The Closed Society and Its Critics: Historical Transformations in African Ethnography John L, Comarott American Ethnologist, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Aug., 1984), 571-583. Stable URL: hitp://lnks,jstor.org/siesici=0094-0496% 28 198408%29 1 1%3A3%3C571%3ATCSAIC%3E2.0,CO%3B2-L American Ethnologist is currently published by American Anthropological Association ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhup:/www.jstororg/about/terms.huml. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hhup:/www jstor.org/journals/anthro. html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ Fei Jun 24 08:11:00 2005,review article the closed society and its critics: historical transformations in African ethnography JOHN L. COMAROFF—University of Chicago ng of Somali Society: Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 1600-1900, LEE V. CASSANELLI, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. xvi + 311 pp., maps, photographs, figures, appendixes, bibliography, inde» $26.00 (cloth). The Political Economy of West African Agriculture. KEITH HART. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology #43. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. vill + 228 pp., tables, notes, bibliographies, index. $34.50 (cloth), $12.95 (paper). The Past in the Present: History, Ecology, and Cultural Variation in Highland ‘Madagascar. CONRAD PHILLIP KOTTAK. Foreword by Roy A. Rappaport. Ann Ar- bor: University of Michigan Press, 1980. xiv + 339 pp., maps, figures, tables, photographs, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $18.95 (cloth), $9.95 (paper). Wives for Cattle: Bridewealth and Marriage in Southern Africa. ADAM KUPER. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982. xiii + 202 pp., maps, tables, figures, a pendix, notes, references, index. $24.95 (cloth). Iis 31 years since Fortes (1953) summarized the achievements of African anthropology in/"The Structure of Unilineal Descent Groups,” an essay the point of which was not merely to state, in a series of secure generalizations, the empirical discoveries of the fitst genera: tion of ethnographers, but also to celebrate the ascendance of the theoretical paradigm shared by them. In the intervening decades, a good deal of that certitude has evaporated amid the shaking of disciplinary foundations: from Leach's (1961) epistemological repudia tion of those very generalizations, through the deconstruction of basic concepts and orien tations, to revelations of their ideological roots, it has become commonplace to proclaim the “crisis” of modern anthropology. Such diagnoses are to be judiciously regarded, however. Apart from being very much in the eye of the beholder, they often bespeak no more than the passage from orthodoxy to heterodoxy. Frequently, too, they occur at the level of rarified theoretical debate and touch only contingently on “what the practitioners do...ethnography” (Geertz 1973:5). Infact, there has developed an observable, perhaps inevitable, gap between the discourses of abstract critique within the discipline and its Copyright © 1984 by the American Ethnologial Society s.096'89)020573-1381 807 African ethnography 571‘mainstream of research and writing; the latter being more conservative, if no less produc- tive, than the former. Nonetheless, the African ethnographic tradition does show signs of hhaving been affected by recent critical debate. Not only has the passing of structural func~ tionalist orthodoxy led to analytic diversification but, if the books to be considered here are symptomatic, out of the confrontation between outworn theses and simpliste an: titheses there has grown a pursuit of mew syntheses. In its polemical dimension this confrontation has expressed itself most acutely in adver sarial exchanges between the so-called classical and critical social sciences over the terms in which economy and society in Africa are to be apprehended—to methodology, that is, but in its ontological rather than its technical aspect. Not surprisingly, considerable atten: tion has been devoted in these exchanges to the proper spatiotemporal conception of units of analysis; the latter, after all, articulate between any theoretical project and its empirical referents, between the construct and the concrete. Thus, on the one hand, structural-func tionalist approaches have been excoriated, ad nauseam, for their inability to deal with his: tory, and specifically for theie failure to appreciate that contemporary realities are the product of capitalist penetration and colonial domination. The primary symptoms of these shortcomings allegedly are: the imposition of false boundaries upon primordial “societies”; the presumption of a radical dichotomy between small-scale systems and the capitalist world, a dichotomy mired in unfortunate binarisms (primitive : modern closed : open « traditional : historical); and the reduction of change to such impover- ished concepts as “modernization” or “detsbalization.” On the other hand, “critical” ap- proaches, notably those concerned with underdevelopment, stand accused of treating local communities as unduly uniform and inert victims of international capitalism. At best, iti held, these approaches ignore the manifest diversity of the African past and present, or ‘explain it away with reference to proximate variations in relations between centers and peripheries, At worst, they deny rural peoples any active role in the dialectics oftheir own history and reduce internal sociocultural forms to a mechanistic function of external forces ‘These polemical characterizations are no more than caricatures, although that fact has not diminished the frequency with which they continue to be rehearsed. Indeed, the very ‘opposition between “critical” and “classical” approaches obscures variations within each, just as it mystifies similarities between theie analytic applications. For example, Marxist ac Counts of precapitalist and colonial societies are hardly all of a theoretical kind; vide, say, Hindess and Hirst’s (1975:45ff, 78) allegation that Meillassoux’s paradigmatic ethnogra: pies of the Guro owe less to Marx than to methodological individualism. Moreover, itis simply untrue that scholars of radical suasion have made no effort, in writing of Third World transformations, to explore the internal structures of local communities or the cultural bases of emergent ideologies. At the same time many of these scholars have, de- spite their antipathy to structural functionalism, relied on similar