Ritual America

Turner was aware that the poor, the lower class, the subaltern had a different and closer
relationship to
the chaotic potentialities of ritual action, "the structurally inferior aspire to symbolic structural superiority in ritual".
History, structure, and ritual, Kelly & Kaplan
The kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices
that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life. Herodutus, Ethnicity, Ancient Greece.

ritual America
The Middle Passage,
ritual-making & the case for Pan Africanism:
the return of the ritual Ambassadors,
the call for ethno-nationalism.
curated by amma birago
for Octavia Butlers Anyanwu, Wild Seed

What one does not remember contains the key to ones tantrums and ones poise.
What one does not remember is he serpent in the garden of ones dreams. it has something
to do with the fact that no one wishes to be plunged, head down, into the torrent of
what he does not remember and does not wish to remember.
- James Baldwin. The Evidence of Things Not Seen

The travelers past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day
that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his
that he did not know he had; the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in
foreign, unpossessed places. - Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.
Turner was aware that the poor, the lower class, the subaltern had a different and closer relationship to

David Northrup. Igbo and Myth Igbo:
Culture and Ethnicity in the Atlantic World, 1600-1850
Ethnogenesis happens under specific historical conditions, either from a process of subdivision among already
existing groups, or by expanding a zone of contact (a system) that brings formerly discrete peoples into contact for
the first time. On a broad scale, this is precisely what the transatlantic slave-trade did, bringing previously discrete
peoples into contact and creating cultural opportunities, albeit under great duress, throughout the Atlantic world,
which persisted for a longer or shorter time depending on local circumstances.
Enslaved Africans, because they tended to be funnelled from broad regions through a limited number of entrepts
and thus were thrown together with others culturally not unlike themselves, expanded the boundaries of ethnicity by
restricting the indices of difference in the diaspora.

History, structure, and ritual, John D. Kelly
Turner was aware that the poor, the lower class, the subaltern had a different and closer relationship to the chaotic
potentialities of ritual action, but in his imagination their goals were alternately the "leveling" of communitas, and
social mobility: "the structurally inferior aspire to symbolic structural superiority in ritual" (256:203).
rituals as therefore life-empowering, and the Boasian conviction that many structures exist, have existed, and can
exist in history. Indeed, we suggest that the rituals in ongoing practice are a principal site of new history being made,
and that study of the plural formal potentialities of rituals could be basic to efforts to imagine possibilities for real
political change.

Ritual has a function to fulfill: "The ritual system compensates
to some extent for the limited range of effective political control and for
the instability of kinship and affinal ties to which political value is attached".
Mathieu Deflem, Ritual, Anti-Structure, and Religion:
A Discussion of Victor Turner's Processual Symbolic Analysis

Rethinking ancestors in Africa. John C. McCall
The fact that it is a man in costume in no way diminishes the truth that it is an embodied spirit. In remarking on the
irreducible quality of this knowledge proverbial wisdom advises that 'you cannot watch a masquerade from only one
position'.
Ohafia model of knowledge represents truth as an irreducible, multi-faceted object. In Ohafia the embodied spirit
which is manifest in masquerade performance is an enactment of the play of truth and illusion through which all
human knowledge exists. The fact that it is a man in costume in no way diminishes the truth that it is an embodied
spirit. In remarking on the irreducible quality of this knowledge proverbial wisdom advises that 'you cannot watch a
masquerade from only one position'. Thus in evaluating the knowledge that our anthropological ancestors have
bestowed upon us it may be appropriate to remember the wisdom inherent in the Ohafia view: that truth can be
found not in the valorisation or vilification of our predecessors but in learning to retrace thoughtfully the paths that
lead to where we are today.
This article is the product of a research project assessing the importance of ancestors in the daily life of people living
in Ohafia, a group of twenty-five villages in the Igbo-speaking region of Nigeria. Like many residents of rural areas
of Africa, Ohafia people continue to maintain shrines to their ancestors, and ritual practices pertaining to ancestors
remain an important aspect of daily life and of agricultural activities. The fact that ancestors remain a vigorous
element in the lives of Ohafia people, and indeed of people in many rural communities in Africa, stands in stark
contrast to the recent decline of interest in ancestors and ancestor-related practices among scho-lars of African
culture and society. This divergence between cultural practice and scholarly interest is largely due to developments
in Western scholarship quite unrelated to the importance of ancestors in the experience of African people. I will
briefly outline these developments before turning to a discussion of my own findings. Ancestors have long held an
important place in anthropology.
Rethinking ancestors in Africa. John C. McCall


Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions
The great influx of immigrants arriving in America beginning in the late 1800s led to the perception, according to
the British historian Eric Hobsbawm, that Americans had to be made. Immigrants were strongly urged to adopt
those rites already in place, such as the Fourth of July commemoration of the overthrow of European colonialism
and the Thanksgiving Day celebration of the Puritan (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) values and mythology that had
defined national culture up until this period. In return, of course, American life facilitated the emergence of a host of
immigrant celebrations, such as Columbus Day and St. Patricks Day. These helped various groups take up
acceptable if somewhat constrained ethnic places within the fabric of American culture. Meanwhile, Hobsbawm
argues, the school system self-consciously undertook a number of programs that made it a machine for political
socialization. Led by the daily rite of pledging allegiance to the flag, which began to spread in the 1890s, these
rites defined Americanism as an act of choice and a matter of specific practices and attitudes.
Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions

European tribalism and African nationalism, Mazi Okoro Ojiaku
Such was the case when the coloniser realized that the Ibos or the Yorubas or the Fanti, for example, did not just
comprise of the small group whom they met in their initial contact, but rather of several others who were not readily
accessible because of poor means of transport and communication. Instead of calling these groups nations which
they were, the European persisted in labeling them tribes. The " discovery " of some of these nations awaited the
consolidation and extension of colonialism as it brought closer together related but hitherto isolated sister clans in
the same territory. In so doing, colonialism, awakened the various groups to their common identity by making them
more aware of their common cultural symbols, rituals and language. The new consciousness in time stimulated the
groups to join in a common political rather than ritual action on a far wider scale than was previously possible.
Expressions of nationalism in traditional societies in Africa were not unknown prior to European colonization of the
continent, as shown by the various wars both secular and religious in the Western Sudan, as between the Fulani and
Kanuri, or the Ashanti and the Fanti, in East Africa between the Hitu and the Buganda overlords and in South Africa
under Chaka the Zulu. Most of these wars were directly or indirectly, born of the slave trade, which set one
neighbour or group against the other, resulting in what erroneously has been called intertribal, as different from
international wars. In general, opposition to alien authority and a determination to preserve group culture,
traditions and institutions through the exercise of autonomy, was the major objective behind these wars. Whether the
authority was that of another African group or a European imperial power, the goal was the same. The Ashanti
nationalism in the 19th Century is perhaps the most well known case ; less known are the Yoruba, the Hausa Fulani,
and the Ibo opposition. To some degree, the nationalism stimulated primarily by the rapacities of the slave trade,
was checked by European colonialism which arbitrarily divided the continent into subject territories, put a stop to
the slave trade, and imposed its own values and institutions on the African society. But this created in its wake a new
kind of problem : it increased the danger to the autonomy of many of the nationality groups now brought together
under one administrative political unit. Thus whereas in Nigeria for example, the rivalry and conflict between the
Ibos and the Yorubas was less frequent before the colonization, it increased in intensity and frequency, following the
creation of Nigeria. Traditional nationalism also underwent a formal change, in response to the impact of
colonialism and western civilization. Thus, whereas the earlier rivalry was conducted within two or more political
and economic systems, the later one was carried out within one economy and one polity. Also, while pre-colonial
nationalism was expressed mainly in wars, raids and the preservation of the purity of a group's values, culture and
lifestyles, what followed was expressed in the form of competition for jobs, amenities, positions of power and
influence and for resource allocation in the new polity. And, while the leaders of earlier nationalism were the
kings, chiefs, war-1ords or elders, who controlled much power and authority in the rural areas, the Ibo or Yoruba
nationalism of a later time, was dominated by the western-educated, whose major theatre of action was primarily the
cities, and only secondarily the rural areas. Thus, European colonization and the resultant exposure of hitherto
isolated groups to a larger world through trade and education, sharpened every group's awareness of both itself and
others, particularly in the urban centers where the contact between different nationality elements became most
intense. Traditional nationalism readily reared up its head here in a new form: the new organizations, associations or
unions with membership drawn on exclusively from the nationality group. In most cases, a major objective of these
organizations was to protect the interest of its members, to ensure the preservation of their culture and values, and to
promote the socio-economic betterment of the members' homeland (20).
In the opinion of the coloniser, for example, the African lacked much of the prerequisite for independence because
he was tribal. Thus, to prepare him for the task, he had to be "educated" and "civilized" like the coloniser and no less
by the latter himself; this meant instilling in him the values, tastes and life styles of the master. To be educated and
civilized was thus to adopt European culture: to behave, act, think and live like the Europeans, and to reject many of
one's traditional values and customs. To the extent that this was a major goal, colonialism was quite successful.
Many an African who was educated became European in everything except in colour. He became in a way a black
Englishman or Frenchman, hence presumably qualified to bear the "white man's burden," namely to "civilize" the
less fortunate tribesmen, and thus lead them to independence. Yet, the educated African was viewed by the coloniser
as his worst enemy : he was accused of preciosity, of pretensions to wisdom and of boldness, not associated with
the timid and subservient villager, before the European. He was vilified for being " de-tribalised, " for not living and
acting like his illiterate or less educated kinsmen, and for not subscribing to the traditions of his tribe. Tribalism was
thus blamed for much of Africa's ills: the continent's putative " underdevelopment " was ascribed to tribalism as
reflected in either the lack of education and civilization, European-style, among the people, or too much education
as evidenced by those who having been Europeanized, cut themselves loose from the world of their tribe. In being "
detribalized, " it was claimed these Africans lost touch with the tribesman and hence disqualified themselves as the
leaders of their people.
If what presently is mistaken for tribalism were understood in its true light as traditional nationalism, a new
awareness could be gained in the effort to build modern and united nation-states in Africa. For then the task
becomes one of devising ways and means of positively utilizing the nationalism to build a bridge between the old
and the new and to institutionalize Western values and techniques in Africa without destruction to traditional
cultures and customs. The fact remains that the strength of the transfer of westernism to Africa depends upon how
well what is transferred is anchored on the values and institutions of the African people.

The classic idea that modernity, with its attendant rationalization and secularization,
would lead to the disappearance or irrelevance of ritual, at least religious ritual. disappeared under the impact
of various modernizing projects. Others, however, have persisted, some of them refashioned or imbued with new
meanings in response to new circumstances. The same modernizing projects that
have undermined some rituals have also generated new ones.
Barry Lyons

Professor Diamond has correctly observed, " Recourse to the explanatory principle of tribalism is a western
reification which blocks our view of African reality and deflects our attention from our responsibility " (30). True
emancipation in Africa therefore entails not only the effective destruction of colonial domination but the
elimination of the concepts upon which the institution itself rested. Awereness of the fact that Ibo and Yoruba are
not just tribes but nations means too that their members are Ibo and Yoruba nationals respectively, and that the new
polity, Nigeria, of which both nations, along with others, are a part, is not a country in the sense England or France
is one, but in the sense that the United States of America or Switzerland is. Hence the need to see Nigeria's problems
in a wider perspective and to seek their solution in the context of a federation. And finally appreciation of the
traditional nationalist element in Africa challenges any atititude which accepts the boundaries - both geographical,
political and economic created by the coloniser as final. The strength of traditional nationalism may yet alter
colonial boundaries, create new ones as it draws new maps to meet the aspirations and demands of people who find
themselves caught up in the untidy and poorly conceived territories arbitrarily created by the coloniser.


History, structure, and ritual. John D. Kelly and Martha Kaplan
the definitions of ritual that have been offered have tended to share a presupposition about their object. In part
because many rituals are indigenously represented as "ancient" and unchang-ing, rituals unlike riots, for example-
carry an albatross of connections to "tradition," the sacred, to structures that have generally been imagined in stasis.
While riots are obviously events in history [it took an E. P. Thompson (249) to demonstrate that they also exist as
types of events in cultural fields], scholars have had a great deal of difficulty conceiving of rituals as anything more
concrete than types of events. Until recently the unique ritual event has been an anomaly, understood only when the
function or transformation is discovered that identifies its place in structure. It is the possibility that rituals are
historical events that now intrigues many anthropologists. To review these changes in problematics, fascinations,
and agendas in the anthropology of ritual, we examine powerful images that have come to stand for ways of
connecting ritual, structure, and history. the reconsiderations of the nature of "ritual." In this review, we
examine the fate of only three important anthropological images of ritual, in the turn to history: the divine king, the
cargo cult, and carnival. We choose each for particular problems that have come to surround the image. Recent
reconsiderations of the rituals and histories of kingship have reopened basic questions about the power of rituals to
structure society. Do the rituals of kings make structureo r superstructure?D o rituals make structure only in some
societies, or in all? The questions about divine kings changed when anthropology abandoned evolutionary historical
models, and they have changed again as anthropology returns to history. Next, the cargo cult is important in the
anthropological imagination as an image of ritual in social change among "others" who are not simply different
from, but also connected to a colonizing Europe. In the turn to history, anthropologists now ask, what is the role of
ritual in a terrain of first encounters, missionization, colonized societies, exploitation, and nationalist struggles?
Finally, carnival is of interest especially as a favorite image of anti-structure, from the Manchester school to the
postmodemists. How does carnival anti-structurer elate to structure and to history?
History, structure, and ritual. John D. Kelly and Martha Kaplan

ritual America
The Middle Passage,

Popular Legitimacy in African Multi-Ethnic States,
Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg As
we have found out in this paper that the problem of African states not functioning effectively is largely related first
to the influence of pre-colonial political structures, on the basic concepts or norms of Sovereignty, Legitimacy,
territoriality, self determination on which the state was formed as well as the structural weakness of corruption,
neopatrimonialism etc. It is also apparent that attempts by the International community to either protect the
existence of the state or to revive the weak states could have negative effects on both the people and the state. What
then is the way out for African states?
The discord and failure of African states is thus explained by the fact that even where they struggle with internal
legitimacy, the international community has upheld their international legitimacy thus giving these states the license
to continue existing but not capable of maintaining an effective territorial control, institutionalized government or
the provision of public goods as expected of states.
Similarly, as mentioned in the first part of this article, the degree to which pre-colonial institutions were centralized
or decentralized also has some bearing on the functional effectiveness of moderns states as these characteristic of
structure and governance still exist. I shall only speak of the effects as I have already explained the structure of these
societies in the first part of the essay.
The main issues that scholars have paid attention to in the discourse of structural problems of African states have
been, neo-patrimonialism, local capture syndrome, corruption, the state being viewed as an amoral institution where
one contributes little to its development but is prepared to take a lot from. This was an evident character of
fragmented pre-colonial societies where local elites unleashed their tyranny on the locals because there was no
strong institutionalization, no effective political structures or an accountable, checks and balance system. In most of
the African states today neopatrimonialism has rocked the governance structure such that the provision of public
goods is hampered by state officials who serve certain interests, who try to capture funds and aids meant for
development purposes. This situation is made worse because just like in fragmented pre-colonial societies, there is
no one to stop them. Van de Walle have claimed that neo patrimonial practices are not just a characteristic of the
African regimes, but rather the corefeature of post-colonial politics in Africa (1997: 3)15. The importance of these
issues rest on the extent of their negative influence on the provision of public goods and welfare. It could be noted
that these set of obstructions to effectiveness are predominantly absent or less in empirical states as they have
reached the maximum level of democratization and are well satiated. Thus in the case of states in Africa it is
apparent that owing to their level of state building, democratization, and development, the effectiveness of the state
is explained by political, social, and economic discourses combined.
As we have found out in this paper that the problem of African states not functioning effectively is largely related
first to the influence of pre-colonial political structures, on the basic concepts or norms of Sovereignty, Legitimacy,
territoriality, self determination on which the state was formed as well as the structural weakness of corruption,
neopatrimonialism etc.
Fostering diverse political parties, strengthening constitutional and legal norms relating to good governance,
building independent and effective judiciary, reconstitution a professional military and police service16(Brooks,
2005) are bound to fail like the transitional government in Somalia. Even Some scholars doubt that African
countries will find peaceful ways to strengthen the state and develop national identities (Herbst, 1990)17.
However, whether the post - colonial African state is strengthened through unpeaceful means War (survival of the
strongest states), or by simply allowing more time to pass for these states to mature, as it took the western states
hundreds of years to mature into such democratic, welfare states, there is a conviction that if these challenges are
prudently faced up to then the future of African states could be brighter than it is today. These wise African words
come into mind It is not what you are called but what you answer to that matter.
Popular Legitimacy in African Multi-Ethnic States,
Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg

The effects of western civilisation and culture on Africa
Dare Arowolo
The central argument of this paper stems from the submission that colonialism, slave trade and missionary are the
platform upon which Western civilisation and culture thrive and are sustained. While insisting that Western
civilisation and culture has precariously contaminated the traditional values of Africa, the paper contends that Africa
had established, well before the advent of colonialism, a pattern of home-grown political systems, governance
process and generally acceptable institutional rule-making arrangement, such that there was progression in the pace
of civilisation of Africa and self-styled tempo of technological development. The paper further submits that the
dynamism and significance of Africa on the global continuum tends to support the argument that Africa would have
evolved and sustained level of development and civilisation without the retrogressive contact with imperial forces.

