Review: A Seminal Work on Traditional African Societies

Reviewed Work(s): The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African

Societies by Igor Kopytoff
Review by: Peter W. Van Arsdale
Source: Africa Today , 3rd Qtr., 1992, Vol. 39, No. 3, Zaire: Troubled Past, Uncertain
Future (3rd Qtr., 1992), pp. 113-115
Published by: Indiana University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4186845

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Africa Today

This content downloaded from

172.58.12.254 on Wed, 31 Mar 2021 13:00:08 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 A Seminal Work on
Traditional African Societies
Peter W. Van Arsdale

Igor Kopytoff, ed., THE AFRICAN FRONTIER: The Reproduction of

Traditional African Societies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987;
Midland Book paperback edition, 1989), pp. 288, $12.95 pb, $35.00 hc.

One of the strongest endorsements that a book can receive is that other
scholars not only begin using and citing it, but begin building their own research
upon the ideas it contains-sometimes even in unexpected settings. Such is the
case with the volume that Igor Kopytoff has edited, The African Frontier. No
less an authority on the Hopi of the American Southwest than Alice Schlegel has
reframed her analysis of that society's socio-political development in light of
Kopytoff's thesis of the internal frontier.'
Kopytoff and his ten fellow contributors to the volume have based their
analyses of the recent evolution of a number of African societies on Kopytoff's
new concept of the frontier. Built in one sense on the 19th century notion of the
frontier as originally espoused by Frederick Jackson Turner, Kopytoff-in his own
words-"stands Tumer's thesis on its head" (p. 3). Whereas Turner saw the
frontier as a unidimensional driving force in shaping the American political and
economic landscape, ever-expanding atthe interface where American Indians and
European settlers were in contact, Kopytoff sees the frontier as multi-dimensional
and interstitial, in some instances even as a force for cultural and historical
conservatism.
At the heart of the research, Kopytoff emphasizes, is this question: "What
is the model of ethnic formation-of ethnogenesis-that in fact applies to
Africa?" (p. 4). The evidence he and his fellow authors provide from such diverse
settings as the Aghem of Cameroon, the Kpelle of Liberia and settlements in
Somalia originaly founded by Bantu-speaking ex-slaves, is that processes of
ethnogenesis occur at local or internal frontiers, within and among peoples who

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
are not as homogeneous as once thought. The internal frontier is posited as
localized, fluid and open to influxes of people who in many instances have been
marginalized.

1. Afice Sd*4l 'AfricasnPobf cal bdxelsin te Arneican Sufs: Hopi as anInternal Frotwr Society," Armican
Anthropologist, Vol. 94, No. 2 (19 2), p . 376-397.

Peter W. Van Arsdale, PhD., isAMunct Aociate Profes crat the Cadiate Scho l of Internatonal Stuxes, Urdvesity
of Dener, Denvr, C0 8020. He alsoserves as Rehxe , knnigrant, and Arfeican lndian Specialst fo the Colord
DiLeon of Mental Healt

