South Africa's economic and political liberalization have engendered new patterns of immigration and urbanization that find South Africans and foreign migrants converging on the streets of inner-city Johannesburg. As they interact, citizens and non-nationals have developed competing idioms for relating to one another and the space they share. For South Africans, this often means appealing to a nativist idiom that locates commonality amidst an allochthonous citizenry while attempting to prohibit foreign transplantation. Non-nationals counter this with an idiom of permanent transit, a way of positioning themselves as outsiders lodged in a superior and unrooted state. These idioms represent competing visions for the inner city's future. For South Africans, the idiom is a generative node of modern nationalist formation. For those permanently passing through the city, it is an idiom of a denationalized “nowhereville.”

Increasing commercialization, population growth, and concurrent increases in land value have affected women's land rights in Africa. Most of the literature concentrates on how these changes have led to an erosion of women's rights. This paper examines some of the processes by which women's rights to land are diminishing. First, we examine cases in which rights previously utilized have become less important; that is, the incidence of exercising rights has decreased. Second, we investigate how women's rights to land decrease as the public meanings underlying the social interpretation and enforcement of rights are manipulated. Third, we examine women's diminishing access to land when the actual rules of access change. While this situation may sound grim, the paper also explores how women have responded to reductions in access to land. They have mounted both legal and customary challenges to inheritance laws, made use of anonymous land markets, organized formal cooperative groups to gain tenure rights, and manipulated customary rules using woman-to-woman marriages and mother-son partnerships. These actions have caused women to create new routes of access to land and in some cases new rights.

This article uses a Weberian model of patrimonialism to analyze clientalist and “staff” roles of child soldiers in the military regimes of the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. It thereby examines institutional aspects of child soldier identity and behavior not addressed in other standard models of child soldiers as coerced victims, revolutionary idealists, or delinquent opportunists. It shifts analytical attention from nation-state patrimonialism to the patrimonial dimensions of rebel regimes. It locates child soldiers within a social organization of domination and reciprocity based on violence structured through patronage ties with military commanders. It identifies child soldier “staff” functions within the administration of a patrimonial regime. A Weberian focus on the institutionalization and strategies of domination and dependency provides a corrective to views that exoticize child soldiers, decontextualize their behavior, or essentialize their “youth” as an explanatory principle.

The studies of African military establishments that appeared from the late 1960s, after the first wave of coups, were very much the products of their time. The theories of modernization and political development that were their starting point were the ideas of an epoch: that of decolonization, nation-building, internationalization of capital, consolidation of U.S. hegemony, and globalization of American social science. They are of interest now because aspects of that epoch are repeating themselves: in particular, the reassertion of U.S. and western hegemony, the return to free market orthodoxy, and a “third wave” of transitions to democracy (Huntington 1991).

Three overlapping debates dominated the literature on the military in developing countries during the 1960s and 1970s. They revolved initially around the conditions of democracy and civilian control. They shifted to the role of the military in modernization or development as armies moved into politics, then focused on political order following deep hegemonic crises in developing countries themselves and in their relations with the West.

Early studies of newly formed African armies and police establishments saw them as part of an institutional transfer of western paradigms of governance, along with the Westminster model and Gaullist presidentialism. Military professionalism was integral to the neocolonial enterprise of transferring power to elites, requiring accelerated training in metropolitan and local academies of African “Narcissuses in uniform” (First 1970, chap. 3).

The New Directions Papers is a new series of the Joint Committee on African Studies (JCAS) of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). The purpose of New Directions is to open or re-open a field of African studies which has been neglected or in which not enough new work has been done. Thus, it is intended as a forum for challenging rather than surveying research agendas and received wisdoms that have shaped understandings about Africa. The Committee seeks papers that are empirically-based but methodologically- or theoretically-minded. For example, a case study would be viewed as an opportunity to show how a new perspective on African realities can be achieved through an innovative approach. In general, the Committee favors papers that can help colleagues who work in Africa to renew their practice of the field. The series will appear jointly in the African Studies Review and Cahiers d'etudes africaines, published simultaneously in English and French.

