Study with special reference to the village of Batagarawa.

The land, labor, credit, and trading institutions of Marmara village, in Hausaland, northern Nigeria, are detailed in this study through fieldwork conducted in two national economic cycles - the petroleum-boom prosperity (in 1977-1979), and the macro-economic decline (in 1985, 1996 and 1998). The book unveils a new paradigm of economic change in the West African savannah, demonstrating how rural accumulation in a polygynous society actually limits the extent of inequality while at the same time promoting technical change. A uniquely African non-capitalist trajectory of accumulation subordinates the acquisition of capital to the expansion of polygynous families, clientage networks, and circles of trading friends. The whole trajectory is driven by an indigenous ethics of personal responsibility. This model disputes the validity of both Marxian theories of capitalist transformation in Africa and the New Institutional Economics.

Study of rural area economic structures and mechanisms in West Africa, with particular reference to ownership and capitalist entrepreneurship among indigenous peoples in Ghana and Nigeria - covers economic implications and social implications of marketing activities connected with agriculture, animal production and fishery. Bibliography pp. 160 to 165, maps and statistical tables.

In Farmers and the State in Colonial Kano, Steven Pierce examines issues surrounding the colonial state and the distribution of state power in northern Nigeria. Here, Pierce deconstructs the colonial state and offers a unique reading of land tenure that challenges earlier views of the role of indirect rule. According to Pierce, land tenure was the means the colonial government used to rule the local population and extract taxes from them, but it was also a political logic with a fundamental flaw and a Western bias. In Pierce's view, colonial representations of land tenure claimed to reflect precolonial systems of rule, but instead, fundamentally misrepresented farmers' experience. He maintains that this misrepresentation created a paradox at the core of the colonial state which persists into the present and helps to explain contemporary problems in African states. In this sweeping and eloquent account of African history, readers will find an extended genealogy of land law and taxation as well as rich material on the power of indigenous knowledge and the persistence of colonial systems of rule.

Hausa society in West Africa has attracted researchers’ attention for decades, and has featured in the historical record for at least 500 years. Yet, no clear picture is available of the historical trajectories that underpin Hausa ethnogenesis. This book addresses this gap, deploying interdisciplinary approaches to revisit questions to which single disciplines have given partial answers, often due to the paucity of written sources for early periods of Hausa history. Contributors draw from the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, economic history, and archaeology to enquire into how a ‘Hausa’ identity took shape and what have been its changing material and cultural manifestations. The result is a compelling overview of one of the most iconic groups of modern West Africa.

How have different forms of colonialism shaped societies and their politics? William F. S. Miles focuses on the Hausa-speaking people of West Africa whose land is still split by an arbitrary boundary established by Great Britain and France at the turn of the century.

Introducing poetry, prose, songs and theatre from Nigeria, this engaging volume blends translated extracts with a rich commentary on the historical development and modern context of this hugely creative culture. Examining imaginative prose-writing, the tale tradition, popular song, Islamic religious poetry and modern TV drama amongst other topics, this is a clear and accessible book on a literary culture that has previously been little-known to the English-speaking readership.

Proceedings and papers prepared for the ILO Tripartite African Regional Seminar on Rural Development and Women held in Dakar, Senegal on June 15-19, 1981.