The Nyamwezi and Sukuma area of Tanzania covers about 50,000 square miles from Lake Victoria in the north to the southern edges of Tabora District. The area probably contains between 4 and 5 million people, about one fifth of the total Tanzanian mainland population. The two peoples speak regional variants of a single language—the name Sukuma simply meant ‘northerners’ originally—and they share many common social structural and cultural forms (Abrahams, 1967b).

In this paper we consider how a functional study can help us to understand the manipulation of myths. This is not to return to the functionalism of Radcliffe-Brown (1935) which sought to explain every social institution by showing how it helps to maintain the social structure. Rather we consider what the myth-maker is trying to do in recounting his stories, or the function these stories serve for the narrator. We are concerned with the logical processes behind myth. This is not the ‘logic’ that Lévi-Strauss (1964, 9-22) tries to elucidate when he unfolds the structural patterns followed by the myths of a particular culture. We do not so much consider myth as an object to be analysed, but myth-making or the narration of myths as an activity of the people concerned. We are concerned with logic in the sense of the mental processes by means of which myth is used to express the intentions of the narrator. For this it is necessary to study myths in the particular contexts in which they are used.

The re-analysis of classical ethnography has become an anthropological industry Since segmentary lineage models enshrined so many of the assumptions integral to what we have learned to call the structural-functional paradigm, they have been subjected to trial by this form of interrogation particularly often. Africanists will be aware that the statuses of Evans-Pritchard's model of Nuer social organization and of Fortes's of Tallensi remain controversial within anthropological circles long after their publication. Another of the classical analyses of a segmentary lineage organization, that made by Laura and Paul Bohannan of the Tiv, seems to have escaped the same degree of controversy. The reason is not without interest: the Bohannans' analyses have been ensured relative immunity from criticism by the general acceptance that their model of Tiv social organization so evidently corresponds to some of the ways in which indigenous Tiv social theorizing represents Tiv society. In other words, and quite explicitly, the Bohannans' analytic model is also a Tiv folk model.

The anthropomorphic brass staff of the Yoruba Ogboni Society—the edan Ogboni—holds a position of isolation and aesthetic distinction within the Yoruba plastic. Whereas traditional wood-carving is humanistic in its identification with life, is spontaneous, descriptive, and experimental in idiom, Ogboni art is iconic—archetypal, hieratic, and conservative, a manifestation of eternal principle. Where the formal theme of Yoruba carving is abstract, dynamic, architectonic, Ogboni art is absolute, static, and linear. Frequently the edan Ogboni is little more than high relief—a non-sculptural projection of drawing in wax. Though art associated with Orisha is often religious it is not generally held to contain a spirit, and is never worshipped as a spirit. Orisha art is most typically symbolic of the spirit, where Ogboni art, in contrast, is sacred and worshipped as the actual vessel of the spirit. This difference in function, besides affecting the resulting form, determines the attitude of the artist to the object rendered. Yoruba wood-carving is therefore free to be naturalistic and spontaneous, where Ogboni art is rigidly traditional and conservative.

This collaboration began when Ames and Gregersen met in Zaria, the capital of one of the old Hausa kingdoms in northern Nigeria. Gregersen, an anthropological linguist, was collecting material for a grammar of Hausa language, and Ames was making an anthropological study of the status and role of professional musicians.

On a souvent répété des cultures négro-africaines qu'elles étaient imprégnées de spiritualité sinon de religiosité; pourtant, comme le remarquait dans un récent article Madame Calame-Griaule: ‘il serait faux de croire que le facteur religieux y joue un rôle essentiel’; il se situe en réalité sur le même plan que les autres manifestations de la vie sociale; il concourt à la construction de cet ensemble fonctionnel que constitue toute culture. C'est dans cette perspective que nous voudrions tenter d'examiner comment la religion bwa – dont les manifestations les plus élaborées et les plus valorisées s'expriment dans l'organisation et le fonctionnement de la société du do – s'intègre dans un complexe institutionnel précis dont elle n'est pas seulement, à certains égards, le reflet, mais l'un des rouages essentiels.

Dakar en 1965 offre l'image d'une grande ville, impression que corroborent les données chiffrées: 500.000 habitants, ensemble industriel qui groupe une centaine d'entreprises et 20.000 salariés, trafic portuaire de 2.000.000 de tonnes, administration ne comptant pas moins de 30.000 fonctionnaires. L'urbanisation y est relativement ancienne puisque la création de la ville date du milieu du siècle dernier; de surcroît une longue tradition de relations et d'échanges ont mis en contact de longue date les populations de la Presqu'île avec l'Europe par l'intermédiaire de Gorée et du trafic négrier et avec les anciens royaumes intérieurs du Sine et du Cayor.

In Zimbabwe after 2000, ZANU(PF) leaders’ past experiences of student activism in Rhodesia were celebrated by the state-owned media as personifications of anti-colonial, nationalist leadership in the struggle to liberate the country. This article examines the history behind this narrative by exploring the entangled realities of student activism in Rhodesia throughout the 1960s and 1970s and its role as a mechanism of elite formation in ZANU(PF). Building on the historiography of African student movements, I show how the persistence of nationalist anti-colonial organizing and liberal traditions on campus made student activism in Rhodesia distinct from that in South Africa and independent African countries to its north. The article then examines how and why three former activists, who took up elite political careers in the party that they subsequently left, contested the ruling party's anti-colonial, ‘patriotic’ rendering of these experiences. These three men's stories invoked imagined and older forms of nationalism or institutional ethic that had been abandoned by the party as it turned to more authoritarian rule. Stories of Rhodesian student activism thus provided space for justifying alternative political possibilities of nationalism, which implicitly critiqued the ruling party's ‘patriotic’ narrative, as well as for nostalgic anecdotes of life on campus, their journeys into adulthood, and the excitement of being part of a dynamic, transformational political project.

Since 2009, several unions of Congolese retailers have demanded the implementation of a 1973 law forbidding foreigners from operating small businesses and limiting their access to retail. Seemingly similar mobilizations have been observed elsewhere in Africa (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa), but the Congolese situation remains undocumented to date. The current discursive patterns and social practices that have emerged from this mobilization call for a socio-political enquiry, interrogating their xenophobic undertones but also viewing them in relation to the distribution of power and emerging political subjectivities of post-Mobutuist urban contexts. Based on extensive fieldwork, combining ethnographic research with interviews with key informants, conducted in Kinshasa between 2010 and 2012, this study focuses on mobilization techniques, the web of representations they give rise to, and political actors involved in or resisting the movement. It reveals a complex type of nationalistic discourse that draws on historical and contemporary global sources, while also being influenced by Congo's ambivalent relationship to national identity in the post-Mobutuist period. The non-distinct xenophobic undertones of the discourse, while mostly directed towards Asians and Lebanese, also result in the systematic targeting of West African business operators. Yet, despite often xenophobic and virulent rhetoric, interactions between Congolese and foreign traders have mostly remained characterized by ‘peaceful coexistence’. Those Congolese and foreigners who have chosen to resist injunctions to exclude the latter from economic spaces thus directly question national citizenship as the main basis for political and economic membership in the city of Kinshasa.

Cameroonians recently invented a new word to characterize the state of their country: anusocratie (the rule of the anus). This became central in the moral panic from 2000 onwards over a supposed proliferation of homosexuality. Anusocratie links such same-sex practices to illicit enrichment by the national elites and their involvement with secret associations of Western provenance, such as Freemasonry, Rosicrucians and the Illuminati. This article tries to unravel this conceptual knot of homosexuality, the occult (Freemasonry) and illicit enrichment: first, by historicizing it. Of interest in the Cameroonian case is the fact that a similar link is mentioned in one of the first ethnographies, Günther Tessmann's Die Pangwe. Freemasonry is clearly a colonial imposition on the country, but the link between same-sex practices and enrichment has a longer history. Second, a comparison with similar ideas elsewhere on the continent can also open up wider perspectives. The link with illicit enrichment does not figure in classical conceptions of ‘homosexuality’ as developed in Europe, yet it strongly emerges from examples from all over Africa. Both Achille Mbembe and Joseph Tonda show that this image of the anus – anal penetration – articulates popular concerns about staggering inequalities. Yet, this aspect is ignored in debates about growing ‘homophobia’ in Africa. A confrontation with classical texts from Western queer theory (Bersani, Mieli) can help us discover other layers in African discourses, notably an emphasis on sexual diversity as an answer to homophobia. It can also serve to relativize the linking of sexual practices to sexual identities, which is still seen as self-evident in much queer theory of Western provenance.

The 1970–4 Kenya Development Plan designated four levels of centres to stimulate rural development: urban centres as the main commercial centres for an entire district, mostly district headquarters though some like Kajiado, Narok and Kitui have not been so designated; rural centres to serve a population of at least 40,000; market centres to serve populations of about 15,000; and local centres to cater for populations of at least 5,000. Thirty six urban centres, 140 rural centres, 231 market and 600 local centres were identified (see Kabwegyere n.d.: esp. ch. 6).

The report of the Commission of Enquiry set up to investigate the protection of secondary industries in Southern Rhodesia, published in 1946, produced statistical evidence to show that output per head was considerably lower than in any other Commonwealth country. The figures quoted refer to 1938, but there is little evidence of any marked advance in African productivity since that date. Only in isolated instances is native labour today working to the full satisfaction of its European management and, as a general rule, Government officials and industrial or commercial employers are unanimous in their condemnation of African inefficiency. Many of these opinions are founded upon race prejudice or ignorance of industrial history, but there is, nevertheless, ample evidence in the form of high absentee rates, rapid labour turnover and an almost complete failure of normal incentives to produce increased productivity, to indicate that something is radically wrong in the industrial field.

