This article explores the hunting aesthetics of initiated Jula hunters of Côte d'Ivoire who call themselves dozos. It explains how their hunting aesthetic structures their relationship to Islam and the Ivoirian state. Although many Africans approach Islam in the context of tensions between local ritual traditions and modernizing Muslim reform, dozos approach Islam the way they approach the forests where they hunt, assimilating to both in order to tame them. They organize their hunting activities around an aesthetic centred on notions of sweetness and fullness; their contraries, difficulty and emptiness; and the process of mimetic transformation (shape-shifting) that mediates between these extremes. With these categories dozos assimilate themselves to and appropriate power from the forest to kill game. They also link themselves to pre-Qur'anic Muslim figures to legitimize themselves as Muslims. More recently, they tried to assimilate to the Ivoirian state to become a parallel police force. Stories of their tutelary spirit, Manimory, and the texts of their hunting songs, incantations, and epics encode diverse ways for dozos to relate to Islam, leaving room for dozos to eschew it as well. Their texts reveal a dynamic sense of history that defies classification in terms of tradition, modernity or postmodernity.

The Education Code of 1887 provided for the teaching of art subjects as they were understood in South Kensington at that time—the age of Froebel and Slojd: the aim seems to have been the vague one of ‘hand-and-eye training’. But the purpose for which hand and eye were to be trained does not appear clearly in its instructions, and I am perfectly certain that the bulk of teachers of the older generation do not know of one. One cannot trace in the Code any real policy of artistic development in the country by means of the educational system. ‘Drawing’ was, and is, taught not primarily from the artist's point of view at all, i. e. as a study of form. The study of colour is not taught, nor the elements of design. Now form, colour, and design are the elements of the graphic and plastic art, and one would have thought that they would have been incorporated in a balanced scheme of elementary education. There was, and is, no provision for the training of taste, appreciation, criticism, or for the slightest perception of the horizons of art history.

The formalization of ‘informal’ customary land rights is at the core of current rural land policies in Africa. The dubious impacts of such policies on agricultural production, and the recomposition of land rights and governance they cause, have been studied widely. But their territorial dimensions are hardly acknowledged. Studying the implementation of a rural land rights formalization project in central Benin, this article highlights the links between territorialization and plot-level land rights formalization. It first unpacks the notion of the village and presents a conceptual framework for analysing the superimposition of and contradiction between customary and administrative territories. Using two case studies, it then examines the conflicts that arise during formalization operations and their outcomes in terms of the mapping of land rights and political and administrative change. This article shows how the political organization of the territory and the socio-spatial inequalities resulting from the history of settlement shape the results of plot-level land rights registration (which explains why large parts of village territories have not been registered), and, in turn, how these registration operations lead to new territorialization processes and increase the heterogeneity of land tenure rights within the territory.

This article explores conflicts over local administrative boundaries in South Sudan and what these reveal about relationships between pastoralist communities and the state. Drawing on research in the Gogrial region of South Sudan, it argues that conflicts over local boundaries are rooted in the existence of different border paradigms and in subsequent attempts to resolve, sometimes violently, competing moral claims on the landscape. It draws a contrast between a Dinka concept of the border as a point that is owned and the state's concept of the border as a neutral dividing line. These concepts are based on different cultural logics, but there has been a century of interpenetration as well as conflict between them. The state has tried to lay its lines over Dinka points and local people have sought to tap the power of the state by claiming authority at administrative boundaries. These complex processes of interpenetration show how rural populations negotiate with violent state power: both in the past and in the process of forming the new state of South Sudan. They also reveal how some pastoralist populations have played an active role in shaping the geography of the state.

On the strength of research in 1992–95 and 1998 this article discusses the way Muslim women dress in Bouaké, Côte D'Ivoire, and what it tells us about the trajectory of their lives and view of the world. Arguing that fashion is emblematic of processes of identification, it seeks to explain how young women come to be situated and position themselves in these processes. To do so, it examines the processes through a life course analysis that takes into account local versionings of tradition and aesthetics, Muslim cosmology and ideals of Western modernity. The article shows that as young women gain social maturity and assume the socially defined status of adult they dress and act increasingly in a manner that emphasises Muslim identity. The various ways in which they use dress reflect the stance they adopt towards competing versionings of Islam.

