The phrase ‘the mentality of the native’ is much on the lips of those whose work brings them into contact with Africans. The need for the study of African mentality is widely recognized; and an immense body of knowledge has accrued from the labours of administrators, missionaries, anthropologists, and others. Yet those whose knowledge is deepest are the first to admit that we still know only in part and darkly. Now it may be that, to achieve a fuller and clearer knowledge of the African mind, not only more study but additional methods of study are required. The main method up till now has necessarily been observation—observation of the behaviour of Africans in natural, everyday situations; and the result of this method has been the description of such behaviour. To this method we owe almost all of our present knowledge of the mentality of the African; and it seems likely that this must for long remain the chief source of our knowledge. It is not, however, the ideal scientific method. Our knowledge could probably be extended and made in some ways more precise by the method of studying the behaviour of Africans not in natural, everyday situations but in situations experimentally arranged and controlled. This method would result not merely in description but in measurement. Results obtained in controlled situations and expressed in quantitative terms would be results precise and verifiable. This method of study is not to be adopted prematurely, before the conditions of its technique can be fulfilled. But the advance of scientific understanding will sooner or later demand some such scientific method. One such method which is already being experimented with does involve the observation of the behaviour of Africans in controlled situations and does yield quantitative results. This is the method of mental testing.

In recent decades, Kinshasa and Brazzaville have given rise to movements of prophecy, messianic fervour and revival (Pentecostalist in nature) in the field of religion. The patterns of liberation and deliverance that can be discerned here reflect forms of identity politics in which Africanity, in the ethnic and national sense, is not only a major issue, but a component that is increasingly associated with armed conflict. These processes express a radical paradigm shift that we place within the context of the relationship between Africanity and religious pluralism that has become evident in these two religious areas in recent years. The term ‘Mboka Mundele’ (the village or country of the Whites) points to an experience of ‘colonial modernity’, and allows us to describe in objective terms the current urban context in which these ‘businessmen of God’ emerge. Fernando Kutino, Ntoumi, Yaucat Guendi and Ne Muanda Nsemi are four major politico-religious figures who embody an ideology of Africanity related to complex types of ‘magic’ and processes of pluralization.

L'analyse spatiale du palais de Kano montre que les lois abolitionant le colonialisme, enforcées au Nigéria après la conquête britannique en 1903, ont affecté différemment a l vie et la place des femmes et des hommes esclaves. Ces différences provenaient des différences historiques concernant le placement et la fonction des femmes et des hommes esclaves dans le palais: tandis que les femmes esclaves habitaient et/ou travaillaient dans un domaine privé et très retire, et se livraient à la reproduction de la famille au pouvoir pour le compte de l'émir, les hommes esclaves du gouvemement habitaient dans des endroits publics et remplissaient des fonctions qui se rapportaient au gouvemement. Lés lois abolitionistes coloniales qui ont restructuré les sphères publiques traditionnelles de l'état, ont en conséquence vigoureusement transformé les places occupées par les hommes esclaves, tandis que le domaine privé des femmes ne fut pratiquement pas touché au début. Avec le temps, comme la protection des esclaves du palais devenait de plus en plus fragile, les femmes esclaves quitterent le palais pour suivre leurs maris esclaves et/ou leurs chefs de families qui avaient été exiles ou qui étaient à la recherche de meilleures occasions à l'extèrieur, provoquant ainsi une diminution dans la réserve des femmes esclaves d'où les concubines étaient choisies. La réserve déclina encore plus lorsque les hommes esclaves reçrent la permission d'épouser des femmes qui étaient nées libres, provoquant une diminution prononcée du nombre de concubines et une transformation prononcée dans l'organisation interne de la famille. L'organisation spatiale de l'esclavage des femmes du palais fut done affectée indirectement et le fut plus tardivement que celle de l'esclavage des hommes.

Cet article démontre l'utilité de l'analyse spatiale pour comprendre les changements historiques, et souligne la nécessité de prêter une plus grande sensibilité aux questions de genre, distinctions de classe, et de pouvoir dans les analyses de l'esclavage et de son abolition. Ce fut le genre, la richesse et le pouvoir des protecteurs royaux bien que la dextérité gouvemementale et l'autorité des hommes esclaves qui conduirent l'administration britannique à promoter l'esclavage au niveau de l'état pour arriver à leurs fins; ceci donnant des avantages aux esclaves que les femmes et/ou les maîtres aux moindres moyens ne pouvaient pas fournir. Ironiquement, ce fut parce que les hommes esclaves avaient tellement d'autorite que les fonctionnaires britanniques finirent par intervenir directement pour eroder leurs places et leur pouvoir. L'analyse établit que l'organisation spatiale de l'esclavage a été construite et érodée différemment selon le temps et l'endroit.

