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Circular Arguments and Self-Fulfilling Definitions: “Statelessness” and the Dagaaba

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Kojo Yelpaala
Kojo Yelpaala*
Affiliation:
McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific
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Extract

Since the publication of Maine's Ancient Law in 1861 social anthropological studies have been prolific. The basic intellectual and investigative interest of these social anthropologists was and continues to be the social, political, and cultural organization of preliterate societies in their benign state of primitivity. Indeed, it might be said that the anthropologist created the savage, the barbarian, and the primitive and their state as an object of intellectual inquiry through fieldwork. Most of these studies conducted within the framework of what Owusu calls “structual-functional empiricism” were not exactly law-centered. Whatever glimpses of the legal system one could obtain was by accident. Law was merely part of a functioning, coherent, and consistent totality; part of the jigsaw puzzle of the primitive reality.

Subsequent legal anthropological works clearly fell into two categories: those that thought that primitive societies did not have law and others that thought that they did. Those of the first group have viewed small-scale societies from the monocles of western jurisprudence, expecting to find a system of rules emanating from an authoritative source in a hierarchically-organized political system with government, courts, and a law-enforcement mechanism backed by coercive physical sanctions. Viewed from this perspective they not surprisingly found what they considered to be a pattern of “statelessness,” lawlessness, anarchy, and notions of justice and remedy based upon the principle of self-help or the law of the claw and the fang. Critics of colonialism and anthropology suggest that this characterization of the expectations of the colonial anthropologist might be a serious misrepresentation of their true expectations. The colonialist needed the anthropologist to provide the methods by which colonialism could be most effective. The anthropologist on the other hand created the savage and his state of statelessness, lawlessness, and self-help to provide a rational basis for colonialist subjugation and exploitation of the savage.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 10 , 1983 , pp. 349 - 385
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1983

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References

Notes

1. Owusu, MaxwelJ, “Ethnology of Africa: The Usefulness of the Useless,” American Anthropologist, 80(1978), 310–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. The definition of law has been one of the most troublesome areas of jurisprudence; more ink has been spilled on it than perhaps any other concept. The most modern effort at the definition of law has been undertaken by Hart, H.L.A., The Concept of Law (Oxford, 1961).Google Scholar For a general review of anthropological studies of law see Nader, Laura, “The Anthropological Study of Law,” American Anthropologist, 67 (1965), 3–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Whether a particular group was “savage” appears to have a well-calculated decision to foster some objective. See in particular Dorward, David, “Ethnography and Administration: A Study of Anglo-Tiv ‘Working Misunderstanding’,” JAH, 15 (1974), 457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Pospisil, L., Anthropology of Law: A Comparative Theory (New York, 1971).Google Scholar See also his Kapauku Papuans and Their Law (New Haven, 1958)Google Scholar and “The Attributes of Law” in Bohannan, Paul, ed., Law and Warfare (New York, 1967), 25–41Google Scholar; Hoebel, L.A., The Law of Primitive Man: A Study in Comparative Legal Dynamics (Cambridge, Mass., 1954)Google Scholar; Gluckman's, Max works include The Judicial Process of the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia (Manchester, 1955)Google Scholar; The Ideas in Barotse Jurisprudence (New Haven, 1965)Google Scholar; Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Scoeity (Oxford, 1965).Google Scholar

5. Owusu, , “Ethnology,” 312.Google Scholar

6. Among recent works on states and state formation are Claessen, H.J.M. and Skalnik, P., eds., The Early State (Hague, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Claessen, /Skalnik, , The Study of the State (Hague, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haas, Jonathan, The Evolution of the Prehistoric State (New York, 1983).Google Scholar

7. With the decline of infant mortality and the dispersion of the Dagaaba all over Ghana any estimate is likely to be inaccurate. The estimated population here is taken from the Ghana Catholic Diary (Accra, 1981). Its estimates of the Catholics in the Wa Dioceses, which controls all Dagao is 92,246. Conservatively, we estimate that one of every three Dagaaba is a Catholic.

8. Goody, Jack, The Social Organization of the Lowiili (London, 1967), 18–26.Google Scholar

9. There is a way of verifying Dagaaba oral narratives of the historical type. It is generally believed that the Dagaaba migratory patterns can be discovered from the Bogkyur narrative generally called the Bogre myth. From my own observation the Bogkyur narrative is a highly-contested event between different individual narrators trying to keep the record straight. A collection of various Bogkyur narratives might provide an interesting starting-point in unravelling Dagaaba origins.

