Bošković Aleksandar Schlee Günther, African Political Systems Revisited
Bošković Aleksandar & Schlee Günther (eds.). — African Political Systems Revisited. New York, Berghahn Books, 2022, 278 p., bibl., index.
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1The ethnographic analysis of different forms of political organizations is a crucial component for the study of vernacular meanings of freedom, experiences of emancipation and the space of tactical or strategic manoeuvre of individuals and groups in different power positions. Political anthropology has historically provided important contributions on these topics, even when “freedom” and “emancipation” were not directly at centre of its attention. A re-reading of the “classics” of the discipline and the effort to critically engage with them on the background of current research interests are always useful and welcomed contributions. The volume African Political Systems Revisited, edited by Aleksandar Bošković and Günther Schlee, is a very sound and stimulating example, since it provides important elements of reflection on the ambiguous relationship that anthropology has with its past and very relevant case studies on how individuals and groups actively negotiate their own power positions in contexts characterized by a plurality of formal and informal political institutions.
2As it is often pointed out, the reading of any history of the discipline tends to give off a schizophrenic vibe, with a “new theoretical revolution” and new keywords emerging every ten years (if not less) and every generation of anthropologists hastily trying to stab its own predecessors. The general impression is that, with very few exceptions, a “classic” in the history of anthropology is a book that has been so widely criticized and intellectually dissected as to become nearly useless for current research, or useful only to be criticized again or to warn students about the mistakes of our forefathers and mothers. Sometimes, a “classic” is just a book that anyone pretends to have read.
3Of course, this ambiguous relationship with our ancestors is also a sign of the vibrant nature of anthropological debates and the ability of the discipline to constantly rethink critically (and de-construct) its own categories in changing ethnographic contexts. However, this tendency has an important consequence: every now and then in the public anthropological debate—and quite often in our everyday research activities—, we are obliged to ask ourselves what to do with the immense corpus of ethnographic studies and theorizations elaborated by previous generations, and why a given book has become a “classic” while others are utterly forgotten. Are anthropologists only working for the historians of the future or is there a way to continue to engage seriously with the “classical” works of our discipline?
- 1 See E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and (...)
4I think that African Political Systems Revisited is one of the best answers to those who believe that engaging with classical anthropological works is a useless or uninteresting endeavour, only helpful to reflect critically on the history of anthropology. Published more than 80 years ago, African Political Systems (APS) has been a “classic” since the very beginning: first, because it gathered together probably the best British anthropologists who had worked in Africa in the 1930s; second, because it provided the first comparative exercise that Radcliffe-Brown believed crucial for the structural-functionalist perspective; and third, because—together with other important works published in the same year1—it inaugurated political anthropology as an important subfield of anthropological studies. Last, but not least, its general inability to deal seriously with dynamics of social change, the strong dichotomy between the centralized and not-centralized political systems it elaborated, and its hesitancy to reflect seriously on the colonial context made the book an object of the criticisms of all the political anthropologists of the following decades. In this sense, it is probably no exaggeration to say that political anthropology developed thanks to, but also against, African Political System: a “classic” in the strict sense of the term.
5For these reasons, the task that the authors of African Political Systems Revisited embark on is a difficult but precious one: how and in what terms can APS be useful for analysing current politics in Africa? The book opens with three brilliant assessments by Adam Kuper (“Foreword”), Aleksandar Bošković (“The Right Book at the Right Time: Early Reactions and Continuing Debates”), and Herbert S. Lewis (“African Political Systems and Political Anthropology”) on the intellectual and political context of elaboration of APS, its importance for political anthropology at the time, and the many debates it generated in the following decades. The authors do not at all hesitate to point out and discuss the many limits of the book, but at the same time they reflect on the many legacies of this classic in the history of political anthropology.
