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On the Category ‘Civilised’ in Liberia and Elsewhere

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

David Brown
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Extract

In any society, and in any period, there are likely to be certain key concepts into which are condensed the prevailing assumptions and attitudes of dominant interest groups. Such collective representations vary both in their cultural specificity, and in the extent and duration of their appeal. They may derive from pre-existing terminologies, with or without contextual modification, or they may appear unheralded in the popular vocabulary of the age. They may appeal to sectional interests or they may, with variable degrees of success, reflect the values and aspirations of the society at large. Yet, whatever their various origins and associations, they tend to have in common two characteristic qualities: a strong normative content, and — perhaps more surprisingly — a formidable resistance to conceptual clarification. There is, then, a mythic element in such terms, in the way that they both harbour ambiguity and obscure its resolution.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 287 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

page 287 note 1 See, for example, Williams, Raymond, Keywords (London, 1976), pp. 48–50.Google Scholar

page 288 note 1 The ethnographic data on which this article is based was collected prior to the coup d'étal of 12 April 1980 led by Master-Sergeant Doe, and present-day usage in Liberia may or may not be consistent with usuage prior to this date.

The Fieldwork in Grand Gedeh County was undertaken from November 1974 to June 1976, financed by a grant from the Social Science Rescarch Council to the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester. The Support of both these bodies is gratefully acknowledged.

page 288 note 2 Fraenkel, Merran, Tribe and Class in Monrovia (London, 1964), pp. 67–8.Google Scholar

page 289 note 1 Ibid. p. 197.

page 289 note 2 See, for example, Schack's, William A. review of Fraenkel's Tribe and Class in Monrovia, in the American Anthropologist (Washington, D.C.), 68, 1966, p. 1529.Google Scholar

page 290 note 1 Clapham, Christopher, Liberia and Sierra Leone: an essay in comparative politics (Cambridge, 1976), p. 28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 290 note 2 For example, Lowenkopf, Martin, Politics in Liberia: the conservative road to development (Standford, 1976), pp. 80–1Google Scholar, quotes with approval David Blanchard's contention in ‘The Study of Small Farm Agriculture in Liberia’, Monrovia, July 1967, that economic gain is the primary incentive to the establishment of ‘kwi’ status. Blanchard's argument rests, however, upon the assumption that this status is formally defined (which is misleading), and also fails to take account of the fact that those classed in the ‘Civilised Community’ are required to make much greater contributions to the Government, in both cash and kind, than the ‘tribal’ community in general. Elizabeth Tonkin's recent paper on ‘civilised’ status in Liberia avoids many of the pitfalls of these other works, though she is more concerned with the history of the concept than with an analysis of its usage in society; ‘Model and Ideology: dimensions of being civilised in Liberia’, in Holy, Ladislav and Stuchlik, Milan (eds.), The Structure of Folk Models (London, 1981), pp. 305–30.Google Scholar

page 291 note 1 Fraenkel, op. cit. p. 197.

page 291 note 2 Gellner, Ernest, ‘Concepts and Society’, from the Transactions of the Fifth World Conference of Sociology (1962), reprinted in Wilson, B. R. (ed.), Rationality (London, 1970), pp. 18–49.Google Scholar

page 291 note 3 Ibid. p. 19.

page 292 note 1 Ibid. p. 42.

page 293 note 1 Ibid. p. 46.

page 296 note 1 Fraenkel, op. cit. p. 67.

page 296 note 2 See, for example, Williams, op. cit. pp. 48–50.

page 297 note 1 Wolpe, Harold, ‘The Theory of Internal Colonialism: the South African case’, in Oxaal, Ivar, Barnett, Tony, and Booth, David (eds.), Beyond the Sociology of Development: economy and society in Latin America and Africa (London and Boston, 1975), pp. 229–52.Google Scholar See also Foweraker, Joseph, ‘The Contemporary Peasantry: class and class practice’, in Newby, Howard (ed.), International Perspectives in Rural Sociology (New York, 1978), pp. 131–58.Google Scholar

page 298 note 1 But see, for example, Boesen, Jannik, ‘On Peasantry and the “Modes of Production Debate”’, in Review of African Political Economy (London), 14–15, 07 1980, pp. 154–61.Google Scholar

page 298 note 2 Wolpe, loc. cit. p. 244.

page 299 note 1 Ibid. pp. 244 ff.

page 299 note 2 In the sense used by Max Weber; see Gerth, H. H. and Wright-Mills, C., From Max Weber (London, 1948), p. 184.Google Scholar

page 299 note 3 Wolpe, loc. cit. p. 249.

page 300 note 1 See, for example, Allen, V. L., ‘The Meaning of the Working Class in Africa,’ in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 10, 2, 07 1972, pp. 169–89.Google Scholar

page 301 note 1 Clapham, op. cit. p. 64.

page 302 note 1 Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger (Harmondsworth, 1970), p. 134.Google Scholar

page 302 note 2 Ibid. p. 134.