In considering the effects of the contact between African societies and European civilization, one is apt to forget that the exploitation of Africa by Europeans began more than five centuries ago. To trace the consequences of this long intercourse between Africa and Europe is a legitimate and worthwhile task. But is it a task for the social anthropologist? Previous contributors to the present symposium have emphasized the necessity of historical reconstruction in order to understand the effects of contact with European civilization upon a particular culture. They have been fortunate in dealing with cultures where the initial impact of the white man is recent enough to be within living memory. On the West Coast of Africa no feat of skill or imagination would suffice to establish a reliable zero point of culture contact. One would presumably have to be content with the construction of an ‘ideal type’ based on the scanty literature and on descriptions of cognate cultures. But must we therefore abandon every hope of investigating the influence of European civilization in these areas, and confine ourselves to the regions of recent contact where the procedure sponsored by Dr. Hunter and Dr. Mair can be successfully employed? I do not think so; and I shall endeavour to describe an approach which is, I believe, equally applicable both in societies which have recently come under the influence of culture contact, and those which have reached an advanced stage of Europeanization.

This article examines the tensions between memory, identity and livelihoods in the making and transformation of cultural patrimony among Fulani cattle keepers of West Africa. Two areas of cattle breeding are examined: the Grassfields of Cameroon and south-western Burkina Faso. Studies on Fulani livestock raising suggest that each group possesses a particular cattle breed that has not changed with time. While the Fulani are thought to be conservative pastoralists, their livestock management practices suggest otherwise. They cross and change cattle breeds in order to adapt to new ecological or socio-political conditions. These strategies of adaptation and adjustment of cattle seem to be in opposition to strategies of heritage conservation. The relationship between Fulani pastoralists and their cattle breeds shows that an animal patrimony is a social product that is susceptible to being reworked. Fulani cattle breeding shows that new crossbreeds can result in the construction of a new heritage over the medium and long term as long as it is transmitted from the present to the next generation and preserved for a period of time.

Over two hundred thousand cubic metres of slag and smelting debris, at least two hundred and seventy smelting sites, more than seven hundred recorded kaolin pits for building and lining furnaces, and probably half as many again not visited by us—these are a few figures that establish three villages of the Ndop Plain, in the highlands of Western Cameroon, as a nineteenth-century Ruhr in Central Africa. To this day, this all Sub-Saharan African record leaves Meroe, ‘the Birmingham of Africa’ well behind. Perhaps the record remains unbroken, however, just because scholars interested in African iron industries seem to have been unconcerned with the overall output of these industries.

Sleeping-sickness control in southern Uganda created ideological openings for the articulation of colonial visions of African environments. Competing colonial agendas, Ugandans' positions in their own environments, and Ugandans' resistance and responses to colonial schemes determined how such visions played themselves out in practice. The emerging power of colonial science played an important role in colonial attempts at constructing nature and defining Africans' relationship with their environments through disease control. The combination of forced depopulations, strategic clearings, and planned resettlement in British sleeping-sickness control schemes in southern Uganda set in motion a cycle of long-term land alienation from 1906 to 1962 that reflected the particular relations between British science, environmental intervention, and colonisation.

The sexual culture of sub-Saharan African peoples is variously utilized as an explanation for the high incidence of HIV in Africa. Thus it has been the target of behaviour change campaigns championed by massive public health education. Based on ethnographic fieldwork (using participant observation, individual interviews, focus group discussions, and a survey) in Masaka District, this article contests a reified, homogeneous and ethnocentric sexualizing of Africans. It engages with how prescribed ritual sex practices are (re)negotiated, contested, affirmed, policed, revised and given meaning within the context of a society living with HIV/AIDS. Among Baganda, sex is customarily a vital component for ‘completing’ individual prosperity, kin-group equilibrium and social cohesion. Various forms of prescribed customary sexual activities range from penetrative sex interaction between penis and vagina, to symbolic performances such as (male) jumping over women's legs or (female) wearing of special belts. Unlike portrayals of customary sex activities in anti-HIV/AIDS discourse, the notion of ‘dangerous sex’ and the fear of contagion are not typical of all ritual sex practices in Masaka. Akin to Christianity, colonialism, colonial medicine and modernizing discourses, anti-HIV/AIDS campaigns are the contemporary social policemen for sex, sexuality and sexual behaviour. In this regard, public health discourse in Uganda is pathologizing the mundane aspects of customary practices. The HIV/AIDS metaphor is variously utilized by Baganda to negotiate whether or not to engage in specific ritual sex activities.