Les Asante (Ashanti) sont un peuple d'habitants de la forêt d'Afrique de l'Ouest, vivant maintenant au sein de la République de Ghana. Cet article étudie comment les Asante perçoivent les animaux de la forêt dans un large contexte culturel et historique. Ces animaux étaient omnipresents dans la vie et les pensées des Asante, et cet article offre une analyse des explications—phénoménologiques et ontologiques—qui leur ont été attribuées. Il est aussi examiné comment les interprétations sur le cas des animaux étaient liées à la compréhension des Asante de l'individualité et de la personne, et aux explications du mythe et de l'histoire.

Contrairement aux suppositions néo-malthusiennes, l'augmentation de la population ne veut pas nécessairement dire quʼil y a moins de bio-diversité. Davantage de gens pourrait signifier une plus grande attention prêtée à l'environnement. Cela dépend beaucoup des circonstances dans lesquelles les populations locales développent une prise de conscience de la gestion de la bio-diversité et un engagement pratique dans celle-ci. Cet article considère deux cas.

Dans le premier cas, une forêt tropicale apparemment primitive s'avère être, lorsquʼon l'inspecte de plus près, chargée de traces d'une occupation humaine antérieure. Il se peut que ceci ait été une bonne chose pour certaines classes de bio-diversité comme les oiseaux par exemple. Dans un deuxième cas, on prête attention aux ressources des cultures agricoles génétiques dans un paysage agricole avec une forte densité de population. Ici, il se peut que la bio-diversité génétique ait été conservée par les agriculteurs qui ont sélectionné des semences adaptées à des conditions physiques difficiles. Ce genre de données obtenues durant l'étude de cas fournit une base sur laquelle les partisans de la défense de l'environnement et les groupes socio-éducatifs peuvent développer une compréhension mutuelle.

This article presents the case of the creation and expansion of Namaqua National Park in Namaqualand, South Africa, to highlight the contradictions between global interests in biodiversity conservation and local livelihoods. Despite the policy shift in the conservation literature from ‘fortress’ to community-based conservation, we argue that in practice conservation still tends to dominate when there is a trade-off between Western-style conservation and support to the livelihoods of marginalized communities. This can again be explained by the hegemony of a conservation discourse that is shared by a network of actors. The article highlights the role played by powerful environmental organizations and wealthy individuals supporting conservation at the expense of land redistribution in Namaqualand. The combination of scientific research and finances provided by this actor-network aided the creation and expansion of the Park. Local people, however, see the expansion of the Park as direct and unfair competition for land that they wish to acquire through the land redistribution programme, as well as an indirect challenge to their local livelihoods. Whatever the merits of their case, it seems clear that communities aspiring to more land, together with advocates of human rights and poverty alleviation, remain on the margins in terms of policy influence, especially when they pursue goals that are perceived by the conservation advocates to be in conflict with those of biodiversity conservation.

This article aims at contributing to our understanding of violence and warfare in contemporary West Africa by adopting a bi-focal analysis that looks both at power struggles within the urban elite and at the grassroots multi-ethnic setting in southern Guinea-Bissau. I pay close attention to the social dynamics of rural peoples' perspectives, coping strategies and inter-ethnic conflicts. Local conflicts are elucidated as an ongoing process that traverses times of war and peace. Although they are subject to manipulation by urban actors, local conflicts are also a matter of continuous negotiation and partial consensus at the grassroots. In stark contrast to this, the struggles in the ruling group are characterized by an escalating spiral of factionalism, diminishing compromises and elimination of rivals. By analysing the relationship between urban and rural actors and the role of cosmology, the article also aims to shed new light on the multiple shapes patron–client relations can assume in Africa.

