For more than a century, observers have noted that the West African power associations known as Komo and Kono prohibit women from seeing their performances and assemblages. Reportedly fearful of seeing something they are not permitted to see, women and children run for shelter and shut the doors. Yet, in western Burkina Faso today, certain Komo and Kono chapters authorize some women to view their arts, and women who are not authorized still interact with performers during events, consult with the organizations’ leaders at other times or assist power association leaders in other ways. A focus on the unseeing but ever-present audiences of Komo and Kono reconfigures our understanding of audiences. Scholars of theatre audiences in different times and places have sometimes used ‘spectators’ as a synonym for ‘audience’, implying a group of people who are physically present for an event and can see it. Unseeing audiences are physically present at a live performance and interact with performers even though they are prohibited from actually seeing the event other people can see. Shifting our focus to women as members of unseeing audiences also reveals women's varied contributions to organizations and arts that have long been framed as institutions that operate squarely within men's domains.

This article deploys sand as a potential way of engaging with contemporary livelihoods in the Ghanaian city of Accra – one of many metropolitan nodes in an urbanizing region of West Africa. Both as a very real material at the heart of concrete urbanization and as metaphorically indicative of the shifting landscapes of opportunity and income on which lives and livelihoods are marked out, sand is offered as a way of seeing and writing about the city. The article brings these two facets of urban sand together in more concrete ways, considering how the material production of the city becomes the uneven, uncertain ground of urban life-making. Drawing from fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Accra, the article engages with the movements of sand across the city, as it travels from extraction zones (or pits) to lorries and then to places of consumption. By honing in on the material behaviours and temporal junctures of sand as it shifts its shape, form and directions, the article draws out the ways in which sand emerges as a platform for exchange, negotiation and ultimately income for different people across the city region. In turn, it offers a share in the sands as a tentative holding space for the kinds of claims made on and through sand, positioning them as indicative of a dweller-led, emergent politics that claims a share of an income, livelihood and urban future.

Explanation, or the identification and assessment of the causes of events and situations, occupies the central place in nearly all historical writing in the present century. It is also the aspect of history which is most keenly debated by philosophers, and is the main issue today in the unending, wearisome, but seemingly inescapable controversy as to whether history belongs, or belongs more, with the sciences or with the humanities. The scientific or positivist school, numbering among its recent exponents Popper and Gardiner, emphasizes the extent to which historical explanation attains a regularity akin to, though not identical with, that found in the physical and other sciences, Hempel adding the contention that such explanation can always, and often should, be reduced to a ‘covering law’, or single universal statement subsuming the whole explanation. The idealists, among whom Croce, Collingwood, and most recently Oakeshott are prominent, stress conversely the uniqueness of history, and Dray has reinforced their position by his attack on the covering law thesis. The debate is one in which historians themselves have taken little part, and African historians none at all, despite its crucial importance for almost every aspect of their profession. Yet it is a debate which needs continuous illustration from the historiographical process, a need which historians are best able to meet. The aim of the present article is to contribute to the debate by examining as a problem in historical explanation the fall of Oyo, the powerful state of the northern Yoruba, in the early nineteenth century.

This is an ethnography of internet scams in Abidjan through which I attempt to develop a theory of digital sorcery. The brouteurs of Côte d'Ivoire impersonate Europeans in social media profiles and seduce others into falling in love with them. After months of flirtatious messaging and photo exchanges, disaster strikes their avatar and they ask for an emergency wire transfer from their digital lover. While millions of euros of income are sent to Abidjan every year, the brouteurs say they can no longer succeed without the use of occult forces, and they turn to marabouts for assistance. During my fieldwork in 2015, rumours circulated that brouteur wealth depended on the blood sacrifice of children for its success. As Ivoirians increasingly employ smartphones and social media in their daily life, the anxieties concerning the illusions and manipulations of the virtual world become enmeshed with those of the occult second world. I suggest that the overlap between hacker technology, con artistry and occult power outlined in Ivoirian urban rumour suggests a model for rethinking the space of virtuality in the global economy as a form of magical semiosis, one that can be every bit as vitality draining as witchcraft itself.

