David Pratten
Biographic Data
| ID | 544501 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Pratten |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Pratten |
| SIGNATURE | PRATTEN D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9210-9529 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 144 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Policing Boundaries
Starting from research on vigilantism and informal justice in Nigeria, this chapter looks at policing practices in the light of their links to wider practices and repertoires of legitimacy, visibility, knowledge, and punishment used in controlling crime and social deviance and resolving disputes in Africa. These practices include both long-established cultural framings of rectitude and popular legitimacy and practices which appropriate ‘state-nes…
Portrait: J. D. Y. Peel
Sub-Saharan Africa is frequently, but unjustly, seen as the periphery of the Muslim world, in terms of both geography and religious influence.By contrast, North Africa is considered to be directly linked to the alleged center of the Muslim world, that is, the Arab Middle East.In fact, Islam has had a presence in sub-Saharan Africa since the earliest days of its history.This chapter tries to redress the periphery bias in the analysis of African Mu…
Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa: An Introduction
The starting point of this collection is to understand the positive and productive potential of uncertainty in Africa. The relevance of the focus on uncertainty in Africa is not only that contemporary life is objectively risky and unpredictable (since it is so everywhere and in every period), but that uncertainty has become a dominant trope, an ‘inevitable force’ (Johnson-Hanks 2005: 366), in the subjective experience of life in contemporary Afri…
Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa
The Precariousness of Prebendalism
A critical aspect of Richard Joseph’s argument in Democracy and Prebendal Politics is easily overlooked. His analysis of the short-lived Second Republic (1979–1983) is well-known for identifying access to public office as the dominant political imperative in Nigeria, and that ethnic and regional identities became entrenched as a result of this quest for state resources. Less evident, however, is the basic, taken-for-granted motivation that sustai…
Retroversion, Introversion, Extraversion: Three Aspects of African Anthropology
Africa is more important to anthropology than anthropology is to Africa
Domesticating Vigilantism in Africa
An unprecedented overview of anthropological and political science research on vigilantism in Africa which makes an important and innovative contribution to current discussions on the relationship between violent self-justice andstate and non-state agencies. Self-justice and legal self-help groups have been gaining importance throughout Africa. The question of who is entitled to formulate 'legal principles', enact 'justice', police 'morality' and…
Masking Youth: Transformation and Transgression in Annang Performance
The full-text of this article is not currently available in ORA, but you may be able to access it via the publisher copy link on this page
The Thief Eats His Shame: Practice and Power in Nigerian Vigilantism
Contemporary Nigerian vigilantism concerns a range of local and global dynamics beyond informal justice. It is a lens on the politics of post-colonial Africa, on the current political economy of Nigeria, and on its most intractable issues - the politics of democracy, ethnicity and religion. The legitimation of vigilante activity has extended beyond dissatisfaction with current levels of law and order and the failings of the Nigeria Police. To und…
The Politics of Protection: Perspectives on Vigilantism in Nigeria
Vigilantism has become an endemic feature of the Nigerian social and political landscape. The emergence of night guards and vigilante groups as popular responses to theft and armed robbery has a long and varied history in Nigeria. Since the return to democracy in 1999, however, Nigeria has witnessed a proliferation of vigilantism: vigilante groups have organized at a variety of levels from lineage to ethnic group, in a variety of locations from v…
The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria
This book is an account of murder and politics in Africa, and an historical ethnography of southern Annang communities during the colonial period. Its narrative leads to events between 1945 and 1948 when the imperial gaze of police, press and politicians was focused on a series of mysterious deaths in south-eastern Nigeria attributed to the 'man-leopard society'. These murder mysteries, reported as the 'biggest, strangest murder hunt in the world…
Man-leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria
Introduction: The Man-Leopard Murder Mysteries
This introductory chapter begins with a background of the ‘man-leopard’ murders, which occurred at Calabar Province in south-eastern Nigeria in 1945. At the time the police investigation was reported as the ‘biggest, strangest murder hunt in the world’, and it would become the last major investigation in Africa into killings linked to a shape-shifting cult. Three years later, when the police wound up their enquiries in early 1948, they calculated…
The Politics of Improvement, 1947–1960
The final months of the man-leopard murder investigations in late 1947 represented a key moment in the political trajectory of south-eastern Nigeria. They marked a shift in relations between the ‘educated elements’ of the improvement unions like the Ibibio Union and the colonial state. Coinciding with the Local Government Despatch of 1947, a secret review was under way in the Eastern Provinces of the political fallout of the Second World War. Its…
Of Leopards and Leaders: Annang Society to 1909