In institutionalizing gacaca, the Rwandan government has launched one of the most ambitious transitional justice projects the world has ever seen. But gacaca is controversial, and its contribution to postconflict reconciliation is unclear. Through public opinion surveys, trial observations, and interviews, this study provides a window into how gacaca has shaped interethnic relations in one Rwandan community. Although gacaca has brought more people to trial than the ICTR, transnational trials, and the ordinary Rwandan courts combined, gacaca exposes—and perhaps deepens—conflict, resentment, and ethnic disunity. Lies, half-truths, and silence have limited gacaca's contribution to truth, justice, and reconciliation.

Performance raises fundamental issues about bodily praxis, human agency, temporality, and discursive knowledge and calls into question conventional understandings of tradition, repetition, mechanical reproduction, and ontological definitions of social order and reality. Across academic disciplines and across modes of production, however, performance is a contested concept, “meaning that its very existence is bound up in disagreement about what it is, and that disagreement over its essence is itself part of that essence” (Strine, Long, and HopKins, 1989: 183). In other words, performance has no precisely agreed upon definition. Rather it varies in scope and import from one academic discipline to another and from one practitioner, or human agent, to another.

In the emerging field of performance studies, performance is open-ended, but it privileges process, the temporally or processually constructed nature of human realities, and the agency of knowledgeable performers who have embodied particular techniques and styles to accomplish it (M. Drewal, 1989b; Conquergood, 1989). In the broadest sense, performance is the praxis of everyday social life; indeed, it is the practical application of embodied skill and knowledge to the task of taking action. Performance is thus a fundamental dimension of culture as well as the production of knowledge about culture. It might include anything from individual agents' negotiations of everyday life, to the stories people tell each other, popular entertainments, political oratory, guerrilla warfare, to bounded events such as theater, ritual, festivals, parades, and more.

The Abakuá Society for men is derived from the West African Ékpè Societies of the Cross River region. It was founded in Havana, Cuba, in 1836 to resist slavery, and has since been active in many aspects of Cuban culture. Although hermetic and little known even within Cuba, an analysis of Cuban popular music recorded from the 1920s until the present reveals Abakuá influence in nearly every genre of Cuban popular music. Abakuá lore is orally transmitted, and Cuban musicians who are Abakuá members have continually documented key aspects of their society's history in commercial recordings, often in Abakuá language. Because theirs is a secret language for initiates only, Abakuá have commercially recorded actual chants of the society, knowing that outsiders cannot interpret them. Even so, these recordings have been very popular because the Abakuá represent a rebellious, even anticolonial, aspect of Cuban culture. Now played throughout the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia, Cuban popular music and its derivatives maintain Abakuá language and aesthetics as integral elements. Because so little has been written about the society by members themselves, commercial recordings with Abakuá content are an important source of knowledge about this group. While listening to the lyrics, I realized that Abakuá musicians have sung about their contributions to Cuban history, their liberation struggles, and race relations. My research suggests the rising importance of Abakuá as a symbol of Cuban culture.

Ever since power struggles within the Sudan People's Liberation Army split the movement into two warring factions in August 1991, rural Nuer and Dinka communities of the South have been grappling with a deepening regional subculture of ethnicized violence. This article describes political factors that have prolonged this bitter conflict into the present and have contributed to the post-1991 polarization and militarization of Dinka and Nuer ethnic identities. Drawing on parallel field research conducted in Dinka and Nuer regions of South Sudan during 1998 and 1999, the authors show how ordinary civilians have been struggling to understand and cope with this new “war of the [southern] educated [elite].” Among the major themes addressed are: (1) the rapid unraveling of regional codes of warfare ethics since 1991; (2) the transformation of previous patterns of interethnic competition over scarce economic resources into politicized programs of ethnicized violence; (3) mounting public despair over the seeming unwillingness of John Garang and Riek Machar to compromise their personal ambitions for the greater unity of the South; and (4) recent peace initiatives made by Dinka and Nuer chiefs, which have succeeded in reducing interethnic violence, despite the continuing intransigence of some military leaders.

