Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-rkxrd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T11:37:43.813Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Traditions of Invention in Equatorial Africa*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Jane I. Guyer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The straightforward logic of experience and the long route along the highways and byways of ethnography and theory have brought me to the same point: a conviction that in Africa in the centuries before its conquest social and cultural life was far more inventive from day to day than we can now easily imagine, steeped as old intellectual frameworks are in the equation between non-literacy and a repetitive “tradition,” and framed as our own social life has been by the organized repositories, routinized access and incremental growth patterns that ensure order and longevity to our own legacies of knowledge. Alongside the kinship, kingship and cult of classic social organizational analysis, attentive reading of African sources suggests another and different social project: the creation of variety amongst people in their skills and intellectual reach, not only reproducing a finite set of known roles and functions with respect to a “system of thought” but also endorsing a constant and volatile engagement on its boundless frontiers.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , December 1996 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Earlier versions of this paper have been read and generously critiqued in detail by Caroline Bledsoe, Bill Murphy, Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Achille Mbembe, Olufemi Taiwo and Christopher Davis. A presentation of my co-authored paper (Guyer and Eno Belinga 1995) to the African Studies Seminar at the University of Chicago provided stimulation for some of the ideas developed here. I have not done justice to scholarship in French; those connections remain to be made.

References

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1992. In My Father's House. Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Apter, Andrew. 1992a. Black Critics and Kings. The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Apter, Andrew. 1992b. “Que Faire? Reconsidering Inventions of Africa, ” Critical Inquiry Autumn: 87–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anyidoho, Kofi. 1995. Transcending Boundaries: The Diaspora Experience in African Heritage Literatures. Chicago: The Institute for Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities at Northwestern University and The Committee on African and African Americ an Studies at the University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Atkins, Keletso. 1993. The Moon Is Dead! Give Us Our Money! The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843-1900. Portsmouth N.H.: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Atran, Scott. 1990. Cognitive Foundations of Natural History. Toward an Anthropology of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Barber, Karen. 1991. I Could Speak Until Tomorrow. Oriki, Women, and the Past in a Yoruba Town. London: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Barber, Karen. 1995. “Money, Self-Realization and the Person in Yoruba Texts,” in Guyer, Jane I. (ed.) Money Matters. Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 205–24.Google Scholar
Barnes, J.A. 1962. “African Models in the New Guinea Highlands,” Man 2: 5–9.Google Scholar
Barnes, Sandra. 1990. “Ritual, Power and Outside Knowledge, ”Journal of Religion in Africa, 20: 248–67.Google Scholar
Bascom, William R. and Herskovits, Melville J.. (eds.) 1959. Continuity and Change in African Cultures. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bellman, Beryl. 1984. The Language of Secrecy. New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berliner, Paul. 1994. Thinking in Jazz. The Infinite Art of Improvization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Binet, Jacques. 1972. Sociétés de Danse chez les Fang du Gabon. Paris: ORSTOM.Google Scholar
Bledsoe, Caroline. 1994. “Constructing Natural Fertility: The Use of Western Contraceptive Technologies in Rural Gambia,” Population and Development Review 20, 1: 81–113.Google Scholar
Bledsoe, Caroline. 1995. “Numerators and Denominators in the Study of High Fertility Populations: Past and Potential Contributions from Cultural Anthropology. ” Paper presented at the Seminar in Honor of John C. Caldwell, “The Continuing Transition,” Australian National University.Google Scholar
Bledsoe, Caroline. Banja-Camara, Fatou, Hill, Allan G., and Marchant, Tanya. nd.“Body Expenditure and Maternal Depreciation in Rural Gambia.” Ms.Google Scholar
Bledsoe, Caroline, and Cohen, Barney, (eds.) 1993. Social Dynamics of Adolescent Fertility in Africa. Washington D.C.: National Academy Press.Google Scholar
Bohannan, Laura. 1949. “A Genealogical Charter,” Africa 22: 4 (Oct. 1952), 301–15.Google Scholar
Boyer, Pascal. 1990. Tradition as Truth and Communication. A Cognitive Description of Traditional Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chinweizu, Onwuchewka Jemie and Madubuike, Ihechukwa. 1975. “Towards the Decolonization of African Literature,” Transition 48: 29–37 and 54.Google Scholar
Comaroff, John and Roberts, Simon. 1981. Rules and Processes. The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
d'Azevedo, Warren. 1973. “Sources of Gola Artistry,” in d'Azevedo, Warren (ed.) The Traditional Artist in African Societies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 282–340.Google Scholar