Si l'eau et le feu ont particulièrement frappé l'imagination des petits Noirs qui se répètent régulièrement plusieurs devinettes qui s'y rapportent, les autres phénomènes ne les ont pas laissés indifférents comme nous verrons par la suite. Voyons d'abord l'eau:

Bakolamba eloko wana mpo na kotambwisa yango — Mai. On cuit cette chose-là pour la faire marcher — L'eau.

Jean and John Comaroff enthusiastically claim that Africa constitutes a rich site ‘of new knowledges and ways of knowing-and-being … that have the capacity to inform and transform theory in the north, to subvert its universalisms in order to rewrite them in a different, less provincial register’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2011). What role, then, can the African university – which, as described by Jeremiah Arowosegbe, is in a lamentable state – play in creating and generalizing these ‘new knowledges’?

Anthropologists are beginning to investigate the sociological dimension of dreams, at least of those purporting to be channels of religious revelation. Two recent examples of this tendency are Charsley (1973) and Curley (1983), each of whom researched dream phenomena in an African independent church. The sociological approach is a firm rejection of earlier and some current attempts to extract patterns of culture and personality from the subjective reconstruction of the dream-as-dreamed, a purely private event. In contrast, the sociological emphasis isolates as its primary datum the dream-as-told to others, an essentially social act, which leads to an analysis of dreams as social assets, which can be manipulated to advantage or disadvantage. Consequently, the method of analysis demands that as much attention be directed to the act of recounting as to the content of the narration, although in practice this seems to mean that content is subordinated to purpose and can be related to social arrangements only indirectly through purposive action. I shall endeavour to correct this latter impression in subsequent argument. The second methodological requirement is to connect narration to social action, social relations and social organization, and to demonstrate the tactical use of dreams in social encounters.

Work-parties, i.e. occasional labour groupings organized for specific economic tasks, are not as yet a topic of marked concern, either for social anthropology in general or for economic anthropology in particular. This is borne out by the fact that there is thus far no study which discusses them in any depth, or crossculturally. Yet work-parties are a fairly widespead phenomenon in Africa.

The idea that the knowledge of an individual is an articulation of a culturally shared paradigmatic framework of concepts is now familiar in anthropology. It is one derived from the work of T. S. Kuhn (1962), who argued that, for natural scientists, the definitions and solutions of problems normally take place within an existing framework provided by the paradigmatic work of a great scientist. Since then several attempts have been made to indicate that, in fields other than the strictly scientific, the knowledge which people have of their physical and social environments is similarly an articulation of paradigmatic ideas (Ardener, 1971, 1978; Barnes, 1969; Buckley, 1976, 1982, 1983; Willis, 1967, 1972, 1978). This article will attempt to develop this methodology in the field of Yoruba religion. Its focus will be Sònpònnó, the Yoruba god of smallpox, a ferocious and vindictive god who not only causes smallpox, but who is also responsible for a form of madness.

II se fait sur le terrain un consensus autour du terme Gbe pour désigner l'ensemble des parlers plus ou moins intelligibles dont le territoire s'étend en gros du fleuve Amugán (connu dans les documents en langues étrangères comme Volta) à l'ouest, au fleuve Wógbó (connu dans les documents en langues étrangères comme Ouémé et Weme) à l'est, puis de l'Océan Atlantique au sud jusqu'en dessous de la latitude 9° nord (cf Capo 1980a). Ce continuum dialectal, mieux connu comme Ewe depuis les importants travaux de Westermann (en particulier Westermann 1930), est maintenant divisé en cinq sections (caractérisées par des innovations précises), à savoir les dialectes Vhe, les dialectes Gen, les dialectes Ajá, les dialectes Fon et les dialectes Phla-Pherá (cf Capo 1980b). En fait, aux expressions comme ‘continuum dialectal’, ‘complexe linguistique’, ‘groupe de parlers’ Gbe, je voudrais proposer qu'on préfère la désignation de ‘la langue Gbe’. Le but de cette étude est done de mettre en lumière certains critères qui permettent d'identifier une langue, et de montrer ainsi que l'option pour ‘la langue Gbe’ n'est pas arbitraire.

In the first part of this paper I discussed the Tswana, Southern Sotho, and Kgalagadi, and showed that among all these peoples a set of intertwined variables produces a consistent pattern of marriage choices and residential alignments. These peoples are organized in tribes, under chiefs who are linked in competition and through marriage with other close agnates. The chiefdom is divided into wards, ruled often by brothers, brothers' sons, or sons of the chief, and within each ward the dominance of the central core of competing and intermarrying agnates is duplicated. Men with patrilateral ties to those in power at each level are brought into alliance or competition with them, and their relationships may be transformed or reinforced by intermarriage. Outsiders are attached to these ruling agnatic cores at each level, and develop or reinforce matrilateral ties to them by contracting suitable marriages.