Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History

SociaI AnlIvopoIog and Tvo Conlvasling Uses oJ TviIaIisn in AJvica

AulIov|s) Felev F. EIeI
Souvce Conpavalive Sludies in Sociel and Hislov, VoI. 32, No. 4 |Ocl., 1990), pp. 660-700
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Social
Anthropology
and
Two
Contrasting
Uses
of Tribalism in Africa
PETER P. EKEH
State
University of
New York at
Buffalo
A remarkable feature of African studies has been the
sharp
discontinuities in
the characterization of transitions in African
history
and
society
from one era
to another.
Thus,
for an
important example,
colonialism has
rarely
been
related to the
previous
era of the slave trade in the
analysis
of
any
dominant
socioeconomic themes in Africa. Such
discontinuity
is
significant
in one
important
strand of modem African studies: The transition from the lore and
scholarship
of colonial social
anthropology
to
postcolonial
forms of African
studies has been stalled into a brittle break because its central focus on the
"tribe" has been under attack. Social
anthropology gained strength through
its
analysis
of the tribe and its associated
concepts
of kin
groups
and
kinship
behaviors in colonial Africa.
However,
following
criticisms of the mission
and manners of social
anthropology by postindependence
African scholars
and
politicians,
and a brave reexamination of the
conceptual problems
of their
discipline,
social
anthropologists
more or less
agreed
to abandon the use of
the tribe and of its more obvious derivative tribalism with
respect
to Africa.
With the abandonment of the use of tribe and tribalism has
emerged
consid-
erable confusion in various
disciplines
concerned with the intellectual discern-
ment of African social realities in connection with their
capacity
to
probe
with
persistence
issues
troubling
Africa for decades and their
ability
to
analyze
new
conceptions
of the notion of tribalism. We list some
aspects
of this
problem.
First,
in
discarding
the terms tribe and
tribalism,
social
anthropology
has
created a
gap
in African studies
by rendering years
of
scholarship
concerned
This
paper
was
prepared
while I was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, Washington,
D.C.,
and on leave from the
University
of
Ibadan, Nigeria.
I thank the
Senate of the
University
of Ibadan for
granting
me leave and the Woodrow Wilson Center for its
generous
research facilities.
My
research assistant at the Wilson Center for the summer of
1989,
Miss
Mary
Shaw
Galvin,
now a
graduate
student at Yale
University,
made
important
and sensitive
suggestions
which led me to make some
changes
in the
paper.
I am
particularly
indebted to the
two
anonymous
readers for this
journal, Comparative
Studies in
Society
and
History,
whose
extensive
queries
enabled me to rework
parts
of the
original manuscript.
0010-4175/90/4240-3162 $5.00
? 1990
Society
for
Comparative Study
of
Society
and
History
660
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA 66I
with the
analysis
of
kinship
as
virtually
irrelevant.
Clearly,
such
organized
focus on
kinship
behaviors as social
anthropology managed
for
up
to five
decades
ought
to be of
continuing
benefit and current relevance for under-
standing moder
social behaviors in Africa.
Second,
while it now
appears
that
the term "ethnic
group"
has
replaced
the
disparaged concept
of "tribe" in
African
scholarship,
there is no clear statement about the
relationship
between
the
two-whether,
especially,
there has been transition from one to the other
and whether there is
persistent
relevance in the
previous analysis
of tribes for
our
understanding
of ethnic
groups
in
moder
Africa.
Third,
while tribalism
seems now abandoned in academic
scholarship
in African studies-with
some
proposing
and indeed
using "ethnicity"
as its
replacement-paradox-
ically,
the use of the term tribalism is
enjoying unprecedented
boom not
only
in
everyday
interactions
among ordinary
Africans but more
especially among
high-ranking
Africans in
government
and
university
institutions.
There
appears
to be clear need and
justification
for a review of the intellec-
tual
component
of this
problem
of the tribe and for some
analysis
of the new
phenomenon
of tribalism in Africa. This
paper
carries out the
following
forms
of
analysis against
this
background
and
understanding.
First,
I shall evaluate
the
anthropological theory
of the tribe
along
with its
demise,
stressing
its
ahistoricity.
Second,
I shall
go
behind the colonial era
explored by
social
anthropology
to
carry
out a
probability analysis
of the social
origins
of
kinship
behaviors in
Africa,
with the
hypothesis
that
they
owe their
scope
and
signifi-
cance in both the
private
and
public
realms in Africa to the weaknesses of the
African
state,
which was unable to
provide protection
for the individual
against
the
ravages
of the slave trade. In other
words,
I shall
argue
that
kinship
assumed the role of state
surrogate during
the centuries of the slave trade.
Along
with this
position,
I
argue
that ethnic
groups
arose under colonialism as
substantial and notional
expansions
of
kinship systems
and
kinship ideology
entrenched in the slave trade era before colonial rule.
Third,
I shall
distinguish
between the
meaning
of tribalism in
anthropology
as a valued and desirable
attribute of tribes and
tribesmen,
and its uses in modern
Africa,
which have
inverted the
anthropological meaning
of this term. In this latter
usage
trib-
alism
emerges
as a
counterideology
invented to
fight against rampant kinship
ideology
in multiethnic communities in modern African nations. That
is,
I
shall demonstrate that
beyond
the
positive meaning
of tribalism in social
anthropology
as the sum of the
ways
of life of
tribesmen,
there is a new
usage
of the term tribalism that
conveys
undesirable modes of behavior in modern
Africa-a
subject clearly requiring
some attention.
Underlying
this
attempt
at
analysing
tribalism,
and its historical and
conceptual antecedents,
is the as-
sumption
that,
in this area at
least,
there are continuities in African
history
and
society,
and that the
sociological
and historical
meanings
of modern African
phenomena
will
emerge
most
fully
if
they
are traced to their roots in the
centuries of the slave trade and colonialism.
662 PETER P. EKEH
EVALUATION OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE TRIBE
AND KINSHIP BEHAVIORS IN AFRICA
Stretching
back to the
beginnings
of their
discipline
in Radcliffe-Brown's
early
sketches
(for example, 1924),
social
anthropologists
reduced African
societies
they
studied to what
they
termed "tribes." The notion of the tribe
was
apparently adopted
as a heuristic
category
for the convenience of
analy-
sis,
with
only
intuitive
meanings
attached to it.
Indeed,
well
up
to the 1950s
there was no known
major
effort to define the tribe. The
itchings
and irrita-
tions of African nationalist reactions
compelled
clearer attention to the defini-
tion of the tribe in the late 1950s and
1960s,
even as social
anthropology
was
in
danger
of
losing
its
territory
of
captive "natives,"
with the
twilight
of
British and French colonization in
sight.
When
finally anthropologists
turned
their attention to the
challenge
of
clarifying
the
meaning
of the
tribe,
the
outcome was not
enlightening.
The net result of various initial
stocktaking
exercises
(for
example,
Fried
1967:154-74;
essays
in Helm
1968;
and Lewis
1968a)
was that
anthropolo-
gists agreed
the term tribe was not amenable to a clear definition and should
be modified. The nearest that could be accommodated within the
discipline
was "tribal
society."
Given the vastness and
frequency
of the use of tribe in
the literature of social
anthropology,
this must be seen as a
far-reaching
conclusion and is as
astounding
as if
sociologists
or
political
scientists were to
abandon the use of the term "social class" or the "state" because it was
adjudged
to be unamenable to clear definitions
(as
indeed Easton
(1953:107-
8)
once contended in vain with
respect
to the
"state").
Nemesis
pursued
the
discipline
of social
anthropology
with
controversy
despite
the refined
appearance
of "tribal
society."
As the contributors to the
most
imaginative
debate on the notion of the tribe
agree,
"tribes" and "tribal
society"
are controversial terms
(Gutkind 1970).
Southall's
commanding
piece
in The
Passing of
Tribal Man in
Africa (1970:28-50) begins
thus:
Controversial
though
the matter
is,
the most
generally acceptable
characteristics of a
tribal
society
are
perhaps
that it is a whole
society,
with a
high degree
of self-
sufficiency
at a near subsistence
level,
based on a
relatively simple technology
without
writing
or
literature,
culture and sense of
identity,
tribal
religion being
also conter-
minous with tribal
society. (1970:28)
In
elaborating
further on these
characteristics,
Southall
(1970:46)
does add
specifically
"the
importance
of the domain of
kinship
and
[its] multiplex
relationships
with all the institutional
implications
of these characteristics."
Would such a definition of tribal
society
then hold for African societies
studied
by
social
anthropologists?
Actually,
the
composition
of these characteristics into tribal
society
would
only beget
a straw man.
Following
elaborate
analysis
and
illustrations,
South-
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
663
all
(1970:45) gives
three
cogent
reasons
why
the "tribal
concept"
should be
abandoned: These are
problems
of
definition (ambiguous, imprecise,
or
conflicting
definitions and also the
failure to stick to them
consistently); problems
of illusion
(false application
of the
concept
to artificial and misconstrued
entities)
and
problems
of transition and
transfor-
mation
(use
of the
concept
of the tribe
unjustifiably
with reference to
phenomena
which are a direct
product
of modem
influences) (italics added).'
It was
entirely possible
that
anthropologists might
have been able to reevalu-
ate and
salvage
the
concept
of the tribe or its new
version,
tribal
society,
in
spite
of these difficulties.
However,
Southall
suggests important
reasons out-
side the
logic
of science
why
it was
prudent
for social
anthropology
in the
postcolonial
era to abandon these emotive terms. With
anthropology already
"naturally
embarrassed
by
the colonialist taint which besmirches it in so much
of the
[third world],"
Southall
(1970:47)
calls on social
anthropologists
and,
presumably,
other Africanists "to
stop calling primitive
and tribal the contem-
porary
communities" from which
may
come modem African
anthropologists
and scholars as their new
colleagues.
He
pleads,
"This
may
be a case in which
human
feelings
have to
prevail
over strict
logic." Continuing
in the same vein
of
prudence,
Southall asks that
for the
strategic
moment ... the word
primitive
should be
dropped
from the vocabu-
lary
of social
anthropology
. . .that the term "tribe" should
usually
be
applied only
to
the small-scale societies of the
past
which retained their
autonomy [hardly
to be found
in the Africa of the colonial era studied
by
social
anthropologists]
and that the new
associations derived from them in the
contemporary
context should be referred to as
ethnic
groups (1970:48).
Southall's views deserve this extended restatement because
they
stand out in
the debate about the tribe in not
only attending
to the
theory
and
practice
of
social
anthropology
but in also
offering
a clear
prescription.
With two decades
already past,
we
may inquire,
how well have
anthropologists responded
to this
clarion call to redress the
subject
matter of social
anthropology?
Furthermore,
what
impact
has social
anthropology
made on the new breed of social science
and social
history
in Africa?
There seems to be little doubt that
by avoiding
the use of the term
tribe,
the
language
of social
anthropology
has become more
polite
and less offensive in
the view of African scholars. Within African studies the more current term is
"ethnic
group,"
which is
presumed
to have the same
meaning
as tribe. On the
other
hand,
outside of African studies the term tribe continues to be used
without hindrance
by anthropologists. Recently,
Southall
(1988:55)
once
again
1
J.
Clyde
Mitchell's related views
(1970:101)
were
presented
in the same volume in which
Southall was
writing:
"Tribal man as a member of a
geographically
defined small-scale
society,
who is immersed in sets of social relations unaffected
by
events and circumstances outside his
community,
almost
by
definition has ceased to be."
664
PETER P. EKEH
complained
about the misuse of the
"concept
of
tribe,
which is still
very
generally
used,
and in a manner that contradicts the more
meticulous,
if
erroneous,
formulations once made
by
Service."
Significantly
he
adds,
"E. R.
Service,
in a series of
publications,
first
promoted
the notion of tribe and
chiefdom as
evolutionary stages
in a universal
structure,
then abandoned it in
the face of
criticism,
but
unaccountably began
to use it later"
(Southall
1988:55n).
It is
entirely possible
that these differences in the
continuing
use of
the term tribe owe
something
to
differing emphases
within
anthropology.
Gutkind
(1970:1)
did foresee such
possibility
in his editorial
preface
to The
Passing of
Tribal Man in
Africa:
It is also
likely
that its
usage
will,
or
might,
continue
longer
in cultural rather than in
social
anthropology
as the
former,
under the
impact
of
ethno-science,
appears
to be
more concerned with
preindustrial
and
prenational
ethnic
units,
their
unique behavior,
values and
language,
whereas social
anthropology
has,
in more recent
years, paid
close attention to social
change
and modernization. While there is
prodigious
literature
by
social
anthropologists
about
literally
thousands of "tribes"
upon
which we have
built our
discipline,
our
progressively sociological,
and social historical
analysis
has
seriously questioned
the
utility
of the
concept
of tribe.
It does
appear,
however,
that it is the African
sensitivity
factor,
rather than
intrinsic differences between cultural
anthropology
(active in the United
States)
and social
anthropology
(dominant
in Great
Britain),
that accounts for
the diminution in the use of the term tribe in African studies. In
India,
where
there is not the same amount of
sensitivity concerning
its use, the terms tribe
and tribal
society
are in continued use, mostly by
Indian scholars,
in a
strong
anthropological
tradition more
aligned
to British social
anthropology
than to
cultural
anthropology.