representations of pre- capitalist systems, albeit transposed into a new lexical key. Thus, orthodox lineage theory has been recast, often without substantive revision, as the “lineage mode of production” land the concept of reproduction, as it has come to be used, is virtually indistinguishable from that old anathema, “equilibrium.” Nor is it easy to avoid the conclusion that the tendency to portray precapitaist formations as self-reproducing structures makes little ad- ‘vance upon the synchronic vision of earlier ethnographers, for it also depends on the col: lapse of diachrony into the “structural time" of repetitive processes." Conversely, notwithstanding its predominantly ahistorical stance—itself warranted by the rise in the West of an epistemology that opposed natural science to idiographic in- ‘uiry—Africanist antheopology has long produced both theoretical dissent (e.g, Evans- Pritchard 1961) and empirical efforts to comprehend colonialism and capitalist penetra- 872tion. Wilson (1941) and Epstein (196419571), among others, wrote of the proletarianization of Africans, and of their integration into a world economy, in terms that anticipated more recent concerns, The problem was not that these ethnographers were unaware of the con: temporary historical context; it was, rather, the dualism according to which they came to treat “traditional” societies, in the heuristic present, as closed systems, and then (in dif ferent studies, or in final chapters of monographs) to examine “social change” as a discrete ‘issue, Social change, in short, mediated the conceptual dichotomy between simple and complex societies as the two entered historical conjuncture. But this is not so different from those Marxist accounts that represent Africa as having consisted of self-reproducing formations until capitalist expansion impelled them into the world system. In fact, the parallel is especially clear when this process is analyzed as an “articulation of modes of production,” a perspective which usually has it that capitalist development involved the systematic perpetuation, in all but the longue durée, of preexisting social and material ar- rangements; the latter thereby being drawn, largely unchanged in form but serving new functions, into the modern epoch. What was for functionalism the heuristic of the ethnographic present becomes for vulgar Marxism the concrete reality of the historical past. But the descriptive characterization of indigenous Africa retains a remarkable kinship, This is not to deny the patent contrasts between functionalist and Marxist perceptions of, the African past and present; or, for that matter, to diminish the evident contribution of {cal scholarship to its illumination. Nor do | intend merely to belabor the obvious —that paradigmatic oppositions often conceal substantive similarities since few would reduce the field, in its current state of complexity, to the stark alternatives proffered by two com- peting epistemologies. Rather, my point lies in a more constructive observation: by virtue Cf their successes and failures alike—and the revelation of both through the polemics of confrontation, however insufficiently they capture the history of ideas—African studies hhave come to converge upon common problems and challenges Insofar as the classical tradition sustained, as its central methodological thesis, the im- age of the closed society, it was predictable that its critics should look to history for an alternative’: the demands of a diachronic perspective provide the most stringent antidote to the chimera obscura of hermetic holism. But the least satisfactory way to meet these demands was to situate the historicity of African systems in the exogenous context in rela- tion to which they had come to exist under colonialism, This solution, advocated most con spicuously but not solely by crude dependency theory, gave Africa its history purely at the behest of the West, an empirical absurdity. Moreover, the treatment of these indigenous systems as the inert object of capitalist penetration collapsed the dialectics oftheir interac- tion with their total contexts into the overdetermined physics of their encompassment by global forces. Hence, just as the closed society became indefensible, so too did its com- plementary opposite: those positions which, in historicizing Africa by recourse to external factors, revvified precisely the dualism —between precapitalist synchrony and postcontact, diachrony, static orders and social change—whose repudiation was the object of the exer- cise in the first place. Herein lies the hub of the problem; for if all this is true, two implications follow. First, African systems—precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial alike—require reconceptualiza tion in such a manner as to reveal their internal dialectics, the historicity of their en ddogenous reproduction and transformation. But where do we look for our models? And to ‘what degree do existing anthropological categories remain useful analytic tools? How, in short, do we arrive at theories of system, of sociocultural order and political economy, that transcend the procrustean binarisms—structurelhistory, systemipractice, societylculture, and so on—bequeathed by the model of the closed society and its epistemological heri- tage? Second, if we reject the view that these systems are inert tabulae rasa, it follows that African ethnography §73their conjuncture with the universe beyond must be a dialectical one as well that is, a pro- ‘cess of articulation which not only constitutes and transforms all the parties to it but also, constructs the very boundaries between the “internal” and the “external.” Further, in speaking of total contexts, the intention is to convey that the latter consist in a historically ramifying series of structures and agencies, ranging hierarchically from proximate com- ‘munities, through gradually more encompassing polities and material arrangements, to the ‘exigencies of the world system itself, however the latter may be conceptualized. AS this suggests, the dialectics of articulation are subject to systematic variation, mediated on one side by the intrinsic dynamics of local formations and on the other by the processual nature ‘of the full panoply of exogenous forces. Nor can the proportionate determination of these dialectics be assumed from the frst; they must be empirically established, But this only becomes possible inasmuch as the true complexity of both African systems and external agencies stand revealed. Only