10. The structure of government as a criterion in the definition of state has reigned supreme since the days of Spencer, Morgan, and Maine. It has been varied slightly by recent anthropologists; see for example the chapters in Meyer Fortes, Evans-Pritchard, E.E., eds., African Political Systems (London, 1940)Google Scholar; and Service, E.R., Origins of the State and Civilization: The Process of Cultural Evolution (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

11. Poulantzas, N., State, Power, Socialism (London, 1978), 11–14.Google Scholar

12. See Wright, H.T. and Johnson, G., “Population, Exchange, and Early State Formation in Southwestern Iran,” American Anthropologist, 77 (1975), 267CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lenski, A., Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification (New York, 1966).Google Scholar

13. Fortes, /Evans-Pritchard, , African Political Systems, 5–6.Google Scholar

14. Horton, Robin, “Stateless Societies in the History of West Africa” in Ajayi, J.F.A. and Crowder, Michael, eds., History of West Africa, I (New York, 1976), 78.Google Scholar

15. Horton, , “Stateless Societies,” 72, with emphasis added.Google Scholar

16. Cohen, Ronald and Service, E.R., eds., Origins of the State: The Anthropology of Political Evolution (Philadelpha, 1978), 4.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., 5.

18. Vansina, Jan, “An African Perspective on State Formation,” (Paper presented at the Second Burdick Vary Symposium, Institute for Research in the Humanities and the Law School of the University of Wisconsin, 1981).Google Scholar

19. For a discussion of the anthropologists' view of stateless societies see Clastres, Pierre, Society Against the State: The Leader as Servant and the Humane Uses of Power Among the Indians of the Americas (New York, 1977), 159.Google Scholar

20. Traore, O., “Aesthetic Ideology and Oral Narrative Paradigms in Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God.” (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1981), 172, 184–87.Google Scholar

21. An example of this is the narrative called yeng gang naa (intelligence is better than kingship). The king in this narrative, angered by the intelligence of his subject, tries to get rid of him by plotting a murder at a feast. The intelligent subject outwits the king, survives the plot, and invites the king for a feast in his house!

22. Clastres, , Society Against the State, 185–86.Google Scholar

23. If you go from one village to another and enquire about why there are generally two chief's houses (one “old” and the other “new”), the general story is that, owing to the atrocities of the first chiefs, they were replaced.

24. Horton, , “Stateless Societies,” 106.Google Scholar

25. Mbiti, John, African Religion and Philosophy (Garden City, N.Y.), 19–36.Google Scholar

26. Rattray, Robert, Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland (Oxford, 1932)Google Scholar; Skalnik, P., “Early States in the Voltaic Basin” in Claesen/Skalnik, Early State, 469n35Google Scholar; Iliasu, A.A., “The Origins of the Mossi-Dagomba State,” Research Review, (1971), 95–113Google Scholar; Staniland, Martin, The Lions of Dagbon: Political Change in Northern Ghana (Cambridge, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fage, J.D., “Reflections on the Early History of the Mossi-Dagomba Group of States” in Vansina, J., Thomas, L.V., and Manny, R., eds., The Historian in Tropical Africa (London, 1964), 177–89.Google Scholar

27. Skalnik, , “Early States,” 472.Google Scholar

28. Wilks, Ivor, “The Mossi and Akan States” in Ajayi/Crowder, History of West Africa, 432Google Scholar; Goody, , “Circulating Succession Among the Gonja” in Goody, , ed., Succession to High Office (Cambridge, 1966)Google Scholar; idem, “The Over-kingdom of Gonja” in D. Forde and P. Kaberry, eds., West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1967), 179-94.

29. According to this narrative a long, long time ago, the king gave an order that nobody in the society should slander his neighbor. Anybody who violated this command should be taken before the king for punishment. On hearing of this new command, Bader went home immediately, picked up his hoe, went up the hill, and stood there pecking away at a flat piece of rock. An antelope came by and, seeing Bader, greeted him and then asked him what he was doing on a hot day on top of a rock. Whereupon Bader retorted, “Can't you see that I am scooping large amounts of soil up to make yam mounts?” The antelope raised his eyebrows and left. No sooner had he disappeared into the brush than he burst out into laughter and said: “What energy does a frail tiny person like Bader have to lift a hoe and be scooping soil on a hard rock. This is something that one should appropriately comment on. The king's command does not make sense in these situations (no boh la ka naa fire) [that is, the king is merely worrying the peace of mind of the people].” Whereupon Bader, who was quietly following the antelope jumped out and said, “Ah hah! I have caught you violating the king's command!” He took the antelope to the king, who condemned it to death and asked Bader to take the antelope away and kill it, which he did. This is just part of a long narrative all of which cannot be told here. There are several other narratives of this nature.