The
upsurge
of the literature on the tribe in India is
publicly sponsored,
with federal and state
government agencies
as well as
university departments
and research institutes
fully
involved.2 It is also
pos-
sible that Aidan Southall's one-man crusade
against
the use of the term in
social
anthropology
has been
partially responsible
for its
infrequent ap-
pearance
in the literature of modern African studies. But, as he has
regretted,
The tribe is one of the
beguiling mystifications
which continues to have a
mysterious
stranglehold
on the minds of
many anthropologists.
It is one of the obvious reasons for
the bad
image
which
anthropology
still has for
many
African scholars . . .
, for our
failure to correct the
unregenerate approach
of the media to Africa, and for the
long
2
Some of these research centres include: Tribal Cultural Research and
Training Institute,
Hyderabad,
Andra Pradesh; Department
of Culture and Folk Research, University
of Gauhati;
National Council of Educational Research and
Training,
New Delhi. Publications
bearing
titles
with the term "tribe" are numerous in India: thus, for
example, Pratap (1968);
Das (1964);
Nagaland (1968);
Srivastara (1971).
It
might yield
some results to
compare
India and Africa with
respect
to the fortunes of
anthropology
and the use of tribe, its
key
term.
Judging by
the
authorship
of the vast literature on
the tribe in India,
it is evident that Western
anthropologists
have left the field to Indians; but the
interests and
discipline
of
anthropology
have not been abandoned. In Africa, with the
departure
of
Western
anthropologists,
the once dominant and
triumphant discipline
of social
anthropology
is in
disarray.
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
665
time
anthropology
is
taking
to become
firmly
rooted in the academic structure within
Africa-though
some
progress
is now
being
made
(Southall 1983:65).
In universities across Black
Africa,
there are
scarcely any separate depart-
ments of
anthropology
to be found
anywhere. Originally
tucked behind so-
ciology,
as the
Department
of
Sociology
and
Anthropology, anthropology
has
been
conveniently forgotten by university
administrations. Modem African
governments
have befriended both
foreign
and
indigenous political
scientists,
sociologists,
and
historians,
but
they
are
uneasy
about
anthropology
and
anthropologists.
In
many
instances African
anthropologists
have had to
adapt
to new academic
fields; moreover,
there are not
adequate graduate pro-
grammes
in
anthropology
on the continent to sustain the
discipline
into the
future.
Obviously,
the taint of colonialism on
anthropology
has not been
easy
to
wipe
clean. This is not to
say
that social
anthropology
and its works and
products
are dead in Africa. On the
contrary,
much of the
organized
social
knowledge produced by
Africans tends to be reaction formations
against
pursuits
of social
anthropology during
the colonization of Africa.
With
respect
to the narrower
subject
matter of this
essay
on
tribalism,
social
anthropology's
erstwhile
preoccupation
with the tribe has left behind a bit-
tersweet
legacy
in Africa. Whereas leaders of
governments
and intellectuals
reject
the label and blame
anthropologists
for
creating
it
(see
Chitepo
1970;
Okot
p'
Bitek
1970:13-14;
Mafeje
1971;
Mamdani
1976:3;
Nnoli 1978:1-
20), they
nonetheless show concern about
tribalism,
which
many regard
as the
new evil
plaguing
modern Africa. The use of tribalism as a
concept
is new in
moder
Africa,
although
its
adoption
seems to have been
imposed by
the
sheer
predominance
of the
anthropological
uses of the term tribe.3 Because of
its
importance,
I shall
attempt
to
analyze
the
meaning
of tribalism in this
essay.
However,
in order to
fully
understand its historical and
sociological
origins,
we must first
gain
a sense of colonial social
anthropology's
mission
and the reactions to it from African intellectuals.
The Character
of
British Social
Anthropology
in
Africa
The character of British social
anthropology
in Africa4 calls for some
explora-
tion not
only
because it deserves it on its own
weight,
with
regard
to its
3
Mafeje (1971:254)
notes that unlike such other terms as
"clan," "nation,"
or
"lineage,"
the
term "tribe" is
only
used
by
Africans when
they speak foreign languages
and that it has no
equivalent
translation in
indigenous
African
languages.
He
argues,
"In
many
instances the
colonial authorities
helped
to create
[sic]
the
things
called
tribes,
in the sense of
political
commu-
nities;
this
process
coincided with and was
helped along by
the
anthropologists' preoccupation
with 'tribes.' This
provided
the material as well as the
ideological
base of what is now called
'tribalism.' Is it
surprising
that the modem
African,
who is a
product
of
colonialism, speaks
the
same
language [as
the
anthropologists]?
If that is a
great puzzle
to the modem social
scientist,
it
was not to Marx
[i.e.,
Marx and
Engels, 1845:64],
who in 1845 wrote: 'The ideas of the
ruling
class are in
every epoch
the
ruling
ideas: i.e. the class which is the
ruling
material force of
society,
is at the same time its
ruling
intellectual force.'"
4
Although
other
European
colonial
powers
were also involved in the
making
of colonial social
666 PETER P. EKEH
achievements in its studies of
kinship
behaviors in
Africa,
but more
signifi-
cantly
because such
exploration
will
help
us to underline how the intellectual
reactions to its
presentation
of African social realities have
shaped
the con-
tents and conduct of modem African studies in the humanities and social
sciences.
Perhaps
the most
important
statement about it is that the
discipline
of social
anthropology
in Africa was an
integral part
of colonialism. If such a
statement is received
today
with resentment and even
hostility,
it is because
colonialism
has,
in its
aftermath,
come to be seen as less
gracious
than its
dominant
contemporaneous image
led its
practitioners
to
perceive
it. Social
anthropologists imagined
that their
discipline
was a
gentler aspect
of the
colonization and
conquest
of
Africa,
but it was
undeniably
a central
piece
of
the craft of colonization.
While colonialism
lasted,
social
anthropology
was the dominant social
science
discipline
in the
study
of Africa. Its Durkheimian
imagery
of
society,
expertly
reduced to its
empiricist
dimensions
by
Radcliffe-Brown for British
practice
(see
Ekeh
1974:6-9),
enabled it to become a
practical
science of men
and
society
in Africa. The inner character of British social
anthropology
is
best revealed in its mission of
assisting
colonial administration in understand-
ing
colonial
peoples.
With
infrequent exceptions,
social
anthropology
was in
fact an
applied
science,
with its theories invented to address
pressing prob-
lems of
governance
in the alien circumstances of colonial rule. In this
regard,
one of the clearest statements of the mission of social
anthropology
is to be
found in S. F.
Nadel,
the Austrian scholar who became a
"government
an-
thropologist"
of the
Anglo-Egyptian
Sudan:
It has been said that modem
anthropology
is destined to be of
great
assistance to
colonial
governments
in
providing
the
knowledge
of the social structure of native
groups upon
which a sound and harmonious Native
Administration,
as
envisaged
in
Indirect
Rule,
should be built. Let me
say
that I for one
firmly
believe in the
possibility
of such
cooperation
between
anthropologist
and administrator
(Nadel 1942:vi).
The doctrine of indirect
rule,
which
enjoined
colonial administrators to rule
native
populations
at minimum cost to the
imperial government by using
permissible indigenous
institutional
arrangements
(see
Fields 1985:33),
was
the cord
tying
social
anthropologists
and administrators in colonized Africa.
Indeed,
when
necessary,
colonial administrators were
required
to collect an-
thropological
data to assist their work of administration. The architect and
theoretician of the doctrine of indirect
rule,
Frederick
Lugard,
endorsed this
arrangement.
In his
prestigious
forward to Nadel's A Black
Byzantium,
anthropology,
no other collection of
anthropologists
commanded the
height
and consensus
achieved
by
British social
anthropologists
in Africa. Thus,
while French
anthropologists
had a
significant presence
in African
studies, particularly
in the
development
of Marxist social an-
thropology, they
were much less
part
of colonization than in the British
experience.
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
667
Lugard
stated this
policy,
and
praised
its author's achievement within its
context:
Since it is the declared
policy
of the British Government to
help
the different units of
native
society
to
govern
themselves . . . it
goes
without the
saying
how valuable such
an
objective study [as Nadel's]
would be to the Administration. We find
that,
in
fact,
it
has been utilized in
conjunction
with the researches of District Officers
(Lugard
1942:iv).
Helen Lackner
(1973)
has traced the
origins
of the full official union be-
tween colonial administration and social
anthropology
to the so-called Wom-
en's War of
1929,
the name
given
to the massive
uprising
of Ibo women
(in
Eastern
Nigeria) against
the colonial state and its
policy
of indirect rule. It was
occasioned
by
rumours that the "warrant"
chiefs,
whose offices had been
created and
imposed
on Ibo communities in order to
implement
the mandate
of indirect
rule,
were about to collect taxes from
women,
as had been the case
with men's
poll
tax in the
previous year. Fearing
that indirect rule
required
far
more
knowledge
of
indigenous
institutions than was then
available,
there was
now
sharper
inclination toward the work of
professional anthropologists.
As
several contributors to the
symposium
"Social
Anthropology
and the Colonial
Encounter"
(Asad 1973)
have
emphasized,
there was a
continuing
debate in
the British colonial administration as to whether the
necessary
research should
be carried out
by
colonial
administrators,
a view
supported by Lugard,
or
by
professional
social
anthropologists,
as advocated
by
Lord
Hailey (for
exam-
ple,
1938:40-67).
In
spite
of "a most
ambiguous
attitude towards
[professional] anthropologists"
on the
part
of the Colonial Office in London
(Lackner 1973:132-3),
social
anthropologists
came to
develop
close ties with
colonial administrations in Africa. As
Langham (1981:xv)
has
remarked,
a
distinguishing
feature of British Social
Anthropology
was its close ties with British
imperialism.
Almost all the influential fieldwork done
by
British Social
Anthropolo-
gists
was
performed
in what were or had been colonies of Mother En-
gland.
. . .
Leading anthropologists
like Malinowski made blatant
(and,
one
gathers,
successful) attempts
to raise
money
for
anthropological
research
by pushing
an-
thropology
as useful in colonial administration.
With so much attention
paid
to
pressing problems
of
governance,
social
anthropology
had little interest in such
leisurely
concerns as the reconstruction
of the African
past.
The immediate
present
was
clearly
its
parish
of concern.
In
caring
so little about the African
past,
colonial social
anthropologists
could
rely
on the authoritative
justification
on the
subject provided by
Radcliffe-
Brown
(1950:2):
For
European
countries we can trace the
development
of social institutions over several
centuries. For most African societies the records from which we can obtain authentic
history
are
extremely scanty
or in some instances
entirely lacking except
for a
very
short
period
of the immediate
past.
We cannot have a
history
of African institutions.
668 PETER P. EKEH
Social
anthropology's emphasis
on the immediate colonial
situation,
of
course,
coincided with administrative
problems
of
governance.
A
great
deal
of the
problems
of colonial rule
emerged
in communities with
scanty
histor-
ical
records,
such as the
Ibo,
whereas societies with well-known histories
(for
example,
Benin, Kano, Ashanti)
were more
pacific
once the initial
problems
of
conquest
were resolved. A
corollary
of this
predisposition
to antihistori-
cism in the
discipline
was thus the choice of a distinct
type
of communities for
investigation:
Those areas
posing
difficulties in
governance
were
generally
preferred
to more
orderly
and
pacific
communities. To cite West African
examples,
social
anthropology
was more interested in
riot-prone
Tiv
(Bohan-
nan and Bohannan
1953)
than in well-ordered and
history-soaked
Sokoto
Caliphate;
and in the examination of the
mysterious
and turbulent Tallensi
political system
(see
Fortes
1945)
than in the
history
of centuries-old Ashanti
kingdom.5
Such lack of interest in the
past by
colonial social
anthropology
in Africa
was also extended to its disdain for the
sociological investigations
of the
past.
In a
provocative
statement in their introduction to the famous
African
Political
Systems,
Fortes and Evans-Pritchard
(1940:5)
aver:
We do not consider that the
origins
of
primitive
institutions can be discovered
and,
therefore,
we do not think that it is worthwhile
seeking
for them. We
speak
for
anthropologists
when we
say
that a scientific
study
of
political institutions must be
inductive and aim
solely
at
establishing
and
explaining
the uniformities found
among
them and their
interdependencies
with other features of social
organization.
This functionalist
injunction against
the
sociological reconstruction of the
basis of institutions in
society,
said to betoken
rejection
of
nineteenth-century
evolutionism, was
religiously
observed
by
colonial social
anthropologists;
and
5
See Forde and
Kaberry (1967:xi): "New
concepts
and field research methods
developed
in
social
anthropology during
the thirties had little immediate influence on the
study
of the
larger
West African [sic] chiefdoms.
