This chapter starts from the premise that economic actions can only be understood if looked upon as embedded in social structure. Therefore, it elaborates the concept of (sustainable) livelihood,... Show moreThis chapter starts from the premise that economic actions can only be understood if looked upon as embedded in social structure. Therefore, it elaborates the concept of (sustainable) livelihood, which is taken to emanate from the interactions of actors with vital capitals. It argues that, in the context of globalization, livelihood becomes increasingly multidimensional and multilocal, spanning rural and urban areas at the same time. The chapter focuses on changing rural-urban linkages in West Africa, notably on the trade in maize, yam, and cattle in Benin. Expanding flows between rural areas and urban outlets are analysed against the background of the livelihood strategies of traders, paying special attention to trade organization, networks, entry modes, and accumulation paths. Emphasis is placed on the role of social capital in these interactions. Bibliogr. [ASC Leiden abstract] Show less
In this chapter the author explores how the inhabitants of Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, have used their church organization to create a viable social texture for themselves, serving political,... Show moreIn this chapter the author explores how the inhabitants of Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, have used their church organization to create a viable social texture for themselves, serving political, economic and kinship goals way beyond the letter of the gospel. In Zambia, towns only came into being during the colonial period. The author starts with a discussion of the relative importance of continuity and transformation in the urban social structure of rural patterns of social relations. He then presents a long monologue of just one urban protagonist, recorded during fieldwork in 1972-1973. Mrs. Evelyn Phiri lives in the township of Kapemperere in Lusaka, and is a member of a well-established church body, the Roman Catholic Church. Her monologue highlights the discussion of elements of continuity and transformation. The church appears as a local formal organization, as a structure of material and ideological/spiritual assistance, and finally as a structure of social control. It assumes functions which can only be understood against the background of preexisting rural traditional patterns, yet caters for needs of crisis support, conflict regulation and the expression of group identity and an emerging class structure. This provides a framework within which to identify urban social processes such as they manifest themselves in the social drama evocated in Mrs. Phiri's monologue. Notes, ref Show less
Many local tenure arrangements in Niger were largely implicit, not recorded in any codified form. In the process of codification now underway, chiefs are regarded as the key interpreters of... Show moreMany local tenure arrangements in Niger were largely implicit, not recorded in any codified form. In the process of codification now underway, chiefs are regarded as the key interpreters of tradition, mutating the implicit into the explicit. Land tenure reform is not without contradictions. How are chiefs to maintain a level of flexibility and dynamism within the codified, rigidified form that the local tenure arrangements will have once they are made explicit? How are chiefs to determine which implicit local customary practice is to have primacy in a codified form, since their parameters are always changing from season to season and from year to year? As the new 'Code rural' in Niger shows, the invention-of-tradition approach which has gained prominence in English-language research has failed in its French counterparts. Both planner-administrators and academics are engaged in a discourse that seems to take tradition as an undisputed given. The remarkable thing is that is appears to work. The 'Code rural' has been considered path-breaking and innovative because it seeks to modernize tenure rules without breaking with tradition. The conclusion is that land tenure legislation can be modernized by integrating traditional chiefs into the legal framework. Show less
The author concentrates on virtuality, which he has come to regard as one of the key concepts for characterizing and understanding the forms of globalization in Africa. Chapters 1 and 2 define... Show moreThe author concentrates on virtuality, which he has come to regard as one of the key concepts for characterizing and understanding the forms of globalization in Africa. Chapters 1 and 2 define virtuality and globalization and provisionally indicate their theoretical relationship. The problematic heritage of an anthropological tradition obsessed with locality provides the analytical framework within which virtuality makes an inspiring topic, as argued in Ch. 3. Ch. 4 offers a transition from theory to empirical case studies by examining the problem of meaning in the African urban environment. Ch. 5 evokes an ethnographic situation (urban puberty rites in present-day Zambia) that illustrates particular forms of virtuality as part of the globalization process. Ch. 6 applies the emerging insights into virtuality and the virtual village to Ren‚ Devisch's notion of villagization as a major process of societal transformation in the Zairian capital, Kinshasa. Ch. 7 explores the applicability of the same concepts to recent patterns of witchcraft and healing as studied, at the national level in Cameroon and Malawi, by Peter Geschiere and Matthew Schoffeleers respectively. The author's own earlier work on the Kazanga festival as an instance of virtuality in the rural context of western central Zambia is summarized in Ch. 8, after which a conclusion rounds off the argument. Show less
