African Political Systems Revisited

Aleksandar Bošković is Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Archaeology in Belgrade. His books include William Robertson Smith (Berghahn Books, 2021), Mesoamerican Religions and Archaeology (Archaeopress, 2017) and Other People’s Anthropologies (Berghahn Books, 2008, editor).

• List of IllustrationsForewordAdam KuperChapter 1. The Right Book at the Right Time: Early Reactions and Continuing DebatesAleksandar BoškovićChapter 2. African Political Systems and Political AnthropologyHerbert S. LewisChapter 3. Complementary Segmentary Opposition, Early Kingship and the Looming State: Bridging the Dichotomy of African Political SystemsSimon SimonseChapter 4. The Shilluk reth: Early King or Head of State? An Inter-Nilotic ExplorationSimon SimonseChapter 5. From African Political Systems and Tribes Without Rulers via The Early State towards a New Approach to the Political Anthropology of AfricaPetr SkalníkChapter 6. Retaliation, Mediation and Punishment in Ankole: Revisiting the Chapter by ObergGünther SchleeChapter 7. Beyond African Political Systems? The Relevance of Patrilineal Descent in Moments of Crisis in Northern SomaliaMarkus V. HoehneChapter 8. Some Notes on the Tuareg (Kinin) of Northern DarfurMunzoul AssalChapter 9. The Nkandla Controversy: Insights from African Political SystemsRobin PalmerChapter 10. Rethinking Tswana Kingships and Their Incorporation in Modern Botswana State FormationØrnulf GulbrandsenAfterwordBilinda StraightIndex

“African Political Systems Revisited is a rich collection…that…more than succeeds in obliging us to acknowledge the ongoing empirical and theoretical value of a disciplinary monument without succumbing to either theoretical nostalgia or postcolonial posturing.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute“African 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,’ 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.” • Cahiers d'Études africaines“African Political Systems Revisited (APSR) offers valuable reconsiderations of some of the key contributions of the original African Political Systems (APS) published by Meyer Fortes and Edward Evan Evans Pritchard in 1940, by way of bridging a central anthropological discussion over a span of 80 years… Altogether, APSR makes an intriguing contribution to the fields of social anthropology, political anthropology, African studies, and political theory and will be a valuable read specifically to students of political anthropology in combination with the original work.” • Anthropos“The book is a high quality discussion by a group of established and upcoming anthropologists of the impact and value of a classical and foundational text in social anthropology … The result is a strong contribution to social anthropology with new theoretical and comparative insights.” • C.S. van der Waal, Stellenbosch University