They
had been
developed mainly
with reference to the
interpreta-
tion of custom and
understanding
of social
processes
in small communities. . . . Interest in
uncentralized segmentary
societies was fostered
by theoretical interest in the
processes whereby
social structures were maintained in the absence of
any institutionalized
hierarchy
of
authority
and
by the practical problems posed
for colonial
governments in
attempting
to
integrate such
societies in their administration." Also see Michael Crowder (1968:13): The
"European
ster-
eotype
of Africa was based on the
acephalous society
. . . because of the romantic
European
mind these
peoples
were more
fascinating
than those who had attained a more
complex
form of
political
administration. And because even
scholarly
studies of African societies
by
an-
thropologists
were
predominantly
concerned in the colonial
period
with such societies, the latter
began
to
appear
to be the rule rather than the
exception that
they
were in West Africa. The
preoccupation
of
anthropologists
with
segmentary
or
'primitive' societies in Africa . . . does
much to
explain
the
unpopularity
of that
discipline among Africans
today. Anthropologists
became, in the
eyes
of the nationalist leaders, agents
of those who held the view that the African
was
incapable
of
self-government."
The mood of the
discipline
in
accepting
what was
important may
be seen in the
outstanding
career of
Meyer
Fortes.
Although
he
probably spent
as much time in
studying
the Ashanti as he
did the Tallensi, Fortes' fame was established with the benefit of his work on the
acephalous
Tallensi rather than
among
the
politically sophisticated Ashanti.
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
669
it
clearly
narrowed the
scope
and
depth
of their
enquiries. According
to its
tenets,
any existing
institutions in
society
were
accepted
as
given.
In this
fashion,
the
rampant kinship system
social
anthropologists
encountered
every-
where in Africa was not
probed
with
respect
to how
long
it had been in
existence,
why
it was so dominant in
Africa,
or whether it was related to the
slave trade that
ravaged
Africa before
European
colonization.
Ultimately,
colonial social
anthropology
had this latent but fundamental
assumption:
Kinship
is constant over time in
any given society
in Africa.
Within the ambiance of such an
assumption,
there was considerable varia-
tion as to which end of the
kinship pendulum
of "blood and soil"
(Kuper
1982:71-74) leading anthropologists
and their
disciples swung (see
Kuper
1973:107-22;
also
Guyer 1981).
What seems undeniable is
that,
relative to
world
ethnography,
Africa was
outstanding
in
having
a
greater proportion
of
unilineal
corporate
descent
groups
than
systems
of bilateral kindred
(see
Freedman
1961:214).
Why
was this the case? The limitation of colonial social
anthropology
was that it never
attempted
to transcend its data and
findings by
framing larger
theoretical issues that would involve an
exploration
of the
African historical
past
in search of answers to such
questions.
Until the "African
Independence"
benchmark
year
of 1960
(see
Carter and
O'Meara
1985),
the
authority
and the views of Radcliffe-Brown and the other
coeditors of
African
Political
Systems (Fortes
and Evans-Pritchard
1940)
and
African Systems of Kinship
and
Marriage (Radcliffe-Brown
and Forde
1950)
provided
the
general guidelines
for the conduct of social
anthropology
in
colonized Africa. Thereafter the
discipline
was
besieged
with
problems:
"The
present
crisis in social
anthropology
. . . has become worse at a time when
colonies have become
'independent'
and there is no more need for colonial
administration,
Indirect Rule and the
anthropology
that
they brought
about"
(Lackner 1973:149). Although
British social
anthropology
has
adjusted
rather
well to this
postcolonial crisis-largely by developing
other fields of interest
outside of Africa
(such
as urban
anthropology)
and also
by blending
into the
huge
American
university
milieu-it cannot be said that it has retained its
former
outstanding identity
and
vigour
cultivated in the midst of British
imperialism
in Africa. A
great
deal of the
questioning
that led to the difficul-
ties the
discipline
faced came in the form of African scholars'
rejections
and
criticisms of colonial social
anthropology's
aims and
claims,
a
subject
to
which we now turn.
African
Reactions: Social
History
Versus Social
Anthropology
The most
important
and sustained intellectual reactions to the
damaged image
Africa suffered from social
anthropological publications
have come from Af-
rican historians
originally
trained in western
historiography
and historical
methodology.
These historians worked to
uproot
three
assumptions
and trends
prevalent
in
Europe
about African societies.
First,
there was the common
670
PETER P. EKEH
assumption
that
European-type historiography
and
history-writing
were
inap-
plicable
to Africa on the
grounds
that its
precolonial past
had not been in-
formed
by any
events and institutions
worthy
of historical
recording.
In other
words,
what was
important
about Africa was its colonial
present,
not its
presumed
autonomous
past.
Second,
it was assumed that
any
worthwhile
history
of Africa could be reduced to the
European
contact with Africa
leading
to the
necessary conquest
of Africa in which
Europeans, propelled by
the
imperatives
of the creed of the "white man's
burden,"
imposed
their benev-
olent rule on natives
who,
without
resistance,
gladly
welcomed the
prestige
of
Western civilization.
Third,
there was
widespread assumption
and insistence
that social
anthropology
was the
proper discipline
to deal with the circum-
stances of Africa at the intellectual level.
Moder
pioneering
African historians
sought
to
upturn
such issues at the
height
of colonial social
anthropology's
dominance
during
the 1950s and
1960s. Foremost
among
these historians was the
leadership
of an intellectual
movement,
later known as the Ibadan School of
History
because it
crystal-
lized its advocacies at the
University
of Ibadan
during
these two decades. This
movement
emerged
to
challenge
what it considered biases
against
Africa in
the mainstream
European
historical characterization of Africa and to
reject
choices made
by
social
anthropologists
in their
study
of Africa.
Championed
by
Kenneth Dike and J. F. Ade
Ajayi,
the movement's mission was clear: To
design
a new African social
history
which would
recapture
the
respect
for the
African
past
that colonialism and its intellectual handmaidens had erased from
the African
agenda
of existence. In their didactic devotion to this
cause, Dike
and
Ajayi (for example,
1968:394)
contended that
A belief in the
continuity
of
life,
a life after
death,
and the
community
of interest
between the
living
and the
dead,
and the
generations yet
unborn is fundamental to all
African
religious,
social,
and
political
life.
Thus,
although
the serious
writing
of
African
history
has
only just begun,
a sense of
history
and tradition has
always
been
part
of the African
way
of life.
The leaders of the Ibadan School of
History
claimed that in the hands of late
nineteenth- and
twentieth-century European
historians, and their Christian
missionary companions,
"African
historiography
became
nothing
more than a
justification
of
European imperialism"
(Dike
and
Ajayi 1968:397); nor,
in
their
view,
had
anthropologists
been less
guilty:
"Their
primary
concern was
to describe the
quaintness
and the
peculiarities
of
tribes,
to
justify
as well as to
facilitate the
imposition
of colonial rule"
(Dike
and
Ajayi 1968:398). Reject-
ing
the
notion,
particularly
common
among
British social historians and social
anthropologists up
to the
1960s,
that historical material and sources must be
written to be
valid,
the advocates of the new African social
history
battled to
include oral traditions as
legitimate
material for
historiography,6 leading
to
6
In
making
this claim the Ibadan School of
History
found a
European sympathy
in the works
of Vansina
(e.g., 1960, 1961, 1971).
It should also be noted that
among
the historians of the
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
671
such
major
landmarks in African
history
as Dike's
(1956)
Trade and Politics
in the
Niger
Delta and Biobaku's
(1957)
The
Egba
and their
Neighbours.
Well aware that the net outcome of the
anthropologists'
work was that
Africa was now seen outside
Africa,
and indeed inside
it,
as the continent of
tribesmen,
the new African social historians' confessed mission was to exor-
cise African studies of the
ugly images
thus foisted on it.
Ajayi
and
Alagoa
(1974),
both leaders of the Ibadan School of
History,
have
given
a clear
account of the route the new dominant African social
history
traveled to
accomplish
its mission:
During
colonial
rule,
which embodied an
attempt
to
cut the African adrift from his historical
experience
and in effect to undermine his basic
humanity, [there emerged]
the effort to rehabilitate African
history
and re-establish the
relevance of the African historical
experience. Essentially,
Africans
[i.e.
African histo-
rians]
and
Europeans
entered into an intellectual
struggle
for the control of the African
mind
(1974:127).
Indeed,
social
history
became an active arm of
decolonization,
and social
historians the
counterpoise
of the
"anthropologists championing
. . . the stat-
ic,
functionalist view of African
society."
In this
struggle
Africa's new univer-
sities
"began
to involve
professional
historians in the
politics
of decoloniza-
tion"
(1974:129), just
as colonial administrations had hired and recruited the
services of
anthropologists
in the colonization of Africa.
Last,
with
indepen-
dence and the attainment of
self-government, Ajayi
and
Alagoa (1974:131)
urge
that
If African
history
is to
provide
the African with
[worthy self-perception],
and thus to
play
an effective role in
independent
Africa,
it has to correct the distortion and
bridge
the
gap
created
by
the colonial
experience
in the African historical tradition
[and]
evolve its own
identity independent
of western
historiography (also
see
Ajayi 1961).
In the view of
many
Africans,
social historians-unlike African social
scientists-have succeeded in
redressing
the
subject
matter of their
discipline
and have carried the main burden of the
campaign against
the
injurious
conse-
quences
of social
anthropology,
which had
conveyed
the
image
of Africa as a
land of tribes and tribesmen.7 The
emphasis
of the new social
history clearly
bears the marks of reaction to colonial social
anthropology.
In their
search,
principally through
much of West and East
Africa,
the social historians chose
communities and
political
entities whose demonstrable histories
preceded
the
Ibadan School were
prominent Europeans
who
adopted
the
style
and
methodology
of the new
African
history.
These included R. Smith
(e.g., 1969), Ryder (e.g., 1969),
and
Omer-Cooper
(e.g.,
1966).
7
It is an indication of the success of the
implantation
of the new historicism in African studies
and the
changed
circumstances of social
anthropology
in the
postcolonial
era that social an-
thropologists began
to
incorporate
historical methods and substantial
history
in what must be
regarded
as a
revisionist,
if
upgraded,
version of social
anthropology.
Thus,
apart
from the
exceptional
earlier work on the
political history
of Zaria
by
M. G. Smith
(1950), by
his back-
ground hardly
a colonial social
anthropologist,
mainstream British social
anthropologists began
to include
history
in their work in the
postindependence period:
see
Lloyd (1971),
Forde and
Kaberry (1967),
Jones
(1963),
and Lewis
(1968b).
672
PETER P. EKEH
arrival of
European conquest
and
rule,
that
is,
the
very
areas in which social
anthropologists
were least interested.
Moreover,
whereas the
principal
actors
in the accounts of social
anthropology
were faceless and nameless
tribesmen,
the new social
history
celebrated the deeds and
lineages
of
kings
and
warriors,
particularly
those
challenging
the
European
invaders and
conquerors.
In
going
back in time to a
deeper
African
past
before the
anthropologists
and
colonization,
African historians
necessarily
landed in the era of the evil
days
of the slave trade. In
studying
it,
they
were not
principally
interested in
its socioeconomic
consequences
for
Africa;8 rather,
their aim was to demon-
strate that even here there were African actors who stood on the
strength
of
their will in their interactions with alien traders.
They
therefore showed no
hesitation in
dubbing
slave trade chieftains as
heroes,
provided they
were not
passive
and
supine
in
dealing
with
European
traders.
Thus,
Nana Olomu of
the
Niger
Delta
(Ikime 1968),
and
King Agaja
of
Dahomey (Akinjobin 1967)
were
portrayed
as heroic
figures,
even
though
their hands were sullied in the
bloodshed of the slave trade.9
Although
colonial social
anthropology
and African social
history
share
between them the distribution of
strength
in African
studies,
in terms of sheer
volume of
publications
and
depth
of
scholarship,
their
separate
contributions
have not
jointly upgraded
our intellectual
mastery
of social
reality
in Africa.
This is
largely
because these two dominant
disciplines
have tended to avoid
the
explanation
and
analysis
of common issues and themes in Africa. In
effect,
social
anthropology
and its intellectual rival social
history
have not
contributed to continuities in African
studies,
not even
by way
of dialectical
confrontations,
because
they
avoided each other's
territory
and field of in-
terest. This leads to a lack of consistent
pursuit
of themes raised in the social
analysis
of Africa.
Thus,
remarkably,
various
aspects
of
kinship (which
an-
thropologists
found to be
rampant
in African
societies)
deserve more attention
from social scientists and historians than has been
paid
to it in African studies.
In the rest of this
paper,
I shall
attempt
to
develop
the natural
history
of
kinship
in Africa. It is
my
view that the
scope
and
persistence
of
kinship
in
Africa have their
beginnings
in the
exigencies
and
imperatives
of the slave
trade. Under colonialism
kinship registered
its revised
presence
in the form of
kinship systems
studied
by
social
anthropologists.
In colonial and
post-
colonial
Africa,
kinship
has been transformed into ethnic
groups
whose mem-
8
In
fact,
Dike and
Ajayi (1968:398)
have
typically
shown
hostility
to
any emphasis
on the
slave
trade, dismissing
it as "another
myth [which] regards
the influence of the Atlantic slave
trade as so
all-pervasive
that it can
explain
all
major
trends in African
history
since the nineteenth
century."
9
It is remarkable that the contents of the
resplendent
African social
history
reveals so little
moralism
concerning
the slave
trade,
thus
contrasting quite sharply
with the moral sensitivities
displayed by
Africans in
diaspora (say,
Eric Williams
1944;
Walter
Rodney 1972)
in
weighing
the
roles
played by
various
participants
in the slave trade.
