Pentecostal studies has been one of the most vibrant areas of research in Africa for over twenty years, but is it time we started to look past Pentecostalism? Using some of the most important work in this tradition as a point of departure, this article offers both a critique of and supplement to the Pentecostal literature. It focuses in particular on how we should understand the relationship between Pentecostalism and African Independency by pushing the debates on how to frame their oft-shared desire to ‘break with the past’. Every rupture is also a realignment and how each is conceptualized and understood is a matter not only of discourse but decisions and dilemmas faced in everyday life.

The article introduces a themed section in the journal on hometown associations in Cameroon. It outlines the impact of ten years’ work in this field and argues that notions of autochthony remain central in understanding Cameroonian politics. However the three articles go on to argue that some of the claims about home, belonging and politics are difficult to reconcile with the hazier reality observed on the ground. The articles aim to disturb any universal, inevitable or overly tidy segue between questions of belonging and claims of political segmentation. Too often the existing literature moves too quickly to an analysis that foregrounds only the worrisome dimensions of a politics of belonging, thus leaving little space for other interpretations. To explore this dilemma the article continues by exploring a land dispute in Bali Nyonga, north-west Cameroon. It shows (1) how ideas of belonging remain central to the practice of politics; (2) how the politics of belonging has changed over time; and (3) how it is possible to foreground an alternative ‘politics of conviviality’, which would otherwise be shaded out by the dominance of the politics of belonging within the literature.

In the mid-1990s, Côte d'Ivoire witnessed the rise of the ideology of ivoirité, a conception of citizenship based on autochthonous origins. Ivoirité was elaborated by a group of Ivorian intellectuals in the context of the political struggle opposing Henry Konan Bedié to Alassane Ouattara in the succession to the late President Houphouët-Boigny. Through the tactical use of the rhetoric of ivoirité, Ouattara was depicted by his adversaries as a ‘Burkinabé’ trying to rule the country. Going beyond this tactical aspect, the article addresses the ideological relations linking ivoirité to the ‘project of an Ivorian liberal society’ explicitly constructed by the same intellectuals. These relations contributed to the emergence, in the Ivorian public space, of a discourse establishing self-evident, hegemonic connections between notions like autochthony, modernity and nationality, on the one hand, and biopolitical concepts like population, immigration, security and resources on the other. The article uses two complementary perspectives to frame this emergent discourse. One focuses on the historical continuity of the political-economic strategies and population policies implemented by colonial governments and post-colonial elites. The other uses Giorgio Agamben's critical enquiry into citizenship and nationality to bring to light the implication of the ivoirité intellectuals in the construction of a national bios, and thus in the singling out of a paradigmatic form of bare life.

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.

This article examines the status of land tenure in Zimbabwe following the ‘Fast Track’ land reforms of 2000–3. It finds that post-reform land tenure remains strongly dualist, with land sales and rental prohibited on the land (about two thirds of the total) classified as ‘A1’ resettlement or ‘communal areas’, while tradeable leases apply to much of the remainder, classified as ‘commercial land’. The article draws on fieldwork in Svosve Communal Area and on previous studies on land transactions in Zimbabwe to argue that land sales and rental transactions are an enduring feature of land use in Zimbabwe's ‘communal areas’. Moreover, the article argues that, despite government prohibition, there is evidence that such transactions are being fuelled by increasing demand for land arising from the collapse in the non-farm economy in Zimbabwe. The article argues that while the logic of informal (or ‘vernacular’) land sales and rental is widely recognized by land users in communal and resettlement areas, government prohibition, in favour of asserting land allocation rights of customary authorities, is driven by considerations of political control of the rural vote.