Islam did not originate the idea or the practice of slavery, but it does admit, and in certain specific instances it enacts, the institution of slavery and establishes it upon firm legal and social foundations. The Sharī'ah, i.e. Islamic Law, takes a panoramic view of slavery in human societies and arrives at a cogent statement of slavery as a state endorsed by Divine Law. According to the legal authorities, the original condition of the race of Adam is freedom, but for their security one of two things is necessary: the religion of Islam, or the protection of the Muslim territory. This protection can be obtained by non-Muslims only on the condition of submission and since it is the duty of all men to embrace Islam this submission is incumbent on all non-Muslims. It is implied by this that non-Muslims (but not necessarily the ‘people of the book’, ahl al-kitāb) may have a state of war declared upon them by Muslims, and in the ensuing conflict captives may be taken. In the eyes of the Law unsubmitting non-Muslims are regarded as enemies (ḥurūb) living in dār al-ḥarb, i.e. the abode of warfare. They are judged to have refused the necessary conditions of freedom, i.e. submission to Islam or protection of the Muslim territory (dār al-Islām), and consequently they have forfeited the protection which would have secured for them the original freedom of the race of Adam.

The civilization of Dahomey is based upon an agricultural economy. No matter what the rank of a Dahomean or what his trade, he must know how to cultivate the soil, and he will have his fields. As in all West Africa, clearing the land and hoeing it in preparation for the actual planting is the work of men. Planting itself is carried out by both men and women, and after the planting has been finished, the care of the growing crops is in the hands of the women. Women play quite as active a role in the economic life of Dahomey as do men, for it is not only their work to care for and harvest the crops, but in the Dahomean organization of markets, it is they who buy and sell. Since money earned by a woman is her own, and it is possible for those who are successful in the market-place to acquire wealth independently, there exists a class of ‘free’ women whose freedom extends to their economic life, and also to their relations with the male sex. This gives rise to the institution of women who play the role ordinarily assumed by men as heads of families, and who become titular ‘husbands’ to their ‘wives’.

The coming of the mobile phone camera has transformed photography. This article explores this transformation through a case study of photography in Eastleigh, a Nairobi estate that is home to many thousand Somalis, both Kenyan Somalis and refugees from Somalia. It is a trade hub for East Africa, a social and economic hub for the global Somali diaspora, and a place regarded as suspect in a country where Somalis have long been marginalized. This article examines Eastleigh as photographic subject and setting, comparing the ubiquity of mobile phone photography there with seldom-practised more traditional forms of photography that are often treated with suspicion in an estate subject to securitized government policy and negative press. It shows how mobile phone photography helps people in the estate communicate visually with the wider Somali diaspora through social media, and how it helps people sell their goods, using as a case study a particular archive of images sent through WhatsApp to the author by Mohaa, a friend of his and a trader in the estate. The article also adds a political dimension to recent anthropological theorizing on mobile photography, showing how, in Eastleigh, Somalis have used photography and social media to take control of the way in which the estate is represented visually, and to demand from the state better services and better treatment.

An attempt will be made in this paper to examine religious affiliation in Freetown (the capital town of Sierra Leone) at the formation of the Colony, and its later developments, from an historical viewpoint, with a view to assessing its contribution to the social evolution of the community. Freetown is rich in missionary records and journals and these, though they deal mainly with the evangelistic aspect of church activity, provide sufficient data to justify some tentative generalizations on the relationship between religious affiliation and the social stratification and growth of the community.

Freetown is an assembly of African peoples of different ethnic origins who became integrated into a community around norms and patterns of behaviour which were not African but western. The main agents in this cultural transformation were the Negro Nova Scotian and Maroon settlers. But the transformation was aided by the patronage and favour which the settlers received from the European administration, and, more important, by the missionary and evangelical activities of the Protestant churches. The Christian religion in Freetown was thus from the outset a positive, cohesive influence rather than a disintegrating force as it has been in some other parts of Africa.

In studying class formation in rural Africa, many subtleties of this process are initially elusive, even when the process itself appears to be quite straightforward. The elusiveness of reality frequently results, at least in part, from the assumptions made by the researcher. So, for example, in studying one area of freehold tenure in Zimbabwe, in which ‘squatting’ is officially disapproved and where the land is legally inherited by a single heir, the informal allocation to others of rights to arable land for cultivation has obvious importance in the process of class formation. Less obvious, however (at least to me at the time), was the significance of grazing usufruct.