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
673
bers are bound
together by
new moral definitions. In this
postcolonial repre-
sentation,
kinship
behaviors have
given
rise to the
concept
called tribalism. In
order to
capture
this intricate existence in Africa we
begin
with a
probability
analysis
and reconstruction of the circumstances of the individual
during
the
era of the slave trade in Africa.
THE SLAVE TRADE AND THE SOCIAL ORIGINS
OF KINSHIP IN AFRICA
Such is the
segmentation
in African studies that it is
likely
to
appear
unusual
to link
up kinship,
the exclusive
centerpiece
construct of colonial social an-
thropology,
with the slave
trade,
about which social
history (but
not social
anthropology)
has
developed
some interest. Social
anthropology apparently
assumed
kinship
to be so natural to Africa that it saw no need to trace its
sociological origins
in other institutions or in
previous
historical
epochs,
nor
to account for its
persistence
in the African historical
landscape.
Thus,
social
anthropologists studying
African
kinship systems
(as
the
principal aspects
of
African social
structures) immediately
at the close of the slave trade did not
relate them to the
dynamics
of that trade.
There is a vast literature on the slave
trade,
the
phenomenon dominating
several centuries of Africa's
chequered century.
First,
there is considerable
attention to the
techniques
of the trade and its cold-blooded economics with
respect
to the
transportation
of its victims. This literature includes the
lively
debates on the number of Africans lost to the
trade,
especially following
the
publication
of
Philip
Curtin's
(1969)
The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census.
Second,
there have also been some
good
accounts as to roles
played by
British
and Western
European
circumstances and
personages
in
promoting
the trade
and in later
ensuring
its abolition. The third area is the
impact
of the slave
trade on the New World of the United
States,
Latin
America,
and the West
Indies. All three strands of literature on the slave trade are of old
vintage
and
of
continuing
interest and
import
in Western
history
and
scholarship.
In
sharp
contrast to such established traditions in the
study
of the slave
trade,
there is much thinner focus on its
impact
on Black Africa itself. Given
the duration and
scope
of the slave trade in
Africa,
this
neglect
is not liable to
be
helpful
in
any attempts
to understand Africa
fully.
The Arab side of the
trade,
involving
trans-Saharan and trans-Indian Ocean
routes,
spanned
some
nine centuries
(A.D. 950-1850)
and "almost
certainly
their much
longer
duration
conjointly produced
a total
export
of slaves of the same order as that
of the Atlantic trade"
(Hair 1978:26).
The
European
trans-Atlantic trade
stretched across some four centuries
(1450-1850)
and involved the successful
export
of "not less than 12 millions and not more than 20 millions"
(Hair
1978:26)
of Africans to the New World.
Indeed,
the
Nigerian
economic
historian
Joseph
Inikori
(1982:25)
has calculated that about
thirty
million men
674
PETER P. EKEH
and women in their
prime
were drained from Africa to Arab lands and the
New World in these centuries.
Surely
millions of
people, perhaps many
more,
perished
in the civil
strife,
pestilence,
and famine induced
by
the double-
barrelled trade from Africa.
What
impact
did such
prolonged disruptions
have on the
development
of
state and
society
in Africa and the
relationship
of the individual to both state
and
society?
Neither colonial social
anthropology
nor its rival African social
history
was
predisposed
to
pay
attention to such a
query.
The
study
of the
slave trade and considerations of its
consequences
for African
development
have not been on the mainstream
agenda
of these two domains of African
studies. As Marvin Harris
(1968:536)
has
pointed
out in
chiding
British social
anthropology
for its ahistoricism:
It is difficult to
imagine
a less
propitious
combination of
place
and
subject
for
syn-
chronic
analysis [than
in
Africa]
... For as
surely
as the slave-run
plantation system
of the New World sounded the death knell of American
aboriginal societies,
it also
marked the
beginning
of vast
upheavals
of human
populations
in Africa.
Blame for such
neglect
of the
analysis
of the African slave trade's conse-
quences
should in fact be extended to African social
historians,
and indeed to
the new
crop
of African social
scientists,
who are wont to be
uneasy
about
raising any
issue of such moral ambivalence as the slave trade.
Serious consideration of the
impact
of the slave trade on Africa
began
as
late as the 1960s with claims
by
the Caribbean scholar Walter
Rodney (1966,
1972)
of its
pervasive negative consequences.
In
sharp
rebuttals of
Rodney's
views,
Fage (1969a, 1969b,
and
1974)
and other British historians-includ-
ing notably Hopkins
(1973:117-23),
Johnson
(1976)
and Hair
(1978)-have
engaged
in the rather awkward
subject
of the economics of the slave trade.
Most of these works
emphasize
the economic and commercial effects of the
slave trade and tend on the whole to
agree
with
Fage (1969a:55)
that the
"broad effect of the slave trade seems to have been to create conditions for a
commercial revolution" in Africa.
10
The Slave Trade and State Formation in
Africa
Fage
did venture
beyond profit-and-loss
calculations on the African side of his
assessment of the slave trade. Walter
Rodney
(1966)
had
argued
that in the
Upper
Guinea internal
slavery
and other forms of
inequalities
had been cre-
ated in
society by
the
intensity
of the external slave trade. In
reply, Fage
(1969b, 1974) argued
that internal
slavery
and other forms of
subject
status
were not
only already
in existence in Africa before the advent of the slave
10
There is at least one
compelling rejection
of this
viewpoint. Manning (1982), although
engaging
in the same economist
reckoning
of the slave trade as
Fage
and other writers of this
view,
did reach
important
conclusions that show that on balance
Dahomey's
economic
growth
suffered
disastrously
as a result of the slave trade.
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
675
trade but in fact betokened
political development
and state formation in Af-
rica. As
Wrigley
(1971:116)
so
wryly put
it,
"Fage
is
unmistakably congrat-
ulating
West Africa in
having
achieved the institution of
slavery
without
European help.
Dr.
Rodney,
who
proudly
demonstrated that the
people
of
Upper
Guinea were innocent of
slavery
until the
eighteenth century,
was stood
upon
his head." In
Fage's
views,
slavery
and
inequality
were the noble em-
blems of state
maturity. Fage (1969b:402)
was even more
daring
in
suggesting
the
following hypothesis:
On the whole it is
probably
true to
say
that the
operation
of the slave trade
may
have
tended to
integrate, strengthen
and
develop unitary,
territorial
political authority, [and]
to weaken or
destroy
more
segmentary
societies. Whether this was
good
or evil
may
be
a nice
point; historically
it
may
be seen as
purposive
and
perhaps
as more or less
inevitable.
Wrigley (1971)
has
correctly
blamed the
insensitivity
and the amoralism of
Fage's position
on the historicist
preoccupation
with the state as the litmus test
of
political development
in African
historiography.
However,
the issues raised
by Fage
are well
beyond
the
methodology
and
metatheory
of African histo-
riography: They
touch on the rare
subject
of the
relationship
between
kinship
and state formation in the context of the slave trade.
Fage
is
arguing
that the
slave trade tended to
destroy kinship organization
while
usefully promoting
state formation. This was
why Fage (1969b:403)
rued the interventions that
terminated the slave trade.
Fage necessarily
states his case in
probability
terms,
and it can be further extended within its own
logic.
To
put
his case in
counterfactual
terms,
Fage
would most
likely
reason that if the slave trade had
not taken
place,
state formation would have been less noticeable and
kinship
networks more extensive in Africa.
Ironically,
the
opposite
conclusion would seem to
emerge
from a finer
probability analysis
that takes into account the
probable
individual and his
reactions in the conditions of the slave trade.
Typically, Fage (especially 1974)
sees
ordinary
Africans in their traditional societies as
subjects,
not as cit-
izens-as
persons
whose
political
choices were made for them
by
their
rulers,
not
by
themselves. In
addition,
Fage's imagery
of the African ruler was one of
an unfettered Prester John whose untrammelled
powers
could not be chal-
lenged
from below
by
his
subjects.
The facts of Africa's
history
and
politics
are
quite
different. The individual was more skillful than to leave himself
exposed
as a
subject
Caliban
nakedly seeking
the
protection
of his
Prospero.
In
practice
his
membership
in a
morally
defined
kinship system protected
the
average
individual from the wantonness of
despotic
rulers. "Not to
belong
to
a
king
or one of his
feudatories,"
writes
Fage (1974:14),
"was to be dan-
gerously exposed"
in the circumstances of the African slave trade. In
fact,
however,
kinship systems
and
groups
ensured that the individual
escaped
the
fate of
subjects
and "broken men" who had to
belong
to a
king
for their own
sake and
protection.
676
PETER P. EKEH
The
political sociology
of slave-trade Africa was far from
being uniform,
of
course. With
respect
to
political
institutions,
three
categories
of states
may
be
identified in this
period,
each with distinct
interrelationships
with
kinship
formations.
First,
some ancient states in existence at the advent of the Atlantic
slave trade continued in their wonted
ways
of
governance
and were thus not
involved in the trade. Foremost in this
category
is the remarkable case of
Ethiopia,
which is
usually
left out in
any
considerations of the slave
trade,
presumably
because it did not
participate
(see
Levine
1974:26).
On the con-
trary,
this fact is an
important
element in
any
fair assessment of the factors
predisposing
other African states to take
part. Ethiopia
is
noteworthy
for its
age-old strong
state institutions and feudal traditions
(with
their
emphasis
on
personal
and contractual relations between lords and
peasants
whose
safety
was thus secured from
foreign exploitation).
It is the absence of these institu-
tions and
traditions"I
elsewhere in Black Africa that enabled the
exploitation
of the slave trade
by
outsiders to take
place.
It is also
noteworthy
that in all of
Black
Africa,
Ethiopia traditionally
has
kinship
structures with the least
politi-
cal salience.
Along
with
Ethiopia,
we
may
include Benin in this first
category
of states.
Long
before the slave trade Benin had
developed
a
strong
sense of
statehood,
with
deep experiences
in warfare for the sake of
protecting
the
public
interest
(see Egherevba
1934;
Ekeh
1976).
Although
Benin had
empires
at various
1
Outside of
Ethiopia,
no
full-fledged
feudal institutions and traditions were sustained in
Black Africa. The varied claims for their existence
by
both liberal and Marxist scholars (for
example,
Mamdani 1976; Prah 1977; Potekhin 1960; Olderogge 1957; Loeb 1962) appear
to me
exaggerated.
Ronald Cohen's discussion (1966) of Bomo
helps
to illustrate the
difficulty
of
making
a case for feudalism in slave-trade Africa. Cohen
(1966:92-5) compares
the
generalized
violence in medieval
Europe (which, as Marc Bloch
argues,
was a factor that led to the institution
of feudal bonds for the
protection
of the individual in the absence of an effective state) with the
wild violence in Borno, whose victims were sold into the slave trade. He
argues
that such
conditions of violence created
possibilities
for the rise of feudalism, as it was the case in
Europe.
But there is this
important
difference between the two: In western
Europe,
the state failed to stem
the tide of the violence of the invasions from the outside and its institutions
consequently
suffered, paving
the
way
for the
emergence
of feudalism. In Borno, the violence that
engulfed
society
was
sponsored by
the state and its functionaries who were
strengthened
and emboldened
by
the
profits
and armaments of the slave trade from distant lands. In effect, the state was
waging
war on
society, particularly
as the
state-sponsored
raids into other territories
(such
as
Adamawa)
spilled
over to domestic violence. In these circumstances, those in
position
of
authority
had little
incentive for feudal contracts. If in
Europe
the
response
to the failure of the state to
provide
security
for the individual was the institution of feudalism, in Africa the
response
to the violation
of the
citizenry by
the state in its
sponsorship
of the slave trade was the entrenchment of
kinship
corporations.
Because of its links with external mercantile
capitalism, the slave trade was inher-
ently inhospitable
to the
emergence
of feudal institutions. That feudal institutions and traditions
would have
eventually emerged
in several cultural enclaves without the
prolonged
slave trade and
the
succeeding European imperialism
in Africa
may
be
imagined
from the advanced
pa-
trimonialism in Benin at the time of its
conquest by
the British
(Bradbury 1973:76-128)
and
strong
indications of
protofeudal possibilities
elsewhere (for example, Bryant 1929). See
Goody's
different
argument (1969) on the
grounds
of
economy
and
technology
for
rejecting
claims for
feudalism in Africa.
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
677
points
in its
history,
the core of its
political organization
was Benin
City.
Like
most
city-states
in
history,
its citizens were sensitive about their
freedom,
and
the
power
of the
King
of Benin was tied to his abilities to
provide
and
protect
such freedom. It was not therefore
surprising
that,
in
spite
of
pressures
from
its
slave-trading neighbors
and
European
slave
traders,
Benin did not
exploit
its
opportunities
in this
respect.
As
Ryder (1969:198),
who reviewed this
matter
carefully,
concluded:
There is no evidence that Benin ever
organized
a
great
slave
trading
network similar to
that which
supplied
the
ports
of the eastern delta
[in
moder-day
eastern
Nigeria],
or
that it ever undertook
systematic
slave
raiding
. . . Benin either could not or would not
become a
slave-trading
state on a
grand
scale
(also
see Davidson
1971:65).
