Anthropology Of Africa

Anthropology of Africa
Dillon Mahoney
LAST MODIFIED: 25 FEBRUARY 2016
DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199766567-0134
Introduction
Anthropological research in Africa has a long and storied history. Even before the trained British professional anthropologists
began long-term fieldwork in the 1930s, there had been a number of pseudo-ethnographic studies by missionaries and
explorers. The colonial-era anthropologists are often criticized today for overly simplifying the complexities of the cultures they
studied while focusing on equilibrium rather than change and ignoring the realities of colonial rule. While postcolonial critiques
are certainly important and valid, there were many exceptions to the standard critique, including the anthropologists of the
Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, who are discussed in The Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and the Manchester School, among
other sections. By the 1960s, anthropologists working in Africa were quite engaged with urbanization, the politics of ethnicity,
social transformation, and Marxist debates. The critical and often revisionist studies of the 1970s laid the groundwork for
modern anthropology as we know it in the 21st century. While facing a daunting task, this article hopes to capture the breadth
and depth of social research conducted on the continent since the early 20th century. Those areas that were colonized by
France and Britain are better represented in the anthropological literature because of colonial relationship between Africa and
anthropology that made certain colonies on the continent the laboratories for anthropological investigation. “Africa” (the idea)
also exists quite powerfully outside of the continent proper, but studies of the diaspora and the broader global impact and
import of the ideas and realities of “Africa” elsewhere are not as prominent in this article as studies conducted within the
continent itself. This article begins with discussions of colonial anthropology and moves to the postcolonial critiques and
eventually to the large number of studies focusing on transformation and change on the continent. These sections have been
broken into several categories, including Kinship, Gender, and the Family; Health, Healing, and Religion; Globalization,
Development, and Political Anthropology; and Performing and Visual Arts. The article ends with a short section on Social
Movements and Rights. This article is designed as a tool to help navigate, topic by topic, the researcher and student through a
long and complex history. It should be viewed as but a starting point for much further and in-depth analysis and exploration.
General Overviews
There are many excellent volumes that provide general overviews of African cultures or representations of Africa more
generally. Skinner 1972 is a classic survey of African cultures and peoples. Moore 1994 is one of the best works for
understanding the history of anthropology in Africa. Grinker, et al. 2010 provides a useful and interdisciplinary volume that
covers a great deal of information and provides classic as well as current readings on Africa and African cultures. Finally,
Ntarangwi, et al. 2006 provides an important edited work that includes chapters from many African anthropologists who not
only reflect on the history of anthropology in Africa but also discuss the role of African anthropologists for the future of
Africanist anthropology.

Grinker, Roy Richard, Stephen C. Lubkemann, and Christopher B. Steiner, eds. 2010. Perspectives on Africa: A reader
in culture, history, and representation. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
An extremely useful reader that covers the history and anthropology of Africa from the precolonial period to the modern day.
Moore, Sally Falk. 1994. Anthropology and Africa: Changing perspectives on a changing scene. Charlottesville: Univ.
Press of Virginia.
One of the best reviews of how the anthropological study of Africa and African peoples developed from the early evolutionary
approaches through the colonial period and into the era of independence and nation building.
Ntarangwi, Mwenda, David Mills, and Mustafa Babiker, eds. 2006. African anthropologies: History, critique, and
practice. Africa in the New Millenium. London: Zed Books.
An important volume of chapters largely by African anthropologists that explore issues of identity, practice, and the place of
colonial history in current anthropological work in Africa.
Skinner, Elliott, ed. 1972. Peoples and cultures of Africa: An anthropological reader. New York: Doubleday.
An edited volume that supplies broad information on African cultures, political and social institutions, history, genetics,
language, and ecology.
Journals
There is a wide range of peer-reviewed African-studies journals, although few that are particularly focused on the anthropology
of Africa. Most African-studies journals are interdisciplinary and several are the journals of various African-studies
associations. The journal Africa is one of the oldest and most important of these journals; its archives include some of the
classic writings by early anthropologists working in Africa. The African Studies Review is not as old, but as the journal of the
African Studies Association, it has a wide readership. The Canadian Journal of African Studies and the Nordic Journal of
African Studies give an important voice to scholars of African from Canada and Scandinavia. The African Anthropologist is
similarly designed to give African anthropologists a voice. The Journal of Religion in Africa is another long-standing
interdisciplinary journal, focusing particularly on religion. The Journal of Modern African Studies and the Journal of African
Cultural Studies have become more prominent as outlets for publishing research on a wide variety of topics, including health,
education, arts, and development in Africa.
Africa.
The premier interdisciplinary journal dedicated to the study of Africa and its peoples.
The African Anthropologist.
A biannual journal of the Pan African Anthropological Association, published by the Council for the Development of Social
Science Research in Africa.

African Studies Review.
This is the primary scholarly journal of the African Studies Association (ASA), published three times per year and with a very
wide readership because of its connection with the ASA.
Canadian Journal of African Studies.
Published three times per year, this is a widely read African Studies journal of the Canadian Association of African Studies.
Journal of African Cultural Studies.
A top journal on African cultural studies, accredited by the South African Department of Education.
Journal of Modern African Studies.
A quarterly journal focusing mainly on current issues in African politics, economics, and society.
Journal of Religion in Africa.
A journal dedicated to the interdisciplinary debate of African religion, past and present.
Nordic Journal of African Studies.
A widely ready journal and the journal of the Nordic Association of African Studies.
Colonial Anthropology
Only an in-depth exploration of the complexities and particularities of colonial anthropology can reveal how varied topics of
study and methodologies actually were. As anthropologists began fieldwork in Africa, the religious, political, and military
contexts of these initiatives were of the utmost importance. When understood within context, the early writing by missionaries,
travelers, and anthropologists is quite revealing and useful for understanding the development of the professional field of
anthropology and the early days of colonialism. While there have been numerous critiques of this early ethnographic research,
the early ethnographers were also making important methodological and theoretical leaps by focusing on specific cultures and
societies in a way that was culturally relativistic in that they approached each culture or society on its own terms. Earlier
“armchair anthropologists” had focused more closely on social evolution and the collection of a vast array of comparable
examples. Many exceptional works of colonial anthropology focus on social change, urbanization, women, popular culture,
power or politics—all topics that will be covered in sections of the article.
Early Studies
Even before Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) took up the chair at the London School of Economics in 1927 and began
training a generation of social anthropologists who were to work on the scientific anthropological study of Africa, there had
been a number of earlier anthropological investigations on the continent. While some of these earlier studies were seen as

lacking in scientific rigor and ethnographic validity, they are still important for the ethnographic information they did capture.
These studies are also some of the first attempts at a culturally relativistic approach to African cultures. Several of these early
ethnographers were either travelers like Northcote Thomas (Thomas 1913–1914) or were ignored because they were not
British, as was the case with Gerhard Lindblom (Lindblom 1920) and Bruno Gutmann (Gutmann 1926). But Malinowksi’s own
teacher, Charles Seligman, had conducted some early research on Nilotic peoples of the Sudan (Seligman and Seligman
1932). Other examples of early studies include Junod 1912, Meek 1937, and Rattray 1923.
Gutmann, Bruno. 1926. Das Recht der Dschagga. Munich: Beck.
An account of early work (The right of the Chagga) by German missionary Bruno Gutmann, conducted in colonial Tanganyika.
Junod, Henry A. 1912. The life of a South African tribe. Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Attinger Frères.
Early work on South Africa by missionary Henry Junod.
Lindblom, Gerhard. 1920. The Akamba in British East Africa: An ethnological monograph. Uppsala, Sweden:
Appelbergs Boktryckeri Aktiebolag.
One of the first ethnographies of an Africa people by a trained anthropologist. The in-depth study of the Kamba of Kenya was
conducted in great detail in the 1910s by Swedish anthropologist Gerhard Lindblom.
Meek, Charles Kingsley. 1937. Law and authority in a Nigerian society: A study in indirect rule. London: Oxford Univ.
Press.
Early work on law in colonial Nigeria, commissioned by the colonial government and featuring a foreword by Lord Frederick
Lugard.
Rattray, Robert Sutherland. 1923. Ashanti. Oxford: Clarendon.
Early ethnographic work on the Ashanti of the Gold Coast, commissioned by the colonial government.
Seligman, Charles C., and Brenda Z. Seligman. 1932. A survey of the pagan tribes of the Nilotic Sudan. London:
Routledge.
Early ethnographic survey conducted in the Sudan by physician, ethnologist, and renowned teacher of Malinowski, C. G.
Seligman. Seligman did, however, tend to create and reproduce arbitrary racialist divides between North Africa and sub-
Saharan Africa.
Thomas, C. Northcote. 1913–1914. Report on the Ibo-speaking peoples of Nigeria. London: Harrison.
Early ethnographic monograph by explorer and traveler Northcote Thomas, commissioned by the colonial government. Like
many other early ethnographers, Thomas was somewhat critical of British colonial rule.

