Christianity and Social Change

in Africa

Essays in Honor of J.D.Y. Peel

Christianity and Social Change

in Africa

Essays in Honor of J.D.Y. Peel

edited by

Toyin Falola

Carolina Academic PressDurham, North Carolina

Copyright © 2005Toyin Falola

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Christianity and social change in Africa : essays in honor of J.D.Y. Peel / edited by Toyin Falola.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 1-59460-135-6

1. Church and social problems—Nigeria. 2. Church and social prob-lems—Africa, West. 3. Social change—Nigeria. 4. Social change—Africa,West. 5. Nigeria—Social conditions—1960– 6. Africa, West—Social condi-tions—1960– I. Peel, J. D. Y. (John David Yeadon), 1941– II. Falola,Toyin. III. Title.

HN39.N55C48 2005306.6'76608—dc22 2005007640

Carolina Academic Press700 Kent St.

Durham, NC 27701Telephone (919) 489-7486

Fax (919) 493-5668www.cap-press.com

Printed in the United States of America

v

Contents

List of Figures

Contributors

Part AContext and Personality

Chapter 1 Introduction 3Toyin Falola

Chapter 2 John Peel 27T.C. McCaskie

Part BYoruba World

Chapter 3 The Cultural Work of Yoruba Globalization 41Stephan Palmié

Chapter 4 Confusion and Empiricism: Several Connected Thoughts 83Jane I. Guyer

Chapter 5 Between the Yoruba and the Deep Blue Sea:The Gradual Integration of Ewe Fishermen on the Lagos-Badagry Seabeach 99Axel Klein

Chapter 6 “In the Olden Days”: Histories of Misbehaving Women in Ado-Odo, Southwestern Nigeria 117Andrea Cornwall

Chapter 7 “Let your garments always be white . . .”Expressions of Past and Present in Yoruba Religious Textiles 139Elisha P. Renne

Chapter 8 Shrine Sanctuary and Mission Sanctuary in West Africa 165Sandra T. Barnes

vi contents

Part CMedia, Politics, and Nationalism

Chapter 9 Translation, Publics, and the Vernacular Press in 1920s Lagos 185Karin Barber

Chapter 10 Cultural Politics and Nationalist History:A Background to Wole Soyinka’s Isara 209Insa Nolte

Chapter 11 Religion, Public Space, and the Press in Contemporary Nigeria 233Matthews A. Ojo

Part DAladura and Pentecostalism

Chapter 12 “Those Who Trade with God Never Lose”:The Economics of Pentecostal Activism in Nigeria 251Asonzeh F-K. Ukah

Chapter 13 Mediating Tradition: Pentecostal Pastors, African Priests,and Chiefs in Ghanaian Popular Films 275Birgit Meyer

Chapter 14 Continuity or Change? Aladura and Born-Again Yoruba Christianity in London 307Hermione Harris

Chapter 15 “Ndi Afe Ocha”: The Early Aladura of Igboland,1925–1975 335Ogbu U. Kalu

Chapter 16 Afro-Brazilian Religion, Progressive Catholicism,and Pentecostalism in Northeast Brazil:Notes on Confluence 361Miriam Cristina M. Rabelo

Part EChristianity and Knowledge Without Borders

Chapter 17 Managing Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa 389Matthew Hassan Kukah

Chapter 18 Conversion, Conquest, and the Qua Iboe Mission 413David Pratten

Chapter 19 Christianity, Colonial Rule, and Ethnicity:The Mission of the White Fathers among the Dagara(Ghana/Burkina Faso) 441Carola Lentz

Chapter 20 A “Religious Encounter” in Amedzofe: Women and Change Through the Twentieth Century 471Lynne Brydon

Chapter 21 Anglicanism and Asantehene Agyeman Prempeh 489T.C. McCaskie

Chapter 22 Chiefdoms, Cantons, and Contentious Land:Mapping out a Mission Field in Twentieth-Century Colonial Cameroon 517Guy Thomas

Chapter 23 Religion and Healing in Hausaland 549Murray Last

Chapter 24 “Listen While I Read”: Patriotic Christianity Among the Young Gikuyu 563John Lonsdale