Again
as in the case of
Ethiopia, kinship
institutions have been weak in
Benin,
in
sharp
contrast to other communities in southern
Nigeria.
The
ordinary
Bini
relied more on state institutions to
protect
him from harm than he did on
kinship systems (see Bradbury 1973:10-16).12
From the
prevalence
of the slave trade in
Africa,
Ethiopia
and Benin must
be
regarded
as the
exception among
the African states in existence at the onset
of the slave trade. Unlike
them,
most other ancient African
states,
corrupted
into the service of the slave
trade,
constitute the second
category
of our
classification.
Examples
of these states include
Dahomey, Oyo,
the Hausa-
Fulani states, and Borno. It should be assumed that involvement in the slave
trade would
compromise
the character of these states and make them less
dependent
on internal sources of
power.
We should also
expect
that in the
long
run the individual citizen would
rely
less on the state for his own
protection
in
these
changed circumstances, both because each state's interest and
ability
to
protect
the individual diminished
significantly
and also because
many
of them
turned on their own citizens, providing
them as victims for the slave trade
(see
Wilson 1856:189-93).
An
outstanding example
of this second
category
of states is
Oyo,
the most
prominent
of the Yoruba states in West Africa. Its fortunes were ruined, from
12
There is considerable confusion in the literature on the slave trade in the varied references to
Benin
City (as
a state
presided
over
by
the
King
of Benin); Benin River (a waterlogged
area
around a river named after Benin
City
in its fame, but
quite
some distance from the
city
and
dominated
by
the riverine
Ijo
and Itsekiri); and the
Bight
of Benin (a huge bay along
the Atlantic
Coast in West
Africa,
which runs from Ghana to
Lagos
in
Nigeria
and has no
geographical
links
with either Benin
City
or Benin
River).
This confusion has become
compounded by
the recent
change
in the name of the
country
of
Dahomey
to Benin and the
adoption of Benin as the official
title for such institutions as the National
University
of
Togo-apparently
all in tribute to the olden
fame of Benin
City.
Because of the
frequent
mention of "Benin" in the historical records of the
slave trade with reference to these other areas with "Benin"
appellation,
there is a false
tendency
to attribute a
great
deal of volume in the slave trade to Benin
City. It should be noted, on the other
hand, that Benin was not innocent of internal
slavery,
which its
aristocracy practised
for at least
two centuries
prior
to the Atlantic slave trade. The fact of internal
slavery
in Benin and the
reluctance or refusal of the Benin
city-state
to
engage
in the slave trade should undermine the
popular argument
that the existence of
slavery
in Africa induced the international slave trade.
678
PETER P. EKEH
the outside and the
inside,
as it turned itself into a
predatory slave-trading
state
and frittered
away
its human
capital
in the fiasco of the trade.
Eventually,
it
was itself consumed in wars whose
captives
fed the slave markets of West
Africa and
slave-holding
estates of Brazil in the last
phase
of the slave trade in
the nineteenth
century. By
contrast with
Ethiopia
and
Benin,
what
appeared
so
remarkable about
Oyo
was the
deep
involvement of its
kinship
structures in
politics
and the
governance
of the state. Historian Robin Law
(1977:63)
notes that "The
political system
of
[slave-trade era]
Oyo
was thus founded
upon
the
lineage
.... The
city
of
Oyo
can, indeed,
be
regarded
as essen-
tially
a federation of
lineages" (also
see
Lloyd
1955; 1962:31-37).
Because
there are no records of
Oyo's political system
in the
preslave
trade
period,
Law
(1977:62)
has
suggested
that "we have to
proceed by assuming
that the
better-documented conditions of the nineteenth
century
can be
projected
back-
wards into earlier times" and thus conclude that the ancient
Oyo
state was as
controlled
by
the forces of
kinship
as in the later slave-trade era. But this
piece
of
retrospective
determinism must be
questioned.
Indeed,
Law and other
historians of
Oyo provide good
reasons
why
it is safer to assume that
kinship
was less
pervasive
in the
preslave
trade era.
Thus,
the
King
of
Oyo
was less
dependent
on
lineage politics
in the earlier
period;
and succession to the
throne was
by
the
protofeudal
rule of
primogeniture
(Law 1977:67;
Johnson
1921:41). By
the later
slave-trading period,
there had been a
decay
in the
succession rule to
competition among
units and sub-units of the
royal lineage
for the
throne,
with the
kin-composed chiefly
council, Oyo
Mesi,
playing
a
major
role in such
struggle.
We
suggest
that in ancient African states
corrupt-
ed into the slave
trade,
there was
great
likelihood that there would be
regres-
sion from
protofeudal possibilities
to the
growth, by way
of
reaction,
of
kinship
institutions,
as seemed to have been the case with
Oyo.
Even when the
machinery
of the state
appeared
more
decisive,
as in
Dahomey,
there would be
substantial
undergrowth
of
kinship
networks not under the control of the state.
By way
of
comparison,
it is
noteworthy
that in
Benin,
with its
strong
state
institutional ties with
society, kinship
was not
only
weak,
but the
protofeudal
rule of succession
by primogeniture
was
strengthened
in time
(see Egherevba
1934:39, 43-44;
Bradbury
1973:16, 97;
Ekeh
1976:70).
The third
category
of states in Africa in the slave trade era consists of those
arising
from the
imperatives
of the trade and therefore ab initio
dependent
on
it. A
large
number of these states did arise with the
apparent
limited aim of
securing captives
to feed into the slave trade.
Examples
of these states come
most
readily
from the most
exploited
area of the West African Atlantic coast
and the
Niger
Delta. These states-studied
by,
inter
alia,
Dike
(1956),
Jones
(1963),
and Ikime
(1968)-were
the direct formations of the slave trade and
embodied the
poverty
of the state in Africa:
They
had little or no link with
any
society
over which
they presided.
In
spite
of the heroic
regard
in which their
"merchant
princes"
are held
by
African social
historians,
they
did not
rely
on
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
679
societal
legitimacy
for their survival. Their
power
derived from their
partners
across the Atlantic
Ocean,
who would
eventually,
in another
guise
of
imperi-
alism,
depose
and humiliate them. Such states
grew along
with
kinship sys-
tems: The slave trade led to the
invigoration,
not the
attenuation,
of
kinship
systems offering
the individual
meaningful protection against
such brash new
state institutions as
sprouted up
to service the avarice of slave-trade chieftains
externally supported by
the invisible hand of international mercantile
cap-
italism from across the Atlantic.
Some
comparisons may
be
usefully
made
among
these different
categories
of states in slave-trade Africa. From the
point
of view of
political sociology,
the
greatest damage
inflicted on the
political
culture of Africa was the division
created between state and
society by
the slave trade. In the
predatory
states of
the second and third
categories,
the state
grew apart
from
society
in
proportion
as its
dependency
on external alien sources
deepened.
On its
part,
the forces of
society
became more
independent
of the
state,
with
kinship flourishing
as the
most
significant representation
of
society.
In this
reckoning, European imperi-
alism must be seen as a historical successor to the slave trade. Once the rules
of association were redefined in
Europe,
the
predatory
states
necessarily
fell
victim of their
dependency
on
European
mercantile
capitalism
which,
as Eric
Williams
(1944)
has
argued,
had to be
replaced
in
England
and
Europe by
industrial
capitalism, demanding
more settled conditions of colonial rule in
Africa. In
spite
of accounts of heroic African resistance to
imperial conquest
popularized
in African social
history,
the onset of colonization was more or
less an affair between the African states and their former alien
supporters,
with little involvement from
society.
Whereas historians
may creditably
cite
the
durability
of
Samory's
"Seven Years War" with the French as an instance
of what African resistance to
European conquest
could demonstrate
(see
Crowder
1968:86-89),
it should be clear on the other hand
that,
especially
in
most West African nations riddled with the slave
trade,
internal
problems
arising
from the
separation
of the state from
society
weakened the
capabilities
of African states to maintain their
political independence
from
foreign
con-
quest.
"The
example
of Sir Gilbert Carter's
spectacular progress through
Yorubaland in 1893"
(Ryder
1969:278)
or the
lightning speed
with which
Frederick
Lugard
subdued the
mighty
Sokoto
Caliphate (1900-04)
was
hardly
a measure of resistance that could be
posed
from a
society
mobilized
against
foreigners.
It is
again
not
surprising
that Benin
proved
to be the most difficult
area to be
conquered
in southern
Nigeria.
As
Ryder (1969:287)
put
it,
"It now
stood isolated as the last
important
traditional state
surviving
in southern
Nigeria."
When Benin's
conquest
came,
it was in the real fashion of war in
which all
society
was involved
(see Bradbury 1973:91).
Nor should it be
forgotten
that
Ethiopia
was not colonized because of some act of
mercy
from
Europe;
the
organization
of
Ethiopia's
state and
society
would
hardly
be
receptive
to
European imperialism
and
penetration
in the fashion in which the
680 PETER P. EKEH
rest of Africa was subdued. Its
convincing
defeat of the Italian invasion
(1895-96),
at the final battle of Adwa in
January
1896,
was a feat that could
only
have been achieved
by
a mobilized
society (see
Boahen
1987:54-56;
Rubenson
1964).
Involvement in the slave trade
clearly
shortened the life
span
of
many
indigenous
African states of the
period.
As Daaku
(1965:137)
has
put
it,
"The
relatively
short lives of
many
of these states was due
[ironically]
to the slave
trade" because
"[their] energies
were
sapped by
the
frequent
need to
fight
if
not for survival then for
political aggrandizement"
in the
quicksand
of the
ugly geopolitics
of the slave trade. Colonial rule
was,
of
course,
the ultimate
collective termination of their
independence
and
sovereign authority.
Another
type
of
comparison
is instructive. African states in the
pre-slave-
trade era
decidedly
attained
greater
cultural
heights
than the states
operating
under the
aegis
of the violence of the slave trade. In this
respect, Wrigley's
(1971:123)
sensitive observations deserve to be echoed:
A condition of cultural
creativity
. . . is most
unlikely
to
belong
to the kind of state
that owes its existence or its
greatness
to
slavery
or the slave trade.
[It
is
remarkable]
that the
acknowledged masterpieces
of the Benin and Ife artists were
produced
before
the end of the seventeenth
century
and that aesthetic decadence set in
precisely
when
the slave trade was
becoming
the dominant mode of economic and social life.
Wrigley's
views here can be extended to the three best known ancient states of
Ghana, Mali,
and
Songhai,
which thrived in succession in the western
part
of
Africa from about the sixth to the sixteenth centuries. Various
accounts,
including
those
by
Arab traders and
visiting
scholars,
present
a
picture
of
states
showing
far more
responsibility
than the later ones of the slave-trade
era.
Fage (1964:20)
himself said that there seems to be "no
question"
that the
empires
of
Ghana, Mali,
and
Songhai
"rank
among
the
highest
achievements
of
Negro
Africans in
history."
For
example,
it is remarkable that the
peace
and
security
of these earlier times allowed learned
pursuits
in the cultural
sphere:
There was an academic
community
of scholars and students in Timbucktu in
Songhai
that has been referred to as Black Africa's first
university (Cissoko
1984:208-10).
This is a far
cry
from the
purely
mundane interests of the
slave-trading
states in the
following
centuries.
Of
course,
vast areas of slave-trade Africa
lay
outside
regions
of
organized
states.
Historically,
however,
they
were not isolated from the slave
trade,
cut
off in
any
tribal enclosures. On the
contrary,
a
good
number of the victims of
the slave trade were
captives
from those areas social
anthropologists
later
characterized as stateless societies-the classic
examples
of the Tiv
(Bohan-
nan and Bohannan
1953);
Ibo
(Green 1947);
Tallensi
(Fortes 1945);
Nuer
(Evans-Pritchard 1940).
These stateless societies were
usually
bordered
by,
or
at
any
rate were close
to,
one or more
slave-trading
states and networks. From
the
point
of view of
history,
the diacritical mark of these societies is that
they
were areas into which
predatory
states sent
organized
raids for
captives
to be
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA 68I
sold into the slave trade. From the
point
of view of colonial social anthro-
pology,
these societies were remarkable for
exhibiting pristine
forms of uni-
lineal descent
systems
of
kinship
that have marked Africa as a
region
in
which,
unlike other
ethnographic regions, "cognatic systems [of
kinship]
are
rare"
(Freedman 1961:214).
The relevant
question flowing
forth about them is
this: Is there
any relationship
between the
anthropological
and historical con-
figurations
of these societies?
The
correspondence
between the vast
history
of these raids for
captives
to
be sold into the slave trade and the
ecology
of this
pristine
form of
kinship
formation of
corporate
unilineal descent
groups
(with
prominent political
functions)
in the same societies seems to be too close to be dismissed as mere
coincidence. It
appears
to denote a notable case of reaction formation. Of
course,
the
apparently fragmented
forces of
kinship
could not
adequately
match the
power
of
imported gunfire (see
Inikori
1977)
in the hands of the
predatory
states.
However,
in the absence of
any shielding
state
institutions,
the little
corporations
of unilineal descent
groups
were liable to be
strength-
ened. The individual could at least
rely
on the
support
and
loyalty
of his
patrilineage,
as much as he was
prepared
to lend
support
for its survival
by
protecting
its constituent members. The success of kin descent
groups
in
protecting
the individual
may
now be difficult to
measure,
but their ca-
pabilities
in
forming
networks and alliances for
protecting
their members
should not be minimized.
