Mary, André. -- Le défi du syncrétisme : le travail symbolique de la religion d'Eboga (Gabon). Paris, Éditions de l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1999, 513 p.

In this remarkable study, at once nuanced and intense, the author sets aside the usual modes of response to religious syncretism, embarking instead on a wideranging theoretical inquiry which is as illuminating as it is, in the end, inconclusive. It will not do, he says, to explain the mixture of Christian and indigenous traits in the religious complex known as Bwiti by the ignorance of its practitioners, or to see it as paganism inadequately masked in sheep's clothing. Nor may we avoid ..

Research on sub-Saharan Africa's unrecorded international trade: some methodological and conceptual problems

This paper describes some of the methodological and conceptual problems in researching aspects of sub-Saharan Africa's international 'underground' trade, meaning commercial transactions which are conducted across international frontiers but which are unrecorded in official data. The authors focus in particular on trade across intercontinental frontiers. They consider some problems of identifying and researching long-distance trade, and particularly intercontinental trade, which is illegal, unofficial or informal. They do so at two levels: first, by looking at sources of evidence for intercontinental flows (the examples of ivory and drugs); second, by adopting a 'bottom-up' approach, studying activities of individuals or small groups of intercontinental traders with a view to extrapolating from their activities in order to draw conclusions of wider application. Finally, they make some remarks concerning new modes of unofficial trade and the people who participate in them.ASC – Publicaties niet-programma gebonde

Le commerce international informel en Afrique sub-saharienne: quelques problèmes méthodologiques et conceptuels

L'économie informelle africaine a pris une telle ampleur qu'il est devenu impossible de la considérer comme une forme annexe de l'économie formelle ou comme un facteur d'importance strictement locale. En outre, le qualificatif «informel» n'est que l'un des termes employés, terme d'ailleurs inapte à rendre compte des flux de biens et de services ne faisant pas l'objet d'un enregistrement officiel ou qui sont totalement illégaux. La portée inter-continentale de cette économie mérite une analyse plus fouillée. Cela pose toute une série de problèmes techniques qui sont examinés ici. Une masse considérable d'informations peut être collectée dans les statistiques portant en particulier sur des types de commerce partiellement ou totalement clandestin, tels que le trafic de l'ivoire ou celui de la drogue. On peut également, en utilisant des techniques anthropologiques, étudier des groupes de petits commerçants exerçant leur activité outre-merASC – Publicaties niet-programma gebonde

Were the first Bantu speakers south of the rainforest farmers? A first assessment of the linguistic evidence

Popular belief has it that the Bantu Expansion was a farming/language dispersal. However, there is neither conclusive archaeological nor linguistic evidence to substantiate this hypothesis, especially not for the initial spread in West-Central Africa. In this chapter we consider lexical reconstructions for both domesticated and wild plants in Proto-West-Coastal Bantu associated with the first Bantu speech communities south of the rainforest about 2500 years ago. The possibility to reconstruct terms for five different crops, i.e. pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), okra (Hibiscus/Abelmoschus esculentus), cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea) and plantain (Musa spp.), indicates that by that time Bantu speakers did know how to cultivate plants. At the same time, they still strongly depended on the plant resources that could be collected in their natural environment, as is evidenced by a preliminary assessment of reconstructible names for wild plants. Agriculture in Central Africa was indeed “a slow revolution”, as the late Jan Vansina once proposed, and certainly not the principal motor behind the early Bantu Expansion

The political economy of migration and reputation in Kinshasa

This essay presents a history of the mikiliste, the high-living bon vivant who travels to Europe and is a central figure in Kinois urban mythology. It looks in particular at the highly theatrical exchanges engaged in by the mikiliste, which relate especially to music patronage and to designer clothing. I show how these exchanges have evolved over time, both shaping and being shaped by the political economy of Kinshasa. The essay shows how such aesthetic performances should not be discussed in isolation from wider political-economic considerations. Those who participate in economies of prestige must be connected to a material base, and the ruling class, with their access to the resources of the interior, have become ever more important participants in the mikiliste rituals of largesse. Recently, theviolent contestation of mikiliste exchange, both in Europe and in Kinshasa, indicates that such moments of largesse may be involved in reproducing politicaleconomic relations in the Congolese capital

Unity Through Diversity: A Case Study of Chrislam in Lagos

This article presents an ethnographic case study of Chrislam, a series of religious movements that fuse Christian and Muslim beliefs and practices, in its socio-cultural and political-economic setting in Nigeria’s former capital Lagos. Against conventional approaches to study religious movements in Africa as syncretic forms of ‘African Christianity’ or ‘African Islam’, I suggest that ‘syncretism’ is a misleading appellation for Chrislam. In fact, Chrislam provides a rationale for scrutinizing the very concept of syncretism and offers an alternative analytical case for understanding its mode of religious pluralism. To account for the religious plurality in Chrislam, I employ assemblage theory as it proposes novel ways for looking at Chrislam’s religious mixing that are in line with how its worshippers perceive their religiosity. The underlying idea in Chrislam’s assemblage of Christianity and Islam is that to be a Christian or Muslim alone is not enough to guarantee success in this world and the hereafter and therefore Chrislam worshippers partake in Christian as well as Muslim practices, appropriating the perceived powers of both