African Political Systems Revisited: Changing Perspectives on Statehood and Power

By Aleksandar Bošković and Günther Schlee

Reexamining a classical work of social anthropology, African Political Systems (1940), edited by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, this book looks at the colonial and academic context from which the work arose, as well as its reception and its subject matter, and looks at how the work can help with analysis of current politics in Africa. This book critically reflects upon the history of anthropology. It also contributes to a political anthropology which is aware of its antecedents, self-reflexive as a discipline, conscious of pitfalls and biases, and able to locate itself in its academic, social and political environment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Apr 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781800734739

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Right Book at the Right Time

Early Reactions and Continuing Debates

Aleksandar Bošković

Introduction

Since its publication in 1940, African Political Systems (APS) has both inspired anthropologists (as well as sociologists like Eisenstadt (1959)), and at the same time provoked some important debates (Gellner 1969; Holý 1979; see also Lewis, Chapter 2 in this volume). In this chapter, I will first analyse the critical responses to the book, as published in the leading anthropological and sociological journals of the time, and will conclude with the general view about the issues that the contributions in this volume address. As an overview of the contributions to the present volume is not the main task of this chapter, readers will be able to find a more detailed overview of particular texts in the Afterword by Straight. In this chapter, I have collected all the available reviews of APS after it was first published. The last (and most recent) review considered here was published only after the Second World War (Paulme 1948).

It is difficult to overstate the importance of this book for the history of anthropology and anthropological theory.¹ First of all, despite the fact that this was not the first time that ‘political systems’ of traditional African kingdoms had been studied, the influence of this volume has proved to be very strong – considerably stronger than that of the volumes that preceded it.² Second, along with later work of the French Africanist Balandier (1967), it proved to have a decisive influence on the establishment of the growing field of political anthropology. As the study of kingdoms gradually evolved into the study of state systems, scholars engaged in this field were among the contributors in the special issue of the journal Cahiers d’Études Africaines that provided important contributions to the study of state systems (Alexandre 1982). Only a year later, another special issue was published in France, this time of Pouvoirs: Revue française d’études constitutionelles et politiques (Ardant and Conac 1983), where ten scholars focused on power (as well as some contemporary issues like development). Finally, it opened up a wide-reaching debate on the actual importance (and, in some cases, of the very existence) and interpretation of the segmentary lineage system, and its relevance for understanding the structure of traditional African societies (Hammond-Tooke 1965, 1985; Subrahmanyam 1999). APS (especially the typology proposed in Radcliffe-Brown’s preface) also provided an important point of reference in the subsequent analyses of the key terms associated with segmentary models that could be used in the studies of Maghreb communities (Salem 1982: 117). Therefore, in many ways, it proved to be ‘the right text at the right time’, as stated by Geertz in another context (Geertz 1997). While it was not the first critical study of the political systems of African peoples (as made clear by Meek and Herskovits in their reviews, for example), it was published at a time of dramatic change in the world, both in a political (the Second World War, with the dawning of the end of colonial empires) and a theoretical (criticism of the still-dominant functionalist approach) sense, and, as such, paved the way for important new interdisciplinary research. This includes, but is not limited to, important new insights in the fields of customary law and its effects on the state institutions (Zenker and Hoehne 2018), as well as about strengthening of the institution of chieftaincy in recent years (Comaroff and Comaroff 2018).

In this chapter, I will look at some early reactions to the book – they tell us a lot about the context in which the book was received and they also offer a glimpse into the making of contemporary anthropological debates about politics at all levels, issues of identity and statehood, and ways of dealing with (and writing about) difference. Unfortunately, there is no discussion about the political organization of African societies in some of the more recent studies of the development of ‘complexity in archaic states’ (Adams 2001), but I hope that the present volume can also add to these types of considerations.