The Construction of Race and Physical Anthropology
Several anthropological studies of the early colonial era have been influential in establishing notions of biological and physical
racial difference between Africans and Europeans, as well as among Africans. Seligman 1966, for example, argues for the
racial separation between North African and sub-Saharan Africans. French and German anthropologists have also been
influenced by the role of science in the creation of their empires and perpetuated ideas of racial differences. Conklin 2013
focuses on the connections between French imperialism and scientific racism, and Dubow 1995 provides a comprehensive
overview of scientific racism and early physical anthropology emerging from South Africa.
Conklin, Alice L. 2013. In the museum of man: Race, anthropology, and empire in France, 1850–1950. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell Univ. Press.
An exploration of the connections between French imperialism and the scientific racism that was prominent in the formative
years of French anthropology. The focus is the late 19th century and the period before and immediately after the First World
War.
Dubow, Saul. 1995. Scientific racism in modern South Africa. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
A comprehensive overview of scientific racism and the place of colonial-era physical anthropology in the construction of race
and difference in Africa, with a specific focus on South Africa. It is an important work for connecting the history of scientific
racism to apartheid and modern racism.
Seligman, C. G. 1966. Races of Africa. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
An influential if controversial text that constructs the ideas of racial differences among African peoples. Revised from the
original edition published in 1930, this book was important for creating the perception of scientific racial difference from a
physical anthropological perspective.
British Social Anthropology and Structural Functionalism
Between 1920 and the 1960s, British social anthropology dominated the study of Africa and its diverse peoples. While there
was some French anthropology, most prominent being the writing of Marcel Griaule (Griaule 1948) and his study of the Dogon
of Mali, the period was dominated by the British. The focus of the functionalists and structural functionalists inspired by noted
British anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Browne (1881–1955) was on the “African system” and a comparative method that
emphasized logic, wholeness, and cultural relativity, and that pushed beyond the earlier popular evolutionary models. While
this type of approach was a strength of the structural functionalists and had a long-lasting impact on anthropologists, there
were also a number of weaknesses to the initial structural-functional approach. For example, the “tribe” as an isolated unit
emerged at this time as the primary focus of anthropological analysis and comparison. This view is historically significant
because of the importance of the tribe as central to colonial regulation and control that helped, problematically, make the
complexity of African social systems more legible. Even early ethnographies, such as Kenyatta 1978, by African
anthropologists tend to take the tribal unit as the focal point of study. Not yet interested in a modern, changing Africa, the tribal
unit was juxtaposed to the modern-industrial social system epitomized by the European and American experiences. Evans-
Pritchard 1937 is the first major ethnographic work in Africa conducted by a trained British anthropologist, with his work on the
Azande of the southwest Sudan. This work was influential because before its time, African religious and belief systems of
thought were largely generalized as being irrational, based on superstition, and outside of the realm of scientific comparative
studies. Evans-Pritchard’s colleague Meyer Fortes also published on his findings on religion and ancestor worship. Fortes

1983 reflects his work. For more on the importance of Evans-Pritchard, see Douglas 1980 for a biography of Evans-Pritchard
and his long-lasting influence on anthropology.
Douglas, Mary. 1980. Edward Evans-Pritchard. New York: Viking.
A fascinating look at the life and career of Evans-Pritchard, written by one of his students and colleagues, Mary Douglas.
Although Evans-Pritchard was more of a structuralist who focused on comparative religion, Douglas gives special praise to
him for being a pioneer in the field of African comparative religion.
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1937. Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon.
This pivotal monograph started a new field of exploration into African belief systems as cohesive and rational. Evans-Pritchard
famously argues in this work that witchcraft among the Azande was a means of understanding coincidence and misfortune.
Fortes, Meyer. 1983. Oedipus and Job in West African religion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Originally published in 1959, this important monograph contrasts the ideas of fate and ancestor worship. The work deals with
religion and beliefs in ancestors and supernatural justice.
Griaule, Marcel. 1948. Dieu d’eau: Entretiens avec Ogotemmêli. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
This book, translated to English (Conversations with Ogotemmêli: An introduction to Dogon religious ideas) in 1965,
represents one of the first important French works of anthropology in Africa and is a very influential study of the Dogon of Mali,
their mode of thought, and their symbols, myths, and rituals.
Kenyatta, Jomo. 1978. Facing Mount Kenya: The traditional life of the Gikuyu. Nairobi, Kenya: Kenway.
Originally published in 1938, this is one of the first major works of Africanist anthropology by an African anthropologist.
Although a functionalist “tribal” study, it is an important ethnography because it is also very critical of British colonial rule.
Colonial Studies of African Political Systems
Religion and politics were central topics for early colonial anthropologists. Evans-Pritchard 1940a, the author’s work on the
Nuer, is largely political if for no more reason than at the time of his research, the British were investigating with whom to
negotiate in their violent attempt to subdue the Nuer. Evans-Pritchard found what he termed “organized anarchy” among the
Nuer, a reality he later developed into his theory of the segmentary lineage system of political organization. He further
explored political systems with his work on the Anuak of the Sudan (Evans-Pritchard 1940b). Early political anthropology
during the colonial era focused on the micro-scale and was interested largely in typologies of political systems that could be
compared through structural-functionalist models (see Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940). Evans-Pritchard’s colleague Meyer
Fortes added a number of comparative studies based on his research among the Tallensi of Ghana (see Fortes 1945). Other
notable examples include Kuper 1947, an account of the Swazi, and Schapera’s 1938 exploration of Tswana custom and law
(Schapera 1938). Southall 1954 builds on this earlier work by proposing the model of the segmentary state, which remained
relevant in political anthropology for decades. Particularly because of the methodological and theoretical innovations that came
during this time period, these early works are still important references for current research on African political systems.

Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1940a. The Nuer. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
A classic work of British social anthropology, this ethnography provides a deep analysis of a pastoralist people, their political
structure, and their relationship to the environment.
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1940b. The political system of the Anuak of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. London: Percy
Lund Humphries.
An important work by Evans-Pritchard on the Anuak of the Sudan. In this book he is as interested in African political system as
in particular modes of thought.
Fortes, Meyer. 1945. The dynamics of clanship among the Tallensi. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
An important work of structural-functional social anthropology based on the Tallensi of Ghana. Like Evans-Pritchard at the
time, Fortes was interested in African political systems and in the structuring of alliances and enmities.
Fortes, Meyer, and Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, eds. 1940. African political systems. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
A widely read comparative volume produced at the height of the popularity of structural functionalism. This work is also famous
for classifying African political systems into two types, those with centralized rule and those like that of the Nuer, who instead
had a segmentary lineage system.
Kuper, Hilda. 1947. An African aristocracy: Rank among the Swazi. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
An important early work on the political structure of an African kingdom, going well beyond village and clan structure.
Schapera, Isaac. 1938. A handbook of Tswana law and custom. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
Important early work on law and custom among the Tswana.
Southall, Aidan. 1954. Alur society: A study in processes and types of domination. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ.
Press.
This first major monograph by Southall is important for proposing his theory of the segmentary state, which influenced studies
of anthropology and political science in Africa and beyond. It is also one of the first uses of Max Weber’s theories in
ethnographic analysis.
Structuralism, Ritual, and Symbolism
Claude Lévi-Strauss and structuralism did have some influence on the anthropology of Africa, although its long-term impact
has not necessarily survived the post-structuralist critiques. Lévi-Strauss’s work on religion, ritual, and symbolism, however,
was adapted into the work of anthropologists like Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, and John Middleton. Middleton 1960, a study of
political struggles and their emergence through ritual life, is one of the first of these works. The author drew largely on the
framework of Turner 1957. The authors of Fortes and Dieterlen 1965 also used structuralist theory in their exploration of

religion and cosmology. Much of this work was replaced later by studies of social transformation and hybridization, although
Turner 1967 and its attention to symbolism has had a lasting impact on symbolic and, more recently, visual anthropology (see
Transformation and Revision).
Fortes, Meyer, and Germaine Dieterlen, eds. 1965. African systems of thought. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
This edited volume tackles a variety of themes relating to religion and cosmology, which were topics pushed to the fore by the
influence of Levi-Strauss’s structuralism.
Middleton, John. 1960. Lugbara religion: Religion and authority among an East African people. London: Oxford Univ.
Press.
Draws on Turner 1957. This work was renowned at its time for its mixture of history and ethnography and its exploration of
what Middleton viewed as an ancestral cult to make connections between political struggles and the ritual life of an African
people.
Turner, Victor. 1957. Schism and continuity in an African society. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
In this first important monograph, Turner channels the trend of the Manchester School and Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (see
The Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and the Manchester School) by focusing on a village life rather than a tribe. He also makes
use of case studies he calls “social dramas” to study conflict rather than social cohesion.
Turner, Victor. 1967. The forest of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
In this important work on the Ndembu of Zambia, Turner focuses on the importance of symbols and rituals in Ndembu life.
Change and Conflict in Colonial Africa
In addition to early studies of bounded tribal units, colonial-era anthropologists also produced a number of very important
works on social change in Africa. They did so even during the period of the Oxford School (1946–1970) and the prominence of
the structural functionalists. The author of Herskovits 1938 had earlier published his two-volume work on the Dahomey and
was very much interested in issues of continuity and change (see also Bascom and Herskovits 1959). Malinowski’s student
Monica Hunter (later Wilson) began looking at change early in her career, as evidenced by Hunter 1936. Other early examples
include the articles and books Fortes 1936, Mair 1938, Wilson and Wilson 1968, and the early writing of Max Gluckman (see
Gluckman 1940). Elliott Skinner, who later became US ambassador to Upper Volta, also wrote about European contact and
social changes brought by colonialism (see Skinner 1964). Together these works represent the seeds of what became more
focused studies of migration, economic change, and urban politics in Africa (see The Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and the
Manchester School and the subsections under Transformation and Revision).
Bascom, William R., and Melville Herskovits. 1959. Continuity and change in African cultures. Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Press.
An important work of anthropology in Africa that was open to ideas of social change during the late colonial era.

