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NEO-TRADITIONALISM AND THE LIMITS OF INVENTION IN BRITISH COLONIAL AFRICA
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2003
Year
ColonialismDecolonialityAfrican Political ThoughtAfrican DiasporaColonial PowerSocial SciencesAfrican HistorySettler ColonialismColonial RuleAfrican American StudiesCultural HistoryLanguage StudiesAfrican Social ChangeMaterial CultureAfrican PoliticsColonial InventionAfrican StudiesAfrican HumanitiesAfrocentricityAnthropologyCultural Anthropology
Scholars on the invention of tradition, customary law, and tribalism since the 1980s have often overstated colonial powers’ ability to manipulate African institutions for hegemony. The article finds that tradition is a dynamic discourse continually reinterpreted, colonial authority was constrained by chiefs’ duty to community welfare, ethnicity reflected long‑standing local conditions, and colonial institutions could not be easily fabricated, limiting colonial power as much as enabling it.
Exploring a range of studies regarding the ‘invention of tradition’, the ‘making of customary law’ and the ‘creation of tribalism’ since the 1980s, this survey article argues that the case for colonial invention has often overstated colonial power and ability to manipulate African institutions to establish hegemony. Rather, tradition was a complex discourse in which people continually reinterpreted the lessons of the past in the context of the present. Colonial power was limited by chiefs' obligation to ensure community well-being to maintain the legitimacy on which colonial authorities depended. And ethnicity reflected longstanding local political, cultural and historical conditions in the changing contexts of colonial rule. None of these institutions were easily fabricated or manipulated, and colonial dependence on them often limited colonial power as much as facilitating it.