Description
Book SynopsisWhen the notion of ‘alternative facts’ and the alleged dawning of a ‘postfactual’ world entered public discourse, social anthropologists found themselves in unexpectedly familiar territory. In theirempirical experience, fact—knowledge accepted as true—derives its salience from social mechanisms of legitimization, thereby demonstrating a deep interconnection with power and authority. In thisperspective, fact is a continually contested and volatile social category.
Due to the specific histories of their colonial and post-independence experience, African societies offer a particularly broad array of insights into social processes of juxtaposition, opposition, and even outright competition between different postulated authorities. The contributions to the present volume explore the variety of ways in which authority is contested in Southern and Eastern Africa, investigating localized discourses on which institution, what kind of knowledge, or whose expertise is accepted as authoritative, thus highlighting the specificities and pluralities in ‘modern’ societies. This edited volume engages with larger theoretical questions regarding power and authority in the context of (post)colonial states (neo)traditional authority, claiming space, conflict and (in)justice, and contestations of knowledge. It offers in-depth critical analyses of ethnographic data that put contemporary African phenomena on equal footing with current controversies in North America, Europe, and other global settings.
Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction: Investigating Authority and Its Legitimization in Contemporary Africa
Part 1. Power and the (Post)Colonial State
Chapter 2. Whose State? Whose Nation? Representations of the History of the Arab Slave Trade and Nation-Building in Tanzania
Chapter 3. Between Ethnicity and Medicine: Reinventing Legitimacy in Chokwe and Sukuma Chieftaincies
Part 2. Contested Authorities and State Power
Chapter 4. By What Authority? Cosmology, Legitimacy, and the Sources of Power in Malawi
Chapter 5. Bittamo: The Duties of Authority in Kara, Southern Ethiopia
Chapter 6. In Search of Democracy: gadaa as a Political Idea – Or, the Legitimacy of Traditional Authority in Times of Turmoil and Unease
Chapter 7. Contested Authorities, External Experts and the Quest for Social Justice: Negotiating Basic Income Grants in an African Setting
Chapter 8. Challenging Neotraditional Authority in Namibia
Part 3. Power and Authority over Space
Chapter 9. Changes in Ethnicity and Land Rights among the !Xun of North-central Namibia
Chapter 10. San Traditional Authorities, Communal Conservancies, Conflicts, and Leadership in Namibia
Chapter 11. Sacred Spaces, Legal Claims: Competing Claims for Legitimate Knowledge and Authority over the Use of Land in Nharira Hills, Zimbabwe
Part 4. Conflict, (In)Justice, and Plural Legitimacies
Chapter 12. Magic Momentum: Negotiating Authority in the Bongolava Region, Madagascar
Chapter 13. Ungoverned Spaces and Informalisation of Violence: The Case of Kenya Police Reservists (KPRs) in Baragoi
Chapter 14. Who Calls the Tune? Submission, Evasion and Contesting Authorities in Ethiopian Refugee Camps
Part 5. Secret Authority and the State
Chapter 15. Secrecy and Visibility: Challenging Verwoerdism in South Africa’s 20th Century
Chapter 16. Legitimizing the Illegitimate: How Ethnologists Fashioned Namibia