First Reviews

The first review of APS was published in the Journal of the Royal African Society in July 1940 (Anonymous 1940). It was not signed and it was under the rubric of ‘sociology and anthropology’. In this brief note, the author quoted from the editors’ introduction and listed all the chapters, concluding that:

The book, then, is a comparative study of African political institutions by a team of trained investigators, working under the auspices of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures. An Introduction by the Editors explains the aims of the study, and draws such tentative conclusions from it as they regard as so far justified. The painstaking researches represented by this book into African political science, so far as developed in the indigenous institutions of a variety of tribes or nations in different parts of the Continent, are of obvious interest and value. (Anonymous 1940: 284)

Another review was published in the same journal a year later by Margaret Wrong (1887–1948), a scholar who was better known for her missionary work, an Oxford-educated Canadian and former Secretary of the International Committee on Christian Literature in Africa. In her review, Wrong briefly outlined the contents of each essay and praised them as ‘stimulating’ (1941: 280). She also appreciated the amount of data that the book provides. However, she was critical of the volume’s apparent lack of coherence, pointing out that, for example: ‘Dr. Richards and Dr. Fortes, writing of the Bemba and Tallensi, supply illuminating material on the weakening of the political system through European conquest and rule, while Dr. Oberg, writing on the Kingdom of Ankole, devotes only one paragraph to this aspect of the subject’ (ibid.: 281). This, she felt, diminished ‘the comparative value of the book’, but it seems that she expected more of a comparative political study, even though she quoted the editors of APS in her review when they wrote that they were ‘more interested in anthropological than in administrative problems’ (ibid.).

Charles Kingsley Meek’s (1885–1965) review was published in Man in 1941. In this, the author summarizes the individual contributions (especially praising the one by Fortes), stating that: ‘This book is a collection of essays by competent anthropologists dealing with the political structure of eight tribes in various parts of Africa, and should prove of great value both for the new material it provides, and as a stimulus to others to undertake similar descriptive studies’ (Meek 1941: 41). On the other hand, he noted important omissions:

It may seem curious that in a book called African Political Systems there is no mention of standard works such as Lord Lugard’s Dual Mandate, Miss Perham’s Native Administration in Nigeria, Rattray’s Ashanti, etc. There are no references to ‘secret’ societies, whose authority, incidentally, may be much wider than that of the political group. And little is said about inter-group or inter-tribal relationships, the use of ‘ambassadors’, arbitrators, and so on. (Ibid.: 42)

However, Meek also stated that the editors themselves saw this volume as a beginning of the work and an important aspect of a more general ‘inquiry’. From a more contemporary perspective, it seems quite interesting that he also thought that the book could be of use not only to students, but also ‘to administrative officers of the Colonial Service’ (ibid.). Perhaps this could also be seen as a reference to dealing with the ‘administrative problems’ referred to in the review by Wrong. Or perhaps this is a reflection of Meek’s personal wish, having served as ‘government anthropologist’ in southern Nigeria in the late 1920s, having being appointed by Lord Lugard himself.³

Reviews in American Journals

Wilfrid Dyson Hambly (1886–1962) wrote a very positive review for the American Sociological Review (Hambly 1940). Hambly was born and educated in the United Kingdom, but moved to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago in 1926, where he became Curator of African Ethnology. In his review of the book, he especially praised the fact that the chapters were all based on meticulous ethnographic research. On the other hand, he noted that would have appreciated more historical context, as well as the addition of some other geographical areas:

One agrees heartily with the absence of theoretical speculation, such as might have resulted from a pedantic introduction of philosophical intricacies of Rousseau or Hobbes. We have here something for the plain, practical man. Nevertheless, one feels that a historical chapter dealing with such kingdoms as that of early Congo and Dahomey might have had a logical place in this scheme. The historical introduction to Gluckman’s essay on the Zulu is pertinent and helpful. (Hambly 1940: 797)

Less generous was the review in American Anthropologist written by Melville J. Herskovits (1895–1963). At the time, Herskovits was establishing himself as the main specialist in African (and African American) studies in the United States in the Department of Anthropology that had been established only a couple of years earlier at Northwestern University. Herskovits immediately recognized the importance of APS, especially ‘for the wider field of comparative studies of political institutions in general’ (1941: 465). On the other hand, he criticized the omission of any reference to the works by Africanists like Roscoe, Meek, Labouret and Gutmann (ibid.: 466).⁴ Or, as he put it:

It is somewhat unfortunate that a few simple additions were not made to the book that would indicate the attention paid to African political organizations by earlier students. It should not have been difficult to include recognition of the existence of such works, and it would have been gracious for some of the authors, at least, to have written without such utter disregard of the research of their older colleagues. (Ibid.: 465)