The Survival of Communities: A Theoretical Perspective by Iain Prattis.
In Equatorial Africa, many ethnic identities are grounded in a violent political canvas where militants and voters
share legitimizing narratives in order to solidify, however temporarily, fluid electoral bases into ideologically
rigidified communities. We need to investigate this important, although poorly understood dimension of
contemporary ethnicity in order to understand current crises of governance, nation-building, and ethnic hatred. The
mystical aspect of ethnicity also bears considerable significance for revising current ideas about space, politics, and
territoriality in this region.

Underlying larger simplified identities 'created' during the twentieth century, historians recognize forces for
integration and differentiation that have been shaping and reshaping West African ethnic identities for many
centuries. The languages that are basic to modern West African 'tribal' identities have existed for thousands of years.
In places in West Africa, precolonial state formation was as important and as instrumental in shaping group
identities as in early modem Europe. The growth of Asante, Dahomey, and the new Yoruba kingdoms of the
nineteenth century instilled a degree of national identity in those who were incorporated into them. However, the
people north of the Bight of Biafra experienced no such political centralization in pre-colonial times, although
considerable economic and cultural exchange took place in pre-colonial times.
Anthropologist Igor Koyptoff argues that 'certain pan-African cultural principles' were the product of long historical
processes during which 'the effects of common origins, diffusion, similarities through convergence, and a functional
relationship among cultural features [have] been equally powerful in the historical shaping of African societies'.2
The region's rapid expansion of overseas and internal trade after 1500 and especially after 1750 further increased
cultural interaction and exchange. The bottom line is that people from the region who were forcibly transported to
the Americas brought with them many similar cultural practices, some common languages, a tradition of group
identity that was fluid not static, but did not possess the ethnolinguistic 'tribal' identities of today.
Scholarship about the formation of African-American identities during slavery has been moving in quite different
directions. Rejecting an older interpretation of enslavement in the Americas as having stripped Africans of their
cultural heritage, recent scholars have sought to demonstrate the persistence of historical African identities. Some
have moved beyond pinpointing particular cultural 'survivals' to positing the transportation to the Americas of
identifiable African cultures.


Defining and studying the modern african diaspora
Colin A. Palmer
The 1999 annual meeting of the American Historical Association will have as its theme "Diasporas and Migrations
in History." This has been welcomed by those scholars whose scholarly interest and research focus on what has
come to be called the African diaspora. As a field of study, the African diaspora has gathered momen-tum in recent
times and this is reflected in the proliferating conferences, courses, Ph.D. programs, faculty positions, book prizes,
and the number of scholars who define themselves as specialists. But, as far as I know, no one has really attempted a
systematic and comprehensive definition of the term "African diaspora," although the concept has been around since
the nineteenth century and the term has been used since the 1960s if not earlier. Does it refer simply to Africans
abroad, that is to say the peoples of African descent who live outside of their ancestral continent? Is Africa a part of
the diaspora? Is the term synonymous with what is now being called the Black Atlantic?'
European peoples began their penetration of the African continent in the fifteenth century, a process that in time
resulted in their dispersal in many other parts of the world. This trade, which began in earnest in the fifteenth
century, may have delivered as many as 200,000 Africans to various European societies and eleven to twelve million
to the Americas over time. The fifth major stream began during the nineteenth century after slavery's demise in the
Americas and continues to our own times. It is characterized by the movement of peoples among, and resettlement
in, various societies. These latter two diasporic streams, along with several substreams, and the communities that
emerged constitute the modem African diaspora. Unlike the premodem diaspora, "racial" oppression and resistance
to it are two of its most salient features.
It is also useful, in this context, to remind ourselves that the appellation "African" was a misnomer until very recent
times. Since, generally speaking, the peoples of Africa traditionally embraced an ethnic identification in
contradistinction to a trans-ethnic, regional, or continentally-based one, it is more historically accurate to speak of
Yoruba, Akan, or Malinke diasporas for much of the period up to the late nineteenth century or even later. The issue
becomes even more complicated when one recognizes that individuals also moved from one society to another for a
variety of reasons including being captured in war. Since an African or trans-ethnic consciousness did not exist, the
people who left their ethnic homeland were, strictly speaking, residing "abroad." Should such intemal movements of
specific peoples in Africa be considered parts of a diasporic stream? Can we speak of an African diaspora before the
late nineteenth or twentieth century since the subjects of our study did not define them-selves as African but as
Yoruba, Wolof, Igbo, or other?
The modern African diaspora, at its core, consists of the millions of peoples of African descent living in various
societies who are united by a past based significantly but not exclusively upon "racial" oppression and the struggles
against it and who, despite the cultural variations and political and other divisions among them, share an emotional
bond with one another and with their ancestral continent and who also, regardless of their location face broadly
similar problems in constructing and realizing themselves. The desire to return to Africa, to be sure, was
articulated by many of the enslaved who were removed from that continent and thousands of free African Americans
left for Liberia during the nineteenth century. Men such as Henry Highland Garnet, Henry McNeal Turner, Marcus
Garvey and others actively embraced emigration to Africa at various times but the appeal of the continent as a place
to re-establish roots seemed to have waned over time. Methodologically speaking, the study of the modern African
diaspora should, in my opinion, begin with the study of Africa. The African continent-the ancestral home-land-must
be central to any informed analysis and understanding of the dispersal of its peoples. Not only must the programs
that are designed promote an understanding of the history and nature of the variegated African cultures, but it must
be recognized that the peoples who left Africa and their ethnic group, coerced or otherwise, brought their cultures,
ideas, and worldviews with them as well. Africa, in all of its cultural richness and diversity, remained very much
alive in the receiving societies as the various ethnic groups created new cultures and recreated their old ways as
circumstances allowed. Consequently, the study of the modern African diaspora, particularly the aspect of it that is
associated with the Atlantic slave trade, cannot be justifiably separated from the study of the home continent.
Defining and studying the modern african diaspora
Colin A. Palmer

Ethnicity in Pre-Colonial Africa:
Historical Approaches, John Thornton
The study of ethnicity has been a major theme in the history of colonial and post colonial Africa. There
have been numerous books and studies published on the topic for many years, and indeed African data has been
instrumental in developing general treatments of the phenomenon of ethnicity. However, this work has been almost
entirely confined to the colonial and post colonial periods, and extremely little has been done in to examine ethnicity
in pre-colonial Africa, which is my particular concern in this paper.
The central problem of attempting a study of pre-colonial ethnicity is one of source material. Modern
studies of ethnicity have been able to rely on extensive archival resources from the colonial system. The reduction
of many African languages to Western orthographies and the subsequently development of literacy in those
languages has made available African discourse on ethnicity that can be mined for data. In addition, colonial and
post colonial states collect and store data which can be used as a statistical underpinning for other sorts of work.
Cartography allows the spatial dimensions of ethnicity to be studied in fair detail.
Virtually none of this sort of material is available for pre-colonial Africa. Most of pre-colonial Africa was non-
literate and therefore internal documentation, in which Africans describe ethnicity themselves, is more or less
entirely lacking. Where there was literacy, such as in the Islamic regions of West Africa and in Christian central
Africa (primarily Angola), the fund of documentation is very small and deals with a relatively limited number of
topics, of which ethnic identity is a tiny minority.
For historians of pre-colonial Africa, therefore, the primary source material comes from European travelers,
especially merchants and missionaries. As outsiders, the Europeans were often not privy to all the information that
might be required to make judgments about ethnic orientations and ideas; many were inadequately prepared
linguistically or by pre-disposition to describe these matters. Merchants tended to be concerned above all with
commercial matters, and to the degree that ethnicity influenced commerce (which on the whole was not much) it
might be noted. Missionary sources are better, since by their profession they needed and wished to gain as much
cultural knowledge as possible. Missionaries often did have command of local languages and queried or challenged
identities in ways that might allow them to witness behavior influenced by concepts of ethnicity.
A second problem of dealing with European sources is that they, first, did not have a clear definition of
what ethnicity was themselves, or rather they had the range of ideas that early modern Europeans had (Christendom
versus the pagan world for example) and they often tried to apply these to the Africans they met. In addition, they
were unclear as to how to define, even in their own terms what they saw in Africa. For example, to what degree did
they see the political entities with whom they dealt as ethnic and to what degree did they key their concepts on
cultural or linguistic traits? Thus when they defined units of settlement or authority we are often unclear as to
whether these were family units (lineages or clans), ethno-linguistic units, or cultural units.
Perhaps because of these difficulties, historians of pre-colonial Africa have generally not devoted their
attention to figuring out ethnic divisions or logic.
In fact, it is probably safe to say that the real pioneering work on pre-colonial African ethnicity was done
first in America by Americanists interested in the African background of African-descended American populations
in the Diaspora. In many parts of the Atlantic world, though not so much in English speaking North America, slaves
were routinely identified in documents with an ethnonym. These names referred to the slaves nation,. country,
terre, nao, or nacin. For example, a French notarial document from the eighteenth century might list
Marie Congo or David Ardre; a Portuguese inventory would describe an Antonio Mina a Cuban judicial
hearing might take testimony from some called Felicia Lucumi. All of these ethnonyms represented someones
conception of an African homeland, and sometimes it was quite explicitly referring to an African point of origin.
We learn from Edward Long in 1776 that Coromantees lived on the Gold Coast, for example, and a few writers
made fairly elaborate descriptions of African seeking to describe the homelands associated with an American slave
ethnonym.
As the study of African Americans took on a cultural turn in the 1990s the question of African ethnicities
took on a new twist. John Thornton proposed that ethnicity was an important part of the African identity in
America, and that to some degree it represented an African carry over. Gwendolyn Midlo-Hall has made the most
determined effort to argue that African ethnonmys make sense to the slaves themselves, even if they are perhaps
New World creations, and presented a systematic study of their use in French documents in Louisiana. Midlo-Hall
also attached significant cultural significance to the ethnic origins of Africans in the Americas, suggesting that
various visible traits can be traced to specific parts of Africa in Louisiana. Michael Gomez created a systematic
survey of African origins and North American destinations, seeking to find links and show ethnic specific influences
in the British colonies. Subsequently Linda Heywood and John Thornton published a major study showing that the
founding African population in the North American and Caribbean colonies of England and the Netherlands derived
almost entirely from West Central Africa and that the ethnic specificity of that region was vital to understanding the
early development of the Americas.
David Northrup and Douglas Chambers published fruitful discussion and exchange of ideas on how
American ethnicities might be read in Africa. Northrup, taking up a position of Thorntons that Igbo referred to
people in the Niger Delta and that this ethnic identification made sense in America, and the Chambers subsequent
attempt to relate cultural traits observed in Virginia (where many people from the Niger Delta were brought as
salves) argued that in fact, the term Igbo is of fairly recent origin, that the Niger Delta is quite culturally diverse and
that there might be multiple identities from it; he was therefore skeptical that the American terms really related
much to Africa. Chambers responded but presenting evidence that the Igbo group and its name was more
widespread in the eighteenth century that Northrup believed, that the cultural diversity of the region was in fact less
than Northrup contended, and a number of smaller issues.
Then in the 2000s the issue took on another dimension. Work on genetics starting in the 1980s had pointed
out that some elements of the genetic code, the mitochondrial DNA and DNA found in the Y-chromosome in
particular could allow a sort of genealogy of humanity to be discovered. In the late 1990s geneticists began to
explore the possibilities that African descended populations in the Americas could trace specific African roots using
DNA. In the 2000s companies were formed to market the analysis of DNA to locate African regions of origin to
African Americans as a way of creating a specific African heritage. Indeed, one company actually offered its
customers a handsomely lettered certificate of ethnicity. In 2006, Henry Louis Gates put out a PBS series
African American Lives in which he used DNA to trace the African roots of eight prominent African Americans.
The series stimulated an even larger interest in the use of DNA to create a link to Africa. Ultimately this link may
well have an impact on tourism to Africa.
In doing all this work, the connection between modern African ethnicities and their pre-colonial
predecessors became problematic. The general public and particularly the African American public wanted to
understand the connection between the identity systems of modern Africa, in which ethnic designations used by
genetic research are give, and the pre-colonial entities from which African American ancestors were drawn. Sorting
this issue out was the subject of at least one major confernence, held at Harvard University in 2006 under the
auspices of Henry Louis Gates to discuss this very issue.
The significance of the debate and new interest was that they began examining African identities in Africa
and connected them to the American side of the ocean. The next step, not yet really taken in print, is to examine
what Africans thought about with regards to identity in the pre-colonial period. The question of how pre-colonial
people in Africa thought of their identity is now a problem of considerable interest across a wide range of spectra.
In the absence of a systematic scholarship on this issue, this paper can only explore some potential ways to
approach it. There are potentially a good number of ways to do this.
One way to examine it is to continue the study of the American side documentation more carefully,
particularly that documentation which sought to study ethnicity systematically. In fact, missionaries possessed both
the linguistic skills and access to Africans that allowed them to pursue this study. In the following section, I will
examine in detail the ethnic identity information contained in three such missionary sources from the seventeenth,
eighteenth and nineteenth century.
Oldendorp also spoke with a man who was of the same nation as this unnamed woman and spoke the same
language. For all this, the names that he gave of the neighbors were Fra, Bente, Nana, Gui, Gurrah, Guaflee, and
No. As this was a refugee area, these neighbors could refer to villages of refugees, and when Oldendorp
interrogated them they gave the names of their villages and not of any kingdom. But in any case, it shows that these
people did not necessarily see their linguistic nation as a primary source of identity, at least on the African side of
the ocean; moreover, it shows that the decisions that individuals made in defining their identity were not necessarily
consistent with each other.
A third sampling of self-identity comes from yet another missionary, Sigismund Koelle. Koelle served in Sierra
Leone in the 1840s. At the time he was there, the Royal Navy was intercepting slave trading vessels on the high
seas, following the British outlawing of the slave trade and the concurrence of other European nations in this action.
When ships were taken at high sea, the slaves on board were not returned to their home countries, but instead taken
to Sierra Leone. Therefore the population of Sierra Leone was like a kaleidoscope of all the African ethnicities
engaged in the slave trade, with hundreds represented.
Like Oldendorp before him, Koelle was interested in linguistic questions, and indeed his book Polyglotta Africana,
published in 1854 was a linguistic study, an attempt to classify all languages in African into a system of families. In
order to collect his samples, Koelle tried to interview at least one person from each group, and gave samples from
each language. In all he had 177 informants representing as many languages. Unlike Oldendorp, however, Koelle
gave personal information about all of his informants, including their name, the name of their languages and
information about the nations location in Africa, including rivers, major features of vegetation or relief. As in
Oldendorps assessment, Koelles informants often gave the names of neighboring groups, although these groups
were not defined either by Koelle or the informant as being of a different language, or having other differences.
For example, Ambre, known in Sierra Leone as Stephen, told him he was from the Baga country, but then Koelle
noted that there were three different Baga groups, one of which spoke a distinct language. Koelle appears to have
named them, the Rio Nunez, Rio Pongo, and Kalu Bagas, as Ambre told him that The Bagas opposite the Isles de
Los are called Kuba by the Rio Nunez Bagas, who in return they call Baga-stene or Baherka, that is naked people
because their women were reputed to go entirely naked.
In another case Kayawon, known in Sierra Leone as Abraham Belford, told him that in Filham, an entity which he
described as having a capital and hence in all likelihood a political unit, which he called Esuh. The people of Filham
were called Dsola or Funi Dsola by their neighbors which Koelle believed meant foreigners or barbarians. Eshu was
bordered on Kutrro, with which is shared a common language.
At times, Koelle noted how enmity shaped conceptions of belonging, for example, his informant from the Mahi
country in modern day Benin told how there was great hatred between them and the Dahomeans because of constant
wars the two had between each other. In another instance, he tried to sort out the Aku or Yoruba identity. He
noted that people who spoke this language did not seem to have a common name for it, and if one addressed
Idsebuan or a Yagban a Yoruba he would say Dont call me by that name I am not a Yoruban. This, he argued by
analogy was the same as in Europe just as e. g. Wrttemburgers or Bavarians would never suffer themselves to be
called Prussians.
It is difficult, even for such a relatively late source, to determine precisely what the named entities that surrounded
the homelands of many of Koelles interviewees represented. Were the defined primarily as polities that controlled
space, determined law, and concentrated revenues? Were the simply divisions by geography, such as villages that
might not be substantially different or percieved as ethnically different from the informants home territory?
Unfortunately Koelle does not give us a defninitive answer to such questions. These questions can be addressed and
perhaps even resolved, but this work has not been attempted. The most systematic studies of Koelles work has
been done by linguists, attempting to identify the places and languages in question, and to see if they can determine
changes in them in the past century. While this work has necessarily had to deal with geography, it has not touched
on the question of ethnicity or ethnic identity.
What emerges from this preliminary research into African self-conceptions is that the issue is complex and different
from what one would meet in colonial and post colonial Africa. At the very start, in recent African history political
units were arbitrarily drawn by outside powers and sovereignty was held outside the region. Colonial powers
simultaneously introduced languages into the ethnic mixture, and in the case of French and Portuguese systems,
complicated the matter further by creating assimilationist policies that moved people toward speaking these
languages. In addition, the systems of education that they introduced standardized some dialects at the expense of
others and created the modern tribe.
The colonial state, as well as a good number of its policies, in turn gradually became the modern states of todays
Africa. Ethnicity emerged in this period as a local set of identities with a variety of origins and supported in many
cases by specific policies of the colonial states. The ethnicity that was born in colonial Africa in turn became the
problem of tribalism in post colonial Africa, a problem which continues to dog Africa today.
But while ethnicty of modern African was born in colonial Africa, it was not without historical roots in the earlier
period. We can be sure that the complex game of resistance and accommodation, collaboration and cooperation
between pre-colonial African elites had one set of relationships in pre-colonial Africa and was building another in
colonial Africa. But we have yet to understand fully the pre-colonial ethnic dynamic. Pre-colonial political systems
differed from those of colonial Africa. In pre-colonial Africa sovereignty was held locally, and in some cases was
splintered or held in very small areas. Pre colonial state systems often did not incorporate a single language
community, or language communities often were larger than the state systems. The basis for differentiation was
thus necessarily different than it would be in the larger and more arbitrarily constructed political systems created in
the colonial period.
Ethnicity in Pre-Colonial Africa:
Historical Approaches, John Thornton