In a previous article I described the terminology of Nyoro kinship and the associated values and patterns of behaviour. In the present paper I give a brief preliminary account of Nyoro marriage, and of the terminology, social relations and values associated with and deriving from it. I discuss also what is usually called the mother's brother-sister's son relationship, the complexities of which in Bunyoro at least can only be fully understood in an affinal context. Here, as before, I seek understanding in terms of Nyoro concepts rather than our own.

It has been said of the African that he does not possess his land but is possessed by it. The attitude of the Eritrean peasant towards his land cannot be more aptly described. Indeed, his preoccupation with his landed possessions shows a depth and passion not often parallelled among African races.

This article examines home-town linkages among the Ije§a Yoruba of south-western Nigeria, focusing on their implications for local development activity. The author argues that elite non-residents play an especially important role in determining the agenda of activities and that, despite limitations and constraints, the maintenance of home town linkages by members of the elite provides their community with crucial access to financial and other resources. The motives for the continued maintenance of these ties are discussed. Finally, the article provides a perspective for comparison with research in other parts of the world, where rural-urban linkages primarily connect migrants with family and household; in the case considered here, involvement with the community as a whole is equally important.

This article examines the role of women in the politics of the Oodua People's Congress (OPC), a militant ethno-nationalist movement of the Yoruba people in south-west Nigeria. Women's inclusion in the organizational structure and their typical roles within the OPC, the article suggests, expand the political agency of women but at the same time ensure that their contributions are contained within the OPC's overall politics. Women play important roles within the OPC, primarily by enabling and supporting the vigilante activities of male OPC members. In the provision of this support, women overwhelmingly draw on the knowledge and powers associated with typically female life experiences. As a result, women's interests are represented within the overall agenda of the OPC, but on the basis of complementary rather than egalitarian gender roles.

Schools are institutionalized spaces of learning where children and young people are trained to become morally and ethically responsible members of society. Cultural ideas and values relating to friendship, social status and the nation, but also regarding one's own body, dress and emotional, verbal or gestural expression, are learned and performed by young people on an everyday basis. In this article, I build on ethnographic research on the ‘new’ generation of Christian and Muslim schools in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (2008–10), and I show that particular ways of learning and performing values can be understood as a form of embodied morality that orients students and teachers in relation to their educational and socio-urban environments. I argue that schools do not represent monolithic ethical or moral frameworks or that the actors in these educational settings learn or embody those frameworks in uniform ways. Rather, the processes of ethical and moral (self-)formation are often highly fragmented due to the diverse (social, religious and economic) backgrounds of students and teachers as well as the logics of class formation in the neoliberal market, which causes a high degree of fluctuation across the (equally fragmented) educational landscape of Dar es Salaam. I therefore define ‘embodied morality’ as a partial and discontinuous practice whose specific forms and experience are inseparably entwined with the specific ideological, social and institutional environments of particular educational settings.

Entre le milieu des années 1970 et le milieu des années 1980, il est apparu un certain nombre de publications qui critiquait les premières ethnographies de maladies et de misfortunes d'avoir attacher trop d'importance a la causalité supematurelle et d'avoir négligé la causalité naturelle et le comportement médical pratique. En effet, à la suite de la première critique de Field par Warren (1974), il y eut ce qui équivalait presque à une croisade visant à prouver que les africains reconnaissaient traditionnellement un domaine médical séparé, dans lequel ils interprètaient les maladies surtout ' en termes empiriques et pratiques plutôt qu'en termes sociaux et moraux.

Cet article critique les efforts qui ont été fait pour jeter une lumière nouvelle sur les étiologies africaines. Poursuivant la discussion de la distinction entre les étiologies naturalistes et personnalistes, autour de laquelle toute la question pivote, cet article examine les critiques qui reprochent aux ethnographes d'avoir attacher trop d'importance à la causalite supematurelle dans les étiologies africaines; qui revendiquent que tandis que ces étiologies sont perçues de façon plus générale elles peuvent en fait être vues comme étant en grande partie naturalistes; et qui revendiquent que l'une des raisons pour cette tendance est que les ethnographies précédentes, en particulier celle d'Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic, n'ont pas été interpretées correctment. Une discussion de la description de l'étiologie des Zande par Evans-Pritchard lui-même, nous amène à la conclusion que les réinterprétations récentes de l'étiologie des Zande sont erronées. Ceci soulève la question: pourquoi ce désir soudain de délinéer des systèmes médicaux discrets? et pourquoi attacher tant d'importance à la causalité naturelle et l'activité pratique?