then, too, may we establish how itis that indigenous social and material forms may influence the direction of historical processes and yet be transformed by them. These problems—which have come to confront all students of African economy and society, whatever their theoretical orientations—ate bound to dominate Africanist discourse for a long time to come. Not unexpectedly, then, itis to some or all of these issues that the studies under review are directed, although they differ widely in their efforts to cultivate new theoretical fields. Kuper builds most concretely on the work of earlier ethnographers. Wives for Cattle begins with the contention that among Southern Bantu the exchange of wives for cattle con stitutes an institutional complex which was, and is, fundamental to the organization of social life throughout the region. These bridewealth institutions varied in substance, but the variation was not random; rather, "inherent potentialities were developed in a regular and systematic way. Consequently, while meeting the exigencies of different local organi zations, the various bridewealth systems were linked to each other by a series of rule. ‘governed transformations’ (p. 3). Kuper thus establishes three objectives, The first is to ex plicate these transformations by subjecting the Southem Bantu systems to a method of structural comparison. The second is captured in the statement that historical “change ...is the basic condition of [Kuper’s] method” (p. 5). But history and structural transformation are themselves closely interwoven, since, it averred, there is a tendency for change, within a common cultura tradition, to assume related forms. Indeed. the value ‘of the regional approach, he suggests, is that it promises—as an alternative to the closed society —to account for “structural transformation and historical change” within a single analytic compass, “while imposing a sense of the context and meaning of cultural prac tices” (p. 4). The third objective, presumably posited as a means of explaining the motiva tion for such transformation, is to show that institutional variations developed as an adap: tation to a range of local conditions These are worthy objectives, and Kuper’s knowledge of the ethnography is certainly equal to their demands. The historical objective, however, may be disposed of without much ado. This study is explicitly concemed with the “pre-industrial period” in fact, not only is it based on the classic monographs of the 1940s and before, but it culls from them {an uncompromisingly hermetic and timeless characterization of the late Bantu world. Thus, the indigenous systems are portrayed as essentially formal structures founded upon varying principles of exchange and alliance. While the latter are held to predicate con: trasting modes of political strategy, no consideration is given to the generic role of human practice, or social processes at large, in their reproduction or transformation. All activity is ultimately entailed in structures-in-place. To be sure, if this is history itis not merely a pro- cess without a subject but, as seriously, a subject without a process. The point is underscored when in (correctly) dismissing de Heusch’s explanation of the origins of 574 american ethnologistTsonga marriage arrangements as promiscuous conjecture, Kuper goes on to express a preference for Radcliffe-Brown’s view that “the springs of social action should be sought in contemporary institutions” (p. 117). Surely, though, the choice between wild speculation ‘and unbridled presentism is itself an antiquarian survival of the anthropological past. Final ly, when history is introduced it is treated briefly under the rubric of “persistence” (p. “V62ff,); and this inspite of the fact that the quoted examples testify to the recent redefini tion of the nature and meaning of bridewealth—as does the unquoted datum that it had already been outlawed in two large Tswana chiefdoms by 1880 (Schapera 1943:40) ‘While Kuper does not fulfill his own historical agenda, the same cannot be said for his ex Curis into structural comparison. It is here, unquestionably, that the strength of the study lies: above all, it succeeds in bringing to order the extraordinarily diverse sociocultural ar- rangements distributed among the Nguni, Sotho-Tswana, Venda, and Tsonga systems and their subvariants. In essence, its thesis is that while a common ideology of bridewealth prevailed, patterns of exchange varied according to three sets of factors: the relative impor: tance of pastoralism and agriculture, kin-marriage rules, and social stratification. In respect of the first, Kuper concludes that when agriculture was the main subsistence activity, bridewealth was relatively high and men depended on their sisters for its acquisition; where cultivation was less significant, it was low and fathers supplied it to their sons (p. 158). Butit Js to the second factor, marriage rules, that most attention is given. Through an excep tionally fine-grained comparison, a number of discrete alliance systems are identified: (1) close-kin martiage (Tswana, Southern Sotho elites) (2) preferential matrlateral cross-cousin ‘marriage (Sotho-Tswana, Venda in general); (3) econd and third cousin marriage (Tsonga, Northern Ngunil; and (4) nonkin marriage (other Nguni). Each is shown to have been associated with particular modes of exchange; with differences in the content of sibling, avuncular, and filial relationships; and with extant forms of political strategy, wedding rites, and household arrangements. They were, in other words, the linchpins of the con trasting sociocultural orders that composed the Banti-speaking universe. Lastly, these pat terns of alliance and exchange were mediated by social stratification, the thied factor, although Kuper does not pursue this much beyond the modest observation that inequality tended to coexist with repetitive alliance (type 3) and that superior groups were materially advantaged by bridewealth transactions Taken together, all this weaves a dense and fascinating tapestry, and offers sug gestive —if unevenly developed and integrated — insights into hitherto unexplored relations between aspects of the various systems. Perhaps most acute is the account of the realiza- tion of alliance structures in the symbolic architecture of the household and of wedding ceremonial; the weakest is its examination of the politics and economics of marriage Similarly, while the structural implications of exchange and alliance ate cogently teated, there