The widespread failure of the post-colonial state in Africa is often attributed to a lack of social and cultural unity, and hence of national identity, in the territories in question. In Europe the state has historically been conceptualized as coterminous with the nation, an apparently ‘natural’ cultural unit that allowed for subsequent political cohesion and the avoidance of ethnic conflict. In Africa the concept (and the reality) of the nation is often absent and this is sometimes considered to be a stumbling block on the path to political stability. However, the suggestion that a state whose population exhibits the requisite cultural homogeneity would construct and maintain a nation and, subsequently, successful and stable statehood is challenged by evidence from the Comoro Islands. Here, despite apparent socio-cultural unity, there has been little movement towards the development of a nation; indeed, there is evidence that an explicit denial of socio-cultural unity underpins the failure of the state.

In a paper written at the end of 1946 (but not published until 1950), I discussed incidentally the types and frequency of marriages with kin among the Tswana tribes of the Bechuanaland Protectorate. I showed there that such marriages are more usual among nobles (descendants of chiefs) than commoners, and also that the two classes differ in the kinds of relative they mostly marry. Since then I have recorded several other genealogies of both nobles and commoners. This new material provides the opportunity for a more detailed analysis than was previously given of rates and types of kin marriage among the Tswana, and in particular for a discussion of the changes that have taken place during the past few generations.

The name of Bushman has been given to a small and rapidly JL diminishing race of African natives who were, and in places still are, scattered over the central and southern parts of the continent from the Cape to near the Equator. They seem to be the survivors of very early inhabitants of this portion of the world, and were certainly here before the allied race of Hottentots or any Bantu-speaking people arrived.

Muslim Hausa-speaking women in the city of Kano in northern Nigeria form a heterogeneous population, differentiated by many social, economic and individual characteristics. New concepts of community and identity beyond the level of kinship, descent and marriage have developed among women in specific urban neighbourhoods, as on a modern housing estate (bariki) for civil servants in the old city of Kano. Although the term matan bariki, ‘women of the barracks’, is synonymous with ‘prostitutes’ for most Hausa-speakers, the secluded wives of policemen living on this housing estate use it as a self-designation that signifies membership of an urban middle class. The article explores the ambivalent meanings of the term bariki as a symbol of modernity and ‘Westernisation’ as well as the relation between seclusion as a religiously defined institution and its significance as a mark of socio-economic status. By redefining the term matan bariki the women of the barracks use a strategy of distinction in order to differentiate themselves from other groups and milieux of women in Kano.

The subject of Igbo traditional religion has aroused a considerable amount of interest among scholars in the past few decades. The works of early ethnographers like Talbot (1926), Meek (1937) and Basden (1938) eloquently spelt out some of its principal themes. Among these are what we may refer to as the three major pillars of Igbo traditional religion, namely the Supreme Being, divinities and ancestors.

One of the problems with most of the existing studies is the tendency to generalize for the whole of Igboland on the basis of evidence which is valid for some Igbo areas only. Given the Igbo type of political system which is characterized by the existence of a very large number of autonomous communities, it is not surprising that there is a greater amount of heterogeneity in the religious system than is the case in the centralized kingdoms of pre-colonial Africa. To understand the diversity of Igbo religious beliefs and practices there is an imperative need for the study of the religious systems of specific Igbo communities.

Fourteen years have passed since J. A. Barnes published his short article on ‘African models in the New Guinea Highlands’ (1962). In it Barnes raised the question of whether the concepts used to analyse systems of descent in African societies were applicable to descent systems in New Guinea that appeared at first glance to be similar. This article signalled the beginning of a debate over the nature of descent and kinship in New Guinea and the advisability of using concepts and results derived from field research in another continent and in a different context. The very status of social anthropology as a comparative and generalizing science is called into question by the debate initiated by Barnes, for if African research has no relevance for New Guinea research, then neither cross-cultural typologies nor generalizations about social behavior are possible. Hence, the New Guinea literature has more than just an area specialist's significance.

Rural–urban migration leads to ever increasing numbers of Africans living in informal settlements. In Accra's largest informal settlement, Old Fadama, residents by definition have no statutory rights to the land and their building activities undermine formal state law and state-recognized customary landowners. Statutory institutions are unable to enforce property rights and alternative interests emerge and organize. In multiple and fragmented ways, local stakeholders create and define their own informal relations of property and land-based authority. This article examines four cases of land transfers, building and development in the settlement that involve a variety of local, national and global actors. Their actions show the contemporaneous making and unmaking of different relations of property and land-based control and authority in the densely populated urban site. Important features of urban development in Accra are thereby shown to be variations in property relations and the multitude of actors that validate land use but that circumvent statutory institutions.

