Abstract
The conclusion of the study addresses the implications of the analysis for a social theory of the particularity of tribal allegiance in SSA. The analysis in Chapters 2–8 of the book reveals that the two major claims made about tribal allegiance in SSA in African studies do not resist close scrutiny. By ignoring the particularity of SSA and by privileging the role of the colonial and postcolonial state in its treatment of tribal allegiance in SSA, the literature fails to explain the particularity of tribal allegiance and its saliency. This failure cries out for an alternative effort to develop a social theory of the high saliency of tribal allegiance in SSA. Such a theory, if based on the precolonial history of SSA, would have serious prescriptive implications for social change in SSA.
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Notes
- 1.
See V.Y. Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, pp. 30 and 38 (Mudimbe 1994).
- 2.
For differing opinions on the role of ethnicity, see Michael Chege, “Comments on Structure and Strategy in Ethnic Conflict: A Few Steps toward Synthesis,” in Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1998, Washington, DC: World Bank, 1999 (Chege 1999); Paul Collier and A. Hoeffler, “On the Economic Causes of Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers—New Series, Vol. 50, no. 4 (1998), pp. 563–573 (Collier and Hoeffler 1998); Paul Collier, “The Market for Civil War,” Foreign Policy, Vol. 136 (2003), pp. 38–45 (Collier 2003); and William Easterly and Ross Levine, “Africa’s Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 112 (1997), pp. 1203–1250 (Easterly and Levine 1997). Others; for example, James Fearon and David Laitin, have been forced to admit that their theories need to be revised and better informed by real narratives of their case studies—see J. Fearon and D. Laitin, “Burkina Faso,” Typescript, no date).
- 3.
The term “territory” is used here to reflect the baseline definition of “tribe” as a society with a high degree of self-sufficiency and political autonomy. In this sense, a tribe is a territorially defined society. “Territory” is not used here to revisit the debate about whether precolonial African states and leaders controlled territory or people, and what was the extent of the territory (see Goran Hyden, African Politics in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 65–68; and Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton University Press, 2000 (Herbst 2000)) or whether the territory presupposed the existence of well marked boundaries (see Igor Kopytoff, ed., The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987 (Kopytoff 1987).
- 4.
D.T. Niane, Sundiata: an Epic of Old Mali, London: Longmans, 1965, p. 62 (Niane 1965); John Illife, The Africans, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 72 (Illife 2007); Jan Vansina, Kingdom of the Savanna, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965, p. 71; Ndaywel e Nziem, “The Political System of the Luba and Lunda: Its Emergence and Expansion,” in B.A. Ogot ed., UNESCO General History of Africa V: Africa from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992, p. 592 (Ndaywel e 1992); Simon Bockie, Death and the Invisible Powers: The World of Kongo Belief, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, pp. 2–5 (Bockie 1993).
- 5.
D.T. Niane, Sundiata: an Epic of Old Mali, 1965, p. 62.
- 6.
Salikoko S. Mufwene, Creoles, ecologie sociale, evolution linguistique, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005, pp. 93–96, 125–131 (Mufwene 2005). For the English version of the argument, see Salikoko S. Mufwene, The Ecology of Language Evolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001 (Mufwene 2001); and his Language Evolution: Contact, Competition and Change, London: Continuum Press, 2008 (Mufwene 2008).
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Sangmpam, S.N. (2017). Conclusion: Why Does it Matter?. In: Ethnicities and Tribes in Sub-Saharan Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50200-7_9
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