The several forms of preferential mating, such as cross-cousin marriage, sororate and levirate, are well known and have been reported from all the ethnographic provinces of the world. Lately Lowie and Rivers have devoted special chapters in their books on social organization to the comparative study of these important institutions. Lowie has pointed out that there is strong evidence for the correlation of sororate and levirate. The later publication of Rivers hardly serves to make these matters any clearer than Lowie's work. Although the latter scholar, with Tylor and others, recognized the close connexion existing between sororate and levirate, the evidence at his disposal did not allow him to arrive at a similar conclusion with regard to the other forms of preferential marriage. Accordingly he had to treat them, for the time being, as institutions of independent origin.

The more the number of Africans who can read and write their mother tongue increases, and the more books, newspapers, and magazines are printed in Africa, the more pressing becomes the necessity of introducing a good, legible system of writing these languages wherever it is lacking. For this reason the Institute has begun to occupy itself with the production of such a system of orthography, and it therefore seems opportune to consider more closely the method and scope of this undertaking before making detailed proposals for a practical orthography.

Since this paper will be chiefly concerned with the suggestion of methods for the investigation of a specific problem, it is necessary first to define the problem as clearly as possible.

In the Huxley Memorial Lecture for 1943 I said, ‘Every culture has its “hard” and its “soft” points. If change is first sought at the former it will provoke resistance and very likely open discord, while the latter are yielding and it is from them that reformation will spread.’ There seems to be no possible dispute about the fact. But to admit the fact carries us only a very little way towards solving the problems to which the existence of yielding and unyielding features of culture gives rise. In the lecture I attempted to go no farther than a very general discussion of these problems. I was therefore pleased when, some time ago, I received a letter from the Editor of this Journal inviting me to discuss more fully what psychological methods may be applied, not merely to recognize those ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ points of culture which history has demonstrated, but to predict them before such demonstration.

Les Masai sont percue comme une société très égalitaire dont les conquêtes doivent beaucoup à la guidée de ses prophètes {Loibonok, ‘laibons’). Cet article analyse les pratiques divinatoires et prophétiques liées à la réputation et aux croyances entourant la principale famille des prophètes Masai, les Loonkidongi. Contrairement à l'idéal égalitaire des Masai, cette famille semble avoir été acceptée comme élite. Pendant tout le XXe siècle, les Loonkidongi ont dominé les Masai par l'initiation et le contrôle de la sorcellerie, assurant la protection d'une part et en entretenant la croyance dans la vulnérabilité des Masai, d'autre part. Vivant à l'écart des autres Masai, avec un plus grand nombre d'épouses et de plus grands troupeaux, avec leur propre système dynastique et ses luttes internes, avec la pénétration de leurs pouvoirs mystiques et de leurs réseaux d'influence, les Loonkidongi ont tous les attributs d'une classe dirigeante supérieure. Dans une telle perspective, les Masai ne forment pas une société égalitaire, mais sont les clients d'un systéme de protection qui, à l'époque pré-coloniale, ressemblait à un état naissant. De nos jours, les prophètes continuent d'exercer leur influence et jouissent de plus de pouvoir, au niveau populaire, que tout autre en Afrique de l'Est où les chefs traditionnels ont été soumis par le gouvernement colonial ou post-colonial.

Fépoque pré-coloniale, les ‘voyants’ (Abarooti) jouaient un rôle politique important et en particulier dans l'organisation militaire des Kuria qui étaient alors constamment harassés par les Masai et d'autres Kuria. Us prédisaient et organisai-ent les vols de bétail entrepris par les guerriers. Plus généralement, ils prédisaient les événements et influencaient done les actions politiques. Leur rôle public les distinguait des devins, même si leur fonction n'était pas officialisée et dépendait de leurs qualites personnelles, de leurs succès et de leur renommè locale. Leur aptitude à la prédiction était identifiée comme une activité onirique (okoroota), mais le terme de rêve doit ici être pris dans un sens aussi bien métaphorique que litteral. Le statut et le domaine d'influence des Abarooti varie beaucoup d'un individu à l'autre. Le terme d'Omonaabi (‘prophète’) fut introduit dans les années 1950 pour parler des anciens voyants de grande renommée qui avaient prédit maints événements ultérieurement prouvés. Mais à cette époque, seules leurs prophéties avaient survécus et non pas leur rôle et encore moins leurs propres personnes. Un commentaire apporte des explications supplémentaires sur ces termes et leur usage en 1990.

The term ‘caste’ has often been applied to Senufo artisan groups. However, an analysis of the social, political and economic relationships of these groups and the farmers amongst whom they live indicates that the characteristics commonly associated with caste systems are often manipulated by the allegedly lower status castes to their benefit, rather than by the majority group of farmers.

