Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa (African Studies)

187 Pages·1983·4.9 MB·English

by  Robert H. Bates

ESSAYS ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY
OF RURAL AFRICA
AFRICAN STUDIES SERIES 38
Editorial board
John Dunn, Reader in Politics and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge
J. M. Lonsdale, Lecturer in History and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
D. M. G. Newbery, Lecturer in Economics and Fellow of Churchill College,
Cambridge
A. F. Robertson, Assistant Director of Development Studies and Fellow of
Darwin College, Cambridge
The African Studies Series is a collection of monographs and general studies
which reflect the interdisciplinary interests of the African Studies Centre at
Cambridge. Volumes to date have combined historical, anthropological,
economic, political and other perspectives. Each contribution has assumed
that such broad approaches can contribute much to our understanding of
Africa, and that this may in turn be of advantage to specific disciplines.
OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES
3 Land Policy in BUganda HENRY W. WEST
4 The Nigerian Military: A Sociological A nalysis of A uthority and Revolt 1960-1967
ROBIN LUCKHAM
5 The Ghanaian Factory Worker: Industrial Man in Africa MARGARET PEIL
6 Labour in the South African Gold Mines, 1911-1969 FRANCIS WILSON
7 The Price of Liberty: Personality and Politics in Colonial Nigeria
KENNETH J. POST and GEORGE D. JENKINS
9 Dependence and Opportunity: Political Change in Ahafo JOHN DUNN and
A. F. ROBERTSON
10 African Railway men: Solidarity and Opposition in an East African Labour Force
R. D. GRILLO
11 Islam and Tribal A rt in West Africa RENE A . BRAVMANN
12 Modern and Traditional Elites in the Politics of Lagos P. D. COLE
13 Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order
IVOR WILKS
14 Culture, Tradition and Society in the West African Novel EMMANUEL OBIECHINA
15 Saints and Politicians: Essays in the Organisation of a Senegalese Peasant Society
DONAL B. CRUISE O'BRIEN
16 The Lions of Dagbon: Political Change in Northern Ghana MARTIN ST ANIL AND
17 Politics of Decolonization: Kenya Europeans and the Land Issue 1960-1965
GRAY WASSERMAN
18 Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-century Africa B. G. MARTIN
19 Warfare in the Sokoto Caliphate: Historical and Sociological Perspectives
JOSEPH P. SMALDONE
20 Liberia and Sierra Leone: An Essay in Comparative Politics CHRISTOPHER CLAPHAM
21 Adam Kok's Griquas: A Study in the Development of Stratification in South Africa
ROBERT ROSS
22 Class, Power and Ideology in Ghana: The Railway men ofSekondi RICHARD JEFFRIES
23 West African States: Failure and Promise: A Study in Comparative Politics JOHN DUNN
24 Afrikaners of the Kalahari: White Minority in a Black State MARGO RUSSELL and
MARTIN RUSSELL
25 A Modern History of Tanganyika JOHN ILIFFE
26 A History of African Christianity 1950-1975 ADRIAN HASTINGS
27 Slaves, Peasants and Capitalists in Southern Angola 1840-1926 w. G. CLARENCE-SMITH
28 The Hidden Hippopotamus: Reappraisal in African History: The Early Colonial Experience
in Western Zambia GWYN PRINS
29 Families Divided: The Impact of Migrant Labour in Lesotho COLIN MURRAY
30 Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth in Dahomey 1640-1960
PATRICK MANNING
31 Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires: The Evolution and Dissolution of the Nineteenth-
century Swazi State PHILIP BONNER
32 Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case of Say y id Mahammad A bdille Hasan
SAIDS. SAMATAR
33 The Political Economy ofPondoland 1860-1930: Production, Labour, Migrancy and Chiefs
in Rural South Africa WILLIAM BEINART
34 Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism
1934-1948 DAN O'MEARA
35 The Settler Economies: Studies in the Economic History of Kenya and Rhodesia
1900-1963 PAUL MOSLEY
36 Slavery in Africa PAUL E. LOVEJOY
37 Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People's War PATRICK CHABAL
ESSAYS ON THE
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF
RURAL AFRICA
ROBERT H. BATES
California Institute of Technology
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE
LONDON NEW YORK NEW ROCHELLE
MELBOURNE SYDNEY
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521245630
© Cambridge University Press 1983
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1983
Re-issued in this digitally printed version 2008
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 82-19757
ISBN 978-0-521-24563-0 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-27101-1 paperback
Contents
Acknowledgements page vii
Introduction 1
Part I The pre-colonial period 5
1 The preservation of order in stateless societies:
a reinterpretation of Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer 7
2 The centralization of African societies 21
Part II The colonial period 59
3 Pressure groups, public policy, and agricultural
development: a study of divergent outcomes 61