Because the
problem
was not
posed
in this mode in the
past,
and in view of
the
proverbial complaint
about lack of "authentic" historical records in these
societies,
we
may
never have conventional answers to the
question
as to
whether the
pristine
form of unilineal
kinship
was a social formation of the
slave
trade,
or at least whether
kinship
was reinforced and
strengthened
in these
zones of
brigandage
and vandalism in the centuries of the slave trade.
However,
we can
piece together
indirect evidence from the Ibo
experience
with
kinlessness before and
during
the slave-trade
period.
In a close-knit and kin-
bonded
society,
to be kinless is a burden of
great
nastiness to the affected
individuals. Kinlessness
gains
its
significance
from the
intensity
of
kinship
in
society:
the
greater
the
necessity
for
upholding kinship
bonds in
private
and
public
behaviors,
the
greater
the
ugliness
and burden of kinlessness. We cite a
famous
European example:
In the medieval
history
of
Ireland,
the kinless
"broken
men,"
or
Fuidhirs,
had to seek
safety
and
security by attaching
themselves to clan and tribal chiefs in a
society
in which it was
dangerous
to live
outside the realm of one's kinfolk
(Maine 1888:173-84).
In
Iboland,
the fate of
the
kinless,
called
osu,
was similar to that of the Irish Fuidhirs. In the
earlier,
pre-slave-trade period,
kinless men and women
sought safety
and
security
through bondage
to
public gods
whose
priests
were
thereby obliged
to
protect
them as "slaves" of the
gods
from the
dangers
which kinless
people
would
otherwise face
(Basden 1938:247).
The crisis of the slave trade led to the
682 PETER P. EKEH
worsening
of the conditions of the
daily living
of the osu. Isichei
(1976:47-48)
paints
the
picture
of their
plight
in the
following
manner: "Another institution
that underwent distortion and
corruption [during
the
general
crisis of the slave
trade in
Iboland]
was that of
osu,
cult
slavery
...
the evidence
suggests
that . . .
[in]
the nineteenth
century,
their numbers
expanded
and their status
deteriorated
dramatically,
so that
they
became
outcasts, [sic] feared,
and
despised." Surely,
if there is such dramatic
change
in the status of Ibo
kinlessness as a result of the slave
trade,
should we not assume that the
convulsions created
by
the slave trade also
deepened kinship
in Iboland?
It seems fair to assume that in the extended centuries of the slave trade in
Africa,
kinship systems
were
strengthened
and elaborated as a means of
providing protection against
the
dangers
of the violence created
by
the slave
trade. It is
my
view that the most
enduring
social structure within which
Africans could be assured some measure of
protection
was
provided by
the
kinship system,
not the
capricious
state institutions that rose and died with the
turbulence of the slave trade. In
proposing
that the slave trade should lead to
the attenuation of
kinship organizations, Fage (1969b)
was
obviously apply-
ing
a favorite Western historical model of
development.
Maine
(1888)
shows
from his Irish data "how
independent
kin-based states evolve into
complex,
centralized
polities.
The latter
eventually destroy
the kin bodies which
give
them
origin,
and thus
ultimately
substantiate the
discontinuity
between kin
institutions and state institutions"
(Fox 1971:138).
Fage
to the
contrary,
the
abnormality
of the slave trade is that it disenabled this form of
development by
ensuring
that the two
grow together,
with the
kinship
institutions
serving
as
countervailing
forces to the barbarism of
predatory
state institutions. As a
matter of
fact,
it could be
argued
from the African
experience
that in several
instances
kinship
institutions
eventually
outlived state institutions.
The slave trade led to another form of abnormal
development
in Africa.
By
encouraging
the
growth
of
kinship
institutions,
the slave trade led to the
fragmentation
of moral
perspectives,
with the
segmented
and nucleated
kinship
entities
serving
as sanctuaries for moral
practices.
Rather than
develop
an inclusive world view
defining
common
morality
under the
aegis
of an
inclusive
deity,
African states of the slave-trade era
presided
over societies
with differentiated moral definitions in
many
instances celebrated in the sacra-
ment of ancestor
worship.
Outside of
Ethiopia,
the
emergence
of a common
world
view,
derived from a world
religion,
was not achieved in
any regions
of
Black Africa.
European
colonial rule was
imposed
on this substratum of
fragmented
moral
perspectives
in the
dying
decades of the nineteenth
century
and in the
first half of the twentieth
century.
Its
platform
of the
plexus
of
kinship
was
well
captured by
colonial social
anthropologists
who, however,
failed to trace
its social
origins
back to the
unsettling
circumstances of the slave trade.
Kinship provided
the individual room for
defining
his
citizenship (that is,
his
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
683
rights
and
duties)
and
meaningful protection against
the vicissitudes of the
slave trade and its
predatory
state institutions.
The relevant
question
that this
analysis
leads to is: What was the
impact
of
colonialism on such
rampant kinship
in Africa? To that
query
we now turn.
COLONIALISM AND KINSHIP IDEOLOGY IN AFRICA
"Kinship,"
writes Richard Fox
(1971:129),
critically paraphrasing
entrenched
wisdom in
political anthropology,
"withers
away
as
society passes
from
prim-
itive to the
complex.
Familial
etiquette gives way
to class
relationship."
Morton Fried
(1967:229)
defines the state as the
conquest
of
kinship:
"A state
is better viewed as the
complex
of institutions
by
means of which the
power
of
the
society
is
organized
on a basis
superior
to
kinship."
The drama and dilemma of
political development
in Africa stem from this
fact,
that such
respected
views on
political development
to the
contrary,
colonialism
heightened
and enhanced the
political
salience of
kinship
in the
state and for the individual. Plotnicov's
comparison (1970:66-7) points
to the
heart of the matter:
Within the
process
of modernization in the
West,
the features of intensive urbaniza-
tion,
extensive
migration,
and
geographical
and social
mobility
have been associated
with a concomitant decline in the
importance
of wide
kinship
ties. ...
By
contrast,
in
Africa
strong
and extensive
kinship
ties . . . have altered little. Ethnic associations
have not
only persisted,
in
many
cases
they
have increased in
importance
in the new
towns and cities.
Indeed,
under colonialism the notion of
kinship
was
considerably expanded
into the construction of ethnic
groups
and
kinship ideology,
which thus be-
came central elements of
any meaningful
definition of the
public
realm. This
persistence
of
kinship
in Africa must be seen as a
product
of the craft of
colonial
rule,
which
by
and
large
built its methods of
governance
on the
dominance of
kinship
in
precolonial
Africa.
The
resulting
colonial state
emerged
from two
processes.
First,
the authori-
ty
of
existing
African states and other nonstate
political systems
was dissolved
and
subjected
to alien
European
control.
Second,
some elements of the Euro-
pean
model of the state were
composed
in the colonial
setting
and
imposed
on
Africa societies as the colonial state. The
parts
of the model of the
European
state
imported
into Africa were
mainly
coercive
aspects
needed in the course
of its
conquest
and colonization. Thus the
military, police force,
and bureau-
cracy
were
prominent.
However,
the construction of the new colonial state
avoided as much as
possible
controls
imposed by
societal
constraints,
includ-
ing legislative processes. Consequently,
the colonial state in Africa was in
general separated
from the values and
morality
of both the
European
societies
from which these elements of the state were
imported,
and the African so-
cieties on which
they
were
imposed.
684
PETER P. EKEH
Contrary
to the
relationship
between the
European
state and
society,
in
which,
as
Engels (1884:155) said,
the state "is
by
no means a
power imposed
from without . . .
rather, it is a
product
of
society,"
the colonial state in
Africa was a
power imposed
from outside Africa and
clearly
set
apart
from the
societies over which it
presided.
Several
consequences developed
from this
separation
of state and
society.
First,
although
the
European
colonization of
Africa resulted in
single
national states
spread
across the territories of con-
quest,
there were no national societies commensurate and coextensive with
the national states of
conquest.
In territories like
Nigeria,
the national state
therefore coexisted and functioned
alongside
several
disparate
societies with
their own distinct
morality complexes
and normative
givens.
Second,
state and
society
in Africa were now
operated
on different
prin-
ciples
of
morality.
Whereas the state and its extended colonial
apparatuses
were run on the
principle
of institutionalized
amorality,
action within re-
stricted
spheres
of
society (say,
in an ethnic
group)
was
governed by
the
principle
of
morality.
Interaction
among persons
from different societal
repre-
sentations,
such as different ethnic
groups,
would thus not be
subject
to moral
principles,
but rather to the
principle
of
amorality.
The dilemma
promoted by
the involvement of the same
persons
in
morally
defined activities in the
societal
sphere
of
kinship
nexus and amoral activities in the civic
public
of
state institutions
poses
one set of intractable
problems
in the
analysis
of
African
politics
(see
Ekeh
1975).
Beneath the colonial state
level,
in the underbrush of
society,
the new
colonial environment
tapped
the resources of
precolonial society by feeding
on
kinship
codes of moral
behavior,
leading
to their
expansion
into
emergent
ethnic
groups
in the colonial
setting.
In the
precolonial period,
there were no
opportunities
for such ethnic
groups: They
were social formations in the
circumstances created
by
colonialism in which
persons
from different
kinship
entities interacted in urban and
polyglot
communities,
but the ethnic
groups
that thus
emerged
were not
integrated
into a
composite society.
Furnivall's
colonial Burma-based caricature
(1948)
of a market-oriented and
morally
impoverished "plural society"
was not distant from the
pattern
of colonial
interactions in Africa. Interactions were rich and
plentiful,
but
relationships
between
persons
from different ethnic
groups
were
essentially
amoral.
Colonialism led to the
crystallization
of
ethnicity
from another direction.
Colonial rule involved minimum
government
and minimum state
functions,
especially
outside the maintenance of law and order. In much of colonial
Africa,
social welfare for individuals was not
part
of state
responsibility.
Consequently,
social welfare functions fell into the
sphere
of the
only
other
entity organized
to undertake it: the
upgraded kinship system,
which
fully
absorbed this
responsibility
for the social welfare of the
individual,
alive or
dead. The items involved in the ethnic social welfare
catalogue
under coloni-
alism extended from such endeavors as the
provision
of education and health
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
685
(and
educational and health
institutions)
to
safeguard against
harassment
(even by
the colonial law enforcement
agencies)
and assurance that the indi-
vidual would be
given proper
burial and his
family
taken care of after his
death. These functions of the
kinship system
and ethnic
groups
were
particu-
larly
undertaken in the cities
by
"town" and "clan" associations formed from
fragments
of the
kinship system
that
migrated
to
polyglot
cities. In the coloni-
al
setting
the individual could
only rely
on state services at his own
peril.
Third,
colonialism
indirectly
contributed to the
growth
of
ethnicity by
encour-
aging "voluntary"
Christian missions that
sought
and maintained
good
rela-
tionships
with
kinship
entities.
Thus,
for
instance,
by translating
the Bible and
Christian catechism texts into African
languages,
the missionaries
helped
to
crystallize
the boundaries of the
emergent
ethnic
groups (see Abernethy
1969). Finally,
colonial rule did contribute to the
expansion
of
ethnicity by
organizing
colonial administration
along kinship
lines. For ease of
gover-
nance,
colonial
rulers,
especially
in British
colonies,
appointed
"chiefs"
where
they already
existed
definitively;
otherwise the rulers
imposed
new
"warrant" chiefs on
existing kinship
entities
(see Afigbo
1972;
Suret-Canale
1964:71-91).
The
impact
of these
developments
on the
ordinary
individual in Africa
counts a
great
deal towards a clear
understanding
of the colonial African state.
Above all
else,
a
major
result of the
way
the colonial state
developed
was that
the individual could
only
be
indirectly
related to the state.
Membership
of a
kinship group-either
in a substantial context of immediate clan networks in
rural areas or in more rarified
appearance
of
ethnicity
in
polyglot
communities
in the cities-became an
integral meaning
of
citizenship
for the individual in
the colonial state. In this
sense, then,
the colonial state was an
overgrowth
spread
across,
and with ties
to,
a mosaic of
kinship groups.
The individual
saw his duties to the colonial state as
only part
of his
responsibilities
to his
kinship group.
Thus,
taxation was for the most
part
levied and collected on a
kinship
basis. In other
words,
the worth of the individual was calculated in the
idiom of
kinship membership.
The
meaning
of
citizenship
in the colonial state as the
rights
and duties of
the individual
collectively managed through kinship
networks dominated
pol-
itics at the
stage
of decolonization and was
deepened by
the tactics of colonial
governors,
who
exploited
this
ideology
of
kinship by encouraging
divisions
along
ethnic lines in the
dying days
of colonial rule. Postcolonial states thus
inherited a definition of
politics impregnated
with a
potent kinship ideology
as
part
of the definition of statehood in
independent
Africa.