Diagne, Soulemane Bachir. 1993. “The Future of Tradition,” in Diop, Momar Coumba (ed.) Senegal. Essays in Statecraft. Dakar: CODESRIA, 269–90.Google Scholar
Drewal, Margaret Thompson. 1991. Yoruba Ritual: Performers Play, Agency. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Dupré, Georges. 1982. Un Ordre et sa Destruction. Paris: ORSTOM.Google Scholar
Dupré, Georges. 1985. Les Naissances d'une Société. Espace et Historicité Chez les Beembé du Congo. Paris: ORSTOM.Google Scholar
Eno Belinga, S.M. 1978. L'Epopée Camerounaise: mvet. Moneblum ou l'homme bleu. Yaoundé.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1940. The Nuer. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Fabian, Johannes. 1990. Power and Performance. Ethnographic Explorations through Proverbial Wisdom and Theater in Shaba, Zaire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Fernandez, James W. 1982. Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fernandez, James W., and Fernandez, R.L.. 1975. “Fang Reliquary Art: Its Quantities and Qualities,” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 15: 723–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortes, Meyer. 1959. Oedipus and Job in West African Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Frobenius, Leo. 1980. The Voice of Africa. Being an Account of the Travels of the German Inner African Exploration Expedition in the Years 1910-1912. New York: Arno Press.Google Scholar
Geschiere, Peter. 1982. Village Communities and the State. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul International.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1979. Central Problems in Social Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1983. A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1994. “Living in a Post-Traditional Society,” in Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Lash, Scott, Reflexive Modernization. Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press, 56–109.Google Scholar
Glance, Natalie S. and Huberman, Bernardo A.. 1994. “The Dynamics of Social Dilemmas,” Scientific American 270,3:76–81.Google Scholar
Goody, Esther N. 1995. “Introduction. Implications of a Social Origin of Intelligence,” in Goody, Esther N. (ed.) Social Intelligence and Interaction. Expressions and Implications ofthe Social Bias in Human Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–33.Google Scholar
Guyer, Jane I. 1993. “Wealth in People and Self-Realization in Equatorial Africa,” Man (N.S.) 289: 243–65.Google Scholar
Guyer, Jane I.. 1994. “Concepts and Questions in the Analysis of “Wealth in People.”” Paper presented at the African Studies Association Meeting.Google Scholar
Guyer, Jane I.. 1995. Introduction. “The Currency Interface and its Dynamics,” in Guyer, Jane I. (ed.) Money Matters. Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities. Portsmouth, NH.: Heinemann, 1–33.Google Scholar
Guyer, Jane I., and Belinga, S.M. Eno. 1995. “Wealth in People as Wealth in Knowledge: Accumulation and Composition in Equatorial Africa,” Journal of African History 36: 91–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hallen, Barry and Sodipo, J.O.. 1986. Knowledge Belief and Witchcraft. Analytical Experiments in African Philosophy. London: Ethnographica.Google Scholar
Hallen, Barry and Sodipo, J.O.. 1994. “Indeterminacy, Ethnophilosophy, Linguistic Philosophy, African Philosophy,” SAPINA Bulletin 5, 2: 20–36.Google Scholar
Hallen, Barry and Sodipo, J.O.. 1995. “Some Observations about Philosophy, Postmodernism, and Art in Contemporary African Studies,” African Studies Review Vol. 28,1,69–80.Google Scholar
Harms, Robert. 1987. Games Against Nature. An Eco-Cultural History of the Nunu of Equatorial Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hart, Keith. 1992. “Market and State after the Cold War. The Informal Economy Reconsidered,” in Dilley, Roy (ed.) Contesting Markets. Analyses of Ideology, Discourse and Practice. London: Edinburgh University Press, 214–27.Google Scholar
Herbert, Eugenia W. 1993. Iron, Gender, and Power. Rituals of Transformation in African Societies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, T.O.. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Horton, Robin. 1983. “Social Psychologies: African and Western,” in Fortes, Meyer Oedipus and Job in West African Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 41–82.Google Scholar
Hountondji, Paulin J. 1994. Les Savoirs Endogenès. Pistes Pour une Recherche. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Iliffe, John. 1989. “The Origins of African Population Growth,” Journal of African History. 30: 165–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janzen, John. 1982. Lemba. A Drum of Affliction in African and the New World. 1650-1930. New York:Google Scholar
Jewsiewicki, Bogumil. 1987. “Vers une Anthropo-Sociologie Historique des Populations,” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 27, 1–2: 107–21.Google Scholar
Jewsiewicki, Bogumil. 1989. Art and Politics in Black Africa. Safi: Canadian Association of African Studies.Google Scholar
Jewsiewicki, Bogumil. 1995. Cheri Samba. The Hybridity of Art. Quebec: Galerie Amrad African Art Publications. Contemporary African Artists Series #1.Google Scholar
Karp, Ivan and Bird, Charles S.. 1980. Explorations in African Systems of Thought. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Koch, Henri. 1968. Magie et Chasse au Cameroun. Paris: Berger-Levrault.Google Scholar
Kopytoff, Igor. 1986. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in Appadurai, A. (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 64–91.Google Scholar
