Publications

This book discusses the manner in which the Herero transformed and moulded their society between 1890, when Maharero Tjamuaha, the chieftain of Okahandja, died, and 1923, when his son, Samuel Maharero, died. Between 1904 and 1908, the Herero were devastated in a genocidal...

In some areas in sub-Saharan Africa a rural proletariat has emerged, consisting mainly of labourers living and working on plantations and large mixed farms. Besides these fully proletarianized estate workers, there is also a category of workers that can be labelled 'semi...

Dit artikel onderzoekt de grenzen van de bruikbaarheid van het door Mary Douglas ontwikkelde 'grid-group' model aan de hand van het voorbeeld van de ontwikkeling van puriteinse (antihekserij) bewegingen in Malawi. De auteur stelt, dat de rehabilitatie van het...

By bringing the active challenge to ethnographic authority by people written about to the fore, the authors of this chapter hope to raise some doubts about the matter-of-factness with which ethnographers maintain their identity as scholarly writers who do their research in...

In the late twentieth century, Nioro du Sahel, an economically marginal town in Mali, has become an important regional pilgrimage centre for Muslims. The present paper discusses the prayer economy in this town, the rather complex but pervasive practices in which gifts are...

Recent studies have pointed to the relationships between marabouts and power in West Africa. The present author argues that these studies should be broadened to include marabouts not necessarily linked directly to particular regimes, but whose reputations and widespread...

Among the manuscripts in the 'Umar Falke Collection at Northwestern University is a poem about .Ham_ahu 'll_ah, the 20-th century Tij_an_i shaykh and reputed 'wal_i,' born c. 1883. He was exiled by the French colonial government in the 1920s, and later in...