This article explores the making of gendered and religious identities among a group of Ghanaian Methodist women in London by bringing to the fore the complex and irreverent ways in which the women of Susanna Wesley Mission Auxiliary (SUWMA) negotiate their recognition within the predominantly patriarchal settings of the Methodist Church. If, on the one hand, the association and its members conform to Christian values and widely accepted Ghanaian constructions of womanhood, on the other hand, flouting expectations of pious femininity, they claim a unique, elevated position within the church. Their transgressive hedonism can thus be read as a performative assertion of their claims to respect, recognition and leadership beyond the narrow parameters of gendered modesty. Many of the women are senior church leaders and respected members of the diaspora. All are successful professional career women and economically independent. Their association is simultaneously about promoting the Christian faith while being recognized as successful, cosmopolitan, glamorous middle-class women. It is this duality which the present article highlights by showing how members of the association negotiate and construct their subjectivities both within the Methodist Church and the Ghanaian diaspora, while they also negotiate their relationship with the Methodist Church in Ghana.

The land disputes in Cameroon that are best known are between groups of local (indigenous) populations and people originating from elsewhere (incomers). This situation is fairly common in the cosmopolitan towns of Douala and Yaoundé. The purpose of this article is not to revisit these types of conflict, but rather to explore conflicts over land between the indigenous populations and the state. This new kind of opposition demonstrates that it is not only the incoming populations who are dispossessing indigenous people of their land. In fact, in various and more effective ways, the state is playing a significant part in the expropriation of indigenous land heritage. This process may be witnessed in urban housing developments, as well as in areas set aside for public utility, or those that are too dangerous to be developed (slopes, piedmonts and marshlands). Through its policy of urbanization, the state is seemingly contributing to producing ‘landless indigenous people’ in much the same way as and probably more effectively than the incomers. This article reviews the historical processes of land expropriation from the time of the colonial state, analysing the grievances of indigenous people faced with this situation, as well as the strategies they have developed in an effort to take back control of their lost lands.

This article explores the ways in which efforts to expand private land tenure, coupled with the continued centrality of customary land administration in Zambia, produce a fractured system of land governance in which localized markets for land emerge but are forced to operate in a clandestine manner. Using ethnographic and archival data sources, I argue that despite the historical and contemporary relationship between land rights and economic ‘development’, the clandestine nature of land markets in rural Zambia tends to (re)produce many of the social ills that ‘development’ seeks to resolve. Using a case study of a clandestine market for land in a Tonga-speaking region of southern Zambia, this article shows how these markets undermine women's rights to land, while allowing for the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of a few.

This article describes how cross-border trade in West Nile, north-western Uganda to a large extent takes place outside of the legal framework. This does not mean that this trade is unregulated. We make use of the concept of ‘practical norms’ to show the existence of regulation within this trade, which diverges both from official norms and social norms (‘moral economy’). The article describes how these practical norms emerged and how they are enforced. First, it is shown how the moral economy of cross-border trade plays an important role in their articulation. Second, we ask which practical concerns play a role in sustaining these norms and how deviations from them activate open power struggles. And third, we show how concrete events have played a role in their emergence.

The 1990s saw the emergence of a thriving Nile perch export market from East Africa. This commercial table fish species is landed by migrant fishermen at villages that have sprung up along the shores of Lake Victoria, and then exported to overseas markets. By analysing the Ugandan perch fishery as a set of careers, the article shows that, although some fishermen have benefited from the perch boom, most face an uncertain and marginal existence. Few of them, however, move away in response. Analysis of an anthropological case study reveals that this is because the fishermen value the urban culture characterizing prominent village landings, expressed in particular clothing and hairstyles, the prevalence of non-kin ties, and a prospering leisure industry epitomized by the proliferation of pool tables. Hence, a cultural preference for life at the landings, rather than a universal quest for economic opportunity, drives their economic decision making.

People's participation in hometown associations reveals a deep sense of belonging to their home place. It has been argued that promotion of this ‘primary patriotism’ by associations is potentially divisive as it may engender parochialism, increase the focus on autochthony, and enhance ethnicization of the political landscape. Contrasting views, however, do not see hometown associations as necessarily inimical to wider social and political cohesion, but as potential sites for civic engagement and citizenship formation at different levels, reflecting the shifting identity that individuals hold. The article explores these issues among the two main tiers of association in Manyu Division, South-West Province, Cameroon. It briefly describes their history and activities, then considers how the identities mobilizing them are constructed in three interlinked ways: geohistorical and genealogical; neotraditional; and national political. It concludes that while these associations occasionally engage in divisive politics in different spheres, analysis needs to balance this against their other activities and relationships. Most hometown associations continue in their original, social role of mutual support among rural–urban migrants, although their expansion into development at home has had more mixed results. Furthermore, concerns about parochialism are often hard to reconcile with the multiple levels of associational life observed.