Fortes, Meyer. 1936. Culture contact as a dynamic process. Africa 9:24–55.
Despite being remembered largely as a structural functionalist interested in comparisons of African political systems, Fortes
demonstrates in this early article an awareness of cultural contact and change during his fieldwork.
Gluckman, Max. 1940. Analysis of a social situation in modern Zululand. Bantu Studies 14:1–30, 147–174.
This widely read and taught early article by Max Gluckman describes the ceremony marking the opening of a bridge in colonial
South Africa. His analysis of colonialism and awareness of social change opened up important discussions of the influence of
power and conflict in colonial Africa.
Herskovits, Melville. 1938. Dahomey, an ancient African kingdom. 2 vols. New York: J. J. Augustin.
A two-volume work on the Dahomey and one of the first major ethnographic works by an American anthropologist in Africa.
Hunter, Monica. 1936. Reaction to conquest. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
This study of the Pondo of South Africa is one of the first examples of anthropological work that investigated African migrants
working on colonial farms.
Mair, Lucy ed. 1938. Methods of study of culture contact in Africa. London: International African Institute.
Important early edited volume that is not a “tribal” study but instead explores social change and does not ignore the impact of
colonialism.
Skinner, Elliott. 1964. The Mossi of the Upper Volta: The political development of a Sudanese people. Stanford, CA:
Stanford Univ. Press.
A classic ethnography of the Mossi people, Skinner’s attempt is to understand the ancient roots of African peoples such as the
Mossi. Believing that the Mossi still maintained their ancient social structures, Skinner focuses on kinship, law, economics, and
religion, although there are also several chapters dedicated to European contact and the colonial period.
Wilson, Godfrey, and Monica Wilson. 1968. The analysis of social change: Based on observations in central Africa.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Originally published in 1945, this work is one of the early ethnographies to explore “detribalization.” However, the authors’ view
of detribalization as the breakdown of African culture and the loss of traditional norms and morals has been critiqued.
The Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and the Manchester School
Beginning in 1941 with Max Gluckman’s directorship of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (RLI) of Northern Rhodesia (now
Zambia), British anthropology took a new turn in Africa toward the analysis of migrant labor, urbanization, and social change.
This shift was both methodological and theoretical and had a lasting impact even after Gluckman returned to the University of
Manchester in the United Kingdom to become one of many leaders of what became known as the Manchester School. This

group of anthropologists rejected the negative, culture-loss perspective of many earlier anthropologists who had worked on
social change in Africa. The Manchester School looked instead at how Africans were being drawn into the world economy. The
early pioneers were Max Gluckman (Gluckman 1955), J. Clyde Mitchell (Mitchell 1956), and Elizabeth Colson (Colson 1960).
Unlike Godfrey Wilson, the RLI’s first director and a Malinowskian, Gluckman and Mitchell were interested in conflict and social
networks. Eventually Arnold Epstein (see Epstein 1958 and Epstein 1967) took the lead with his explorations of urban politics
(also see Urbanization and African Cities) and his use of extended case studies and quantitative data. This methodological
innovation included turning toward network studies and analyses such as those pioneered by J. Clyde Mitchell (see Mitchell
1969) and used by Bruce Kapferer in his study of networks and transactions (Kapferer 1972). The Manchester School
anthropologists pushed to confront social problems and to do so had to include the colonial presence in their studies.
Schumaker 2001, which focuses on the RLI and its African research assistants, is a valuable resource for more information on
the RLI and the Manchester School.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1960. Social organization of the Gwembe Tonga. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
One of several monographs by Colson on the Tonga of Northern Rhodesia, about whom Colson published extensively. By the
1970s she was publishing increasingly on social transformation and the consequences of resettlement.
Epstein, Arnold Leonard. 1958. Politics in an urban African community. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
An attempt to focus on urban Africa, the politics of trade unions, and the urban phenomenon of tribalism.
Epstein, Arnold Leonard. 1967. The craft of social anthropology. London: Tavistock.
With an introduction by Max Gluckman, this edited volume has helped popularize methodological innovations such as the use
of statistics and long-term case studies.
Gluckman, Max. 1955. The judicial process among the Barotse of northern Rhodesia. Manchester, UK: Manchester
Univ. Press.
One of many important works by Gluckman, who pushed the study of non-tribal Africa by exploring judicial systems and
conflict.
Kapferer, Bruce. 1972. Strategy and transaction in an African society. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
An important Manchester School–style look at the impact of urban networks on a shifting economy and urban socioeconomic
transactions.
Mitchell, J. Clyde. 1956. The kalela dance: Aspects of social relationships among urban Africans in Northern
Rhodesia. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
Unique for its argument that urban tribal identities were new and distinctly different from precolonial identities found in rural
areas. Focusing on dances and inter-tribal stereotyping, this book is also a fascinating study of the emergence of an urban
African popular culture.

Mitchell, J. Clyde, ed. 1969. Social networks in urban situations. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
An influential edited volume that marks a shift in methods toward urban research and network analysis.
Schumaker, Lyn. 2001. Africanizing anthropology: Fieldwork, networks, and the making of cultural knowledge in
central Africa. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
This history of the RLI and Manchester School argues that the knowledge produced by these anthropologists in the mid-20th
century was aided heavily by their African research assistants who “Africanized” anthropology at the time.
Urbanization and African Cities
The first wave of anthropological studies of cities tended to view cities such as Freetown, Sierra Leone; Kita, Mali; Ibadan,
Nigeria; and Kampala, Uganda as totalities to be studied as an alternative to the tribal model. Such is the case with Miner
1953, a study of Timbuctoo, as well as Banton 1957; Hopkins 1972; and Lloyd, et al. 1967. Their authors were being
revolutionary in the sense that they were abandoning the “tribal” unit and collecting more quantitative data. Yet they were still
very much interested in exploring cities as whole entities, their focus being on the political, economic, and social all working
together cohesively. Some early works on urban Africa were also focused on how Africans lost their traditions and tribal
identities through the urbanization process. In contrast to the pessimistic or negative detribalization model, others like Watson
1958 argue that the industrial and “tribal” socioeconomic models could coexist. The “system” models were eventually
abandoned as anthropologists embraced the complex realities they were finding. Zambia’s copperbelt proved a fertile ground
for studies of urbanization, migration, and social change (see Powdermaker 1962). Other works, like Richards 1955, a study of
colonial Uganda, focus on the impact of economic development, and Southall and Gutkind 1957 engages with issues such as
urbanization, development, and infrastructure in a study of Kampala and its suburbs.
Banton, Michael. 1957. West African city: A study of tribal life in Freetown. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
An anthropological attempt to study Freetown as an urban whole.
Hopkins, Nicholas S. 1972. Popular government in an African town: Kita, Mali. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
An ethnographic attempt to study an African city, Kita, Mali, as an entity of its own.
Lloyd, Peter C., Akin L. Mabogunje, and B. Awe. 1967. The city of Ibadan: A symposium on its structure and
development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
This volume represents an attempt to frame an African city as a whole, moving beyond the rural “tribal” model to understand
the city of Ibadan, Nigeria, in its entirety.
Miner, Horace. 1953. The primitive city of Timbuctoo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
Early urban study of a city as a whole. Miner tried with difficulty to apply Robert Redfield’s concept of the evolution of urbanity
to the city of Timbuctoo.

Powdermaker, Hortense. 1962. Copper town: Changing Africa; The human situation on the Rhodesian copperbelt.
New York: Harper & Row.
A look at the role of urbanization, industrialization, and mining in colonial Rhodesia.
Richards, Audrey. 1955. Economic development and tribal change: A study of immigrant labour in Buganda.
Cambridge, UK: Heffer.
An important early study from colonial Uganda that explores social change, ethnic diversity, and migration within the context of
economic development.
Southall, Aiden W., and Peter C. W. Gutkind. 1957. Townsmen in the making: Kampala and its suburbs. 2d ed.
Kampala, Uganda: East African Institute of Social Research.
An important and influential work on the Ugandan city of Kampala during the late colonial period. The focus is specifically on
social change during times of urbanization and increasing social stratification. The authors focus on issues such as
infrastructure development, water sanitation, and the power of African migrants to resist social change.
Watson, William. 1958. Tribal cohesion in a money economy. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
Watson argues against detribalization models, contending that industrial and “tribal” social and economic systems could
coexist. With an introduction by Max Gluckman, this book was an important piece of the broader arguments being made by the
Manchester School at the time (see also The Rhodes-Livinstone Institute and the Manchester School).
The French Marxists
Other than Marcel Griaule, the presence of French anthropologists in Africa was hardly felt within African Studies during the
colonial era. This situation changed in the 1960s when Marxist ideas came to dominate the French academy, ironically at the
same time that Lévi-Strauss, though not a Marxist, was also at the height of his popularity. Georges Balandier became the
primary promoter of anthropological studies of Africa in France. His works, such as Balandier 1963, mark a major shift in
perspective among the French, and in many ways mirror the changes in perspective and method being promoted by the RLI
and Manchester School anthropologists (see The Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and the Manchester School). Balandier’s focus
was on modern African communities and his methods were both historic and demographic. For example, Balandier 1963
compares the Fang and Bakongo and their reactions to colonization. Balandier 1970 is a political, economic, and cultural study
that explores conflict and crisis. While not as driven theoretically by Marxism, Balandier had a major impact on French Marxist
anthropologists who soon followed, including Maurice Godelier and Claude Meillassoux. While more historical than
ethnographic, Meillassoux 1964, an account of the author’s work on the Gouro of the Ivory Coast, directly confronts the
question of whether Marxist models could be applied to the African context.
Balandier, Georges. 1963. Sociologie actuelle de l’Afrique noire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Published originally in 1955, this study of modern change in French colonial Africa (Current sociology of black Africa) focuses
on conflict, politics, and the social changes brought by colonialism. In comparing the Fang and Bakongo during colonial rule,
Balandier combines interviews with demographic data gained from surveys as well as official colonial documents.