3rd Quarter, 1992 113

This content downloaded from

172.58.12.254 on Wed, 31 Mar 2021 13:00:08 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 One of Kopytoff's most important contributions is the emphasis he places on
the concept of flux.2 Within an implicit systems-analytic context, he and his
colleagues paint a picture of African societies in constant change. Unlike the
traditional "tribal model," which tended to emphasize geographic, ethnic and
socio-political constancy even as societies came into contact, the internal frontier
model emphasizes the interplay of socio-political, economic and ecological factors
which has led to ethnogenesis. While tribes may exist as named entities, they
rarely exist as long-standing, integrated cultural systems. Through the book's
analyses, large numbers of sub-Saharan African peoples are shown to be
relatively recent occupants of their current habitats.
How does ethnogenesis work? The following excerpt describes one version,
in overview fashion:
[In an internal frontier area, a] new immigrant compound becomes the
nucleus of a hamlet. In time, the hamlet grows into a village as it attracts
relatives from back home and other settlers that have been similarly
ejected from the surrounding societies onto the frontier. Sometimes the
new settlement solidifies, joins with other settlements or establishes a
hegemony over them, and finally crystallizes into a new polity and
eventually a society (p. 6).
If this, on the one hand, sounds remarkably commonplace and theoretically
unexciting, it is intended to. Kopytoff and his contributors have done a masterful
job of portraying emergent African societies as they actually are, not as old-school
anthropologists, historians and political scientists thought they should be. If this,
on the other hand, sounds like the processes immigrants and refugees often have
undergone as they have established new footholds in foreign lands, it also is
intended to. The superb chapter by Lee Casanelli supports this latter point.
An historian, Casanelli uses archival and oral sources in his analysis of
ex-slave, Bantu-speaking people who began moving in the mid-19th century into
an area of southern Somalia that came to be known as Goshaland. Casanelli
refers to the settlements that emerged as "remarkable experiments in social
reconstruction" (p. 216), and indeed, his analysis strongly supports the book's
subtitle. Mixing freed, runaway and liberated slaves alike, plantation-bred skills
(synthesized with immigrants' own ethnic traditions) led to the development of
viable small-scale agricultural systems.
This occurred in a variant of the African frontier described by Kopytoff (pp.
214-215) as the "distant frontier as refuge." Somali herdsmen, in one sense,
provided what I would term the "counterpoint at the distant frontier." The
herdsmen were not directly imposed upon by the newcomers, but did serve as a
buffer, sometimes adversarial and at other times cooperative.
Casanelli details processes of kin amalgamation and fragmentation, with
attendant settlement formation and dissolution. The high degree of flux that
Kopytoff argues for in his general thesis of frontier dynamics clearly is supported

2. The concept of flux is discussed in detail in Peter W. Van Arsdale, "The Ecology of Survival in Sudan's Periphery-
Shcgt-Term Tactics and Lorg-Term Strategies," Africa Today, Vol. 36, Nos 3 & 4 (1989), pp. 6578.

114 AFRICA TODAY

This content downloaded from

172.58.12.254 on Wed, 31 Mar 2021 13:00:08 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Peter W. Van Arsdale

here. Casanelli notes processes whereby new runaways, of different ethnic

origins, were incorporated into existing ex-slave settlements in Goshaland with
gamas (original founders) maintaining political control. With members of
numerous Bantu-speaking ethnic groups in close contact and active settlement
expansion underway, yet with a high degree of intra-regional mobility being
exhibited by many individuals, it was essential that gamas emerge as what I would
term "systems regulators."
Two chapters in the book deal with Zaire by Nancy Fairley on the Ekie of
southern Zaire, and by Randall Packard on the BaShu of Eastern Zaire. Fairley's
is of particular importance. Kopytoff sees it as a "paradigmatic case" of the
frontier-first for Ekie immigrants whose arrival caused Pygmy Twa to leave, and
second for Luba immigrants who became "Ekie" chiefs. Through the 17th and
18th centuries Ekieland evolved from a politically uncentralized system of small
polities to a kingdom qua state.
Fairley creatively weaves oral history (which she incorrectly equates with the
term "oral tradition") and documentary sources into a tightly crafted processual
account. Like other authors in the volume, she avoids synchronic-functionalist
traps. An implicit systems-analytic framework is utilized as she demonstrates how
specific individual leaders shaped Ekie processes of political change and how
ritual gained pre-eminence in the absence of military power as the kingdom
evolved. Conquest theory is shown to be inappropriate to the understanding of
this example of state formation.
While the analysis of several of the authors (e.g., Lee Casanelli on the Bantu
in Somalia, and William Murphy and Caroline Bledsoe, who cover the Kpelle)
would have benefitted from greater attention to economic processes, the book as
a whole has very few flaws. It already is proving to be a seminal work of
tremendous benefit to anthropologists, historians and political scientists working
in and out of Africa.
And what does Schlegel conclude in applying this thesis to the Hopi? That,
as with most African societies, "tribal models" do not work well in explaining the
evolution of socio-political and ceremonial organization. That, as with Lamar and
Thompson3 cross-cultural comparisons of this type will continue to be of great
importance. That, as with Kopytoff, ecological factors are important but not
all-powerful in determining what takes place as one society evolves in
concert-and dynamic interplay-with its neighbors.

3. Had Lamar and Leonard 1Thxnpso, The Frontier in History: North America and Southern Africa
Compared GIew Haven, CT: Yale Uriversty Press, 1981).

3rd Quarter, 1992 115

This content downloaded from

172.58.12.254 on Wed, 31 Mar 2021 13:00:08 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms