Western concern with ‘conserving’ or ‘managing’ the rain forests of Africa has led to the setting up of a number of conservation projects. In such projects the ‘participation’ of the ‘community’ in forest conservation has become the new orthodoxy. However, proposals about local people's participation presume that defining the future of the forest is a straight contest between the alternatives of conservation or forest clearing. Such proposals also presume that the existence of communities is non-problematic. In contrast, this article documents that there is already considerable local debate about forest use and conservation, much of it among those excluded from the formal arena of politics and policy-making. Concern with ‘the environment’ includes concern about the perpetuation of society, and represents a clear continuation of West African village cosmologies focused on the societalisation of space. At the same time, conservation aims of ‘keeping the forest as it is’ have few resonances, since forest people see society itself as an artful, but often problematic, construction in which the conversion of the forest plays a central part. In conclusion, the article suggests that the key to environmental management must be for external agencies to articulate with the interests and values of those who hold a legitimate stake in African forest resources.

The prominence of the eland in San thought is suggested by the frequency with which this antelope was depicted in rock paintings and also by the myths and rituals in which it features. In this paper we describe and compare certain eland beliefs and hunting rituals drawn from two San groups, the !Kung of Botswana and the now extinct \Xam of the Cape Province. The relevance of material obtained from the northern !Kung to the explication of the limited southern \Xam ethnographic record and rock paintings has been regarded as questionable in view of the ecological and linguistic differences between the two societies. Using the results of recent field work among the !Kung, we attempt to show that, in spite of the linguistic and ecological differences, there is evidence for a conceptual framework common to both groups.

Since 1960 several million Africans have been relocated in South Africa, mainly from the common (or ‘white’) area to the so-called ‘homelands’. This process of relocation is still under way, and precise enumeration of the numbers of people who have been and will be affected is impossible. Estimates vary according to the definition of ‘relocation’: it is apparent, for instance, that official sources define the process as narrowly as possible in order to minimize the numbers involved. There is abundant evidence, however, that relocation has taken place on a vast scale, and that the process has generally resulted in increased poverty and misery for its victims (Surplus People Project, 1983). Kane-Berman has recently argued that the South African Bantustans are, at present, not so much reservoirs of a reserve army of labour as dumping grounds ‘for people who have little chance of obtaining employment anywhere’ (1981: 29). From having been sub-subsistence dormitory areas for labour migrants, they are rapidly becoming places to which the structurally unemployed are being permanently consigned.

Cet article examine la proposition que les niveaux de l'agro-diversité déclinent en conséquence de l'augmentation de l'intensification des systèmes agricoles. La plupart de la littérature sur l'agriculture itinérante souligne le grand nombre d'espèces de plantes, à la fois sauvages et cultivées, que ces systèmes incorporent, tandis que les descriptions de l'agriculture mécanisée et intensive indique quʼun petit nombre d'espèces survivent.

Cet article fait un compte-rendu sur un système agro-économique qui est connu pour son intensité—celui des Kofyars au centre du Nigéria—mais qui cependant arrive à maintenir un haut niveau de diversité. Cet article explore plus généralement le rôle de la bio-diversité dans les systèmes agricoles des petites exploitations, et présente des arguments en faveur de ces systèmes, qui comme celui des Kofyars, favorise la bio-diversité comme faisant part de la ‘soutenabilité’ économique et environnementale, bien quʼils commencent à s'adapter à de nouvelles conditions agricoles.

The Manya-Krobo are one of the eight groups comprising the Adangme-speaking peoples who inhabit the Shai Plain between the River Volta and the Accra Plain. Until about 1890 the Krobo head-quarters were on the Krobo Hill, a rocky fastness which rises abruptly like a craggy island out of the perfectly flat plain. They have now abandoned this hill and made their head-quarters in the town of Odumase near the foot.

This article examines the interplay of agency, culture and context in order to consider the social embeddedness of money and trade at the margins of South Africa's economy. Focusing on small-scale, survivalist informal enterprise operators, it draws on socio-cultural analysis to explore the social dynamics involved in generating and managing wealth. After describing the informal sector in South Africa, the article elucidates the relationship between money and economic informality. First, diverse objectives, typically irreducible to the maximization of profit, animate those in the informal sector and challenge meta-narratives of a ‘great transformation’ towards socially disembedded and depersonalized economic relationships. Second, regimes of economic governance, both state-led and informal, shape the terrain on which informal economic activity occurs in complex and constitutive ways. Third, local idioms and practices of trading, managing money and negotiating social claims similarly configure economic activities. Fourth, and finally, encroaching and often inexorable processes of formalization differentially influence those in the informal sector. The analysis draws on these findings to recapitulate both the ubiquity and centrality of the sociality at the heart of economy, and to examine the particular forms they take in South Africa's informal economy.

I examine the struggle surrounding the relocations of Bushmen from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana. Despite a recent court decision allowing the Bushmen to return, the ‘war of words’ continues and the Bushmen's circumstances remain inconclusive. I analyse and compare the actions of transnational and local NGOs and the Botswana state in addressing the ‘Bushman Question’ and consider the impacts of the various strategies and images deployed. The clash between essentialized views of pristine hunter-gatherers and images of Bushmen as modern citizens in the making has contributed to the problematic outcome thus far.

This article contributes to the theorization of involuntary return and moral economies in the context of economic crisis and vulnerability prompted by restrictive migration regimes and conflicts. Drawing on fieldwork in a rural town in Ghana where international labour migration is an established livelihood, it analyses deportations from North Africa, Israel and Europe and emergency return from Libya following the civil war in 2011. The article argues that return to the home town, rather than being detained or stuck en route, constitutes a particular context precisely because migrants face family and community expectations upon their return. Involuntary return constitutes a disruption of migration projects when migrants return empty-handed, going from being remitters to burdens for their families. This creates conflicts and disappointments within family and the local community, especially in relation to norms of provision and gender ideals. The paper highlights three effects of the moral economy of involuntary return. First, that involuntary return does not constitute a priori termination of migration, as many involuntary return migrants migrate again, often in high-risk ways. Second, it discusses the ambivalence of reciprocity and interdependency in families. And third, it shows how involuntary return challenges dominant ideals of masculinity.

On a donné le nom de ‘parenté a plaisanterie’ à des institutions et manifestations diverses qui ne sont peut-être pas de même nature ou dont la nature commune, en tous cas, n'a pas été saisie. On s'est fié à l'apparence. Ou plutôt on à donné de l'importance à un facteur apparent, la plaisanterie injurieuse, qui se retrouve dans des occasions nombreuses et sans rapports les unes avec les autres. La parole, qu'elle soit injurieuse ou flatteuse, bénéfique ou maléfique, est certes avant tout porteuse de force vitale; elle a dans toutes ses applications la qualité constante d'être le verbe. Elle permet ainsi les emplois les plus différents qui, pour autant, ne sont pas obligatoirement classables dans la même série. En tous cas retenir l'aspect ‘plaisanterie’ de plusieurs phénomènes risque de lier les choses les plus hétéroclites. Une cloche sonne le glas et les mariages. II ne viendrait à l'idée de personne de prétendre que les funérailles et les noces se rencontrent dans une série dite ‘cérémonies à cloches‘.

Rural–urban migration and networks are fundamental for many livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. Remittances in cash and kind provide additional income, enhance food security and offer access to viable resources in both rural and urban areas. Migration allows the involved households to benefit from price differences between rural and urban areas. In this contribution, I demonstrate that rural–urban networks not only contribute to poverty alleviation and security, but also further socio-economic stratification. This aspect has been ignored or neglected by most scholars and development planners. Using ethnographic data from Namibia, I have adopted a translocal perspective on migration and stratification, focusing on the resulting impact in rural areas where modern urban forms of stratification, induced by education and income from wage labour, are on the increase.

This article deals with issues of territoriality, public space, the microphysics of power and street gang life in the current urban context of Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this city, a growing number of street children invade the public places. They team up in gangs and scour the streets in search of a location to settle (for a while). Along with their appropriation of public space, these gangs encounter several actors such as the city authorities, shop owners, tenants or rival street gangs. Before any settlement, deals have to be closed since every inch of the city is negotiable. All participants get involved in these negotiations, for no one is considered marginal, certainly not the street youth who are inextricably bound up with Congolese society. This contribution considers this dynamic field of negotiations through a focus on space and analyses it from a Foucauldian angle. It explores how gang members develop particular ways to control their territories and exercise power in them. Additionally, it examines how street youths manage to construct a home in the streets and make sense of their urban environment in the process.

The emergence of the charismatic movements in Nigeria in the 1970s is a remarkable religious phenomenon. Their rapid growth and success could be attributed to many factors, but the central factor which clearly emerges is that the movements have been presented in a manner acceptable and relevant to Nigerians, and they have been adapted to the situation in Nigeria. The continuous growth of the movements into the 1980s suggests that they are acting as responses to certain areas of need in Christian commitment in Nigeria. The concept of contextualisation is therefore the major key to an understanding of their rapid growth. Were it not for their contextualisation, the movements might have crystallised without any growth or might even have condemned themselves to decline and dissolution.

A significant aspect of the newly developed towns of Central and Southern Africa is the degree to which social relationships in certain situations are being organized in terms of social strata. It is not always easy, however, to secure data on the nature of the system of stratification—there are, in fact, very few substantial studies available. One method of approach, which promises to be fruitful, is through the study of the ranking of occupations by their social prestige. This method has the advantage that the techniques are fairly simple. They can be applied at successive times, thus yielding some measure of change, and they can be applied at different places, thus yielding comparative material.