Cattle raiding is iconic of the colonial frontier in Southern African history and historiography. Incorporating settlers and Africans as aggressors and victims alike, archives and ethnohistories depict raiding as thieving, subverting authority, and inciting conflict. Despite the in-depth anthropological attention given to ‘Bushman raiding’ and frontier commandos, comparatively little work has focused on the social and cultural function of cattle raiding within chiefdoms: that is, examining cattle raiding as socially embedded rather than simply transgressing authority and property ownership. This article explores how these narratives of ‘disorder’ have been constructed, and some alternative perspectives on nineteenth-century cattle raiding as a social institution. Through vignettes drawing on archival, archaeological, ethnographic and folkloric evidence, this article offers glimpses of what narratives of the recent past could look like if views of raiding-as-disorder were revisited and revised. I draw attention to where raids were illegal versus illicit, the role of cattle as social agents, and the logic underpinning designations of raiding as resistance. Developing a view of raiding as social practice permits us to interrogate archival perceptions of raiders as outlaws and raids as analogues for warfare, thus enabling more nuanced investigations of conflict in Southern Africa's past.

Much has been said about the presence of China in Africa over the last fifteen years, with, for the most part, these discussions affirming either a ‘for’ or ‘against’ position. Working from a micro-level perspective, this ethnographic article looks at how the everyday associations of ‘China’ and ‘the Chinese’ in Kenya are increasing, engendering expansive signifiers that proliferate as Kenya's relationship with China deepens. Although I anchor this argument in the local discursive practices that shape the proposed Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA)–Westlands expressway, I trace how references to China and the Chinese expand beyond construction to take up social meanings that are continuously being assembled. Although the referents may seem unrelated in their diversity, I argue that they index wider local anxieties that de-centre China and re-centre the Kenyan government in practices that place the burdens of ‘development’ on the country's already burdened citizens.

The study of social, economic and political networks provides a new perspective on the history of northwestern Sierra Leone and neighbouring parts of Guinea during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article concerns the men and women of wealth, rank and power who built and maintained local and extensive networks focused on towns in northwestern Sierra Leone, Port Loko and Kambia, at two time periods, c. 1800 and c. 1865. These activities involved the production and exchange of resources; the migration, settlement and intermarriage of families; and the creation, expansion and fission of households, alliances and other groups. Network analysis illuminates major historical changes, such as the development of towns, kingdoms and interregional trade systems. Furthermore, it reveals the shifting nature of ethnic identities, particularly among the Mande. And finally, it helps to show how society in the northwest became more class differentiated as internal and external commerce expanded.

In their initial interaction with the Colonial powers, several East African peoples such as the Maasai, the Turkana, the Sebei, the Karamojong, and the Nandi—all organized through some type of age-based institution—united around prophetic leaders, diviners, or ritual experts who mobilized men from several territorial sections to confront the intruders. This ad hoc military unity was necessarily short-lived, usually ending with the defeat of the people by the colonial power and see the imprisonment or death of the prophetic leader involved. (See Fosbrooke 1948: 12-19; Merker 1910: 67-105; Jacobs 1965: 20-108; Dyson-Hudson 1966: 15-16; Gulliver 1950: 229, 240; Meinertzhagen 1956: 222 ff; Weatherby 1962: 200-12; 1967: 133-44; Lamphear 1976: 225-43.) While ethnological studies of various age-organizations often mention that diviners or prophetsprovided professional services for the members of an age-group at their ceremonies, no one has examined the process by which a prophetic leader or diviner established his legitimacy during periods of peace so that he might lead the people during times of crisis. An examination of the prophetic institution among the Maasai and the relationship between the prophets and the members of the age-sets may provide some insight into the process, especially the manner in which prophets emerged as leaders of the people during two major crises in the history of the Purko-Kisongo Maasai: the Ilaikipiak war and the rinderpest pan-zootic.