political change.

Aspects of pan-Africanism
The Black scholar July-August, 1973 by Robert Chrisman
the British defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, England's command of the seas was uncontested; and hence its
command of the slave trade, international commerce, and the strategic areas of the New World: North America and
the West Indies. Africans were seized and worked ruthlessly. According to conservative estimates, 50 million
Africans died before or during the voyage to the Western Hemisphere and only 18 million Africans survived.
The black national consciousness of black Americans is irrevocably linked to slavery and the monstrous institution
of racism which enforces and justifies the oppression of blacks. Afro- Americans are still, in essence, a captive
population, chained to wage and welfare slavery. Slavery was not an aberration but an essential element in the
development of capitalism. One cannot imagine the economic development of Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and
the United States without slavery. It was the monumental productive power of millions of enslaved blacks which
brought about the extraordinary development of monopoly capitalism. Thus James Boggs is quite correct when he
states: In order to understand the ease with which racism entrenched itself in Europe and North America, it is
important to emphasize that not only the big merchants, manufacturers and shipowners benefited from the slave
trade and slavery. All kinds of little people on both sides of the Atlantic drew blood money directly from the slave
traffic.
Trade began to change from a gambler's search for treasure to investment for permanent income; and this income
consisted of goods for sale which were in practice found more valuable than treasure for hoarding. To perfect this
arrangement, slaves and more slaves must be had. The shift of the European political economy from mercantilism to
capitalism was accompanied by a change in political power. Portugal's fortunes waned, and with the British defeat
of the Spanish Armada in 1588, England's command of the seas was uncontested; and hence its command of the
slave trade, international commerce, and the strategic areas of the New World: North America and the West Indies.
Africans were seized and worked ruthlessly. According to conservative estimates, 50 million Africans died before or
during the voyage to the Western Hemisphere and only 18 million Africans survived.
t the First Pan- African Congress in London, 1900, W.E.B. Du Bois uttered the prophetic lines, "The problem of
the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line - the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia
and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea." The foresight of Dr. Du Bois* statement is matched only by the
historical significance that this Pan-African Congress itself was to assume. For, seventy years later, Pan-African
organizations and groups and the "darker races of Asia, Africa and America," are engaged in protracted struggle
against the racism and economic exploitation of their countries by Europe and the United States.
The Pan-African vision has as its basic premise that we the people of African descent throughout the globe,
constitute a common cultural and political community by virtue of our origin in Africa and our common racial,
social and economic oppression. It further maintains that political, economic and cultural unity is essential among all
Africans, to bring about effective action for the liberation and progress of the African peoples and nations. The
vision of effective united action which characterizes Pan-African thought originates from the systematic dispersal of
African peoples for the past 500 years, through slavery and imperialism. From 1400 on through 1900, the countries
of Europe experienced three related phenomena: the formation of national states, with a tremendous surge of
nationalist expansion; vast technological and industrial development; and the development of a unique economic
system which began with mercantilism and ended with international capitalism. Africa, like Asia and South America
suffered the direct, harmful consequences of this triple phenomena and very few of its benefits. In the 1400's, before
the "discovery" of America and the Western Hemisphere, the embryonic nation states of Europe established regular
contact with Africa. As a result of their supremacy at that time in ship-making and navigation, the Portuguese
merchant class got a monopoly on trade with the Kingdom of Guinea, and gold, ivory and spices poured into
Portugal, creating fabulous wealth. In 1441, Portugal imported its first cargo of African slaves. As the competition
for Asian and African goods intensified among mercantile European states - Spain, Portugal, England and France -
exploration for new sources of easy wealth expanded, leading to global navigation. By 1600 these countries had
established colonies in North America, South America and the West Indies. Whereas these explorations had first
been prompted to secure easy, "surface" wealth such as gold and jewels, for merchant trade, the expanding European
nations discovered that sugar, cotton, tobacco and foodstuffs were more profitable, for they could be processed and
sold to the entire populations of their countries. The political economy of Europe, with varying degrees of
sophistication, shifted from mercantilism to capitalism.
Trade began to change from a gambler's search for treasure to investment for permanent income; and this income
consisted of goods for sale which were in practice found more valuable than treasure for hoarding. To perfect this
arrangement, slaves and more slaves must be had. The shift of the European political economy from mercantilism to
capitalism was accompanied by a change in political power. Portugal's fortunes waned, and with the British defeat
of the Spanish Armada in 1588, England's command of the seas was uncontested; and hence its command of the
slave trade, international commerce, and the strategic areas of the New World: North America and the West Indies.
Africans were seized and worked ruthlessly. According to conservative estimates, 50 million Africans died before or
during the voyage to the Western Hemisphere and only 18 million Africans survived.
This rape of Africa created the following historic conditions under which Pan- Africanism would emerge as a
proposed solution to the oppression of black people: (1) the removal of millions of Africans created what has been
called the "African diaspora"; (2) the slave trade decimated Africa's prime population for hundreds of years, super-
annuated West Africa and disturbed the internal political balance of African peoples to each other; (3) the slave
trade and its turmoil interrupted Africa's political and economic development, which would have probably led to
industrialization and political centralization, and left that continent weakened and vulnerable to the European
imperialists' "scramble for Africa" from 1880-1910. It was precisely the uprooting of millions of Africans and the
conditions of slavery which laid the foundations for Pan- Africanism and black nationalism in the United States and
the West Indies.

ritual America
The Middle Passage,

Pan-African movement. The precise ideology program
and platform for that movement have yet to be formulated - though the black consciousness
and, increasingly, the material conditions for such a movement exist.

restricting the indices of difference in the diaspora.

Obiagele Lake, Toward a Pan-African Identity
Diaspora African Repatriates in Ghana
The notion of all people of African descent constituting "one people" may be viewed as a mythic construction when
seen in light of numerousc ultural,h istorical, and regionald ifferencesa mongt hem.N evertheless, the utilityo f such
construction, accordingt o Soren-son, is to counterbalancethe profoundse nseo f losst hata ccompa-niesi t. Tod
escribeas mythst hesef ormso f remembering, of constructingne ws haredid entities,an do f formulating particularvi
sionso f the futurei s not necessarilyto dis-misst hema s illegitimateas pirations,fal sev ersionsof his-tory,o r invalidty
peso f identity, butr atherto emphasize theirs ocialc haracter.... . Mythsa ren otr elicso f some antiquep ast but
mechanismsfo r organizingex perience andr eworkingth e present(p . 201;e mphasisin original). Diaspora Africans
are joined by other diasporizedp eoplesw ho have also createdn otions of broader kinship alliances in order to more
effec-tively wage struggles against European and Euro-pean Americanh egemonici nstitutions. Pan-ethnic
formulations amongF irstN ation people,f or exam-ple, clearly resonate with diaspora African collec-tive responses
to colonialism and racism.
Instead,a spectso f commono rigins( for example,r acial, territorial, or religiouso nes) have been primordializedto
servea s a charterf or people of different cultures to forge common identities around issues of mutual concern. While
Diaspora Africansh ave utilizedt he connectiono f racial and economice xploitationto formulatea kinshipi diom,
Native Americans "have seen that the shared his-toricale xperienceo f [brokent reaties]h as provided Indians with a
plan of action and a set of demands" (Trosper 1981: 252).

In doing so, people created many living variants or common traditions out of loosely shared ancestral ones; the
ethnicity of these neo- African named groups, therefore, were invented traditions which combined the familiar
with the functional. The process of creating new diasporic African-derived cultures in the Americas, historical
creolization, was likely to have been a group phenomenon enacted out of shared roles as captives and forced
migrants, rather than the supposedly random and ad hoc experimentation of crowds of cultural strangers.
restricting the indices of difference in the diaspora. In doing so, people created many living variants or common
traditions out of loosely shared ancestral ones; the ethnicity of these neo- African named groups, therefore, were
invented traditions which combined the familiar with the functional. The process of creating new diasporic
African-derived cultures in the Americas, historical creolization, was likely to have been a group phenomenon
enacted out of shared roles as captives and forced migrants, rather than the supposedly random and ad hoc
experimentation of crowds of cultural strangers.

Bethwell A. Ogot, Rereading the History and
Historiography of Epistemic Domination and Resistance in Africa.
"Whatever Africans share," he says, "we do not have a common traditional culture, common language, a common
religious or conceptual vocabulary. ... We do not even belong to a common race? I think it is clear enough that a
biologically rooted conception of race is both dangerous in practice and misleading in theory; African unity, African
identity, need se curer foundations than race" (1992:23). In any case, Appiah informs those who believe in racial
differences that "we are already contaminated by each other" in a complex, interdependent human world that is ill-
served, finally, by the effort of engaging in "the manufacture of otherness" (1992:24). In short, intellectually and
biologically we are all hybrids.
In the field of politics, Appiah discusses what he calls "altered states" and wonders whether there was ever a
moment of "nationalism" at all in Africa, given the multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural, and multireligious nature
of these states. He takes the example of his country, Ghana, and ask how Nkrumah's nationalism, for example, was
able to ignore the fact of Ghana's diversity. He asserts that Nkrumah's nationalist enthusiasm was pan-Africanist?
consistently and publicly preoccupied with the complete liberation of Africa from colonial rule? and that eventually
it failed because it was not nationalistic. There are several problems with both of these points of view. In regard to
African intellectual life, it must be acknowledged that both of the institutions mentioned by Appiah the university
and scholarly publishing are changing very quickly.

