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The Politics of Informal Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Janet L. Roitman
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There is evidence of a new trend in recent scholarship on African political economy: an effort to tip the scale towards the latter end of the so-called state-society balance. This nascent movement portends to serve as a corrective to past academic work devoted to defining and delineating the form and nature of the African state. The statist literature has traditionally formed two camps, one based on liberal, neo-classical theory, and the other informed by the neo-Marxist dependencia model. No matter what the approach, in these studies the state is the central locus of macro-economic and political processes: as the centre of resource extraction and distribution, and the determinant of the nature of national politics, the state is fixated upon as the source of, and/or solution to, the economic status of African societies.

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The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 1990 , pp. 671 - 696
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 I allude to the state-society ‘balance’ as opposed to its ‘struggle’, since the volume cited most often as the ‘state of the art’ commentary in this field is Donald, Rothchild and Naomi, Chazan (eds.), The Precarious Balance: state and society in Africa (Boulder and London, 1988).Google Scholar

2 Compare the contending definitions given in the following works: Leys, Cohn, ‘The “Overdeveloped” Post Colonial State: a re-evaluation’, in Review of African Political Economy (London), 5, 01–04 1976, pp. 39–48;Google ScholarAke, Claude, A Political Economy of Africa (London, 1981);Google ScholarJackson, Robert H. and Rosberg, Carl C., ‘Why Africa's Weak States Persist: the empirical and the juridical in statehood’, in World Politics (Princeton), 35, 1, 10 1982, pp. 1–24;Google ScholarHyden, Göran, No Shortcuts to Progress: African development management in perspective (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983);Google ScholarYoung, Crawford and Turner, Thomas, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison, 1984);Google ScholarCallaghy, Thomas M., The State-Society Struggle: Zaire in comparative perspective (New York, 1984);Google ScholarShaw, Timothy M., Towards a Political Economy for Africa: the dialectics of dependence (London and Basingstoke, 1985);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Gutkind, Peter C. W. and Wallerstein, Immanuel, Political Economy of Contemporary Africa (Beverly Hills, London, and New Delhi, 1985 edn.).Google Scholar

3 Some examples include Kasfir, Nelson, ‘State, Magendo, and Class Formation in Uganda’, in Kasfir, (ed.), State and Class in Africa (London, 1984), pp. 84–103;Google ScholarMacGaffey, Janet, Entrepreneurs and Parasites: the struggle for indigenous capitalism in Zaire (Cambridge, 1987);Google ScholarBratton, Michael, ‘Beyond the State: civil society and associational life in Africa’, in World Politics, 41, 04 1989, pp. 407–30; and the compislation of works found in Rothchild and Chazan (eds.), op. cit.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See, for example, Naomi Chazan, ‘Patterns of State-Society Incorporation and Disengagement in Africa’, in Rothchild and Chazan (eds.), op. cit. pp. 121–48, as well as MacGaffey, Janet, ‘How to Survive and Become Rich Amidst Devastation: the second economy in Zaire’, in African Affairs (London), 82, 328, 07 1983, pp. 351–66.Google Scholar See also a host of interesting articles published in various issues of Politique africaine (Paris), several of which are cited below.Google Scholar

5 Cf. Callaghy, op. cit.

6 Cf. Forrest, Joshua, ‘The Contemporary African State: a ruling class?’, in Review of African Political Economy (Sheffield), 38, 04 1987, pp. 66–71,Google Scholar and Bayart, Jean-François, L'Etat en Afrique: la politique du ventre (Paris, 1989), ch. 6 and pp. 260–6.Google Scholar

7 Berry, Sara S., Cocoa, Custom, and Socio-Economic Change in Rural Western Nigeria (Oxford, 1975);Google ScholarBernstein, Henry, ‘African Peasantries: a theoretical framework’, in Journal of Peasant Studies (London), 6, 4, 1979, pp. 421–33;Google ScholarCooper, Frederick, From Slaves to Squatters: plantation labor and agriculture in Zanzibar and coastal Kenya, 1890–1925 (New Haven and London, 1980);Google Scholar and Kitching, Gavin, Class and Economic Change in Kenya: the making of an African petite bourgeoisie, 1905–1970 (New Haven and London, 1980).Google Scholar

8 Nyang'oro, Julius E., The State and Economic Development in Africa: declining political economies (New York, 1989), p. 118, referring to studies done by Callaghy, op. cit.Google Scholar, and Schatz, Sayre P., Nigerian Capitalism (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1977).Google Scholar