Chapter 25 The Holy Trinity, or the Reduced Marx, Weber,Durkheim 595Gavin Williams

Chapter 26 At the Baraza: Socializing and Intellectual Practice at the Swahili Coast 613Kai Kresse

Index 633

contents vii

List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Sculpture of two Africans carrying a European in a hammock.10

Figure 1.2 Livingstone, the missionary, in an African village close to Lua-bala village. 11

Figure 1.3 African sculpture of a colonial officer and school teacher. 13

Figure 1.4 Dr. Diedre Badejo (left) and Iyalorisa Oloma Aina (right). Photoby Ramona LaRoche. 22

Figure 2.1 J.D.Y. Peel (photo by Sophie Baker). 28

Figure 3.1 Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther. 72

Figure 4.1 European missionaries at a Yoruba village, 19th century. 88

Figure 5.1 Map of Yorubaland. 100

Figure 6.1 Yoruba Dowry (bridewealth) Container. 121

Figure 7.1 Altar draped with white cloth, with portrait of Moses Orimolade,Ogu Oluwa New Jerusalem Church, Eternal Sacred Order of theCherubim and Seraphim, Mount Zion, Maryland, Lagos, 26March 2003 (photo by E.P. Renne). 140

Figure 7.2 The three trunks of the large ose (baobab) tree near the Elekole’spalace are regularly wrapped with white cloth, in part to insurethe peaceful unity of the town. Ikole-Ekiti, 29 July 2002 (photoby E.P. Renne). 144

Figure 7.3 Olori Omode, of the Imole Olua cult, Itapa-Ekiti, wearing an un-sewn, white cloth wrapper, with two apo yata bags with asoadodo [red cloth] straps, knotted aso oke waistband, holding uruwith beaded handles, coral necklace, and otun. 147

Figure 7.4 Prophetess Ekuno.la Smart, wearing white dress and 4-corneredwoli cap, Ondo, 24 February 2003 (photo by E.P. Renne). 149

ix

Figure 7.5 Prayer warriors with special caps with a red band (some are em-broidered, “prayer warrior”) and white dresses with a red sash,St. Saviour’s United Church of Cherubim and Seraphim Cathe-dral, Owo, 28 March 2003. 151

Figure 7.6 Almanac printed by the Christ for All Nations organization show-ing Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke wearing a shirt made from locallywoven aso oke cloth at the CfaN Gospel Campaign, Ogbomosho.

156

Figure 7.7 Cover from the video, Funfun L’Oluwa (Boye Ventures, Lagos,2003). 160

Figure 10.1 Wole Soyinka. 210

Figure 10.2 Map of Isara in Nigeria. 212

Figure 12.1 Banner for a Pentecostal preacher in Lagos. 254

Figure 12.2 Billboards advertising Pentecostal preachers. 256

Figure 13.1 Scene from Stolen Bible. 285

Figure 13.2 Scene from Stolen Bible. 288

Figure 13.3 Scene from Time. 289

Figure 13.4 Video depiction of tradition. 296

Figure 13.5 Video representation of a chief. 299

Figure 15.1 Aladura document. 338

Figure 18.1 A lady missionary in late nineteenth century Africa. 424

Figure 18.2 Church in Qua Iboe. 435

Figure 19.1 Territoire Dagari, after Paternot 1949. 452

Figure 21.1 Agyeman Prempeh in exile at Elmina. 491

Figure 22.1 Heinrich Karl Dorsch. Copyright Basel Mission Archive; ref. QS-30.001.174.01). 521

Figure 22.2 Returning from Bali, 1907. BMCA E-30.25.013: Gottlieb Frei-drich Spellenberg. Copyright Basel Mission Archive; ref. QS-30.001.1174.01. 523

Figure 22.3 Dorsch map of Cameroon, 1908. “Karte des südwestlichen Teilsvon Kamerun (enthaltend das Basler Missionsgebiet) auf Grundvon Original-Aufnahmen von Missionaren der Basler Missionsowie von Offizieren und Beamten unter Anlehnung an M. Moi-

x list of figures

sel gezeichnet von Heinrich Dorsch.” Basel: Verlag der Basler Mis-sionsbuchhandlung in Basel, 1908. (Copyright Basel MissionArchive). 524