Representation is an issue that lies at the heart of a current debate in African studies regarding the cultural
composition of Africa itself. On one side of the debate are those who argue that there is indeed such a thing as an
"African" identity whose deep essence transcends the surface differences that distinguish one African culture from
another. On the other side are those who argue that culturally the peoples of Africa have far less in common than is
usually assumed. The Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah is among those who have argued that there is
no cultural unity in Africa, and that Africanist discourse has inaccurately grouped together vastly divergent cultures.
"Whatever Africans share," he writes, "we do not have a common traditional culture, common languages, a common
religious or conceptual vocabulary.... We do not even belong to a common race" (1992:26).
Cultural expression for Fanon thus refers not to a predeter mined model offered by the past but to a reality that lies
in the future as a perpetual creation: for him culture is not a state but a becoming. In a short span of time, Frantz
Fanon proved to be a committed social philosopher whose ideas on racism, colonialism, African revolution, and
neocolonialism had a profound impact not only in Africa, but also in other countries in the South. He was able to
acquire the status of a latter-day prophet, since many of his prophesies concerning the "Second Liberation" in Africa
were fulfilled. His influence was particularly evident in the writing of some of the younger African professional
philosophers, including Marcien Towa at the University of Yaounde in the Cameroon, and Paulin Hountondji in
Mali. Towa argued that no cultural development of any importance will be possible in Africa until Africans have
built up a material strength capable of guaranteeing their sovereignty and powers of decision, not only in the
political and economic field, but also in the cultural. Towa therefore calls for a renunciation of the self as constituted
by the African past and an opening out to new perspectives of thought and action. He proceeds, however, to
advocate the adoption of Western thought, especially in the fields of science and technology, as the only intellectual
tradition capable of leading to the transformation of Africa. Contemporary Africans, he claims, can turn the secret of
European hegemony to their own use by destroying traditional idols and assimilating the spirit of Europe, the secret
of its power and its victory over Africa. Total intellectual surrender! In his African Philosophy: Myth and Reality
(1983), Hountondji criticizes Western writings about African systems of thought.4 He particularly takes issue with
the works of Tempels and Griaule, because these authors presented African "philosophy" as an unarticulated
intellectual system about which African peoples themselves are uncritical and largely unaware. He also condemns
the Western perspective, which assumes that critical knowledge about Africa can only come from outside where the
Western observer somehow "sees" more than indigenous Africans can possibly see themselves. An authentic and
meaningful African philosophy, according to Hountondji, must spring from African intellectual discourse and must
not simply refine and build upon Western models of Africa. But where, then, is this new philosophy to be found?
His answer is that it is "yet to come." For him, the "so-called" traditional African thought with its oral forms of
expression and transmission may constitute wisdom, but it lacks the power of sustained critical reflection that real
philosophy demands. Towa and Hountondji thus represent those contemporary African intellectuals who have failed
to find truth in their own societies and within themselves and are wandering over foreign lands in search of it. They
are in effect intellectual escapees who prefer to live physically or mentally as exiles in foreign lands with established
social and civil lives, and who believe in the impossibility of finding any meaningful life in their homelands. For
them salvation is an external phenomenon. In this context, it is important that we reread Mudimbe's The Invention of
Africa (1988), which forms part of the growing critical literature on the epistemological claims underlying the image
of "otherness" in Western scholarship. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge:
determining what we know and how we know it and identifying the conditions that must be met for something to
count as knowledge. Mudimbe's work is a general survey of how Western construction of "primitive" and "savage"
images of Africa, particularly in historical and anthropological studies, has influenced the rise of alienated discourse
and self-identity among Africans themselves. Modern African intellectual history has participated in a consistent
escape from the harshly negated African past. In the humanities and social sciences in general, and in philosophy
and religion in particular, African intellectuals continue to define their world on the basis of Western
epistemological standards. Mudimbe's book is also an excellent intellectual description of the historical dilemmas
faced daily by many educated African "elites" in regard to how best to adapt the "usable past" to the construction of
their present. Haunted by their history, Mudimbe argues, African "elites" are constantly eager to abandon their past
in order to adopt what is "modern" and "civilized" and therefore, foreign and Western. Every day in legal suits,
political rhetoric, and in economic and social planning and policy making he battle against the past is fought and
the past, frequently called the "traditional" in the constructed discourse, is suppressed. In short, the contemporary
African intellectual in the humanities and social sciences is torn between two intellectual directions, not quite
knowing how to strike a balance between the two or how to draw knowledge from all sources in ways that will
improve and enrichment African values and "traditions." But Mudimbe does not show clearly how the "usable past"
should be utilized by "experts" to construct an "authentic" African episteme. He conceives of philosophy as
primarily a form of discourse, a system of making representations and explanations of history. What is important in
philosophy for Mudimbe are the epistemological values on which the representation of history, as well as its claims
to usefulness and relevance, are based. Philosophy, in other words, is the means through which "the world" is
constructed and structured, and in this sense no philosophical system can validly judge others. Hence to Mudimbe
the notion of the superiority of Western philosophy over African modes of thought is part of a wider Western
ideological plot rather than a fact, part of a more complex discourse invented and maintained by Europe as an aspect
of the epistemological order through which it has affirmed itself in opposition to "others." For Mudimbe, therefore,
the most important questions in the debate on African philosophy are those about the epistemological groundings
that define African rationality. Doesn't Africa have its own order of knowledge, or episteme, on the basis of which it
can define its rules and parameters of rational discourse apart from the epistemological locus in the West?
Unfortunately, Mudimbe himself provides no satisfactory answer to this fundamental question. Furthermore, in
raising the question itself he relies heavily on the work of French scholars.
So how does one reach the African epistemological locus without recourse to established Western methods? This
question is regarded as a nonissue by Kwame Anthony Appiah in his book In My Father's House: Africa in the
Philosophy of Culture (1992). The title refers, of course, to Christ's words at the Last Supper, when he said that "in
my Father's house there are many mansions? meaning that there is room enough for all in heaven. In Appiah's case,
however, his "father's house" is Africa, which has many houses, many cultures, many identities. The theme of this
iconoclastic book is a question: "How are we to think about Africa's contemporary cultures in the light both of the
two main external determinants of her recent cultural history? European and Afro New World conceptions of
Africa? and of her own endogenous cultural traditions?" (1992:ix-x). He claims that many African (and African
American) intellectuals have failed to find a negotiable middle way between endogenous "tradition" and exogenous
"Western" ideas, and that without such a successful negotiation ideological decolonization is bound to fail. For a
long time, Appiah asserts, Africa's intellectuals have been engaged in a conversation with one another and with
Europeans and Americans about what it means to be African; these debates, he says, are really about African
identity. In In My Father's House Appiah offers us what he regards as a ground breaking as well as ground-
clearing analysis of absurdities and damaging presuppositions that have clouded our discussions of race, Africa, and
nationalism since the nineteenth century. He first explores the role of racial ideology in the development of pan-
Africanisn, focusing particularly on the ideas of the African American intellectuals with Alexander Crummell and
W.E.B. Du Bois as his archetypes who initiated pan-Africanist discourse. In examining their works, he argues that
the idea of the Negro, and of an African race, is an unavoidable element in the discourse, and that these racialist
notions are grounded in bad biological?and worse, bad ethical ideas inherited from the increasingly racialized
thought of nineteenth-century Europe and America. He contends that Crummell and Du Bois accepted a
conventional notion of racial nationalism based on a romantic European definition of the Negro. He adds that the
very invention of Africa as something more than a geographical entity was an outgrowth, and that the notion of pan-
Africanism, founded on the notion of the African, was based, in turn, not on any genuine cultural commonality but
on the very European concept of the Negro, who was in vented by the "whites" in order to dominate them. Hence
"Africa," and the notion of the African, are both inventions of the "whites." Thus, Appiah says, Du Bois and
Crummell began with an "ennobling lie" that may have satisfied the hearts yearning for black unity but ignored all
we have learned from genetics. "Whatever Africans share," he says, "we do not have a common traditional culture,
common language, a common religious or conceptual vocabulary. ... We do not even belong to a common race? I
think it is clear enough that a biologically rooted conception of race is both dangerous in practice and misleading in
theory; African unity, African identity, need se curer foundations than race" (1992:23). In any case, Appiah informs
those who believe in racial differences that "we are already contaminated by each other" in a complex,
interdependent human world that is ill-served, finally, by the effort of engaging in "the manufacture of otherness"
(1992:24). In short, intellectually and biologically we are all hybrids.
In the field of politics, Appiah discusses what he calls "altered states" and wonders whether there was ever a
moment of "nationalism" at all in Africa, given the multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural, and multireligious nature
of these states. He takes the example of his country, Ghana, and ask how Nkrumah's nationalism, for example, was
able to ignore the fact of Ghana's diversity. He asserts that Nkrumah's nationalist enthusiasm was pan-Africanist?
consistently and publicly preoccupied with the complete liberation of Africa from colonial rule? and that eventually
it failed because it was not nationalistic. There are several problems with both of these points of view. In regard to
African intellectual life, it must be acknowledged that both of the institutions mentioned by Appiah the university
and scholarly publishing are changing very quickly.

Self-Determination, Ethno-Nationalism and Conflicts in Nigeria,
Kehinde Olayode
The proliferation of ethno-regional organisations has resulted into the escalation of ethno-religious conflicts in many
of Nigerias urban communities since independence. The basic issue of contention is the right of people to
determine its own destiny. However, the legal interpretations of self-determination in human rights discourses
remain items of serious contention. The study attempts to answer the following questions: What economic and
political rights can people claim? How can they achieve selfdetermination within the context of an existing state?
Should each people or nation enjoy a right to sovereign independence? Can a multi-ethnic or multi-national state
survive in the face of conflicting group claiming for power? Is ethno-nationalism compatible with the legal
framework of a nation state?
The paper argues that far from being a primordial and a largely uncontrollable source of instability, ethno-
nationalism is political and to some extent, artificial. Ethnic mobilisation has been a political instrument of the
African elites in the postindependence period, much the same way that the phenomenon of nationalism was, in the
decolonisation struggle. However, by encouraging a clientelist attitude towards the state, whose resources are
perceived as a pie from which each group must try to carve out as large a slice as possible and by hampering any
effort at co-operative nationbuilding, the emergence of a wider cohesive national identity, which is essential for the
implementation of developmental strategies, has been stymied.
The study was carried out in Nigeria using a qualitative method involving interviews, engagements with local
debates and the use of archival materials.

Kehinde Olayode
African leaders have long been concerned with the potential for fragmentation along ethnic lines. With rare
exceptions, African states like states in most parts of the world are conglomerations of groups, thrown together by
the vagaries of colonial boundaries. Thus, states preceded nations. In essence, Nigeria came into being long
before a substantial number of its residents felt themselves to be Nigerians. They felt themselves far more likely to
be Igbo, Tiv, Hausa /Fulani or Yoruba peoples than citizens of the Nigerian nation (Welch, 1995:108)
Many early African leaders pressed for unity in the face of division. While Senegals Lopold Sdar Senghor
advocated federation and rallied against micronationalism, Ghanas Kwame Nkrumah pressed for political
unification of the newly-independent African states. Although the fear of destabilisation based on ethnicity did not
result in a United States of Africa, it did result in the creation of the Organization of African Unity, and a pledge to
maintain the inherited status quo. The OAU - now transformed into the African Union (AU) - has from its inception,
taken strong stands against revising borders or dividing states, in order to accommodate sub-national claims.
Among its principles are preservation of unity within inherited frontiers, unreserved condemnation of plotting
against member states, and respect for sovereign equality (Welch, 1995:108-109).
Therefore, in dealing with ethno-nationalism and group rights, one is focusing on one of the most emotional issues
in both contemporary African and international human rights debates. The legal interpretation of self-determination
and the place of the individual versus the group in human rights discourses remain items of serious contention.
Ethnic groups seeking to empower themselves collide with the desire of states to maintain centralized control. Thus,
pluralism, far from being viewed as an essential building block and a safeguard for competitive democracy, is
perceived as a weapon potentially destructive.
Following the inauguration of Nigerias Fourth Republic on 29th May 1999, the normally liberal environment
provided by democracy for the exercise of freedom and personal rights, triggered an unprecedented wave of ethnic
activism, and political tensions across the country. The proliferation of ethnic militias and the intensification of
ethno-regional nationalism, demanding a re-negotiation of the federalist foundations of the Nigerian state have
resulted into the escalation of ethno-religious conflicts in many of Nigerias urban communities. Foundational
issues, which had hitherto been classified as non-negotiable in the constitution-making process of the late 1980s,
appeared to have been re-invented in recent times. These issues constitute the core of the national question, which
has remained lingering and unresolved since independence.
This study attempts to answer the following questions: Should each people or nation enjoy a right to sovereign
independence? What economic and political rights can people claim? How can they achieve self-determination
within the context of an existing state? Is ethno-nationalism compatible with the legal framework of a nation state?
Should each people or nation enjoy a right to sovereign independence? Can a multi-ethnic or multi-national state
survive in the face of conflicting group claims for power?
Kehinde Olayode
Although the state unquestionably remains the most visible actor in world politics, nationalism and nationality are
potent cultural factors defining the core loyalties and identities of many people that influence how states act. Many
people pledge their primary allegiance not to the state and government that rules them, but rather to the politically
active minority group with which they associate themselves.
One broad category of such national groups is the ethno-nationalist group whose members share a common
nationality, language, cultural tradition, and kinship ties. They view themselves as members of their nationality first
and of their state only secondarilya definition that follows the interpretation of Francis (1976: 76), who maintains
that cultural affinities manifest in shared linguistic, religious, racial, or other markers [...] (and) enable one
community to distinguish itself from others. An ethnic group is regarded generally as a social collectivity, whose
members not only share such objective characteristics as language, core-territory, ancestral myths, culture, religion
and /or political organization, but also has some subjective consciousness or perception of common descent or
identity (Suberu, 1996). Okwudiba Nnoli (1993:34) elaborates on the meaning of ethno-nationalism as a
phenomenon associated with contact between cultural linguistic communal groups, characterized by cultural
prejudice and social discrimination. Underlying these characteristics are the feelings of pride in the in-group, and
the exclusiveness of its members. The central theme of ethnic nationalists is that nations are defined by a shared
heritage, which usually includes a common language, a common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry.
Anthony Smith (1991:14) describes a nation as a named human population sharing an historic territory, common
myths and historical memories, a mass public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for
all members. Smith claimed that the nation is a community of common myths and memories as in an ethnie. In
other words, Smith suggests that there is continuity between pre-modern ethnies and modern nations because these
latter are commonly formed by pre-modern ethnies cultural basis. Nations are inconceivable without that cultural
basis.
Smith (1991:73) defined nationalism as: An ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity
and identity on behalf of a population deemed by some of its members to constitute an actual or potential nation.
Nationalism, according to Smith, does not require that members of a "nation" should all be alike, only that they
should feel an intense bond of solidarity to the nation and other members of their nation. A sense of nationalism can
inhabit and be produced from whatever dominant ideology exists in a given locale. While Smith agrees with other
authors that nationalism is a modern phenomenon, he insists that nations have premodern origins. Smith argued that
any attempt to explain how and why nations emerged must start from ethnic ties and identities, which have
commonly formed their cultural basis.
Ethnic nationalism, according to Smith, is the mobilisation of ethnic groups by using language, ethno-history,
religion, traditions and customs. In other words, Smith argued that through the rediscovery of an ethnic past,
national identity could inspire ethnic communities to claim their rights as nations (Isiksal 2002:9). The central
political tenet of ethnic nationalism is that each ethnic group on earth is entitled to self-determination. The outcome
of this right to self-determination may vary, from calls for self-regulated administrative bodies within an already-
established society, to an autonomous entity separate from that society, to a sovereign state removed from that
society. In international relations, it also leads to policies and movements for irredentism to claim a common
nation based upon ethnicity.
Kehinde Olayode
Ethno-nationalism is therefore defined in this study as peoples loyalty to and identification with a particular ethnic
nationality groups within a nation state. At the heart of ethno-nationalism lies the issue of self-determination. What
economic and political rights can people claim? How can they achieve selfdetermination within the context of an
existing state? The basic issue is the right of a people to determine its own destiny. However, what constitutes a
people is still a subject of scholarly arguments, which are not the focus of this study.
The principle of self-determination is prominently embodied in Article I of the Charter of the United Nations.
Earlier it was explicitly embraced by US President Woodrow Wilson and became the guiding principle for the
reconstruction of Europe following World War I. The principle was incorporated into the 1941 Atlantic Charter and
the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals, which evolved into the United Nations Charter.
Essentially, the right to self-determination is the right of a people to determine its own destiny. In particular, the
principle allows a people to choose its own political status and to determine its own form of economic, cultural and
social development. Exercise of this right can result in a variety of different outcomes ranging from political
independence to full integration within a state. The importance lies in the right of choice, so that the outcome of a
people's choice should not affect the existence of the right to make a choice. In practice, however, the possible
outcome of an exercise of self-determination will often determine the attitude of governments towards the actual
claim by a people or nation. Thus, while claims to cultural autonomy may be more readily recognized by states,
claims to independence are more likely to be rejected by them. Nevertheless, the right to self-determination is
recognized in international law as a right of process (not of outcome) belonging to peoples and not to states or
governments.
The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 committed the idea of the right for self-determination to
the body of international protocol. In essence, all people reserve the right to seek self-determination to address a lack
of proper representation or oppression from any given government. There is tension between the concept of self-
determination and that of territorial integrity. The prevailing force of the principle of territorial integrity was
exemplified by the adherence to the principle of uti possidetis during the decolonization process (that is, the
retaining of colonial borders in the birth of independent nations). This conflict has been resolved in practice by
defining the notion of people entitled to self-determination as persons living in a particular geographic area within
a nation-state rather than persons sharing a common culture or language. Hence, self-determination as it is
understood in the early 21st century does not generally promote the political aspirations of oppressed ethnic
minorities.
Expounding his thesis on federalism in 1946, Chief Obafemi Awolowo argued that: Nigeria is not a nation. It is a
mere geographical expression. There are no Nigerians in the same sense as there are English, Welsh, or French. The
word Nigerian is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria
from those who do not. (West African Pilot, 1946)
For Awolowo, the differences among the varying ethnic groups in languages, social organisation, religion and
educational advancement slowed down progress in certain sections and thereby caused frustration among more
ambitious groups. He argued that each of the constituent units of Nigeria was a nation by itself with many tribes
and clans, and they should be allowed to solve their problems, according to their peculiar traditions and ideals
(Awolowo, 1947). Thus, the basis of Yoruba nationalism like the Ogoni struggle is rooted in self-determination
within the Nigerian state.
Kehinde Olayode