9 Sandbrook, Richard, with Barker, Judith, The Politics of Africa's Economic Stagnation (Cambridge, 1985), p. 12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Kennedy, Paul, African Capitalism: the struggle for ascendency (Cambridge, 1988), p. 5.Google Scholar

11 Hyden, op. cit. p. 7.

12 The psychiatric tones taint much of the literature. Young and Turner, op. cit. p. 399, observe ‘the pathology of state decay’; René Lemarchand, ‘The State, the Parallel Economy, and the Changing Structure of Patronage Systems’, in Rothchild and Chazan (eds.), op. cit. p. 150, detects ‘pathological dysfunctions’; while John A. A. Ayoade's prognosis is ‘postcolonial bureaupathology’, in ‘States Without Citizens: an emerging African phenomenon’, in Ibid. p. 107.

13 Eicher, Carl, ‘Facing up to Africa's Food Crisis’, in Foreign Affairs (New York), 61, 1982, p. 17;Google ScholarNyang'oro, , op. cit. especially chs. 4–6; and Sandbrook with Barker, op. cit. especially p. 33.Google Scholar

14 Berry, Sara S., ‘Food Crisis and Agrarian Change in Africa: a review essay’, in African Studies Review (Los Angeles), 27, 2, 06 1984, p. 90.Google Scholar

15 Cf. Copans, Jean, ‘Du yin de palme nouveau dans de vieilles calebasses? À propos de l'état, des marchés, des paysans, des crises et des luttes populaires en Afrique noire’, in Genéve-Afrique (Geneva), 27, 1, 1989, p. 18.Google Scholar Here, Copans is referring to the thesis that the means to capitalist accumulation is located within the state, implying a high degree of interpenetration of the commercial and political sectors. For elaboration, see Schatzberg, Michael G., Politics and Class in Zaire: bureaucracy, business, and beer in Lisala (New York and London, 1980),Google Scholar and Joseph, Richard A., Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria: the rise and fall of the Second Republic (Cambridge, 1987).Google Scholar

16 Here, I am reading ‘rational’ as consistency in choice – i.e. what rational-choice theorists call ‘ordered preference structures’. The positing of unidimensional rationality, a central premise of the neo-classical models of the market now much applied in studies of political economy, constructs the individual outside of society in that each individual is equipped with the same capacity to calculate and reason. Neither is dependent on the other for the construction of this capacity, and hence there is no problem of contending and variable modes and forms of reasoning. Cf. Hindess, B., ‘Rational Choice Theory and the Analysis of Political Action’, in Economy and Society (London), 13, 3, 1984, pp. 255–77.Google Scholar In the African context, see Berry, Sara S., ‘Rural Class Formation in West Africa’, in Bates, Robert H. and Lofchie, Michael F. (eds.), Agricultural Development in Africa: issues of public policy (New York, 1980), pp. 401–24,Google Scholar and especially Lemarchand, René, ‘African Peasantrieo, Reciprocity and the Market; the economy of affection reconsidered’, in Cahiers d'éludes africaines (Paris), 113, 1989, pp. 33–67.Google Scholar

17 Disassociating the individual from his or her social context has serious consequences for those who utilise neo-classical models in that power relations, the central interest to political scientists, are not part of the theoretical construct. This is a critical point, to which I will return. For further remarks, cf. Nafziger, E. Wayne, ‘A Critique of Development Economics in the U.S.’, in Journal of Development Studies (London), 13, 1976, pp. 18–34, and Sara S. Berry, ‘Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Africa; a critical essay’, African Studies Center Working Paper, Boston University, 1981, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

18 For further critique, see Brenner, Robert, ‘The Origins of Capitalist Development; a critique of neo-Smithian Marxism’, in New Left Review (London), 104, 07–08 1977, pp. 25–92.Google Scholar

19 See Cooper, Frederick, ‘Africa and the World Economy’, in African Studies Review (Los Angeles), 24, 2–3, 06–09 1981, pp. 3–13, for an overview of this debate with reference to the general literature.Google Scholar On the last point, see Guyer, Jane I., ‘Food, Cocoa, and the Division of Labor by Sex in Two West African Societies’, in Comparative Studies in Society and History (Cambridge), 22, 3, 1980, pp. 355–73;Google Scholar Berry, Cocoa, Custom, and Socio-Economic Change; Kitching, Gavin, Development and Underdevelopment in Historical Perspective: populism, nationalism and industrialization (London, 1982), especially p. 29; Bernstein, loc. cit. p. 424, and ‘Agricultural “Modernization” in the Era of Structural Adjustment’, The Open University, Milton Keynes, September 1989, D.P.P. Working Paper No. 16.Google Scholar