This article explores the middle classes as cultural practice by focusing on the young professionals, or “yuppies,” of Nairobi. Young professionals are particularly interesting to study because they are the population that has reaped the benefits of a historical development of socioeconomic opportunities. They also occupy an interesting position in the context of local preoccupations with being modern or “sophisticated” in Kenya and in terms of the expectations and assumptions of previous generations. The article touches briefly on the history of class analysis in African studies and then, departing from Marx and following a Weberian analysis, shows how three factors are important in analyzing the middle classes and the forging of class identities in a globalizing world: access to education, resulting in salaried occupations; consumption patterns; and modern self-perceptions.

In 2009, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill introduced in Uganda's Parliament reignited homophobic sentiment across Africa. Despite a well-documented history of sexual diversity in Africa, claims that homosexuality is “un-African” are being used to justify violence and exclusion. This article, based primarily on a discursive analysis of public media sources, delves into various cultural logics that reveal the tensions and contradictions in Ugandans' widespread opposition to homosexuality. U.S. evangelical influence, postcolonial amnesia in regard to “tradition,” fertility concerns, and human rights exceptionalism drive this moral panic over issues of sexual diversity. Such sentiments must be addressed by confronting neocolonial religious influence and cultivating renewed respect for human rights and Africa's history of sexual diversity.

Popular culture in Africa is increasingly intertwined with the public space of nations. Drawing on contemporary scholarship on popular culture, citizenship, and identity in transnational and global contexts, this article analyzes the phenomenal success of the television show Big Brother Africa in 2003 and argues that people's everyday engagement with popular culture, including television, must be a central component of understanding emergent public spaces and citizenship practices in Africa's present and future.

A striking turn in African studies since the late 1980s has been the renewed attention to “witchcraft,” conceptualized explicitly in relation to modern changes. Perhaps the prior neglect of this relationship by social scientists is even more striking, for throughout the postcolonial period the influence of witchcraft discourse has become increasingly manifest, precisely in modern sectors of society including politics, sports, new forms of entrepreneurship, and institutions of formal education. The neglect of what could be called the “modernity” of witchcraft has been especially striking among anthropologists, in view of the long-standing preoccupation in their discipline with the theme of “sorcery and witchcraft.” Up until the end of the 1980s, and despite their supposed expertise in this field, anthropologists seemed reluctant to confront the flourishing of the occult in modern sectors of society, abandoning this challenging theme to journalists and theologians. A wide array of reasons can account for this reluctance, such as the tenacious influence of the structural-functionalist paradigm with its obsession with order and internal integration, or the tendency to study “witchcraft” or ”sorcery” in local contexts. Another reason is the preference of anthropologists for clear-cut classifications such as “good” versus “bad” magic—while it is precisely the diffuseness and ambiguity of discourses on the occult that are so important for understanding their relevance for interpellating modern changes (see Geschiere 1997, especially the afterword). This reticence on the part of anthropologists has abruptly broken down and, especially since 1993, there has been a torrent of studies on witchcraft and the occult. The theme of witchcraft and modernity is decidedly popular now.

Peasants are an ambiguous social category. They are difficult to define and their political behavior defies most generalizations. Nevertheless, social scientists, many working outside of Africa, have produced a voluminous literature debating both the critical characteristics and the analytical utility of the term peasant.

Some take the view that peasants have been defined so broadly and contradictorily as to render the concept virtually useless and that the notion should either be discarded or referred to only by negation (Dalton, 1972; Hill, 1963; Moore, 1972; Ennew, Hirst, and Tribe, 1977; Friedmann, 1980). Other scholars obviously disagree, having advanced definitions of the essence of peasants and varieties of agrarian change. Culturalists such as Kroeber (1948) and Redfield (1956) highlighted the peasants' folk version of a higher culture. Chayanov (1966) emphasized the demographic cycle of the peasant household, exhibiting a natural pattern of growth and change. Wolf (1966) and Godelier (1973) shifted the focus to the historically derived relationships of domination in which peasants were subsumed. Shanin defined peasants “as a kind of arrangement of humanity” (1973: 76) in which their partial involvement in the market and their partial subordination to the state or appropriating class were their most salient characteristics.

These debates were reproduced within African Studies. Those skeptical that the concept had any analytical value initially prevailed. This position was defended most vigorously in a theoretical essay by Fallers (1961) and in Hill's (1963) masterful work on agrarian change in southern Ghana. As late as 1972, Post noted that “most writers either evade this issue or display analytical uncertainty or forthrightly reject the term [peasant]” (1972: 223).