Among the authors mentioned by Herskovits, C.K. Meek (who wrote the review of APS for Man mentioned above) was especially prolific (for example, Meek 1925, 1931, 1937). His Northern Tribes of Nigeria became an instant classic in African studies. He was educated in theology. Two other authors mentioned by Herskovits were missionaries, Anglican John Roscoe (1861–1932), and Lutheran Bruno Gutmann (1876–1966). Roscoe was fascinated by (and probably saw himself as an intellectual heir of) David Livingstone, and his detailed ethnography of what was then the Uganda Protectorate was a major reference work for Africanists for decades (Roscoe 1921), although clearly it was not considered important enough by Wagner to refer to it in APS. Gutmann served between 1902 and 1938 among the Chagga near Kilimanjaro (in what is now Tanzania), fiercely defending their cultural particularity against unstoppable modernization and producing some fine ethnographic material in the process (Gutmann 1909, 1932/38). Finally, French ethnologist Henri Labouret (1878–1959) is the only one of the scholars mentioned whose work continues to enjoy respect and admiration, as well as influence among French Africanists (Labouret 1931, 1937). Labouret held many important posts, including Director of the African Institute (Institut international africain) and Professor of Sudanese Languages at the École nationale des langues orientales vivantes (1926–45), and he was also Professor of African Civilization at l’École coloniale, Paris (1926–45). Although the contributors to APS were probably familiar with the works of these scholars, the focus of most of these works (with the possible exception of Meek’s) seems very far removed from the idea of social anthropology that they were working on. Thus, while it is easy to see how some particular aspects of their work (like Roscoe’s vocal opposition to slavery or Gutmann’s and Labouret’s criticism of colonialism) were very close to those of Herskovits and the idea of cultural anthropology that he was developing, for the contributors to APS, they seemed like fleeting moments that had little relevance in terms of understanding the social and political processes. At the same time, the active involvement of some of them with the colonial authorities (especially Meek, until 1933, but also Labouret) did not help their case either. In retrospect, this also helps us to understand the limited influence that these scholars had later on, especially in comparison with those who contributed to APS.

Herskovits was also critical of the fact that the volume only included references to the territories held by the British:

Before the war, when this volume was projected, persons in France and Belgium could have been found to write on the political organization of selected tribes in the areas controlled by these other nations, and this would have greatly enhanced the value of the book and substantially reinforced conclusions drawn from its materials. (Herskovits 1941: 466)

Herskovits criticized the dichotomy that the editors introduce (APS, p. 5), as he believed that ‘the second type’ (i.e. ‘societies which lack centralized authority, administrative machinery, and constituted judicial institutions’) was much more present in Africa and that there were other ‘informal control mechanisms’, as he called them, which regulated matters in specific societies. Turning to specific chapters, he saw ‘difficulties’ when ‘analyzing political institutions in non-political states’ (1941: 467):

This is implicit, for example in Wagner’s definition of a political unit (p. 199 [of APS]). Another example is found in Fortes’ summary of the political institutions of the Tallensi (p. 241), while the same problem is inherent in Evans-Pritchard’s attempt to indicate what is meant by the term ‘tribe’ among the Nuer (p. 278). For this is untrod ground, and perhaps this is why two of the three contributors who are concerned with tribes of this kind give the impression of being uneasy over the absence of specific categories. (Ibid.: 467)

Herskovits also strongly criticized Wagner’s discussion of ‘internal political structure’ as ‘merely a compilation of comments concerning social organization, gift exchange economics, religion, and … quasi-legal processes’ (ibid.). Evans-Pritchard fared slightly better because of his statement ‘of Nuer political relativity’, which made his arguments stronger. According to Herskovits, Fortes and Wagner were too heavily influenced by ‘the functionalist position, which holds that no cultural institution can be understood except in terms of its interrelationship with all other portions of the culture of which it forms part’ (ibid.). The concluding lines of this review forecast a major change (and a paradigm shift) that he claimed would occur in anthropology within a decade:

This approach is shown to be impossible when dealing with shadowy, amorphous canons of regulation such as are found in ‘non-political’ African groups. And in Evans-Pritchard’s thesis that ‘the consistency we perceive in Nuer political structure is one of process rather than one of morphology’ (p. 296 [of APS]), we see reflected the importance of studying a given aspect of a culture in terms of the special problem it poses. (Ibid.: 467)