20 For interesting case-studies which demonstrate this point, see the ensemble of articles compiled in Africa (London), 59, 1, 1989, especially H. W. O. Okoth-Ogendo, ‘Some Issues of Theory in the Study of Tenure Relations in African Agriculture’, pp. 6–17, and Angélique Haugerud, ‘Land Tenure and Agrarian Change in Kenya’, pp. 61–90.Google Scholar

21 The most visible of this genre is Hyden, Göran, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: underdevelopment and an uncaptured peasantry (London, 1980).Google Scholar See also Azarya, Victor and Chazan, Naomi, ‘Disengagement from the State in Africa: reflections on the experience of Ghana and Guinea’, in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29, 1, 01 1987, pp. 106–31, and Rothchild and Chazan (eds.), op. cit., especially the introduction by Victor Azarya, ‘Reordering State-Society Relations: incorporation and disengagement’, pp. 3–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 This approach ‘from below’ is associated with the study of ‘popular modes of political action’ which, during the last decade, has been significantly advanced by European scholars. Cf. Politique africaine, 1, 1981.Google Scholar

23 Rothchild, and Chazan, (eds.), op. cit. p. ix.Google Scholar

24 Cf. Bayart, Jean-Francois, ‘La revanche des sociétés africaines’, in Politique africaine, II, 1983, pp. 95–127.Google Scholar

25 The theoretical and empirical importance of these spheres of production and exchange, as opposed to their descriptive sense, will be addressed later in the text with respect to my central concern, the loci and modes of control and domination of the production process and channels of accumulation.

26 I do not wish to imply that there is no distinction to be made between economic (and thus political) activities taking place in state-controlled arenas and those which are clearly outside such spheres. My main point is that the Manichean conception of state-society relations results in a false dichotomy between ‘formal’ (i.e. institutional) and ‘informal’ (i.e. residual) categories. I question. furthermore, the extent to which the power bases of the two realms are clearly delineated, and also object to the implied normative connotations of this static, reactive model. To what extent are they normal modes of production and exchange for African societies, in the sense that they are embedded in social relations spanning local and national groupings? To what extent do these realms have histories that predate the colonial era? I will take up these questions below.

27 MacGaffey, op. cit. p. 23. She notes that this definition has been taken from Feige, E., ‘How Big is the Irregular ‘U.S.’ Economy?’, in Challenge, 11–12 1979.Google Scholar

28 Correctly, because much of it is not perceived as such by Africans themselves. See comments by Gérard Prunier, ‘Le Magendo’, in Politique africaine, 9, March 1983, pp. 53–4 and 61.

29 It is interesting that most analyses posit this realm as the consequence of state failure, as mentioned above. Yet here it becomes clear that these activities may, in fact, be part of the cause of state failure in that they deprive the state of its economic base. This may be a problem of the chicken and the egg, but its implications for common explanations of the African ‘crisis’ is to be explored.

30 Here I stress MacGaffey's tendency to describe what she has observed as a new phenomenon. Although she does give a short history of the ‘second economy’ in op. cit. pp. 1127–17, she none the less perceives these activities as responses to recent state failures.

31 Ibid. p. 25. Her argument that this realm exhibits the basis of class formation in Kisangani (and represents a trend being witnessed elsewhere in Zaïre, if not in Africa), implies that these entrepreneurs are, in fact, autonomous from the state. However, she describes Zaïrian bureaucrats as ‘parasites’, indicating their reliance on the human and material resources circulating in the non-state realm. The ways in which they go about capturing and directing such constituent elements are to be discerned – and this may render the ‘autonomous’ qualification problematic. Hence my insistence on the utility of her original definition emphasising the circumvention of taxation.

32 Cf. Azarya, ‘Reordering State-Society Relations’, pp. 12–14. Although what is of import here is how the appropriation of this concept has led to static and oppositional analyses of statesociety relations in the literature being reviewed, the very notion of the ‘anonymous’ market is in itself certainly problematic in Africa, if not in other social contexts as well.