Rethinking ancestors in Africa, John C. McCall
As we reached the crest of a hill we came across a fresh and unmarked grave. Knowing that this was a strange place
for a grave, I asked what circumstances had led to a burial in this unlikely spot. One of my companions explained
that the man had lived most of his adult life in a distant city and had failed to return home periodically to share his
wealth, maintain his links with his relations in the village and retain a room in his compound. While men often
pursue careers in distant locations it was vital that they should return periodically to affirm their family ties and
maintain a room in the compound. Membership in the paternal descent group is marked by maintenance of a
personal space in the paternal compound and upon death a man should be buried under the floor of that room. Those
who fail to maintain this symbolic presence are referred to as 'lost sons'. When this particular man's body was
returned to the village for burial there was no appropriate place to bury it and so he was interred in a maize field.
The entire situation was scandalous and constituted a great embarrassment to his family. As this explanation was
completed my other companion suddenly chimed in: 'But his son could put things right if he were to build a new
compound over the grave.' It took me a moment to recognize the significance of this remark. .
This article is the product of a research project assessing the importance of ancestors in the daily life of people living
in Ohafia, a group of twenty-five villages in the Igbo-speaking region of Nigeria. Like many residents of rural areas
of Africa, Ohafia people continue to maintain shrines to their ances-tors, and ritual practices pertaining to ancestors
remain an important aspect of daily life and of agricultural activities. The fact that ancestors remain a vigorous
element in the lives of Ohafia people, and indeed of people in many rural communities in Africa, stands in stark
contrast to the recent decline of interest in ancestors and ancestor-related practices among scho-lars of African
culture and society. This divergence between cultural practice and scholarly interest is largely due to developments
in Western scholarship quite unrelated to the importance of ancestors in the experience of African people. I will
briefly outline these developments before turning to a discus-sion of my own findings. Ancestors have long held an
important place in anthropology.
By doing so I hope to demonstrate the extent to which ancestor-related practices are techniques for experientially
engaging with the socially constituted past, thus providing cultural mechanisms with which people can make and
remake their social world. In this I am in agreement with Giddens (1976, 1979) that the social world is not a given
fact-external and coercive, as in Durkheim's (1938) formulation-but is continually constituted and reconstituted
through the interrelations of individuals engaged in the work of social praxis. In Ohafia notions of ethnicity,
community, paternal and maternal descent groups-the components of every individual's sense of himself or herself
in relation to a multiplicity of social identities-are products of knowledge of the past. This knowledge is grounded in
the lived experience of daily life in Ohafia villages and the fundamental conceptions of personhood which emerge
from that experience. The categories of 'who I am' and 'who we are' are always known in relation to 'those who
brought us into the world'. My exploration of ancestors necessarily began at the locus of my own research in Ohafia.
However, my findings had much broader implications pertaining to the general question of the role of ancestors in
the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa. As I became established in the rural farming commu-nities of Ohafia and
involved in the daily flux of existence I came to appreciate the pervasiveness of the ancestral presence in the lives of
the people. The first problem which became apparent was the complexity of the notion of an ancestor. I found that
ancestors do not occupy a single 'position' in a struc-tural sense but are embodied in a number of different ways in a
wide range of activities and material culture.
A 'founder' is often a person without a home and in need of one: a person 'out of place', to paraphrase Mary Douglas.
Kopytoff (1987: 18) has observed that 'African societies were so constructed that they systematically produced
frontiersmen' and he cites the common theme in African history of the migration of 'the disgruntled, the victimized,
the exiled, the refugees, the losers in internecine struggles, the adventurous, and the ambitious'. That this ragged lot
are the source of that most exalted category of ancestor-the 'founding father'-would seem to contradict the common
observation that only those who have lived long and morally upright lives can attain the status of ancestorhood (see
Uchendu, 1976: 293). My enquiries revealed that-as the above story demonstrates-it is often scandal, conflict or
disaster that leads to a particular individual attaining the status of 'found-ing father'. This is not merely a product of
the disjuncture between the present day and a past removed to quasi-mythical times. It is an on-going process which
can be witnessed in the present. The following is an abridged example from my own field notes. As I was walking
from a remote compound back to the village with two friends, we left the main path to take a short cut through a
large maize field adjacent to the village. As we reached the crest of a hill we came across a fresh and unmarked
grave. Knowing that this was a strange place for a grave, I asked what circumstances had led to a burial in this
unlikely spot. One of my companions explained that the man had lived most of his adult life in a distant city and had
failed to return home periodically to share his wealth, maintain his links with his relations in the village and retain a
room in his compound. While men often pursue careers in distant locations it was vital that they should return
periodically to affirm their family ties and maintain a room in the compound. Membership in the paternal descent
group is marked by maintenance of a personal space in the paternal compound and upon death a man should be
buried under the floor of that room. Those who fail to maintain this symbolic presence are referred to as 'lost sons'.
When this particular man's body was returned to the village for burial there was no appropriate place to bury it and
so he was interred in a maize field. The entire situation was scandalous and constituted a great embarrassment to his
family. As this explanation was completed my other companion suddenly chimed in: 'But his son could put things
right if he were to build a new compound over the grave.' It took me a moment to recognize the significance of this
remark. .

ritual America
The Middle Passage,

It is most doubtful, as we shall presently demonstrate, that "tribalism" the use of cultural symbolism or key
cultural features to symbolize structural unity by members of the tribe, within the "modern" nations of Africa, is the
powerful evil it is purported to be. In the first place, the nationality group or the traditional nation, not the tribe, is
the problem; how to integrate the various powerful nationality groups into a truly modern nation of either Nigeria,
Ghana, or the Congo, without destroying their cultural roots and identity, is the problem, and not the less onerous
task of unifying the small, disparate and generally weak "tribes" or clans.
To acknowledge the national status of the African group would be to admit its similarity and equality with its
European counterpart, hence to question the basic rationale behind imperialism and colonialism.
In precolonial times, these societies contained large communities comparable to their kind in Europe, in
geographical area and population strength, and recognizable as nations, in the sense of communities with a common
culmre, tradition and history, and in some cases, common political, organizational and administrative structure. (6)
But they differed from most European nations in one major respect : they were nations in traditional societies. Not
all nations or nationality groups in traditional societies were organized as political units subject to a single supreme
central government, although there were a number of such units, especially among the so-called "central- ised"
polities. Strictly speaking, there were no tribes in Africa on the eve of European penetration and eventual
domination of the continent. For even before then, Africa had experienced repeated large-scale movements of people
from one region or area to the other, as the movement of the Christians through North Africa or the Moslems later
across the Sahara to western Sudan. The result was the mixing of people through conquest or marriage and the loss
of that peculiar political and economic autonomy said to distinguish the tribe from other entities. Besides, the
continental nature of Africa inevitably exposed people to relationships with their neighbours in a way that constantly
and over a time, significantly affected both their culture and institutions, thereby corrupting their " tribal purity ".
Thus, even before anthropology began effective study of what it calls the tribal society, the latter was hardly in
existence any longer.
Such was the case when the coloniser realized that the Ibos or the Yorubas or the Fanti, for example, did not just
comprise of the small group whom they met in their initial contact, but rather of several others who were not readily
accessible because of poor means of transport and communication. Instead of calling these groups nations which
they were, the European persisted in labeling them tribes. The "discovery " of some of these nations awaited the
consolidation and extension of colonialism as it brought closer together related but hitherto isolated sister clans in
the same territory. In so doing, colonialism, awakened the various groups to their common identity by making them
more aware of their common cultural symbols, rituals and language. The new consciousness in time stimulated the
groups to join in a common political rather than ritual action on a far wider scale than was previously possible.
It is most doubtful, as we shall presently demonstrate, that "tribalism" the use of cultural symbolism or key
cultural features to symbolize structural unity by members of the tribe, within the "modern" nations of Africa, is the
powerful evil it is purported to be. In the first place, the nationality group or the traditional nation, not the tribe, is
the problem; how to integrate the various powerful nationality groups into a truly modern nation of either Nigeria,
Ghana, or the Congo, without destroying their cultural roots and identity, is the problem, and not the less onerous
task of unifying the small, disparate and generally weak "tribes" or clans.
Tribalism is therefore a misnomer for a process better described as traditional nationalism, by which we mean the
brand of nationalism which is animated by the values and normative principles of a traditional society. Nationalism
is used in the present context, in the sense of the activities of any organization or group that explicity asserts the
rights, claims or aspirations of a given African society (from the level of the language-group to that of Pan-Africa)
in opposition to authority, whatever its institutional form and objectives. A society is traditional when it is marked
by strong attachments arising from a sense of natural affinity, deriving from one's birth into a given family, religious
community and language group. Relations are functionally diffuse, involve a wide portion of the lives of the group
members, hence the strong sense of group obligation and solidarity. Traditional nationalism is therefore nationalism
governed by the ties, the value system, the obligations and loyalties arising from one's membership in a traditional
society. It is the logical response of people whose society is largely traditional, to the rapidly changing world around
them; an effort at adjustment to new conditions as the old social institutions - the village, clan or even tribe are
increasingly subordinated to the "modern" society.
Not surprisingly loyalty transcending kinship membership and nationality affiliations only developed quite slowly;
in many cases it was retarded. Under this condition, associations diffuse in function and with a membership based
on primordial attachments flourished, to protect individuals and groups recently shorn of their traditional ties in the
cities. In time they laid the foundation for the special-purpose associations - the political parties and the trade
unions, that emerged later in response to " modern " nationalism.
The uses of traditional nationalism
Every nationalism is traditional to the degree that it is animated by the values and traditions of its society; for a
people's history, culture, world outlook as well as the things they cherish and treasure most, inevitably influence the
way and manner they project themselves as a national group. Where the society is mainly traditional, the nationalism
is bound to reflect marked traditionalism, as is the case in most " Third World " (23) societies. This is not without
advantage. With few exceptions, the nation-state in present-day Africa is an artificial creation of the European
coloniser. It has its origins in the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 which arbitrarily partitioned the continent among the
imperial European powers and in so doing either threw together groups with different and dissimilar customs and
languages, else divided others hitherto united by a common territory, language and history. Many a new nation-state
is thus a mosaic of peoples with differing values, traditions, sentiments and religions.
The dysfunctionality of traditional nationalism has been more widely publicized than its merits. It is claimed, for
example, that traditional loyalties weaken the emergence of wider loyalties in the new nation-states of Africa
because they entail implicit attachments to values and institutions considered incompatible with the requirements of
social reconstruction. It is even argued that because of the particularistic obligations and the diffuse orientation
inherent in nationality groups, the merging of their roles with political ones, can and does result in the compounding
of favoritism and corruption in government as well as in the intensification of separatist movements inimical to
national unity (26). While this may be true to some extent, the fact remains that traditional nationalism is possibly
one of the least powerful forces militating against national unity. Wide scale illiteracy, general poverty, poor or
ineffective leadership, poor means of transport and communication, are among the obstacles to unity in the new
nations of the world. As a matter of fact traditional nationalism has contributed more towards national unity than it
has hindered.

Ritual, community and war: Wayne K. Durrill
Local flag presentation ceremonies and disunity in the early confederacy
Scholars often assume without examining their assumption closely that rituals form part of the deep structure of
social life that transcends ordinary events and daily conflicts. Indeed, anthropologists in particular often think of
ritual as an antidote to conflict, local ritual mediators functioning as a kind of court of last resort for social conflicts
that might otherwise destroy the basic social bonds and institutions that glue a society together. But to think in such
terms renders rituals an expression of the structure of a society divorced from the actions of the members of that
society, a product of the long term experience of society brought to bear on transient difficulties. Nothing could be
further from the truth in the early Confederacy.
The advantage in developing these three themes manhood, faith, and community lay in the fact that all Southern
white men could be motivated by them, not just committed secessionists. Manhood, faith and community after all
formed the basis upon which Southern white men had constructed their per? sonal identities and secured their social
positions for generations. Oddly enough, manhood a subject usually developed in flag presentations as a figure
imbued with bravery, in short, a hero was the least well developed of the three usual themes in flag presentation

Ritual polity and economy: James Heitzman
The transactional network of an imperial temple in medieval south India.
The paradigm of the "ritual polity" suggests that cultural meaning may explain the formation of the early state, the
legitimation of its authority, and the spatial configurations of its political units.
Incorporation within large political units involved a gradation from administrative and fiscal control near the center
to an increasingly ritual and theatrical allegiance at the geographic peripheries. This paper builds on the idea of the
ritual polity to show that a pattern of ritual integration is a key to empirical study of political and economic
development. The logic of the argument is as follows: Rulers in the ritual polity had to maintain institutions and
participate in events that continually renewed their legitimacy as the upholders of cosmic order. Legitimating
activities could be episodic, such as military campaigns or meetings of the court, but the most important forms of
legitimation were the long-term support of religious institutions such as temples or monasteries-concrete
manifestations of the protection of dharma. Let us assume that the organization of ritual integration was rational, that
is, the scale or style of participation of different actors in the system manifested the importance ascribed to
individuals, families or places within the political order. The varying degrees of participation in a ritual state system
could thus indicate variations in the political and economic importance of the participants. If this assumption is
correct, then we may recreate a picture of political economy by discovering patterns of ritual behavior at the court or
at religious institutions. If the picture that emerges expands our understanding of concrete political or economic
processes, then the ritual polity will prove to be a valuable historical paradigm.
Ritual polity and economy: James Heitzman
The transactional network of an imperial temple in medieval south India.

Ritual and the Political Unconscious: Adebayo Williams
The Case of "Death and the King's Horseman"
In feudal societies, ritual was part of the cultural dominant. In other words, ritual was part of a complex and
insidious apparatus of cultural and political reproduction employed by the dominant groups. It is to be expected,
given the superannuation of the feudal mode of production in Western societies, that the phenomenon of ritual itself
would have lost much of its power and social efficacy. ,,,Thus, in the industrial and scientific age, ritual has acquired
the pejorative con- notation of a meaningless exercise, a mundane routine. But if any meaningful intellectual
encounter between Western societies and the emergent post-colonial cultures of the Third World is to take place,
such "emptied" spaces must be recontested with a view to directing people's attention to this profoundly subtle
hegemonic assault. To do this is to problematize the very concept of ritual. The first step in this process would be to
return ritual to its sacred origins, that is, to see it as an aspect of symbolic thinking which Mircea Eliade regards as
sharing the same substance with human existence (Images 12). Ritual, then, in the words ofAke Hulkrantz, is a
"fixed, usually solemn behaviour that is repeated in certain situations. Anthropologists like to call the latter 'crisis
situations,' but there is not always any crisis involved. It would be better to speak of sacred situations in
Durkheim's spirit" (136). For people in pre-industrial societies, rituals served as a vehicle for rees- tablishing contact
with the ontological essence of the tribe. On the sacred nature of rituals, Eliade is again invaluable when he notes
that "rituals are given sanctification and rationalization in a culture by being referred to supposedly divine
prototypes. Rituals periodically reconfirm the sacredness of their origins and reestablish 'sacred' (as opposed to
'profane') time for the community per- forming the rituals" (Myths 133). As can be seen from this line of argument,
rituals are expressions of human needs and desires; they are also instrumental in satisfying such needs and desires.
Since human needs are varied, there will be several prototypes of rituals to take care of them (see Hulkrantz 137).
Whatever the form ritual might take, it is clear that human sacrifice is its most severe and extreme form. Several
rationales have been advanced to explain the phenomenon of human sacrifice. They range from the need for a
reactualization of direct relations between a people and their god to a drive towards the seasonal regeneration of
sacred forces. Although the precise function of this undeniably harsh ritual might vary from place to place, it too is a
function of social needs.
Ritual and the Political Unconscious: Adebayo Williams
The Case of "Death and the King's Horseman"

ritual America
The Middle Passage,

political change.

Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions:
Catherine Bell

Ritual in the study of contemporary society and culture
What roles might the concept of ritual play in the study of contemporary society and culture? As one of the founding
concepts of our discipline, ritual has long been a cornerstone of anthropological thought: from the works of Emile
Durkheim through Gregory Bateson, Claude Levi-Strauss, Mary Douglas, and Victor Turner, countless classics have
been built upon this infinitely perplexing and thus fascinating aspect of human life. In recent decades, however,
ritual has undergone a rapid retreat from the forefront of anthropological consideration. Although rituals role in the
initial formation of anthropology does not grant it permanent immunity to transitions in scholarly interest, its recent
departure also should not be casually interpreted as proof of irrelevance.