This criticism was very powerful and detailed, but it also reflects a different view of anthropology. For Herskovits, anthropologists needed to take a much more active (or even activist) role than his colleagues working in Britain were ready to do. Colonialism was still alive and well (at least on the surface) at the time when APS was published, and its publication cannot be abstracted out of the political context of its time. The anthropologists who contributed to APS were engaged in a different type of approach from their colleagues on the other side of the Atlantic, actively trying to understand the societies they studied, but with different emphasis and much more ambiguity. Herskovits did not find their approach very convincing. Of course, this should all also be put into the context of his own position at the time, as he had established the Anthropology Department only a couple of years earlier (1938) at Northwestern University and was in the process of establishing African Studies in the United States (Herskovits 1941a).

French Perspectives

The final review that I will discuss here is the one published in L’Année sociologique in 1948. Since this journal was not published during the Second World War, the massive volume in which the review article appeared covered the years between 1940 and 1948. By then, APS was already in its third edition.

The review was written by one of the leading French Africanists, Denise Paulme (1909–98), known for her fieldwork among the Dogon in West Africa and also for her work in museums. Between 1937 and 1961, she headed the ‘Afrique noire’ section at the Musée de l’Homme, and in 1957 became Senior Fellow at the École pratique des hautes études. She had studied law, but was attracted to ethnology after attending lectures by Marcel Mauss in 1927. Her work was greatly appreciated by leading Africanists (like Balandier), and Claude Lévi-Strauss helped her to secure a permanent position in 1957. She was one of the most influential people in the founding generation of French anthropology (Héritier 1999).

In her review, Paulme first noted that the fact that the book was already in its third edition proved its importance. She summarized the content of all the chapters, focusing on key points, and occasionally adding interesting observations (for example, she felt that Nadel was too pessimistic in his assumption that ‘the Kede have now abandoned all pretention to the existence of an autonomous politics’ (Paulme 1948: 315)). This led her to conclude that the contributors of APS privileged in their studies disintegration processes to the processes of integration – also using Wagner’s chapter as an example (ibid.). Paulme was not satisfied with Evans-Pritchard’s definition of the clan (‘not all African clans are exogamous, as shown by Mrs Kuper among the Swazi’ (ibid.)), but quoted with approval (just like Herskovits before her) his relativistic definition of the ‘tribe’ among the Nuer.

Although she was not as critical as Herskovits, Paulme found the distinction made by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard between two different types of societies to be ‘too vague’, as there are societies that have categories that resemble the ones of the state (Paulme 1948: 316). Here she drew on her own research experience in Sudan, but also on her expertise as a legal scholar. Just like Meek (quoted above), she noted with disapproval the absence of reference to ‘secret societies’, which could provide the dominant influence that, according to the editors, was missing from what they called the ‘Group B’ societies. She also noted that it was very strange, especially for a volume entitled African Political Systems, not to find any reference to ‘ambassadors’ – trade or political representatives sent to other societies. Finally, she also criticized the opposition of, on the one hand, an administrative organization and, on the other hand, a lineage system, as the lineage could also be seen as a form of administrative organization (ibid.).⁵ Nevertheless, she praised the book and concluded that it would ‘provide great benefit to ethnographers, students, and [sic] all colonial administrators’ (ibid.: 316).⁶