33 Hyden, , Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania, pp. 10, 18, and 33.Google Scholar

34 Berry, , ‘Food Crisis and Agrarian Change’, p. 76.Google Scholar

35 Geschiere, Peter, ‘La Paysannerie africaine est-elle captive?’, in Politique africaine, 14 06 1984, pp. 13–34, is a well-developed and precise critique of Hyden's thesis.Google Scholar See also Kasfir, Nelson, ‘Are African Peasants Self-Sufficient?’, in Development and Change (London), 17, 04 1986, pp. 335–57.Google Scholar

36 Rapport économique régional Haut Zaïre, 1976, cited in MacGaffey, op. cit. pp. 136–7, my emphasis. See also her comments on pp. 135–8.

37 Cf. Miras, Claude de, ‘De la Formation du capital privé à léconomie populaire spontaneeée’, in Politique africaine, 14, 06 1984, p. 92–110Google Scholar. See also Alain Morice, ‘Commerce parallèle et troc à Luanda’, in ibid. 17, March 1985, p. 150–20, and Kasfir, ‘State, Magendo, and Class Formation in Uganda’. See the examples given by Prunier, loc. cit. p. 60, re complicity between petty traders and agents of the state.

38 Morice, loc. cit. p. 106.

39 Casswell, N., ‘Autopsie de l'ONCAD: la politique arachidière au Senegal, 1966–1980’, in Politique africaine 14, 06 1984, p. 57.Google Scholar On the political economy of the Mourides, see O’Brien, Donal B. Cruise, The Mourides of Senegal: the political and economic organization of an Islamic brotherhood (Oxford, 1971),Google Scholar and Copans, Jean, Les Marabouts de l'arachide (Paris, 1989).Google Scholar

40 Kisangani, Emizet, ‘A Social Dilemma in a Less Developed Country: the massacre of the Loxodonta Africana in Zaire’, Common Property Resource Management Conference, National Academy of Science, New York, 26 March 1985. For lack of access to this paper, I owe my comments to its presentation in Lemarchand, ‘The State’, loc. cit. p. 164 and 169, fn. 41.Google Scholar

41 These estimates are cited in Green, Reginald H., ‘Magendo in the Political Economy of Uganda: pathology, parallel system or dominant sub-mode of production?’, Discussion Paper No. 64, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, 1981; Lemarchand, ‘The State’, loc. cit. p. 161; and MacGaffey, op. cit. p. 24.Google Scholar

42 Azarya, and Chazan, , in Rothchild and Chazan (eds.), op. cit. pp. 3–21 and 121–48, respectively. While a more nuanced, less oppositional, and thus static formulation of incorporation and disengagement might be a heuristic device, Azarya's comment that he is haunted by the ‘vexing problem’ that ‘the manifestations of incorporation and disengagement are not easily differentiated’ is a telling indication that the processes under examination are much more fluid, polyphonic, and complex than the model allows.Google Scholar

43 Igué, O. J., ‘L'officiel, le parallèle et le clandestin’, in Politique africaine, 9, 03 1983, p. 29, my translation. It is also interesting to note that Lemarchand asserts in ‘The State’, p. 149–70, that the emergence of the prebendal state ‘paved the way’ for the institutionalisation of parallel economies. To what extent the ‘informal’ power hierarchies that form the basis for these activities are in some sense ‘formal’ (i.e. institutionalised) is, unfortunately, not explored. Bayart, L'État en Afrique, offers conceptual insight into these phenomena by way of what he terms ‘l'état rhizome’, or the state as a breeding ground for multifarious informal networks.Google Scholar

44 Berry has examined these networks in ‘Rural Class Formation in West Africa’, calling them ‘diversification strategies’ which obscure their formation. See also Berry, Sara S., ‘Oil and the Disappearing Peasantry:accumulation, differentiation, and underdevelopment. in Western Nigeria’, in Michael, Watts (ed.), State, Oil, and Agriculture in Nigeria (Berkeley, 1987), p. 202–22.Google Scholar

45 Azarya, , ‘Reordering State-Society Relations’, p. 8, my emphasis.Google Scholar

46 Cf. MacGaffey, op. cit.

47 MacGaffey's assertion that her entrepreneurs represent the beginnings of a true capitalist class is inconsistent with her observation, in op. cit. p. 4, that the Nande traders of Kivu make ‘use of ethnic ties, investing their wealth in productive enterprise and trade’. See also Ibid. p. 81–7, where she correctly emphasises the importance of intersections between class and ethnicity. Here, the recognition that ethnic affiliations may imply privileged access to key resources causes one to doubt the clear-cut statement that Nande accumulators are achieving their wealth autonomously of local power bases, which are in some way linked to the national locus of power.