The article traces the history of debates on land transfers in northern Ghana and discusses the ways in which African and European views on land tenure influenced and instrumentalized each other. Using the case of Nandom in the Upper West Region, I analyse how an expansionist group of Dagara farmers gained access to and legitimized control over land previously held by a group of Sisala hunters and farmers claiming to be the ‘first-comers’ to the area. Both groups acknowledge that the Sisala eventually transferred land to the Dagara immigrants, symbolically effected by the transmission of an earth-shrine stone. However, the Sisala interpret this historical event in terms of a ‘gift’, invoking the language of kinship and continued dependency, while the Dagara construe it in terms of a ‘purchase’, implicating exchange, equality and autonomy. These different perspectives, as well as colonial officials' ideas that land ownership was ultimately vested in the ancestors of the first-comer lineage and therefore ‘inalienable’, have shaped early disputes about the Nandom earth shrine and Dagara property rights. Competing conceptions of pre-colonial African land tenure continue to provide powerful arguments in current land conflicts, and shrinking land reserves as well as the political implications of landed property, in the context of decentralization policies, have exacerbated the debate on the ‘inalienability’ of land.

The Upper West Region in northern Ghana is a major source area of migrants who travel to southern Ghana seasonally or for longer periods. This has important implications for the lives and livelihoods of the migrants themselves and their relatives at home. Almost invariably the impact of out-migration on sending areas has been studied using ‘Western’ academic parameters. Little is known about how the people hemselves value the profound changes that migration causes in their societies. In this article, findings are presented from interviews with 204 rural household heads who were asked to express their opinion about the consequences of seasonal, long-term and return migration. A quantitative approach to qualitative data was adopted to differentiate between collective perceptions and individual opinions. It was found that almost all respondents were positive about the consequences of seasonal labour migration. They applauded its contribution to food security and considered it one of the few ways of gaining access to money and goods. The respondents were much more ambivalent about the consequences of long-term migration and return migration. On the positive side, they emphasized that out-migration reduced the pressure on farmland, and that some migrants attain higher living standards, both for themselves and for their relatives at home. On the negative side, many long-term migrants are not able to improve their livelihoods or lose their interest in the home community. The lack of support of some migrants is greatly lamented, especially if they later return empty-handed and become a burden on their relatives at home. The methodology used in this study yielded a holistic view of the consequences of migration on the source area as seen through the eyes of the home community

In Akropong-Akwapim, south-eastern Ghana, memories of a sorrowful or conflict-laden past are accessed by verbal and visual strategies that are allusive in nature. The name-response that a mother gives to her child, sites marked in the ritual landscape and a chief's gold-covered linguist staff with a carved narrative image are all sites of memory pertaining to the identity of persons or groups. Formalized, repetitive and felt to be obligatory, they commemorate continuity with a dangerous and/or painful past and simultaneously deny it. This essay concerns memory, ritual, and the deliberate obscurity of reference.

Using ethnographic and historical approaches, this article examines unplanned, peri-urban settlements on Dar es Salaam's northern and western fringe, where urban farming is central to many residents’ household economy. Contrasting with conventional models of African urban migration, these new districts were established by a vanguard of educated urban professionals, utilizing farming as an economic diversification strategy. Despite disjunctures arising through decolonization and implementation of state socialism in the 1960s and 1970s, this peri-urban vanguard not only engaged in agricultural activities reminiscent of regions on the borderlands of Tanzania, but also contributed to the reproduction of configurations of socio-economic inequality characteristic of other kinds of urban communities. With critical infrastructural improvements and a pool of urban labourers supporting their endeavours, these districts attracted additional, economically influential urban in-migrants following capitalist reforms following the implementation of the Zanzibar Declaration in 1991.

