Statements are frequently made by residents and travellers in Africa about the effects of missions on Native communities, but they are seldom backed by an analysis of concrete facts. The African is subject to the influences of Western European culture in many different ways, and it is extremely difficult to isolate the influence of missions from other contact influences, particularly since African Christians tend, for a variety of reasons, to be more affected by these other influences than their pagan neighbour. By comparing, in one area, the life of pagan and Christian families which are subject to similar non-Christian contact influences it is, however, possible to study specific differences in belief and behaviour. One such observable difference is found in the believed working of religious sanctions. Among the Nyakyusa of South Tanganyika behaviour in the pagan community is directly affected by the belief that certain actions are punished by the ancestors, by witchcraft, or by magic. Christian teachers attack these beliefs. The problem then arises as to how far belief in traditional religious sanctions remains in the Christian community, how far it is replaced or modified, and how far changes in belief affect behaviour.

In this paper I consider some Lugbara notions about witches, ghosts, and other agents who bring sickness to human beings. I do not discuss the relationship of these notions, and the behaviour associated with them, to the social structure. The two aspects, ideological and structural, are intimately connected, but it is possible to discuss them separately: on the one hand, to present the ideology as a system consistent within itself and, on the other, to show the way in which it is part of the total social system. Here I attempt only the former.

1.1. On the structural level, it is usual to consider and write each element (radical, affix, &c.) as it occurs, both in the form quoted and in all other forms, as an abstraction. On the phonological level, we normally discuss and note down each word in terms of relevant sound units, disregarding structural variations if they happen to be neutralized for the hearer. On the phonetic level, we consider and try to write each sentence as it sounds in the particular utterance under examination. The relationship between the phonological and the phonetic levels is simple and clear, though one should not be misled by this clarity into assuming identity.

Ozuitem is an Ibo community of approximately 7,400 individuals situated in Bende Division, Owerri Province, Southern Nigeria. This, like similar communities, is generally referred to as a ‘clan’ by government officials and this term has been crystallized in Talbot's volumes. Meek, as a result of his researches into Ibo social organization, refers to these as ‘communes’ or ‘village groups’. Throughout this study the term ‘community’ will be used to refer to Ozuitem and other similar politically autonomous and descent groups.

In 1970 and 1971 I spent fifteen months studying the ritual gatherings of a syncretistic healing movement popular among the coastal Fante of Ghana. The group is known as the ‘Nakabah people’ (the name of one of the founders) or more generally as The Twelve Apostles Church. On Fridays the Twelve Apostles gather for a healing ritual known to them as edwuma, the work, or sunsum edwuma, the working with spirits. On Sundays a prayer service called kyεpor, a pidgin term for ‘chapel’, is conducted. Both the edwuma and the kyεpor are performed in small communal healing centres of the movement designated as ‘gardens’. Most of these gardens are located in coastal fishing towns or inland agricultural villages up and down the coastline of Ghana's central region.

The official religion in Ethiopia is Christianity, a part of the Ethiopian population are Moslems, others, called Falasha, are of Jewish faith, still others are pagans. Whatever their religious beliefs, Ethiopians have in common a belief in the spirit called zar. The name is of non-Semitic origin, probably derived from the name of the supreme divinity of the pagan Cushites, the God-Heaven called in Agau ğar, and in Sidamo languages: Kaffa yarō, Buoro darō. This ancient pagan god is regarded in christianized Abyssinia as a malevolent genius. Although the official church, Christian or Moslem, condemns the belief in zar and the practices connected with it, the current opinion is that everyone ‘has a zar’.

Cet article examine le profile des spectateurs des vidéos Yoruba, le style de marketing et la politique de choix à Ogbomọṣọ, une ville nigérienne sur la bordure du Nord de l'état Ọyọ. En tant que communauté comerçante itinérante, Ogbomọṣọ est un endroit où la production nʼest pas une source de richesse; à la place, les grosses richesses sont toujours répatriées de l'extérieur, faisant naître des doutes, provenant de son apparément invisible base productive, sur l'abilité et les accomplissements humains. La vocation qui consiste à vendre les vidéos est en train de se développer bien que ce ne soit pas encore couronné de succès en tant quʼenterprise qui rapporte de l'argent. Mais le commerce Iui-même, de par l'attrayance de sa culture de marché, semble inviter une clientèle graduelle, systématique et progressive. Ce commerce attire les consommateurs, surtout les jeunes, par sa garantie de choix et la promesse d'un pouvoir négotiable. Les consommateurs peuvent sélectionner et choisir parmi une variété de produits. Ils sont libres de les prendre ou de construire des rapports avec les vendeurs, selon l'importance quʼils mettent sur le coût, la qualité et la quantité des biens. Pour les gens d'Ogbomọṣọ dont le désir insatiable de liberté et de succès les ont emmené au loin dans d'autres pays, le marché représente quelque chose qui peut jouer plusieurs rôles. On soutient ici quʼune idéologie locale de marketing promote la vente de vidéos dans leurs contextes productifs et que ceux qui les achètent dans ces contexts actent dans le cadre de la même idéologie Les vidéos traitent de la connaissance et des différents niveaux de son acquisition. Les producteurs, les vendeurs, et les consommateurs sont engagés dans une considération de l'économie politique de leur temps. Et en tant que forme de courtage, les vidéos fondent toutes les prévisions en une conception de l'histoire perçue d'un point de vue moraliste. Elles sont aussi une illusion de vente lorsque dans le contexte nigérien elles parlent de progrès.