Ritual is arguably a universal feature of human social existence: just as one cannot envision a society without
language or exchange, one would be equally hard-pressed to imagine a society without ritual. And while the word
ritual commonly brings to mind exoticized images of primitive others diligently engaged in mystical activities,
one can find rituals, both sacred and secular, throughout modern society: collective experiences, from the
Olympics to the commemoration of national tragedies; cyclical gatherings, from weekly congregations at the local
church to the annual turkey carving at Thanksgiving to the intoxication of Mardi Gras; and personal life-patterns,
from morning grooming routines to the ways in which we greet and interact with one another. Ritual is in fact an
inevitable component of culture, extending from the largest-scale social and political processes to the most intimate
aspects of our self-experience. Yet within this universality, the inherent multiplicity of ritual practices, both between
and within cultures, also reflects the full diversity of the human experience. It was then neither pure coincidence nor
primitivist exoticization that placed ritual at the center of the development of anthropological thought: it was instead
rituals rich potential insights as an object of sociocultural analysis.

Catherine Bell

In a 1992 plea to revise the Pledge of Allegiance, George P. Fletcher, a Columbia law professor, laid out the
problem in terms that demand a ritual solution. If we once had a strong sense of American destiny, we now risk
losing it. Forging a common national loyalty among immigrant children and the descendants of slaves is becoming
ever more difficult. A new, inclusive form of patriotism is needed to underscore the unity in our diversity. . . . One
way to realize the values of patriotism in our time is to rethink rituals like the Pledge of Allegiance and adapt them
to the loyalties of a multicultural society.

Fletchers concerns reflect a widespread understanding, shared with the corps of Soviet ritualists, that ritual is
indispensable not only to nationalism but also to basic modes of communal socialization. In these roles, the process
of ritual invention is neither completely self-conscious nor completely unconscious. For example, what was an
explicit ritual invention from the perspective of Soviet officials was not nearly so clear-cut for the citizens who
participated in them.

This tentative world community can only begin to attempt to acknowledge itself as such within the formality of
ritual since ritual formality defines an identity symbolically, not empirically. Heavy on the rhetoric of common
values while open to a great deal of variation in each participants purposes, ritual makes few of the pragmatic or
substantive political statements so vulnerable to disagreement and contention. Perhaps because of its ambiguity,
therefore, the Olympics are, as MacAloon puts it, the closest approximation to a truly global ritual symbol
system that humankind has yet generated.

Catherine Bell

As a combination of ritual and sports, the Olympics are an apt way of expressing the ideal of a world community
and its real-life contradictions and constraints. Indeed, the competitive open-endedness of the sports contests and the
political concerns that are apt to disrupt the games are certainly more reflective of the way that modern nations
experience the tension between global ideals and realities than a fully ritualized ceremony could express.
For de Coubertin, the ceremonies accompanying the competitions were not just aesthetic or entertaining additions.
He argued that it is primarily through the ceremonies that the Olympiad must distinguish itself from a mere series
of world championships. In this vein, he sought to formulate a religious dimension to the games, gradually
articulating a vision of the transcendent and impassioned soaring at the heart of the cult of athletics. As MacAloon
points out, de Coubertin was designing a decidedly secular and rationalized form of religion that could still evoke
the emotional appeal of religious symbols and rituals.83 With these symbols and rites, de Coubertin explicitly
wanted to give the world an idea of itself as a community, a simple, clear and tangible idea can draw together not
only people of all ages and all professions, but of all opinions and all situations.

The familiar Olympic symbols express this view of unity with diversity. For example, the lighting of the sacred
flame at Archaia Olympic (Mount Olympus) and its relay to the site of the games does not collapse or deny
geographic distance; it painstakingly traverses it. The flag of five linked rings that represent the five continents also
expresses this idea, especially when it enters the arena as the culmination of the display of national flags. The
symbols of nationhood are not squashed for a vague oneness; they are paraded and then capped by Olympic symbols
of commonality and cooperation. Likewise, when individual athletes contend and compete as persons and as
national teams, their personal and national achievements are celebrated, as in the awards ceremony that plays the
national anthem of the gold medal winner. Yet the gold, silver, and bronze medals depict Olympic insignia. In this
way, de Coubertin orchestrated an extended ceremonial that accepted and built upon the realities of modern politics.
A more idealistic view of human unity, without national or individual glory, would not have such great appeal.
Nonetheless, he copied the ancient Greek oath of honor and disinterest taken by each athlete. This oath was
central to de Coubertins sense of the Olympics and more important to the religiosity of the games than any
ceremony before the altar of Zeus. It was to be purifying ritual, the secret of the ceremonies, sworn before
the assembled flags of the competing nations before the opening of the games.

Still, in his major work, The Olympic Idea: Discourses and Essays, de Coubertins pragmatism sees beyond oaths
and ceremonies: To ask the peoples of the world to love one another is merely a form of childishness. To ask them
to respect one another is not in the least utopian, but in order to respect one another it is first necessary to know one
another.88 This emphasis on the individual and coming to know individuals, not just teams and nations, is one of
the main dynamics by which the Olympics negotiate the tensions between national identities and global unities.

This new ritual paradigm has more subtle ramifications as well. Traditionally, for example, the legitimate authority
and efficacy of ritual were closely intertwined. For invented rites, which are not deeply rooted in a any shared sense
of tradition, however, legitimacy and authority tend to be construed more lightly and on quite different grounds. For
that reason, perhaps, much greater weight appears to fall on the dimension of efficacy. There is increased pressure
for the invented rite to show that it works; this is what legitimates the rite since there is no tradition to do this.
Of course, the expectations of what it means to work are also not the same as for traditional rituals, for which no one
asked whether the rite worked, just whether it was done correctly. In some societies and cosmologies, correct
performance of a ritual made it effective whether you wanted it to be or not.

Catherine Bell

Yet its applicability to ritual activity does not seem to be very general or obvious. For a number of scholars, what
Myerhoff described indicts the prevalent style of self-conscious ritual entrepreneurship in the modern world, an
intrinsically chaotic state of affairs that is the result of losing authentic collective ritual and traditional forms of
community. Whether Myerhoff attempted to describe all ritual or just modern ritual styles, it is an assessment that
does not adequately portray what is going on in a number of contemporary - and some not so contemporary - ritual
settings. Today there is a growing social legitimacy for many types of ritual improvisation as well as the
unprecedented visibility of the very dynamics of ritual invention - from the highly idiosyncratic weddings that
became popular in the late 1960s to a whole spectrum of new private and public rites, such as divorce ceremonies or
rites to mourn the felling of the rain forest. In all of these activities, people are quite aware that they are
constructing their worlds, the moral precepts they should live by, and even the devotional images in which they
decide to believe. They plan their rites step by step, watch themselves perform them, and are quite likely to sit down
afterward and analyze what worked and what did not, both in terms of the ritual dynamics themselves and in terms
of the effects the ritual was expected to produce.
Upon closer scrutiny, this self-conscious invention of ritual is not just a modern phenomenon, although the degree to
which people now feel free to eschew any claims for ritual antiquity may be relatively unprecedented. Mens
fraternal organizations in America in the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the Freemasons and the Odd
Fellows, offered elaborate rituals that were, in fact, their main attraction. Before most of these mens groups began
to shrink dramatically in the mid-20th century, some actively solicited members to submit plans for rituals, awarding
prizes of $50 to $100 for the best and most perfect Ritual. The history of the environmental movement in America
is also the history of self-conscious devising of ceremonies, such as Arbor Day rites, to express changing
perspectives on nature.58 One Californian new age movement appointed a few members to sit down and design
from scratch a complete set of communal rituals that would express the beliefs and ideals of the group. They devised
a total package of rites, most of which were regularly and effectively performed for about twenty years, at which
time the group changed in decisive ways for a host of external reasons.

Catherine Bell

In some ritual situations, such as the development of American national rituals described earlier, it seems to have
been important not to call undue attention to the facts of invention. In other cases, however, such as the development
and introduction in the former Soviet Union of a full system of socialist rituals, this was less important since
revolutionary socialist ideology explicitly expected Soviet citizens to remake the world. By the 1960s these freshly
minted rites included public commemorations of political events, such as May Day and the anniversary of the Great
October Socialist Revolution, initiations into various groups like the Young Pioneers or the army, lifecycle rites for
the registration of newborns, marriages, funerals, and calendrical rituals associated with the agricultural cycle. The
story of Soviet ritual demonstrates that large-scale ritualization instigated and directed by a core of very self-
conscious specialists could be effectively promoted and well received by the populace.61 It was a ritual system
designed and revised in government offices by various scholar-bureaucrats for the explicit purpose of social control
and political indoctrination, a dimension that most citizens clearly understood. At the same time, many people could
find or force into these occasions symbolic actions that had emotional significance for them. While widespread
public acceptance made the ideological intent of embedding communist values in every intimate aspect of Soviet life
appear successful, the whole story suggests some important qualifications. It is far from clear, for example, that
these rites were very effective in socializing anybody to embody particular ideological attitudes and dispositions.
Researchers repeatedly point to the stubborn selectivity with which Soviet citizens accepted and participated in the
civic activities of the state, and both Soviet and Western scholars have remarked in surprise at the degree to which
people can differentiate what they do and what they believe.

Catherine Bell

Committee resolutions and then a ministerial decree called for new civic rituals to inundate the whole of Soviet life,
establishing an organic connection between the new rites and the rhythm of peoples lives that would
systematically synthesize the logical, emotional, and aesthetic dimensions of experience. The new rites would
replace older religious rites as communist morality and socialist internationalism would overpower bourgeois
nationalism. Special commissions researched both general and local issues, devised systematic descriptions of
particular rites, and gave practical assistance to those attempting to implement the rites on the local level.
Designing a rite, according to Lane, involved activities analogous to the scripting and production of a new play on
the one hand and the introduction of new political legislation on the other. A particular collective would rehearse the
script, invite critical comments from the creators and the performers, and revise it until it felt right. Then a
commission would advertise and disseminate the rite on a regional scale. The first public performances were usually
covered in the media, and gradually photographs and brochures were made available to interested parties. After the
rite was established, there was a monitoring process that could introduce further changes as necessary and periodic
seminars disseminated advice to the local officials.
Various familiar symbols and traditions were readily appropriated in bits and pieces to fashion something that was
evocative while still espousing sentiments in keeping with official directives. Likewise, once the system was in
place, specific parts of the new rites, such as the songs, could be put into the school curriculum to teach students a
type of ritual competence and prepare them with associations that they could bring to their future participation in
the ritual system.

At the beginning, it was hard to achieve the right balance of structure and spontaneity, of the ideological and the
emotional, or the collective and the personal. But the commitment to using ritual as a major tool of socialization
made the designers learn from their mistakes and give more weight to the less ideological, more affective
dimensions of ritual activity. The local officials who supervised the rites particularly observed the need for such
changes. They saw that people were looking to these rituals for some form of emotional fulfillment, and they made it
clear to the upperlevel bureaucrats that strict ideology would not do. Local officials, for example, tried to explain to
the towering chain of command over them that the 1920s birth ritual had to be changed or no one would use it. The
original, unworkable wording had the new mother declare, The child belongs to me only physically. For its
spiritual education I hand it over to society.
As an elite corps of ritual specialists emerged within the government, they defended their work by arguing that even
Christian ritual was once new and had originated by means of conscious efforts on the part of the church leadership.
Yet the Socialist ritual elite also set up various other levels of ritual experts. People were recruited on the local level
and trained to act as officiants, usually a part-time job.

Called ritual elders in the Ukraine and leaders in Russia, these officiants often requested more formal training
for their demanding jobs; one local leader went so far as to compare their periodic seminars with the training of a
priest. While the most active enthusiasm for the ritual system was probably concentrated in the party and its youth
organizations, there was general cooperation from many sectors of the population with the notable exception of the
intellectuals and artists. For calendrical holidays, most of the parades were organized by leaders of work collectives,
who needed to resort to only mild pressure to get sufficient volunteers. Subtle forms of peer group pressure clearly
pressed people to participate in workplace ceremonies, but not to the point of generating much resentment.
However, the 1960s saw more overt pressure to discourage people who preferred religious alternatives to the
sanctioned socialist rite. Yet as these socialist rituals became established and their performance more sophisticated,
persuasion seems to have been limited to impersonal propaganda.69

Catherine Bell

Some features of this history of socialist ritual invention readily turn up in situations more familiar to most people.
Certainly the ritual dimensions of American national identity - the Pledge of Allegiance, Fourth of July parades,
special ways to handle the flag, the national anthem, and so on- have also been formally created so as to socialize
people into certain ways of thinking and feeling. People respond to these symbols and events in very personal ways,
which can both support the original intentions and subvert them. Due to subtle strategies of traditionalization, most
people take these activities to be old and authoritative, rarely questioning their origins. Yet, as we saw earlier, most
of Americas national rituals were rather recently established.

The great influx of immigrants arriving in America beginning in the late 1800s led to the perception, according to
the British historian Eric Hobsbawm, that Americans had to be made. Immigrants were strongly urged to adopt
those rites already in place, such as the Fourth of July commemoration of the overthrow of European colonialism
and the Thanksgiving Day celebration of the Puritan (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) values and mythology that had
defined national culture up until this period. In return, of course, American life facilitated the emergence of a host of
immigrant celebrations, such as Columbus Day and St. Patricks Day. These helped various groups take up
acceptable if somewhat constrained ethnic places within the fabric of American culture. Meanwhile, Hobsbawm
argues, the school system self-consciously undertook a number of programs that made it a machine for political
socialization.74

Catherine Bell

Led by the daily rite of pledging allegiance to the flag, which began to spread in the 1890s, these rites defined
Americanism as an act of choice and a matter of specific practices and attitudes. One predictable result of such a
definition of what it meant to be an American was the simultaneous definition of un-Americanism. Hobsbawm
describes this un-Americanism as personified by the unassimilated immigrant, the foreigner against whom the good
American could assert his or her Americanism, not least by the punctilious performance of all the formal and
informal rituals, the assertion of all the beliefs conventionally and institutionally established as characteristic of
good Americans.
The American national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, goes back to a poem written by the Baltimore lawyer
Francis Scott Key in 1814, which was later set to the tune of a popular English song. By 1843 it was called our
national ballad, but it did not officially become the national anthem until 1931. The fact that it was formally
adopted quite recently and, more aesthetically, that so few people can comfortably sing it has led some concerned
citizens to suggest revisions or substitutions. Yet despite the obvious problems of the anthem and the obvious virtues
of many of the suggested changes, the song appears to have entered the realm of tradition where it is accorded the
respect of an aged symbol that cannot be tampered with.
In a 1992 plea to revise the Pledge of Allegiance, George P. Fletcher, a Columbia law professor, laid out the
problem in terms that demand a ritual solution. If we once had a strong sense of American destiny, we now risk
losing it. Forging a common national loyalty among immigrant children and the descendants of slaves is becoming
ever more difficult. A new, inclusive form of patriotism is needed to underscore the unity in our diversity. . . . One
way to realize the values of patriotism in our time is to rethink rituals like the Pledge of Allegiance and adapt them
to the loyalties of a multicultural society.

Catherine Bell

Fletchers concerns reflect a widespread understanding, shared with the corps of Soviet ritualists, that ritual is
indispensable not only to nationalism but also to basic modes of communal socialization. In these roles, the process
of ritual invention is neither completely self-conscious nor completely unconscious. For example, what was an
explicit ritual invention from the perspective of Soviet officials was not nearly so clear-cut for the citizens who
participated in them.

