NUMBER 25 & 26 / 1987

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

JEAN-CLAUDE BARBIER is a sociologist, associated since 1970 with ORSTOM (French institute for development research). He has carried out research in Chad and Cameroon and is presently working in Togo and Bénin. Having studied chieftaincy in various rural settings, his present research concerns the role of chieftaincy in urban settings and its potential role in community development. In addition to those mentioned in his article, his recent publications include “Alliance ou conflit entre le haut et le bas,”(Politique Afrieain 1:130-137, 1981) and “Les Kotokoli d’ailleurs - étude d’une diaspora,” in Migrations Togolaises - bilan et perspectiues (Lomé: Université du Bénin, 1986).

WIM VAN BINSBERGEN has been associated with the Africa Studies Center in Leiden since 1977; since 1980 he is head of its Department of Political and Historical Studies. He received his training in social anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and his doctorate in social sciences from the Free University in 1979. He was a lecturer and later a research affiliate at the University of Zambia (197 1-74) and has carried out field research in Tunisia (1968, 1970), Zambia (1972-74, 1977, 1978) and Guinea-Bissau (1983). The dominant theme in his fieldwork and writing has been religion. Among his many publications is his book Religious Change in Zambia (1981). With F. Reyntjens and G. Hesseling he edited State and Local Community in Africa/L’Etat et la communauté locale en Afrique (Cahiers du CEDAF, 1986).

MARLIES BOUMAN received her training in law and criminology from the Free University of Amsterdam in 1984 with a thesis based on field research in Botswana entitled “Crime and punishment in Botswana”. She has since then been working on a doctoral thesis concerning conflicts over cattle-’theft’ in Botswana. She carried out field work in Botswana from 1982-1985.

HENRI J.M. CLAESSEN is professor of anthropology at the University of Leiden. He studied geography and anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, receiving his doctorate in 1970 with a thesis entitled Van vorsten en volken (Of Princes and Peoples). His publications are largely in political anthropology and deal in particular with the early state. He has contributed to and edited a number of books on this subject, including The Early State and The Study of the State (1978, 1981, with P. Skalník), Political Anthropology: the State of the Art (1979, with S.L. Seaton) and Early State Dynamics (1987, with P. van de Velde).

JOHN TAMUKEDDE MUGAMBWA is senior lecturer in law at the University of Papua New Guinea; he has also taught law at Makerere University and the National University of Lesotho, and received his law training at Makerere and at Yale University. His received his doctorate in 1986 from the Australian National University; his thesis is entitled “Evolution of the British legal authority in Uganda with special emphasis on Buganda 1890-1938.”

FILIP REYNTJENS is lecturer in law at the Universities of Antwerp and Leuven and director of the African Studies and Documentation Center (CEDAF-ASDOC) in Brussels. He received his legal training at the Universities of Antwerp and London and his doctorate from the University of Antwerp. He taught law for three years at the National University of Rwanda. He has published extensively on public law and political change in Africa and on informal dispute resolution. His books include Off the Horseback? Legal Aspects of the Return to Constitutional Government in Africa South of the Sahara (1980) and Pouvoir et droit au Rwanda (1985).

EMILE A.B. VAN ROUVEROY VAN NIEUWAAL is senior research officer at the Africa Studies Center in Leiden and a part-time professor of constitutional law and the history of public law in Africa at the University of Leiden. He received his legal training at the University of Groningen. His doctoral thesis (University of Leiden) is entitled A la recherche de la justice: quelques aspects du droit matrimonial et de la justice du juge de paix et du chef supérieur des Anufòm à Mango dans le nord du Togo (Leiden: African Studies Center, 1976). He has carried out extensive legal anthropological field research since 1968 among the Anufôm in Northern Togo, resulting in numerous articles, among them “To claim or not to claim: changing views about the restitution of marriage prestations among the Anufòm in Northern Togo” in this Journal (African Law Studies 12:102-128, 1975, with E.A. Baerends). His research in Northern Togo has also led to a number of ethnographic films dealing with chieftaincy, dispute processing, aspects of Islam, etc. Since 1986 his research has become more legal-political in character, emphasizing the interaction of state institutions and (neo) traditional political authorities, particularly in Togo but also by way of comparison in other West African states such as Ghana, Burkina Faso and Bénin. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of this Journal.

FRANK A. SALAMONE is chairman of the social science department of Elizabeth Seton College in Yonkers, New York, and associate editor of the African Studies Review. He received his doctorate in anthropology from the State University of New York (Buffalo) in 1973. He has published extensively on the Hausa and other topics in African anthropology and sociology. He is the author of “The clash between indigenous, Islamic, colonial and post-colonial law in Nigeria” in issue 21 of this journal.

 
HANS SCHOENMAKERS studied anthropology at the University of Utrecht. He is presently on the staff of the Office of International Cooperation of the University of Groningen, responsible among other things for coordination of the inter-university program with the Eduardo Mondlane University of Maputo, Mozambique. In 1983-1984 he carried out field research in Guinea-Bissau as a member of the staff of the Africa Studies Centre, Leiden. A book based on this research is in preparation: State, Rural Development and Peasants in Guinea-Bissau. An earlier publication based on his research in Guinea-Bissau is “The establishment of the colonial economy in Guinea-Bissau” (Les Cahiers du CEDAF, nrs. 2-3-4, pp. 3-3 1, Brussels, 1986).

PETER SKALNIK is senior lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Cape Town. He received his university training in African studies at Charles University (Prague) and Leningrad State University; his doctoral thesis (“The dynamics of early state development in the Voltaic area”) was submitted to Charles University in 1973, but for political reasons he was not permitted to defend it. He has taught at universities in many countries, in particular Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands. His fieldwork has been in the Soviet Union (brief periods in 1966, 1967, 1973), Czechoslovakia (1970-76, intermittently), Northern Ghana (18 months during 1978- 1986) and more recently in Franschhoek, Cape Province, South Africa. His research interests include the theory of the state, the history of anthropological theory (especially in Eastern Europe), rural development (especially in Africa) and mountain communities. Among his numerous publications in many languages are two books co-edited with H.J.M. Claessen (The Early State, 1978, and The Study of the State, 1981). Forthcoming is An Argonaut from Cracow. Bronislaw Malinowski’s Pre-fieldwork Writings (edited with R.J. Thornton) and Outwitting the State (proceedings of a symposium on ‘responses of indigenous/local systems of authority to imported patterns of state power’). Monographs on the Nanumba-Konkomba ‘war’ and on the relationship between Nanumba chieftaincy and the colonial and post-colonial state are in preparation.