Paulme was also friends with one of the most fascinating figures of the last century, Michel Leiris (1901–90), an artist, poet, writer, critic, traveller, surrealist and ethnographer, a true ‘Renaissance Man’ whose friends included Breton, Bataille, Giacometti, Picasso, Césaire and Métraux. He was also a great innovator in modern confessional literature, writing several autobiographies and keeping a diary from 1922 until 1989. This confessional and very personal style influenced the creation of his first major ethnographic work, L’Afrique fantôme (Phantom Africa), published in 1934 and based on the notes and diaries from the Dakar-Djibouti expedition (1931–33 (Leiris 1996)). In the recent European history of ideas, the concept of ‘Africa’ has occupied a very prominent place. The idea of the ‘people without history’ was first formulated by Hegel in his lectures on the philosophy of history in the early nineteenth century. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that captured the imagination of the people, and this image persisted for much of the century. The fascination with the mysterious other that this ‘Africa’ had to offer also influenced first appreciations of African art – from Henry Moore’s sculptures to cubism and Picasso. This fascination also made it into the Parisian surrealist circles of the 1920s. However, with scholars like Leiris, this image became much more complex – he saw (and, in doing so, was much ahead of his time) the artificiality of the whole construct. He realized that Europeans’ fascination with the ‘Dark continent’ was mostly the product of their own fears and insecurities, as well as a consequence of their inability to see others as being just as human as themselves. It was also a useful tool for colonial domination, whose consequences were present in aspects of everyday life (Bošković 2003: 527). Leiris also developed a specific – and quite original – version of functionalism that was completely independent of the forms practised by English-speaking anthropologists (Bošković 2010: 137).

This brief excursion was necessary in order to contextualize and historicize one of the reviewers of this volume, but also to point to some of the directions in which studies of African societies were moving in France – and this reviewer’s influence was very strong. Thus, Paulme’s review should also be seen in the context of the emerging debates in French ethnology and anthropology at the time, about the colonial legacy, ‘African-ness’ and the whole concept of négritude.

Legacy and Influences

The collection of essays edited by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard had a lasting effect. It started as a collective project by eight anthropologists influenced by Radcliffe-Brown’s version of structuralism, and offering examples of case studies that combined functionalist insights with regional expertise – although, as noted by Herskovits, Evans-Pritchard was already moving in a different direction.⁷ According to Radcliffe-Brown, this was the opportunity to give ‘the comparative study of political institutions, with special reference to the simpler societies … the attention it deserves’ (APS, p. xi):

The task of social anthropology, as a natural science of human society, is the systematic investigation of the nature of social institutions … Applied to human societies the comparative method used as an instrument for inductive inference will enable us to discover the universal, essential, characters which belong to all human societies, past, present, and future. The progressive achievement of knowledge of this kind must be the aim of all who believe that a veritable science of human society is possible and desirable. (Ibid.)

As some of the authors secured full-time positions in the emerging discipline, APS also provoked important debates, especially regarding kinship:

During the great debates on kinship of/in the 1950s and 1960s, the model presented in African Political Systems was subjected to criticism from many quarters. Some felt that it was simply too neat to fit the complexities of real life. Others disparaged it as evolutionism in disguise. Yet others (most prominently Lévi-Strauss) rejected its exclusive focus on descent as the main principle of kinship. (Eriksen and Nielsen 2013: 89)

The debates that began in 1940 led to important reconsiderations of kinship and descent in the following decades. The model of descent proposed in this volume was further developed by Evans-Pritchard in his studies of the Nuer (Evans-Pritchard 1940, 1951), and Fortes established himself as the most influential scholar in kinship theory (Fortes 1949), distancing himself from Radcliffe-Brown (Kuper 2015: 61).

APS had a very wide impact immediately after its publication – as noted by Easton (1959), for example. Based on some of his own research in Sudan, Holý (1979) strongly criticized the whole concept of the ‘segmentary lineage system’. Even today, the emphasis that the contributors of this volume place on the aspects of political organization and leadership still resonate as very important – and this is especially relevant with the political shifts taking place, particularly in East Africa, as well as the implications that these shifts have for the processes of ethnic alliances and identification (Schlee and Watson 2009a, 2009b; Bošković and Ignjatović 2012; Eidson et al. 2017). As our understanding of others takes different forms (the usefulness of the work for colonial administrators seems to be a relic of a bygone era), it is important to take note of the works that transformed the history of our discipline. And in the case of APS, it was clear from the first reviews that the importance of this work was immediately realized.

Conclusion: The Present Volume

The chapters in the present volume address the issues raised by APS in two different ways. All the authors address both the book and the subject matter of the book (African political systems). Some approach it through the impact it had on the history of anthropology (Guldbransen, Lewis, Simonse, Schlee and Skalník), while others (Assal, Hoehne and Palmer) focus on its role in shaping anthropological theory (‘Group A’ vs. ‘Group B’ societies). Of course, as suggested by Günther Schlee, ‘two approaches boil down to the same, if we think of types of theory, how they succeed each other in time and how they are connected to each other’.⁸

A major area of overlap is that all chapters critically discuss the rigid dichotomy between Group A and Group B societies. Some do it by looking back into the history of anthropology and re-examining the interpretation of the examples discussed in APS and classical monographs, while others apply this dichotomy to the results of their own field research and examine the extent to which it works and also where it does not work.