‘Traditional healers’ (sangomas) in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, are organized into ‘schools’ around a senior teacher (gobela). Healing is understood by its practioners to be a profession, not a religion or even a spiritual exercise. Healers actively assess the effectiveness of their healing methods, transmit their knowledge to each other, and evaluate each others’ performances in ways that stray far from the mere transmission of ‘tradition’. Clients are likely to pay sangomas as much as they would medical doctors for their services, which are not limited to the medical. Their practices can be divided into roughly six ‘disciplines’: divination, herbs, control of ancestral spirits, the cult of foreign ndzawe spirits, drumming and dancing, and training of new sangomas. The status of sangoma is achieved through an arduous process of teaching and learning through which the student or initiate is simultaneously ‘healed’ and educated to become a member of the profession that coheres around these knowledge practices.

In this discussion of the forms of Hausa social placement I wish to direct attention to the important sociological problems connected with status distribution. The Hausa afford excellent illustrative material for this purpose since their society, which lays great stress on status, is neither tribal nor modern but roughly midway between these extremes.

From the earliest years of colonial government in Kenya, cattle raiding by Africans against their neighbours, and in particular livestock thefts from European farmers, presented the administration with their most persistent policing problem in the rural areas of the colony. As the period of colonial rule in Kenya was drawing to a close, reported cases of stock theft were once again showing a sharp increase, climbing from 1578 cases in 1955 to 4243 in 1962 (Kenya Police Dept, 1955 and 1962). In a pattern by then familiar to the Kenya administration, this prompted the renewal of demands from the European settler community for more extensive and concerted government action to deal with the activities of the thieves. Settler opinion held that the continuing prevalence of stock theft had much to do with the ‘social prestige’ attached to the crime in many African communities. The unwillingness of the African public to assist in the prevention and detection of stock theft had long been interpreted as a tacit sanctioning of such theft, leading to the conclusion that, within the ‘moral economy’ of many African communities, stock theft was not thought of as a crime at all. ‘After all,’ commented the Provincial Commissioner of the Rift Valley Province in 1959, ‘stock theft is the traditional sport of the young men of many tribes, and the elders cannot be expected to act as kill-joys and stamp it out unless they themselves are liable to suffer.’ This view was applied most readily to the pastoralists of the Rift Valley and western Kenya, the Maasai and Kalenjin, who were commonly involved in crimes of this sort. The belief that stock theft was an acceptable form of accumulation within Kalenjin and Maasai society determined the nature of the legislation put forward by the colonial administration to deal with the crime. Policing and punishment were accordingly based upon the notion of collective responsibility for acts of stock theft, with wide powers to extend collective punishments to families, villages and even entire locations found to be implicated in thefts.

The following two articles were originally presented at a four-day seminar on the ‘domestication’ of modernity in Leiden and The Hague in June 1995. The aim of the seminar was to compare the different trajectories in which African societies try to appropriate modernity: how they deal with the images and dreams of a modern way of life which flood the continent—the spectacular successes of the few and the deep feelings of disappointment of the many. ‘Modernity's enchantment’—a phrase coined by Jean and John Comaroff (1992)—applies very well to Africa. Jean-Pierre Warnier's remark, in his study of entrepreneurs in west Cameroon (1993), that ‘le goût des Camerounais pour tout ce qui est importé plutôt que produit localement est légendaire’ is true of many if not all African countries. Achille Mbembe (1992) forcefully demonstrates that the popular masses are as intent as the elites on participating in the consumerist rituals of new forms of wealth and power. But it is clear also that this obsession with modernity follows very varied trajectories. Jean-François Bayart (1989) emphasises that the marked consumerism of African elites is not to be seen as just an atavistic outcome of la politique du ventre; rather, it is related to specific imaginaires of the link between wealth and power and to varying pressures ‘from below’ towards redistribution.

L'Afrique de l'est possède un riche registre historique et archéologique qui documente les influences significantes de l'utilisation des pâturages sur les habitats de la savane. Dans cet article, l'auteur explore l'hétérogènéité des paysages de la savane et leurs effets sur l'utilisation des ressources locales. Il est suggéré que le malentendu fondamental en ce qui concerne les ressources principales—dans ce cas les marécages—et leur importance pour les systèmes sociaux et économiques locaux a mal dirigé les arguments au sujet de la dégradation environnementale dans les endroits pastoraux de la savane. En se concentrant sur une région du nord du Kenya—le bassin du Lake Baringo du district Baringo—où les soucis globaux à la fois au sujet de la perte de la bio-diversité et de la désertification sont exprimés avec force, cet article indique que la relation causale entre les pratiques sociales locales et l'un ou l'autre de ces phénomènes a été extremement exagérée.

Dans le cas du Baringo, il montre (1) comment la valeur des marécages du bassin est constamment mal interprétée par l'état et autres interêts extérieurs, et (2) comment le rôle, tel qu'il est perçu, des troupeaux africain quant à la création d'une dégradation environnementale (la désertification) contredit la reconnaissance récente que le pastoralisme apporte une contribution positive au maintient de la bio-diversité.