48 Prunier illustrates this phenomenon with clarity. When discussing the determination of the unofficial rate of exchange in Uganda, he states in loc. cit. p. 59, my translation: ‘This rate is, apart from the disastrous economic situation of Uganda, a result of the monopoly over foreign currencies held back by the only two groups with access to them, the military and the coffee smugglers. They sometimes constitute, moreover, one and the same group, and public rumour describes abundantly the mechanisms of a state magendo, competing with a private magendo, which operates with the co-operation of army officials and those of the Uganda Marketing Board – when the two are not the one and the same.’ See also his amusing examples in Ibid. p. 60; the case of soldiers renting themselves out privately is especially telling.

49 Robertson, A. F., The Dynamics of Productive Relationships: African share contracts in comparative perspective (Cambridge, 1987), p. 7.Google Scholar He refers to Halligan, W., ‘Self-Selection by Contractual Choice and the Theory of Share-Cropping’, in Bell Journal of Economics (Hicksville, N.Y.), 9, 2, 1987, p. 344–54, on this point.Google Scholar

50 Jean-Marc Gastellu makes a similar point in Riches paysans de C^e d'Ivoire (Paris, 1989), p. 157–61, when noting that the distinction between the planters and their workers is one of degree and not kind.Google Scholar

51 Robertson, op. cit. p. 7.

52 Ibid. p. 78. The abusa entrepreneurs ‘have come to depend on the elaboration of abusa as a species of sub-contract which secures the flow of income, and of capital for further investment, from mature farms.’ The end result being that abusa contributes to the establishment of new farms with wage labour, while the share-crop institution perpetuates itself as a mediation between two modes of production.

53 See Parkin, David J., Palms, Wine, and Witnesses: public spirit and private gain in an African farming community (San Francisco, 1972),Google Scholar and Stichter, Sharon, Migrant Labour in Kenya: capitalism and African response, 1895–1975 (London, 1982).Google Scholar

54 Berry, Sara S., ‘Social Institutions and Access to Resources’, in Africa, 59, I, 1989, p. 47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 Warnier, Jean-Pierre and Miaffo, Dieudonné, ‘Accumulation et ethos de la notabilité chez les Bamiléké’, in Peter, Geschiere and Konings, Piet (eds.), Political Economy of Cameroon: historical perspectives (London, forthcoming).Google Scholar

56 See Ibid. as well as Ouden, J. H. B. den, ‘In Search of Personal Mobility: changing interpersonal relations in two Bamiléké chiefdoms, Cameroon’, in Africa, 57, 1, 1987, p. 4–27.Google Scholar

57 See, for example, the detailed work done by scholars such as Geschiere, Peter, ‘Accumulation and Non-Accumulation in Agriculture: regional comparisons’, in Geschiere, and Konings, Piet (eds.), Proceedings/Contributions. Conference on the Political Economy of Cameroon – Historical Perspectives, Part II (Leiden, 1989), p. 557–85;Google ScholarBerry, Sara S., Fathers Work for their Sons: accumulation, mobility and class formation in an extended Yoruba community (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985);Google ScholarGuyer, Jane I., Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston, 1984);Google ScholarWarnier, and Miaffo, , loc. cit.; and Gastellu, op. cit.Google Scholar

58 Cf. Chazan, Naomi, An Anatomy of Ghanaian Politics: managing political recession, 1969–1982 (Boulder, 1983). See also CruiseO'Brien, op. cit.Google Scholar

59 Berrv, ‘Social Institutions and Access to Resources’, p. 48.Google Scholar

60 Achille Mbembe has sarcastically commented that if it were true that the problem of economic accumulation in Africa were due to the lack of ‘faceless workers’, the reinstatement of a historic system of impersonal labour (i.e. slavery or forced labour) should lead to increased productive activity. Personal communication, Leiden, June 1990. However, that these forms of labour would not be incorporated into local systems in a way that would diffuse their ‘impersonal’ nature cannot be ruled out. On the appropriation, ‘deconstruction’, and ‘détournement’ of development projects by peasants, cf. de Sardan’s, J.-P. Olivier contribution to Boiral, P., Lanteri, J.-F., and Sardan, de (eds.), Paysans, experts et chercheurs en Afrique noire (Paris, 1985),Google Scholar and Desjeux, Dominique, Stratégies pasannes en Afrique noire (Paris, 1987).Google Scholar

