Megan Vaughan

Death and Dying in the History of Africa Since 1800

In this Introduction to the Special Issue on Death in African History we explore issues raised by the existing literature and suggest ways forward for future research. Death has long been a central concern of social anthropological writing on African societies, and of the extensive literature on African belief sys- tems. Until recently, however, little attention has been paid to the history of death practices in Africa in relation to demographic change, urbanization, the interven- tions of the colonial and postcolonial state and the availability of new technologies. We explore the ways in which these forces have contributed to re-inventions of practices and beliefs surrounding death which are both self-evidently ‘modern’ and yet also rooted in a much longer history.

Food Production and Family Labour in Southern Malawi: the Shire Highlands and Upper Shire Valley in the Early Colonial Period

The mechanics of food production by peasant cultivators have received relatively little attention from historians of colonial Africa, and yet a knowledge of food production systems and the labour they require is crucial to any understanding of rural change and stratification in the colonial period. On the Shire Highlands of Southern Malawi, ecological disturbance and the alienation of land in the early years of the twentieth century meant that an intensification of labour on food production was needed if hunger was to be avoided. The differential success of various groups in holding on to their family labour was a major factor making for economic differentiation in this period. Full-scale famine was avoided by the ability of some groups to adopt new cropping patterns, intensify labour, and thus continue to produce a food surplus. A degree of land shortage could be accommodated as long as labour could be intensified on the available land. In the Upper Shire valley at the same time, there was little shortage of land, but the concern for food security there was important in determining the outcome of the introduction of cotton as a cash-crop. The attainment of food security in this area, which was prone to drought, involved the deployment of family labour on food production over much of the year, including the planting of second crops and back-up crops in the dry season. The introduction of cotton was largely a failure because the returns did not compensate for the loss of labour on food production.

AFRICA AND THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN WORLD

The Commission for Africa, which reported in March 2005, drew attention to the enduring problem of poverty in Africa, but also reinforced the common perception that Africa has a troubled relationship with the ‘modern world’. This essay reviews the literature on Africas long-term political and economic development, paying particular attention to the continents insertion into the global system in the period described by C. A. Bayly as the ‘birth of the modern world’. It concludes that, though many of the continents current problems arise out of recent policy failures, we should not ignore longer-term, structural elements of environmental, demographic and economic history, including the consequences (direct and indirect) of the slave trade.

The Discovery of Suicide in Eastern and Southern Africa

Historically African societies have been assumed to have low suicide rates, though there is little conclusive evidence to support this assertion and it is informed by dubious colonial assumptions about the nature of African subjectivity. In particular, longitudinal evidence is lacking. In recent years suicide has begun to attract the attention of psychiatry professionals in Eastern and Southern Africa and of the media. It is now widely argued that suicide rates are increasing, and in some places concern around suicide has taken the appearance of a ‘moral panic’. Suicide is invested with a variety of meanings across the two regions. The results of a small-scale study of attitudes to suicide in Malawi are reported.

Scarification in Africa

ABSTRACT The meaning and function of ‘inscriptions on the body’ have been the subject of lively debate amongst historians and anthropologists of colonial expansion and the societies of the Pacific. With some notable exceptions, the parallel history of scarification practices in Africa has received less attention. However, colonial evidence for scarification exists and can be re-read in the light of recent debates on the limits of the ‘invention of tradition’ in colonial Africa.

Slavery and Colonial Identity in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius

On 25 May 1785, a M. Lousteau arrived at the police station in Port Louis, Isle de France (now Mauritius) to complain that his slave Jouan had been abducted. He described Jouan as an ‘Indien’, ‘Lascar’ and ‘Malabar’, and said that he had learned that he had been smuggled on to the royal ship Le Brillant , bound for Pondicherry in southern India, by one Bernard (whom Lousteau describes as a ‘creol libre’ but who later is described as ‘Malabar, soi-disant libre’ and ‘Topa Libre’). The story of the escape had been told to him by a ‘Bengalie’ slave called Modeste, who belonged to the ‘Lascar’ fisherman, Bacou. A number of people had apparently assisted Jouans escape in other ways—most importantly his trunk of belongings had been moved secretly from hut to hut before being embarked with him. Lousteau was a member of that ever-growing professional group of eighteenth-century France and its colonies: the lawyers. He was clerk to the islands supreme court, the Conseil Superieur. He supported a large family, he said, and the loss of Jouan represented a serious loss to their welfare. Jouan, it turned out, was no ordinary slave. He was a skilled carpenter who earned his master a significant sum every month; he was highly valued, and Lousteau had refused an offer of 5,000 livres for him. What is more, he could be easily recognised, for he was always exceptionally well turned-out and well-groomed. To facilitate in the search for his slave, Lousteau provided the following description of him: He declares that his fugitive slave is of the Lascar caste, a Malabar, dark black in colour, short in height, with a handsome, slightly thin face, a gentle appearance, with long hair … that he is very well dressed, abundantly endowed with clothes , such as jackets and shorts … wearing small gold earrings , a pin with a gold heart on his shirt, and on the arm a mark on the skin which he thinks reads DM.

‘DIVINE KINGS’: SEX, DEATH AND ANTHROPOLOGY IN INTER-WAR EAST/CENTRAL AFRICA

The elaborate mortuary rites of the Chitimukulu (the paramount chief of the Bemba people) attracted the attention of both colonial administrators and anthropologists in inter-war Northern Rhodesia. This paper examines the political and symbolic significance of these rites before turning to an analysis of accounts, by the anthropologist Audrey Richards, of the deaths of two ‘commoners’ in the 1930s. The paper argues that chiefly power resided less in the threat of death which was enacted spectacularly in the Chitimukulus mortuary rituals than in the promise to create and protect life, located in the practices of quotidian life. This promise of the creation and protection of life was being progressively undermined by the conditions of colonial rule.

Introduction: Themes in the Study of Death and Loss in Africa

Undoubtedly, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has focused attention on the ways in which death is managed and understood in African societies. Although the demographic and economic impact of HIV/AIDS has yet to be fully grasped, it is already evident that wide-scale AIDS mortality has profoundly influenced reproductive decision-making, reconfigured kinship structures and domestic economies of care, altered livelihood strategies and exacted an immense toll on already overburdened public health systems (Nattrass 2003; Iliffe 2006). More subtle but no less significant has been the emergence in some parts of Africa of new discursive frameworks through which the relationship between life and death (Niehaus 2007; Irving 2007; Robins 2006), to the dead and diseased body (Fassin 2007), and to the dying process (Klaits 2010) can be both imagined and expressed.

Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition, and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890-1990

Introduction: In & Out of Context: The Problems of a R e-Study - The Colonial Construction of Knowledge: History & Anthropology - The Colonial Construction of Knowledg e: Ecology & Agriculture - Relishing Porridge: The Gen der Politics of Food - Cultivators & Colonial Officers : Food Supply and the Politics of Marketing - Developing M en: The Creation of the Progressive Farmer - Migration &am p Marriage - Working for Salt: Nutrition in the 1980s - F rom Millet to Maize: Gender and Household Labor in the 198 0s - Conclusion