In this article I discuss the incorporation of the people of two Bamileke chiefdoms into wider economic and political systems. In doing this I will concentrate on the interactions and strategies of individuals. A number of issues will concern us: the types of relations of dependency within the chiefdoms and the possibilities for manipulating them to further individual economic, political and social mobility; the effects of the commercialisation of agriculture during both colonial and post-colonial periods; the opening up of areas outside the chiefdoms for trade and migration; the erosion of the chiefdom structure and its consequences for interpersonal relations and the possibilities for furthering individual and family interests. I will approach these problems mainly from the point of view of the changing patterns of authority and power relations.

Since the early 1970s the heavy impact of recurrent drought has given rise to the sense that Sahelian pastoralism is in decline. This is usually attributed to increasing aridity, environmental degradation and the destructive effects of colonial policies on traditional mechanisms to spread risk and promote recovery from drought. These factors clearly contribute to the pastoral sector's apparently increasing difficulties in contending with environmental hardship and variability. However, analysts' strong emphasis on forces exogenous to the sector has created a seriously distorted view of a system in uniform decline. In fact, when changes within the pastoral sector are examined, it becomes clear that the movement of people away from full-time transhumant livestock raising since the 1970s reflects not the decline of pastoralism per se but rather the slipping-out by a stratum of producers for whom the risks associated with this activity were simply too great relative to possible returns. Understanding that drought-induced impoverishment has its roots in differential ability to bear risks linked to environmental variability is especially important in formulating sound policies to ensure present and former pastoralists' continued access to income-generating activities, whether in full-time livestock raising or in other areas.

Assongu are small terracotta figurines, sculpted to represent a spirit force which originated on, and is said to emanate from, an island in the Aby Lagoon of southeastern Ivory Coast. The sculptures are called ‘fetish’ figures by the people who make and use them. They are material representations of the powerful spirit force called Assongu (which I write with an upper-case A for clarity), which is propitiated by offerings presented to the sculptures. The tradition exists among the Eotilé, the Anyi of Sanwi, the Abure and the Nzema, all of whom live around the Aby Lagoon (see map).

The relationship of masquerade performance to social organization and to the differentiation of traditional power and authority in everyday life is scarcely noted in the literature on African ritual. And yet research among two Kuba-related groups (Northern Kete and Southern Bushoong) in south-central Zaire indicate an enduring relationship, such that we can better understand the one by examining the others. The appearance of masquerade figures during initiation rituals both reinforces and validates distinctions of power in Kuba culture. Furthermore, funerals for initiated men in conjunction with masquerade performance provide a setting in which some of the activities relating to these distinctions of power are acted out.

Lucy Philip Mair was born in London in 1901 and died in London on 1 April 1986. She was a social anthropologist of international reputation and known particularly for her work on Africa.

The Institute's fifty-ninth Executive Council meeting took place at the African Studies Centre of the University of Bayreuth in the Federal German Republic in July 1986 following the Centre's annual symposium on the theme of ‘Identity in Africa’. Professor Jacob Ade Ajayi, myself, and Professors Mohamed Omer Beshir and John Paden gave papers at the symposium and Professor Michael Crowder delivered a special public lecture on the current crisis in African Studies (see p. 109). We are very grateful to Professor Helmut Ruppert, Director of Africanistics at Bayreuth, and to our Executive Council member, Professor Franz Rottland, and to Professor and Mrs Christopher Winter and all their colleagues for inviting us to meet at Bayreuth in this very productive fashion and in such congenial company. The meeting served to highlight the continuing international role of the Institute. Professors Martin Njeuma (Cameroon) and Toshinao Yoneyama (Japan) were attending Executive Council for the first time. The following new members were elected to Council: Professor AH Mazrui (Vice-Chairman), Professor Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch (Consultative Director), Professor J. M. Schoffeleers, Professor Abdoulaye Bara Diop and Dr Steven Moyo. While welcoming Professor Coquery-Vidrovitch as incoming French Consultative Director, warm tribute was paid to her retiring predecessor, Professor Pierre Alexandre, who had for so many years sustained French support for the Institute. The Institute was extremely fortunate to have enjoyed the advice and guidance of a colleague of such distinction and wide-ranging expertise.

In April 1986 British Africanists met to discuss the crisis facing African Studies in their country. The crisis was easily denned as one of lack of resources in universities where current cutbacks have particularly affected area studies; of the limited funds available to libraries specialising in African Studies; and of the severe reduction in the number of publishers willing to take on monographs relating to Africa, with the result that many scholars are ‘giving up all hope of being published'.1 Furthermore, lack of travel funds has meant that many Africanists teaching in Britain have not been to the continent of their study in seven years. So few new appointments have recently been made in the field of African Studies in British universities that, unless something drastic is done to reverse the trend, in fifteen years’ time there will be a sharp decline in the numbers actually engaged in African Studies as generations grow old and are not replaced.2 Students can see no future in pursuing African Studies at the postgraduate level and their teachers are in no position to advise even their most brilliant students that doctoral research will lead to an academic appointment. These developments have taken place in a context where those who run the government have lost or are losing interest in Africa, a continent which is seen increasingly as one of unending problems which they just wish would go away. Indeed, the whole crisis in African Studies, as described by some of the leading British Africanists that April, invited headlines in the respected weekly magazine West Africa: ‘African Studies in peril. Is the study of Africa in British universities dying?