the young men carried out a series of swift changes which resulted in a more successful adaptation of the system and its closer integration.

In an article entitled ‘Practical Anthropology’, which appeared in Vol. II, No. I of Africa, Professor Malinowski makes suggestions as to the manner in which the anthropologist can be of service to those who are engaged in the practical business of colonial administration, especially in Africa. He writes, it is true, as an anthropologist, and he proposes that the anthropologist shall record the facts and the ‘practical’ man draw his deductions therefrom. How many anthropologists would agree that a division into anthropologists and practical men is satisfactory may be open to doubt: but as I am certainly not an anthropologist I hope that I may speak for the practical man.

The Tallensi of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast furnish data of special interest for the study of comparative social structure among the peoples of West Africa. Large as the ethnographic literature on West Africa is, it is singularly lacking in analytical data concerning social structure. Some of the most useful collections of ethnographic information on West African peoples thus lack the foundation without which a coherent picture of a society is impossible. Tables of kinship terms, enumerations of kinship usages, catalogues of marriage and inheritance customs, and such-like information are no more than the raw materials for the construction of a systematic representation of social structure. And very often the raw materials are not sufficient. There are plenty of bricks but no mortar. The reasons for such lacunae are obvibys. A sympathetic amateur ethnographer can bring together material of inestimable value; but without a good theoretical grounding in modern social anthropology the field worker will not look for, and even if he stumbles across it, will not recognise the kind of material necessary for an understanding of social structure. He must; first of all, have the concept of a total social structure clearly in his mind; and he must look for the connexions, which are very often implicit, by which ostensibly discrete processes and institutions are related to one another in a meaningful pattern.

The Zulu live on the south-east coast of South Africa, in a region of fertile soil, watered by fair summer rains which are occasionally interrupted by drought. Towards the end of the agricultural season they hold a great tribal ceremony, which Sir James Frazer cites as a typical first fruits sacrament, though the ceremony itself has many different rites. I hope in this paper to show that these, and the taboos on the early eating of the first fruits, together with the ritual approach to them, guard against socially disruptive forces. To the natives the importance of the ceremony is that it protects them against mystical powers; their actual effect must be sought by the anthropologist.

The cultural significance of regular ‘hunger periods’ in tropical Africa, however much it may be disputed by anthropologists, has for a long time been apparent to less objective observers. It is generally accepted by those concerned in the engagement of migrant labour that at certain regular times of the year the supply is greater than at others: and it is believed that the number of men presenting for engagement is related to the quantity of food available in the villages. This view, as will be shown below, is an over-simplification. Ogbu (1973), though he relates seasonal hunger among the Poka to labour migration, sees die latter as a cause rather than a result of the former. He apparently considers that migration reduces the number of agricultural workers to below an unstipulated critical level above which it might still be possible to produce a sufficiency of food at all seasons, provided that animal pests could be controlled and agricultural techniques made more efficient. Seasonal hunger among the Ibo of Onicha he blames on shortage of farmland, low yield, and high storage loss of foodstuffs. At first sight it might appear that the cultural concomitants of the hunger period contrast rather strikingly between the two populations; and yet the recurrent hunger period is recognized by the FAO and other authorities (though Miracle (1961) questions its existence) as being a phenomenon widespread in sub- Saharan Africa, and one which might in consequence be expected to result from similar or related causes in most of the situations in which it occurs.

Among the agro-pastoral Kuria people of East Africa, whose population straddles the border between Tanzania and Kenya, many young men are engaged in an illicit, violent livestock trade in which cattle stolen in Tanzania are sold to Tanzanian or Kenyan buyers for cash. This raiding is inextricably bound up with the phenomenon of warfare between mutually antagonistic Kuria clans, which not only serves to legitimise raids on the enemy's cattle herds so long as the fighting rages but which also fosters and sustains an atmosphere of inter-clan enmity that lends support to cattle raiding, particularly on the herds of former adversaries, even after hostilities have ended. Clan warfare emerges as both a cause and an effect of raiding as well as serving as a training ground for novice raiders. On the basis of field research in the Tarime District lowlands, the article argues that although Kuria cattle raiding, oriented to the cash market, owes its existence to capitalist penetration and is driven by the rising demand for cattle, particularly in Kenya, it remains heavily dependent on inter-clan warfare, which has two main causes: animosity engendered by commercialised cattle raiding, and boundary adjustments initiated by the government, either for administrative reasons or, paradoxically, in an effort to resolve existing disputes over access to pasture, grazing and water.

Drawing on rarely analysed primary sources obtained during multi-site archival research, this article examines and proposes to reassesses the political rhetoric deployed in pre-genocide Rwanda (First and Second Republics). The article contends that the First and Second Republics' rhetoric was not as ethnocentric as often contended. It argues instead that this rhetoric, cautious and moderate, should be understood as part of regime resilience strategies. Born of questionable origins, the two regimes faced recurrent instability and only imposed their authority questionably on segments of the Rwandan population. Unlike ethnocentric rhetoric calling upon limited ethnic affinities, moderate rhetoric was meant to ‘persuade’ and ‘pre-empt’, in other words extend support for regimes that were uncertain of their grounding.