is a lack of clarity concerning the status of the factors—economy, marriage rules, and stratification —that ostensibly underlie patterns of variation. From the construction of the argument, it appears that these are intended as the “rules” that govern the transforma tions subsumed in the sociocultural orders of the region. What is more, since the final ob- jective of the study—to show that those transformations are responses to differing local Conditions —is not dealt with in its own right, it becomes clear that the three factors are both the “rules of transformation” and the “local conditions” of which Kuper speaks. This is all very well, but it must be proven that they do in fact determine the production of variance and, equally, how they do s0. By the end of the account itis difficult to decide whether they represent causes, effects, or merely entailed features of the various systems As a result, the latter appear less as transformations, explained sui generis, than as a descriptive class of taxonomic variations Wives for Cattle is a challenging study, replete with arguments over which area African ethnography 875specialists in particular, and reasonable minds in general, will take sides, As a Southern Airicanist, | greatly admire Kuper’s synthetic achievement, yet find myself in strong disagreement with him on a number of counts. | shall mention just one and let the matter rest While I concur that marriage is a constitutive feature of these systems, the reduction of the latter to formal structures of exchange and alliance, and to taxonomic types, violates their very essence. For example, by treating Bantu social orders as he does, Kuper is cor pelled to conclude that any Tswana system falls into two categories: their elites practice endogamy and others, preferential MBD marriage. Apart from the difficulties involved in allocating one sociocultural order to two classes, each of which is supposed to impart form to the total system, the fact is that both royals and commoners practice all the various forms of marriage. Indeed, this gives the Tswana universe its dialectical quality: the coex- istence, especially, of FBD and MBD unions engenders a contradiction between relations of rivalrous equality and those of hierarchical inequality; a contradiction whichis itself en- tailed in the tension, in political economy, between the individuation of households as units of property and production and their incorporation into larger centralized structures. These contradictions motivate social practice, for they demand action upon the world; and practice in turn, realizes the statistical frequencies that Kuper describes as formal patterns of alliance. Taken over time, these frequencies change, and as they do, so Tswana ‘economy and society undergo transformation, Thus, some chiefdoms take the manifest and momentary shape that Kuper, with his synchronic sources and formalist proclivties, describes as generic, while others appear as egalitarian and acephalous, with little MBD. marriage. Still other communities appear as highly centralized and stratified orders in which royals marry endogamously within and matrilaterally with those whom they would dominate, these two strategies being conditions of each other and not distinct “types.” Moreover, the endogenous realization of these contrasting patterns within Tswana systems may lead to enduring changes in their constitution, just as it mediates their interaction with ‘exogenous forces.” ‘This commentary i intended not as parochial debate but as an affirmation of Kuper’s n= itil objectives: one path away from the closed society does lie in theoretically principled analyses of comparative systems and theit transformation over space and time. The point is well taken by Cassanelli and Kottak, who also essay regional perspectives and view transformations within a common cultural tradition as adaptations to varying local condi- tions. In addition, both address the interaction between local formations (as more or less ‘open systems) and their total contexts. Of the two, Kottak’s The Past in the Present is the more ambitious: he aims at “clarifying how cultures are constituted, how they work, and how and why they change,” especially with respect to “sociopolitical transformation and the origin of the state;relationships between prior structure, ideology, and material condi- tions; and the forms, functions and context of customs focusing on death .. kinship, mar- riage ... and economic activities” (p. xi). ‘The Betsileo, i is argued, were once part of a single proto-Malagasyan cultural heritage. Until 1830 they had their own petty states but were subordinated by the Merina and later by the French; today they live in socioeconomically diverse communities. This movement from homogeneity to heterogeneity is explicated in terms of “adaptive radiation,” accord ing to which variation arises, particularly in access to resources: (1) through modifications in sociocultural means”; (2) by virtue of material conditions; and (3)to mediate the artcula- tion between communities (p. 42), Malagasy is divided into six ecosystems, Betsileo being inrigation agriculturalists and, to a lesser degree, mixed pastoralists, a fact which, along with other variables, has produced differentiation among them. To make his case, Kottak first discusses variation through time and then diversities in space. He begins with an ac- 576 american ethnologistcount of state formation before the Merina conquest and compares agricultural Lalangina with pastoral Isandra. Although these districts shared internal sociocultural conditions, Lalangina developed into a centralized and stratified polity while Isandra did not. Kottak speculates, after Carniero, that environmental circumscription of an increasing population may have made the difference, but that other factors (eg, trade, slavery, hydraulic agriculture) also contributed. However, since the historiography is poor, it is difficult (again) to separate cause from effect, analysis from description, Consequently, the objec- tive of explaining state formation goes unrealized, as does the promise of revealing the in- teraction between indigenous forms and their total contexts. Kottak nonetheless does establish that the production of diversity in this early period in- fluenced the subsequent conjuncture between the Betsileo and their conquerors. Thus, for ‘example, the Merina conquest is shown to have exacerbated both preexisting socioeconomic contrasts and differential access to resources. More generally, it