This chapter discusses the constitution of Annang society and the intersections of corporate and individual modes of identification. It outlines the key elements of Annang personhood in relation to lineage, initiation and conceptions of the soul. It links the genealogy of shape-shifting beliefs and a shifting symbolic landscape to gendered and generational tensions wrought by a succession of changes from yams to slaves, and from slaves to palm oi…
Echos of Ekpe Owo
In many senses the Annang past is a ‘scarce resource’. Annang history is hedged in by the practice of past and present religious injunctions, by concepts of knowledge and by the interplay of ‘hierarchies of credibility’. The past's scarcity is derived very simply from the fact that very few people living in the villages of the ‘leopard area’ today talk freely and directly about ékpê ówó. There is good reason for many older people to be uncomforta…
The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria
This book is an account of murder and politics in Africa, and an historical ethnography of southern Annang communities during the colonial period. Its narrative leads to events between 1945 and 1948 when the imperial gaze of police, press and politicians was focused on a series of mysterious deaths in south-eastern Nigeria attributed to the 'man-leopard society'. These murder mysteries, reported as the 'biggest, strangest murder hunt in the world…
Michel de Certeau: Ethnography and the challenge of plurality
devoted to his work and published since his death in 1986 attest to his broader influence.De Certeau's work has therefore been revisited and reassessed in numerous disciplinary circles.Curiously, however, anthropology, so seemingly sponge-like in its theoretical fashions, has not engaged extensively with de Certeau's work. 2 This is despite the fact that de Certeau's primary thematic concerns were peculiarly anthropological in nature.Issues of re…
Mystics and missionaries: Narratives of the spirit movement in Eastern Nigeria
This paper combines insights from de Certeau's writings on mysticism, history and possession, along with Africanist perspectives on new religious movements to inform a case study of a Christian revival movement in late 1920s south‐eastern Nigeria. The paper focuses on the events and fallout of the so‐called Spirit Movement of 1927 in which bands of young men and women entered states of spiritual possession, paraded along the roads, attacked elder…
The Politics of Vigilance in Southeastern Nigeria
This article argues that governance can be best analysed within modes of vigilance. Where recent work on the post-colonial state has emphasized the symbolic and practical constitution of the state through surveillance and spatialization, so in counterpoint, this analysis illustrates that social engagement with the state is based on conceptions of vigilance and practices of counter-surveillance with both spatial and temporal dimensions. Drawing on…
The politics of plunder: The rhetorics of order and disorder in Southern Nigeria
This article looks at four cases of youth‐led identity‐based social movements in Benin City and in the Annang area of southern Nigeria. It shows how each of these movements — youth associations, ‘area boys’, vigilantes and campus cults — draws on different, older repertoires of discourse and organization, and enters into relations with state authority that combine elements of complicity, insurgency, monitoring and disengagement. It argues that th…
This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria
A journey into contemporary Africa's most powerful, most corrupt nation.. To understand Africa, you have to understand Nigeria, and few Americans understand Nigeria better than Karl Maier. In the tradition of Philip Gourevitch's bestselling We Regret to Inform You...and Redmond O'Hanlon's No Mercy, This House Has Fallen is a bracing, disturbing, evocative report on the state of Africa's most populous, potentially richest, and most dangerously dys…
Local Institutional Development and Relief in Ethiopia: A Kire-based Seed Distribution Programme in North Wollo
Highlighted here is the important role played by community-based organisations in relief supply operations. In the context of an emergency seed supply project in northern Ethiopia in 1995, it examines the participation of burial societies, known as kires, in targeting, distribution and management. The paper illustrates that factors of local institutional legitimacy, transparency and accountability are central, both to the effective representation…
The Politics of Protection: Perspectives on Vigilantism in Nigeria
Vigilantism has become an endemic feature of the Nigerian social and political landscape. The emergence of night guards and vigilante groups as popular responses to theft and armed robbery has a long and varied history in Nigeria. Since the return to democracy in 1999, however, Nigeria has witnessed a proliferation of vigilantism: vigilante groups have organized at a variety of levels from lineage to ethnic group, in a variety of locations from v…
The politics of plunder: The rhetorics of order and disorder in Southern Nigeria
This article looks at four cases of youth‐led identity‐based social movements in Benin City and in the Annang area of southern Nigeria. It shows how each of these movements — youth associations, ‘area boys’, vigilantes and campus cults — draws on different, older repertoires of discourse and organization, and enters into relations with state authority that combine elements of complicity, insurgency, monitoring and disengagement. It argues that th…
The Thief Eats His Shame: Practice and Power in Nigerian Vigilantism
Contemporary Nigerian vigilantism concerns a range of local and global dynamics beyond informal justice. It is a lens on the politics of post-colonial Africa, on the current political economy of Nigeria, and on its most intractable issues - the politics of democracy, ethnicity and religion. The legitimation of vigilante activity has extended beyond dissatisfaction with current levels of law and order and the failings of the Nigeria Police. To und…
This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria
A journey into contemporary Africa's most powerful, most corrupt nation.. To understand Africa, you have to understand Nigeria, and few Americans understand Nigeria better than Karl Maier. In the tradition of Philip Gourevitch's bestselling We Regret to Inform You...and Redmond O'Hanlon's No Mercy, This House Has Fallen is a bracing, disturbing, evocative report on the state of Africa's most populous, potentially richest, and most dangerously dys…
The Politics of Vigilance in Southeastern Nigeria
This article argues that governance can be best analysed within modes of vigilance. Where recent work on the post-colonial state has emphasized the symbolic and practical constitution of the state through surveillance and spatialization, so in counterpoint, this analysis illustrates that social engagement with the state is based on conceptions of vigilance and practices of counter-surveillance with both spatial and temporal dimensions. Drawing on…
Masking Youth: Transformation and Transgression in Annang Performance
The full-text of this article is not currently available in ORA, but you may be able to access it via the publisher copy link on this page
Local Institutional Development and Relief in Ethiopia: A Kire-based Seed Distribution Programme in North Wollo
Highlighted here is the important role played by community-based organisations in relief supply operations. In the context of an emergency seed supply project in northern Ethiopia in 1995, it examines the participation of burial societies, known as kires, in targeting, distribution and management. The paper illustrates that factors of local institutional legitimacy, transparency and accountability are central, both to the effective representation…
Local Institutional Development and Relief in Ethiopia: A Kire-based Seed Distribution Programme in North Wollo
Highlighted here is the important role played by community-based organisations in relief supply operations. In the context of an emergency seed supply project in northern Ethiopia in 1995, it examines the participation of burial societies, known as kires, in targeting, distribution and management. The paper illustrates that factors of local institutional legitimacy, transparency and accountability are central, both to the effective representation…
This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria
A journey into contemporary Africa's most powerful, most corrupt nation.. To understand Africa, you have to understand Nigeria, and few Americans understand Nigeria better than Karl Maier. In the tradition of Philip Gourevitch's bestselling We Regret to Inform You...and Redmond O'Hanlon's No Mercy, This House Has Fallen is a bracing, disturbing, evocative report on the state of Africa's most populous, potentially richest, and most dangerously dys…
The politics of plunder: The rhetorics of order and disorder in Southern Nigeria
This article looks at four cases of youth‐led identity‐based social movements in Benin City and in the Annang area of southern Nigeria. It shows how each of these movements — youth associations, ‘area boys’, vigilantes and campus cults — draws on different, older repertoires of discourse and organization, and enters into relations with state authority that combine elements of complicity, insurgency, monitoring and disengagement. It argues that th…
The Politics of Vigilance in Southeastern Nigeria
This article argues that governance can be best analysed within modes of vigilance. Where recent work on the post-colonial state has emphasized the symbolic and practical constitution of the state through surveillance and spatialization, so in counterpoint, this analysis illustrates that social engagement with the state is based on conceptions of vigilance and practices of counter-surveillance with both spatial and temporal dimensions. Drawing on…
The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria
This book is an account of murder and politics in Africa, and an historical ethnography of southern Annang communities during the colonial period. Its narrative leads to events between 1945 and 1948 when the imperial gaze of police, press and politicians was focused on a series of mysterious deaths in south-eastern Nigeria attributed to the 'man-leopard society'. These murder mysteries, reported as the 'biggest, strangest murder hunt in the world…
Man-leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria
Introduction: The Man-Leopard Murder Mysteries
This introductory chapter begins with a background of the ‘man-leopard’ murders, which occurred at Calabar Province in south-eastern Nigeria in 1945. At the time the police investigation was reported as the ‘biggest, strangest murder hunt in the world’, and it would become the last major investigation in Africa into killings linked to a shape-shifting cult. Three years later, when the police wound up their enquiries in early 1948, they calculated…
The Politics of Improvement, 1947–1960
The final months of the man-leopard murder investigations in late 1947 represented a key moment in the political trajectory of south-eastern Nigeria. They marked a shift in relations between the ‘educated elements’ of the improvement unions like the Ibibio Union and the colonial state. Coinciding with the Local Government Despatch of 1947, a secret review was under way in the Eastern Provinces of the political fallout of the Second World War. Its…
Of Leopards and Leaders: Annang Society to 1909
This chapter discusses the constitution of Annang society and the intersections of corporate and individual modes of identification. It outlines the key elements of Annang personhood in relation to lineage, initiation and conceptions of the soul. It links the genealogy of shape-shifting beliefs and a shifting symbolic landscape to gendered and generational tensions wrought by a succession of changes from yams to slaves, and from slaves to palm oi…
Echos of Ekpe Owo