Les notes qui suivent résument des observations faites dans les territoires du Soudan occidental, notamment en Haute Volta, au Soudan Français, en Haute Côte d'Ivoire, en Guinée et enfin au Sénégal depuis plusieurs années. Elles portent exclusivement sur la personne et les activités nocives, réelles ou supposées, de certains individus, auxquels on attribue les caractéristiques suivantes. Ce sont des hommes ou des femmes, doués de facultés sumaturelles qui leur permettent de se métamorphoser, de voler dans les airs, de pénétrer dans les profondeurs de la terre, enfin et surtout, de faire périr les autres hommes en dévorant leurs organes internes, de préférence le cœur et le foie. Ces êtres malfaisants sont généralement qualifiés de sorciers dans les langues européennes (witch; Hexe), sans que l'on prenne soin de les distinguer des magiciens dont ils empruntent parfois les procédés. Il conviendrait, selon nous, de les appeler ‘sorciers mangeurs d'hommes’, en raison de l'irrésistible impulsion qui les oblige, suivant les croyances indigènes, à commettre des actes d'une anthropophagie particulière.

De nombreuses cultures ont matérialisé l'opposition et/ou la complémentarité existant entre l'homme et la femme par des couples basés sur des notions de latéralité (gauche—droite), d'orientation (est—ouest), de couleur (noir—blanc, rouge—blanc, …). Le nombre apparaît aussi comme un moyen privilégié permettant d'exprimer cette idée.

It is only of late years that the Sudan Government has laid particular stress on the language side of Southern administration. Hitherto all official intercourse with the natives had been through the medium of Arabic, the official language of the North. It became apparent after a while that the form of Arabic spoken in the Southern provinces was so debased as to be hardly practical. Unlike the Northerners, whose religion and culture is Islamic and who speak Arabic in the home side by side with the local dialects, the Southern tribes are pagan, and for the most part strongly opposed to outside culture, whether Islamic or otherwise, while only those who come into contact with governing officials or Northern traders can speak the jargon which passes for Arabic in the South.

Kwaara banda daarey, hala ga kano, yeow s'a gar. The stranger (no matter how long he/she has lived in a town) will never possess the choicest fruit of the daarey tree behind the village.

The daarey tree (Ziziphus jujuba) is found in and around Songhay towns in the Republic of Niger. Since its sweet red fruit is coveted, the whereabouts of the finest daarey are never divulged to foreigners, lest they steal from the Songhay that which is most delicious in their communities. The proverb underscores just how careful the Songhay are in protecting from non-Songhay that which is their own. It also suggests that just as non-Songhay will never possess the choicest daarey fruits, so too they will neither marry the most beautiful Songhay maidens nor become influential in community affairs. The most beautiful maidens, like the best daarey trees, are kept from the sight of non-Songhay; the sociocultural knowledge which enables a person to be perceived as influential is never taught directly to those who have migrated to the lands of the Songhay.

Major factors which influence the pace of change in rural districts of Kenya relate to the nature of the local environment and traditional economy, population density and the degree of integration with the national economy and polity. In general change takes place more rapidly in the better watered high potential areas than in the semi-arid or arid areas. Kitui is a district in the semi-arid zone of the Eastern Province, Kenya. Traditionally its residents – the Kitui Akamba – were agro-pastoralists. With the establishment of British rule they expanded cultivation into former rangelands, and grazed their animals‘cattle and small stock – in areas once the preserve of wild life. This generated a resurgence in the local economy mirrored in the fact that the young men adamantly resisted administrative pressure to induce them to become labour migrants.