Balandier, Georges. 1970. Political anthropology. New York: Random House.
This work signals a certain consensus among both English- and French-speaking political anthropologists of the time, with a
focus on the combination of political, economic, and cultural data.
Meillassoux, Claude. 1964. Anthropologie économique des Gouro de Côte d’Ivoire. Paris: Mouton.
This important study of the Gouro of the Ivory Coast (The economic anthropology of the Gouro of the Ivory Coast) is by one of
Balandier’s students. It pushed the emerging body of theory on political anthropology into the Marxist debates of the 1960s.
Transformation and Revision
With the slow end of the colonial regimes, African studies was changing. Researchers in other fields outside of anthropology
became more interested in Africa at the same time that there emerged a larger questioning of whether Africans needed
anyone to speak for them (see Staniland 1983). There was also a critical rethinking of the role of anthropologists in Africa
during the colonial era (Asad 1973). Kopytoff 1971 and Hammond and Jablow 1992 are essentially self-critiques of
anthropology and deconstructions of earlier studies. With the emerging importance of Marx for anthropological analysis, the
focus also began to shift toward questions of development and underdevelopment, especially with Walter Rodney 1981, a
widely read and influential book on the European “underdevelopment” of Africa. The author of Mudimbe 1988 later employed
Foucault to question the role of anthropology in the invention of the very idea of Africa. The presence of women also rose to
the foreground. At the same time these challenges were being made, anthropologists were adjusting their studies and
perspective by further exploring topics of process, transformation, and change (see Moore 1986). Whether it was a
deconstruction of gender roles and ethnicity or a study of migrants, transformation came to dominate the literature (see
Vincent 1982 and the subsections of this section).
Asad, Talal, ed. 1973. Anthropology and the colonial encounter. New York: Humanities Press.
Covering more than just Africa, this edited volume provides a powerful critique of the role of British colonialism in the
production of knowledge about peoples studied by the early anthropologists of the 20th century.
Hammond, Dorothy, and Alta Jablow. 1992. The Africa that never was: Four centuries of British writing about Africa.
Prospect Heights, NJ: Waveland.
An important critique and rethinking of early British social anthropology in Africa and how it constructed an Africa that fit its
assumptions but did not necessarily exist in reality.
Kopytoff, Igor. 1971. Ancestors as elders in Africa. Africa 41:129–142.
An important critique of the study of “ancestor worship” in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on comparisons of language and issues
of translation, it is very teachable and useful for rethinking how early colonial anthropologists approached the study of African
religious practices and belief systems.

Moore, Sally Falk. 1986. Social facts and fabrications: “Customary” law on Kilimanjaro, 1880–1980. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge Univ. Press.
An important work that blends history with ethnography and explores the themes of change and constructed traditions as a
strategy of both Africans and Europeans.
Mudimbe, V. Y. 1988. The invention of Africa: Gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana
Univ. Press.
While not written by an anthropologist, this work is an important critique of colonial anthropology. Mudimbe raises a number of
questions, such as whether there is such a thing as an Africa, African culture, or an African mode of thought.
Rodney, Walter. 1981. How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Washington, DC: Howard Univ. Press.
Originally published in 1972, this largely historical and political work, while not officially ethnographic, is one of the most
influential critiques of colonialism and international development that emerged from the 1970s.
Staniland, Martin. 1983. Who needs African studies?. African Studies Review 26.2/3: 77–97.
A provocative article that asks important questions about the role of the anthropologist in African studies both in the past and
the future. Available online.
Vincent, Joan. 1982. Teso in transition: The political economy of peasant and class in east Africa. Berkeley: Univ. of
California Press.
Part of the larger shift in economic and political anthropology toward a focus on transformation. Looking at the Teso of Kenya,
this work also signals a shift toward political economy for understanding contemporary anthropological realities.
History, Politics, and Economics
While the structural functionalists had not ignored the precolonial histories of African peoples, they felt that the work and
objectives of anthropology were quite separate from those of historians. But through the late 1960s and 1970s, history gained
an ever-increasing place within the work of anthropologists. Even Evans-Pritchard 1949, a monograph on the Sanusi of
Cyrenaica, is as much historical as ethnographic, demonstrating the author’s own personal interest in history and the shift
within anthropology toward the inclusion of history within ethnographic studies—something Malinowski did not appreciate but
Evans-Pritchard very much did. Goody 1971, though criticized for its technological determinism, attempts to use a history of
technological innovations to explain the differences between African and European cultures. Harms 1981 and Kopytoff 1987
draw heavily on history to explain contemporary realities in African societies, and Iliffe 1987 roots its study of African poverty in
the history of colonialism. Most importantly, social change was recognized as central to ethnographic studies and something
that was taking place long before the colonial era. Proving this point is a central goal of Cohen and Odhiambo 1989, a study of
social change among the Luo of western Kenya. Colonial travel writing and missionizing also became important objects of
anthropological inquiry (see Comaroff 1985 and Comaroff and Comaroff 1992).

Cohen, David William, and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo. 1989. Siaya: The historical anthropology of an African landscape.
London: James Currey.
A study of the Luo-speaking residents of Siaya in western Kenya, this is an innovative ethnography that aims to break down
boundaries between ethnographers and the objects of ethnographic study. It covers topics such as gender, social change, and
modernity in deep historical context.
Comaroff, Jean. 1985. Body of power, spirit of resistance. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
An important work in a body of anthropological literature looking at the impact of missionizing and the indigenizing of
Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa (see also Changing Religion and Belief Systems).
Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. 1992. Ethnography and the historical imagination. Boulder, CO: Westview.
An important deconstruction and critique of colonial travel writing and anthropology.
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1949. The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. Oxford: Clarendon.
In this work, which is largely historical, Evans-Pritchard demonstrates the importance of history for the anthropology of Africa.
Goody, Jack. 1971. Technology, tradition, and the state in Africa. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
In this influential work on the history of the development of African political systems, Goody looks specifically at technology,
arguing that the differences between Africa and Europe are largely rooted in different histories of technological development.
Harms, Robert W. 1981. River of wealth, river of sorrow: The central Zaire Basin in the era of the slave and ivory trade,
1500–1891. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
A use of history to discuss social change during the era of the slave and then ivory trades in the Congo River Basin. The focus
is on how commerce and wealth inequality shaped the commercial class and the family relations and married life of women.
Iliffe, John. 1987. The African poor: A history. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Draws heavily on history to discuss the impoverished of Africa. Iliffe focuses on experiences of poverty and the relationship
between Africa’s poor and government activity on a resource-rich continent.
Kopytoff, Igor. 1987. The African frontier: The reproduction of traditional African societies. Bloomington: Indiana
Univ. Press.
In this influential book, Kopytoff constructs a theory about state development and the related community formation through
African history. His focus is on cycles of migration to thinly settled areas and the reproduction of earlier social formations,
relationships, and values in those newly settled areas.

History and the Hunter–Gatherer Debate
For much of the 20th century, hunter–gatherers in Africa were seen as the prototypical group for anthropological study, since
they seemed to occupy the initial phase in the evolution of human societies. Early works like Lee 1979 on the “bushmen” of the
Kalahari or Turnbull 1968 on the “pygmies” of Central Africa are classic hunter–gatherer studies. The publication of Lee and
Devore 1968 has set off an entire debate as to the validity of the anthropological studies of hunter–gatherers in Africa.
Wilmsen 1989 is the most powerful singular critique, although Lee also had his reply to this debate (see Soloway and Lee
1990).
Lee, Richard B. 1979. The !Kung San: Men, women, and work in a foraging society. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press.
A classic hunter–gatherer study, Lee includes history and ecology in his study of the culture of the !Kung of northern
Botswana.
Lee, Richard B., and Irven Devore, eds. 1968. Man the hunter: The first intensive survey of a single, crucial stage of
human development; Man’s once universal hunting way of life. Chicago: Aldine.
A controversial work dedicated to Claude Levi-Strauss, it is at the center of the hunter–gatherer debate. While controversial, it
includes important works on the !Kung, Hadza, Mbuti, and other renowned African communities by Richad Lee, Colin Turnbull,
and many others.
Soloway, Jacqueline S., and Richard B. Lee. 1990. Foragers, genuine or spurious? Situating the Kalahari San in
history. Current Anthropology 31:109–147.
In many ways a reply to Wilmsen 1989, a defense of hunter–gatherer studies, and a continuation of the broader hunter
–gatherer debate.
Turnbull, Colin M. 1968. The forest people. New York: Simon and Schuster.
This classic study of the Mbuti of the Congo describes the author’s daily experiences living in Central Africa during the 1950s.
Wilmsen, Edwin. 1989. Land filled with flies: A political economy of the Kalahari. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
An powerful challenge to popular anthropological representations of hunter–gatherers, or “bushmen” of the Kalahari.
Wilmsen’s historical approach is a key critique within the broader hunter–gatherer debate.
Migration and Change
As increasing numbers of Africans migrated to cities, the political and economic aspects of this reality were hard to ignore.
There were also many practical implications, such as the provision of food and periodic food shortages with which African
cities were forced to struggle. Bates 1981, among other works, focuses on markets, states, and food shortages. A similar
example is Hart 1982 and its use of historical political economy in a study of West African agriculture. By the 1980s,
anthropological studies of cities focused on specific issues such as labor migration and ethnicity. Anthropologists did not try to
view African cities as coherent totalities (see Urbanization and African Cities) or focus on the urban/rural gap as older studies

had. Instead, the topics of analysis became more specific, and studies focused on issues such as cloth production and
marketing (see Launay 1982). MacGaffey 1987 roots its study of Zaire’s “second economy” in the city. Rooting its study in a
history of Islamic nationalism in northern Nigerian, Lubeck 1986 explores class formation among Muslim urbanites in Kano.
Both Barnes 1986 and Cohen 1981 use cities as the arenas for the construction of a politics of elite popular culture.
Barnes, Sandra. 1986. Patrons and power: Creating a political community in metropolitan Lagos. Bloomington:
Indiana Univ. Press.
An example of the type of urban and political anthropology that emerged in the 1980s, this book explores patron-client
relations and their centrality in shaping life in Lagos, Nigeria.
Bates, Robert. 1981. Markets and states in tropical Africa: The political basis of agricultural policies. Berkeley: Univ.
of California Press.
A classic work of political and economic anthropology within Africa that explores some of the paradoxical relationships
between African states and farmers that gave rise to periodic food shortages.
Cohen, Abner. 1981. The politics of elite culture: Explorations in the dramaturgy of power in a modern African
society. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
An important work of urban anthropology focusing on class formation, politics, and the popular culture of African elites. Also an
important work in a body of anthropological literature looking at the impact of missionizing and the indigenizing of Christianity
in sub-Saharan Africa (see also Changing Religious and Belief Systems).
Hart, Keith. 1982. The political economy of West African agriculture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
This work by Hart signaled an important move toward the use of political economy in building anthropological understandings
of African urbanity.
Launay, Robert. 1982. Traders without trade: Responses to change in two Dyula communities. Cambridge, UK:
Combining history with ethnography, this book compares how two Dyula communities dealt with the loss of their precolonial
monopolies over regional trade and how they adapted through and beyond the colonial period.
Lubeck, Paul M. 1986. Islam and urban labor in northern Nigeria: The making of a Muslim working class. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
An important work on economic and social change in Kano in northern Nigeria, this monograph analyzes the interaction
between urban class formation and Islamic nationalism, arguing that industrialization has meant that Islamic nationalism has
aided the development of class consciousness.
MacGaffey, Janet. 1987. Entrepreneurs and parasites: The struggle for indigenous capitalism in Zaire. New York:

