Table of Contents

Acknowledgments x

List of Maps xiv

List of Figures xv

List of Plates xvii

List of Tables xviii

Introduction: Africa in Perspective 1

Part I: Representation and Discourse 19

Introduction 21

1 Africa Observed: Discourses of the Imperial Imagination 31

 Jean and John Comaroff

2 The Meaning of Our Work 44

 Cheikh Anta Diop

3 Europe Upside Down: Fallacies of the New Afrocentrism 48

 Kwame Anthony Appiah

4 Discourse of Power and Knowledge of Otherness 55

 V. Y. Mudimbe

Part II: From Tribe to Ethnicity: Kinship and Social Organization 61

Introduction 63

5 The Nuer: Time and Space 71

 E. E. Evans-Pritchard

6 The Illusion of Tribe 83

 Aidan W. Southall

 7 Ethnicity in Southern African History 95

 Leroy Vail

Part III: Economics as a Cultural System 109

Introduction 111

 8 Lele Economy Compared with the Bushong 123

 Mary Douglas

 9 Research on an African Mode of Production 139

 Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch

10 The Cattle of Money and the Cattle of Girls among the Nuer, 1930–83 151

Sharon Hutchinson

Part IV: Hunter-Gatherers in Africa 167

Introduction 169

11 The Lesson of the Pygmies 175

 Colin M. Turnbull

12 Houses in the Rainforest: Gender and Ethnicity among the Lese and Efe in Zaire 184

 Roy Richard Grinker

13 Land Filled with Flies: The Evolution of Illusion 200

 Edwin N. Wilmsen

14 Foragers, Genuine or Spurious? Situating the Kalahari San in History 219

 Jacqueline S. Solway and Richard B. Lee

Part V: Witchcraft, Science, and Rationality: The Translation of Culture 237

Introduction 239

15 Conversations on Rain-making 245

 David Livingstone

16 The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events 249

 E. E. Evans-Pritchard

17 Understanding a Primitive Society 257

 Peter Winch

18 The Moral Economy of Witchcraft: An Essay in Comparative History 270

 Ralph A. Austen

Part VI: Ancestors, Gods, and the Philosophy of Religion 283

Introduction 285

19 Conversations with Ogotemmêli 291

 Marcel Griaule

20 African Philosophy, Myth and Reality 302

 Paulin J. Hountondji

21 Ancestors as Elders in Africa 314

 Igor Kopytoff

Part VII: Arts, Aesthetics, and Heritage 323

Introduction 325

22 Humorous Masks and Serious Politics among the Afi kpo Igbo 335

Simon Ottenberg

23 Art, Identity, Boundaries: Postmodernism and Contemporary African Art 348

 Olu Oguibe

24 As Plato Duly Warned: Music, Politics, and Social Change in Coastal East Africa 354

 Kelly M. Askew

25 In Place of Slavery: Fashioning Coastal Identity 372

 Bayo Holsey

Part VIII: Sex and Gender Studies in Africa: Economy and Society 379

Introduction 381

26 The Economics of Polygamy 389

 Ester Boserup

27 “Sitting on a Man”: Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of Igbo Women 399

 Judith Van Allen

28 Virginity Testing: Managing Sexuality in a Maturing HIV/AIDS Epidemic 411

 Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala

Part IX: Europe in Africa: Colonization 423

Introduction 425

29 The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa: Methods of Ruling Native Races 431

 Frederick D. Lugard

30 How Europe Underdeveloped Africa 439

 Walter Rodney

31 The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa 450

 Terence Ranger

32 Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary 462

 Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Part X: Nations and Nationalism 471

Introduction 473

33 Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century 477

 Léopold Sédar Senghor

34 On National Culture 484

 Frantz Fanon

35 Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Modernity: The Paradox of Mau Mau 498

 Bruce J. Berman

36 The Invisible Face: Masks, Ethnicity, and the State in Côte d’Ivoire 514

 Christopher B. Steiner

Part XI: Violent Transformations: Conflict and Displacement 521

Introduction 523

37 Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa 531

 Max Gluckman

38 Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone 543

 Paul Richards

39 Sacrifice as Terror: The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 555

 Christopher C. Taylor

40 Where to Be an Ancestor? Reconstituting Socio-spiritual Worlds among Displaced Mozambicans 569

Stephen Lubkemann

Part XII: Development, Governance, and Globalization 583

Introduction 585

41 Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt 595

 James Ferguson

42 Development Aid and Structural Violence: The Case of Rwanda 609

 Peter Uvin

43 Nigerian Scams as Political Critique: Globalization, Inequality and 419 616

 Daniel Jordan Smith

44 The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly 629

 Jean-François Bayart

45 “Govern Yourselves!” Democracy and Carnage in Northern Mozambique 644

 Harry G. West

46 Nuer-American Passages 660

 Dianna Shandy

Index 671

About the Author

Roy Richard Grinker, Ph.D. is Professor of Anthropology andInternational Affairs at George Washington University, Director ofthe GW Institute for Ethnographic Research, and Editor-in-Chief ofAnthropological Quarterly. He is author of four other books,including In the Arms of Africa: The Life of Colin M.Turnbull, Houses in the Rainforest: Ethnicity andInequality Among Farmers and Foragers in Central Africa, and Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism. Christopher B. Steiner is the Lucy C. McDannel 22Professor of Art History and Director of Museum Studies atConnecticut College. He is the author of the award-winningbook African Art in Transit, and co-editor (with RuthPhillips) of Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity inColonial and Postcolonial Worlds. Stephen Lubkemann is Associate Professor of Anthropologyand International Affairs at George Washington University. Heis author of Culture in Chaos: An Anthropology of the SocialCondition in War and is associate editor for AnthropologicalQuarterly and a co-founder of GWU s Diaspora ResearchProgram.