In many senses the Annang past is a ‘scarce resource’. Annang history is hedged in by the practice of past and present religious injunctions, by concepts of knowledge and by the interplay of ‘hierarchies of credibility’. The past's scarcity is derived very simply from the fact that very few people living in the villages of the ‘leopard area’ today talk freely and directly about ékpê ówó. There is good reason for many older people to be uncomforta…
The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria
This book is an account of murder and politics in Africa, and an historical ethnography of southern Annang communities during the colonial period. Its narrative leads to events between 1945 and 1948 when the imperial gaze of police, press and politicians was focused on a series of mysterious deaths in south-eastern Nigeria attributed to the 'man-leopard society'. These murder mysteries, reported as the 'biggest, strangest murder hunt in the world…
Michel de Certeau: Ethnography and the challenge of plurality
devoted to his work and published since his death in 1986 attest to his broader influence.De Certeau's work has therefore been revisited and reassessed in numerous disciplinary circles.Curiously, however, anthropology, so seemingly sponge-like in its theoretical fashions, has not engaged extensively with de Certeau's work. 2 This is despite the fact that de Certeau's primary thematic concerns were peculiarly anthropological in nature.Issues of re…
Mystics and missionaries: Narratives of the spirit movement in Eastern Nigeria
This paper combines insights from de Certeau's writings on mysticism, history and possession, along with Africanist perspectives on new religious movements to inform a case study of a Christian revival movement in late 1920s south‐eastern Nigeria. The paper focuses on the events and fallout of the so‐called Spirit Movement of 1927 in which bands of young men and women entered states of spiritual possession, paraded along the roads, attacked elder…
Masking Youth: Transformation and Transgression in Annang Performance
The full-text of this article is not currently available in ORA, but you may be able to access it via the publisher copy link on this page
The Thief Eats His Shame: Practice and Power in Nigerian Vigilantism
Contemporary Nigerian vigilantism concerns a range of local and global dynamics beyond informal justice. It is a lens on the politics of post-colonial Africa, on the current political economy of Nigeria, and on its most intractable issues - the politics of democracy, ethnicity and religion. The legitimation of vigilante activity has extended beyond dissatisfaction with current levels of law and order and the failings of the Nigeria Police. To und…
The Politics of Protection: Perspectives on Vigilantism in Nigeria
Vigilantism has become an endemic feature of the Nigerian social and political landscape. The emergence of night guards and vigilante groups as popular responses to theft and armed robbery has a long and varied history in Nigeria. Since the return to democracy in 1999, however, Nigeria has witnessed a proliferation of vigilantism: vigilante groups have organized at a variety of levels from lineage to ethnic group, in a variety of locations from v…
Domesticating Vigilantism in Africa
An unprecedented overview of anthropological and political science research on vigilantism in Africa which makes an important and innovative contribution to current discussions on the relationship between violent self-justice andstate and non-state agencies. Self-justice and legal self-help groups have been gaining importance throughout Africa. The question of who is entitled to formulate 'legal principles', enact 'justice', police 'morality' and…
Retroversion, Introversion, Extraversion: Three Aspects of African Anthropology
Africa is more important to anthropology than anthropology is to Africa
The Precariousness of Prebendalism
A critical aspect of Richard Joseph’s argument in Democracy and Prebendal Politics is easily overlooked. His analysis of the short-lived Second Republic (1979–1983) is well-known for identifying access to public office as the dominant political imperative in Nigeria, and that ethnic and regional identities became entrenched as a result of this quest for state resources. Less evident, however, is the basic, taken-for-granted motivation that sustai…
Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa
Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa: An Introduction
The starting point of this collection is to understand the positive and productive potential of uncertainty in Africa. The relevance of the focus on uncertainty in Africa is not only that contemporary life is objectively risky and unpredictable (since it is so everywhere and in every period), but that uncertainty has become a dominant trope, an ‘inevitable force’ (Johnson-Hanks 2005: 366), in the subjective experience of life in contemporary Afri…
Policing Boundaries
Starting from research on vigilantism and informal justice in Nigeria, this chapter looks at policing practices in the light of their links to wider practices and repertoires of legitimacy, visibility, knowledge, and punishment used in controlling crime and social deviance and resolving disputes in Africa. These practices include both long-established cultural framings of rectitude and popular legitimacy and practices which appropriate ‘state-nes…
Portrait: J. D. Y. Peel
Sub-Saharan Africa is frequently, but unjustly, seen as the periphery of the Muslim world, in terms of both geography and religious influence.By contrast, North Africa is considered to be directly linked to the alleged center of the Muslim world, that is, the Arab Middle East.In fact, Islam has had a presence in sub-Saharan Africa since the earliest days of its history.This chapter tries to redress the periphery bias in the analysis of African Mu…
Sociology (18 works) · Political science (14 works) · Law (13 works) · History (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Anthropology (7 works) · African history and culture studies (6 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · Art (6 works)