is ‘demonstrated that precolonial Madagascar had a complex endogenous history, molded, on the one hand, by the capacity of the Betsileo and Merina sociocultural orders to generate a variety of political and material arrangements and, on the other, for these contour processes of articulation and transformation. Indeed, the anthropology of Malagasy is securely inscribed in this history and, as in South Africa, cannot be artificially ‘excised from it, Kottak makes Kuper’s point very well, at least descriptively: the transfor- mations of Betsileo economy and society ate, as all transformations must be, both tem- poral and spatial. If Kottak has not succeeded in establishing their determination, his eth ography does illuminate the processes involved The theme is less cogently extended into the colonial period, however. Itis held that with pacification, the abolition of slavery, and technological development, past distinctions were further sharpened, thereby yielding the contrasts found today among Betsileo, The rest of the study is devoted to these points, as Kottak compares social, material, and ritual ‘organization in three modern villages. His argument is straightfoward: that similar cultural “raw material” under dissimilar material conditions produces dissimilar consequences (p. 261); that culture is not generated by the material, or vice versa, but is the meaningful basis through which human needs are satisfied (p. 263). To be sure, the ethnography does in dicate that the variable social patterns, productive relations, and death ceremonials in the three villages comprise tightly interrelated complexes; and each does seem to “fit” with its ecological context. Nevertheless, the argument remains inconclusive Notwithstanding Kottak’s desire to avoid the "impoverishment" of Betsileo culture in the ‘cause of his ecological approach (p. 262), itis here that the account is most vulnerable. Despite a wealth of detail, this culture is described purely at the level of manifest content and is reduced to an intervening variable, a received means for satisfying exogenously determined ends (p. 266) If ths is true, the case for adaptive radiation depends solely upon the force of material factors in producing diversity. Kottak is careful to suggest a range of possible relationships between prior cultural structures and material conditions. Taking only those relevant here, where the same prior structures occur, similar material conditions should lead to parallel evolution (the “retention of similarities”; p. 266} different ones, to divergent evolution and adaptive radiation. At the extremes, as between Betsileo agriculturalists and pastoralists, this may appear to hold. But more problematically, most Betsileo and Merina share an ecosystem (p. 54) and therefore should have undergone parallel evolution. Yet the Merina developed a state capable of imperial conquest and the subordination of the Betsileo themselves. If this is “parallel evolution,” how do we distinguish “similarities” from “differences”? And if the differences are too great to be ‘lossed as “parallel evolution,” then the central thesis crumbles. When placed within a ‘comparative framework, it becomes weaker yet. To return to Kuper’s ethnography, some rangements to Atrican ethnography 577‘Tswana live in centralized and stratified polities, others are acephalously organized, and their interaction with their ecology varies accordingly. By Kottak’s model, this could only be the evolutionary product of adaptation mediated by dissimilar material conditions. Yet 2 similar ecological context is shared by most of these communities which, in any case, undergo endogenous transformation due partly to contradictions in their political economies and sociocultural orders (see above). Could this not apply to the Merina and Betsileo, most of whom also share a similar environment and, allegedly, a proto Malagasyan heritage? In sum, the case for adaptive radiation is not sustained. Yet Kottak’s study isa valuable ‘one, for by treating the Betsileo system, as an open formation, in terms of an interaction between internal structures and total context, it seeks to deal ina principled manner with the typification of social form and transformation. It remains to be seen, of course, whether the adaptive radiation model, suitably refined, may yet have explanatory value; and this study isa step along the way to finding that out. However, it does make plain the fact that if African anthropology isto advance, it can only do so in proportion to the cogency with which we reveal both the cultural and material logic of the open society and its transforma: tions. Cassanelli’s The Shaping of Somali Society, an excellent history of the Somali from 1600, to 1900, affirms this conclusion and also analyzes the production of uniformity and divers: ty in terms of an interaction between sociocultural forms, ecological constraints, and exter nal forces. Its central theme derives from the observation that although the Somali ac- ‘quired @ common identity through historical experience, their society was characterized by ‘marked local variations in social and economic arrangements. Cassanelli, 100, attributes these to the effect of “regional resource systems,” but he eschews environmental deter minism (p. 65) by locating adaptive mechanisms within the Somali system itself. In so do- ing, he avoids reducing Somali history to a gross evolutionary movement from homogenei- ty to heterogeneity, showing instead that its leitmotf lies in the ebb and flow of social ag ‘gregations and political relations, of cultural unity and economic fortunes Precolonial Somali society, according to this account, was dominated by segmentary descent groups which, in the absence of centralized government, acted in various and fluid combinations as corporate units. But this system and its workings are not viewed as a primordial “given”: the emergence of a common genealogical idiom, of unity in a pa ticularstic Islam, and of intergroup relations were realized through human practice, born of a shared ideology and mediated by environmental exigencies, as interactions among the inhabitants of the Somali world took their course. Clearly, the most pervasive feature of this world was the threat of drought, the Somali response to which tells much about the cul- tural and practical logic that fashioned their everyday lives and their historical con- sciousness. Cassanelli suggests that this response was motivated by the imperative, in- scribed in the values surrounding