Those who view Rome from the perspective of modern empires have been struck by Rome's longevity (for example, Brunt 1965:267; Doyle 1986:81–103; Syme 1958:1). Attempts to explain this phenomenon, however, have given little if any consideration to why movements of national independence have occurred in modern times, but not in Roman antiquity. This is the more striking inasmuch as nationalist rebellions against imperial rule typically accompanied the dissolution of direct imperial control over native populations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Certainly the decisions of modern imperialists to give up their empires have been influenced by political idealism or by calculations of economic self-interest unique to their historical situations (Liithy 1964:34). Nonetheless, the role of their subjects must also be taken into consideration, because it was the initiative of the colonial natives, not that of the imperial masters, that typically has resulted in the first calls for independence and, most often, in the nationalist rebellions that provoked imperialists into dismantling their empires. Idealistic impulses and calculations of economic self-interest alike have taken place within the context of that initiative and cannot help but to have been colored by it. It would be a mistake to identify nationalist sentiment and rebellion as the only reasons for the collapse of modern empires, but they must be included among the decisive reasons.

A remarkable feature of African studies has been the sharp discontinuities in the characterization of transitions in African history and society from one era to another. Thus, for an important example, colonialism has rarely been related to the previous era of the slave trade in the analysis of any dominant socioeconomic themes in Africa. Such discontinuity is significant in one important strand of modern African studies: The transition from the lore and scholarship of colonial social anthropology to postcolonial forms of African studies has been stalled into a brittle break because its central focus on the “tribe” has been under attack. Social anthropology gained strength through its analysis of the tribe and its associated concepts of kin groups and kinship behaviors in colonial Africa. However, following criticisms of the mission and manners of social anthropology by postindependence African scholars and politicians, and a brave reexamination of the conceptual problems of their discipline, social anthropologists more or less agreed to abandon the use of the tribe and of its more obvious derivative tribalism with respect to Africa.

Black electoral leaders in the post-civil rights South have exhibited broad agreement on the nature of the political task of displacing unresponsive white elites from power and directing attention to the previously excluded black constituency. There are a few cases, however, in which the commonly expected solidarity and consensus among the black elected leaders has not occurred, despite intensified hostility from the white elite. In this analysis these circumstances are explored from one small town in Mississippi where blacks won nearly total administrative control in 1977. However, the apparent leadership consensus, though fragile, quickly evaporated, due to conflicts of ideology, class, idiosyncrasy, and racial invidiousness. This ultimately led to administrative paralysis in the allocation and management of scarce political goods. In this town where there were broad disagreements between three sets of political contenders, each sought to dominate the policy process by staffing various public positions. The scarcity of these positions, the diametrically opposed goals of the contenders, and the precariousness of the control exerted even by the administrative leadership produced a hopeless struggle. Eventually the government crumbled. Analysis reveals that the complex sociopolitical environment and certain aspects of the political structure contributed to this breakdown. The rapid development of a tripartite leadership cleavage was hardly accommodated by political structures designed to serve the ends of a racial caste system. The fragility of the political environment and the absence of structural mechanisms for conflict resolution severely diminished the ability of the new leaders to perform.

This paper examines the emergence and character of popular religious groups and considers their implications for long-term cultural change in Latin America. Particular attention is given to the link between religious change and the creation of a popular subject, a set of confident, articulate and capable men and women, from hitherto silent, unorganized, and dispirited populations. I argue here that creation of such a popular subject is nurtured by transformations in key expressions of popular religion, by the way these take form in new patterns of community organization and group solidarity, and by efforts to rework the ties that bind popular groups to dominant institutions.

In the mid-nineteenth century, a gentleman in Xiaolan having the Mai surname wrote in his memoir:

Age eighteen, the forty-seventh year of Qianlong's reign [1782], there was a chrysanthemum festival. Each major surname group put on floral displays, and six platforms were set up throughout the town. There were scores of theatrical troupes whose performance brought together kinsmen and friends. The tradition of the festival started that year.

Since Fiji's independence in 1970, a chiefly establishment drawn largely from the eastern regions of the island group has dominated the government there and, through the Alliance Party, has managed, in one way or another, to retain power in successive electoral contests until its outright defeat in the general elections of April 1987. The new government comprised a coalition of the National Federation Party (NFP), supported largely by the Fiji Indian community, and the Fiji Labour Party, which was essentially multiracial. Before the elections, Dr. Timoci Bavadra, the Labour leader, had been chosen to head the coalition. An indigenous Fijian “commoner” from the western region of Fiji, Bavadra's victory in April 1987 represented a break in a long history of eastern chiefly political predominance established and consolidated under colonial rule, and carried forward into the modern context of post-independence politics.