This essay deals with the relation between ritual behaviour and environmental conditions in an African rural society, that of the South-East Surmic (Nilo-Saharan)-speaking Me'en people, a group of... Show moreThis essay deals with the relation between ritual behaviour and environmental conditions in an African rural society, that of the South-East Surmic (Nilo-Saharan)-speaking Me'en people, a group of 'tribal' cultivators in Käfa region, Ethiopia. The study attempts to integrate 'ideational' and material-environmental elements, in order to explain how meaning in ritual is constituted in the dialectic between human action and environmental conditions. For this purpose, a text of the 'mósit', a central ritual of the Me'en, is presented and discussed. The author looks at the significance of environmental referents in the ritual acts and words, and at how the language and the context of the 'mósit' reflect social and reproductive relations within Me'en society. The aim is an explanatory account of the 'mósit' as a religious ritual system. The unifying theoretical perspective which informs this analysis is derived from the theory of E.T. Lawson and R.N. MacCauley (1990), which advocates a 'competence'-approach to religious ritual behaviour. Show less
Nkoya is an ethnic and linguistic label applying to about 50,000 people inhabiting the wooded plateau of Central Western Zambia. The author discusses the valley as the effective rural community... Show moreNkoya is an ethnic and linguistic label applying to about 50,000 people inhabiting the wooded plateau of Central Western Zambia. The author discusses the valley as the effective rural community and the villages as the main constituent social units within the valley and finally indicates the place of Nkoya society within the context of Central Africa as a whole Show less
The alternative proposed here for the tribal model as a unit of study is not another, better unit of study (e.g. a mode of production, an expanding social formation, or a well-defined spatio... Show moreThe alternative proposed here for the tribal model as a unit of study is not another, better unit of study (e.g. a mode of production, an expanding social formation, or a well-defined spatio-temporal portion of reality), but a growing awareness of possible problems and interrelations, informed by insights from history and political economy. Thus this paper is an exercise in the interaction of anthropology and history in the analysis of a specific set of data: Introduction - The end of rural anthropology in Zambia? - The unit of study - Studying the Nkoya - Ethnicity, history and the Nkoya experience - Nkoya ethnicity and the dialectics of consciousness - Conclusion: beyond the unit of study. Show less
Introduction to a volume of papers delivered during the 1977 conference of the Afrika-Studiecentrum in Leiden with the theme of 'Migration and rural development in Tropical Africa'. The... Show moreIntroduction to a volume of papers delivered during the 1977 conference of the Afrika-Studiecentrum in Leiden with the theme of 'Migration and rural development in Tropical Africa'. The geographical coverage of this volume includes West- and Southern Africa, bu does not extend to East or Central Africa. Th papers discuss the main problems of migration in Tropical Africa, namely: 1. The definition of migration, 2. Description of migration streams, 3. Forces behind migration; structure versus individual motivation. 4. The nature of the sectors between which migration takes place, 5. The historical processes by which these different sectors have emerged. 6. The political and economic processes by which the differences between sectors are perpetuated, 7. The social processes by which the different sectors are connected, 8. Migration and rural development. The A's in part 3 end with the general problem that relates to the subjective appreciation of contemporary African conditions, among researchers. Show less
Review of Robert H. Bates, Rural Responses to Industrialization: A Study of Village Zambia, New Haven & London, 1976. Even though this book is important because it is a major step towards... Show moreReview of Robert H. Bates, Rural Responses to Industrialization: A Study of Village Zambia, New Haven & London, 1976. Even though this book is important because it is a major step towards asking the right questions concerning the transformation of Central-African society, the reviewer argues that most of Bates' answers to the emerging questions are wrong. Sections: Introduction - Structure and method - Tribute to Francis Bacon: Bates' quantitative analysis - Occam and the limits of income maximalization - Conclusion: towards an alternative. Notes, tables Show less
Paper presented at the 34th annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, section: Anthropological contributions to the study of migration, Amsterdam, 19-22 March 1975 Abridged abstract:... Show morePaper presented at the 34th annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, section: Anthropological contributions to the study of migration, Amsterdam, 19-22 March 1975 Abridged abstract: Antagonism between older and younger men constitutes a striking feature of a rural community in post-independent Zambia. In the local political processes surrounding the 1973 Zambia general elections, a small group of young men organised themselves within a framework suggested by national party politics, and attempted (with unexpected support from the elders) to construct a youth-centred social order which could dissolve the intergenerational struggle while presenting a blue-print for rural reconstruction. The present paper attempts to interpret these data, in particular as the outcome of a process of social change shaped mainly by labour migration. It examines the pre-colonial career model, changes in rural leadership under colonial rule, the emergence of an urban career model, the changing status of rural youth, ideological change in the colonial era, and the post-independent situation Show less
