Despite the prevailing presence of exploitation of the rural by the urban in present day Zaire, it is still too early to pretend to put forward a precise definition and measurement of this exploitation process, especially as far as Zairian small urban centers are concerned. No systematic field research has so far been undertaken on these small centers.

However, this study will show that in south-eastern Zaire the social environment of small urban centers is too suffocating to allow them to play a positive role in the development of the rural masses. Some stifling mechanisms are encountered in the small urban centers, which impede the efficient circulation of goods and services between the centers and the rural areas and exacerbate the exploitation of the rural people by the small urban centers to the greatest advantage of the urban elite and of world capitalism.

The geographical area of south-eastern Zaire, corresponding to the administrative Region of Shaba (formerly Katanga), seems a suitable field for the study of small urban centers. It constitutes, together with the economic pole of Kinshasa and the administrative Region of Bas-Zaire, one of the most industrialized areas in Zaire. Copper mining industry—including production of secondary minerals such as cobalt, zinc, iron, gold, platinum, cadmium, germanium, rhenium—is predominant in southern Shaba. The Gecamines alone supplies the Zaire state with 75 percent of its foreign exchange. It employs a personnel of more than 300,000 units and carries on its different productive activities on a concession of 20,000 sq km. Its extractive and service activities are concentrated in cities (Lubumbashi, Likasi, Kolwesi) and in small urban centers with populations growing from year to year (Kipushi, Kambove, Kwadingusha).

A large number of black workers from white-owned farms in the Albany and Bathurst districts have migrated to a small city, Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape. In an attempt to illustrate the process by which people from rural areas settle in and adjust to urban life, this paper focuses on the manner in which migration presently occurs. From the 1940s farms in the Albany and Bathurst districts were rapidly losing labor, largely on account of mechanization and land rationalization. At that time many farm dwellers were migrating to Grahamstown and to some extent Port Elizabeth. The past few decades witnessed a massive further migration from these farms and this, together with natural increase, contributed to the 53.9 percent increase in Grahamstown's black population in the 1970-80 decade. Most of those who emigrated to the town have tried to establish themselves in the urban area even though their new places of residence have apparently impossible demands and challenges.

In South Africa many researchers (e.g. Wilson, F. 1972) have rightly highlighted the economic and administrative constraints which prevent many migrant workers from accepting town as their permanent home. This paper seeks some understanding of the basic motivation of people who emigrate to town and decide (usually quite unequivocally) to live there permanently. Since fewer studies have been made of small towns than of the large cities, the case reveals some of the lesser known aspects of urbanization in Southern Africa: the interdependence between town and country, the immigrants' overwhelming commitment to urban living, the relevance of chain migration, the role of the extended family in facilitating urban adaptation and the utilization of rural resources by those who are settling in town.

Judicial research from a cross-national perspective has been a relatively neglected subject among American scholars. Since the founding of Law and Society Review, approximately twenty-two articles have appeared on comparative judicial topics, with one issue (summer 1978) devoted exclusively to a European sociology of law. Of these articles, five address African problems. In fifteen years of International and Comparative Law Quarterly, only seven articles treat the African judiciary. A perusal of the British Journal of Law and Society reveals a similar neglect of the cross-national perspective. More revealing, in two of the respected comparative politics journals, Comparative Politics and Comparative Political Studies, only 0.3 percent of the total number of articles published between 1968 and 1981 dealt with judicial systems. Out of twenty-nine subject headings, courts and constitutions finished in a tie for last place-only 7.1 percent of all articles (Sigelman and Gadbois, 1983: 293-94).

Unfortunately, the journals specializing in African affairs offer us no more enlightenment about judicial systems on that continent. While the prestigious Journal of Modern African Studies has published approximately ten articles on judicial issues, the other journals have been decidedly remiss. Two specialized journals are devoted to the topic: Journal of African Law and African Law Studies. Competent articles have been published in these outlets but, due to their general inaccessability, they have failed to become part of the research knowledge on African political systems.

Why has there been a relative neglect of cross-national studies of the African judiciary? This article first provides explanations for why these institutions have not enjoyed scholarly visibility.

This paper is an attempt to assess the Braudel/Wallerstein model of the modern world-system by looking at the development of a new commercial elite in a small urban center in Morocco (Braudel, 1979; Wallerstein, 1974). The modern world-system model raises a host of questions which cannot be properly addressed in a brief paper. After reviewing some of these questions, this study will focus on the role of trade in the spread of capitalism and the idea that capitalist trade can be distinguished from non-capitalist trade. If capitalism spreads through trade, one might expect that an analysis of the commercial sector might be at least as illuminating as one of the spread of capitalism in the rural or industrial areas—which are the more common sorts of analysis to date. The primary concern is to delineate how homogeneously capitalist the commercial sector of this urban center is, and what changes have occurred in its structure with the appearance of a new elite. The paper begins with an outline of the geographical and historical background and then proceeds to a discussion of the modern world-system and the theory of unequal exchange, which has been posited as the mechanism for maintaining the peripheralization of much of the world. The main section of the paper which follows tries to assess the structure of the commercial sector and the development of a new commercial elite in Essaouira during the 20th century. In the conclusion, the paper assesses the importance of the modern world-system as an explanation for the structure and behavior of the Essaouiran commercial sector and the new elites.