Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T22:42:57.675Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Ideology of ‘Tribalism’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Archie Mafeje
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Few authors have been able to write on Africa without making constant reference to ‘tribalism’. Could this be the distinguishing feature of the continent? or is it merely a reflection of the system of perceptions of those who write on Africa, and of their African ‘converts’? Objective reality is very difficult to disentangle from subjective perception, almost in the same way as concepts in the social sciences are hard to purify of all ideological connotations. Might not African history, written, not by Europeans, but by Africans themselves, have employed different concepts and told a different story? If so, what would have been the theoretical explanation? Are things what they are called, or do they have an existence which is independent of the nomenclature that attaches to them? When it comes to Africa, answers vary independently of whether the observer is a liberal idealist, a Marxist materialist, or an African ‘convert’.

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , August 1971 , pp. 253 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Page 254 note 1 Gulliver, P. H. (ed.), Tradition and Transition in East Africa: studies of the tribal element in the modern era (London, 1969), pp. 2, 7–8, and 24.Google Scholar

Page 254 note 2 Marx, K. and Engels, F., The German Ideology (London, 1965 edn.), p. 61.Google Scholar

Page 255 note 1 Cf. Wilson, G. and M., The Analysis of Social Change (Cambridge, 1945)Google Scholar; Firth, R., Elements of Social Organization (London, 1951)Google Scholar; Redfield, R., The Primitive World and its Transformation (Ithaca, 1953)Google Scholar; and Richards, A. I., Economic Development and Tribal Change (Cambridge, 1954).Google Scholar

Page 255 note 2 Gluckman, Max, ‘Anthropological Problems arising from the African Industrial Revolution’, in Southall, A. W. (ed.), Social Change in Modern Africa (London, 1961), p. 69.Google Scholar

Page 255 note 3 See Gluckman, , Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa (London, 1963)Google Scholar, and his contributions to other works: ‘The Tribal Areas in South and Central Africa’, in Kuper, Leo and Smith, M. G. (eds.), Pluralism in Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969)Google Scholar; ‘Tribalism, Ruralism and Urbanism in Plural Societies’, in Turner, V. W. (ed.), Colonialism in Africa, 1870–1960, vol. III, Profiles of Change (Cambridge, 1971)Google Scholar; and ‘Inter-hierarchical Roles: professional and party ethnics in the tribal areas in South and Central Africa’, in M. Swartz (ed.), Local-level Politics (Chicago, 1968).Google Scholar

Page 255 note 4 Mitchell, J. C., The Kalela Dance (Lusaka, 1956),Google Scholar Rhodes-Livingstone Papers, no. 27.

Page 255 note 5 E.g. in Southall, op. cit. pp. 35 and 67.

Page 256 note 1 Epstein, A. L., Politics in an Urban African Community (Manchester, 1958).Google Scholar

Page 256 note 2 Led by Apter, David; see his The Gold Coast in Transition (Princeton, 1955)Google Scholar and The Political Kingdom in Uganda (Princeton, 1961).Google Scholar Cf. also Coleman, James S., Nigeria: background to nationalism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1958),Google Scholar and Post, K. W. J., The Nigerian Federal Elections of 1959: politics and administration in a developing political system (London, 1963).Google Scholar

Page 256 note 3 See Lewis, I., ‘Tribalism’, in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1968), vol. XVI, pp. 146–50.Google Scholar

Page 257 note 1 Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (eds.), African Political Systems (London, 1940), passim.Google Scholar

Page 257 note 2 Schapera, I., Government and Politics in Tribal Societies (London, 1956), p. 203.Google Scholar

Page 258 note 1 Smith, M. G., Government in Zazzau (London, 1960)Google Scholar; and Mitchell, J. C., Tribalism and the Plural Society (London, 1960).Google Scholar

Page 258 note 2 Gulliver, op. cit. pp. 43–4.

Page 258 note 3 Cf. Marx and Engels, op. cit. pp. 43–4.

Page 259 note 1 W. J. Argyle, ‘European Nationalism and African Tribalism’, in Gulliver, op. cit. pp. 41–57.

Page 259 note 2 Lévi-Strauss, C., Structural Anthropology (New York, 1963), pp. 281–2.Google Scholar

Page 260 note 1 Mafeje, A., ‘Leadership and Change in a Peasant Community’; M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1963.Google Scholar

Page 260 note 2 Wilson, M. and Mafeje, A., Langa: a study of social groups in an African township (London 1963), pp. 47–9.Google Scholar

Page 260 note 3 Gulliver, P. H., editorial introduction, Tradition and Transition in East Africa, p. 12.Google Scholar

Page 260 note 4 R. D. Griller, ‘The Tribal Factor in an East African Trade Union’, ibid. p. 320.

Page 260 note 5 D. J. Parkin, ‘Tribe as Fact and Fiction in an East African City’, ibid. p. 295.

Page 261 note 1 Apthorpe, R. J., ‘Does Tribalism Really Matter?’, in Transition (Kampala), 37, 10 1968, p. 22.Google Scholar

Page 261 note 2 For an example, see Gulliver, op. cit. p. 24; I might also cite an M.A. candidate at Makerere University who said that ‘tribalism’ did not start in Kigeze until 1958.