TRIBALISM AND KINSHIP IDEOLOGY IN POSTCOLONIAL AFRICA
The
political
turbulence in much of
postcolonial
Black Africa owes a
great
deal of its virulence to the confrontation between entrenched and
rampant
kinship ideology
inherited from colonialism and the efforts of a fraction of the
686 PETER P. EKEH
new rulers to
destroy
what
they
saw as a divisive instinct
standing
in the
way
of the evolution of a united and
composite political organization
in the fashion
of the
European
state. In this
respect,
we must
acknowledge
the
hopes
and
vision of a few
pioneering
African statesmen who
thought
it was
possible
to
dislodge
such robust
kinship ideologies
in their
attempts
at
building
virile
kinship-free
African states. Kwame
Nkrumah,
in
Ghana,
and Sekou
Toure,
in
Guinea,
in their various
ways
underestimated the
strength
of ethnic
loyalties
and blundered into
antipluralist policies.
Sekou Toure was firm in his denun-
ciation of the forces of
ethnicity. According
to Aristide
Zolberg (1966:45):
Sekou Toure stressed that the most
important
task of the state was "the definite
reinforcement of the nation
by
means of the elimination of the
sequels
of the
regional
spirit
... How can the
unity
of the nation be
forged
if there remains in the
political
and electoral domain irrational elements to be
exploited
or which can influence a
part
of
society?"
But,
as Sekou Toure
painfully
discovered,
the
"regional spirit"
of bonded
kinship
was not
easy
to
dislodge.
The African state
continued,
even in Ghana
and
Guinea,
to be
plagued by
the divisiveness of
kinship loyalties implanted
during
the slave-trade era and emboldened
during
colonialism.
Unlike Ghana and
Guinea,
other
postcolonial
states
very early
settled to a
different
pattern
of
response
to the
problem
of
kinship loyalties.
In
Nigeria,
for a
prime example,
the salience and
potency
of
ethnicity,
and its associated
kinship ideology,
were
fully recognized
in the
early
1960s as
problems
that
had to be
accepted
into the definition of the
Nigerian
state. In
Nigeria,
Zaire,
Cameroun,
Kenya,
and a host of other
postcolonial
states in
Africa,
no efforts
were made-unlike the
attempts
in Ghana and Guinea-to
destroy
the
princi-
ple
of
exercising
one's ultimate
loyalties
to constituent ethnic
groups;
how-
ever,
important attempts
and
compromises
were made to contain their destruc-
tive effects and domesticate their
political
ambitions.
Perhaps
the most
articulate of such efforts is the construction of the doctrine of federal character
in the 1979
Nigerian
constitution,
which
designed
an elaborate formula for the
"consociational"
apportionment
of offices and other state resources on the
basis of the ethnic
composition
of
Nigeria
(see
Ekeh and
Osaghae 1989).
The
Nigerian
doctrine of federal character is an affirmation and
recognition
of
ethnicity
as an
organizing principle,
but it is also an
attempt
to blunt the
divisiveness induced
by
the
kinship ideology informing public
affairs in
Nigeria's postcolonial
history,
which led to a fierce civil war in the late 1960s.
The
principle
of federal character is
consciously
intended,
in
Nigeria,
to limit
the
dangers
inherent in the
struggle
to enhance sectional and ethnic
oppor-
tunities
through
the control of state
apparatuses.13
13
The framers of the 1979
Nigerian
Constitution
gave federal
character a final cause defini-
tion as follows: "'Federal character' of
Nigeria
refers to the distinctive desire of the
peoples
of
Nigeria
to
promote
national
unity,
foster national
loyalty
and
give every
citizen of
Nigeria
a sense
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
687
Apart
from such directed efforts at
domesticating
the
problems arising
from
kinship ideology
and
kinship loyalties
in Black Africa as
through
the deliber-
ated constitutional device in the
Nigerian experiment,
an
attempt
has
emerged
to limit the
dangers
of this
kinship ideology through
societal control of the
behaviors of those who act in modem multiethnic communities. It is man-
ifested in the
widespread
use of two terms in modem Africa: tribalism and
tribalists. Because tribalism is a
sociological
construction
attacking kinship
ideology,
I shall term it a
counterideology. Although
this
counterideology
of
tribalism is one of the most
important sociological thoughts
to
emerge
in
postcolonial
Africa,
there is no statement of its
meaning
in the literature.
Indeed,
there is a sizeable confusion between this
sociological
notion of
tribalism as a
counterideology
and as
rejection
of the tenets of
ethnicity
and
kinship ideology,
and the
anthropological meaning
of tribalism as a
strong
sense of
identifying
with one's ethnic and
kinship groups
in rural enclaves.
This confusion is
quite significant
because outside Africa tribalism continues
to be used in its
anthropological
sense,
whereas inside Africa tribalism is
widely
used in its other
meaning
in both
everyday
interactions and in such
serious circles as
universities,
parliament,
official
government documents,
and in
newspapers.
It
appears proper
that the distinction between these two
uses of tribalism should be outlined.
Two
Contrasting
Uses
of
Tribalism in
Africa
The
anthropological meaning
of tribalism is best
captured
from the vast
literature and the
early
direction of the
Rhodes-Livingstone
Institute of British
Central
Africa,
in which tribalism was understood as the attribute of tribes and
of tribesmen who demonstrate
loyalty
and adherence to tribal
ways
of
doing
things.
As enunciated
by
its second director
(Gluckman 1945:1),
the Institute
"aim[ed]
to
analyze
the
organization
of modem Central Africa and to show
how selected urban and tribal communities live within it." The Institute's core
attention turned on rural men and tribal
folkways,
and how their behaviors were
transposed
to new colonial urban concentrations. As Gluckman
(1961:67)
was
to summarize it much
later,
"Perhaps
out of the tradition of
anthropology,
we
[in
the
Institute]
have been interested
largely
in the
problem
of
why
tribalism
of
belonging
to the nation
notwithstanding
the diversities of ethnic
origin, culture, language
or
religion
which
may
exist and which it is their desire to nourish and harness to the enrichment of
the Federal
Republic
of
Nigeria" (Williams 1976:x).
This condensed definition of federal char-
acter was distilled from three
separate points
of view as
proper ways
of
achieving
the
supreme
constitutional
goal
of the
"promotion
of national
loyalty
in a multi-ethnic
society,"
which
urged:
"fair and
equitable
treatment for all the
component
states and ethnic
groups
in the
country";
"fair
and
just
treatment for all ethnic
groups
within the area of
authority
of
[any] government"
in
Nigeria;
and the avoidance of "the
predominance
in the Federal Government or
any
of its
agencies
of
persons
from some
states,
ethnic or other sectional
groups
to the exclusion of
persons
from other
states,
ethnic or other sectional
groups,
or the
monopoly
of the office of the President
by persons
from
any
state or ethnic
groups" (Williams 1976:viii-ix).
688
PETER P. EKEH
persists,
both in tribal areas and in
towns,
in
spite
of the industrial revolution
which has
produced
such
great
social
changes." Accordingly,
"detribaliza-
tion,"
or the
degree
to which a townsman
departs
from his tribal
ways,
became
a central construct of the
anthropologists
of the
Rhodes-Livingstone
Institute
(see
Wilson
1941-2).14
Several studies of tribalism in southern Africa were
premised
on the mean-
ing
of
loyalty
and adherence to traditional values and norms as a source of
individual
strength,
with ambivalence on the
possibility
of "detribalization"
or
departure
from tribalism. J. C. Mitchell's acclaimed The Kalela Dance
(1956)
and
Epstein's
Politics in an Urban
African Community (1958)
revolved
around this
meaning
of tribalism.
Many distinguished papers
on southern
Africa which
carry
"tribalism" in their titles
imply approbation
for the tribal
folkways
carried into new urban areas:
thus,
Gluckman
(1960),
Mayer (1961),
Mitchell
(1960),
and Lee
(1971).
Such an
anthropological meaning
of tribalism is
dramatically
different from
its moder
sociological
uses in
postcolonial
Africa. In this latter
context,
tribalism refers to obnoxious modes of behavior in multiethnic circumstances
that threaten and
endanger
normal coexistence
among persons
from different
ethnic
groups.
As used
by
Africans,
tribalism in
postcolonial
Africa refers to
the abhorrence for the abuse of common
opportunities
and
public goods (that
is,
those owned in common
by
various ethnic
groups) through
manifestation
of undue
preferences
for
persons
of one's own ethnic
grouping.
Tribalism has
also been used as a term of
opprobrium
to denote
objectionable
activities of
individuals who threaten the
integrity
of the nation and
yet
favor its
spe-
cialized ethnic
fragments.
Thus,
the
government
of the
Republic
of Somalia
felt
compelled
to
explain
the basis of this
meaning
of tribalism in its
book,
War
Against
the Evils
of
Tribalism in Our
Country (Somalia
Democratic
Republic 1983);
and the
government
of
Kenya thought
it wise to
sponsor
a
"public
opinion poll
on tribalism in
Kenya" (Market
Research
Company
1961).
Even an
employee
of the socialist
government
of Ghana's Information
Service
Department attempted
to offer a Marxist
explanation
for the existence
of tribalism
among
educated Ghanaians in terms of false consciousness and a
misinformed class
struggle (Asamoa 1982).
In this
meaning,
tribalism and
14
Richard Brown
(1973, 1979)
has
given symphatetic
accounts of the
Rhodes-Livingstone
Institute and its first two
directors, Godfrey
Wilson and Max Gluckman. His defense of the
Institute and its two
pioneer
directors was written
against
the
background
of what he saw as unfair
attacks on colonial social
anthropology
(1973:173-74).
In contrast to such
criticisms,
Brown
(1973:174-75)
believes that the case of
Godfrey
Wilson and the
Rhodes-Livingstone
Institute is
"an
interesting
one since it illustrates the fundamental
ambiguity
which
lay
at the heart of the
relationship
between
anthropology
and colonial rule.
Furthermore,
the RLI was the first institute
of its kind in the
dependent empire
and it served as a model in
many respects
for those that were
later established after the second world war in east and west Africa and in the West Indies."
Predictably,
the name of the Institute was
rapidly changed (to
the Institute for African
Studies,
University
of
Zambia)
in the
postcolonial
era.
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
689
tribalists are seen as evil forces in
Africa,
which
governments,
trade
unions,
student
organizations,
and
newspapers
feel
compelled
to
fight.
This
intellectually insurgent
notion of tribalism in Africa does not neces-
sarily reject
traditional
ways
of
doing things. Virtually everyone
who
pro-
motes this
counterideology respects
tradition,
but attacks the abuse of in-
terethnic
public goods by
those
privileged
to use such
goods, especially
if
they
are also in a
position
to
dispense
them.
Furthermore,
this notion of tribalism
rejects
the
principle
of
exclusivity
inherent in
kinship ideology
as
implanted
into colonial statecraft. We can characterize the
counterideology
of tribalism
in this sense as an
emergent sociological
form of decolonization
deserving
analysis.
The
Sociological
Contents
of
the
Counterideology of
Tribalism
The terms
"ideology"
and
"counterideology,"
as used in this
paper,
refer to
sociological
constructions that have
emerged
in African
history
and
society
in
response
to the
major consequences
of slave trade and colonialism. What I
have characterized as
kinship ideology
constitutes a
body
of ideas and
prac-
tices that have enthroned
kinship
as a
governing principle
of
private
and
public
behaviors of individuals whose
identity
thus rests on their
kinship
associations. Because such
kinship ideology
defined the individual's rela-
tionships
to the colonial
state,
the usual
atrophy
of
kinship
in the face of the
increasing complexity
of socioeconomic
development
evident in world
history
elsewhere has not occurred in Africa. On the
contrary, kinship
in various
manifestations constitutes a
major problem
for the
development
of
composite
national societies and the
functioning
of national states. The societal invention
of a different set of ideas that seek to limit the
efficacy
of this
kinship ideology
is what I have termed the
counterideology
of tribalism.
As a
counterideology,
tribalism is not an academic construct
suggested
or
invented
by any
social science
analyst.
On the
contrary,
and to the consterna-
tion of African scholars who would
prefer
to
forgo
the use of the
term,
tribalism
emerged
into wide use in
postcolonial
Africa as a term
apparently
borrowed from the
vocabulary
of social
anthropology
and then inverted into a
despised meaning.
Also in wide use is the associated term
tribalist,
that
is,
a
person adjudged guilty
of the
practice
of tribalism. Both terms have rich
connotations in modern
Africa,
and their contents are
suggestive
of a tele-
ological meaning
of
appropriate
rules of coexistence in
polyglot
and multi-
ethnic communities.
In this
meaning,
as
counterideology,
tribalism assumes that when
persons
from different ethnic
groups
live
together
in multiethnic
communities,
they
have to
agree
to be bound
by
common rules of coexistence. It attacks behav-
iors and attitudes
tending
to be subversive of the
prospects
of
good
com-
radeship
and
neighborliness
in
polyglot
and multiethnic communities. In other
words,
whereas the
counterideology
of tribalism would
accept
certain behav-
690 PETER P. EKEH
iors as
inappropriate
in multiethnic
circumstances,
it would not condemn such
behaviors if enacted within
given enclaves,
away
from multiethnic environ-
ments.15 With
respect
to
participation
in the affairs of the state and in its
agencies,
the ethics of tribalism call for
mandatory
fairness in
sharing
out the
benefits that accrue to citizens across constituent ethnic
groups.
On the
whole,
the ethics of tribalism as
counterideology prescribe
what
may
be termed contrarinorms.