nomadic pastoralism, of sustaining a herd's capacity to reconstitute itself and thereby to protect the collective autonomy ofits owners, To meet this ‘demand and ensure their survival such groups were compelled to deploy segmentary alliances within and beyond the pastoral sector and also to create linkages in towns and with merchants and cultivators, with whom they lived in a symbiotic relationship. Also, fluctuating material fortunes had politico-economic consequences: as some segments suf- fered ecological vicissitude, they were forced to engage in common action with each other, thus realizing larger groupings; and, where such alliances were unequal, internally differen- tiated political units developed. This was further exacerbated by regional contrasts; while all regions contained the basic resources needed for survival, and were linked to towns and trade routes, some lineages were favored by their social and natural location. Thus, despite the absence of a unifying state, a number of such groups, often in federation and linked by 578 american ethnologist‘marriage, managed to impose their authority over others, exacting tribute and support from their clients Significantly, these regional rulers fused secular with spiritual power. Neither was a suffi cient basis for sustained hegemony, but together they transformed an expanding descent group into the authority of a sultanate which could enter into advantageous relations with farmers, traders, and urban centers. However, the rise of these sultanates contradicted the dominant Somali ideology of egalitarianism and the autonomy of nomadic groups. Thus, centralization bred its own antithesis —conflict and rebellion —and eventually broke down, Its ideological consequences, though, have endured: these processes have come to signify, in Somali consciousness, the danger of political domination and the value of egalitarian in- dependence. Moreover, their inscription in a shared mythology has given substance to an ‘emergent common identity Herein lies an important dualism, On the one hand, lineages have always enjoyed un: ‘equal resources, and interaction between them inevitably realized imbalances in wealth and power. In fact, the very logic of their action upon the world entailed the production and transformation of such imbalances and, with them, the diversities endemic to Somali social and economic arrangements. Later, these diversities were to affect the conjuncture be tween the various constituencies of this universe and Italian colonialism. On the other hand the ideology that came to unite the Somali rejected political confederation and hierarchy. Hence, despite the fact that social practice was necessarily directed toward the creation of inequalities, the prevailing ideology rationalized action in the cause of egalitarian autonomy. The corollary is clear: this dualism underlay the contradictory tendencies within Somali economy and society and gave form to the fluidities wrought by ecological hap: Penstance, social circumstance, and political militance. It also motivated collective resistance to outsiders; for the Somalis, united in their commitment to disunity, it made sense to fight those who would impose political circumscription upon them. Hence, despite ‘masking inequalities which were being honed by the colonial process itself, a shared ideology yielded concerted action against its agents; action which, in turn, refined and modified Somali identity The story of anticolonial resistance is important in its own right, as are several themes that have gone unmentioned. For now, | stress just three conclusions that emerge from Cassanelli’s analysis. First, contrary to the classic deployment of the segmentary lineage model as a synchronic representation of African sociocultural systems, he treats segmen- tary structures as the principles which underlay the internal dialectic of Somali society; a dialectic which, realized through intentional action, configured and transformed ‘economic, social, and political relations. Second, as this suggests, the ideological and sociological character of these relations are not given an ontological status but a historical archaeology. Thus, the genealogical idiom of Somali social organization, theit religious practices, marriage alliances, and so on, were of men’s making, yet were nat made by the Somalis as they pleased; they, like everyone else, were culturally and environmentally en- dowed actors. Still, they wete not the overdetermined puppets of a self-reproducing system. Above all, Cassanell’s account explodes the myth of the “cold culture, the absur- dity that precapitalist man lacked history, just as it defuses the notion that segmentary models are preclusively associated with the closed society. Third, Cassanelli succeeds in showing how the dynamics of Somali society affected its articulation with the exogenous forces that were brought to bear on it. It is demonstrated that prior structures and ideologies, variously realized, had a part in determining the contrasting destinies of the communities of Somalia; that endogenous historical forms constrained the colonial agen ies themselves and sparked collective action against them. Cassanellis analysis i ultimately limited inits treatment of the encompassment of homo ‘African ethnography $79ruralis by the wider historical currents of the modern epoch, the theme to which Hart’s study is devoted. The Political Economy of West African Agriculture stands in sharp con- trast to the other books, although in one sense it is a complement to them: while they ex amine Africa from within, Hart's work is representative of the second major strand in con- temporary African studies, that which examines economy and society atthe periphery with reference to the global context In his stimulating volume Hart sets out to examine the various forms of commodity pro- ‘duction that have arisen in the region and to explore how they have affected social and ‘economic life in its diverse communities; to explain why this region has, aside from Nigeria, become relatively backward; and to identify planning strategies which might foster the development of capitalism within it, He encourages us to wonder at the hubris of the enter- prise, West Africa, as defined here, consists of 16 countries, 4 colonial traditions, hundreds ‘of ethnic groups and at least 2 very different ecological systems. Yet, he argues, its “unity Cf... experience is real enough” to persuade him “to abandon the... the ethnographic case study in search of a