Faisant suite à une discussion au sujet de l'étiologie des Wimbum et le concept de médecine, basé sur des recherches dans les Grassfields au Cameroun, l'auteur arguments que l'insistance sur la causalité naturaliste et l'activité pratique dans la définition des systèmes médicaux africains ne les font pas s'élargir davantage comme les protagonistes le prétendent, mais les font au contraire se rétrécir davantage, et que les grandes descriptions des systèmes médicaux ne sont pas des représentations plus exactes de la manière dont les africains interprètent et affrontent la maladie, mais des constructions déterminees de manière biomédicale, imposées à la culture africaine à travers l'ethnographie médicale. Cet article se termine par un argument en faveur de la dissolution du concept, “systemes ethnomédicaux”.

In his important pioneering study of migrations into Ghana, Rouch makes the observation that different tribal groups of migrants organize themselves differently in the foreign towns to which they migrate. The forms of their organization fall into a continuum between two extremes. At the one end are migrants who form only segmental, temporary, tribal groupings. At the other end are migrants who form autonomous, multi-purposive, tribal communities. Banton makes a similar observation in his study of migrants in Freetown. Neither Rouch nor Banton analyses this difference in detail, though both tend to explain it in terms of differences in tribal traditional culture.

This article focuses on three concerns: (1) the historical and contemporary distinctiveness of the ‘north’ from the rest of Ghana; (2) the extent to which the ‘north’ is itself a distinct and united political entity; and (3) the relevance to the area of competing analyses of Ghanaian politics which emphasize:

• the continuing importance of a distinct ‘northern’ political consciousness;

• the role of competing Ghanaian political traditions based on ideology and related socio-economic divisions;

• the growth of conscious ‘self-interest’ on the part of individual voters; and

• the continued significance of local loyalties and rivalries, many of which pre-date the arrival of the British to the area in the final decades of the nineteenth century.

The article argues that while no monocausal analysis of northern politics is adequate, longstanding internal divisions and rivalries, and distinct local issues, have been highly significant in determining the characteristics of its politics. It further suggests that whilst individual self-interest and ideological and related socio-economic differences have some role in determining the political sympathies and allegiances of members of the political elite, their independent role in determining voting patterns at the local level is limited. Longstanding local divisions and patterns of loyalty may vary in their intensity and impact from time to time, but nevertheless continue to have the potential to shape general political and specific electoral behaviour. Such an analysis is not peculiar to the north, with areas in the south and east also having significant traditional rivalries. It is, however, of particular significance in the north because of its history and the prevalence of common assumptions about the north's having a distinct political identity.

Much of this article focuses on evidence gleaned from the 2004 elections, but it must be remembered that there are potentially serious limitations on the value of this source. In the first place it may be that electoral malpractice and various forms of vote rigging provide a distorted picture of what actually took place. While there were certainly attempts to buy votes in constituencies throughout the north, shooting incidents in Bawku and Tamale, and assaults and attempted assaults on election officials in at least three constituencies, the general impression was of a free, fair and credible election. Of more real significance, however, are the implicit features of an election – votes are aggregated so that we do not know the motivation behind individual voters' selections, and indeed each individual may have conflicting pressures and interests which have to be balanced into a single vote. It is certainly the contention here that underlying issues and actual electoral issues are not congruent; it is argued that only in a limited number of areas in the north did the underlying issues dominate the electoral outcome. It is, however, the potential for longstanding local divisions and loyalties to do so that is still significant today – and likely to remain so in the foreseeable future.

The aims of this analysis are: (1) to investigate a puzzle in Nyoro ethnography; (2) to support the theme of a forthcoming handbook on the symbolism of right and left; (3) to make a further contribution to the understanding of secular-mystical diarchy or complementary governance; and (4) to carry out a routine exercise in the structural analysis of symbolism, in a continuing attempt to isolate its general principles.

