STATUS AND IDENTITY IN WEST AFRICA: Nyamakalaw of Mande
Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis. 1995.
Pp. xiv + 204. (PB) ISBN 0-253-20929-3.
Edited by David C. Conrad and Barbara E. Frank.

Book Review From the title, one could guess that this is a work of anthropologists. Though anthropology has made every effort to distance itself from its colonial antecedents, its rather sordid origins continue to hunt it to this day. This book, a result of a collaboration of eleven Africanist scholars, provides the evidence, if evidence is needed. Except for the three scholars that appear to be natives of the region, the rest are Western scholars who have over the years carried out several research in the area of Mali, Senegal and Burkina Faso. The books aims at revisiting the social structure of the Mande speaking peoples of West Africa and correcting what was believed to be a mistaken view developed by the early colonial scholarship. The focus of inquiry is the group of artisans, blacksmith, potters, leatherworkers and bards or praise singers, known as nyamakalaw, who are thought to be a kind of lower caste of the Mande people of Mali, in West Africa. The book is made up of an introduction and nine chapters, divided into three sections of three chapters each. The introduction, quite a chapter, not only introduces the chapters but also attempted a kind of literature review, in which the weaknesses of previous researches were highlighted to justify the need for this and further research on the subject. The first section tried to tackle what it calls ‘paradox of word and meaning’, examining the etymology of the word nyamakalaw, the power structure of the society and the semantics of the various terms by which some of the artisans are known. The second section focuses on the social history and discusses linguistic evidences, oral tradition and identity of the Mande Diaspora. The third, and last section, deals with ‘power of agency and identity’ in which the issue of identity, as seen from the perspective of  anthropology, was pursued among some Mande Diaspora in northern Ivory Coast, some women artisans in Jenne, Mali, and in the modern Mande literature. The content of the book, coming as it did from an academic workshop, is highly academic not only in the sense of hair-splitting and abstraction but also in being far-fetched from the immediate and pressing problems of the region. It must have, therefore, been meant for specialist, like anthropologists, linguists and Africanists. From the introduction, through the rest of the papers the writers claim that previous scholars have either misunderstood the issues or have been unfair in their interpretations, yet their own approaches did not appear too different from the very one they criticized, at least the frame of reference as well as the prejudices, subtle as they may be, have remained the same. The Mande are a Muslim people and Islam had spread into that region for nearly a millenium, and must have informed a lot of the values of the people in the region, but no one made it a central issue in the analysis, which claims to redress previous short comings. Coming from the West, where religion generally is no longer important and where only material consideration motivates human action, it is perhaps easy to understand, if difficult to forgive, this marginilisation of Islam, fashionable as it has been since the colonial times. Ignoring the degree of social integration which was clearly accelerated by Islam, among other factors, must have denied the study the opportunity to unravel a lot of the mysteries in this intricate dynamics between Islam and animism. But perhaps this should not be surprising, for this, after all, is what anthropology might be all about. It must be said, however, the introduction, written by the two editors and the last chapter, ‘Jaliya in the modern World’, by cheick Mahamadou Keita, one of the contributors, made much easier reading and came very close to raising the issues at play in this social dynamics. The role of the colonialist, the French in this case, in dislocating (some would say poisoning) the colonized societies, subverting their values and forcing Western values down the throats of their victims, were marginally touched, when Cheick Keita quoted one of the eloquent Malian scholars, Massa Makan Diabate. “Griots”, Diabate wrote, “have died with the arrival of the whites, …… there are no more griots now. The griots of the sun of independence have traded gold for copper. They are simple entertainers who display there flowery eloquence in order to gain small change” [i.e. for money] (P.184) What role have the French (the whites) played in this degeneration, is one of the questions that such researches would not even ask, much less answer. In any case anthropology is about the study of primitive societies and the French are not. The mere efforts these scholars have made in this book to break away from the inauspicious past of anthropology, unsuccessful as it may have been, still gives one hope that some day the relevant issues will be raised and we shall see the role of previous studies for what they have been. Usman Bugaje