An important work on the informal, or “second,” economy (see The Informal Economy) in Zaire and the relationship between
small-scale entrepreneurs and the Mobutu state. The focus is on how an African business class found social mobility without
political connections as the economy of Zaire fell into severe decline.
The Political Construction of Tribe and Ethnicity
As criticism of anthropology continued through the 1970s and 1980s in volume and weight, there came a need to rethink the
very use of the word “tribe” by anthropologists. While ethnicity was the preferred option, it too had its failings. African “tribes”
and “ethnic groups” were rooted in a long history of social construction, invention, and politics (see van Binsbergen 1992).
Southall 1970 is one of the earliest and most convincing challenges to the tribal model. Vail 1991 creates a very useful model
for understanding the political construction of tribes out of rural-urban migration and gendered inter-generational conflict.
Hobsbawm and Ranger 1984 combines history and ethnography to explore the construction of ethnic identities. Cronk 2004
reports on work on the crossing of ethnic boundaries between foragers and pastoralists and is also very useful by focusing on
the importance of subsistence strategies. Several studies have emerged that deal specifically with pastoralists like the Maasai,
the construction of pastoralist identity and lifestyle, and their relationships with their neighbors. See, for example, Galaty and
Bonte 1991 and Spear and Waller 1993. Along a similar line, Grinker 1994 explores power relations between foragers and
farmers in Central Africa.
Cronk, Lee. 2004. From Mukugodo to Maasai: Ethnicity and cultural change in Kenya. Boulder, CO: Westview.
A blend of history and ethnography, this concise study of the construction and flexibility of ethnic boundaries in Kenya draws
attention to the connection between ethnic identity and subsistence strategy as Cronk describes how Mukogodo foragers shift
to becoming pastoral Maasai.
Galaty, John G., and Pierre Bonte, eds. 1991. Herders, warriors, and traders: Pastoralism in Africa. Boulder, CO:
Westview.
This volume compares a number of African pastoralist peoples and their neighbors, such as the Tswana and the San and the
Maasai and the Mursi. Authors explore factors such as conflict and migration in arguing that pastoralism is a legitimate and
viable economic alternative to settled agriculture.
Grinker, Roy Richard. 1994. Houses in the rainforest: Ethnicity and inequality among farmers and foragers in Central
Africa. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
An important work on the relationship between foragers and farmers in Central Africa.
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. 1984. The invention of tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
An important work of history and ethnography, this volume provides examples of how tradition was invented and manipulated
during colonialism by both the colonial administration and Africans of various groups and statuses.
Southall, Aidan. 1970. The illusion of tribe. Journal of African and Asian Studies 5:28–50.
Uses numerous historical examples to demonstrate how African “tribes” were constructed at times by colonial governments
and missionaries.

Spear, Thomas T., and Richard Waller, eds. 1993. Being Maasai: Ethnicity and identity in East Africa. Athens, OH:
Ohio Univ. Press.
An edited volume that explores the complex interaction between Maasai ethnicity and politics in an attempt to describe how
Maasai ethnicity has been constructed through time in different ways, depending upon the context.
Vail, Leroy, ed. 1991. The creation of tribalism in Southern Africa. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
This volume presents an important model by seeing tribalism as a modern political phenomenon and a product of migration
and gender relations.
van Binsbergen, Wim. 1992. Tears of rain: Ethnicity and history in central western Zambia. London, UK: Kegan Paul
International.
A blend of history and ethnography, this is an important work for understanding the historical construction and social
significance of ethnic groups in Zambia. Van Binsbergen also makes important connections between spiritual beliefs and
political life.
Postcolonial Economic Anthropology
The increasing focus on process and change has had a major impact on economic anthropology, evident in the work of the
RLI and Manchester School anthropologists (see The Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and the Manchester School) and other
works like Smith 1955 in its discussion of the Hausa economy of northern Nigeria. Early examples of this shifting focus include
Bohannan and Bohannan 1968 on the Tiv economy; Bohannan and Dalton 1962, a collection of papers on African markets;
Forde 1956, a study of Efik traders in Calabar; and Gulliver 1955, a comparison of the Jie and Turkana pastoralists of East
Africa. Cohen 1969, a study of Hausa migrant traders, argues for a further rethinking of the relationships among factors such
as ethnic identity, religion, and economy. See also Parkin 1972, a study of adaptations among Kenya’s coastal Giriama to a
market economy. Such economic studies eventually developed into full-fledged critiques of economic development policies
(see Hill 1986).
Bohannan, Paul, and Laura Bohannan. 1968. Tiv economy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press.
An important and influential book that covers topics including the farming economy, exchange, investment, and the impact of
money.
Bohannan, Paul, and George Dalton, eds. 1962. Markets in Africa. Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press.
This edited volume marks an important turn in economic anthropology by pushing away from the tribal unit and toward
economic diasporas, especially in West Africa, where there had long been connections between ethnic groups and particular
economic niches.
Cohen, Abner. 1969. Custom and politics in urban Africa: A study of Hausa migrants in Yoruba towns. Berkeley: Univ.
of California Press.

An exploration of urbanization and ethnic complexity in Ibadan, Nigeria, this book covers issues of migration, ethno-religious
politics, long-distance trade, and political ethnicity in urban Africa. Cohen discusses “retribalization,” or the hardening of new
ethno-religious boundaries during times of social and economic change.
Forde, C. Daryll. 1956. Efik traders of Old Calabar. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
An important critique of structural-functionalist approaches, this account of Forde’s work in southern Nigeria highlights the
economic importance of non-kinship associations and called into question the otherwise heavy emphasis on kinship and
lineage of the time.
Gulliver, Philip. 1955. The family herds: A study of two pastoral tribes in East Africa, the Jie and Turkana. London,
UK: Routledge.
An exploration of economic change among the Turkana and Jie pastoralists of East Africa, including issues such as the
property of pastoral communities, labor migration, and systems of land tenure.
Hill, Polly. 1986. Development economics on trial: The anthropological case for a prosecution. Cambridge, UK:
One of many important indictments of “development” in Africa by anthropologists who had come to study economic transition
from a deeply historic and ethnographic perspective (see also Development in Africa).
Parkin, David J. 1972. Palms, wine, and witnesses: Public spirit and private gain in an African farming community.
San Francisco: Chandler.
This study of the expansion of the palm wine business among the Giriama of the Kenyan coast is an important look at
economic transition and how generational and ethnic tension is negotiated as individuals balance tradition with the needs of a
modern market economy.
Smith, M. G. 1955. The economy of the Hausa communities in Zaria. London: H. M. Stationary Office.
A study of economy and social change in northern Nigeria that proved very influential for decades.
The Informal Economy
As anthropologists increased their explorations of migration to urban Africa and the economic changes that accompanied this
demographic shift, a new branch of literature emerged that explored what Hart 1973 terms the “informal economy,” based on
the author’s study of urban employment and unemployment in urban Ghana. While the term was picked up and employed
heavily by international development organizations and even African governments such as Kenya (see King 1996),
anthropologists continued with their own perspective on the development of small-scale urban business, often termed part of
the “informal” sector, or the “second economy” (MacGaffey 1991). MacGaffey and Bazenguissa-Ganga 2000 reports on the
authors’ transnational research on African traders operating globally, and Hansen and Vaa 2004 explores the relationship
between governments and informal markets and housing. Tripp 1997 draws direct connections between the informal economy
and economic neoliberalism, which proved influential to nearly all later studies of African informal economies. (see
Globalization and Neoliberalism).

Hansen, Karen, and Mariken Vaa, eds. 2004. Reconsidering informality: Perspectives from urban Africa. Uppsala,
Sweden: Sweden Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.
An edited volume that includes research on the informal economy and informal housing in Zambia, Guinea-Bissau, Zimbabwe,
the Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and Lesotho to create a wonderful set of
comparisons.
Hart, Keith. 1973. Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana. Journal of Modern African Studies
11:61–89.
The initial use of the term informal economy by Keith Hart in his study of urban Ghana. His primary research question is why
so many people listed officially as unemployed were, in fact, working so much.
King, Kenneth. 1996. Jua kali Kenya: Change and development in an informal economy, 1970–95. London: James
Currey.
This study of Kenya’s “jua kali,” or informal sector, in Nairobi explores social and economic change from the 1970s through the
1990s. It is an important work of economic anthropology that combines history and ethnography to explore the importance of
informal economies in urban Africa.
MacGaffey, Janet. 1991. The real economy of Zaire: The contribution of smuggling and other unofficial activities to
national wealth. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.
This book steers economic anthropology and the study of the “second” or “informal” economy into the realm of national and
global politics and economics.
MacGaffey, Janet, and Remy Bazenguissa-Ganga. 2000. Congo-Paris: Transnational traders on the margins of the
law. Oxford: James Currey.
An exceptional use of the life histories of transnational Congolese traders, this book is an important anthropological work of
network analysis that moves beyond sedentarist paradigms and discusses both the methodological and theoretical importance
of studying transnational African traders for our understanding of globalization and global informal economies.
Tripp, Aili Mari. 1997. Changing the rules: The politics of liberalization and the urban informal economy in Tanzania.
Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
A study of the informal economy in Dar es Salaam, this book is not only the story of economic resistance and survival during a
time of economic liberalization but also an important study of the role of women in the urban informal economy and the
broader impact on gender relations and norms.
Kinship, Gender, and the Family
Even during the colonial era, there had been some ethnographic work on marriage and the family (see Schapera 1940).
Increased migration and social change, changing family life, and gender relations became more of a topic of focus (Murray