This tentative world community can only begin to attempt to acknowledge itself as such within the formality of
ritual since ritual formality defines an identity symbolically, not empirically. Heavy on the rhetoric of common
values while open to a great deal of variation in each participants purposes, ritual makes few of the pragmatic or
substantive political statements so vulnerable to disagreement and contention. Perhaps because of its ambiguity,
therefore, the Olympics are, as MacAloon puts it, the closest approximation to a truly global ritual symbol system
that humankind has yet generated.
As a combination of ritual and sports, the Olympics are an apt way of expressing the ideal of a world community
and its real-life contradictions and constraints. Indeed, the competitive open-endedness of the sports contests and the
political concerns that are apt to disrupt the games are certainly more reflective of the way that modern nations
experience the tension between global ideals and realities than a fully ritualized ceremony could express.
For de Coubertin, the ceremonies accompanying the competitions were not just aesthetic or entertaining additions.
He argued that it is primarily through the ceremonies that the Olympiad must distinguish itself from a mere series
of world championships. In this vein, he sought to formulate a religious dimension to the games, gradually
articulating a vision of the transcendent and impassioned soaring at the heart of the cult of athletics. As MacAloon
points out, de Coubertin was designing a decidedly secular and rationalized form of religion that could still evoke
the emotional appeal of religious symbols and rituals.83 With these symbols and rites, de Coubertin explicitly
wanted to give the world an idea of itself as a community, a simple, clear and tangible idea can draw together not
only people of all ages and all professions, but of all opinions and all situations.84

Catherine Bell

The familiar Olympic symbols express this view of unity with diversity. For example, the lighting of the sacred
flame at Archaia Olympic (Mount Olympus) and its relay to the site of the games does not collapse or deny
geographic distance; it painstakingly traverses it. The flag of five linked rings that represent the five continents also
expresses this idea, especially when it enters the arena as the culmination of the display of national flags.86 The
symbols of nationhood are not squashed for a vague oneness; they are paraded and then capped by Olympic symbols
of commonality and cooperation. Likewise, when individual athletes contend and compete as persons and as
national teams, their personal and national achievements are celebrated, as in the awards ceremony that plays the
national anthem of the gold medal winner. Yet the gold, silver, and bronze medals depict Olympic insignia. In this
way, de Coubertin orchestrated an extended ceremonial that accepted and built upon the realities of modern politics.
A more idealistic view of human unity, without national or individual glory, would not have such great appeal.
Nonetheless, he copied the ancient Greek oath of honor and disinterest taken by each athlete. This oath was
central to de Coubertins sense of the Olympics and more important to the religiosity of the games than any
ceremony before the altar of Zeus. It was to be purifying ritual, the secret of the ceremonies, sworn before
the assembled flags of the competing nations before the opening of the games.87
Still, in his major work, The Olympic Idea: Discourses and Essays, de Coubertins pragmatism sees beyond oaths
and ceremonies: To ask the peoples of the world to love one another is merely a form of childishness. To ask them
to respect one another is not in the least utopian, but in order to respect one another it is first necessary to know one
another.88 This emphasis on the individual and coming to know individuals, not just teams and nations, is one of
the main dynamics by which the Olympics negotiate the tensions between national identities and global unities.

From Limen to Border: DONALD WEBER
Meditation on the Legacy of Victor Turner for American Cultural Studies
What, I want to ask, is the difference between a "liminar," a liminal figure straddling "betwixt and between" (in
Turner's famous phrase) structural positions, in passage between identities, and the imagination of the "border" as a
zone or sphere of positionality? How, that is, does the discourse of the border challenge Turner's model of
liminality?
what Turner terms a striving after new forms and structures, a gestation process, a fetation of modes appropriate
to postliminal existence. The isolation, or perhaps invisibility, engenders a degree of spontaneity as detachment
from the constricted mores of the quotidian occasions a dissipation of social responsibility. Turner further
extends his definition of the experience and condition of liminality to encompass a typical permanent liminal state.
Liminality, then, does not necessarily assume a transitional aspect but can perforce exist as a state in itself. He
concludes that there exist individuals, groups, or social categories for which the liminal moment turns into a
permanent condition.

History, structure, and ritual, John D. Kelly.
By the 1970s, "social drama" and "ritual process," "communitas" and "liminality" were vital in anthropology, and
influential in many related fields of ritual and historical study. Any serious student of ritual is still expected to
grapple with the proposition that rituals, and with them societies, are not structures but processes. Each, as Turner
describes "Society (societas)," at the conclusion of The Ritual Process, "seems to be a process rather than a thing-a
dialectical process with successive phases of structure and com-munitas" (256:203). The process model is powerful.
The image of social life as "process" puts narrative at the living heart of description, and it also effaces the
distinction between the unique and the typical, a distinction surely arbitrary and definitely optional to any effort to
depict the ongoing flow. Turner's method, especially in combination with the interpretivism of Geertz (a favorite
com-bination in ritual studies), enables sweep, selectivity, and great authority in boundary- and connection-drawing,
licensing ritual analysts to capture the speech and practice of ritual and evoke the experience of it without making
explicit claims about the ongoing reality of any system. Process theorists have argued persuasively that they have
captured elements of social life missing from accounts of social structures and cultural systems. Some structuralists
contest Turner's theory as a universalization of one model of structure and anti-structure, as when Sangren argues
that Chinese society is "a self-reproducing cybernetic system" (226:129; cf 255:54) without moments of communitas
but instead with an indigenous and different logic of anti-structure and structure, yin and yang (226:132-51, 189-94).
However, other structuralists now connect the efficacy of rituals to their dramatic, aesthetic, and multivocal
character, their riotous surplus of meaning as well as their order (e.g. 254:239). In a recent review article, Vincent
argued that the late 1970s and early 1980s were the scene of a shift in multiple subfields of anthropology, "from
systemic to processual analysis" (263:112). We sense a further shift in ritual studies of the late 1980s: from images
of dialectical processes to images of deconstructive ones; from successive phases of struc-ture and anti-structuret o
relations of power and resistance; from processualism to chaotics.
From Victor Turner to Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin wrote his major study of carnival in the 1930s; it was published
in 1965, and in 1968 became the first of his books to be translated into English, as Rabelais and his World. His first
impact was in literary studies; and he arrived in anthropology, judging by the weight of references, only very
recently. To Bakhtin the medieval carnival is neither a moment of anti-structure in a dialectical process of structure-
making nor a place of nonstructure. It is the limit and opponent of "official" structure, its moving line of corrosive
parody the counter to official power and proof of the futility of ruling efforts to hegemonize. Victor Turner himself
was interested in carnival, play, and chaos (182, 257, 259).
... Turner was aware that the poor, the lower class, the subaltern had a different and closer relationship to the chaotic
potentiali-ties of ritual action, but in his imagination their goals were alternately the "leveling" of communitas, and
social mobility: "the structurally inferior aspire to symbolic structural superiority in ritual" (256:203). Similarly,
Turner was interested in play, but for him "play is a serious business!"

By the late 1970s, studies of carnival began to turn away from the idea of a functional role for anti-structure,i n a
functional synthesis of ritual process and structural necessity, towards "a greater tolerance for disorder" and a search
for an "adequate account of expressions of disorder and license as persistent elements in culture" (3:207, 3:196; 17).
More generally, many 1980s ethnographers have sought to avoid depicting one "system" or "structure" to rituals
observed: Wagner studies men's houses and mortuary feasts in New Ireland and finds "ritual elicitation of meaning"
there to involve not a closed system of institutions but "indirect and reactive, or competitive, inducement to action"
(269:xvi,215).
Bakhtin's image of the carnivalesque is no more intrinsically historical than Turner's anti-structure. But because it is
not the dialectical complement to structure, Bakhtin's chaotic, dialogical reality refuses to allow history to be
submerged into any general model of system and its transforma-tions in process. It makes all "official" structures,
systems, and practices stand out as particular phenomena with their own modalities and con-tradictions. It makes
structure intrinsically historical.
Turner was aware that the poor, the lower class, the subaltern had a different and closer relationship to the
chaotic potentiali-ties of ritual action, but in his imagination their goals were alternately the "leveling" of
communitas, and social mobility: "the structurally inferior aspire to symbolic structural superiority in
ritual" (256:203).
political change.
History, structure, and ritual John D. Kelly

RITUALS MAKING HISTORY
In recent scholarship, new issues have been raised about structure, history, and ritual. To Valeri (261:341-42),
rituals are practices in which the participants do not believe themselves to be the authors of what they do, believing
instead that their ritual significations are authorized and prescribed by a superior authority. Bloch (28, 29) dismisses
Valeri's structuralism and identifies rituals as assertions that brook no arguments, that suggest no alternatives, and
cannot be contested. Others then show that ritual is also a potent force for change, not merely a conservative power
(155, 242). In Turner's hands drama and process encompass both order and change; in Comaroff's view (56) the
drama is the struggle to control the sign, and ritual is historical practice, a highly encoded resistance to hegemonic
order. We think these elements can be brought together (see also 147, 153). Valeri's suggestion that rituals displace
authority and authorship becomes most interesting if we do not suppose that there is an ongoing and totalizing
structure or system behind practice. Rituals then are not productions from cultural templates or "expressions" of
structure, but instead are acts of power in the fashioning of structures: acts that make gods, kings, presidents, and
property-rightsb y declaring that the authority of the priest, judge, or police officer resides in a higher source, a
mana, dharma or constitution.
As Combs-Schilling (60:252) argues, "Rituals build definitions." But what gives ritual the "fullness, independence,
and capacity to orchestrate experience" that "enables it to build definitions in pure and clarified form" (60:253)?
Combs-Schilling and others (33:87ff) emphasize body imagery and inscrip-tion, which are important but do not
distinguish ritual from other activity. Ritual has the power to define bodies and many other things besides. How?
The special power in ritual acts, including their unique ability to encompass contestation, lies in the lack of
independence asserted by a ritual participant, even while he or she makes assertions about authority. To talk to a
person in trance is to speak to the deity manifesting; to talk to the judge in court is to be in court. Engagement only
adduces evidence of the presence of the god, or of the force of law.
We prefer the Hocartian sense of rituals as therefore life-empowering, and the Boasian conviction that many
structures exist, have existed, and can exist in history. Indeed, we suggest that the rituals in ongoing practice are a
principal site of new history being made, and that study of the plural formal potentialities of rituals could be basic to
efforts to imagine possibilities for real political change. In either case, from either the Foucaultian or the Boasian
view, a history of rituals is a history of reproduction, contestation, transformation, and-if we accept carnival as a
ritual-deconstruction of authority. How can a new church, school, kingdom, colony, nation, party, "Common
Market," or other "imagined community" (6) come into being except through its own characteristic rituals? Can a
state be unmade by a carnival?

Popular Legitimacy in African Multi-Ethnic States
ROBERT H. JACKSON AND CARL G. ROSBERG
The political world of ethnicity is one not only of money-lenders and market exchange, but also of ideologues and
moral campaigns. It is probably impossible permanently to repress moralistic ethnicity by, for example, responding
to all ethnic claims by instrumental policies and measures, as the recent history of many western multi-ethnic
societies suggests where moralistic ethnicity has been reasserting itself - for example, the United States, Canada,
Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, France, Italy, and Spain.2 State-ethnic relations therefore present the analyst with
questions of political right and justice as well as political interest. In this article we are concerned with the political
and moral issue of popular legitimacy in African state-ethnic relations.
It is a paradox of Africa's multi-ethnic states that internal division and discord has resulted not in their civil
disintegration, but rather in theirjurisdictional protection. The map of Africa has remained virtually unchanged since
the end of colonialism, and every state has enjoyed, and has been upheld by, international legitimacy. Most African
governments cannot be as confident about their internal legitimacy, which is not usually institutionalised. Several
regimes have opted for a one-party democracy, which has the advantage of being able to accommodate participation
without incurring a risk of internal discord stemming from organised political competition. This system of
government may become more commonplace in the future as other rulers come to recognise that political
participation need not threaten their paramount position, and that this can legitimate their authority without
provoking ethno-regional instability. But most regimes will continue to rely primarily on 'virtual representation' to
secure popular legitimacy. Of course, if such practices as nominated single lists and other forms of patronage are to
achieve legitimacy, the rulers will have to exercise their discretion fairly. It is always possible for 'virtual
representation' to deteriorate into a 'spoils system' which can easily squander general goodwill in a multi-ethnic state
if, as usually happens, the spoils are confined only to privileged groups. In uninstitutionalised multi-ethnic states
only the rulers can provide the equity that is necessary to secure popular legitimacy.

European tribalism and African nationalism Mazi Okoro Ojiaku
Asked what they consider the three most serious obstacles to unity and development in Africa, few people will, I
contend, omit "tribe" or "tribalism". For one thing, both concepts are popularly associated with the continent and
generally assumed to be inimical to progress and development. For another, both are vague and little understood by
people who use them to refer to any form of African behaviour or life style incompre- hensible or inexplicable to an
outside observer, particularly one with a different cultural framework. Thus, the difference in culture and custom, in
beliefs and institutions between Africans and non- Africans are often assumed to inhere from the tribalism of the
African.
Most social units, big and small, in Africa undoubtedly share in common a number of features such as a sense of
community among their respective memberships, relative independence from external political control and
economic influence, the habitation of a common territory, and subsistence agriculture. But these characteristics
which are clearly traditional peculia- rities, hardly refer to or define the " tribeness " of a social unit. Possibly there
never was a tribe even in traditional Africa. Its invention was therefore both inevitable in light of European
ignorance of the character and size of many African communities, early in the contact with the latter, and logical, in
view of European cultural arrogance and racial superiority complex, on the eve of the colonization of the continent.
For it is a historical fact that before the 18th Century when Europe attained her technological and industrial
superiority over the rest of the world, African and European kings and rulers, addressed and treated each other as
equals (3). But this changed shortly afterwards, as European image of themselves and of others underwent
significant transformation, in response to the industrial revolution, the demands of capitalism, and the logic of
imperialism and colonialism. Impressed by their technological achievement and amazed at the low rate of change in
African societies for example, Europeans readily identified themselves as a superior group of mankind, who owe
their high status to their culture, hence their colour (4).
Not surprisingly, limited as he was in his knowledge of African geography and institutions, and given his cultural
chauvinism and arrogance, the coloniser aided by the anthropologist, his specialist on small and non- western
societies, mistook the clan for the tribe. Even later, when it became evident that some clans were only a part of a
larger community or nation, consisting of continuous sister-clans sharing common culture, traditions and a sense of
unity, the idea of the tribe remained unchanged. Such was the case when the coloniser realized that the Ibos or the
Yorubas or the Fanti, for example, dit not just comprise of the small group whom they met in their initial contact,
but rather of several others who were not readily accessible because of poor means of transport and communication.
Instead of calling these groups nations which they were, the European persisted in labeling them tribes. The "
discovery " of some of these nations awaited the consolidation and extension of colonialism as it brought closer
together related but hitherto isolated sister clans in the same territory. In so doing, colonialism, awakened the
various groups to their common identity by making them more aware of their common cultural symbols, rituals and
language. The new consciousness in time stimulated the groups to join in a common political rather than ritual
action on a far wider scale than was previously possible. In many cases, however, some clans have remained the
small, isolated and self-contained autonomous communities reminiscent of the anthropologist's " tribe " :
communities without sister clans, and belonging to no wider community or nation. While sharing some features in
common with the clan within a nation, such a unit differs in the degree of its isolation and in its rather very limited
horizons, typical of the small-scale society (8).