They postulate
a set of behaviors that
ought
to
be avoided in order to
permit
harmonious multiethnic existence. That is to
say,
tribalism
recognizes
that
although
it is natural for individuals to be
pre-
disposed
to enact behaviors that reflect their ethnic
background
and
may
well
indicate their
loyalties
towards their ethnic
groups,
the actor
ought
to avoid
such behaviors and even
suppress
them in the new circumstances of multi-
ethnic coexistence. These rules
emphasize
behaviors that
ought
not be enact-
ed,
not those that
ought
to be enacted.
An
important
difference between norms and contrarinorms that will
help
us
to understand the nature of tribalism as
counterideology may
be illustrated
with
respect
to the rewards and sanctions for
compliance
with,
or breach
of,
norms and contrarinorms.
Compliance
with norms
carry
societal
approval
and
possible
rewards;
their breach carries manifest
sanctions,
possibly legislated
punishment.
On the other
hand,
compliance
with contrarinorms
carry
no
rewards,
even in terms of
approval,
but their breach
clearly
carries sanctions.
"Thou shalt honour
thy
father and
thy
mother" is a normative rule. Its
observance is
acknowledged
and sometimes rewarded with societal
approval;
its breach is
certainly disapproved
and
perhaps punished.
"Thou shalt not
kill" is a contrarinormative rule: Its observance is not
rewarded;
its breach is
punished.
This distinction owes
something
to the differences in the nature of
normative rules and of contrarinorms: Norms are statements of rules of nor-
mal
behavior,
whereas contrarinorms state rules that control abnormal behav-
ior.
Now,
tribalism as a
counterideology
is a contrarinorm
forbidding
certain
types
of offensive behaviors in multiethnic circumstances in Africa and for
which
postcolonial
African societies
impose
sanctions of
disapproval against
certain classes of actors.
Tribalists
What endows the notion of tribalism as a
counterideology
with so much
sociological
content is the fact that
postcolonial
African communities have
15
A common
example
in
everyday
interactions in
Nigeria
will
help
to
clarify
this
point.
If two
persons,
A and
B,
were
holding
a conversation in their common ethnic
language
and a third
person,
C,
from a different ethnic
group
came
upon
their
conversation,
it is
expected
that A and B
would terminate conversation in their ethnic
language
and switch to a common
language, say
English.
If A and B failed to do
that,
the third
person, C,
would be
right
to label them tribalists.
What is
probably
distinctive here is the use of the label "tribalists" in a manner
designed
to
put
pressure
on actors to conform to new modes of behavior in multiethnic circumstances.
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
69I
tagged
certain elites in
society
as those who
ought
to
uphold
the new ethics of
coexistence in multiethnic societies while
sparing
other actors at lower levels
of
society
from the
responsibility
of
upholding
such ethics.
Perhaps
a
working
example
from
Nigeria
will
help
to establish
my point
of definition of tribalists.
If the head
(that is,
chairperson
in American
parlance)
of a
department
in a
Nigerian University
were to hire
only persons
from his own ethnic
group,
he
would be labelled a tribalist
by
his
colleagues
and others in the
university.
Such a label would
seriously
lower such a
professor's
esteem and
may
well
jeopardize
his
prospects
for
any
other
major appointments.
Similar
charges
of
tribalism would also be made
against
other
high-status persons
who are na-
tional office holders in the
public
realm,
were
they
to restrict the benefits
flowing
from their offices to their ethnic
groups.
On the other
hand,
if a lower-
status
person, say
a
foreman,
were
given
the
opportunity
to hire
persons
in the
university,
his first inclination would be to
bring
near him as
many people
as
possible
from his own ethnic
group.
He would
not, however,
be called a
tribalist in the
way
that the head of the
department
would be so labeled.
Nigerians
are more
likely
to
laugh
off such behavior as
expected anyway.
Inside this
intriguing
distinction is the central character of tribalism as
counterideology.
In
postcolonial
Africa,
society
seems to allow a distinction
between
low-ranking
individuals who
may
live within the norms of their
ethnic
groups
and those
high-ranking
members of
society, especially
if
they
operate
at the national
level,
who are
required
to
uphold
and
promote supra-
ethnic rules of coexistence in the multiethnic communities and states of Af-
rica. It is in this sense that tribesmen cannot be
tribalists,
and tribalists cannot
be tribesmen.
Tribesmen,
were
they
to
exist,
would live their entire existence
wrapped up
in tribal norms. Tribalists are
those,
on the other
hand,
who are
deemed to have violated
supra-ethnic
rules of existence that are their
responsi-
bility
to
promote
and
uphold.
CONCLUSIONS: TOWARD THE POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY OF AFRICA
The outline of the
history
of the
development
of state and
society
in
Europe
towers over African studies like a
colossus,
and its shadows direct the
path
of
African
political sociology.
The directions
given by European
models of state
and
society usually appear
in the form of "the
tyranny
of borrowed
para-
digms"
that,
as
Oyovbaire
(1983)
has
proclaimed,
tend to distort the academic
representation
of the
reality
of social existence in Africa
(see
Sklar
1985:22).
In the
history
of
Europe, kinship disappeared quite early (particularly
in
England)
from serious interaction with the
state,
thus
leaving
its
investigation
to reconstruction and inference
(for example, Phillpotts
1913;
Murray
1983;
Maranda
1974).
For this
reason,
apparently,
it has been
tempting
to liken the
development
of the
relationships
between the state and
kinship
in Africa to the
European
historical
pattern,
with the
expectation
that
kinship
will
disappear
692 PETER P. EKEH
from the
public
realm in Africa. On the
contrary,
the burden of this
paper
is
that,
in the area of the
relationship
between
kinship
and the
state,
the African
experience
offers a
sharp
contrast to the
history
of
Europe.
In
Europe,
the Hobbesian
problem
of order was resolved for the individual
through
the successful transfer of his relations of
reciprocal
ties of
citizenship
(which guaranteed
his
protection
from
insecurity)
from
kinship
nexus to
feudal and
protostate
institutions.
Thus,
Marc Bloch
(1940:142)
credits the
rise of feudalism to the
weakening
of
kinship:
To the
individual,
threatened
by
the numerous
dangers
bred
by
an
atmosphere
of
violence,
the
kinship group
did not seem to offer
adequate protection.
... In the form
in which it then
existed,
it was too
vague
and too variable in its
outlines,
too
deeply
undermined
by
the
duality
of descent
by
male and female lines .... The tie of
kinship
was one of the essential elements of feudal
society;
its relative weakness
explains why
there was feudalism at all.
Or,
as he
puts
it
elsewhere,
"Although
the
obligations arising
from blood-
relationship played
a
very
active
part
in
[feudal society],
it did not
rely
on
kinship
alone. More
precisely,
feudal ties were
developed
when those of
kinship proved inadequate"
(Bloch 1940:443). Similarly,
Maine
(1888:155-
6)
sees the
emergence
of feudalism in the
inability
of
kinship groups
to
cope
with the crisis of violence in Western
Europe:
"The
general
disorder of the
world had much to do with the
growth
of the new
[feudal]
institutions . . . a
little
community compactly
united under a feudal lord was
greatly stronger
for
defence or attack than
any body
of kinsmen or
co-villagers."
In
Europe,
the weakness of
kinship
enabled the
growth
of feudal and
protostate
institutions that
eventually
blossomed into moder
kinship-free
statehood. However,
in
preparing
ourselves for
analysing
this
subject
in Af-
rican
political sociology,
we
may
entertain this counterfactual
question:
What
would have
happened
in Western
Europe
if there had been no viable institu-
tions that could have taken over the
political
functions of
kinship
of
protecting
the individual from
widespread insecurity?
We
may imagine
that
kinship,
in
reaction to such
generalized
violence and in the absence of
any
viable alter-
natives,
would have been
strengthened.
This
appears
in fact to have
happened
in some sections of
Europe:
"On this
point history
is
decisive,
for the
only
regions
in which
powerful agnatic groups
survived-German lands on the
shores of the North
Sea,
Celtic districts of the British Isles-knew
nothing
of
vassalage,
the fief and the manor"
(Bloch 1940:142).
This is
quite
close to
what has occurred in much of Africa.
In the African
experience,
the Hobbesian
problem
of order has not been
solved for the individual
by
some
embracing
state Leviathan nor
by any
surrogate
feudal order of
government.
It has been alleviated
through
an under-
growth
and suffusion of
kinship
bonds. The disorder in several
portions
of
Africa's
history
emanated from the state. When it has
not,
the state has
generally proved
inefficient in its control. In
sharp
contrast,
across the cen-
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBALISM IN AFRICA
693
turies
kinship
has
consistently provided
the individual with some
security
within its limits of
efficacy. Clearly,
the lot of the individual has thus been
worse than that of
Europeans, although
better than that of the native Aus-
tralian or native American Indian. In
general
terms of world
history,
the
centuries between the fifteenth and nineteenth bore traumatic
experiences
for
the native cultures of
Australasia,
the
Americas,
and Africa. If there is
judg-
ment that in relative terms the African as an individual has withstood the
turmoil occasioned
by
the slave trade and
imperialism
rather
well,
then this
survival is owed more to the
strength
of
kinship
than to
any
state
organiza-
tion.
States of various
grades
did
operate during
the era of the slave
trade;
and
European imperialism
did lead to the creation of
Western-type
states in
Africa,
but in
general
the
individual,
with rare
exceptions,
could not entrust his
safety
and
security
to the state.
Indeed,
the distrust of the state and its institutions
by
the individual has been the norm rather than the
exception
in the
history
of
Africa. In
many
instances,
the individual has needed his
kinship
ties to save
him from harrassment
by
the state and its
agencies.
This
longstanding
contrast
between the trustworthiness of
kinship
ties and distrust of state institutions is
related to what
Cocquery-Vidrovitch (1978:283)
sees as a
juxtaposition
of two economic
systems impervious
to one
another,
at the
village
and
state levels . . .
[and]
a
dichotomy
which has struck all African historians: the invar-
iance of the basic
self-sustaining
communities
by
contrast with the
instability
at the
socio-political
level
(italics
in
original).
Thus,
in
Africa,
the absence of
strong
and reliable state institutions has led
to the
strengthening
of
kinship
ties. The
political sociology
of Africa is
distinct in this
respect
because,
rather than
disappearing, kinship
has had to be
integrated
into the existence of the modern African state. This
uniqueness
translates
very boldly
into the
everyday language
of
politics
and
society
in
Africa.
However,
the semantic
exploitation
of this
prominence
of
kinship
has
rarely
been
captured
in moder African studies. In
effect,
the subtleties of
nuanced
kinship terminology
in modern
everyday
life and
language frequently
evade an over-determined and
over-Europeanized
"Africanist"
scholarship.
Indeed,
modern African studies in the United States and
Europe
tend to be
rather distant from Africans. Much of it is
essentially
what it was in the
heyday
of colonial social
anthropology:
the
interpretation
of Africans and
their behaviors to non-Africans outside Africa. As such the insider views
within Africa are divorced from the outsider definitions of relevance
by
Af-
ricanists. But the academic
representation
of the African insider views is
nowadays besieged
with adversities and
increasingly,
unlike,
for
example,
the
Ibadan School of
History
in the 1950s and
1960s,
the research
agenda
in
Africa
ignores
the insider view in order to be
published
outside Africa-
leading
to the
adoption
of
concepts
and
terminology
that
hardly
fit moder
694
PETER P. EKEH
African realities. This trend is
deeply troubling
to the
political sociology
of
Africa,
which leaves unexamined such
intellectually explosive kinship-based
constructs as tribalism.
Another
problem
of African
political sociology
has been the
segmentation
of its concerns into exclusive
periods,
with
major emphasis
on the
post-
colonial state. There is
important
need for
broadening
the
inquiries
concern-
ing
the sources of the weaknesses of the African state.
Any
such reorientation
would benefit
by avoiding
the
pitfalls
of what I have called elsewhere "the
fallacy
of
dependency
determinism."16 It
compels
the determination of rele-
vance in African studies from the convenience of the "Africanist" scholar and
from the
point
of view of what is fashionable in Western social science. Some
balance
may
be struck
by shifting
the boundaries of the
political sociology
of
Africa into
long-range inquiries
into the causes and
consequences
of the
poverty
of the African state
system.
Such efforts will
lead,
in the view of this
paper,
to a fuller statement on the inverse
relationship
between the abundance
of
kinship
and the
poverty
of state institutions in Africa's
history.
16
See Ekeh
(1986:23-24):
"the
fallacy of dependency
determination is manifest and wide-
spread
in African
scholarship
in various
ideological
hues. When a
paradigm
is
prominent
in the
United States and
Europe,
or Latin
America,
usually
because it addresses a
pressing problem
in
the
society
of its
invention,
it
spreads rapidly
to African
scholarship,
even if the
problem
that
gives
rise to such a
paradigm
is of little
importance
to Africa.
Conversely,
when a
prominent
paradigm
in the social sciences in the West
goes
into
decline,
usually
because it is no
longer
able
to
cope
with new
realities,
it also
quickly
suffers a
relapse
in
Africa,
even if the
problems
such a
paradigm
is
designed
to solve are still
pressing
in Africa."
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