Figure 22.4 Detail, Dorsch map of Cameroon, 1908. “Karte des südwest-lichen Teils von Kamerun (enthaltend das Basler Missionsgebiet)auf Grund von Original-Aufnahmen von Missionaren der BaslerMission sowie von Offizieren und Beamten unter Anlehnung anM. Moisel gezeichnet von Heinrich Dorsch.” Basel: Verlag derBasler Missionsbuchhandlung in Basel, 1908. (Copyright BaselMission Archive). 526

Figure 22.5 Neue Aufnahmen von Gustav Conrau im Norden und Nord-westen des Kamerun-Gebirges aus den Jahren 1986 und 1897.Redigiert und gezeichnet von Max Moisel. Mittheilungen aus dendeutschen Schutzgebieten, Bd. XI, 1898. (Copyright Basel Mis-sion Archive). 527

Figure 22.6 G. Conrau's Wegeaufnahmen im Lande der Banyang, Bangwa,Kabo, Basosi und Bafo. Redigirt (sic) und gezeichnet von MaxMoisel. Mittheilungen aus den deutschen Schutzgebieten, Bd. XI,1898. (Copyright Basel Mission Archive). 528

Figure 22.7 Hinterland des Manenguba-Gebirges, in: Der Evangelische Hei-denbote, December 1906(12), 93. 529

Figure 22.8 Copy (16 October 1905) of the original plan of the Basel Missionplot affixed to BMCA E-31.9,6, CI Bali, 2. Teil, Schenkung-surkunde, Bali, 31 January 1905. 541

Figure 22.6 BMCA E-31.9,6, CI Bali, 1. Teil, Certified plan of the Basel Mis-sion plot signed by A. C. Kemavor, Government Surveyor, 21.1.1938. 545

Figure 23.1 Caliph entering Sokoto, 19th Century. 557

Figure 25.1 Karl Marx. 597

list of figures xi

Contributors

Karen Barber is Professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the Centre ofWest African Studies, University of Birmingham. She specializes in Yorubaculture, and also does comparative work on oral literature and popular cul-ture across Africa. Her most recent book is, The Generation of Plays: YorubaPopular Life in Theatre (2000).

Sandra T. Barnes is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsyl-vania, Founding Director of its African Studies Center, and in 2004–05 a fel-low at the Stanford University Humanities Center. She is the editor of Africa’sOgun: Old World and New, an interdisciplinary collection of recently expandedand revised essays that focus on West African religious culture and its contin-uing vitality in the diaspora. Her book, Patrons and Power: Creating a Politi-cal Community in Metropolitan Lagos (1986), won the Amaury Talbot Prizefor the best book on Africa. She is President of the African Studies Associa-tion, and sits on the Boards of Directors of the American Council of LearnedSocieties and the Foundation for the Advancement of International MedicalEducation and Research. She has been a visiting faculty member at Johns Hop-kins University and the University of Ibadan (Nigeria). Her current researchfocuses on West Africa: pre-colonial social and cultural life along the GuineaCoast and post-colonial popular culture.

Lynne Brydon is Senior Lecturer in the Centre of West African Studies, Uni-versity of Birmingham (UK). Among her publications are Women in the ThirdWorld (with Sylvia Chant) and Adjusting Society: The World Bank, the IMF andGhana (with Karen Legge). She co-edits Ghana Studies Review (with Takyi-waa Manuh), and is a member of the Editorial Collective of the Review ofAfrican Political Economy.

Andrea Cornwall is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at theUniversity of Sussex, where she works on the politics of participation, gender,and governance, and sexual and reproductive rights. Her publications includeDislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (edited, with Nancy Lind-isfarne, 1994), Realizing Rights: Transforming Approaches to Sexual and Repro-

xiii

ductive Wellbeing (co-edited, with Alice Welbourn, 2002), Readings in Genderin Africa (James Currey, 2004), “Spending power: love, money and the re-configuration of gender relations in Ado-Odo, southwestern Nigeria” (Amer-ican Ethnologist, 29:4, 2002), and “ ‘To be a man is more than a day’s work’:Shifting ideals of manliness in Ado-Odo, southwestern Nigeria” (in Lisa Lind-say and Stephan Miescher eds., Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa,Heinemann, 2003).

