From tribe to ethnicity in Western Zambia: the unit of study as an ideological problem

Binsbergen, W.M.J. van (1985)

Part of book or chapter of book

The author argues that Zambian rural anthropology is on the decline, and that this decline is related to the reliance, among anthropologists, on the tribe and ethnic group as the basic unit of study in the past; that the one way to escape from the tribal model on the analytical plane without sacrificing the subjects' own organization of their experience, is to try to explain this experience as a form of consciousness emerging out of the dialectics of political incorporation and, even more fundamentally, the penetration of capitalism, in other words, the articulation of capitalism and a non-capitalist mode of production. The chapter is based on research among the Nkoya of western Zambia, an earlier version of it was published in 'Journal of Southern African Studies', vol. 8, no. 1, (1981/82), pages 51-81. 

• Africa
• African studies
• ethnicity
• Nkoya
• historiography
• rural
• Zambia

• All authors: Binsbergen, W.M.J. van
• Editor(s): Binsbergen W.M.J. van, Geschiere P.L.
• Date: 1985
• Title of host publication: African Study Monographs; Old modes of production and capitalist encroachment: anthropological explorations in Africa
• Pages: 181 - 234
• ISBN (print): 0710300891