What are the experiences of the African middle classes, and what do their experiences tell us about social change on the continent? While there have been ample attempts to demarcate the parameters of this social group, the necessary work of tracing the social life and social relations of the middle classes is just beginning. The articles in this special issue provide compelling accounts of the ways in which the middle classes are as much made through their social relations and social practices as they are (if indeed they are) identifiable through aggregate snapshots of income, consumption habits and voting behaviours. Rachel Spronk (2018: 316) has argued that ‘the middle class is not a clear object in the sense of an existing group that can be clearly delineated; rather, it is a classification-in-the-making’. We agree, and our aim in bringing these contributions together in this special issue is to develop our understanding of how this process is emerging in different contexts across Africa. In her opening contribution, Carola Lentz suggests that we need more research on ‘the social dynamics of “doing being middle-class”’, or what we term here ‘middle-classness’, which attends to this ‘classification-in-the-making’ through urban–rural changes over intergenerational life courses, multi-class households, kinship and social relations. Such an agenda has recently been opened up by two edited volumes on the African middle classes (Melber 2016; Kroeker et al. 2018). We further develop this agenda here through a series of empirically rich articles by scholars in African studies, anthropology, literature and sociology that explicitly address the question of the lived experiences of the middle classes. Echoing Spronk's unease with taking ‘the middle class’ as an already constituted social group, what emerges across the articles is rather the unstable, tenuous and context-specific nature of middle-class prosperity in contemporary Africa. Social positions shift – or are questioned – as one moves from the suburb to the township (Ndlovu on South Africa) or into state-subsidized high-rise apartments (Gastrow on Angola). Stability gives way over time to precarity (Southall on Zimbabwe). Wealth is not tied to the individual but circulates more widely through social relations. Should one invest in the nuclear or the extended family (Hull on South Africa; Spronk on Ghana)? In a house or a car (Durham on Botswana)? And why does it matter – for the individual, the household, the family, the city, the nation and the continent? To grasp what it means to be middle-class in Africa today necessarily requires an understanding of the historical, social and spatial embeddedness of lived experiences at multiple scales.

The certainty of the individual's extinction as a human being contradicts so outrageously the value and effort of living that most cultures minimize the confrontation with this certainty, or cushion it with assurances of some form of immortality. I am going to describe some of the ways in which the Yoruba express their fear of death, and the response they make to it, especially through their traditional religion, which is still the religion of a good proportion of the five million Yoruba in South-West Nigeria and Southern Dahomey. These examples show the wide range of their attempts to cope with this recurrent fear.

In the South African national elections of 2004 the ruling ANC (African National Congress) increased its majority, particularly within the poorer, black, rural voting districts. Drawing on ethnographic research that I conducted in Impalahoek – a village in the Bushbuckridge municipality of the Limpopo Province – this paper investigates reasons for this pattern of voting. With reference to a survey of 87 households I show that unemployment, crime and disease had increased dramatically between 1990/1 and 2003/4. Yet, at the same time, there have been considerable improvements in access to state pensions, housing, school feeding schemes and child support grants. In this context, I argue that the ANC's election campaign highlighted the capacity of government in service provision, and that voting for the ruling party constituted a strategic attempt to obtain access to state-controlled services. Hence the election was characterized by neo-patrimonial politics and by a transactional logic of voting. Voting for the ruling party does not amount to an ideological endorsement of its policies, and discontent is more likely to be expressed through boycotting the elections rather than voting for opposition parties.

How will history judge British late-colonial efforts to export its model of higher education to Africa? In this article I challenge any simple interpretation of the ‘Asquith Commission’ university colleges – such as Makerere or University College Ibadan – as alien impositions or colonial intellectual ‘hothouses’. Focusing on Makerere University in Uganda, and drawing on a variety of archival and personal sources, I show how its students and faculty engaged in an ambivalent recreation and subversion of the Western idea of the university and its foundational discourses. I suggest that the institution offered a space to question and debate the purpose of an African university education. Students and staff made use of their limited political autonomy to challenge and rework the colonial hierarchies of race and culture. As a result, Makerere remained an influential forum for intellectual debate, cultural expression and social critique until the mid-1970s. Whilst this legacy is made less visible by the subsequent years of political crisis, underfunding and expansion in student numbers, it remains an important historical legacy from which to rethink the future of African universities.

This article discusses the historical construction of land tenure patterns in the Communal Areas of Zimbabwe, previously the Reserves of colonial Rhodesia. In many respects the form of communal tenure found in the Communal Areas today emerged during the early colonial period. While being glossed as ‘traditional’, communal tenure is a contradictory amalgam of local, regional and state initiatives. The discussion outlines the historical development of present tenure relations in the Communal Areas, reviews their multiple sources of legitimacy and suggests that common property regimes in Zimbabwe are not simply the artefact of colonial indirect rule.