This article traces the impact of state formation and class formation on the emergence and development of competitive ethnopolitical identities in Sierra Leone. The politicization of Creole, Mende, Temne and Limba identity deserves scrutiny on account of the dominant role these identities have played in shaping political processes in postcolonial Sierra Leone. Not only is Sierra Leone a culturally plural and intensely stratified society, its postcolonial political history attests to, and offers interesting insights about, the intimate connections between class, ethnicity and state formation. From the end of the nineteenth century until independence, the most divisive ethnoregional conflict in Sierra Leone pitted colony Creole elites against protectorate African elites. The Creoles, separatist in their political attitudes and aspirations, rejected political equality with protectorate Africans and the latter resented both the assertions of superiority by Creoles and their relative dominance in Sierra Leone politics prior to decolonization. This polarization persists even today, but its political significance has paled in comparison to both the rift between the Mendes of the south and the Temnes of the north and the contemporary dominance of Limba cultural entrepreneurs and politicians. Fissures in protectorate elite solidarity coincided with the emergence of political organizations founded and led by competing petty bourgeois elements. One such organization, the All Peoples Congress (APC) party, was formed as an alternative to the Mende-dominated Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP).

This essay is intended for teachers. It is not seen as simply setting out the history of the genocide in Rwanda; that has been done elsewhere. Instead, this article addresses four conceptual fields associated with the genocide, and asks two questions of them: how do these issues become important in understanding the genocide, and how does understanding the genocide illuminate these themes? The themes explored include ethnicity, outside influences, gender issues, and ecological issues. None of these issues are unique to Rwanda; therefore, there is a danger in “distancing” genocide to some remote, “exotic” locale: it has occurred in North America, Europe, and Asia, as well as Africa. Because it results from the conjunction of influences and actions widely present in the world today, genocide needs to be addressed direcdy, and understood, not neglected. This article is intended as a step in this process.

In spite of over a half century of interventions and waves of “reforms,” higher education in Africa today consists of institutions, systems, and practices that lack distinct values and goals, or a mission and vision connecting them to the major challenges of their local and global contexts. What is needed in African higher education is true transformation, which will involve practical and epistemological ruptures with previous ways of doing things and a reconstruction of structures, relations, cultures, and institutions. Of particular importance are initiatives that will ensure gender equity, changes in the organization and process of knowledge production, and a reenvisioning of universities' funding sources and mechanisms.

Do we really understand life after genocide? A reflection on the construction of knowledge in and on Rwanda reveals that it is rife with contradictory assertions and images, and that there is a discrepancy between image and reality. This article attempts to map the center(s) of knowledge construction in postgenocide Rwanda, the place not only where policy is made, but also where knowledge is actively construed, managed, and controlled. It argues that an overall cultivation of the aesthetics of progress and a culturally specific communication code have contributed to an active interference in the scientific construction of knowledge. It stresses the need for scholars and observers to reveal the social and historical context for the knowledge being generated. It also urges them to physically and mentally move away from the center of society: to adopt a bottom-up perspective that captures the voices of ordinary people.

This article argues for constructive responses to the dominance, in the analysis of African economic history, of concepts derived from Western experience. It reviews the existing responses of this kind, highlighting the fact that some of the most influential ideas applied to African economies, past and present, have been coined in the context not of Europe or North America but rather of other relatively poor regions formerly under European colonial rule. These “Third World” contributions have been enriching for African studies, though they have been duly criticized in African contexts, in accordance with the usual scholarly pattern. It is argued here that the main requirement for overcoming conceptual Eurocentrism in African history, in the interests of a more genuinely “general” social science and “global” history, is reciprocal comparison of Africa and other continents—or, more precisely, of specific areas within Africa with counterparts elsewhere. Pioneering examples of such comparisons are reviewed and, to illustrate the possibilities, a set of propositions is put forward from African history that may be useful for specialists on other parts of the world. The article concludes with suggestions for ways in which Africanists can best pursue the project of reciprocal comparison, and with a plea for us to be more intellectually ambitious.