canvas appropriate to the [region's] agricultural question’ (p. 1. ‘Whether this is a necessary or an empirically accurate rationale for his regional perspective is debatable: as we have seen, the analysis of variation can be as compelling. Moreover, Hart's account admirably attests to the structural and experiential heterogeneity of West Arica; its very point is to show that contrasting prior structures, mediated by local political ‘exigencies, have yielded a range of local economic conditions which are at once variable in ‘content and similar in form, ‘West African agriculture, argues Hart, can only be understood in an extended time frame ‘and with respect to the global context of industrial capitalism. This is not to suggest that its history is reducible to a transition from subsistence to commercial farming, as neither com- modity production nor trade were foreign to the subcontinent. In any case, such a transi- tion is never a “leap from one kind of economy to another but a continuum from self sufficiency to greater interdependence through the market (p. 10). Nonetheless, in the ‘evolution of a commodity economy it is necessary to distinguish between capitalist and ‘ther forms. In West Africa, where land and labor were not scarce, agricultural practice ‘was well suited to the environment, and the populace extracted an adequate livelihood, the productivity of labor being relatively high. Without mechanization, however, this pro- ductivity stagnated, despite the externally stimulated growth of commercial farming, and capitalist enterprise did not take root. Significantly, in fact, export agriculture languishes at the same level of labor productivity as traditional food cultivation. Thus, although there has long been some capitalist production in West Africa, overall conditions have approx: mated a “vent for surplus” (.e., development through use of existing factors) more than those of an industrial economy. And, given the intervention of colonial interests which locked West Africa into unfavorable exchange relations, and of postcolonial states that ill served agrarian development, the region was worse off in 1980 than in 1830. To explain this, Hart bortows from Anglo-French ethnography a representation of precapitalist orders; from Marx, the theory of commodity economy; from Weber, a concep: tion ofthe state; from Lenin, insight into peasant-capitaist relations; from Steuart, an 18th: century analogue of political economy; and from Lewis, a model of the evolution of the in: ternational economic order. These are woven together, at times ingeniously, through the historical analysis, which begins at the dawn of the modern era By 1830 the savannah states and forest kingdoms had long been involved in trade, but geo-social conditions did rot allow their rulers to control commodity production. Also, while the acephalous socie ties of the region were largely self-sufficient, social relations of production and exchange prevented accumulation. Thus, neither state nor stateless systems, despite their potential for growth, transformed their productive practices, even when drawn into commerce. Be- 580 american ethnologist‘tween 1830 and 1900, European expansion made West Africa a source of vegetable oil, ‘groundnuts, and other crops, and stimulated export agriculture. However, partly due to the booms and busts” of the era, and to the fact that prior divisions of labor were sustained, none of this propelled local cultivation into capitalist production. While West Africa was being securely tied into noncapitalist commercial farming, industrialization elsewhere was generating the terms of its economic degradation. The colonial period, in turn, saw the expansion of indigenous agriculture and an in creased commitment to commodity production. Contrary to Marxist views, Hart does not attribute this to force but to the fact that “people sold their goods and labor in the hope of raising their living standards” (p. 112). Stl, the “booms and busts” continued, as did the in- creasing discrepancy between labor productivity in Europe and Africa, especially in the raising of foodstuffs —all of which undermined the purchasing power of local exports and exacerbated the income gap between the two regions. Hence, in the postcolonial era the successor states inherited backward economies, the effect of which, asin eatlier periods, was not to discourage their involvement in agriculture. Quite the opposite, economy and polities have always been fused in West Africa—hence the title of the study, and the evocation of Steuart and Weber—and the intervention of government has contributed directly to the cycle of stagnation. In light of their penury and the perceived need for ‘massive expenditure for infrastructure and social services, these states have, by monop- sonistic controls and other means, extracted the maximum from the agricultural sec tor—and spent the proceeds in the urban context, where public demand is potentially most threatening to their stability. This, finally, has created a vicious cirle in which low ag productivity and exploitative regimes tend to reproduce each other Hart's study is destined to be controversial. Its conclusion that West African underdevelopment grew out of discrepancies in productivity and purchasing power be tween the First and Thied Worlds, like its dismissal ofthe coercive character of colonialism, will divide scholarly opinion. Similarly, its insistence that the state has always been an ir reducible element in the organization of material existence runs counter to the venerated tradition that since the 19th century has reduced the integrated concept of political economy to the aggregate primacy of economy over polity. Also, the account lacks definitive detail at several points: Just how did the West African commitment to the profit motive aris, if not by coercion? By what mechanisms did British industralization actually effect the extraction of agricultural products from the region? Hart has presented never- theless a vision of West African economy and society that is at once sensitive to the in- herent dynamism of local structures and to the complexities of global forces. And, consis- tent with my earlier comments, their conjuncture is viewed as a processual equation in which these structures and forces are mutually constituted and transformed. In my view, his typification of the exogenous side of the equation, which builds upon a magisterial rasp of economic theory and histor, is stronger than his elaboration of the endogenous