Across the central area of Ibo country, in the Eastern Region of Nigeria, is a thickly populated belt in which population growth has rarely resulted in the development of compact urban or quasi-urban centres, except under exceptional, generally modern, conditions. Typically, the population is spread so evenly throughout the palm-forest that it is difficult to believe that concentrations of over 1,000 persons per square mile are now quite commonplace. The population of Mba-Ise is 186,300 in only about 167 square miles, with a migrant population elsewhere of about 30,000. This type of settlement has put a special imprint on social organization in the area, and some of the interrelationships between lineage, territorial organization, and other kinds of groupings are indicated in this article.

The Igala-speaking peoples of Nigeria live in the middle belt zone of that country, close to the confluence of the river Niger and the river Benue. Ancestor cults of various kinds are central to their religious system, but there is also an important cult of the earth as well as cults of diverse spirits known collectively as ẹbọ. The latter includes the spirit of smallpox, Iye, spirits associated with water, called Alijenu, and other spirits inhabiting the fringes of cultivated land. Culturally the Igala have many close affinities with the Yoruba from whom they are separated geographically by the intervening Niger and the settlements of other peoples. But the main emphases of Igala religion are slightly different from those of Yoruba religion. Thus the cult of ẹbọ which in a rudimentary way resembles the cult of orisha among the Yoruba occupies a more marginal place in Igala religion than the orisha cults do in the Yoruba system of belief. Ancestors and the earth cults play a more direct and central role in Igala than in Yoruba. One belief which appears to be basic to both systems of thought, however, is the belief in medicine, called ogwu in Igala. Yoruba beliefs about medicine have not been published in enough detail to make systematic comparison possible. But it is hoped that the account given here of the Igala side of the picture may stimulate further work on this potentially interesting comparison.

L'homme ne peut se réaliser de manière humaine, dans un milieu naturel donné, s'il ne le rationalise d'une façon ou d'une autre. De plus, sa vie en société exige que cette rationalisation, même si elle émane d'un individu céateur, dépasse le cadre d'une conventionnalité purement individuelle—notion à peine concevable—et s'impose, dans la mesure où elle lui convient—c'est là l'origine du mot conventionnel—au milieu social.

This article examines concepts of ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ for migrants and citizens in the twilight of empire. It focuses on the ‘cheminots refoulés’, railway workers with origins in the former French Sudan (today's Republic of Mali) who were expelled from Senegal shortly after both territories declared independence, and other ‘Sudanese’ settled in Senegal, sometimes for several generations. Using newly available archives in France, Mali and Senegal, and interviews with former cheminots and ‘Sudanese migrants’ on both sides of the border, this article seeks to historicize memories of autochthony and allochthony that have been constructed and contested in postcolonial nation-building projects. The Mali Federation carried the lingering memory of federalist political projects, but it proved untenable only months after the Federation's June 1960 independence from France. When member states declared independence from each other, the internal boundary between Senegal and the Sudanese Republic became an international border between Senegal and the Republic of Mali. In the wake of the collapse, politicians in Bamako and Dakar clamoured to redefine the ‘nation’ and its ‘nationals’ through selective remembering. Thousands of cheminots and ‘Sudanese migrants’ who had moved to Senegal from Sudan years (or decades) earlier were suddenly labelled ‘foreigners’ and ‘expatriates’ and faced two governments eager to see them ‘return’ to a hastily proclaimed nation state. This ‘repatriation’ allowed Republic of Mali officials to ‘perform the nation’ by (re)integrating and (re)membering the migrants in a nascent ‘homeland’. But, having circulated between Senegal and Sudan/Mali for decades, ‘Sudanese migrants’ in both states retained and invoked memories of older political communities, upsetting new national priorities. The loss of the Mali Federation raises questions about local, national and international citizenship and movement in mid-century West Africa. Examining the histories invoked to imagine postcolonial political communities, this article offers an insight into the role that memory has played in constructing and contesting the nation's central place in migration histories within Africa and beyond.