61 This point is cogently developed in Geschiere, Peter, ‘Witchcraft and Cash Crops: transformation of witchcraft beliefs and their implications to development in two Cameroonian societies’, World Congress for Rural Sociology, Bologna, 25–30 June 1988.Google Scholar

62 In West Africa, remnants of the rôle of the Mande, Hausa, and Yoruba in the long-distance trade routes can be traced in the establishment of what is today the frontier ‘clandestine’ trade. Cf. Igue, loc. cit. p. 39–40 and 50.

63 The West African Atlantic coast re the slave and gold economies, for example.

64 French colonial policy towards the Bamiléké, for example, led to a distinct rôle for Bamiléké chiefs in the expansion of cash crops. They collaborated closely with the modern elite and, by 1945, established control of coffee co-operatives which became a base for local accumulation. Insights taken from Geschiere, ‘Accumulation and Non-Accumulation in Agriculture’, p. 577–8, who refers to Dongmo, J.-L., Le Dynamisme Bamiléké, Vol. I (Yaoundé, 1981).Google Scholar

65 ‘Terroirs’ is an untranslatable term taken from historical geography – specifically Bois, Paul, Les Paysans de l'ouest (Paris, 1960)Google Scholar - much used by Braudel, Fernand, L'Identité de la France: espace et histoire (Paris, 1986).Google ScholarCf. Bayart, , L'État en Afrique, pp. 142–3 and 317–22.Google Scholar

66 For more on ‘the invention of tradition’ and the limits thereof, see Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence O., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983),Google Scholar and Appadurai, Arjun, ‘The Past as a Scarce Resource’, in Man (London), 16, p. 201–19.Google Scholar

67 Caswell, loc. cit. p. 57.

68 Ibid. p. 66. Warnier and Miaffo, loc. cit. p. 40–4, interpret the ‘ethos de la notabilité’ among the Bamiléké in the same light.

69 Cf. Igué, loc. cit. p. 38 and 40, my translation.

70 Note that Igué indicates, in ibid. p. 47, that the movements of semi-permanent and permanent ‘fraudulent’ trade in West Africa have maintained the North-South-North and EastWest-East orientations of the colonial period. It should be noted that migrant labour is significant in determining the extent and flow of regional production and trade, as are the local systems of exchange which crop up as a result of the disparities between C.F.A. and non-C.F.A. currencies. These factors are crucial elements to the study of ‘informal’ economies.

71 An especially illuminating set of studies concerning configurations of interest between producers, traders, consumers, and the state can be found in Guyer, Jane I. (ed.), Feeding African Cities (London, 1987).Google Scholar

72 Rochchild, Donald and Foley, Michael W., ‘African States and the Politics of Inclusive Coalitions’, in Rothchild and Chazan (eds.), op. cit. p. 233–64, make use of an interesting construct: the ‘hegemonial exchange regime’, described on p. 249 as ‘a form of state-facilitated coordination in which partially autonomous central and subregional actors engage in quiet and informal exchanges on the basis of commonly known and accepted norms, rules and understandings’. Unfortunately, it is applied in the context of ‘society’s disengagement from the state’ and thus results in a static and functionalist interpretation. Here, Bayart's ‘éitat rhizome’, mentioned earlier, and his related elaboration on factional conflicts in op. cit. p. 60–7, do more justice to the fluid nature of the processes in question, as well as to their historical context.Google Scholar

73 See the various themes discussed in Freund, Bill, ‘Labor and Labor History in Africa: a review of the literature’, in African Studies Review, 27, 2, 1984, pp. 1–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74 With respect to rights-in-persons and African slavery, see Kopytoff, Igor and Meiers, Susanne, ‘African Slavery as an Institution of Marginality’, in Meiers, and Kopytoff, (eds.), African Slavery: historical and anthropological perspectives (Madison, 1977), fn. 11,Google Scholar and Kopytoff, Igor, ‘The Internal African Frontier’, in Kopytoff, (ed.), The African Frontier: the reproduction of traditional African societies (Bloomington, 1987), pp. 43–6.Google Scholar

75 For a penetrating analysis of this genre, see Barnes, Sandra T., Patrons and Power: creating a political community in metropolitan Lagos (Manchester, 1986).Google Scholar