1981). Goody 1976 is a study of changes in kinship and domestic life; it had a major impact on subsequent research. Goody
1982, an account of research on child labor and children, more generally also fits this model. The same is true of Wilson 1977,
the author’s writing on gender and generation among the Nyakyusa-Ngonda peoples of Tanzania and Malawi, and Guyer 1981
and Guyer 1987 discuss research on households and women’s role in providing food and nutrition in African cities.
Goody, Jack. 1976. Production and reproduction: A comparative study of the domestic domain. Cambridge, UK:
One of many works by Jack Goody. This book influenced many later studies of household economies and the related gender
relations by comparing typical European and African households, looking specifically at issues of class, land tenure, rural
labor, inheritance, and the gendered division of labor in each case.
Goody, Esther N. 1982. Parenthood and social reproduction: Fostering and occupational roles in West Africa.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Moving beyond simple studies of rural/urban divides or migration, this monograph focuses specifically on parenting,
apprenticeship, and the role of children in the economy.
Guyer, Jane. 1981. Household and community in African studies. African Studies Review 24:87–137.
One of many important early articles by Jane Guyer, in which she explores issues of households, labor, and the construction
of gender.
Guyer, Jane. 1987. Feeding African cities: Studies in regional social history. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
An important work representing the shift in anthropology toward a focus not only on rural-urban migration but also on the
growth of African cities and the availability of food.
Murray, Colin. 1981. Families divided: The impact of migrant labor in Lesotho. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ.
Press.
Part of the larger shift in economic and political anthropology toward an emphasis on transformation, Murray’s book focuses
on migrant labor and its impact on family life in Lesotho.
Schapera, Isaac. 1940. Married life in an African tribe. London: Faber and Faber.
One of the earliest in-depth looks at the Tswana that also discusses issues of gender and marriage.
Wilson, Monica. 1977. For men and elders: Change in the relations of generations and of men and women among the
Nyakyusa-Ngonda people, 1875–1971. New York: Africana Publishing
The fourth of Wilson’s monographs on the Nyakyusa of Tanzania and Malawi. She combines history and ethnography in
discussing changing gendered and generational relations throughout the colonial period.

African Women, Social Control, and Gender Dynamics
With a continued look at how migration, urbanization, and social transformation affected the family and kinship structures,
there has increasingly been a necessary emphasis placed on the role of women and the importance of gender dynamics to
any culture or society. Jack Goody’s work on kinship and the domestic domain (Goody 1976, cited under Kinship, Gender, and
the Family) was quickly followed by additional research on the control of marriage by men and elders and the gendered
division of labor. Other early examples of this focus on gender and women’s roles include Kaberry 2005, a study of the
position of women in the British Cameroons; Obbo 1980, reporting on the author’s work on African women; Bledsoe 1980, a
book about women and marriage; Oppong 1983, which studies gender relations in West Africa; Swantz 1985, a look at women
in development; and Bay 1982, a discussion of women and work in Africa. Much of this literature is rooted in changes brought
during colonialism, such as the emergent view of female urbanites, traders, and politicians as “wicked” in the eyes of men and
political elites. Hodgson and McCurdy 2001 discusses this view as an assertion of masculine power designed to oppress
women and stigmatize certain actions and behaviors. While many of the chapters in the authors’ book focus on historical
events, the same discursive pattern and practice can be currently found throughout Africa.
Bay, Edna G. 1982. Women and work in Africa. Boulder, CO: Westview.
An important look at social change and women’s roles in an urbanizing Africa.
Bledsoe, Caroline H. 1980. Women and marriage in Kpelle society. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
One of many important monographs at this period that deal with issues such as household economies and the gendered
division of labor.
Crehan, Kate. 1997. The fractured community: Landscapes of power and gender in rural Zambia. Berkeley: Univ. of
California Press.
A comparison of two Zambian communities, this ethnography connects everyday lived experiences with the broader political
and economic changes that affected Zambian families, gender, and kin relations during the 1980s.
Hodgson, Dorothy, and Sheryl McCurdy, eds. 2001. “Wicked” women and the reconfiguration of gender in Africa.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
An important edited volume that combines history and ethnography to discuss the roles of women in Africa and their constant
struggle against being controlled and manipulated by those in power.
Kaberry, Phyllis. 2005. Women of the grassfields: A study of the economic position of women in Bamenda, British
Cameroons. London: Routledge.
An important early study of women and gender dynamics in Cameroon, originally published in 1952 and conducted by one of
the leading early female anthropologists.
Obbo, Christine. 1980. African women: Their struggle for economic independence. London: Zed Books.
An important ethnography that focuses on women and the social construction of gender roles out of the needs and pressures
of labor migration in modern urban Africa.

Oppong, Christine, ed. 1983. Female and male in West Africa. London: Allen and Unwin.
An important edited volume that looks at labor migration and ethnicity and how gender roles and differences emerge as
socially relevant in new ways from the pressures of labor migration and economic change.
Swantz, Marja-Liisa. 1985. Women in development, a creative role denied: The case of Tanzania. New York: St.
Martin’s.
A critical study and monograph that explores issues of gender and social change as well as the emerging importance of
“women in development” in the early 1980s.
Health, Healing, and Religion
Anthropology’s focus on history and social change helped researchers connect precolonial belief systems to modern medicine
and healing while overcoming artificial dualities of modern science and traditional practices. The study of religion has
increasingly become intertwined with the study of medicine and the impact of epidemics such as HIV/AIDS. This section
attempts to make these connections through a series of subsections that include topics such as social change, traditional
healing, religious belief systems, and modern medical epidemics.
Changing Religious and Belief Systems
With the continued emergence of historically rooted studies that focused on social transformation and change, anthropological
research in Africa necessarily shifted to a look at the long-term impacts of missionizing on the continent (Comaroff and
Comaroff 1991, Comaroff and Comaroff 1997). These historical works on the history and legacy of mission work emerged
largely in the late 20th century as ethnographers increasingly encountered and studied the rise of African Independent
Churches (AICs) and the emergence of Pentecostal and charismatic forms of Christianity on the African continent. These
works are necessarily rooted in histories of colonialism and sociocultural change. Other explorations of the works of
missionaries and evangelism include Horton 1971, Jules-Rosette 1975, MacGaffey 1983, and Werbner 1977. These studies
became influential in the more recent emergent literature on exploring beliefs in the devil and Pentecostalism (see Meyer
1999).
Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. 1991. Of revelation and revolution. Vol. 1, Christianity, colonialism, and
consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
A blend of history and ethnography, this work places postcolonial African studies within the broader dialogue between Africans
and Europeans that the authors argue produced certain types of consciousness about the reality of African sociocultural
realities. The focus is specifically on the relationship between the British imagination and the Tswana.
Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. 1997. Of revelation and revolution. Vol. 2: The dialectics of modernity on a South
African frontier. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
This volume focuses on how the colonial desire to “civilize” Africans influenced the colonizers, indigenous Africans, and
Europeans back in England. The authors also look at hybrid cultural forms that emerged as a result of the missionaries’ efforts.

Horton, Robin. 1971. African conversion. Africa 41:85–108.
An important look at conversion and part of a larger body of anthropological literature on missionizing and the indigenizing of
Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa.
Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. 1975. African apostles: Ritual and conversion in the Church of John Maranke. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell Univ. Press.
An ethnographic account of ritual and conversion, this book is an important work on the impact of missionizing, conversion,
and the indigenizing of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa.
MacGaffey, Wyatt. 1983. Modern Kongo prophets: Religion in a plural society. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.
Based on research in the Congo, this ethnography is an important investigation of the role of missionizing and indigenized
Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa.
Meyer, Birgit. 1999. Translating the devil: Religion and modernity among the Ewe in Ghana. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
Univ. Press.
Blending history and ethnography, this book explores the way the Christianity of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church was
understood in Ghana. Meyer argues that modernity is related to religious enchantment even as Pentecostals focus greatly on
Satan and beliefs in the devil as a means of localizing traditional occult beliefs.
Werbner, Richard, ed. 1977. Regional cults. London: Academic Press.
An edited volume on modern Christian-inspired cults in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Modernity of Sorcery and “Witchcraft”
Accompanying studies of missionizing and religious transformation (see Changing Religious and Belief Systems) has been
research on urban cults and the modernity of sorcery, or “witchcraft.” Austen 1993, for example, calls for a rethinking of the
idea that African witchcraft as studied for decades since Evans-Pritchard is traditional or even African, arguing instead that
witchcraft in Europe and Africa are both products of the same process, the global spread of capitalism. Geschiere 1982 and
van Binsbergen 1992 are two of the first studies in anthropology to look at how the supernatural penetrated political life at all
scales of society. Geschiere 1997 builds on the author’s earlier work in his study of magic and sorcery in the markets of
Cameroon. Lan 1985, a work on spirit mediums in Zimbabwe, takes on a similar theme, although more within a context of
violence and warfare. A theme consistent in all these studies is that there is a connection between witchcraft, insecurity, and
inequality, as Adam Ashforth found in his research in Soweto (Ashforth 2005). Writing reflexively, the author of West 2007
even discusses how his own ethnographic attempts to learn about peoples’ lives in Zimbabwe were seen locally as a form of
sorcery because of the way that ethnographers, like sorcerers, make and refute claims about the world.
Ashforth, Adam. 2005. Witchcraft, violence, and democracy in South Africa. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