Jane I. Guyer is Professor of Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University.Her research has focused on social and economic change in West and CentralAfrica over the past century. An African Niche Economy. Farming to FeedIbadan 1968–88 (1997) studies a Yoruba town in the Ibadan hinterland, andMarginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa (2004) re-analyzesethnographic and historical evidence from several areas, including SouthernNigeria. A co-edited book (with LaRay Denzer and Adigun Agbaje), MoneyStruggles and City Life: Devaluation in Ibadan and Other Urban Centers inSouthern Nigeria, 1986–1996 (2002; 2003, Ibadan) addresses some aspects ofthe “confusion” of her topic for this volume.

Hermione Harris is a consultant researcher with the Information Centre aboutAsylum and Refugees (ICAR) at King’s College, London. Her publications in-clude The Somali Community in the UK (2004). She has carried out extensiveresearch on Yoruba churches in London, the subject of her doctoral thesis TheCherubim and Seraphim: the Concept and Practice of Empowerment in anAfrican Church in London (2002).

Ogbu U. Kalu, formerly of the University of Nigeria, is the Henry Winters LuceProfessor of World Christianity and Mission, McCormick Theological Semi-nary, Chicago, and Associate Director of Chicago Center for Global Ministries.His book, Embattled Gods: Christianization of Igboland, 1841–1991 was firstpublished in 1996, and has been republished by Africa World Press. The Uni-versity of South Africa Press is publishing his collection of essays, Clio in a Sa-cred Garb: Essays on Christian Presence and African Responses, 1900–2000. Heis the editor of African Christianity: an African Story that is forthcoming underthe Perspective Series, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Axel Klein is the Head of the International Unit at the UK-based NGO DrugScope, working on a range of issues including drug policy, prison reform, andcivil society capacity building. He has published on drug policy and the in-formal sector in Nigeria, and is currently editing a volume on illicit drugs inAfrica with Isidore Obot. Previous publications include Caribbean Drugs: fromCriminalisation to Harm rReduction, edited with Anthony Harriott and Mar-

xiv contributors

cus Day, and Fragile Peace: State Failure, Violence and Development in CrisisRegions, co-edited with Tobias Debiel.

Kai Kresse is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St. An-drews. His publications include Sagacious Reasoning: H. Odera Oruka in Memo-riam (Frankfurt/New York Peter Lang. 1997), co-edited with Anke Graness(reprinted in an Africa-edition by East African Educational Publishers,Nairobi, 1999); Symbolisches Flanieren: Kulturphilosophische Streifzuege. (Han-nover: Wehrhahn Verlag. 2001), co-edited with Roger Behrens & Ronnie Pe-plow; and, as editor, Reading Mudimbe, to appear as a special issue of Journalof African Cultural Studies (in press). He is currently finalizing a book manu-script on Swahili philosophical discourse, dealing with poets, thinkers, andintellectual practice in Mombasa. Recent articles in the Journal of Religion inAfrica (2003), and edited collections, e.g. Scott Reese (ed), The Transmissionof Learning in Islamic Africa. (Leiden: Brill. 2004). He was awarded the Evans-Pritchard Lectureship at All Souls College, Oxford, for the academic year2005– 6. He is also part of the editorial team of the online journal Polylog:Forum for Intercultural Philosophy. He holds an M.A. in Philosophy from theUniversity of Hamburg, where he also studied Swahili, and an MSc and aPh.D. in Anthropology and African Studies from the University of London.

Matthew H. Kukah is a Catholic priest, Vicar General, Archdiocese of Kaduna,Nigeria. He studied philosophy and theology at St Augustine’s Seminary, Jos,and received his MA in Peace Studies at Bradford University, and his Ph.D. atthe School of African and Oriental Studies, London. He has served as the Sec-retary General, Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria; Member, Human Rights Vio-lations Investigation Commission; Senior Rhodes Scholar, St Antony’s Col-lege, Oxford; and the Edward Mason Fellow, Kennedy School of Government,Harvard University.

