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Socialism and Social Change in Rural Mali

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Nicholas S. Hopkins
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Extract

An ideological orientation on the part of a government is an important impetus to social change in many of the countries of the under-developed world. As Clifford Geertz has pointed out, an ideology is a model for the ideal arrangement of all aspects of life, and the active propagation of such a view of the world by those in positions of power and authority in a society is bound to have an effect on the normal processes of social change.1 In so far as this model is successfully turned into an effective programme for directed social change, we may observe the exciting spectacle of a people carrying out changes which they are convinced are necessary, and modernising themselves in an atmosphere of enthusiasm and progress. This process usually amounts to a social revolution. But there are many pitfalls, and it is easy for proposed programmes of social change to get bogged down in the intricate networks of political relations between leaders and people, or to founder on hard economic realities.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , October 1969 , pp. 457 - 467
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

Page 457 note 1 Ceertz, C., ‘Ideology as a Cultural System’, in Apter, David E. (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (New York, 1964), pp. 47–76.Google Scholar

Page 457 note 2 The formal doctrines of Mali socialism have been analysed by Grundy, Kenneth W., ‘Mali: the prospects of planned socialism’, in Friedland, W. H. and Rosberg, C. G. (eds.), African Socialism (Stanford, 1963), pp. 575–93;Google Scholar by Hodgkin, Thomas and Morgenthau, Ruth Schachter, ‘Mali’, in Coleman, J. S. and Rosberg, C. G. (eds.), Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (Berkeley, 1964), pp. 216–58;Google Scholar and by Snyder, Francis G., ‘The Political Thought of Modibo Keita’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), v, 1, 05 1967, pp. 79–106.Google Scholar

Page 458 note 1 Field research was made possible by a predoctoral fellowship from the National (U.S.) Institute of Mental Health, supplemented by a research grant.

Page 458 note 2 The main ethnographic references on the Maninka (also known as the Malinké and the Mandingo) are: Monteil, Charles, Les Bambara de Ségou et du Kaarta (Paris, 1924);Google ScholarLabouret, Henri, ‘:Les Mandings et leur langue’, in Bulletin du Comité d'études historiques et scientfiques de l'Afrique occidentale française (Dakar), XVII, 1, 1934, pp. 1–270;Google Scholar Mamby Sidibé, ‘Coutumier du cercle de Kita’, ibid. xv, 1, pp. 72–177; Montrat, Maurice, ‘Notes sur les Malinkés du Sankaran’, in Outremer (Paris), 1935, pp. 107–27;Google ScholarDieterlen, Germaine, ‘Mythe et organisation sociale au Soudan français’, in Journal de la Société des africanistes (Paris), xxv, 1955, pp. 39–76;Google ScholarBernus, Edmond, ‘Kobané, un village malinké du Haut-Niger’, in Cahiers d'outremer (Bordeaux), IX, 3, 1956, pp. 239–62;Google Scholar and Cissé, Youssouf, ‘Notes sur les sociétés de chasseurs malinké’, in Journal de la Société des africanistes, XXXIV, 1964, pp. 175–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 458 note 3 See Leynaud, Emile, ‘Fraternités d'âge et sociétés de culture dans la Haute-Vallée du Niger’, in Cahiers d'études africaines (Paris), VI, 1966, pp. 41–68.Google Scholar

Page 458 note 4 Barlet, Paul, ‘Chronique du cercle de Kita’; unpublished manuscript, 1942.Google Scholar

See Morgenthau, Ruth Schachter, Political Parties in French-speaking West Africa (Oxford, 1964), pp. 279–81.Google Scholar

Page 460 note 1 The anti-merchant theme was a popular one in the plays produced by youth movements around the country in 1965.

Page 460 note 2 See also Igor Kopytoff, ‘Socialism and Traditional African Societies’, in Friedland and Rosberg, op. cit. pp. 53–62.

Page 460 note 3 See Leynaud, op. cit. pp. 64–8.

Page 461 note 1 For these groups, see Meillassoux, Claude, Urbanization of an African Community: voluntary associations in Bamako (Seattle, 1968), pp. 43–5;Google Scholar and Hopkins, Nicholas S., ‘Government in Kita: institutions and processes in a Malian town’; unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1967.Google Scholar

Page 462 note 1 For implications of the attempt to extend control, see Zolberg, Aristide R., Creating Political Order: the party-states of West Africa (Chicago, 1966), especially pp. 135 ff.Google Scholar

Page 463 note 1 Personal communication from William I. Jones.

Page 464 note 1 Leynaud, op. cit.

Page 464 note 2 For a description of the co-operatives, see Hopkins, Nicholas S., ‘Leadership and Consensus in two Malian Cooperatives’, in David Brokensha (ed.), The Anthropology of Development in Africa (forthcoming).Google Scholar

Page 465 note 1 Some villages had built schools around the time of independence, in the hope of forcing the Government to assign teachers to them. This sometimes worked, but eventually the Government had to stipulate that the sites of new schools could only be chosen by the local party in co-operation with the national Ministry of Education.

Page 465 note 2 The Société mutuelle pour le développement rural (S.M.D.R.) played a key role in organising the rural economy; the Sociélé malienne pour l'importation et l'exportation (Somiex) is the state import-export company, handling the export of groundnuts.

Page 466 note 1 These young men were also regarded as spies and as government officials with power to command, attitudes that they did nothing to dispel by counting people's cattle or the amount handed over in bride wealth, and by supervising rather than participating in collective village work.

Page 467 note 1 Foltz, William J., From French West Africa to the Mali Federation (New Haven, 1965),Google Scholar points out that the Mali leaders were more concerned with politics and organisation than with economics, so this is perhaps not too surprising.