This book focuses on the connection between witchcraft and persistent insecurity, fear, and inequality in Soweto, South Africa.
Ashforth connects the struggle to manage the fear of witchcraft and sorcery with the challenges to legitimize the democratic
post-apartheid state in South Africa.
Austen, Ralph A. 1993. The moral economy of witchcraft: An essay in comparative history. In Modernity and its
malcontents. Edited by Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, 89–110. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
A comparison of African witchcraft to the witchcraft found in early modern Europe. Austen draws connections between the
modernity of witchcraft in Africa and market economies that stress individualism and individual accumulation.
Geschiere, Peter. 1997. The modernity of witchcraft: Politics and the occult in postcolonial Africa. Charlottesville:
Univ. Press of Virginia.
An important work on the Maka of Cameroon that explores the modernity of witchcraft in Africa. Geschiere connects witchcraft
beliefs, rumors, and superstitions to market practices and competition.
Geschiere, Peter. 1982. Village communities and the state: Changing relations among the Maka of south-eastern
Cameroon since the colonial conquest. London: Routledge.
A major work on the Maka of Cameroon and how they emerged from colonization, this monograph is also one of the first to
explore connections between the supernatural and political life.
Lan, David. 1985. Guns and rain: Guerillas and spirit mediums in Zimbabwe. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
This important monograph on research conducted among the Shona of Zimbabwe and Mozambique focuses on modern
guerilla warfare and how it was waged in Zimbabwe with the help of local spirit mediums. Lan’s focus is on syncretism of belief
systems.
West, Harry G. 2007. Ethnographic sorcery. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
An important look at sorcery among the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique. West argues that ethnography
and sorcery have much in common in that both have the ability to challenge or reverse claims about the world.
van Binsbergen, Wim. 1992. Tears of rain: Ethnicity and history in central western Zambia. London: Kegan Paul
International.
A blend of history and ethnography, this is an important work for understanding the historical construction and social
significance of ethnic groups in Zambia. Van Binsbergen also makes important connections between spiritual beliefs and
political life.
Islam in Africa
Anthropologists have been more prone to study the role of missionaries and Christianity within Africa than to focus on Islam.
Islam was, however, widespread in Africa much earlier. There are many recent studies of African Islam and the relationships

between Muslims and other belief systems in Africa. These studies range from discussions of the interactions between
Muslims and non-Muslims to the importance of Islamic revival. For example, Buggenhagen 2012 explores transnational
Senegalese women-broker ideas about Muslim beliefs and social roles as the women conduct their businesses. Masquelier
2009 is also a study of the role of women in Islamic revivalist movements. The author’s earlier work is also important for its
focus on mystical beliefs and spirit possession for connecting historical changes to the shifting identities of Niger’s Mawri (see
Masquelier 2001). Lubeck 1986 and McIntosh 2009 look at the connections between Islam and nationalism in Nigeria and
Kenya. The volume Soares and Otayek 2007 places changes within African Muslim communities within a deep political and
economic context. Such an approach draws on Soares 2005 and its earlier work on Islam in western Mali, in which the author
uses realities of social and religious change to challenge the idea that African Islam is fundamentalist.
Buggenhagen, Beth A. 2012. Muslim families in global Senegal: Money takes care of shame. Bloomington: Indiana
Univ. Press.
This look at Senegalese Murid migrants highlights the roles of women as they continue an old community tradition as
transnational traders who also negotiate and broker ideas about ritual, sacrifice, and social roles.
Lubeck, Paul M. 1986. Islam and urban labor in northern Nigeria: The making of a Muslim working class. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
An important work on economic and social change in Kano in northern Nigeria, this monograph analyzes the interaction
between urban class formation and Islamic nationalism, arguing that industrialization has meant that Islamic nationalism has
aided the development of class consciousness.
Masquelier, Adeline. 2001. Prayer has spoiled everything: Possession, power, and identity in an Islamic town in Niger.
Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
An exploration of the activities and taming of “bori,” mystical beings that are an important component of Mawri society in Niger.
Masquelier explores how the bori and bori possession both challenge and borrow from Islam in a larger reflection of identity
and historical power dynamics.
Masquelier, Adline. 2009. Women and Islamic revival in a West African town. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.
Based on research in a small town in Niger, this book explores Islamic revivalist movements among the Hausa-speaking
community, with a particular focus on the role of women in these movements and issues such as modesty and piety.
McIntosh, Janet. 2009. The edge of Islam: Power, personhood, and ethno-religious boundaries on the Kenya Coast.
Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
With a focus on the town of Malindi in coastal Kenya, this book explores ethno-religious tensions on the East African coast and
focuses on how individuals and populations of diverse backgrounds relate to one another and understand the role of Islam in
daily lives and local and national politics.
Soares, Benjamin F. 2005. Islam and the prayer economy: History and authority in a Malian town. Ann Arbor: Univ. of
Michigan Press.

Blending history and ethnography, this work counters views of Islam as fundamentalist. Soares explores everyday ways of
being Muslim and the daily lived experience of Muslim life in western Mali.
Soares, Benjamin F., and René Otayek, eds. 2007. Islam and Muslim politics in Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
The works in this edited volume on Islam are very nicely placed within the context of globalization and neoliberalism (see
Globalization and Neoliberalism). The focus is on the complexity of Islamic rights, politics, and activism in modern Africa.
Healing and Medicine
Numerous ethnographies have been published in the late 20th and early 21st centuries to break down the artificial duality of
traditional healing and modern medicine. As Wendland 2010 demonstrates in a study of African medical students, this
deconstruction is an important part of the process of learning to become a medical professional in Africa. Similarly, Langwick
2011, a study of maladies in Tanzania, directly confronts the relationship between healing and modern medicine. The study
Janzen 1992 also connects traditional dance and spirit possession with modern forms of healing the production of social
knowledge about illness. Chapman 2010 looks specifically at sexuality and maternal health, and Livingston explores both
perceptions of debility (see Livingston 2005) and cancer (see Livingston 2012) along similar lines. Hamdy 2012, a study of
perceptions of organ trafficking in Egypt, combines research on the global economy with local Islamic perceptions of ethics
and personhood.
Chapman, Rachel R. 2010. Family secrets: Risking reproduction in central Mozambique. Nashville: Vanderbilt Univ.
Press.
This book explores how neoliberal political and economic changes in Mozambique have altered perceptions of sexual and
reproductive health, specifically maternal health care. It pushes beyond dualities of traditional healing and modern science by
looking at how medical science, Shona tradition, and Christian beliefs are intertwined.
Hamdy, Sherine. 2012. Our bodies belong to God: Organ transplants, Islam, and the struggle for human dignity in
Egypt. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
This book explores the discourse surrounding organ transplants in Egypt, looking specifically at the impacts of political
oppression and the privatization of health care. It is significant for dealing with issues of medical ethics, specifically within the
context of Islamic teachings and thought.
Janzen, John M. 1992. Ngoma: Discourses of healing in central and southern Africa. Berkeley: Univ. of California
Press.
Based on research in Kinshasa and Cape Town, this work connects drumming and dance, or ngoma, to the practice of healing
and spirit possession. It links the history of medicine and religion with music and the production of social networks and
knowledge.
Langwick, Stacey A. 2011. Bodies, politics, and African healing: The matter of maladies in Tanzania. Bloomington:
Indiana Univ. Press.

An ethnographic exploration of the relationship between African healing and Western medical science. It is important for
moving beyond dualisms of science and tradition, and it connects anthropology with public health and postcolonial theory.
Livingston, Julie. 2005. Debility and the moral imagination in Botswana. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.
This book explores how social change brought by colonialism, urbanization, and the spread of modern disease has influenced
perceptions of health and disease in Botswana. It moves beyond dualisms of tradition and modern science by exploring
networks of caregiving and how they respond to new types of disability, including the impact of HIV/AIDS.
Livingston, Julie. 2012. Improvising medicine: An African oncology ward in an emerging cancer epidemic. Durham,
NC: Duke Univ. Press.
Livingston explores the politics and economics of healthcare in Botswana as cancer spreads across the Global South. Her
focus is on the blend of hope and futility that frame the everyday lived realities in an oncology ward.
Wendland, Claire L. 2010. A heart for the work: Journeys through an African medical school. Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Press.
One of the first ethnographies of medical students in Africa, this book explores how Malawian medical students balance the
realities of poverty and disease with hope and creativity. It is significant for its ethnographic method and focus on the impact of
medical training for public health.
HIV/AIDS
Especially since the 1990s and the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, there has been an increasing focus on health and the
dilemmas caused by HIV and AIDS. Much of this work also includes the importance of gender, class, power, and issues of
health more generally. Susser 2009 does an exemplary job of discussing the role of gender in shaping the face of the AIDS
epidemic in South Africa. The edited volumes Dilger and Luig 2010 and Feldman 2008 provide an excellent mix of cases
studies and complex personal experiences of families, communities, and health professionals. Church congregations also play
an interesting role in several studies (see Klaits 2010). A theme running through many works is how a lack of cultural
understanding can lead to either a failed intervention project or further conspiracy theories about the “real” causes of the
epidemic (see McNeill 2011; Rodlach 2006; Nguyen 2010). Benton 2015, a study of HIV exceptionalism, is unique because it
discusses how an African country like Sierra Leone can play on popular representations of Africa as a suffering continent to
attract donor aid from the international community.
Benton, Adia. 2015. HIV exceptionalism: Development through disease in Sierra Leone. Minneapolis: Univ. of
Minnesota Press.
Although not a country with an exceptionally high rate of HIV, as Sierra Leone emerged from civil war, the country re-branded
itself as suffering from HIV to attract international donor attention. This book is important for its exploration of the unintended
consequences of Western non-government-organization–based aid, particularly with regard to HIV/AIDS prevention.
Dilger, Hansjörg, and Ute Luig, eds. 2010. Morality, hope, and grief: Anthropologies of AIDS in Africa. Oxford:
Berghahn.