Laburthe-Tolra, Philippe. 1977. Minlaaba; Histoire et Société Traditionelle Ches les Beti du Sud-Cameroun. Paris: Honoré Champion.Google Scholar
Lawal, Babatunde. 1985. “Ori: The Significance of the Head in Yoruba Sculpture,” The Journal of Anthropological Research 41, 1: 91–103.Google Scholar
Levine, Donald L. (ed.) 1971. Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
MacGaffey, Wyatt. 1988. “Complexity, Astonishment and Power: The Visual Vocabulary of Kongo Minkisi,” Journal of Southern African Studies 14, 2: 188–203.Google Scholar
MacGaffey, Wyatt. 1991. Art and Healing of the Bakongo, Commented by Themselves. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
MacGaffey, Wyatt. 1993. “The Eyes of Understanding: Kongo Minkisi. In Nationa Museum of African Art, Astonishment and Power. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Press.Google Scholar
Masolo, D.A. 1994. African Philosophy in Search of Identity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Matory, J. Lorand. 1994. Sex and the Empire that is no More. Gender and Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.Google Scholar
Mbembe, Achille. 1988. Afriques Indociles. Christianisme, Pouvoir et Etat en Société Postcoloniale. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Mbembe, Achille. “Mémoire Historique et Action Politique,” in Bayart, J-F., Mbembe, A. and Toulabor, C., Le Politique par le bas en Afrique Noire. Contributions à une Problematique de la Democratie. Paris: Karthala, 149–229.Google Scholar
Meillassoux, Claude. 1961. “Essai d'Interpretation du Phénomène Economique dans les Sociétés Traditionelles d'autosubsistance,” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 1: 38–67.Google Scholar
Meillassoux, Claude. 1964. Anthropologic Economique des Gouros de Cote d'Ivoire. Paris/The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Moore, Sally Falk. 1975. “Epilogue. Uncertainties in Situations, Indeterminacies in Culture,” in (ed.) Symbol and Politics in Communal Ideology: Cases and Questions. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 210–39.Google Scholar
Moore, Sally Falk. 1993. “Changing Perspectives on a Changing Africa. The Work of Anthropology. In Bates, Robert H., Mudimbe, V.Y., and O'Barr, Jean (eds.) Africa and the Disciplines. The Contributions of Research in Africa to the Social Sciences and Humanities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 3–57.Google Scholar
Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa. Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Mudimbe, V.Y. 1994. Parables and Fables. Exegesis, Textuality, and Politics in Central Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Mudimbe, V.Y, and Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1993. “The Impact of African Studies on Philosophy,” in Bates, Robert H., Mudimbe, V.Y. and O'Barr, Jean (eds.) Africa and the Disciplines. The Contributions of Research in Africa to the Social Sciences and Humanities. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 113–38.Google Scholar
Murphy, William P. 1980. “Secret Knowledge as Property and Power in Kpelle Society: Elders Versus Youth, Africa 50, 2: 193–207.Google Scholar
Murphy, William P.. 1990. “Creating the Appearance of Consensus in Mende Political Discourse,” American Anthropologist 92, 1:24–41.Google Scholar
Murphy, William P.. 1995. “The Sublime Dance of Mende Politics: An African Aesthetic of Charismatic Power. ” Ms.Google Scholar
Nowak, Martin A., May, Robert M., and Sigmund, Karl. 1995. “The Arithmetics of Mutual Help,” Scientific American 272, 6:76–81.Google Scholar
Rey, Pierre-Philippe. 1975. “The Lineage Mode of Production,” Critique of Anthropology 3: 27–29.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall D. 1968. Tribesmen. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Schildkrout, Enid and Keim, C.A.. 1990. African Reflections: Art from Northeastern Zaire. New York:Google Scholar
Soyinka, Wole. 1975. “Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Tradition,” Transition 48: 38–44.Google Scholar
Taiwo, Olufemi. 1993. “Colonialism and its Aftermath. The Crisis of Knowledge Production,” Callaloo 16, 3: 891–908.Google Scholar
Taiwo, Olufemi. 1995. “Appropriating Africa: An Essay on New Africanist Schools,” Issue 23, 1: 39–45.Google Scholar
Tessmann, Gunter. 1914. Die Pangwe. Excerpts in P. Laburthe Tolra and C. FalgayrettesLeveau (1922) Fang. Paris: Musee Dapper.Google Scholar
Thompson, Robert Farris. 1973. “Yoruba Artistic Criticism,” in d'Azedvedo, Warren (ed.) The Traditional Artist in African Societies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 19–61.Google Scholar
Vansina, Jan. 1973. The Tio Kingdom of the Middle Kongo 1880-1882. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vansina, Jan. 1990. Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1948. From Max Weber. Essays in Sociology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Zabusky, Stacia E. 1995. Launching Europe. An Ethnography of European Cooperation in Space Science. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Zeitlyn, David. 1995. “Divination as Dialogue: Negotiation of Meaning with Random Responses,” in Goody, Esther N. (ed.) Social Intelligence and Interaction. Expressions an Implications of the Social Bias in Human Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 189–205.Google Scholar
Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. 1993. A Modern Economic History of Africa. Volume I: The Nineteen Century. Dakar: CODESRIA.Google Scholar