Initiation, through which a Bantu establishes spiritual communion with his ancestors, is also a necessary preliminary to marriage; thus the place of initiation of the Bakongo is called nzo longo, i.e. the house of legitimate wedlock. It is during the ceremonies attending it that both sexes are supposed to receive their sexual education. It must, however, be admitted that, as a rule, boys and girls know at an early age as much about the animal, if not the social and spiritual, side of matrimony as their elders, for we have ample evidence that they indulge freely in promiscuous sexual intercourse long before marriage and even puberty.

Evans-Pritchard's assessment of what contemporary social anthropologists might call ‘contextual ethnicity’ has offered many with no first-hand research experience in this region of Africa a prerogative in which some apparently revel: to opine on the bizarre and the obvious. Examples of the former persuasion are typified by articles which, with a passion for ‘theoretical purity’, openly declare an indifference to ethnographic fact (Newcomer 1972). Others attempt to account for the present distribution of pastoral Nilotes in the Southern Sudan as though ‘tribal’ groups and their tract of migration possessed the physical properties of pool balls pelleted across the swampland of the Upper Nile Basin (e.g. Southall 1976). Some must surely have had moment to wonder if the Nuer really exist at all. Of course they do, as even the uninterested tourist could note by observing the ethnic composition of labour groups in Khartoum, but only because so do the Dinka, who live north, south and west of Nuerland.

L'étude d'un cas Nigerien illustre comment la compréhension, par les gens locaux, de la same agit sur les perceptions de la survie infantile, en cela que les interprétations des indigènes peuvent se juxtaposer à des données extérieures différentes. La conclusion tirée de deux recherches étendues sur un village de Hausa-Fulani, effectuées à douze années d'interval, suggère un déclin dans les taux de mortalité infantile consécutif à la plus grande disponibilité de biomédicaments. Nous notons cependant que, d'apres les perceptions locales, les risques de mortalité sont maintenant plus élevés pour les enfants de moins de cinq ans. Notre désbat est centré sur les circonstances impliquées dans cette ethnodémographie et son application a d'autres études de population.

The Luvale in Northern Rhodesia came under British administration in the early years of the present century, the first Government headquarters in Balovale district having been established in 1907. Some time previously, about 1892, they had already come under pressure from the Lozi to the south as a result of Lozi intervention in the war between the Luvale and the Lunda. When, therefore, the Barotseland protectorate was established at the beginning of the century, the Balovale district was included within it. Relations with the Lozi authorities were slight in the early years of British administration; later, about 1930, when the Lozi sought to introduce a greater degree of political control in Balovale district, their relations with the Luvale (and Lunda) became strained. The Luvale chiefs acquired a special role as the focal point of Luvale opposition to Lozi interference, and thereby enhanced their status and prestige in the eyes of their people. The Balovale district was finally excised from Barotseland in 1941 after a Royal Commission had inquired into the dispute. Thereafter certain of the Luvale chiefs were gazetted with de jure recognition under the Native Authorities Ordinance.

Twenty years after the Mozambican war ended, a return to arms from 2013 by the opposition movement Renamo served to revitalize support for the party in the 2014 election, and put pressure on the Frelimo government to consider demands for constitutional change. Building on existing research on post-war politics and on recent economic change, this article addresses the question of how Renamo obtained civilians’ approval for renewed armed action in the south of Sofala province, the region where conflict broke out in 2013. I argue that popular legitimacy for Renamo's challenge to the state is constituted in a narrative about Renamo that is congruent both with present-day grievances against the state and with understandings of local history dating to the anticolonial struggle that challenge the nationalist history on which Frelimo hegemony rests. Renamo has adapted this narrative in such a way as to claim a historic role for itself in defending the interests of central and northern Mozambique and in struggling for an inclusive and democratic state. In this way, Renamo has gained support for its renewed armed actions, not only among those politicized by Renamo in the earlier war but more broadly among civilians in the region.

The circumstances of a child’s birth define his or her starting point in life, and they will be inscribed in the child’s file, so to speak, by means of a set of rule-governed birth names. These ‘child names’ are perfectly suitable for this initial stage of life, but all Baatɔmbu aspire one day to replace this original set of ‘orthodox’ names by another orthodox name, an inherited title name, corresponding to an achieved social and spiritual status. Commoners and nobles have separate institutions of gɔɔbiru, ‘inherited title names’, but in both cases the successive bearers of a gɔɔbiru share an exemplary essence that each must honour and perpetuate with his life. Baatɔnu nobles bestow baptism names on children around the age of seven, allowing these young candidates for the various gɔɔbiru to be matched, according to their potential, with a name whose influence will guide them into adulthood. Joking names and teknonyms can be classified as non-orthodox or informal names and seem to fill a gap left by the orthodox names, allowing personal and family relations to be expressed and negotiated. These names carry no prestige, but their use affords pride and pleasure and, unlike orthodox names, they can be used without infringing ‘shame’-based taboos.