The chapters in this edited volume aim to move away from a macro-political exploration of broader political and economic
issues to the micro-politics of illness and death on the personal level. Focusing on social and moral transformation, this work
embraces the complex challenges facing families, communities, and health professionals.
Feldman, Douglas A., ed. 2008. AIDS, culture, and Africa. Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida.
Providing a criticism of an overly politicized or medicalized view of AIDS, the essays in this edited volume push for a more
anthropological view of the epidemic in Africa. Feldman focuses on how love, song, and spirituality can work to resist evil
forces in life.
Klaits, Frederick. 2010. Death in a church of life: Moral passion during Botswana’s time of AIDS. Berkeley: Univ. of
California Press.
Focuses on the power of caring and intimacy in a small Botswanan Christian congregation dealing with the AIDS epidemic.
McNeill, Fraser G. 2011. AIDS, Politics, and music in South Africa. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Focusing on the failure of biomedical approaches to fighting HIV/AIDS in South Africa, this book explores the ways various
interventions have been either appropriated or rejected. The author argues that music is central to people’s understanding how
medical interventions operate.
Nguyen, Vinh-Kim. 2010. The republic of therapy: Triage and sovereignty in West Africa’s time of AIDS. Durham, NC:
Duke Univ. Press.
Focusing on the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso, this book explores the power of storytelling about one’s own health to receive
medicine or treatment in situations in which medicine is scarce. Nguyen explores how the social significance of triage
constitutes something he refers to as therapeutic sovereignty.
Rodlach, Alexander. 2006. Witches, Westerners, and HIV: AIDS and cultures of blame in Africa. Walnut Creek, CA:
Left Coast Press.
Based on research in Zimbabwe, this book draws connections between witchcraft belief and conspiracy theories about the
roots of HIV/AIDS. The author draws attention to how cultural misunderstandings can lead to the failure of very well-meaning
health interventions.
Susser, Ida. 2009. AIDS, sex, and culture: Global politics and survival in southern Africa. Malden, MA: Wiley-
Blackwell.
Provides an account of everyday experiences with the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, focusing specifically on the importance
of gender and gender inequality for shaping the ways the AIDS epidemic affects communities and transforms social life.

Globalization, Development, and Political Anthropology
The subsections of this section cover a range of topics related to political and economic change in Africa. The first, Politics and
Patronage, covers key works from the significant literature on African political systems and the focus on ethnicity and
patrimonialism. International development is then covered in Development in Africa. This topic has grown to prominence since
the late 1980s, and entire courses are currently taught on development in Africa. Again, key works have been selected to
highlight some of the main anthropological contributions to this interdisciplinary field and to discuss the primary approaches
and debates. The subsection Understanding Violence in Africa includes literature on African wars and conflicts.
Anthropologists have played an important role in providing context and ethnographic insight into the conflicts that often occupy
Western media headlines about the continent. There are then sections on Political Ecology and African Environments, Racial
Politics, and finally a section on Globalization and Neoliberalism. Together these subsections include anthropological
approaches to power and the importance of context to understand complex situations of social change.
Politics and Patronage
During the colonial era, anthropologists explored politics primarily on the micro-level (see Colonial Studies of African Political
Systems). By the 1970s and 1980s this focus had changed. While early political anthropology in Africa had largely
concentrated on typologies, by the 1970s there was an increasing emphasis on the politics of constructed identities (see The
Political Construction of Tribe and Ethnicity). There were, however, some early studies such as Middleton 1960 and Turner
1957 (both cited under Colonial Anthropology: Structuralism, Ritual, and Symbolism) that explore how ambitious men
attempted to access the power of macro-level politics. Then with independence came a wave of studies that looked at new
elites, diversity, and pluralism (see Lloyd 1966). The major questions revolved around the incorporation of local systems into
national ones (see Cohen and Middleton 1970) or the maintenance of ethnic boundaries in multiethnic communities (see Karp
2005; Parkin 1976). Bayart 1993 has had a major impact on the field by drawing on numerous cases from French West and
Central Africa in discussing patron-client conditions and a “dog-eat-dog” mentality that characterized the logic of much of
Africa’s political elite. Far from arguing that African politics were irrational or dysfunctional, Bayart contends that African
political systems worked, although according to a logic quite opposite the typical rational Weberian model so idealized in Euro-
American political science. The book Chabal and Daloz 1999 builds on Bayart’s argument and discusses the very rational
political instrumentalization of disorder by African political elite. This book is a useful work for understanding political crises
throughout Africa (see Globalization, Development, and Political Anthropology: Understanding Violence in Africa). Haugerud
1995, a study of patronage, rural development, and the mobilization of ethnic patron-client networks in Kenya, is also essential
reading in this new political anthropology of modern Africa.
Bayart, Jean-François. 1993. The state in Africa: The politics of the belly. London: Longman.
Essential reading that focuses mainly on French West and Central Africa in the post-independence era. Bayart makes
powerful arguments about African political culture.
Chabal, Patrick, and Jean-Pascal Daloz. 1999. Africa works: Disorder as political instrument. Bloomington: Indiana
Univ. Press.
Arguing that the political instrumentalization of disorder in Africa, which often seems chaotic, is actually quite rational, the
authors cover a variety of topics, including the relationship between witchcraft and modernity, the “illusion of civil society,” and
the “informalization of politics.”
Cohen, Ronald, and John Middleton, eds. 1970. From tribe to nation in Africa. Scranton, PA: Chandler.

Although still working within the binary of the tribe and the nation, this is an important edited volume for moving political
anthropology in Africa beyond the level of micro-politics to a look at the emerging diversity and pluralism within independent
nations.
Haugerud, Angelique. 1995. The culture of politics in modern Kenya. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
This work of political anthropology explores issues of ethnic politics and mobilization among the Embu of Kenya. The book is a
crucial piece in understanding national politics, as well as the everyday struggles of a rural community.
Karp, Ivan. 2005. Fields of change among the Iteso of Kenya. New York: Routledge.
First published in 1978, this monograph marks the shift in anthropology toward social transformation and change by focusing
on the Iteso in Kenya and how they have adapted to colonial rule and the loss of political autonomy.
Lloyd, Peter C., ed. 1966. The new elites of tropical Africa. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
An important edited volume of the independence era that explores changing political realities in Africa. It pushes beyond the
micro-political level to look at the emergence of new elites as well as diversity and pluralism in African political society.
Parkin, David J., ed. 1976. Town and country in Central and Eastern Africa. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
An important edited volume that takes a more political-economic approach to understanding relationships between rural and
urban Africa.
Development in Africa
Entering the 1990s, works on development and change in Africa were rare. Written in the 1980s, Hill 1986 and Horowitz and
Painter 1986 critique development in Africa. Skinner 1989 is by an author who was both an academic and a US ambassador,
who also wrote about the social and cultural roots of Burkina Faso’s Mossi as they worked to form an independent state.
Ferguson 1990 and Ferguson 1999, studies of the relationships between the knowledge produced by development institutions
like the World Bank and the lived realities of people in Lesotho and Zambia, have become widely read and influential books in
the anthropology of development. These works also signaled a shift toward the study of development discourse (see Ferguson
1990) and the question of a possible postmodern condition in Africa (see Ferguson 1999). Other works such as Hodgson
2001, a study of the Maasai, is deeply historical and explores issues of gender, indigenous rights, and the relationships
between constructed Maasai ethnicity and various international development regimes. Smith 2008 connects religious change
and belief with the politics of development in Kenya.
Ferguson, James. 1990. The Anti-politics machine: “Development,” depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in
Lesotho. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Focusing on the power of development discourse in southern Africa, this book has influenced a generation of anthropologists
studying the power of development discourses and institutions like the World Bank to construct the idea of undevelopment and
erase the histories of African social and economic realities.

Ferguson, James. 1999. Expectations of modernity: Myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian copperbelt.
Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
An ethnography of social change on the Zambian copperbelt, this book revisits the work of the Manchester School
anthropologists (see The Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and the Manchester School) to rethink patterns of migration in Zambia.
Hill, Polly. 1986. Development economics on trial: The anthropological case for a prosecution. Cambridge, UK:
One of many important indictments of international development interventions in Africa from a deeply historical and
ethnographic perspective.
Hodgson, Dorothy. 2001. Once intrepid warriors: Gender, ethnicity, and the cultural politics of Maasai development.
Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.
Blending history and ethnography, this book explores the gender dynamics of the political mobilization of ethnic identity in East
Africa, as well as generational differences and the tensions between modernity and marginalization. An important work on the
impact of development initiatives on Tanzania’s Maasai communities.
Horowitz, Michael M., and Thomas Painter, eds. 1986. Anthropology and rural development in West Africa. London:
Westview.
Part of the shifting focus within anthropology to social transformation, this edited volume includes a number of chapters that
criticize development initiatives in Africa.
Piot, Charles. 2010. Nostalgia for the future: West Africa after the Cold War. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Drawing on fieldwork in Togo, Piot considers how West Africa has been reshaped by a new post-Cold War biopolitics. In his
rethinking of neoliberal and neocolonial West Africa, he considers topics such as new digital technologies, the resurgence in
witchcraft accusations, Pentecostalism, and a culture of scams and fraud.
Skinner, Elliott. 1989. The Mossi of Burkina Faso: Chiefs, politicians, and soldiers. Prospect Heights, NJ: Waveland.
Written in the style of a classic ethnography of the Mossi of Burkina Faso, this book seeks to understand their social structure,
religion, and politics, and the impact of colonialism as the Mossi work to form an independent state.
Smith, James Howard. 2008. Bewitching development: Witchcraft and the reinvention of development in neoliberal
Kenya. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Drawing on fieldwork conducted among Kenya’s Taita, this excellent book is an exploration of connections between
“development” and other belief systems in neoliberal East Africa. It also connects with literature on the modernity of witchcraft
and sorcery in Africa (see The Modernity of Sorcery and “Witchcraft”).

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