Murray Last is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology, Uni-versity College London. He specializes in both the pre-colonial history of Mus-lim northern Nigeria and the ethnography of illness and healing. He has beenworking in and on northern Nigeria since 1961, researching a wide variety ofsubjects with colleagues in Bayero University and elsewhere; he visits Nigeriaevery year. In 1967 he published The Sokoto Caliphate (London: LongmansGreen), and edited (with G.L. Chavunduka), The Professionalisation of AfricanMedicine in 1986 (Manchester: Manchester University Press for InternationalAfrican Institute); in addition he has over seventy publications on history andon anthropology. He edited the International African Institute’s journalAFRICA for fifteen years (1986–2001).

contributors xv

Carola Lentz is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Johannes GutenbergUniversity of Mainz, Germany, and was a fellow of the Netherland’s Institutefor Advanced Studies in 2000–2001. Following her doctoral research on labormigration and ethnicity in Ecuador, she has conducted research on ethnicity,elite formation, and history in North-Western Ghana. She is author of EthnicUnity and Local Patriotism: The Production of History in North-Western Ghana,1870–1990 (forthcoming), as well many related articles, and co-editor of Eth-nicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention (2000). Further publications includethe edited volumes Les Dagara et leurs voisins: Histoire de peuplement et rela-tions interethniques au sud-ouest du Burkina Faso (2001), and Histoire du pe-uplement et relations interethnique au Burkina Faso (2003). Her current re-search focuses on mobility, land rights, and the politics of belonging inNorth-Western Ghana and South-Western Burkina Faso.

John M. Lonsdale is Emeritus Professor of Modern African History at the Uni-versity of Cambridge, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. His pub-lished work includes Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (1992, withBruce Berman), and Mau Mau and Nationhood (edited, with Atieno Odhi-ambo, 2003). He is a past general editor of the Cambridge University PressAfrican Studies Series, past chairman of the African Studies Centre at Cam-bridge and past president of the African Studies Association of the UnitedKingdom. He is currently working on the intellectual life of Jomo Kenyatta,the British decolonization of Kenya, and the historical relationship betweenreligion and politics in Kenya.

T. C. McCaskie is Professor of Asante History, Centre of West African Stud-ies, University of Birmingham, U.K. He is author of State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Asante Identities: His-tory and Modernity in an African Village 1850–1950 (Indiana and EdinburghUniversity Presses, 2000), as well as numerous book chapters and journal ar-ticles on Asante history and culture. Most recently, he was co-editor with A.Adu Boahen, E. Akyeampong, N. Lawler, and I. Wilks of The History ofAshanti Kings and the whole country itself, and Other Writings by Otumfuo,Nana Agyeman Prempeh I (Oxford University Press for the British Academy).He is presently writing a book on contemporary Asante.

Birgit Meyer is professor of Religion and Society in the Department of Sociol-ogy and Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, and professor of theanthropology of religion at the Free University, Amsterdam. Her publicationsinclude Translating the Devil. Religion and Modernity Among the Ewe in Ghana(1999), Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure (1999, edited

xvi contributors

with Peter Geschiere). Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Con-cealment (edited with Peter Pels), and Religion, Media and the Public Sphere(in press, edited with Annelies Moors). Her current research focuses on theinterface of religion and media in Ghana.

Insa Nolte is a lecturer at the Centre of West African Studies at the Universityof Birmingham, UK. Her publications include “Identity and Violence: ThePolitics of Youth in Ijebu-Remo, Nigeria” (2004, JMAS 42/1), and “Chieftaincyand the State in Abacha’s Nigeria: Kingship, Political Rivalry and CompetingHistories in Abeokuta During the 1990s” (2002, Africa 72/3). She is presentlywriting a monograph on power, politics and Obafemi Awolowo in Ijebu-Remo.

Matthews A. Ojo completed his doctoral studies in theology at the Universityof London (School of Oriental and African Studies, and King’s College, Lon-don) in 1987. His research interest is African Christianity with particular ref-erence to the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. He has published ex-tensively in this field, and recently in the area of religion and politics inNigeria. In 1999, he was involved in a British Academy-funded research onreligion and media in Nigeria. In 2002, he was a Visiting Professor at HarvardUniversity Divinity School and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study ofWorld Religions, Harvard University. He is presently a Professor and Head ofDepartment of Religious Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria.