Among the Punu of Congo-Brazzaville ikoku dancing is perceived through the concept of joy. In line with the privileging of the emotional experience, this article intends to consider the dance as an emotive institution – that is, a socially organized activity that creates culturally meaningful forms of emotion within which an understanding of self, as well as social identities and relations, are shaped. In ikoku, a succession of dance sessions, embarked on with shame-banishing pride and performed individually or as a couple, awakens a shared joy. Through the dance patterns and idiom, this joyful dancing is connected to the fecundating sexual encounter and to the activity of fishing, linking the dance world to the life-bearing water spirit world. The joining of sexual differentiation and maternal containment that in this way is enacted and deeply experienced by the participants – if the event succeeds in awakening joy – supports basic structures of Punu rural society characterized by the tension between conjugal relations based on a patri-virilocal principle and matriclanic belonging. The emphasis that our analysis places on the dance form itself, and on the shared joy in dawning fertility it evokes, also proves to be fruitful in understanding how ikoku dancing persists in changing contexts – and even in urban ones.

This article demonstrates that the struggle over the Muslim ‘veil’ in public schools, which is related to tensions between the norms of secular democracy and principles of religious tolerance, has also become a topic of debate in Cameroon. I take the life of a young woman, Maimouna, whose life I have followed for 22 years, as a point of departure, and place it in the historical and social contexts of her society. I try not only to negotiate presuppositions about women and Islam in order to challenge notions of Muslim women as a homogeneous category, but also to challenge the automatic association of Islam, fundamentalism and the debate on veiling. In this debate it is often taken for granted that women have no say over their own lives. I show not only that the wishes of diverse groups of women living in Muslim societies may vary, but also that in a single woman's life her views may change. I explore how aspects of the new fundamentalist discourse (in which education for women is of importance) – against a background in which political and religious leaders, as in the past, cooperate closely – come to the fore in the subject of veiling. Religious and political councils initiate the foundation of private Islamic schools that are built with money from Saudi Arabian NGOs. In these schools women may wear headgear, which they have to take off in public schools in accordance with the laic prescriptions of Cameroon's constitution. The incessant change of views on veiling is linked to local, national and international contexts, but in a different way at each level. The story of Maimouna indicates that modernity is gendered. In the fundamentalist discourse in Cameroon in which veiling has acquired significance, men opt for another type of school where veiling is allowed, while women opt for education.

The article offers an empirical perspective regarding customary land sales in Côte d'Ivoire, focusing on their socio-political embeddedness as well as on the implications of such processes for the content of the rights and duties transferred. Two interlinked aspects of land transfers, which usually come together in African contexts, are to be taken into account: rights and obligations regarding land access and control (‘the land resource dimension’), and rights and obligations regarding group membership, and more generally the socio-political dimensions that condition the social recognition and effectiveness of the transfer of land rights (‘the socio-political dimension’). These two dimensions are empirically explored, together with the processes of their connection and possible disconnection/reconnection. We show that the diverging interpretations of land transfers, from emic as well as from etic viewpoints, do not necessarily correspond to mutually exclusive explanatory models, or to a simple transition phase from customary to ‘pure’ market land transfers. Access to land may become commoditized without extinguishing the socio-political dimension of land transactions. Another point is that the articulation of these two dimensions of land transfers is a specific and always contextualized issue. This has direct consequences on the legitimacy of land transfers as well as on the security of the stranger right holder within the local community and more generally on the politicization of land issue.

In spite of the universality of clientelism, it is often seen as a peculiar aspect of Third World politics, one which inevitably stifles development. This study examines clientelistic relationships in south-western Nigeria and their possible impact on rural development, with a special focus on Ibadan. It finds that rural clients attract the attention of the political class to promote the exchange of goods for loyalty through associations that afford clients a sort of cohesive power and a common front, the basis of their relevance in the political-clientelistic chain. This clientelistic chain also serves as the channel through which development projects are conceived and implemented. But since the projects provided only serve symbolic purposes, they easily collapse: clients may have the opportunity of changing patrons, but they remain subservient to the political/economic elite. Thus rural underdevelopment persists in spite of a continual inflow of development projects (and goods).