Gulbrandsen begins with certain ‘cultural idioms’, but this discussion of Tswana kingship brings him all the way to modernity and postcolonial Botswana. While Tswana kingdoms served to legitimize the strong state with parliamentarian democracy, they have at the same time produced and influenced various contradictions, as demonstrated in his chapter. Lewis takes as his starting point the debate about the primacy of the social versus the individual and presents a detailed account of different aspects in the formation of APS, as well as subsequent readings of it. This debate is also reflected in Schlee’s chapter. Schlee starts with Oberg’s chapter from APS and, taking into account both ethnographic (Africanist) and comparative historical data, focuses on the process of state becoming a state (‘thinking about the state’). Again, Lewis also notes the fact that the contributors to APS ignored work on similar topics that had already been published before 1940 (as noted above). While also looking at the book from a historical perspective, Simonse presents ‘an ethnographic case where the structural continuity between societies of Group A and Group B is clearly visible’. Skalník takes an even wider approach, comparing the book (as well as its latent evolutionism) to later projects, like Tribes without Rulers, as well as his own work on the early state. Just like Gulbrandsen, Skalník is optimistic about the insights that APS could bring into understanding parallelism of modern forms of state and the various nonstate polities, be it chiefdoms or acephalous communities but also present-day terrorist, ultranationalist, utopian and extremist religious political forms that may or not call themselves states.

Höhne critically examines the concept of the segmentary lineage system and, based on his research in northern Somalia, argues that it does not really work (contrary to, for example, Holý (1979)), but that it can be used as a heuristic device. This leads him to caution against the rejection of a model that effectively helps to understand contemporary conflict dynamics in a volatile area far from overarching state control. Assal presents an interesting account of the Tuareg in northern Darfur (Sudan), as well as how they became victims of the recent political crisis in the country. Palmer also uses the ongoing political crisis in his own country (South Africa) in order to highlight some aspects of representation of a postcolonial society (Gluckman’s contribution in APS), as well as to offer anthropological insights into the cultural and ritual role of the homestead and the roots of traditional patriarchy to offer an interpretation of the Nkandla Controversy (a major scandal involving the former South African President).

With the combination of historical insights and contemporary ethnographic research, the contributors to this book offer valuable insights into the paradigms and challenges facing societies in the first decades of the twenty-first century. I believe that they also speak loudly and clearly about the importance of anthropological perspectives, and how they could help us understand the challenges of a world with shifting paradigms.

Aleksandar Bošković is Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Archaeology in Belgrade, Serbia. He has taught at the Faculty of Social Sciences, the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), the University of Brasília (Brazil), Rhodes University in Grahamstown (South Africa), the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa), University of Belgrade (Serbia), the University of Donja Gorica (Montenegro) and the University of St Andrews (Scotland). His books include William Robertson Smith (Berghahn Books, 2021), Mesoamerican Religions and Archaeology (Archaeopress, 2017), Other People’s Anthropologies (Berghahn Books, 2008, editor) and The Anthropological Field on the Margins of Europe (LIT Verlag, 2013, co-editor with Chris Hann).

Notes

1. For more detailed references, see also Lewis, Chapter 2 in this volume.

2. This does not imply anything about the actual quality of the books preceding this one, but the fact is that some authors who wrote in APS had a lasting influence on social and cultural anthropology. Herskovits explicitly mentions omissions of four authors, and I will come back to them when discussing his review.

3. Lord Lugard (1858–1945) was the Governor General of Nigeria (1914–1919), and was the one who came up with the idea of ‘Indirect Rule’. Kuper (2015: 81) offers an excellent explanation of the position of British social anthropologists within the colonial context, as well as about some common misconceptions about the relationship between anthropologists and colonial administrators.

4. Radcliffe-Brown (APS, p. xiii) expected that the volume would ‘stimulate other anthropologists to give us similar descriptive studies’. So, the authors around APS did not see themselves as producing something ‘definitive’. The editors stated in their introduction that their aim ‘was to provide a convenient reference book for anthropologists’ (ibid.: 1).

