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Liberia: The Dynamics of Continuity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Thomas P. Wrubel
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Extract

Social scientists studying the development of Liberian political and social institutions have frequently viewed the country as fitting the model of a plural society. M. G. Smith has defined such a society as the differential incorporation of two or more collectivities within the same society… presum[ing] significant antecedent differences of institutions, culture and ethnicity between the collectivities concerned and…restrict[ing] their assimilation by preserving or promoting the institutional distinctness.

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , August 1971 , pp. 189 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

Page 189 note 1 Smith, M. G., ‘Pluralism in Pre-Colonial African Societies’, in Kuper, Leo and Smith, M. G. (eds.), Pluralism in Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), pp. 91 and 96.Google Scholar

Page 189 note 2 Smith, M. G., ‘Social and Cultural Pluralism’, in Van den Berghe, Pierre L. (ed.), Africa: social problems of change and conflict (San Francisco, 1965), p. 71.Google Scholar

Page 189 note 3 By national identity is meant the degree to which the individual considers himself to be physically, legally, and psychologically a member of the nation-state, partaking of the benefits, privileges, duties, and obligations attached to that membership. The problem of national identity refers to the degree to which loyalty to sub-national units interferes with loyalty to, and identification with, the nation-state. For a general discussion of national identity, see Verba, Sidney, ‘Comparative Political Culture’, in Pye, Lucien and Verba, Sidney, Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, 1965), pp. 529–35.Google Scholar

Page 190 note 1 Holsoe's, Svend E. unpublished paper, ‘A Study of Settler-Native Relations in Western Liberia: 1821–1847’ (DePauw University, 08 1969),Google Scholar gives a thorough account of these early functional relationships. See also Brown, G. W., The Economic History of Liberia (Washington, 1941), p. 117.Google Scholar

Page 190 note 2 See, for example, Brown, op. cit. pp. 117 and 137 and Fraenkel, Merran, Tribe and Class in Monrovia (London, 1964), pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

Page 191 note 1 McCall, D. F., ‘Liberia: an appraisal’, in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Philadelphia), 306, 07 1956, p. 94.Google Scholar

Page 191 note 2 Fraenkel, op. cit. p. 20.

Page 193 note 1 Quoted by Marinelli, Lawrence, The New Liberia: a historical and political survey (New York, 1964), p. 36.Google Scholar

Page 193 note 2 Ibid.

Page 194 note 1 For another discussion of formalism in Liberian politics, see Liebenow, J. Gus, Liberia: the evolution of privilege (Ithaca, 1969), pp. 81–4.Google Scholar

Page 194 note 2 Fraenkel, op. cit. pp. 18–19.

Page 194 note 3 See, for example, Gibbs, James Jr, ‘The Kpelle of Liberia’, in Gibbs, James (ed.), Peoples of Africa (New York, 1965), p. 230.Google Scholar

Page 195 note 1 Edelman, Murray, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana, Ill., 1964), p. 168.Google Scholar

Page 195 note 2 Structures of Liberian government are discussed in detail by Liebenow, op. cit. passim.

Page 197 note 1 An account of the role of authority in a typical Liberian tribal culture will be found in Cole, Michael and Gay, John, The New Mathematics and an Old Culture: a study of learning among the Kpelle (New York, 1967).Google Scholar

Page 199 note 1 Clower, R. W., Dalton, G., Harwitz, M., and Walters, A., Growth Without Development: an economic survey of Liberia (Evanston, 1966), p. 274.Google Scholar

Page 200 note 1 Liebenow, op. cit. p. 87.

Page 201 note 1 ‘Education Supplement’, The Liberian Star (Monrovia), 07 1967Google Scholar; and The Liberian Age (Monrovia), 26 12 1967, p. 4.Google Scholar

Page 203 note 1 Young, Crawford, Politics in the Congo: decolonization and independence (Princeton, 1965), pp. 263–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 203 note 2 Huntington, Samuel, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1969), p. 41.Google Scholar

Page 203 note 3 Hodgkin, Thomas, ‘Education and Social Change in Liberia’, in West Africa (London), 12 09 1953, p. 847.Google Scholar

Page 203 note 4 For example, speech by President Tubman at a student loyalty demonstration in Monrovia, 2 May 1968.