4 The commercialization of agriculture and the rise of
rural political protest 92
Part III Agrarian society in post-independence Africa 105
5 The nature and origins of agricultural policies in Africa 107
Conclusion 134
Notes 148
Index 111
To Mary Dexter Bates, who got me into this profession
Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to the Division of Social Sciences of the California
Institute of Technology and to the National Science Foundation (Grant No.
SOC 77-08573) for supporting this work.
I was ably assisted by the staff of the Millikan Library and the Munger
Africana Library of the California Institute of Technology. Jill Irby typed
and retyped drafts of this manuscript with skill and good humour; she kept
the project - and the author - on course despite numerous disruptions.
Kenneth McCue, Mariam Eichwold, and Leslie Madden provided research
assistance.
Numerous people have read and criticized the papers that form this study.
They include Thayer Scudder, Elizabeth Colson, Samuel Popkin, David
Laitin, Gordon Tullock, Marc Ross, Charles Plott, John Ferejohn, Gary
Miller, Bruce Cain, Gordon Appleby, Roger Noll, Gary Cox, Joshua
Foreman, Richard Sklar, Michael Lofchie, Lance Davis, Douglass North,
Philip Hoffman, Ronald Cohen, Eleanor Searle, George Dalton, William
O. Jones, Bruce Johnston, Raymond Hopkins, David Grether, David
Brokensha, Bernard Riley, Vernon Ruttan, Robert Keohane, David
Abernethy, Barry Ames, Brian Barry, Carl Eicher, Elon Gilbert, Yujiro
Hay ami, Frances Hill, Goran Hyden, Marvin Miracle, Joe Oppenheimer,
James Scott, Alan Sweezy, Judith Tendler, Stanley Greenburg, Margaret
Levi, Ivor Wilks, Sara Berry, and several anonymous referees. I also wish to
thank the editors of the African Studies Series of Cambridge University
Press, and especially John Dunn, for their criticism and support. With so
much assistance, the faults that remain are mine alone.
vn
The Publisher acknowledges with thanks permission to reprint the following
chapters: Chapter 1 from The Preservation of Order in Stateless Societies:
A Reinterpretation of Evans-Pritchard's The Nuef in Frontiers of Econo-
mics, 1979 edited by Gordon Tullock (Center for Study of Public Choice,
Virginia Polytechnic and State University, 1979); Chapter 3 from 'Pressure
Groups, Public Policy and Agricultural Development' in Agricultural
Development in Africa: Issues of Public Policy edited by Robert H. Bates
and Michael F. Lofchie (© Praeger Publishers CBS Educational and
Professional Publishing, a Division of CBS, Inc., 1980); Chapter4from The
Commercialization of Agriculture and the Rise of Rural Protest in Black
Africa' in Food, Politics and Agricultural Development edited by Raymond
F. Hopkins, Donald J. Puchala and Ross B. Talbot (Westview Press, 1979).
Introduction
Rural Africa is important in its own right. For scholars, it is important as
well in that it poses problems which offer opportunities for intellectual
progress.
Until recently, most observers behaved as if the urban and industrial areas
were determining the fundamental character of the African continent. For
some, the cities embodied and instilled new cultural values. For others, they
propagated new forms of social organization. And, for most, the urban and
industrial sectors contained the forces of change; the rural areas, the forces
of inertia. Certainly, for political scientists, the cities represented the critical
political arena; for it was in the towns of Africa that political movements
were organized, voters mobilized, riots fomented, and coups set in motion.
Despite the rapid growth of the towns and the concomitant growth in
expectations of rapid social change, the vast preponderance of Africa's
population has remained in the rural areas. And, despite massive invest-
ments in industry and manufacturing, the vast bulk of Africa's economy has
remained in agriculture. The agrarian population of Africa has, from time to
time, won the attention it thus warrants; but such recognition has most
generally come at moments of high drama, such as times of drought or of
triumph by rural liberation movements.
Increasingly, however, less dramatic but more powerful forces have
begun to compel a reassessment of the importance of rural Africa. Most
fundamentally, a recognition has grown that the limits to Africa's capacity to
undergo social change are determined in large part by the performance of its
rural sector. It has been realized that the stagnation of many African
economies, the decline of others, and the sporadic growth of still others
result at least in part from economic forces which originate from the
countryside.
This book joins with the work of others who are convinced of the central
importance of Africa's rural populations. It seeks, moreover, to advance our
understanding of Africa's problems of rural development; thus the last
portion of this volume is devoted to an examination of the agricultural
policies of African states. But the origins of this volume lie deeper than in its
1