Cet article a pour but de rendre compte, en termes de dettes, du système de parenté des Bamiléké du Cameroun, qui résident dans la cheffèrie Bangoua. La relation d'alliance est ainsi sous-tendue par une dette symbolique, qui subordonne le preneur de femmes à ces donneurs (père et grand-père maternel de la fiancée),et la relation père–enfants est marquée par une dette de réciprocité. Les problématiques respectives de ces dettes, empruntés à Lacan, éclairent sous un jour nouveau l'interdit de l'inceste, la double filiation et le culte des ancêtres. Cette approche permet de faire ressortir que la loi sociale, marquee par la dette symbolique inhérente au langage, est garantie paradoxalement, dans cette société patrilinéaire, par les ancêtres du père de la mère.

People living in the neighbourhoods of Nampula city, northern Mozambique, often speak of a war that is being waged at night, during which sick infants and small children figure more and more frequently as the preferred prey of malevolent ancestors, witches and new malign spirits that come at night, and who abduct and enslave them in order to harm their families. The purpose of this article is to explore what this ‘war of the night’ reveals, to understand why it is that mothers are afraid their babies and children will be stolen from the compound and, finally, to analyse the ways in which families handle their fears and apprehensions about a child's sickness. I begin this analysis of the ‘war of the night’, and the accompanying anxieties surrounding infants and children, by examining it in relation to large-scale changes that have occurred both at the micro-level of the household and in the community more generally. Specifically, the article looks at the ways in which ongoing economic and social transformations are reconfiguring gender and generational relationships, which, in turn, generates more insecurity within the household and intensifies a sense of existential threat from external forces. The article then examines the cultural logic of rumours and beliefs involving children, as a consideration of local interpretations and experiences of infancy and childhood helps shed light on local concepts of (children's) vulnerability. With the aid of three case studies, the article charts how families manage children's diseases. It shows how the uncertainty surrounding an illness is not always ameliorated by divinations or by the healing provided by women working on behalf of ancestral power. Instead, women healers often crystallize and intensify mothers’ fears, also because their medical and ritual interventions are not always effective. The article concludes by examining the reasons why these women healers are increasingly struggling to manage the evil forces haunting infants and children and to make their medical interventions effective, and the effect of this on their local authority.

Bayaaye is a Luganda word meaning ‘hooligans’ used since the 1970s to both disparage Ugandan urban youth and celebrate their streetwise resourcefulness. The original so-called bayaaye were youth, often fresh from the countryside, who worked as street hustlers in the 1970s underground economy. This article focuses on how one Ugandan intellectual, M. B. Nsimbi, in his Luganda-language novel about the Idi Amin era, Kulyennyingi (1984), diagnosed the rise of the bayaaye as a national moral pathology. I discuss how this novel relates to earlier Luganda literary works, which advocated an idealized precolonial, rural African tradition as a moral reference point for modern living. A recent revised discourse about urban youth as ‘bayaaye’ or ‘ghetto’, accompanying the political rise of reggae star Bobi Wine, is considered in light of the earlier history of the bayaaye stereotype.

Colonial rule in West Africa initiated the incorporation of mobile people, particularly pastoralists, into Western territorial states. This article reports on the early period of French colonial rule of the area that is now South-Western Niger – a strategically important area with respect to territorial competition among the French colonies of Dahomey and Soudan (later the colonies of Senegambia and Niger) as well as the British colony of Nigeria. Building from the study of contemporary patterns of livestock mobility and their logics, archival and secondary literatures are used to develop an understanding of dominant herd mobility patterns at the time (transhumance for grazing and trekking to distant markets); the importance of livestock as a source of tax revenue; colonial anxieties about the loss of livestock from within their borders; and efforts of colonial administrators to reduce the potential loss of livestock from their territories. This case illustrates the limitations of the territorial state model where the state lacks sufficient power over mobile subjects utilizing a sparse and fluctuating resource base. The actions of French administrators and Fulɓe pastoralists worked as a form of ‘hands-off’ negotiation, with each group monitoring and reacting to the actions of the other. Due to the limitations of colonial state control, the existence of boundaries elicited greater monitoring of livestock movements by colonial administrators but also increased the leverage held by mobile pastoralists as the French sought to increase the attractiveness of their territory to the principal managers of its wealth (livestock). The proximity of borders to the study area complicated the task of French colonial administrators, who necessarily became increasingly focused on monitoring the movements of their subjects (labour and capital) to avoid their possible escape as they moved within the borderlands of what is now South-Western Niger. The limits of colonial power to monitor and control these movements led administrators to initiate policies favouring pastoralists.