30. Rattray, , Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland, 427.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., 409.

32. Goody, , Social Organization of the Lowiili, 13.Google Scholar

33. For an explanation of positive ethnocentricism see Hsu, Francis L.K., “The Cultural Problem of the Cultural Anthropologist,” American Anthropologist, 81 (1979), 517–522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Horton, , “Stateless Societies,” 106Google Scholar; Tamakloe, E., A Brief History of the Dagomba People (Accra, 1931), Chapters 1-2Google Scholar; Wilks, , “Mossi and Akan State,” 418.Google Scholar

35. For Babatu see Holden, J.J., “The Zabarima of North-west Ghana,” THSG, 8 (1965), 60–86.Google Scholar

36. Hoebel, E.A., Man in the Primitive World (New York, 1949), 376.Google Scholar

37. Goody, J., “Fields of Social Control Among the Lo Dagaaba,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 75 (1957), 96Google Scholar; Fortes, M., The Dynamics of Kinship Among the Tallensi (London, 1945).Google Scholar

38. Professor J. Kubayanda of the University of Ghana and other Dagaaba scholars currently collecting oral traditions and oral narratives have encountered sources making references to the Kumbelo.

39. For a discussion of the anthropological attitude towards authority see Pospisil, , Anthropology of Law, 44–49.Google Scholar See also Yang, M.C., A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province (New York, 1945).Google Scholar

40. Pospisil, , Anthropology of Law, 44–47Google Scholar; Clastres, “Society Against the State.”

41. See Levine, R.A., “The Internationalization of Political Values in Stateless Societies,” Human Organization, 11 (1960), 51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42. Brown, P., “Patterns of Authority in West Africa,” Africa, 21 (1951), 261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. Pospisil, , Anthropology of Law, 43-44, 56–57.Google Scholar

44. E.g., Goody, , “Fields of Social Control,” 86Google Scholar; Fortes, , Dynamics of Clanship, 7, 181–85.Google Scholar

45. Tiewul, S.A. and Kobieh, F., “The Dagaaba” (unpublished manuscript, 1977), 5.Google Scholar

46. Horton, , “Stateless Societies,” 89.Google Scholar

47. The origins, nature, and development of the clan system and the lineage structure of the Dagaaba will be the subject of another paper in which I will discuss the legal ramifications of the concept of corporate entities.

48. The origins of this custom are clouded by a mystical uncle trying to reward his nephew and punish his son for the latter's misconduct on a farm where all three were working. The uncle then decreed that all property derived from his farming activities would go to his nephew. A familiar tale…

49. Fortes, , “The Structure of Unilineal Descent Groups,” American Anthropologist, 55 (1953), 27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50. In fact the appropriateness and even the validity of classic lineage theory is now coming under attack. For the most recent critique see Kuper, Adam, “Lineage Theory: A Critical Retrospect,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 11 (1982), 71–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51. Goody, Jack, Death, Property, and the Ancestors (London, 1962), passim.Google Scholar

52. At the installation of Guni II at Nanzaari on 27 December 1980 I recorded the oral narrative of the origins of chieftaincy in that village. The oral tradition suggested that, when the British administrator got to Nanyaare, he asked for the ruler (owner) of the village and was taken to the tendaana. The administrator told the tendaana to be chief. The tendaana in turn offered the position to a youngman, asking him to be chief on his behalf.

53. According to oral sources, Kayaan was so powerful and wicked that people from his village, Tugu, had protection wherever they went. In fact they named the village after him-Ka-yaateng. However, when the British administrator took away his medal he was so sad that, they alleged, he shed tears. Among the Dagaaba the term Kyir Mwintong (shed tears) can be used to describe the intensity of a person's feelings even though he may not actually have shed tears.

54. Forced labor and taxes took different forms. For example, each household had to contribute labor to work the chief's farm three times during the farming season, contribute grains for the schools, grass for roofing the colonial buildings, etc. I observed and participated in activities such as cutting grass or tending the chief's pigs in the late 1940s and 1950s.

55. The farm iibo is very important in identifying general legal principles in a society that is polycentrically autonomous, libo welds the various autonomous units together, thereby providing uniformity and certainty. See Pospisil, Anthropology of Law.

56. According to an interview with an informant in Jirapa 1971, the people of Jirapa, having heard of the removal of the chiefs in Lawra and neighboring villages, met and decided that they would not make any complaints about their chief since he and the tenderne were of the same clan. The action was calculated to prevent the shift in the power center. However, according to this informant the chief was warned by the tenderne to conduct himself with utmost integrity.

57. Interview in Kalsagri, December, 1971.