Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2016
This paper surveys the state of research on ideology and belief in Africa, a subject made up of two often separated notions but significant as a conjunction in current African history and in need of theoretical elaboration. Although there have been writings on this subject in numerous disciplines, this essay will concentrate on the anthropological perspective of the relationship of ideology and belief, as stimulated by anthropologists' confrontations with African developments
The paper presents three major arguments or themes. First, it contends that the distinction between ideology and belief is invidious and should be transcended. Second, it documents that the study of these phenomena in Africa, whether labeled cultural superstructure or labeled ideology and belief, has become increasingly a historical rather than a mythological science. This trend should be hastened. The argument applies to the study of belief principles similar to those that Professor Ajayi (1967:274) invoked in a well known essay for the study of history. It was time, Ajayi said, to replace the mythical Africa of colonial thought with knowledge of what real men did in real situations. The third theme of this essay is that although the models of society constructed by its members and the models constructed by outside observers are, as Lévi-Strauss says (1967:274), phenomena of the same order, the models belong to different cultures, meet different requirements, cannot be reconciled, and should not be confused, although they often have been in the past, in African studies in particular.