Brand marketing in its latest global advances offers ideologies of public participation and the audience–‘provider’ relationship that many in the developing world are finding compelling, even when consumer capitalism fails to produce its promised rewards immediately. Strategies of ‘branding’ are being explored in combination with older performance strategies, with new syncretic branded arenas emerging as a result. In Africa, music and dance have always been important for establishing certain arenas and mediating transactions within them. In the era of post-independence nationalism, ‘traditional’ dances were itemized and made more disciplined and spectacular to give new states an aura of inclusiveness, rigour and historical depth. As the image of a powerful African state declines, these same dance traditions are being hitched to commercial brands, and to the globalized consumerist/entreprenurial dream. This article considers the Senator National Cultural Extravaganza, an annual traditional music-and-dance competition sponsored by East Africa Breweries Ltd, which requires participants to compose ‘local’ songs and dances in praise of Senator Extra Lager. It focuses on the spatial and temporal architectures of events and the way these channel, and are complicated by, the energies and significances of dance. The ‘textbook’ brand–consumer relationship does not, it is argued, survive wholly intact.

In 1936 the Royal Empire Society of Great Britain published African Native Music: An Annotated Bibliography, by Douglas H. Varley. This work fulfilled a long-standing need felt by ethnomusicologists, and particularly those emphasizing the study of African music, for, carefully, done and well annotated, it provided an excellent reference volume for students in the field. The present bibliography represents an extension of Varley's work, listing the books and articles published on African and African-derived music since 1936, as well as a few references omitted from the original volume. While it can by no means be said that the present work includes all references to African music over the past 15 years, it is felt that the major portion of those works has been listed. At the same time, since the listing is small it has not been classified by problems and areas as was the original compilation.

Jusqu'a une date très récente l'usage du gnomon chez les Bambara du Soudan français était, on peut dire, général. Il se trouvait presque sans exception dans tous les villages des masa dont les attributions et le rôle dans la société bambara, malgré des travaux importants consacrés à cette ethnie, sont loin d'être exactement connus. Actuellement, l'influence musulmane, comme aussi le contact avec notre civilisation, ont fait disparaître l'emploi de cet instrument astronomique; les vieux Bambara n'en parlent plus que comme d'une chose du passé. Mais la mémoire des informateurs très divers est vive à son endroit, et, sans rien vouloir exagérer, il semblerait qu'il s'agisse là d'un des plus vieux et des plus authentiques édifices de la civilisation Noire.

Robert Buijtenhuijs's critique of my book Rural Rebels (1977) is interesting because it highlights serious flaws that can be made in critical analysis, among them the ‘I think the writer means’ fallacy, a false dichotomy, reductionism and a disregard for the quality of the data. Since space limitations prevent me from replying to all of Buijtenhuijs's criticisms (his critique is three times longer than my permitted reply) I will limit myself to the aforementioned that are matters of more general concern.

When addressing the Congress of the Southern Rhodesia Municipal Association at the Victoria Falls in May 1944, Sir Evelyn Baring, then Governor of Southern Rhodesia, expressed the view that the historian of the future, when he came to write the story of Southern Rhodesia during the present period, would conclude his survey by remarking that the problem of the urban Native was one of the most vital of those which faced the colony during the 1940's, and that-steps taken then to meet it had a profound effect on future years.

This article is an attempt to assess the importance of certain aspects of this problem and indicate directions in which thought, planning and action are necessary if the problem is to be satisfactorily solved. The implications of urbanization cannot be treated lightly nor can a laissez-faire attitude be adopted.

Cet article situe la recherche sur la bio-diversité africaine dans son contexte néolibéral général. Il maintient que l'‘africanisation’ de la bio-diversité en tant que concept et pratique doit, par nécessité, prendre place au sein d'un contexte néolibéral de globalisation et de localisation, et en opposition au climat général constitué par les relations continuellement changeantes entre la société civile, le marché, et l'état. Cet article conclut, que par conséquent, on doit comprendre les stratégies se rapportant à la bio-diversité comme étant des efforts visant à ‘maintenir le global en place’, bien que celles-ci ne doivent pas dégénérer en un centrisme africain rudimentaire ou potentiellement un relativisme réactionnaire.