6This helpful exercise becomes evident in the other, more ethnographic, essays, where the authors engage seriously with some theoretical aspects of APS to shed light on different—and profoundly changed—African scenarios. In the following two chapters, Simon Simonse focuses on the South Sudanese societies of the monyomiji cluster (chapter 3) and the Shilluk Kingdom (chapter 4) to bridge the gap between centralized and segmentary societies that APS postulated, by showing how the logic of “balanced opposition” that defines segmentary societies plays out in much the same way in the relationships between the king and his subjects. In chapter 5, Petr Skalník criticizes APS for its latent evolutionism and reconstructs the articulated anthropological debate on the origins of the State from structural functionalism to Carneiro’s argument, neo-Marxist perspectives, Russian neo-evolutionism and Tymowski’s works. He advocates for an approach able “to grip with the parallelism of modern forms of the State and various nonstate policies, be it chiefdoms or acephalous communities, but also present-day terrorist, ultranationalist, utopian and extremist religious political forms that may or may not call themselves States” (p. 116).
7The interplay and competition between different political institutions (with different degrees of power, forms of legitimacy, and strategies) inside the same arena is also the topic of the following chapter. By taking inspiration from the APS chapter by Kalervo Oberg on the Ankole Kingdom, Günther Schlee develops a reflection on centralized political institutions (in Africa as elsewhere) that are unable to monopolize executive power and must constantly renegotiate their authority with other socio-political institutions and powers. The effort to make APS resonate with current ethnographic research is also evident in chapter 7, where Marcus V. Hoehne explores conflict dynamics in Northern Somalia to argue that the segmentary lineage system elaborated by APS can be “a useful heuristic device to make sense of individual behaviour in a field characterized by changing power structures, situational reference to various forms of kinship, and diasporic and transnational political engagement” (p. 158). Chapter 8, by Munzoul Assal, explores the dynamics of political and economic marginalization experienced by the Tuareg people in Sudan and provides important information on how they tried to overcome their subordinate position in a context characterized by war and profound hostilities.
8Robin Palmer’s chapter addresses instead the political trajectory of Jacob Zuma and the scandal surrounding the huge improvements he made to his homestead with public money. Palmer takes inspiration from Max Gluckman’s reflections on the symbolic and political importance of the homestead in Zululand to make sense of the popular support that Zuma inspired despite the scandal and his ability to manipulate “traditional” values to reinforce his position. The crucial concept of “mystical values” raised by APS is also at the centre of the last chapter, where Ørnulf Gulbrandsen shows how the principles that gave legitimacy to the Tswana kingship (as guardians of the common good, power balance, social order, wealth, and equality before the law) have been reproduced and reshaped in a postcolonial, neoliberal setting characterized by rising economic inequalities. Finally, the “Afterword” by Bilinda Straight is a brilliant comment of the volume that links the relationship between law and violence (a topic widely discussed in APS and in this volume) to the police killing of United States citizen George Floyd.
9African Political Systems Revisited is ethnographically and theoretically rich, an excellent example of how we can read, discuss with, and profit from a “classic” of anthropology, without uncritically celebrating it or haughtily dismissing its possible contributions for the present. If a similar exercise were made for other “classics,” I think our relationships with our ancestors would be much more fruitful. The discussion of how different political systems, values and forms of legitimacy interact and are renegotiated is a necessary step toward a better understanding of what “freedom,” “emancipation,” “resistance,” and “agency” mean in different African contexts.
Notes
1 See E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1940; and M. Gluckman, “Analysis of A Social Situation in Modern Zululand,” Bantu Studies 14 (1), 1940, pp. 1–30.
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Marco Gardini, « Bošković Aleksandar Schlee Günther, African Political Systems Revisited », Cahiers d’études africaines, 257 | 2025, 309-311.
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Marco Gardini, « Bošković Aleksandar Schlee Günther, African Political Systems Revisited », Cahiers d’études africaines [En ligne], 257 | 2025, mis en ligne le 11 mars 2025, consulté le 16 avril 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/50101 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13h7n
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