factors, which focuses more on productive institutions than on total systems, But he has established, beyond doubt, the viability and value of a historical economic anthropology of open societies Drawing all this together, it is clear that after 31 years there are indeed few remaining, secure generalizations and no shared paradigms to replace those left behind. For all that, or pethaps because of it, our knowledge of Africa over this period has increased not merely in degree but also in kind. Insofar as there has been an overall trend in the mode of produc tion ofthat knowledge, it has been away from the nomathetic pursuit of the closed society, the critics of which appear now to outnumber its apologists, and toward history and the comparative analysis of systems and their transformations. These are very general ‘methodological orientations, however, not substantive theoretical commitments, African ethnography 581Eatliee | suggest that any principled advance in the theory and practice of African ethnography by necessity must reconceptualize the internal dialectics of local systems and, complementarily, explicate their spatiotemporal articulation with external structures and agencies. This is haedly a novel observation; nor is it confined to Africa. Yet itis one thing to make this observation and quite another to meet its demands. Among the studies considered here, those of Kuper and Kottak clearly recognize the problem and help to iden- tify its complexities. But the theories and methods they offer for its resolution, while il uminating in their treatment of indigenous systems, are partial and limited. Neither tltimately demonstrates the endogenous capacities of these systems for transformation or offers a convincing account of their interaction with their total contexts. Cassanelli and Hart, by contrast, make major, albeit not uncontroversial, contributions to precisely these issues: the former, by his subtle analysis of the historicity and internal dynamics of precolonial Somali economy and society; the latter, by his exposition of the relationship between local structures in West Africa and their unfolding global context. Taken together, these two volumes, the theoretical implications of which far transcend their immediate set- tings, contrive an optimistic denouement. They both speak to the possiblity ofa vigorous, historically informed, and context-sensitive Africanist anthropology, one that does escape the procrustean dichotomies of which I speak. We may, again, differ over the conceptual terms of this anthropology, but contrary to Worsley’s (1970) prediction of its imminent demise, its at least alive and vital enough to argue about. notes ‘Acknowledgments. 1 should like 0 thank Jean Comaroff and Ralph Austen for thee insightful comments on earlier drafts of this essay ie might be argued that what distinguishes Marxist accounts of precapitalist orders i (1) thelr characterization ofthese formations as systems of domination” (Meillassoux 1981}, andor (2) their ‘emphasis onthe material determination of social life. However, a number of structural functionalist Studies have also stressed pattems of domination as endemic to precaptalit economy and society, n ‘deed, Dovslas’s (1963) Lele ethnography is a much clearer demonstration ofthe subjugation of women ‘nd youne men by elders than i Meillassoux's more vaunted exposition. Moreover, a5 s exemplified by Gluckman (194%), Alican materialist analyst i hardly 8 Markst preserve However, the fusion of these two perspectives within an integrated theory of system has not. as far as | am aware, been forth ‘coming fom non-Marast sources ? Much remains to be said on the whole question of the historicizaton of anthropology, among. them that many ofthe burgeoning calls fora closer relationship between history and anthropology are rendered vacuous by their allure to address the essential question, Which anthvopology, what history? [Ater all, any such relationship depends not onthe nature of disciplines per se but on prior theoretical Considerations Quite simply, history may mean very different thins for structoral functionals, ‘Mapists, or sructualsts In their various hues. Moreover, anthropologists often equate history with "process" or "diachtony,” which i clealy mistaken: history qua discipline is as capable of yielding synchronic analysis as i the most rigid of anthropological functionalisms, jst as process, when con Fined tothe reproduction of social systems, is either historical nor diachronic. But, most fundamen tally, the very posting of a relationship between history and anthropology reaffirms the ontological ‘existence ofeach, andthe epistemologial division between them. ny view, there shouldbe no such Felationship, since there ought nol tobe an opposition to begin with: a theory of society thats not als 2 theory of history, oF vice versa, is hardly ¢ theory at all (Comaroft 1982143-144) > For a mote detailed account of che internal dialectics of Tswana systems, and oftheir interaction swith exogenous forces, see Comaroft (1982) references cited Comaroft, JL 1982. Dialectical Systems, History and Anthropology: Units of Study and Questions of Theory. Journal of Southern Afican Studies 82)143-172, 882 american ethnologistDoulas, M "963 The Lele of the Kasai London: Oxford Univesity Press Epstein, AL 1964{1957| Urban Communities in Asia, In Closed Systems and Open Minds. M. Glackman and E Devons, eds. pp. 83-102. Chicago: Aldine EvanePritehard, EE 1961 | Anthtopology and History. Manchester: Manchester University Press Fortes, M 1953. The Structure of Unilineal Descent Groups. American Anthropologist 5517-41 Geertz, C "1971 The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, Gluckman, M 1941 Economy of the Central Barotse Plain. Rhodes-Lvingstone Institute, Paper No. 7. Living Hindess Band P.Q. Hirst 1975 Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Leach £8 1961 Rethinking Anthropology. London: Athlone Pres, Meillassour, C 4981 Maidens, Meal and Money. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres. ‘Schapera 1943 "Tribal Legislation among the Tswana ofthe Bechuanaland Protectorate. London: Percy Lund, Humphreys forthe London Schoo! of Economics, wilson, 1941 An Essay on the Economics of Detribalization in Northern Rhodesia (Part I) Rhodes-Living- stone Insitute, Paper No.5. Livingstone Worsley. P.M. 1970" The End of Anthtopology? Transactions of the Sith World Conference of Sociology 3: 121-129. Submitted 21 June 1983. [Accepted 14 October 1983 African ethnography 583