2 - Individuals' Basic Security Needs & the Limits of Democratization in Africa

Summary

THE dominant constructs of African political sociology were formulated in the 1960s. It was then fashionable to forge supraindividual categories as the essential foundation of society, thanks to the formidable presence of Parsonian sociology in that era. It was an age of theory-building in which individuals and their needs counted for little. Despite George Homans' (1964) exasperated plea for enhancing the individual's place in social theories, urging social scientists to choose the path of 'Bringing Men Back I n / the theoretical orientations that influenced African studies in the 1960s were essentially collectivistic. They led to the recognition of such ideational ensembles as state, society, ethnic groups and tribes. They were far more reluctant to recognize the potency of unique individuals and their needs in the formation of these entities.

The neglect of the unique individual and his (or her) needs was not confined to academic practitioners who chose their theoretical models from Western social sciences. On the contrary, the neglect of the unique individual and his needs has been historic in Africa. The slave trade was based on spite for the worthiness of the unique individual. The most important state, which arose and functioned in the African history of the nineteenth century was the Fulani Sokoto Caliphate. It sprang from a revolution that was organized against Hausa kings who were accused of allowing too much freedom in the lives of their citizens (see Ekeh, 1997). The succeeding regimes of European colonialism, which occupied much of African history of the twentieth century, allowed very little room for the needs of the individual. In the post-colonial era, African states have done nothing to overcome the hostile relations between states and individuals in previous eras of African history. In a sense, therefore, the academic belittlement of the individual in African studies is a refraction from African history of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.