5. In her own words: ‘Mais dans beaucoup de sociétés africaines, les sociétés secrètes peuvent exercer cette influence dominante. A ce propos, il peut sembler étrange que, dans un livre qui s’intitule Systèmes politiques africains, on ne trouve aucune référence aux sociétés secrètes dont l’autorité peut déborder parfois l’unité politique; peu de choses sur les rapports internationaux, l’emploi d’ ambassadeurs, les rapports entre organisation économique et système politique. Il paraît enfin un peu arbitraire d’opposer d’une part une organisation administrative, d’autre part un système de lignages, le lignage étant lui aussi, vu sous un certain angle, une organisation administrative’ (1948: 316). (‘In many African societies, secret societies could exert a dominant influence. That is why it seems strange that in a book with the title African Political Systems there are no references to secret societies whose authority can sometimes overwhelm political unity; little about international relations, the use of ambassadors, the relationship between economic organization and political system. Finally, it seems a little arbitrary to oppose an administrative organization, with a kinship system, as the kinship is also being, seen from a certain angle, a form of administrative organization’.

6. Perhaps following up on the sentence from the Editors’ Note: ‘We hope this book will be of interest and of use to those who have the task of administering African peoples. The anthropologist’s duty is to present the facts and theory of native social organization as he sees them’ (ibid.: vii).

7. Of course, as noted by Eriksen and Nielsen, ‘structural-functionalism’ was not ‘a static doctrine; it was a theory that evolved and ultimately transcended itself’ (2013: 90).

8. Personal communication, 2019.

References

Reviews of APS

Anonymous. 1940. ‘African Political Systems by M. Fortes; E.E. Evans-Pritchard’, Journal of the Royal African Society, 39(156) (1940): 283–84.

Hambly, Wilfrid Dyson. 1940. ‘African Political Systems by M. Fortes; E.E. Evans-Pritchard’, American Sociological Review, 5(5) (1940): 796–98.

Herskovits, Melville J. 1941. ‘African Political Systems by M. Fortes; E.E. Evans-Pritchard’, American Anthropologist, N.S., 43(1) (1941): 465–68.

Meek, C.K. 1941. ‘African Political Systems’, Man, 41 (1941): 41–42.

Paulme, Denise. 1948. ‘Fortes (M.) et Evans Pritchard (É.). – African Political Systems’, L’Année sociologique, 1 (1940–48): 313–16.

Wrong, Margaret. 1941. ‘African Political Systems by M. Fortes; E.E. Evans-Pritchard’, Journal of the Royal African Society, 40(160) (1941): 280–81.

Literature

Adams, Robert McC. 2001. ‘Complexity in Archaic States’, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 20(3): 345–60.

Alexandre, Pierre (ed.) 1982. Systèmes étatiques africains. Special issue of Cahiers d’Études Africaines 22, vol. 87–88. Paris: EHESS.

Ardant, Philippe, and Gérard Conac (eds). 1983. Les pouvoirs africains. Special issue of Pouvoirs: Revue française d’études constitutionelles et politiques No. 25. Paris: Seuil.

Balandier, Georges. 1967. Anthropologie politique. Paris: PUF.

Bošković, Aleksandar. 2003. ‘Michel Leiris: Ethnologist in Search of Meanings’, Anthropos, 98(2): 526–29.

———. 2010. Kratak uvod u antropologiju. Zagreb: Jesenski i Turk.

Bošković, Aleksandar, and Suzana Ignjatović. 2012. ‘Understanding Ethnic Conflicts through Rational Choice: A Review Article’, Ethnos, 77(2): 289–94.

Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff (eds). 2018. The Politics of Custom: Chiefship, Capital, and the State in Contemporary Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Easton, David. 1959. ‘Political Anthropology’, Biennial Review of Anthropology, 1: 210–62.

Eidson, John R., Dereje Feyissa, Veronika Fuest, Markus V. Hoehne, Boris Nieswand, Günther Schlee and Olaf Zenker. 2017. ‘From Identification to Framing and Alignment: A New Approach to the Comparative Analysis of Collective Identities’, Current Anthropology, 58(3): 340–59.

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