Using fieldwork data from South Africa's Eastern Cape Province, this article highlights ambiguities of volunteering as idea and practice by exploring discursive strategies used by volunteers in the field of civic crime prevention when the ethical honesty and selflessness of their commitment to volunteering is questioned by others. These ambiguities relate to asymmetries in the relationship between donors and recipients of volunteering, as well as, most importantly, the challenge to determine what constitutes the ‘common good’. This article demonstrates that these strategies entail the accommodation of contentions about: (1) the social identity of the volunteer by stressing the volunteer's commitment to abstract causes and objectives; (2) powerful asymmetries between donors and recipients of volunteering by invoking an encompassing sociality; and/or (3) the (alleged) self-interest of volunteers by defining the personal benefits achieved by volunteering not as an end in themselves but as ‘private means’ to ‘public ends’. All three strategies have in common that volunteers as ‘ethical subjects’ can here be shown to be co-produced with South African ‘communities of ethics’ on different social scales.

Most work on the political implications of hometown associations has focused on male elites. This contribution attends instead to the gendered varieties of hometown associations, exploring variations in the bases of shared identity among six Bamiléké women's hometown associations – hailing from Ndé Division, Western Province, and organized in both elite and neighbourhood-based non-elite associations – in Yaoundé, Cameroon. It suggests several ways to reconceptualize hometown associations and belonging. Addressing the situationally specific ways Bamiléké women use and interpret ‘home’, the unit of belonging, it differentiates among actors and associations by gender and status. Viewing the autochthony debate from the perspective of allogènes, it reveals that the emotions of memory, marginalization and recognition are central to belonging, understandings of home, and involvement in hometown associations. Finally, it suggests that differences in associations’ network structure affect both orientations and actions toward the home place, and at times an ‘ethnicization’ of ‘home’. The non-elite hometown associations exhibit the dense, bounded networks of ‘urban villages’ and strive to bring ‘home’ to the city. Members of elite hometown associations are urbanites, developing social networks consisting of more diverse and specialized ties, which may account for more universalistic discourse about bringing ‘development’ to the hometown.

Tracing the persistence of community health workers (CHWs) as a key category in both global health policy and anthropological representation, this article asks how enduring scholarly investments in CHWs can reveal changing political stakes for both health work and ethnographic research. Amid renewed calls for a focus on health systems and universal health coverage, the article suggests that the durability of attention to CHWs is instructive. It simultaneously points to the imbrication of health with political and social relations and clinical and technological infrastructures as well as to how ethnographic investments in health systems can sometimes obscure the ambivalent politics of health. Drawing on fieldwork with CHWs, NGO staff and public health officials, and on public health literature on CHWs, it argues for greater attention to the political ambivalence of health labour. It suggests that the experiences of health workers themselves can serve as analytical examples in this regard, pointing to analyses that begin not with normative notions of health systems or the conceptual boundaries of global health ‘projects’ but with a focus on the contested relations through which health labour is realized over time. Such attention can also indicate possibilities for health beyond dreams of projects, clinics or health systems.

In this article, I focus on the narratives of two men, Patrick and Father Marko Mkandla. I ask whether their continued interactions with, and appeals to, Zimbabwe's politicized legal system were ‘foolish’. The two men inhabited different geographic regions and diverged in their economic positions, political engagement, and ties to Zimbabwe's human rights networks. They nonetheless both started their accounts by recollecting that they persisted in reporting cases of political violence to the Zimbabwe Republic Police. Their accounts show us that imagining, invoking and interacting with the law in Zimbabwe was often an ambiguous, occasionally dangerous, and very contradictory exercise. Under ZANU-PF's rule, judicial institutions were increasingly politicized as instruments for repression. The men nevertheless continued to interact with the state and its officials as if these were bound by rules. This allowed Patrick and Father Mkandla to perform their rights-based citizenship, to experience occasional ‘successes’, and to differentiate themselves from the ‘unprofessional’ politicized civil servants they encountered during their appeals. Rather than ‘foolishly’ invoking the law, some Zimbabwean citizens engaged it as a shared language through which they could articulate their imagination of, hopes for, and belonging to a rule-bound state in the future.

The collection of republished essays entitled Right and Left: Essays in Dual Symbolic Classification, edited and with a substantial introduction by Rodney Needham (the University of Chicago Press, 1973), has been long awaited. All of the essays are of great interest, and all are concerned with the binary mode of symbolic classification, something which appears to be found, in greater or lesser degree, in all human cultures. The work will no doubt be widely reviewed in the appropriate journals. What follows is not an attempt at an over-all review. It is rather a response to, and a critical examination of, some of the arguments Needham advances in his introduction to the book. As such, I hope that it may contribute, however modestly, to our understanding of some of the problems involved in the application of the ‘binary’ mode of structural analysis to ethnographic data. The context is the symbolism of the Banyoro of western Uganda.