Stephan Palmié is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University ofChicago. His publications include Das Exil der Götter: Geschichte und Vorstel-lungswelt einer afrokubanischen Religion (1991), Wizards and Scientists: Explo-rations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition (2002), an edited volume onSlave Cultures and the Cultures of Slavery (1995), and a co-edition of the orig-inal manuscript of C.G.A. Oldendorp’s History of the Mission of the MoravianBrethren in the Caribbean Islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John(1767–77) in four volumes (2000, 2002).

David Pratten is a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Sussex. Hisforthcoming publications include The Man-Leopard Murder Mysteries: Historyand Society in Colonial Nigeria, and various articles on youth, violence andvigilantism in southern Nigeria.

Miriam Rabelo teaches at the Department of Sociology and Postgraduate Pro-gram in Social Sciences of the Universidade Federal da Bahia (Brazil). She hascarried out research in the field of anthropology of religion and health inBrazil, with a special focus on religious healing. Among her publications are:Experiéncia de Doença e Narrativa with Paulo César Alves and Iara Souza (Ed-

contributors xvii

itora Fiocruz, 1999), and Antropologia da Saúde: traçando identidades e ex-plorando fronteiras with Paulo César Alves (Editora Fiocruz, 1998).

Elisha P. Renne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropologyand the Center for Afro-American and African Studies, University of Michi-gan. Her research focuses on fertility and reproductive health, gender rela-tions, religion, and social change, and the anthropology of cloth, specificallyin Nigeria. Publications include Population and Progress in a Yoruba Town (Ed-inburgh and Michigan, 2003), Regulating Menstruation: Beliefs, Practices, In-terpretations (with E. van de Walle; Chicago, 2001), and Cloth That Does NotDie: The Meaning of Cloth in Bunu Social Life (Washington, 1995). She ispresently co-editing a volume (with B. Agbaje-Williams), Yoruba Religious Tex-tiles, which will be published early in 2005.

Guy Thomas is Director of the Archives and Library of Mission 21 and Lec-turer in African history at the University of Basel. While heading the projectto set up the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon Central Archives and Library(PCCCAL), he was among the founding members of the Association ofFriends of Archives and Antiquities-Cameroon (AFAAC). He is a core mem-ber of the Centre for African Studies in Basel and is on the Advisory Board ofthe journal Le Fait Missionaire. He has published several articles, and is aboutto produce his first book on the mediation, appropriation, and domesticationof Christianity in twentieth-century anglophone Cameroon. Ongoing researchcovers a wide range of themes linked to the social history of Christian mis-sions, primarily in West and West-Central Africa.

Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah is a Research Fellow at the Centre of African Studies(CAS), School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.His publications include, “Pentecostalism, Religious Expansion and the City:Lesson from the Nigerian Bible Belt,” in: Peter Probst & Gerd Spittler (eds),Resistance and Expansion: Explorations of Local Vitality in Africa, Lit Münster(2004); “Advertising God: Nigerian Christian Video-Films and the Power ofConsumer Culture”, JRA, (2003); “Reklame für Gott: Religiöse Werbung inNigeria,” in Tobias Wendl (ed.), Afrikanische Reklamekunst (2002); “The Localand the Global in the Media and Material Culture of Nigerian Pentecostalism”(forthcoming); “Mobilities, Migration and Multiplication: The Expansion ofthe Religious Field of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Nige-ria” (forthcoming). His current research interests focus on the economics ofPentecostal popular culture in Africa, African Pentecostal Video films; andAfrican Diasporan Religions.

xviii contributors

Gavin Williams is Fellow and Tutor in Politics at St Peter’s College, Oxford,where he teaches comparative politics, political and social theories, and poli-tics in Africa. He studied at the Universities of Stellenbosch and Oxford. Hehas published articles and edited books on politics and political economy andon land and agricultural policies in Africa, particularly Nigeria, and more re-cently South Africa, and on the discourses and practices of development andof the World Bank. He is writing a history of the South African wine industry.

contributors xix