Expressions of nationalism in traditional societies in Africa were not unknown prior to European colonization of the
continent, European colonialism which arbitrarily divided the continent into subject territories, put a stop to the
slave trade, and imposed its own values and institutions on the African society. But this created in its wake a new
kind of problem : it increased the danger to the autonomy of many of the nationality groups now brought together
under one administrative political unit. Thus whereas in Nigeria for example, the rivalry and conflict between the
Ibos and the Yorubas was less frequent before the colonization, it increased in intensity and frequency, following the
creation of Nigeria. Traditional nationalism also underwent a formal change, in response to the impact of
colonialism and western civilization. Thus, whereas the earlier rivalry was conducted within two or more political
and economic systems, the later one was carried out within one economy and one polity. Also, while pre-colonial
nationalism was expressed mainly in wars, raids and the preservation of the purity of a group's values, culture and
lifestyles, what followed was expressed in the form of competition for jobs, amenities, positions of power and
influence and for resource allocation in the new polity. And, while the leaders of earlier nationalism were the kings,
chiefs, war-1ords or elders, who controlled much power and authority in the rural areas, the Ibo or Yoruba
nationalism of a later time, was dominated by the western-educated, whose major theatre of action was primarily the
cities, and only secondarily the rural areas. Thus, European colonization and the resultant exposure of hitherto
isolated groups to a larger world through trade and education, sharpened every group's awareness of both itself and
others, particularly in the urban centers where the contact between different nationality elements became most
intense. Traditional nationalism readily reared up its head here in a new form : the new organizations, associations
or unions with membership drawn exclusively from the nationality group. In most cases, a major objective of these
organizations was to protect the interest of its members, to ensure the preservation of their culture and values, and to
promote the socio-economic betterment of the members' homeland (20).

ritual America
The Middle Passage,
The dynamics of traditional nationalism
If what presently is mistaken for tribalism were understood in its true light as traditional nationalism, a new
awareness could be gained in the effort to build modern and united nation-states in Africa. For then the task
becomes one of devising ways and means of positively utilizing the nationalism to build a bridge between the old
and the new and to institutionalize Western values and techniques in Africa without destruction to traditional
cultures and customs. The fact remains that the strength of the transfer of westernism to Africa depends upon how
well what is transferred is anchored on the values and institutions of the African people..
In this way, the organizations or unions contribute to the diffusion of en irely new ideas, habits, technical procedures
and a considerable restructuring of social relationships among its members, while facilitating the opportunities for
individual and group moblity as well as the social contact which help to speed the process of resocialization. The
various associations which reflect traditional nationalism serve as a plank for leadership training both in the modern
methods of business as well as in the newer associations of an urban society, as for example, the trade unions,
political parties or professional societies. In this way, traditional nationalism gives new status to many a group like
the young and ambitious who act as the interpreters and leaders of those less westernized and sophisticated than
themselves. Since their new roles help to bring them into contact with both their group and members of other
nationality groups, they help widen their horizons, while imbuing them with increased self- confidence, psychic
mobility and adjustment to the cosmopolitan ethos of the city. And in a function no less important, through the
unions or organizations, traditional nationalism acts as an adaptative mechanism by substituting, on behalf of the "
urban villager ", a grouping based on common interest, and capable of serving many of the same needs as the
traditional family or lineage. To some degree, membership in these bodies replaces much of the psychic security and
moral assurance one loses by leaving the village, with the new companionship and the new opportunity it offers in
the mutual sharing with others like oneself in moments of joy or sorrow. Not uncommonly, the organizations or
unions, provide in the fashion of the extended family, counsel and protection in terms of legal aid, or sickness and
funeral benefits to their members, thereby, enabling them to continue their most important kinship obligations (24).
All these result in what Professor Burke has termed the "process of socialization ". Through this process individual
members of a group or community shed their beliefs, values and behaviour relative to membership in certain
groupings; are exposed to new values and beliefs; modify their behaviour and human interrelationships, and act in
such a way as to form new groupings which give expression to the new or altered values, beliefs and behaviour (25).
As a matter of fact traditional nationalism has contributed more towards national unity than it has hindered. It is
common knowledge that the colonial struggle for independence in Africa succeeded only with the formation of mass
parties, which (24) Max Gluckman, " Tribalism in Modern British Central Africa ", reached the widest cross-section
of the population in a way that linked the leadership with the masses. Earlier movements failed partly because being
urban based, their membership was narrow and limited to the few educated people residing in the cities, and partly
because of the poor means of transport and communication and the general low rate of literacy in the society. Still,
another imponderable was the presence of nationality groups, as in Nigeria. Since in some cases, these differed from
one another as England, France or Germany did from each other, founding a mass or national party or movement
capable of embracing such variety of nationalities, especially under the colonial conditions, proved not only difficult
but generally impracticable (27). It is most doubtful that reliance on appeals on ideological grounds would have
succeeded in forging a political movement since ideological differences under the colonial situation were minimal.
Besides, of itself, ideology does not command much allegiance. Hence the recourse to the nationality group with its
characteristic cultural and linguistic ties among large populations, as the rallying point for the formation of parties.
Primordial attachments were viewed as the best basis for political units, on the logic that legitimate authority
acceptable to the masses flows only from the inherent coerciveness of such attachments. The idea was to build a
political base first among one's own people, thereafter to open the party or movement to people outside of the
nationality group. Unfortunately, resistance against this unity has strongly come from the artificial territorial units
created by the colonisers on the basis of national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Thus while traditional
nationalism has acted to unify peoples with a common culture and history, modern nationalism has tended to
perpetuate disunity.
The failure of many an African leader to solve problems supposedly caused by tribalism points to one possibility,
namely, misconception of these problems, for while the existence of the latter is hardly in doubt, claims as to their
causes or source of origin, are not readily convincing, particularly when associated with tribalism. Effective and
successful solution of these problems rests on a sound understanding of their causes : this in turn demands looking
beyond the false and deceptive pointers to the real and actual ones, on the logic that the knowledge so gained would
contribute significantly to the improvement and betterment of the society. If what presently is mistaken for tribalism
were understood in its true light as traditional nationalism, a new awareness could be gained in the effort to build
modern and united nation-states in Africa. For then the task becomes one of devising ways and means of positively
utilizing the nationalism to build a bridge between the old and the new and to institutionalize Western values and
techniques in Africa without destruction to traditional cultures and customs. The fact remains that the strength of the
transfer of westernism to Africa depends upon how well what is transferred is anchored on the values and
institutions of the African people..


Diasporas, James Clifford,
This essay asks what is at stake, politically and intellectually, in contemporary invocations of diaspora. It discusses
problems of defining a traveling term, in changing global conditions. How do diaspora discourses represent
experiences of displacement, of constructing homes away from home? What experiences do they reject, replace, or
marginalize? How do these discourses attain comparative scope while remaining rooted/routed in specific,
discrepant histories? The essay also explores the political ambivalence, the utopic/dystopic tension, of diaspora
visions that are always entangled in powerful global histories. It argues that contemporary diasporic practices cannot
be reduced to epiphenomena of the nation-state or of global capitalism. While defined and constrained by these
structures, they also exceed and criticize them: old and new diasporas offer resources for emergent
"postcolonialisms."

Tracking Diaspora
An unruly crowd of descriptive/interpretive terms now jostle and converse in an effort to characterize the contact
zones of nations, cultures, and regions: terms such as border, travel, creolization, transculturation, hybridity, and
diaspora (as well as the looser diasporic). Important new journals, such as Public Culture and Diaspora (or the
revived Transition), are devoted to the history and current production of transnational cultures. In his editorial
preface to the first issue of Diaspora, Khachig Tololian writes, "Diasporas are the exemplary communities of the
transnational moment." But he adds that diaspora will not be privileged in the new "Journal of Transnational
Studies" and that "the term that once described Jewish, Greek, and Armenian dispersion now shares meanings with a
larger semantic domain that includes words like immigrant, expatriate, refugee, guest-worker, exile community,
overseas community, ethnic community" (Tololian 1991:4-5). This is the domain of shared and discrepant
meanings, adjacent maps and histories, that we need to sort out and specify as we work our way into a comparative,
intercultural studies.
It is now widely understood that the old localizing strategies-by bounded community, by organic culture, by region,
by center and periphery-may obscure as much as they reveal. Roger Rouse makes this point forcefully in his
contribution to Diaspora's inaugural issue.
Separate places become effectively a single community "through the continuous circulation of people, money,
goods, and information" (Rouse 1991:14). "Transnational migrant circuits," as Rouse calls them, exemplify the
kinds of complex cultural formations that current anthropology and intercultural studies describe and theorize.'
Diasporas usually presuppose longer distances and a separation more like exile: a constitutive taboo on return, or its
postponement to a remote future. Diasporas also connect multiple communities of a dispersed population.
Systematic border crossings may be part of this interconnection, but multi-locale diaspora cultures are not
necessarily defined by a specific geopolitical boundary. It is worth holding onto the historical and geographical
specificity of the two paradigms, while recognizing that the concrete predicaments denoted by the terms border and
diaspora bleed into one another. As we will see below, diasporic forms of longing, memory, and (dis)identification
are shared by a broad spectrum of minority and migrant populations. And dispersed peoples, once separated from
homelands by vast oceans and political barriers, increasingly find themselves in border relations with the old country
thanks to a to-and-fro made possible by modem technologies of transport, communication, and labor migration.
This overlap of border and diaspora experiences in late-20th-century everyday life suggests the difficulty of
maintaining exclusivist paradigms in our attempts to account for transnational identity formations. When I speak of
the need to sort out paradigms and maintain historical specificity, I do not mean the imposition of strict meanings
and authenticity tests.
Diasporas are caught up with and defined against (1) the norms of nation-states and (2) indigenous, and especially
autochthonous, claims by "tribal" peoples. The nation-state, as common territory and time, is traversed and, to
varying degrees, subverted by diasporic attachments. Diasporic populations do not come from elsewhere in the same
way that "immigrants" do. In assimilationist national ideologies such as those of the United States, immigrants may
experience loss and nostalgia, but only en route to a whole new home in a new place. Such narratives are designed to
integrate immigrants, not people in diasporas. Whether the national narrative is one of common origins or of
gathered populations, it cannot assimilate groups that maintain important allegiances and practical connections to a
homeland or a dispersed community located elsewhere. Peoples whose sense of identity is centrally defined by
collective histories of displacement and violent loss cannot be "cured" by merging into a new national community.
This is especially true when they are the victims of ongoing, structural prejudice. Positive articulations of diaspora
identity reach outside the normative territory and temporality (myth/history) of the nation-state.3
But are diaspora cultures consistently antinationalist? What about their own national aspirations? Resistance to
assimilation can take the form of reclaiming another nation that has been lost, elsewhere in space and time, but
powerful as a political formation here and now. There are, of course, antinationalist nationalisms, and I do not want
to suggest that diasporic cultural politics are somehow innocent of nationalist aims or chauvinist agendas. Indeed,
some of the most violent articulations of purity and racial exclusivism come from diaspora populations. But such
discourses are usually weapons of the (relatively) weak. It is important to distinguish nationalist critical longing and
nostalgic or eschatological visions, from actual nation building-with the help of armies, schools, police, and mass
media.
Diaspora involves dwelling, maintaining communities, having collective homes away from home (and in this it
is different from exile, with its frequently individualistic focus). Diaspora discourse articulates, or bends together,
both roots and routes to construct what Gilroy describes as alternate public spheres (1987), forms of community
consciousness and solidarity that maintain identifications outside the national time/space in order to live inside, with
a difference.
Diaspora exists in practical, and at times principled, tension with nativist identity formations.
Transnational connections break the binary relation of minority communities with majority societies-a dependency
that structures projects of both assimilation and resistance. And it gives a strengthened spatial/historical content to
older mediating concepts such as W. E. B. Du Bois's double consciousness. Moreover, diasporas are not exactly
immigrant communities. The latter could be seen as temporary, a site where the canonical three generations
struggled through a hard transition to ethnic American status. But the "immigrant" process never worked very well
for Africans, enslaved or free, in the New World. And the so-called new immigrations of non-European peoples of
color similarly disrupt linear assimilation narratives (see especially Schiller et al. 1992). While there is a range of
acceptance and alienation associated with ethnic and class variations, the masses of these new arrivals are kept in
subordinate positions by established structures of racial exclusion.
Diaspora consciousness is thus constituted both negatively and positively. It is constituted negatively by experiences
of discrimination and exclusion. diasporic consciousness "makes the best of a bad situation." Experiences of
loss, marginality, and exile (differentially cushioned by class) are often reinforced by systematic exploitation and
blocked advancement. This constitutive suffering coexists with the skills of survival: strength in adaptive distinction,
discrepant cosmopolitanism, and stubborn visions of renewal. Diaspora consciousness lives loss and hope as a
defining tension.

The aspects of Bakhtin's legacy still most popular among us-the novel as subversive genre, carnival as permanent
revolution, and culture as a battleground where marginal figures endlessly undermine all centers-are somewhat in
eclipse on Bakhtin's home ground. And no wonder, for subversion, revolution, and the myth of a collective "body of
the people" that never hurts or dies no matter how much you torment it, understandably arouse less rapture in the ex-
Soviet Union than in the West. .. First, the mystique of carnival had to be rethought and, as it were, demystified.

Hocart argues that rituals reproduce life. In his own arguments about "power over life" Foucault orients study of
"discursive practices," and reorga-nizes the study of power in sexuality, medicine, penology, the state, and other
aspects of "modern" life. But surely Foucault is wrong to locate in 17th-century Europe the first appearance of such
"power over life," mechanisms of power characterized by "the administration of bodies and the calculated
management of life" (96:139-40) privilege political econo-my in the definition of practice, and relegate ritual to a
secondary, poetic, and even mystifying function, identifying as "traditional" the forms of authority structured by
ritual. We follow Foucault and Hocart in not privileging a political-economic definition of the real, when they insist
upon the discourse in all practices and the practice in discourse, the ritual in all politics and the politics in ritual. We
argue that ritual plays a crucial role in practice, as a vehicle for all forms of authority. From the Foucaultian point of
view, this makes all ritual sinister, and the best defense is ironic distance. We prefer the Hocartian sense of rituals as
therefore life-empowering, and the Boasian conviction that many structures exist, have existed, and can exist in
history. Indeed, we suggest that the rituals in ongoing practice are a principal site of new history being made, and
that study of the plural formal potentialities of rituals could be basic to efforts to imagine possibilities for real
political change. In either case, from either the Foucaultian or the Boasian view, a history of rituals is a history of
reproduction, contestation, transformation, and-if we accept carnival as a ritual-deconstruction of authority. How can
a new church, school, kingdom, colony, nation, party, "Common Market," or other "imagined community" come
into being except through its own characteristic rituals? Can a state be unmade by a carnival?

History, structure, and ritual John D. Kelly
While his study is clearly rooted in structural-functionalism, his project is different, and inherently historical. Evans-
Pritchard resists evidence of historical change as he depicts Zande modes of behavior and modes of thought. In
contrast, the devil iconography and rituals in South America can only be understood, in Taussig's view, through
atten-tion to their historical context, as response to conquest, Christianity, and capitalist development. There has
been a turn to history in the anthropology of the 1980s, reflected even in the titles of many published works: not
only a turn to historical materials, but a turn from accounts set in a timeless "ethnograph-ic present" to accounts that
find history intrinsic to their subject. Definition of "ritual" has long been debated; proposed delimiting features range
from biological bases (71, 258); to functional values (82, 178); to linguistic, symbolic, or semiotic forms (29, 104,
242); to rejection of the category altogether (115); to rejection of all general categories, and insistence that the
proper starting point is indigenous experience and category (203). But the definitions of ritual that have been offered
have tended to share a presupposition about their object. In part because many rituals are indigenously represented
as "ancient" and unchanging, rituals unlike riots, for example-carry an albatross of connections to "tradition," the
sacred, to structures that have generally been imagined in stasis. While riots are obviously events in history [it took
an E. P. Thompson (249) to demonstrate that they also exist as types of events in cultural fields], scholars have had a
great deal of difficulty conceiving of rituals as anything more concrete than types of events. Until recently the
unique ritual event has been an anomaly, understood only when the function or transformation is discovered that
identifies its place in structure. It is the possibility that rituals are historical events that now intrigues many
anthropologists. To review these changes in problematics, fascinations, and agendas in the anthropology of ritual,
we examine powerful images that have come to stand for ways of connecting ritual, structure, and history. Kuhn
(159:187) pro-poses that paradigmatic experiments become touchstones for whole "disci-plinary matrices" in natural
sciences. Whether or not anthropology has or has had anything like Kuhn's paradigms (indeed, whether or not
physics has), we propose that in anthropology, images of particular practices and particular 'Other debates within
anthropology's turn to history merit their own review essays, including questions about the nature of "history"a nd
"structure,"t wo concepts which, however defined, always problematize each other. For example, we do not review
discussion of practice (33, 74), world and local systems (270, 271, 281), or representation (47). Here we consider
one distinct and distinctive dimension of the anthropological turn to history: the reconsiderations of the nature of
"ritual." And because our focus is on ritual as historical, there are many important studies of ritual systems and even
ethnohistorical reconstructions of ritual systems that are not reviewed here, because they do not engage the problem
of the relation of ritual, structure, and history.

ritual America
The Middle Passage,

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